disintegration

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/33168859.

Rating: Explicit
Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Creator Chose Not To Use Archive
Warnings
Category: F/F, F/M, M/M
Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Relationship: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, Remus Lupin & Dorcas Meadowes, Minor or
Background Relationship(s)
Character: Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, James Potter, Marlene McKinnon, Dorcas
Meadowes, Mary Macdonald, Regulus Black, Pandora Lovegood, Lily
Evans
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Vampire Sirius Black, Hunter Remus
Lupin, First War with Voldemort, Except it's Vampires, Enemies to
Lovers, Dubious Morality, unlearning prejudices, Character Death,
Vampire Hunters, New York City, Arson, War, Angst, Hurt/Comfort,
Heist, reluctant allies, Sexual Tension, as in Knife to the Throat kind of
sexual tension, BAMF Dorcas Meadowes, Sirius Black's Vulnerability
Issues, James Potter's Gaggle of Forlorn Supernatural Youths™, Blood
Drinking, Horcrux Hunting, Marlene McKinnon Runs The Order,
Corruption, Sexual Content, depictions of ptsd, Grief, Death, I want to
re-emphasise this, Ppl will die, Identity Issues, working through trauma,
Gun Violence, Knife Kink, Near Death Experiences, Suicidal Thoughts,
Heavy Angst, Found Family, Dissociation, Fluff, i promise there’s some
of that in here too, ’we’d die for each other and kill each other in the
same breath’ type romance, Betrayal, Tags Are Always Changing
Because Jude Is Indecisive, Remus Lupin’s Brood Of Supernatural
Kids He Accidentally Adopted™
Language: English
Series: Part 1 of killer
Stats: Published: 2021-08-10 Updated: 2023-07-03 Words: 648,338 Chapters:
34/45

disintegration
by moonymoment

Summary

Remus stepped into Sirius’ personal space, leaning down and taking out his holy water
doused dagger from his pouch. He placed it flat underneath Sirius’ chin, pushing his head
up to look him in the eyes. He hissed as the silver burnt him, red and vicious.

“What,” he whispered, “are you doing here?”

Sirius looked pained for a second, and then he blinked, and that stupid, cocky smile lit up
his face once more.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, pretty boy?”

 or — Sirius and Remus have been trying to kill each other for eight years, but something
always seems to be standing in the way.

Notes

HELLO! welcome back to another one of jude’s wolfstar passion projects. except this is
like. the real deal. this is essentially the vamp sirius enemies to lovers wolfstar fic of my
DREAMS and it's absolutely spiralled out of my control sooo here we go ig:

PLEASE READ BEFORE YOU START:

(or at least skim the bold bits lol)

overarching CW’s consist of a LOT of violence, blood, angst. death, as well. betrayal.
depictions of HEAVY grief, PTSD, and dissociation. these characters are not always
good people and I am not marketing them as such. the relationships aren’t always healthy
(though they try their best) and, again, not marketing them as such. the fic is heavy from
the beginning on moralistic disputes, prejudices and unlearning those, and the concept of
“good” and “evil” being contested. i play with these things a lot; nothing is black and white
in this fic. it gets COMPLICATED, and plotty, and gritty, and deep.

there will be some “major” character deaths. the deaths in question, in my opinion, are
not worthy of the MCD archive tag, but I know that some people will disagree with me. so,
I made the executive decision to put “chose not to warn” on there, to let you know that i
chose not to put MCD. but death and/or murder is tagged about 6 times in the additional
tags, lol. please listen to that!

the first half of the story is a lot lighter, and when the bad parts hit I do try to sprinkle in
some relief, but if you can’t handle a lot of angst this fic may not be for you. updates are
staggered but the chapters get LENGTHY once you hit about the ch4 mark. the lowest
counts are around 15k and the highest are pushing 30 (but they’re rare, I tend to stay
comfortably around 19-23k). I try to aim for an update once every 2-3 weeks but sometimes
life gets in the way. no clue what the final word count will be but i’m pretty sure it’ll
exceed 700k.

i read every single comment but don’t always reply to all of them! i try my best but, like i
said up above, sometimes life gets in the way. however i love every single one and I thank
you endlessly for leaving literally anything ❤️

and, finally, as you’ll see below, the fic is split into four “books”! they’re sectioned to sort
of help differentiate the “arcs” in the story, i would suppose, but they’re also there for your
stability too, and to help split it up so the word count seems a bit less intimidating! the
theme so far (as for books one and two, which are complete) seems to be that they cap at
about 200k (i believe 1 is just a little under and 2 is like 20k over), so. yeah!

i think that’s all i have to say, sooo, yep. buckle in folks. this fic is a monster but it's my
monster <3 I truly hope you love it as much as I do ❤️

J xxxx
 one

BOOK ONE: The Hotel

Remus didn’t wake up that morning expecting Sirius Black to be tied up in his living room by
noon, but, honestly, Remus never expected Sirius Black when Sirius Black decided to show
himself.

The vampire had a knack for appearing in Remus’ life when he wanted him there least, a taunting
shadow, ever-present in the holy water doused rope he had begun to carry around with him
everywhere - just in case.

It was ridiculous - even looking at him now, wrists singed and sizzling with his every movement,
hair somehow still sitting perfectly if not a little frazzled, beads of sweat lying leisurely on his
brow. It was ridiculous, particularly, that he wasn’t fucking dead yet. Today will be the day,
Remus told himself, as he moved across the room to his desks and began to sort through his stakes.

He recalled the first time he had met Sirius, eight years ago; ‘met’ being perhaps too kind of a
word, in substitute of an act that felt a little less like meeting and a little more like being thrust into
the personal space of an incredibly ravenous vampire at dusk. He had been a novice hunter then -
barely 20, in awe of a world beyond his previous understanding and still getting to grips with it.
What had it been that night? A poltergeist, maybe, or a Wraith - easy stuff. He had never come into
contact with a vampire, but had heard incredulous things about them from Moody, along with
werewolves (the latter of which being the beast that had been the downfall of his eye). It had been
just his luck that the seemingly harmless, painfully unarmed trip down the road would be his first
encounter with one. Just his fucking luck.

He had yelled, as Sirius had pinned him against the wall of an alley at a ridiculous speed - it almost
felt like flying, had he not been able to feel the wind from the momentum of Sirius’ feet pelting -
and had been thrust against the bricks, immediately winded, blinded for a second before the spots
in his vision had melted away and there he was, the beautiful, terrible creature, pupils wide and
erratic in his thirst, teeth bared as he snarled in what Remus had learned since was involuntary in a
thirsty, feral vampire. Remus had been positive he would not have the time to shimmy the small
stake he kept in his inside jacket pocket through to his sleeve, but then, unbelievably, Sirius had
begun to speak.

“Oh, you’re a pretty one,” Sirius had drawled, low and aristocratic. He had jerked his head
sideways, throwing locks of hair away from his face, and closed his eyes, inhaling deeply and
almost sensually. “That changes things.”

Remus saw his opportunity and took it - stall. “Changes what?”

“Well, I’m disinclined to kill you now,” Sirius had murmured. “Of course, I was disinclined
regardless; bodies are such a faff to dispose of, truly, especially one as long as yours; but your
face… I can appreciate a pretty face.”

He removed the forearm that had been pinned against Remus’ chest, other hand still splayed
against his collarbones, and traced one, tantalising fingernail from his right temple all the way
down to the curve of his chin, flicking it upwards, a smile playing on his face. Remus could feel
the stake with the tips of his fingers, but he couldn’t seem to grasp it.
“What a waste it would be,” Sirius breathed, barely audible; eyes scanning Remus’ every feature in
such a nuanced way it made him widely uncomfortable. “A waste indeed… but I’m so hungry…”

Sirius had snarled, fangs fully bare and pupils dilating once more as he leaned forwards, shifting
his weight on Remus ever so slightly, but enough; enough for Remus to get a firm grip on the back
end of the stake, and giving him the room to thrust it forward. In his festering panic he did not
aim.

Sirius dropped all weight on Remus immediately, staggering backwards in shock, mouth forming a
perfect and almost comical O as he stared down at the wooden stake protruding from his lower
stomach. His head snapped up, eyes wild, to see Remus standing tall - he had managed to whip his
pistol out of the pouch it lived in on his back, and was pointing it directly at Sirius, face stony and
chin jutted out bravely. The small amount of shock that had flickered over Sirius’ face dissipated as
he straightened up, only slightly hunched over due to his appendage; and that fucking cocky smirk
made its way onto his undead face once more.

“A hunter, are we?” he had said, in a tone so fucking patronising that Remus’ finger actually
twitched on the trigger; he knew damn well the pistol would do nothing but slow him down, being
metal and not wooden bullets… but the vampire needn’t know that. “You missed.”

He edged forward slightly, and Sirius actually laughed, a sound festered in what sounded like both
shock and almost respect, which was very gratifying for Remus. The vampire pulled the stake out
of his stomach with a groan, thrusting the blood-soaked wood sideways and stretching a little as he
presumably healed. Remus took another step forward, and Sirius halted, eyebrows raised and
infuriating smirk taking over his face once more.

“Are you going to kill me, pretty boy?” he had asked tauntingly, eyeing the pistol providently, and
taking a step forward. Remus instinctively took a step back again - a small step, barely noticeable
to any but the one with heightened senses and super strength. Sirius laughed, and Remus knew it
was over.

“If you were going to kill me, you would’ve done it by now, hunter,” he hissed, any sense of
entertainment replaced with pure malice as he addressed Remus, spitting out the last word like it
was poison.

“As would you,” Remus had replied, and if Sirius had seen the error in his ways, he had not
acknowledged it; the smirk had simply grown larger, a strange twinkle in his eyes.

“As would I have indeed,” he said, looking Remus up and down, once, twice over. “I shall see you
around, pretty boy. Save some of that spunk for me.”

And he had, thus, disappeared into the night; in a blur, leaving only the momentum in the wind that
swirled nearby loose papers at Remus’ feet, and the awe in the young hunter himself; although he
had not realised it at the time.

Sirius Black, as Remus would learn his name during their… third? encounter, was, to put it simply,
a thorn in his fucking backside. Now, Remus wouldn’t go so far to say that Sirius was his ‘mortal
enemy’ or anything of the sort - he wasn’t that dramatic - but if there was a contest, Sirius would
be the top contender. He always seemed to get away. The hunt, Remus had come to realise after
years of dealing with him, was nothing but a game to him. This wasn’t new, of course - Remus had
encountered many a vampire in his years since their first alleyway rendezvous, and every single
one had the same twisted smile, the same twisted motivation, festered in the gratification that they
received as they hunted their victim, made their kill.
The difference with Sirius Black was that he always won.

Their last encounter, about seven months before now, had seen Sirius somehow caught in the
middle of some nasty demon business in London; he had had the absolute audacity to distract
Remus with a broken salt line as he (somehow?) cut through his bounds and slipped out the
window of the fifty-floor duplex, disappearing without a trace. Remus had not had the gall to hope
he was dead, as the time before, about another eight months prior to that, Sirius had caught him in a
small town in Germany during a hunt for a banshee that had been terrorising the citizens; Remus
had left him in a burning shack along with the banshee’s burnt corpse. Then, again, he had not
believed he was dead. He knew better by then.

Sirius Black had made it his life’s mission to irritate him - he would either die on his own terms or
he would not die at all.

And it was really starting to fucking bug him.

“Cat got your tongue, pretty boy?” came the voice, now; charismatic and unbothered as ever,
despite the smell of sizzling flesh coating the air coming from the bounds at his wrist. Remus
thrust open a window in his annoyance and turned around.

“What?”

“I asked you,” said Sirius, wiggling on his chair slightly, “if you wanted to go get coffee. There’s a
nice little place on the corner of here. I know you haven’t been in Texas long - you’ll love it, I
swear.”

And there, inexplicably, was Remus’ least favourite development. The flirting. It irritated every
cell in Remus’ body, every inch of his soul, because it worked. Sirius was just trying to catch him
off guard, throw him off his game. And it worked. Remus hated admitting it to himself - he had the
mind to grab the pistol (loaded with wooden bullets, this time) and take him out right there, tied up
in the middle of his living room.

He didn’t.

“Why are you here?” Remus spat, twirling a stake around his fingers as he circled Sirius. “I know
you - everywhere you go is for a purpose. Every time you’re around me is to fucking mess
something up. What is it now, Black? Found a new nest?” Remus’ lip curled, slightly. “I know you
were searching after I burnt your last one down.”

Remus might have imagined the flicker of weakness that flitted across Sirius’ face, but he gave
himself a mental pat on the back for it anyway.

Sirius groaned dramatically, blowing hair out of his face and giving Remus an entirely unamused
look, bordering on incredulous. “Okay, first of all, Lupin, nest is an outdated term. We call them
covens now, look it up.”

“I don’t care.”

“Second of all—why do you think I have an ulterior motive?”

“You’re in Texas. It’s Texas.”

“Can a vampire not explore a little? Jesus,” he scoffed, shifting his tied up ankles uncomfortably,
“You people think we spend all of our time in dingy graveyards and dungeons in Transylvania,
don’t you? Stereotypes. Disgusting. It’s the twenty-first century, come on now.”
“No,” Remus hissed as an interjection, closing his eyes and bringing his hands up to massage his
temples. “I think you spend all of your time annoying me. So, I am going to ask you once more."

Remus stepped into Sirius’ personal space, leaning down and taking out his holy water doused
dagger from his pouch. He placed it flat underneath Sirius’ chin, pushing his head up to look him
in the eyes. He hissed as the silver burnt him, red and vicious.

“What,” he whispered, “are you doing here?”

Sirius looked pained for a second, and then he blinked, and that stupid, cocky smile lit up his face
once more.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, pretty boy?”

Remus groaned and pulled the knife away, giving Sirius only a moment of gratification before he
stabbed him in the stomach, hard, leaving the dagger in, protruding from him, the hilt glinting
mischievously. Sirius swore loudly, groaning in pain and breathing heavily. The dagger wouldn’t
do anything fatal - it would just burn long enough to torture him into giving information.

“I guess I’ll just leave you here then,” Remus said simply, going to the table to wipe his hands.
“Until you give me what I want.”

“Mmmm,” Sirius wheezed, breathing obviously weaker; attitude not. “I love a man who knows
what he wants.”

Remus rolled his eyes and went to tighten his ropes, adding some around his chest for good
measure, before putting tape over his mouth lest he call him ‘pretty boy’ one more fucking time—

He closed and padlocked the windows and the door, metal also doused in holy water, and set off
for his lunch with Dorcas that he was definitely at least 30 minutes late to.

Sirius Black is going to die at my hands, Remus thought, but only when he is no longer use to me.

***

Remus’ first thought upon re-entering his house about two hours later was that it seemed eerily…
quiet. Dread filled his stomach. He rushed into the living room - the door still padlocked - to see, as
he almost expected, no Sirius. He sighed.

The ropes had not been cut, there was absolutely no sign of force or wear on them. It was as if he
had simply slipped out of them, though Remus knew it was impossible - he had tightened them
only moments before he left. The locks on the windows were intact; there was, almost, nothing out
of place. Almost.

As he swivelled around, Remus spotted his blade. Sirius had taken the absolute courtesy of
cleaning his blood off the blade with a cloth, folded and placed gingerly next to it. Remus almost
laughed.

And to top it all off, as he knocked the chair in his anguish, he noticed a small piece of paper flutter
to the floor. He picked it up and unfolded it slowly.

The paper contained, in an unmistakable calligraphic cursive, the address to a coffee shop called
‘Fleur’s’ that Remus had passed on his way home, just ten minutes down the road. And underneath
it, a message.
6pm. Friday. I’ll give you what you want.

And underneath,

Don’t be late, pretty boy.

Remus collapsed onto the chair, and wished, fleetingly, that he was the one tied up instead.

***

“And you’re sure you used the holy water locks?”

“Yes!” Remus said, exasperated, lying on his sofa on the phone to Dorcas. She hummed through
the static. “I know I did, because that was what I didn’t do last time he got away. Cas, how does he
do it?”

“I don’t know,” she said, eventually. “I’ve never known a slippier vampire. How did he get out of
the ropes without damaging them? You’re sure they were on tight enough?”

Remus groaned in frustration, and Dorcas laughed. “Sorry, I’m sorry,” she said, “Sirius is just…
something else. I don’t understand how he could’ve got out. Accomplice, maybe?”

He shook his head instinctively. “No one was invited in. The bureau transferred the deed to me
temporarily while I’m borrowing this place - I had to invite him in to fucking capture him in the
first place. Would you believe he had gotten himself trapped on the porch, under the shade?”

“Yes, you told me that thrice now, Remus.”

“Well, I’m going to tell you again! How the fuck is he smart enough to escape all of my
reinforcements but stupidenough to get himself trapped out during a sunny day?”

Dorcas was silent for a moment, to the point where Remus had to prompt her.

“Sorry,” she said hastily. “I was just… well I was just thinking; why haven’t you just… killed him
yet? Why did you leave him there anyway?”

Remus opened his mouth, but nothing came out. At the silence, Dorcas continued.

“I know it’s not from lack of trying, Rem, I swear I do, but… this situation seemed so perfect. And
if you’d staked him you wouldn’t have been half an hour late to lunch as well. It would’ve been a
win-win for everyone. Well, except Sirius.” She paused for a moment, taking a breath in. “But you
didn’t kill him. And you were half an hour late to lunch with me. And he did escape, which means
you’re in a bad mood, I’m now in a bad mood and he wins the game again.”

Remus said nothing, feeling awfully like he was being lectured; shame prickled at his gut, a flush
rising up his neck.

“I just don’t get it, Remus. I want to understand.”

The thing was, Remus didn’t understand it either.

Since their very first meeting, and Remus’ very first encounter with a vampire, he had killed, and
he had done it well. He had found entire covens and taken them out, bloodsuckers north, south, and
equal of the equator; to the east, to the west. He had killed them easily. And, since the first day he
had met Sirius, he had never not held a gun with wooden bullets. And he had met Sirius multiple
times since then. Two shots, head and the heart; bang bang.
Remus sometimes worried that the time he spent hunting and killing monsters was turning him into
one, too. It was, he knew most of the time, an irrational thought. He had sworn an oath to protect
humans, and that is what he was doing. He was killing killers. Only the worst of the lot - the
vampires that took out families one by one, the werewolves that savaged communities on a full
moon. The ghouls that terrorised humans, the demons that possessed them. He killed them all, no
problem, no rhyme or reason besides the innate desire to protect his kind, and the oath he had
sworn as a hunter. And yet, he had never managed to kill Sirius.

Sirius, who had tried to kill him the first time they met. Sirius, who had probably murdered
hundreds since then; citizens like him, walking home alone at night, with families, friends, lives
ahead of them. Sirius, who popped up when Remus least wanted him to. Sirius, who… fuck. Who
made his life exciting.

There was no more denying the small, repressed twinge of excitement that he felt whenever he saw
Sirius; their feud was familiar, it was easy. Sirius hurt him, he hurt Sirius back. Sirius escaped him,
he recaptured him, the cycle repeats. Remus had always had an excuse for why he hadn’t killed
him before. Nothing seemed to sound good enough now that he had been confronted with it.

“He had information I needed,” Remus said, now, pathetically.

He wasn’t even sure if he believed himself anymore.

Dorcas didn’t press the subject, going on to talk about her recent correspondence with Mary, who
was somewhere in Bulgaria on an undercover mission amongst a coven of dark witches. Remus,
Dorcas and Mary were as tight as three bullets in a barrel - they had trained together, since the ripe
age of seventeen, and had lived together in London for almost five years afterwards. Dorcas and
Mary were his closest friends - his only friends. They were a trio; Remus would take a bullet, a
knife, a stake to the heart for either of them without even pausing to think about it.

Where Dorcas and Remus were trained humans, Mary was a witch herself, though a good one -
Moody had picked her up somewhere on the coast of Trinidad after her pacifist family had been
attacked by vampires. She had killed them all - burnt them bitterly with one or two waves of her
hands. All witches were born with a natural understanding of the earth’s core, a baseline level of
magic; but every now and then, witches had specialties. Mary was a pyrokinetic prodigy - she
could bend fire like nothing Remus had ever seen. Moody liked to have links to light witches - he
had consistent correspondence and understanding with Caradoc Dearborn’s coven, from
Scandinavia - but Mary had not wanted to simply be an asset. She had wanted to fight. She had
wanted to avenge. And, so, she had sworn her life to the cause in a blood ritual; she had teamed up
with Dorcas and Remus and they had stood on top of the highest mountains, at the edges of oceans
together. Remus had utmost trust in them.

See, there was a large, spidery network of hunters; they existed in different capacities all over the
globe, but the American organisation had been partnered with the European organisation - based in
London - since before Remus had even existed. He, himself had been born and recruited in Wales,
by Moody, who essentially headed the network and was the distributor, along with Dumbledore, of
safe-houses and places of retribution - again, Moody for Europe, Dumbledore for America
(although, from what Remus could see, Minerva, Dumbledore’s assistant, seemed to hold the
operation up on her back).

Dorcas was British as well (born and recruited in Bristol after unknowingly killing a shapeshifter)
but she had moved to America about three years prior to develop her own, buzzing, American
recruitment system. Moody, when his own was full up, had sent little Peter Pettigrew from
Germany, who had trained in Austin and was now somewhere up in New York, and that, there,
was the extent of the hunters in America that Remus was close to by name. He tended to stick close
to his circle in Europe - he was only in Texas because Dorcas had asked for him.

She had located a vampire nest - coven - after a strange chain of missing children led from
Oklahoma all the way up to Austin, where they had, apparently, settled for a few months. The lead
had gone cold for a while, and Dorcas had been about ready to give up until two weeks ago, when
the vampires had made themselves known in the east. Dorcas had realised, then, that the amount
they were dealing with was way more than she thought, and thus had invited Remus to come help
her.

And, well, Dorcas had saved his life about five years prior on the shores of Greece, fighting a
(frankly, fucking terrifying and supposed-to-be-extinct) Basilisk (as she had brought up a total of
seven (7!) times in trying to convince him to come), and Remus eventually acquiesced - not
because he owed her, not because he loved her, but because he simply wanted her to shut up.

But if she asked, it is because he did in fact owe her, and he did in fact love her.

Sirius’ presence, now, in Austin, was thus proving to be incredibly fucking irritating. Remus
didn’t want to be in America in the first place, really, and now he had another vampire to think
about, completely separate to the other dozens of vampires he already had to fucking think about,
that he wasn’t thinking about because he was so focused on the one.

And yet, all this being said, he knew he had to go to the damned coffee shop to meet him. He
hadn’t told Dorcas, because he knew what she would say - that it was either a) a trap, or b) a
distraction, because Sirius was working with the coven in Austin and wanted to keep them off their
trail. But there was a part of Remus… a part of him that couldn’t not know. A part of him that had
to tail Sirius; if not kept under his roof, at least kept under his wing, observed, watched over. If he
didn’t keep an eye on Sirius, people would probably die, and his entire existence was to try and
minimise that happening as much as possible.

In addition, Remus thought, on the topic of Sirius; he didn’t seem to be loyal to anyone. Of course,
he had had a coven, once - it must’ve been coming up on seven years now. The night he and Mary
had burnt it to the ground. He had thought Sirius died, then; too naïve to know any better, he
supposed, it being only a year since that fateful night where Sirius almost killed him. He had even
celebrated - a week later, once he had been let out of the hospital - at the bar with Mary, Gid and
Fab; Mary who he was partnered with; the twins just to have a good time. At one point he had
thought he had seen Sirius’ sunken, solemn face in the window, but had crocked it down to the
drunkenness and not thought about it until nine months later, when he ran into Sirius in Edinburgh.
He had had sunglasses on despite the cloudy, dusk weather, but his feathery hair and leather jacket;
the way his cheekbones sunk in; the way his lips always fell to a natural pout; it was unmistakably
him. Remus had cornered him in a back alley behind a farmer’s market, with - Remus laughed as
he remembered - the same dagger he had stabbed Sirius with only hours ago.

“Fuck, Lupin,” Sirius had hissed, skin sizzling where the knife was pressed to his neck. “Come on,
my skin is going to blister and bleed all over this jacket. I like this jacket.” His lips had fallen into
their natural pout, and his voice had, for the first time Remus had ever heard it, gone all… whiny,
and ridiculously human sounding. Remus remembered the way it filled him with rage. He had had
half a mind to decapitate him right then and there, but he needed answers.

“You died,” Remus hissed, breath whipping against Sirius’ face. “You burned. I killed you.”

That fucking smirk. “Evidently not, pretty boy.”

Remus flicked his wrist and nicked Sirius’ neck, drawing blood that dripped down onto his shirt.
Sirius huffed impatiently, and rather dramatically.

“Do you want to pay for my dry cleaning, Lupin?”

“Stop calling me that.” It was out before Remus had even thought about what he was saying.

Sirius quirked a brow. “Why? It is your name, no?”

Remus licked his lips, and Sirius grinned.

“Or do you like pretty boy? I know I like it,” he said, cheesing, and Remus felt a hot flush of
embarrassment creep up his neck.

“No,” he spat, adjusting the angle of the blade so it hissed on a new patch of Sirius’ unburned skin.
He watched the old one heal before his eyes, like it was nothing. “I don’t want you to fucking refer
to me at all, because I’m going to kill you as soon as you tell me how the fuck you escaped that
warehouse.”

Sirius’ smile lessened until his face was stony, eyes flickering up and down Remus’ face as it
always did, absorbing. Memorising.

And then, in one, ridiculously quick and suave movement Sirius tripped Remus up, sending him
staggering backwards and loosening his grip on the knife. And in a flash of movement and a whip
of momentum Sirius was behind him, one forearm wrapped around his throat in a death grip, the
other holding the hilt of the knife; the entire thing had been doused in holy water, and he could see
Sirius’ palm burning where he was gripping it, holding it against his throat. Remus skidded his feet
across the floor in an attempt to escape, but Sirius’ grip was unwilling; he was like marble, set in
stone, unbudgeable. Remus only stopped struggling when Sirius whispered in his ear, his breath
hot against the side of his face, and minty as it reached his nostrils.

“A magician,” he whispered tantalisingly; and in one swift motion he nicked a small, 2cm long
strip of skin just above the top of his sternum, between his collarbones, “never reveals his secrets,
Remus Lupin.”

Sirius’ other arm loosened on Remus, but he didn’t dare move with the knife to his throat. He
hissed as Sirius wiped his forefinger slowly, but harshly, on his cut, coating his finger in blood, and
Remus saw out of the corner of his eye the finger move towards his mouth; heard the sensual pop
as Sirius licked it; felt the heave of his pleasured breath in his ear once more.

“You taste nice, pretty boy,” Sirius murmured, and Remus could hear the smile in his words.

And in one last swift motion Sirius had released Remus, twirled him around and thrown him
staggering backwards; he fell to his arse on the floor, looking up at Sirius with wide, incredulous
eyes, speechless. Sirius simply smiled and pulled his sunglasses from where he had propped them
onto his head, placing them back over his eyes.

“Sirius Black,” he said, smirking, hair bouncing around his ears and falling gracefully to his
shoulders. “That’s my name. For the next time you try to kill me.”

He had almost fully turned when he paused, and turned back.

“Oh,” he said lightly, “I believe this belongs to you.”

The knife clattered at Remus’ feet, and he took a quick look at it before shifting his eyes back to
Sirius. The vampire held up his hand, moving his fingers in a childlike wave goodbye as he walked
backwards.

Remus watched as his hand healed; burns, blood and blisters repairing itself miraculously; and then
he was gone, into the crowds.

Edinburgh bled back into Texas as Dorcas snapped him back into reality, and he discovered he had
zoned out for at least a minute.

“Remus,” she said firmly. “Just forget about it. You’re just going to drive yourself crazy wondering
how he escaped, and I can’t afford for you to go crazy right now. His presence in itself is probably
a trap to throw you off our real mission - and it’s working. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s
working with them; their kind stick together, undead breeds undead. What information could he
possibly have that’s worth this?”

Her words rang through his ears for the next five days. She was right; he knew she was right.

His feet dragged him to the damn coffee shop anyway.

Sirius was sitting there already, sunglasses on again, takeout coffee cup in front of him. He looked
ridiculously casual and loose in a leather jacket and black jeans. His hair was up in a bun on the top
of his head, strands cascading around his chiselled features. He looked up as the bell signalling
Remus’ entrance went, and whistled lowly.

“Hey, pretty boy.”

“Shut up,” Remus said firmly, going straight to the counter to order and wait for his coffee. It was
a solid five minutes before he, reluctantly, made his way over to the table. Sirius kicked the leg of
the chair opposite him, pushing it out from where it was tucked into the table with a deafening
groan as the legs grinded against the floor.

Remus ‘hmmphed’, staring down at it. “Charming.”

Sirius flashed a brilliant grin and gestured for him to sit down. Remus had to restrain himself from
punching him.

“Isn’t this nice,” Sirius said cheerily, taking a sip of his coffee. “You know, I think this is the first
time we’ve had an encounter without one of us trying to kill the other.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Remus muttered, and he laughed musically.

“You got that dagger on you? I gotta say, I’ve missed it against my throat. There’s something…
familiar about your dagger in particular. Just doesn’t do it for me when other hunters try.”

Remus shifted awkwardly, face stony. He knew Sirius was teasing but couldn’t help but feel a pang
in his chest at the word “familiar”; that being the word he would also use to describe their
encounters. Familiar, easy. Trying to twist that into a negative context was proving to be a struggle,
but he would keep trying.

And yes, he did have the dagger on him. It’s presence (sheathed and pressed against his thigh,
currently) was all the more distracting.

“Yes, I do,” Remus said, eventually, biting the inside of his lip. “But we’re not here for pathetic
flirting and aimless threats—”

“Well—”
“I’m not here for pathetic flirting and aimless threats. I will spike your drink if you don’t start
talking.”

And there it was, Sirius’ infuriating smirk, paired with another patronising whistle. This was what
he hated most about the vampire, how he never took Remus seriously; not when he had locked him
in a burning room, not when he had the dagger against his throat, one shift of weight away from
complete decapitation. Not when Remus was holding a stake in his chest, grazing his heart. He
would simply smile, and his eyes would glint mischievously, as if it was an adrenaline rush for
him; do it, pretty boy. Do it. I fucking dare you.

Remus did not need to be dared. It was the implication that he wouldn’t shift the weight; that he
wouldn’t twist the angle, pierce his heart, take his head clean off; this was what bugged Remus the
most. Sirius Black thought he was a coward, and Remus was no fucking coward.

After he’s given me what I want.

When Sirius Black is no longer of use to me.

Sirius, now, was staring at him peculiarly; smile dropped mostly, hand spinning the half-empty
wooden cup around rhythmically. Remus rolled his eyes.

“So?”

The smirk, again.

“So?”

Remus groaned. He didn’t have time for this. “What the fuck do you want, Black?”

Sirius grinned, tongue playing between his teeth, and looked Remus up and down. No, he wasn’t
doing this.

“Alright, fine,” Remus said gruffly, going to stand up and pick up his bag. “You wanna actually
tell me why you’re here, you know where I am. Otherwise, please just stay the fuck out of my
way.”

“No, no, wait,” Sirius said, legitimately now, grabbing onto Remus’ wrist. He sighed. “I’ll tell you.
Swear it.”

Remus sat down again, gingerly. Sirius stared at him for a moment and then leaned forward, voice
lower; all teasing dropped.

“There’s a coven. A bad one, on the rise. I know you think I’m the spawn of Satan—which is
rather offensive, I’m more like his grandson, but anyway—if you think I’m bad, these vampires are
worse. A million times worse.”

Remus scoffed. “I know there’s a coven, that’s what me and Dorcas are here for—”

Sirius frowned. “What? Oh—no, no, them? Oh, that coven is a bunch of fucking pussies, don’t
even pay any heed to them.”

His eyebrow quirked. “Yeah, a bunch of pussies who have kidnapped eleven children.”

“Exactly!” Sirius said, and Remus almost laughed. “I could’ve done twenty-two by now.”

“Not helping.”
Sirius rolled his eyes, taking another sip of his coffee before leaning in again. “These guys are on
the East Coast, based in New York. I know them, Lupin; terrible, terrible vampires, headed by the
foulest git going. He went dormant for a few decades after a nasty bloodbath in the fifties and
woke up about five years ago, and he’s been growing his coven again since. Purebloods - they’re
true savages, Remus.”

Remus pursed his lips. He knew about Purebloods; had never encountered one, but he had heard
the myths.

Purebloods came from the very first set of vampires; the originals, if you will. Whether the
original bloodsuckers were real was heavily debatable - no one in this lifetime or the fifty lifetimes
in the past had ever seen or heard from them - but Purebloods… they were definitely real.

Made directly from the venom of an Original, Pureblood Vampires - and this took Remus a solid
three months to wrap his head around - have the ability to create (or so, the legends say). Create,
as in… children; children who grow until they reach maturity, and then stop growing - children
with heightened amounts of power and abilities other than a typical vampire. Lethal, persuasive -
there were even myths that, at full strength, Purebloods share a sort of witch-like telekinesis, in
which they could make anyone do anything, see anything, believe anything. Remus wasn’t sure
how much he believed in that. It sounded like something out of a fairytale; or a really trashy teen
TV show.

According to legends, purebloods can only breed with other purebloods for a successful outcome,
and there weren’t many to begin with; purebloods breeding with half-bloods (‘normal’ vampires -
no one uses that title) does not provide one with the ability to create, as does purebloods breeding
too close incestuously. Their procreation, while incredible, had such limitations that they
eventually were overpowered and overrun by average, bitten vampires; and with the amount dying
off, were unable to create more.

They’re not supposed to exist anymore - the latest legitimate record Remus has ever found of one
was from 1703; they’re generally accepted to have died out since then. But, where most hunters
believe they’re extinct, Remus has always been impartial. He knew, better than most, how slippery
vampires were - how easily they could hide. He would be lying if he said he wasn’t interested.

He waited a moment before speaking again. “Who?”

Sirius took a deep breath in. “Ever heard of the Malfoys?”

Remus’ stomach jolted. He had, in fact, heard of the Malfoy’s - Abraxas Malfoy being the vampire
previously specified, the one in records from 1703, after slaughtering an entire town and all of the
cattle on his own. He leaned forward, slightly, and saw Sirius’ lip curl as he caught his interest.

“So, you have,” he said, pleased. “Worth investigating?”

Remus frowned. “Wait—that’s why you’re here? To give me… a lead?”

Violent red alarms began to go off in his head. There was no way.

“Yeah,” Sirius said, as if it was obvious. “Look, pretty boy; we both know that I am a genius.”

Remus blinked at the… strange turn of conversation but heard him out anyway.

“And me getting away from you every - single - time - isn’t… personal, it’s just… me acting on
that intelligence.”
Oh, Remus was going to punch him. Why was he hearing him out again?

“But you’re the best vampire hunter I know. Honestly, Lupin. I’ve never seen anyone take us out
as efficiently as you do. My win isn’t your lack, it’s just… my win. You’re good at what you do. I
respect the work ethic.”

Remus was… to put it simply, fucking confused. “Where is this going, Black?”

“I’m saying that I want these bastards taken care of, and you’re my guy. I know better than anyone
how good you are at what you do.”

“And I know better than anyone how much of a slippery, tricky dickhead you are—” Sirius
laughed “—so what is it? What’s the catch? You want something. Out with it.”

Sirius shrugged; content look on his face. He leant back comfortably again, tapping his fingers
absent-mindedly on the table. “Nothing. Promise.”

“I don’t know how to tell you this, but your promises mean nothing to me, Black.”

“Honestly!” Sirius said, laughing through his words. “I want nothing except this coven, gone. We
can travel up to New York in the next few days, scope the crime scenes - I can sniff them out—”

“Ah-ah,” Remus called, holding up a hand. “Who is we?”

Sirius raised an eyebrow. “Well, ‘we’ generally means whoever is in present company, so… that
would be—”

“You and me? Working together?” Remus actually laughed, now, dry and sarcastically, before
downing the last few drops of his coffee. “Fat chance.”

“Oh, come on, Lupin—”

“No!” Remus hissed. “Are you insane?”

“Debatable.”

“God, that’s what you want, isn’t it? If I’m such an efficient hunter, the coven has probably put a
hit out on me or something—you want me to trust you, to go with you, and then you’re going to gut
me in my sleep. Do you think I’m an idiot?”

Sirius gaped for a moment. “No, but I commend your imagination. Look, sweetheart—”

“Don’t fucking call me that.”

“You can go after them all alone if you want. You have the information. Look up police records in
the boroughs in the past five years - homicides and missing persons - and I can promise you you’ll
find a pattern. I’m just saying, you work with me, we get it done quicker and easier.” He raised his
eyebrows, cocky smile growing on his face. “I’m valuable.”

“You’re a pain in my ass is what you are,” Remus deadpanned, picking up his bag and standing.
Sirius stood too.

He took a step closer to Remus, and Remus instantly backed up, giving him a threatening look and
bringing an overt hand to his belt. The outline of the dagger was prominent when he pulled back
his coat. Sirius stepped back, putting two hands up in surrender.
“Alright, pretty boy, I’m not going to murder you in a café—”

“You’re not going to murder me full stop, which I can guarantee would happen if I were to work
with you. And even if I wanted to - which I would never - me and Dorcas are already on a case
here. The coven of pussies, remember? Peter Pettigrew is in New York, go harass him.”

“Pettigrew…” Sirius frowned for a second, pondering. “Short, stocky, dirty blonde? Definitely
new?”

Remus rolled his eyes, but nodded, and a look of recognition came upon Sirius’ face, quickly
replaced with incredulity.

“That guy?” he said, as if the thought was unfathomable. “He tried to kill James and ended up with
a dislocated shoulder and a bruised ego. He’s not the man for this job, Remus, you are.”

Remus didn’t have the energy to ask who the fuck James was, or berate Sirius for insulting his
friend. His stomach had begun to rumble, and he had an affinity to go home and make Toad in the
Hole or something equally British and pretend he simply wasn’t here anymore.

“I’m going home,” Remus said, slinging his bag over his shoulder. “I’ll think about sending
someone to look into it when I’m done with these ‘pussies’ who are terrorising families across the
state.”

He nearly turned, but something made him stay.

“Look, Black; I’m on a case,” he breathed, realising how exasperated he was. “It’s important, and I
don’t have the time to deal with your shit. So, if you’re not going to just keel over and die, do the
second-best thing and don’t—” he said, now, pressing a fist to Sirius’ chest, angling it so he could
feel the stake shooter underneath his sleeve press against his sternum, “get in my fucking way.”

Sirius’ eyes flickered over Remus’ face and back up to his eyes, and Remus realised with a start
how close they were; how close he had placed himself. He put in strenuous effort to make sure that
the flutter behind his navel didn’t show on his face.

When Sirius spoke, he could feel his breath; cold and intimate.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” the vampire breathed; barely even audible, paired with a lick of his lips
and the ghost of a smile. Remus swallowed, but didn’t pull away.

A tiny voice in the back of his mind registered that he had never been close enough to Sirius in a
non-bloodbath situation to ever realise what he smelled like.

A tinier voice registered that he smelled really, really nice.

Something kickstarted Remus’ brain - probably the growing look of smug satisfaction on Sirius’
face - and he pulled away, huffing and stalking out of the coffee shop and down the road without a
second look.

He knew exactly what he was doing. The fucking cocky bastard.

Remus fell asleep that night picturing all of the ways he wanted to kill Sirius; and, eventually, all of
the other things he wanted to do to him as well.
 two

Sirius, surprisingly, stayed true to his word. Remus didn’t see him for almost three whole weeks.

He knew, in his heart, that it was a good thing - Sirius was staying the fuck out of his way, as he
asked him to - but therein was the thing. Sirius was actually doing something Remus had asked him
to. He had fully expected to see the vampire within 3 days; be thwarted by him on a mission,
interrupted during important research; but there was nothing. In the end, it almost made Remus
more infuriated that Sirius didn’t come to annoy him, which made absolutely zero sense. He had
plenty of reasons to hate the vampire - one act of common courtesy didn’t mean shit. Besides that,
it probably wasn’t even about Remus. He was probably out there terrorising poor Texans at night,
draining them of blood, throwing them in dumpsters. Out there with whoever the fuck James was.
Remus felt a pang of anger at the thought. Another vampire he had to think about? He was going to
go insane.

No, correction; he was going insane. It almost felt like he was looking for Sirius around every
corner, waiting for the ambush, the knife to his back, the teeth to his neck. It was driving him
crazy; even despite what Dorcas had said, even despite the fact he now knew why Sirius was here,
he still couldn’t make himself forget about it; couldn’t stop himself from thinking about what he
could be doing, where he was, why he hadn’t shown up.

The sooner Dorcas and I slaughter this coven, he had been thinking periodically to keep himself
sane, the sooner I can get my ass back on a flight home and get as far away from him as humanly
possible.

Of course, a week and a half into the three-week-no-Sirius period, they found the coven. Dorcas
had been tailing them for months; they moved around a lot, never stuck in one place for long, but
she had lookouts and spies around the city - citizens who knew the faces, people who could keep
an eye out. Remus got a call one night at almost 7 - another murder, and a witness who had seen
the direction they had gone in. She had labelled four safe-houses around the area that was
frequented by them, and only one was viable. It was go time.

The place was eerily quiet by the time they got there, but as Remus edged along the outside he
passed underneath a slightly cracked open window, and heard voices.

“Another one?” someone hissed, “We said no more until we were able to move on!”

“But she just smelled so good…” a thicker, goofier voice floated out of the room, and it was then
that Remus became aware of the fact he could hear a low sobbing. It took one more moment to
realise that it was a child.

Dorcas, positioned on the other side of the door, gave him the signal, and in they went.

The vampires had obviously not been expecting them; there was a moment of panic, in which
Remus got two well-aimed wooden bullets to the chest of one of them, knocking it dead; and then
they attacked. He counted nine adults, maybe more. But the adults weren’t the problem.

The missing children that had led them here had not, as they had presumed, been killed at all,
but turned; hidden in a different room, they heard the commotion and came pouring out, a horde of
9 to 15-year-old vampires; savage, tortured, and uncontrollable.

Fortunately, the children, being so uncontrollable, were easy to kill - they had not learned any sense
of how to fight, and gave Remus easy, clear shots of their hearts, where an adult vampire would
have the sense to keep moving.

Remus was pinned to the ground in the commotion by a young girl, hissing and feral, going for his
neck; he staked her in the heart and immediately got a clean shot of another of the children, in mid-
air as he pounced. The child hit the floor with a haunting bang. He had been the youngest Remus
had seen.

Dorcas was, across the room, doing insanely well; she took out three of the adults - two at once
with a stake and a gun - and was now pinned against the wall by one, who had her weaponed hand
pressed against the wall above her head; the other being used to push him far enough not to pierce
her jugular. Remus, from across the room, locked eyes with her and it was as if they had
telepathically communicated; she ducked, and Remus got a clean shot of the vampire, right through
the head. He immediately let go of her and she whipped her hand around to stake him in the heart,
throwing him halfway across the room.

Focusing on saving Dorcas, he hadn’t realised that one of the adults was coming towards him until
it was too late; the stocky man, who looked about twenty five, threw him against the room and he
hit the wall, banging his head and making his vision clot. The vampire was on him before he could
even blink, an erratic glint in his eye.

“You’ll taste nice,” he said enigmatically, and a tiny part of Remus registered this was the goofy
sounding voice from earlier before the vampire sunk his teeth into his neck, and his brain short-
circuited.

He screamed out in agony and turned as far as he could to the left; his gun had fallen out of his
hand. He reached, fingers stretched as far as they would go, so much so that he was in pain, but his
neck felt worse; momentarily he registered a white-hot feeling on his arm, but kept reaching, his
vision going blurry; he grabbed the gun and tunnelled underneath the body pressing him to the
floor, placed it directly on his heart, and shot. The momentum of the close-range shot threw the
vampire off his body, and the lack of obstruction gave him way to see, now, why he was so light-
headed so quickly; one of the children had sunk their teeth into his arm and trailed it downwards,
creating two incredibly deep gashes, and Remus realised he couldn’t breathe.

In one, swift movement, that Remus practically saw in slow-motion, Dorcas turned, her braids
soaring through the air, and threw one of her daggers across the room; it spun, glinting as it flew,
and embedded itself into her skull with a repulsive bang. She died instantly, falling forward onto
Remus, who used what felt like the last of his strength to push her off.

In the commotion Remus heard one of the adults scream; he couldn’t decipher the words, but
evidently it was a call-back, as the remaining few adults and six children immediately stood down
and began to flee, jumping through glass windows and pelting through the door with the
momentum to catch fire. Only one remained; an old, terrifying man, who had a young, crying girl
that could only be the human in a chokehold.

She let out one last sob, and then he twisted and snapped her neck.

In the two seconds it took for her to fall to the ground he was gone, like an apparition, as if he had
not been there at all.

“Remus,” Dorcas cried, taking off her flannel and creating a temporary tourniquet around his arm.
She took his own hand and moved it to his neck to make him put pressure on it and rushed out the
door to the first-aid kit in the car.
The next half an hour or so went as somewhat of a blur to Remus; Dorcas was a trained medical
professional, so she didn’t move him then (as she would tell him later) in fear of him losing more
blood. She bandaged him up and managed to stem the blood flow as much as she could so it would
be safe for him to move.

“Fuck, that hurts,” Remus wheezed as she cleaned the blood off his neck after stemming the injury.
She had given him a pocket mirror, and he used it to look at the two, clean puncture wounds. He
realised with a start that he had, actually, never been bitten on the neck before. That felt like a
strange feat for a hunter who spent so much time fighting vampires, but the neck was such a tender
area, and Remus had been trained to protect it instinctively. His wrists were littered with bites,
white scarring up his forearm - mostly over his body, actually, from various monsters over the
years - but this was new.

“I’ll bet it does,” Dorcas said, beginning to dress it. She had already dressed his arm, which was
now completely bandaged; it had softened to a dull ache, echoing the ache in Remus’ own head.
“Now, obviously they were sucking in and not pulsing out, but you’ll still have traces of venom in
your system, so we just gotta make sure you don’t die for the next two days or so, alright?”

“Mhm,” Remus nodded. He had been through it all before. She would probably move in to monitor
him for a couple of days. It would feel like old times.

It took another ten minutes for her to be completely satisfied. “Can you stand?” she said softly,
giving him her arm; she hoisted him up and, after a few shaky steps, he found he was okay.

For the first time, he shifted his gaze to the young girl. Her neck was twisted at an obscene angle,
and Remus couldn’t tell whether he was happy and horrified at how peaceful her face was in death.
She couldn’t have been older than fifteen.

“Cas…” he said, and she turned to look too. He heard her sigh.

“They bit her, Remus,” she said softly, “she’s going to wake up in a couple hours and she’s going
to be one of them.”

She turned to look at him. There was a clear question in her eyes.

Remus, unforgivably, felt his eyes well up with tears.

“I can’t,” he whispered helplessly, and Dorcas nodded, giving him a comforting smile and a nod.

“It’s okay,” she said softly. “It’s okay. Go get in the car, love. I’ll do it.”

Remus hadn’t even made it to the car before he heard the gunshot. The tears fell silently, mingling
with dirt, and blood, and regret.

***

Dorcas did stay with him for a couple of days - five and a half, to be precise. The first two were
mandatory. The third and fourth were precautionary. The fifth was because she knew something
was up.

Remus could tell that she thought he was off his game. He could tell that she thought Sirius’
presence had thrown him off. She’d never say it - they hadn’t even spoken about the vampire since
their conversation on the phone, but he could tell what she was thinking. She knew him. She knew
his fighting style. She had seen him over the years they trained together take out vampires in
simulations doubling in size of that coven, alone; granted, they were simulations, but he had
definitely matched and applied that skill to real life. And the issue was, she was right.

He had been thrown off his game by Sirius’ appearance. It was as if, once the vampire decided to
make himself known in Remus’ life once again, he occupied his every thought.

It was bordering on obsession; Remus knew that. He did. He couldn’t help the thoughts that came
to him during the day. He couldn’t help the dreams that plagued him at night.

If I were to never see Sirius Black again, Remus thought in bed on Day 5, it would be too fucking
soon.

Predictably, Sirius showed up on Day 6; because when had Sirius Black ever made an appearance
in Remus’ life that wasn’t at the most inconvenient time. It was a gift, truly.

Dorcas left at around 5pm, promising to call in at the weekend and making Remus, in turn, promise
to take all of his meds and not forget them.

“And eat well,” she said, bustling around - she moved his mail from one countertop to another,
smoothed out his tablecloth. She was hovering. “And if you need any help showering—"

“Cas!”

“What?” she said, grinning. She had an affinity for winding him up; Remus often saw her as the
sister he never had.

“I can shower just fine. It’s not like my leg is broken.”

“Thank God your leg’s not broken,” she muttered, checking her phone. “Remember when you
broke your leg on that Banshee case in Cork, and me and Mary had to take turns—”

“Yes, okay, you’ve seen my bits, thank you for that, Dorcas,” Remus said, rubbing a hand over his
forehead.

“Oh!” she gasped, looking up from her phone. “Speaking of people who’ve seen your bits—”

“I already hate what you’re about to say.”

“—Benjy and Fabian are going to come visit at some point in the next couple weeks. They’re in
Louisiana, but they have a bit of free time.”

Remus’ stomach just about fell out of his ass. “Prewett?”

“What other Fabian do you know?"

“He’s in America?!” Remus gasped - the last time he had heard from Fabian, he had been in
Manchester.

“Both twins are for a couple months. I think he wants to go for a night out.”

“Oh, god, no, Cas,” Remus said; no, begged. “I can’t get drunk. I’ll sleep with him again.”

Dorcas took one look at him and burst out laughing. Remus did not think it was very funny.

“You are a weak, weak little man,” she said, looking down, and then paused. She frowned at him.
“How does it work? With identical twins? Like... are you attracted to them both or just Fab?"
“Oh my god, leave.”

“Just asking!” she trilled from down the hall. “I’ll monitor your tequila intake if you monitor
mine!”

Remus scowled, but supposed that was fair.

The rest of his day went on as usual. He sifted through his mail and found that he had received
another forwarded letter from Mary. It was addressed from two weeks ago - evidently, Bulgaria-
London-Texas correspondence was not the most efficient - but it was always nice to hear from her,
however brief and vague she had to be to maintain her position. She had been gone a long couple of
months, now, and Remus missed her a lot. He sat down with some tea to read it; it was vague, as
always, but this one mentioned an odd stranger and an expedition that may put her out of
correspondence for a couple of weeks. She sent her love.

He moved through the motions of the day and about 9pm got up from where he was reading on his
bed to sort through some papers on the top of his drawers. He was skimming over a report about a
Kitsune (from, hilariously, Benjy himself), when he felt it; a rush of wind, a chill spreading over his
back. He stood very still, and eyed his gun, an arm’s length away.

In one, quick motion, he grabbed and cocked his gun and swivelled around; and out of the shadows
came Sirius, slender and graceful, his eyes twinkling in the low light.

Remus’ first instinct, completely despite himself, was relief - he lowered the gun down only an
inch on instinct before straightening up again.

What the fuck was that? he thought to himself, swallowing and aiming for Sirius’ heart. Pathetic.

“Hey now, sweetheart, let’s not get carried away,” Sirius drawled, and Remus’ insides burned with
hatred. “I come in peace.”

For the second time in a month Sirius Black was stood in front of Remus with his two hands up in
surrender, and Remus was unsure of how he felt about it.

“You wouldn’t know peace if it hit you in the face,” he muttered.

“Or stabbed me in the gut?” Sirius joked. “How about burnt me on the throat?”

“Tell me again why I invited you in?”

Sirius grinned, his face gleaming, and sat himself down on the end of Remus’ bed with an air of
comfortability. “Well, I believe the right answer here is, to tor-ture me,” he made a dramatic hand
gesture for each syllable, “but if it were up to me, it would have been you inviting me in to take a
look at your lovely, quaint little bedroom… ooh, are these silk?” He began patting down Remus’
bed covers, reaching over to grab a pillow. “How sensual, Lupin.”

Remus groaned. “What do you want?”

“Well, I—” Sirius looked up for the first time in a minute or two, when he was busy admiring
Remus’ bed covers, and frowned. “Oh, for god’s sake, Lupin, put the gun down. It’s very
inhospitable. When I kill you, it’s going to be in front of a crowd, not in your pathetic little
bedroom.” He smirked, again, patting the bed down once more. “There is only one way I would
allow these sheets to be soiled, and it’s not via bloodstains.”

Remus rolled his eyes, but lowered the gun anyway - almost putting it right back up when Sirius
smiled, satisfied and murmured “attaboy”. He turned to place it on the drawers behind him, his
sleeves riding up as he swivelled.

Sirius was there, and then he wasn’t. There was nothing in front of Remus, and then there was
Sirius; whooshing across the room with so much force his curtains waved, in the half-a-second it
took for Remus to swivel his body back around. He jumped and staggered back so quickly that he
banged into the furniture, and his left hand automatically reached back to retrieve the gun. Sirius
wasn’t focusing on his left hand, however.

“Black, what the fuck are you doing—”

“Shut up,” he said, malice in his tone but somehow Remus felt like it wasn’t directed at him. He
might never know what possessed him to actually shut up instead of fighting his ground, but he
did; looking at Sirius with wide eyes.

The vampire grabbed him by the wrist, and Remus watched as he slowly pulled the rest of his
sleeve up.

Dorcas had replaced the bandages since they were first put on, and they were a lot less bulky now.
Remus’ eyes flickered up to Sirius’ face and he watched as he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply,
his cheeks hollowing, brows knitted together, and Remus knew he could smell his blood.

“You’re hurt,” he murmured, eyes flying open, and his tone was different to anything Remus had
ever heard before; lacking the sarcasm and teasing that his words were usually laden with. It was a
deadpan, a statement. Remus wasn’t sure what to do with that.

He cleared his throat, tugging his arm back but Sirius kept a hold on it; his fingers gripped tightly
around the skin just underneath the crease of his elbow, the small space of his forearm that wasn’t
laden with bandages. He tugged again, and Sirius maintained his grip; he only relented when he
tugged a third time and Sirius shifted his hand and accidentally put pressure on his wound through
the bandage. Remus winced in pain. Sirius let go instantly.

“Who did this to you?” Sirius asked slowly, his breath brushing against Remus’ face and the low
timbre of his voice sending shivers up his spine. Remus instinctively tried to move backwards, but
there was no room; so, they stood, bodies nearly pressed against each other but not; faces almost
touching, but not.

Remus took a long moment to reply.

“Why do you care?” he said, willing malice to lace through his voice, lest his tone betray the way
his stomach swirled.

“Who did it, Remus,” Sirius near growled, shoving a palm into the corner of the drawers; and as he
leaned to the left, the tiny reading light teamed up with the soft white lighting from the moon
outside to illuminate the side of Remus’ jaw; and there it was. Dorcas had replaced the dressing on
his neck with a skin-coloured plaster, unnoticeable in the low light unless you were really looking.

Sirius was really looking.

It was almost as if the world stood still; Sirius immediately froze, as still as a statue, not breathing -
not that he had to breathe at all - and Remus turned his head to his right, attempting to cover the
wound with his own skin; but he knew he had seen it.

“Sirius,” Remus said, almost pleadingly, as he watched Sirius’ hand travel up and grip his chin
aggressively in between two fingers, pushing his head to the side once more, and Remus became
distantly aware that this was the first time he had ever called him by his first name to his face.

If he noticed it, he didn’t react; his hands stayed on a steady trail up to his neck, nimble fingers
brushing against Remus’ jawline as he peeled back the plaster. All Remus could do was stand
there, helpless. If Sirius hadn’t been occupying his every thought before, he was burned into every
cell in his body now.

“That coven did this to you,” Sirius said slowly, spitting the word coven as if it was a disease. The
plaster had come fully off now, and Remus kept his eyes on Sirius’ face. He was staring,
unwavering, at the puncture wounds on Remus’ neck. His pupils were dilated and almost
murderous.

Remus nodded.

Sirius Black had never scared Remus before. Not once since the first night they had met, when
Remus had been young, naïve, unaware. Sirius Black was a lot of things to Remus - annoying,
insufferable, flirty, slippery. Skilful, powerful, important. But he was never scary. Not until now.

Remus shifted, increasingly uncomfortable, and incredibly confused. He could hear his own pulse
beating and wondered if Sirius could hear it too.

And then, as fast as he had come, he was gone: the only evidence of his presence in the ruffled silk
sheets, the waving curtains, the open window and Remus’ thrumming heart. He brought a hand
instinctively to his neck, and willed the shivers going down his spine to cease before stalking over
to the window, and triple locking it.

***

One week.

Three days in confusion. The inability to look at the puncture wounds on his neck. Remus had put a
plaster over them as soon as possible and had given them as little thought as he could.

The fourth day he spent with Dorcas; they went out for drinks, and Remus saw a total of three men
with long black hair and pretty faces that he thought was Sirius.

The fifth day, he travelled to visit a hunter in a nearby city and thought his taxi driver was Sirius.

The sixth day, he kept his window open.

The seventh day, he got a call from Dorcas at about 8am.

“Remus,” she said hastily. He grunted. She had woken him up. “Remus, it’s an emergency. Get
your FBI clothes on.”

He almost fell out of bed.

An hour and a half later found Remus walking underneath the police lines and through towards an
abandoned house, the next city over. Dorcas spoke to the police under the guise of FBI while
Remus staked the place out.

An officer was stood in front of the door, and Remus whipped out his badge, attempting to look
authoritative. The officer shrugged and stepped aside but put a hand on his shoulder before he
could enter.
“Brace yourself,” he said solemnly. “It’s not pretty.”

His words could not have been truer. It was, to put it simply, a bloodbath; and it was instantly
recognisable as the vampires that had escaped from them almost two weeks ago, except they were
all - all - viciously decapitated. Four of them were in a pile, heads strewn across the floor. He and
Dorcas were planning to go after them again this week; but someone had got there first.

It was obvious. Surely, it was obvious.

Remus didn’t know what to think.

He exited the room just as Dorcas came up the stairs, giving her only a grim nod. Her face went
ashen, and she ran in to see for herself, coming out a minute later looking glum.

“Who?” she hissed as soon as she and Remus were out of earshot. “There are no hunters within the
vicinity, but even if there were - that is not our work.”

“I don’t know.”

“A werewolf, maybe?” she pondered, and Remus shifted uncomfortably. “Ah, no - too clean.”

“Whatever it was,” he said quietly, “they’ll find a way to cover it up. And that was every vampire
left in the city, so, we’re done here, I guess.”

Dorcas groaned, evidently frustrated; she actually stomped her foot a little. “This is so fucking
unfair. I spent months tailing this stupid fucking nest—”

“Coven,” Remus said quietly, without realising. Dorcas paused and frowned at him.

“What?"

“They—ah,” he scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. “They call them covens, now. Not
nests.”

Dorcas looked like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I don’t care.”

Yeah, Remus didn’t either.

He let her rant and rave all the way until the car (where she kicked the wheel and swore profusely),
and he could feel the anger emanating off her as she drove. They spoke scarcely until Dorcas was
turning back into the depths of the city.

“They weren’t the only vampires,” she said, and Remus looked at her.

“What?”

“You said they were the only vampires in the city. They weren’t.”

Remus frowned at her for a moment, before realisation struck. Dorcas smiled for the first time
since the crime scene.

“Cas, no.”

“Come on!” she whined, tapping impatiently on the steering wheel. “I need to kill something!”

“You did! We got like, half of them.”

She turned, sending Dorcas a charismatic grin that reminded him of... someone. “And so, what’s
one more?”

Remus had to laugh - at her, at the situation, at his life, he didn’t know - and Dorcas laughed too,
putting on some music, evidently cheered up.

“First of all, we’d never catch him,” he said. Lie. “And second of all, I haven’t seen him in weeks.”
Lie. “He probably fucked off somewhere more exciting.” Another lie.

“And you’re not going to go after him, now our case is bust?”

Remus shrugged. “He’ll come back to annoy me eventually; and when he does, he will die by my
hands, and my hands alone.”

…Lie?

He didn’t know anymore. He really didn’t.

***

Why was Remus still in Texas? There’s a million-dollar question.

His and Dorcas’ case had gone bust over a week ago. Nine days, to be exact. He had no,
absolutely no, reason to be in Texas still.

…Lie.

He had one.

One reason, who wasn’t fucking showing himself.

He was on edge. He needed answers, and he needed them now. He was at least 97% sure that
Sirius had slaughtered the entire coven - who else? Who else could be that powerful, that slippery?
If there were werewolves around, Remus would know. No, it was him. This, he was certain about.

Why? Well, that was anybody’s guess. Remus had none.

Sirius’ behaviour that night in his bedroom simply made no sense to him. He had chalked it down
to three options: jealousy, possessiveness, or - and this one was the absolute worst of all -
compassion? Care?

Except, his actions had been intertwined with a literal murder threat; with the imperative
‘when’. “When I kill you, it’s going to be in front of a crowd, not in your pathetic little bedroom.”

No... no, see, that couldn’t be it. But why would he be jealous? Why would he feel possessive?

But why would Remus be jealous, when Sirius had mentioned James? Why would he be
possessive, when Dorcas had suggested killing him? Killing him was something that was so
personal to Remus - their… dynamic, whatever it was, was something that was theirs and theirs
alone. Remus wanted to singe Sirius’ skin. Remus wanted to plunge the stake into his
heart. Remus wanted to make him gasp, scream… whine…

No. No. There was no way. There was absolutely no way.

It made no sense. It made, truly, absolutely no sense, and could not be happening; it was simply
Remus’ juggled up brain confusing pain with pleasure. He wondered, briefly and hilariously, if he
might be a sadist. There’s something to think about.

No. Sirius Black was going to die at his hands, and that was going to be it. Sirius Black was going
to die at his hands right after Sirius Black explained why the fuck he slaughtered that coven, and…
maybe after a strong hate-fuck, for good measure.

Shit. Remus groaned and let his head fall into his hands. He could see the hilt of his dagger
twinkling out of the corner of his eye from where it was laid on his desk and had the sudden urge to
jam it into his own jugular and put them both out of their misery.

Benjy and Fabian came to visit for that weekend, as Dorcas had predicted - they were passing
through on their way across the state, staying in some hotel with the money they had left. Remus
hadn’t seen Benjy in a while - he was a senior hunter (not in age - he was only thirty-five - but in
position) and thus had a lot of superior officer-like duties for Dumbledore that took him out of the
field for a while. They all met round Dorcas’ place and he delighted in telling them all about the
possession case they were working on. Benjy was lovely; younger than his years, and it was always
a treat to see him.

Fabian hadn’t changed. He and Gideon were two years older than Remus, tall (taller than Remus -
Dorcas couldn’t believe it when they met them) and strongly-built. He was tamer than Gid - quieter
- but still fun, a joy to be around regardless. He and Remus’ nights occurred once in a blue moon -
usually fuelled by alcohol, and usually to the regret of both parties the day afterwards. It was about
time they moved on, to be quite honest.

As expected, Benjy suggested they go out ‘to lift Dorcas’ spirits’ - she was still rather glum after
the case had gone bust, he supposed - and, after a lot of persuasion, they (Remus in particular)
acquiesced. Clubs in general weren’t really his thing, but his head had been pounding for the past
week or so and he supposed if he stayed far enough away he wouldn’t sleep with any more gingers.

Dorcas had lived in Austin for longer, but Benjy - being Benjy, the absolute social butterfly - knew
about all of the best places to go. He dragged them to a club called The Leaky Cauldron; he found
the name incredibly amusing, especially since he had taken out a group of dark witches in Arizona
only last year. This was the story he relayed in the taxi, which was - somehow - three hours ago,
now. Remus had taken… a number that he could not remember of shots in order to ‘loosen up’, in
Dorcas’ words, and enjoy his environment. She sure as hell was; she was currently glued via the
lips to a hot blonde in a dress that barely covered her nipples, and Remus almost whooped.

Benjy dragged him out to dance - not his thing, never his thing, no matter how many shots he had
had - but it was definitely Benjy’s; he looked like a movie character, filled to the brim with
charisma and confidence. It almost made him envious. Fabian eventually joined him, whereas
Remus, himself, simply swayed at the sidelines, about as ‘loose’ as he could be without getting
full-on alcohol poisoning.

Except… except, he must be drunker than he thought, because there was a man, dancing with
another man; he had a skimpy shirt buttoned down halfway, exposing his porcelain chest, tucked
into skinny, skinny, jeans; his cheekbones were hollowed as if hand carved, and his black hair was
loose, free, alive—yes, he was alive, alive and imbued with light and so much static energy it was
as if the entire world revolved around him, and him alone. And so Remus must be drunker than he
thought, because this beautiful, beautiful man couldn’t be Sirius Black; because Sirius Black was
cold, and dark, and dead, and had been for a hundred years, and would be until Remus killed him
for good.

The man turned. He jerked his head to the music and his hair whipped enthusiastically off his face,
settling around his cheeks as if it was framed there, and he locked eyes with Remus; and it was just
the two of them.

Because it was Sirius Black.

It was a version of Sirius Black that Remus had never even fathomed could exist; a version of
Sirius that existed only in this club. A version of Sirius that Remus might have gone over to, might
have talked to, and, if he had had enough drinks, might have hit on; this was a version of Sirius
Black that Remus could see himself - in the split second that the music melted away and the people
faded into nothing and there was just him and those steel grey, beautiful eyes, filled with so much
energy Remus felt weak - loving, possibly; maybe; unfathomably.

This was a version of Sirius that could ruin his life in the most normal way possible; by breaking
his heart metaphorically, not physically.

And, suddenly, it was as if someone had pressed play on everyone except for them, because the
music was booming, and the man was still dancing but Sirius was still, as a statue, and the clouds
evaporated and reality set in and there was a vampire, here, in the middle of a dance floor packed
with humans and Remus was a hunter, for fucks sake. His hand palmed the sheathed dagger under
his clothes, and his legs moved of their own accord; simply an autopiloted blur of Point A to Point
B with one cargo pickup on the way until he was pushing him against the bathroom wall, knife
pressed to his neck once more.

And this was familiar; this was easy. This was them; it was how they worked, and if Remus
pretended hard enough, he could erase the painted version of Sirius he had seen on the dance floor,
the version coated in beauty and humanity and he could see the skeleton underneath, the murderer,
the monster. And he could breathe. He could breathe.

“What,” he choked out, relishing in the familiar sound of Sirius’ skin burning and not caring who
saw, “the fuck are you doing here?”

Sirius exhaled, brows knitted together, and Remus realised he had eyeliner smeared underneath his
eyes and formed a silent prayer to any deity out there for help.

“Wow,” he wheezed out, typically avoiding Remus’ question; “When I thought about being
pressed against the bathroom wall tonight it was definitely in a different context, but I’m not
complaining.”

It was almost comforting. It really was. Remus pressed the dagger in further and he choked,
slightly, huffing heavily out of his nose.

“Fucking hell, pretty boy, do you ever go anywhere without this thing?"

“What are you doing here?” Remus repeated, practically spitting out the words, and he saw Sirius’
eyes flicker with something unmistakeable: rage. Yes, rage. This is good. This is expected.

What was not expected was the hand that reached up to twist Remus’ arm backwards, spinning him
around and pressing his back to Sirius’ chest, his mouth to his ear, like he had all of those years
ago in the back alley in Edinburgh except this one was fuelled with a different kind of energy.
Remus heard the clatter as his dagger hit the floor.

“What does it look like, you fucking moron?” Sirius hissed into his ear, dark and threatening,
before releasing Remus and spinning him around once more. He took a few involuntary staggers
back, looking at Sirius incredulously. The vampire groaned dramatically.

“I was dancing, Remus! Ever heard of that?” Remus simply blinked, and Sirius huffed and ran an
angsty hand through his hair.

“That guy was nice, too,” he said, regrettably, “Would’ve been a good lay. Real shame - ugh,
thanks for that, Lupin. You absolute prick.”

Remus had, genuinely, no idea what was going on. Sirius stared at him impatiently, waiting for
him to speak.

“I—you—lay?”

Smooth.

Sirius rolled his eyes and actually laughed, dry and exasperated. “Yes! But you ruined that with
your holier-than-thou hunter shit and now that guy has probably gone to fuck some other blonde
himbo wearing a speedo thong, and I’m in the bathroom with a knife to my throat - which is really
sexy, by the way, but only if you’re gonna fuck me afterwards! Which you’re not!”

He groaned again and kicked the wall pathetically, and Remus really tried to will coherency to
come to him. He tried.

“…Sexy?”

Nope. Next time.

Sirius looked at him like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Yes,” he said testily, “I guess I’ve never told you that, but it’s not exactly hard to figure out. I’m
a vampire, the whole violence thing is kind of my area, Lupin.”

Vampire. He’s a vampire. He’s a vampire, Remus, get it together.

“You’re a vampire!”

Sirius quirked a brow. “Are you high? What did you take?”

“No, I—” Remus’ brain, which had apparently short-circuited, had switched on all at once, and a
million things were being screamed at him. He grasped to try and find one. What are you doing
here? No; he’s here to get laid - keep up, Remus.

“I just wasn’t expecting to see you. Here.”

Sirius seemed to get his point and smiled - Remus couldn’t tell if it was a patronising smile, or
a can-you-believe-this-shit smile.

“What did I tell you about stereotypes, sweetheart? You hunters are so fucking close-minded.”

“Close-minded?!” Remus repeated, feeling his ears heat up. “You kill people!”

“Serial killers kill people, but do they do that every single day?!”

“Comparing yourself to a serial killer is definitely not the angle you want to be going for right
now.”

“Oh my god,” Sirius groaned, rubbing his temples in a way that reminded Remus an awful lot of
himself. “You know what I mean! Just because I’m a vampire doesn’t mean I live a fucking…
gothic, Dracula existence. I have a life, Remus; I have hobbies, things I enjoy doing, people I want
to fuck - and not eat afterwards, before you think what I know you’re going to be thinking. My
entire life does not revolve around you, or blood, or these—stupid—” he pulled his upper lip up
with his thumb; his fangs were retracted, but his canines were still unnaturally sharp,
“—fucking—teeth! I even like to eat real food. Do I have to? No! But cheeseburgers are
fucking gorgeous. On par with O neg, I’m telling you.” He folded his arms, rant apparently over.
Remus just gaped.

“If you hadn’t just ruined my night, I would’ve made a joke about how cheeseburgers are as
gorgeous as you,” he pointed out, childishly, after a few moments. “But I’m pissed, so I won’t.”

Remus thought that quite defeated the point, but whatever.

He looked at the vampire; the pout on his face, exaggerated from his natural, full lips, and the way
his brows were knitted together, and he really, actually felt the urge to apologise.

What the fuck? He seriously must be drunker than he thought. There was no way this was
happening.

“You know what, Lupin,” Sirius said, unfolding his arms and pushing himself off the wall, “I
really can’t be bothered. If I promise - pinky fucking promise - to not eat anyone on the dance floor;
because I know that’s what you thought I was doing; would you just… leave me alone for
tonight?”

Remus blinked, and Sirius began to straighten out his shirt, unfolding the cuffs. He looked up, and
gave Remus that perfect, infuriating smirk. Remus didn’t have the heart nor the braincells to do
anything but deal with the flutter in his stomach.

“We can go back to killing each other tomorrow?” Sirius said hopefully, raising his eyebrows and
catching his tongue between his teeth.

Remus’ body apparently grew tired of waiting for his brain to complete buffering, and he was
deflating and nodding before he even realised what he was doing. Sirius shot him a brilliant grin
and kicked the dagger towards him. Remus picked it up.

“So, wait,” Sirius said, “If you’re here, I presume that means your fiery little partner is here too?”

Remus cleared his throat. “Dorcas, yes.”

Sirius sighed. “Damn. She’ll recognise me and, unlike you, she won’t hesitate.”

Remus opened his mouth to protest at that - all brain cells firing at “arsey reply” - when Sirius
walked up to him, and his mouth ran dry. Of course, Remus was simply standing in the short
entrance hallway, and Sirius needed to shuffle past him to get out.

He smelled really, really good, and that smell triggered a memory, and that memory triggered
words that spewed out of Remus’ mouth involuntarily.

“Why did you do it?”

Sirius paused, his back to Remus, and turned slowly. He had an indecipherable expression on his
face.

“Do what?” he deadpanned, lip curling, and Remus sighed.

“You’re really gonna make me say it?” he said exasperatedly, and when Sirius’ mouth curved up
further, groaned. “Why did you kill that coven?”

Sirius pursed his lips, before saying, simply, “They hurt you.”

Remus frowned, mouth parting in disbelief. “You hurt me! All the time! I thought you would’ve
been happy that I got my ass beat.”

Sirius inhaled, exhaled slowly, before taking two small steps to cross the distance again, pushing
himself back into Remus’ vicinity. They were about the same height - perhaps Remus was a bit
taller, but Sirius was wearing platform boots - and subsequently, he was the perfect height to
whisper directly into Remus’ ear.

“I’m going to make this very clear, Remus Lupin,” he murmured, incredibly low and rich, sending
a shiver directly down Remus’ spine. “They can hurt you. They can cut you, and beat you, and
make you bleed."

In a split-second Sirius had him, gripped by the hips, chest against chest, fingers pressing into the
tender spots just above Remus’ pelvis bone; underneath his shirt; cold fingers touching warm skin.

“But no one,” Sirius continued, moving his head downwards to the tender skin on Remus’ neck,
where the puncture wounds from the bite mark were almost fully healed, a red, white scar,
evidence of another vampire’s transgression; another man’s touch. Remus unwillingly moved his
head to give Sirius more access. His eyes fluttered shut.

“No one bites you here,” he whispered, finally, and Remus jumped slightly at the feeling of Sirius’
teeth on his skin; his fangs had popped, but they weren’t piercing him, simply grazing over his
neck, unbearably soft and teasing. Remus’ own hands, at some point, moved upwards, and he
cupped Sirius’ own neck. His breaths came in shaky, aroused heaves.

Sirius retracted his fangs again - Remus could somehow just tell - and trailed his tongue, next,
around the two scars; then his lips, kissing them both, sucking just enough to make Remus feel like
he was going fucking crazy; enough to make the world melt around them again. Enough to make
the version of Sirius from the club real again, tangible again, as if he was going to lift his head
from Remus’ neck and crash his lips against his own, and Remus would pull him in, and pull his
hair, and make him trail his tongue around his scars again and again until he was writhing.

Sirius moved downwards to the soft spot just above his collarbone and sucked, and Remus moaned
ever so slightly, tightening his grip on the back of Sirius’ neck and rocking his hips, taking every
feeling and memorising it, taking it in while he still could.

He felt Sirius smile against his skin, dart his tongue across the site and then his touch was gone; he
released Remus’ hips with a jolt and pulled away, letting Remus’ hands fall pathetically, as if he
had no control - which, really, he didn’t.

He took two steps backwards, looking Remus up and down with the ghost of a smile on his face,
and swiped his tongue across his top row of teeth.

“See you around, pretty boy,” he said, biting his lip. “And don’t you dare forget that dagger.”

And then he was gone. Just like that.

A confused haze seemed to befall over Remus; he fell backwards, slightly, or maybe he walked -
all he knew was that he was leaning against the sink counter, one hand in his hair, when Fabian
found him.
“Hey,” he said, cautiously; softly. He was flushed from the alcohol, warm and red. He was
everything that Sirius was not. “You okay?”

Remus blinked at him, unsure whether his daze was alcohol-fuelled or Black-fuelled. His neck still
burnt.

“Yeah,” Remus said quietly. “You?”

“Yeah. We’ve barely spoken.”

“Yeah—er—” he squeezed his eyes shut and gripped at anything he could find. “How are you?
How’s Gid?”

Fabian started to say something, and Remus tuned out. He brought a hand up to rub at the side of
his neck instinctively, and then, in a second he was across the room and pressing his lips against
another.

Fabian reacted instantly. It was clockwork, he supposed. It was an outlet; it always had been, on
nights where their job had taken over all aspects of their lives and all Remus wanted to do was
forget the way his knife looked deep inside someone’s chest; the scarlet lining between his fingers.

Remus fucked him to forget. But, that night in the dingy bathroom of a shitty club when Remus
tilted his head and let Fabian press his lips to the soft spot above his collarbone, he was doing it to
remember.

***

Remus had next to no recollection of getting home; he was dazed in the bathroom one minute,
dazed in the taxi the next. Dazed in his bed after Fabian left, still half-drunk and so insanely
sexually frustrated (yes, still; Sirius’ touch had sent bolts through his bloodstream that buzzed for
hours) he felt like he was going to go crazy - piled on with the frustration over why he was sexually
frustrated, and frustration over the lack of understanding he had leading up to the catalyst of the
frustration. Big, angry, frustrated vibes. Remus had half a mind to lock himself in his room and not
talk to anyone for a minimum of 3 working days, while he tried to figure this shit out.

Sometimes, his lifestyle… it was a lot. Remus loved what he did - it was all he had ever known,
really, since he had been seventeen and Moody had recruited him off the shores of Northern Wales
after he knocked out a demon (in his defence, he didn’t know it was a demon) with one strong
blow. He had found a family in hunting - Dorcas, Mary, Benjy; the Prewett twins; even Moody and
the Weasley boys, Bill and Charlie; people who cared about him. People who he had things in
common with. It was easy, doing what he did; a routine that he didn’t have to alter. A choreography
that never changed.

But, God, was it frustrating during times like these. Times like these where what he really, truly
needed was to talk to someone who wasn’t a hunter - to get a breath of fresh air from his life, rid
himself of vampires, werewolves, witches, ghouls, demons just for a weekend. Travel to Paris to
see the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, and not to perform an exorcism. Go out to a bar and snog a
guy in the furthest toilet stall without worrying if he was a vampire. Leave the house without his
dagger, once. His job was never-ending; he never got to clock out, and he rarely got to talk to
anyone who did. It was why his escapades with Fabian always left a slightly bitter taste in his
mouth. There was nothing to gain from pretending. It just made reality slightly more hard to
content with.

Remus’ saving grace came in the form of a phone call from New York on Day 2 of his wallowing
in solitary frustrated self-pity. Because, in all the commotion in his life in his hunter bubble, he
hadn’t even thought of her.

“Hey, stranger.”

Remus beamed. “Lily.”

Lily Evans - twenty-seven, trained nurse, (assistant to the) medical examiner in the morgue.
Resident of a lovely, quaint little house in a suburb north of NYC, home temporarily to the most
aggressive pair of poltergeist’s Remus has, and maintains to, three years later, ever see.

Lily and Remus had clicked almost instantaneously when he had found her case in a passing plea
for help online, while he was passing through the country to help Dorcas set up her training centre.
It had taken almost two weeks of sleeping in motels - due to both the fact that there were two and
they were fucking assholes - for Remus to manage to expel the spirits from her house, and they had
kept in contact ever since. It was rather sporadic - they’d talk every day for weeks at a time, but
sometimes Lily got highly overwhelmed at the hospital, or Remus put too much of himself into a
case, and they fizzled out. But they always bounced back. She was the only sense of normality
Remus had in his life - and that’s saying a lot for Lily Evans.

Lily was, Remus thought hilariously for a moment, almost… too normal? Not in the ennui,
suburban mother sense (although she was neither suburban nor a mother, since transferring to a
hospital in Manhattan and moving into an apartment in the city with three of her coworkers), in the
way she was so hilariously unbothered. It was probably somewhat to do with her upbringing -
Lily’s father had been a scientist, and a rather experimental one, at that. She was five when her
house went up in burning red flames with him behind the door. Locked from the inside. The fire
took days to be put out. Lily, of course, didn’t remember much - neither did her estranged sister,
Petunia - but her earliest memories were, according to her, living a sort of nomadic lifestyle
travelling around the continental U.S.; three Evans’ women trying desperately to make reparations
for what her father had destroyed.

Her impartiality to the presence of the supernatural in the corners of her peripheral vision, in her
opinion, stems from the first five years of her life in which she thought her father was a wizard -
when, in actuality, he was a crazed experimental scientist with one foot in some dirty business and
a steaming death wish.

Her reason for calling after a month only hammered this impartiality in.

“Rem,” she said firmly, leading into something; he sat up, ears alert. “You kill vampires.”

“Fact.”

“So, you know a lot about them?”

“Another fact.”

“Okay, case study,” she said; “5’11 male, lives in my building. Always tailing me in some shape or
form, but I never see him leave before 9pm.”

“Night shift?”

“Nope, ruled that out,” she said lightly, “He comes back at super random times. No uniform either
- super inconsistent. Rules out a job.”

“And you said he’s tailing you? Like, hunting you?”

She sighed. “Not—well, not exactly. He just always tries to talk to me when I see him in the
building - which is a lot. He seems… nervous, and he always says really awkward things. You said
they’re like… chill, and charismatic, right?”

“Well, no, not necessarily,” said Remus, humming in contemplation. “Vampirism amplifies what’s
already there. The only thing added is their animalistic instincts, but personality wise, doesn’t
change ‘em; not really. Well, the power tends to corrupt them, but that’s a whole other thing.” He
paused, smacking his lips together. “What makes you think this is a vampire, then? It sounds to me
like he just has a crush on you.”

“The physicality. I read those crash courses you gave me - he fits all the signs. Sharp natural
canines, super bright eyes. Quick senses; he’s just off, Remus, I know it. How do I proceed? Should
I kill him?”

“Woah—Lils, calm down,” he said quickly. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I know he’s a vampire, Remus, I can feel it. I’m not worried, or anything, he seems like too much
of a pussy to do anything, but I’ve been sitting on this for months now.”

“Don’t underestimate him,” Remus said. “I’ve heard from a… source that there’s a coven growing
in NYC. Be careful, Lils, yeah?”

She scoffed tinnily, and when she spoke next Remus could hear her smile. “Alright, Remus. No
killing vampires for me.” She paused, and then said again, “Wait. Case? Does that mean you’re
coming up here?"

And there was the question. Remus had been attempting to not think about it for weeks now, since
that stupid coffee shop… thing, to no avail. He was sure, if it were a real threat, that Peter
would’ve wired in by now; but something in him was begging him to go to the library, look at the
police files; the missing person cases… Remus was always notorious for spotting that which others
overlooked.

“I don’t know,” he said, truthfully. Lily groaned.

“Oh, please, if there’s any chance for you to come up here you have to take it! It’s been so long I
think I’ve forgotten what you look like.”

“It’s been eleven months, you definitely haven’t, Lily.”

She laughed, and Remus grinned, almost forgetting for a moment what was weighing him down.
He cleared his throat as her laughter softened.

“Um, actually, speaking of,” he said, and she hummed in acknowledgement. “Funny coincidence, I
was actually going to call you to… talk to you about something.”

“Go on.”

“Er—” he scratched the back of his neck absent-mindedly. “You remember… Sirius?”

She paused, and Remus could almost picture the knowing smile on her face as she answered,
“Vividly.”

And so, he told her. He relayed every detail of the past few weeks of his life in detail, pausing for
brief commentaries and acknowledging hums from Lily, who listened intently. He relayed his
confusion, his frustration; everything that the devil and the angel on each shoulder had been
whispering to him for weeks, possibly even years, repressed and ignored and sheathed with so
much hatred and pain that he wasn’t sure he knew how to do anything else. He finished with the
night in the club, hand reaching up to brush over the stupid fucking hickey that was still there on
the thin skin above his collarbone.

Lily took a deep breath after he finished, and Remus thought that sounded about right.

“Well,” she said, with the air of a middle-aged man slapping his knees and standing up, “I think
he’s right about you being close-minded."

“You—what?”

Lily laughed at his indiscretion, but Remus didn’t seem to understand what was funny.

“Think about it, Rem,” she said after her laughter faded, “you’ve been in this business for what,
coming up on ten years now? More than that? You were seventeen when you were recruited, your
poor, impressionable brain was fed and ingrained all of this information as fact… but when was the
last time a hunter actually spoke to a vampire? Where is this information coming from if not years
of… I don’t know, prejudice?”

Remus could not believe what he was hearing. “Prejudice? I think we have the right - they’re
monsters, Lily. They kill people.”

She made a noise that sounded like an audible version of a shrug. “Humans kill people.”

“That’s different. This is in their instincts.”

“But that’s the thing,” she said firmly. “It’s the only instinct you care about! Like—like, cats have
instincts to kill too, right? Mice and shit. But my mom’s cat is the biggest pussy - pun unintended -
going, and literally never does. How do you know there aren’t vampires like that too?”

Remus blinked. “Lily, I think you’re going about this all wrong—”

“Maybe I am,” she interjected, “but if you had ever taken a minute in your ten years of hunting to
think like I am - that’s as a human - maybe you wouldn’t be so surprised that Sirius, like… has a
life outside of eating people.”

Remus huffed indignantly.

“And, I mean, it’s obvious you’re obsessed with him.”

If Remus had had anything to choke on, he would have. “What?!”

“Oh, I thought you knew that? Was that not established?”

“No, you—what?” Remus repeated, feeling utterly dumbstruck.

Lily sighed. “Remus, I’ve known you for three years and I feel like almost every single time we
have spoken you’ve figured out a way to bring up Sirius Black.”

Remus felt a flush of embarrassment creep up his spine.

“I’m not trying to tell you how you feel, but I just… you wouldn’t be this frustrated about it if it
was nothing. You wouldn’t have just spent half an hour describing to me how much you want to
hate-fuck him - in the loosest term possible - if it was nothing.”
“Okay, that’s different,” Remus said, suddenly feeling rather defensive. “He has spent so long
tailing me and annoying me that he—he knows how to push my buttons, or something. He knows
how to fluster me, he has since the fucking beginning, it’s all calculated. None of it is real.”

Lily was quiet for a moment on the line.

“Okay,” she said patiently. “Answer me this, then; why are you still in Texas, Remus?”

Remus exhaled slowly. He had been asking himself the same question.

“You wanna know what I think? I think that you may not like him in the conventional way, but…
you enjoy it, Remus. The chase. You enjoy his attention on you, you enjoy the fact that he’s here -
or you thought he was here - for you, and only you. You enjoy the dance, you’re good at it, and
you’re so fucking frustrated this time because it’s not going how it normally goes; Sirius isn’t
fitting into your normal depiction of him, he’s showing you other sides and layers that are making
him more, dare I say, human, and you’re frustrated because you don’t know what’s coming next.
You’re completely in the dark. But something in you is excited… something in you likes it, hopes
for more; so you’re staying in Texas, and you’re waiting. You don’t know what you’re waiting for,
but you’re waiting.”

She paused, and the silence between them was tantalising. Remus didn’t dare to even breathe.

“Let him in,” she said, softly. “Take the case. I’m not saying you have to lower your guard
completely, and I’m not saying you have to stop threatening him with that dagger or stake or
whatever it is that’ll kill him. But… he killed an entire coven, for you, Remus. Without blinking.
Step out of your comfort zone, just once, and see how it goes. And if things go sideways, at least
we know you can defend yourself.”

Another silence.

“Remus?”

“Yeah, you—” Remus croaked, almost laughing despite himself. Or, at himself. “You really know
how to read people, Lily.”

“Well, I took a class in Psychology once. You could say I’m a master.”

He laughed, and Lily changed the subject to her roommates' nightmarish parakeets, and Remus let
her distract him once more.
 three

The second time Remus encountered Sirius Black, he learned, first-hand, what he took to assume
every vampire to be, now; selfish, and disloyal.

He had been on the coast of southern England - Cornwall, to be exact, the very south of the isle,
right on the tip of the waters that separated England and France; almost to the point where the lines
blurred. This was especially obvious as it was June, during one of the rare points of the year that
England was bathed in relentless, sweltering sun. And Remus, as always, couldn’t enjoy it, because
he was on a case.

He was partnered with Mary, and it was a typical vampire nest. Typical, that was, until he had
tailed them to an abandoned warehouse and had been whooshed down the hall of the second floor
and slammed against the wall by none other than… well, only the vampire Remus had been
thinking about for the better part of a year.

Sirius had hissed directly in his face, fangs and veins popped and eyes tinted a threatening, erratic-
looking black before Remus had seen what he thought was a twinge of recognition on his face, and
it cleared up, as quickly as the dark clouds of May parted to welcome the sun in June.

“Pretty boy,” Sirius said, a flicker of amusement in the way his lip twitched. “It’s been a while.”

“Too long,” Remus said, and, with the limited movement he could force out of his right hand
(pinned against his chest) he pushed his hand upwards and collided it with Sirius’ neck, triggering
the stake shooter on his wrist and lodging a sharp, finitely carved mini stake deep into Sirius’ neck.

He staggered back, gasping and choking, and Remus’ hand flickered first, on instinct, to his gun;
and then slyly sideways, to a stake tucked into his belt on the other side. He was going to kill Sirius
intimately; he was going to watch the light leave his eyes.

He kicked Sirius harshly in the stomach, and he staggered back a few more paces before dropping
to his knees, still choking, his eyes streaming with unwanted water and hands clutching at his neck;
with a loud, pained groan he managed to dislodge the stake and throw it to the side, taking a deep
breath as the wound closed up and looking up at Remus murderously.

“Ow,” he snarled half-sarcastically, and Remus didn’t hesitate.

He ran, falling to his knees and skidding across the laminated floor of the hallway, stake hand
outstretched, and everything seemed to happen all at once; his stake hit the skin over his heart and
punctured; deep but not deep enough; and as soon as it made contact Sirius had a grip on his arm
and had thrown him across the room, against the wall, to the floor. Remus could see blood where
Sirius’ nails had broken skin on his forearms, four scratched trails downwards, and could taste it
from where his face had been knocked against the floor - he thought, briefly, that his nose might be
bleeding, and became distantly aware of the quiet alarm coming from his pocket.

A high-pitched wailing on his communications device, sent from Mary on the other end. The
distinctive signal for abandon ship, or, more poetically: run like hell.

In a second Sirius picked him up and pushed him against the wall, snarling viciously. Remus had
instinctively managed to grab his gun while he had been on the floor and in one movement he
pulled his arm up, holding it cold against Sirius’ head, the underside of his chin; tasting blood and
sweet karma.
Sirius halted for a moment, face clearing up, lip curling slightly - and there it was.

Do it, pretty boy. I fucking dare you.

He didn’t get chance - he blinked and Sirius had him by the hand, pulling his trigger finger and the
three curled around the handle of the gun back until Remus heard a crack, and contorting his wrist
backwards so that Remus could feel the muscles pull and could only pray that it wouldn’t snap
too.

And the gun was pressed up against Remus’ throat, now, still wielded by his own arm, lone thumb
around the handle; trigger abandoned but message clear from the evil set of Sirius’ eyes.

That was when, simultaneously, they both smelled the smoke.

Sirius was gone almost instantly; Remus watched him blink, and then fly down the hallway and
through a set of double doors. He took a moment to cough and choke and let his windpipe clear
before he was up, following him, through the archway where the double doors had been viciously
thrown off their hinges.

Sirius was leaning halfway over a ledge. He had run through to the main centre, which was an open
plan; the second floor in the centre simply a set of rickety stairs and an open landing, barred with
railings; and the air was thick, and pulsing with smoke. The entire bottom floor, from what Remus
could see, was on fire - flames catching on the abandoned boxes, wooden flooring and posts. He
could see movement down below. He prayed it was the vampires and not Mary. He could see the
indistinguishable glow of flames licking up the wall opposite it through the smoke layering itself
over the surfaces, and his brain began to go full-speed; the staircase was to his right, and if he got
there fast enough he could escape out the side door.

He took a breath in, unable to stop himself, and immediately began to splutter, falling to his knees
to avoid the brunt of the smoke as it floated to the roof and stayed there. His spluttering,
apparently, reminded Sirius of his presence. He threw his head up and saw him; he was still
gripping the railings so hard his knuckles were white, but his head now turned to Remus. His hair
was wild, waving in time with the force of the flames, and his eyes wilder, glossy and reflecting the
madness, mouth open slightly in obscene shock. Remus saw his gaze flicker over to the window
with openable panes behind him - and the smoke swirled around a whoosh of wind like a whip
lashing beside him from the momentum as Sirius sprinted towards freedom.

The window was filled in.

“Fuck!” Sirius screamed, sprinting over to the window on the opposite side; this one was open, no
glass, but barred. He tried to wrench them apart, succeeding enough to reach his head out but there
were too many bars crowding the space for the bent ones to go. Remus watched as he ripped one
off with strenuous effort, and then looked away, focusing instead on crawling to the stairs. He
could see the daylight shining through the gaps of the hinges. There was no air left.

The last few things Remus registered were the sound of Sirius screaming as he caught on fire, his
own hand slipping and his face colliding with one of the steps, his body falling; and then he was
awake in the hospital, nodding along dazedly to the alibi that Mary had come up with and being
asked how on earth he managed to kick the side door off the hinges and drag himself out onto the
grass outside.

Adrenaline, Remus had told them, before passing out again.

That had to be it, right?

***

Mary had apologised profusely; it had been her magic, see, that had set the place alight. Vampires
were, as all hunters knew, extremely flammable and susceptible to fire, and so when she had two
holding both of her arms and one coming dangerously near to her throat, the flames that expelled
from her palms in desperation had caught so quickly it was more like an explosion, sending flames
everywhere within a ten-foot radius and immediately becoming irreversible even for a witch of her
power. He had never blamed her - they had both survived with no severe long-term effects (Remus
suffering only three broken fingers, a wrist sprain, a dislocated jaw and a concussion later,
alongside, of course, the smoke inhalation) and they had managed to kill the nest, right? It had
been a job meticulously done in his eyes.

That was until Sirius had made himself known to be very alive in the streets of Edinburgh, of
course.

Remus thought extensively over the next few nights after Lily’s phone call about this encounter,
about how easily Sirius had abandoned his nest, in Cornwall - it was what he did. Vampires
weren’t loyal to anyone except each other? Sirius Black wasn’t even loyal to other vampires. Why,
in any God-given hell, would Remus dare to work with him? Why would he ever see Sirius Black
as anything less than the monster he was, when he had shown it to him again and again? No
amount of human partying or hobby-taking could undo that. Remus’ forefinger was still fucking
crooked, for fucks sake.

This is stupid, Remus thought with finality, lying in bed - window locked. This whole dilemma is
stupid. Peter has New York covered. Sirius hasn’t shown his face since the club, where he was,
more than likely, just trying to get a rise out of him. The vampires were still dead, regardless of
who killed them. And Remus Lupin wasn’t waiting for anything.

Remus pulled his laptop out from his bag and booked one ticket from Austin Airport to London
Gatwick, thirteen hours, non-stop, and then shoved his laptop angrily back into his bag and flipped
himself over to sleep.

It was, surprisingly, Benjy who called him first, two mornings later as Remus was drinking his tea
and getting ready to start packing his things.

“Benjy?” Remus asked, putting down his mug. “What’s up—”

“Remus, it’s Pete,” Benjy said hurriedly, “Attacked—Hospital—Vampires—”

Remus needn’t hear anymore.

It took about two hours for the emergency phone to ring - they were stationed in every safe-house,
signalling an emergency intervention. He answered the phone to one of the lovely secretaries from
the borough in London, who verified his identity and told him that all hunters stationed in America
under Dumbledore’s wing were to partake in a Skype call that afternoon; which was what led him
to 1pm, in his living room, listening to his croaky, dreamy voice go through mandatory procedures.

“Meadowes,” he was saying now, eyes piercing, “Update on Pettigrew?”

Dorcas had, as Remus had found out, not been the one to call him due to the fact as soon as she had
found out she had dropped everything and gone to NYC. She had been his emergency contact.

“Stable,” she said - to anyone else in a voice that may seem confident, but Remus, after knowing
her for so long, could hear the shakiness in her voice. “He hasn’t woken up yet, but it’s medically
induced. They’re saying there’s a 50/50 chance he’ll pull through.”

Dumbledore nodded. “And it was…”

“Vampires, sir, yes. Unmistakeable. Three at the least, maybe more than five - again, we don’t
know because he hasn’t woken up yet. He didn’t even tell anyone he was tracking them.”

Dumbledore exhaled slowly. All the hunters were stony faced. Remus noticed Hestia Jones -
stationed in Pennsylvania - reach to her left for a tissue to dry her eyes with.

“This is one of the worst Vampire attacks on a hunter we’ve seen in our country in a while. Peter
may have only been in the field for a few years, but his skill was undisputable - thus, the extent of
his injuries suggest we are dealing with a coven more vicious than we have seen in many decades.”

Remus swallowed, suddenly feeling intensely guilty.

“Who is in the area? Bordering states?”

Hestia Jones piped up, along with a few other hunters stationed on the East Coast.

“Somebody needs to take over the case.”

The silence was throat-constricting. Remus bit his lip and twiddled his hands underneath the
camera’s angle.

“I can’t, unfortunately, sir,” Hestia said, breaking the silence. “I’m on an apparition case as of right
now.”

“Type?”

“Unrested ghoul, sir. Terrorising a single mother and her three young children.”

Dumbledore nodded again, and asked another hunter of their situation - busy, busy, busy.

And after a tantalising five minutes or so, Benjy Fenwick piped up from the corner of Remus’
screen.

“Sir,” he said warily, “I’m sorry for the interruption, but I’m sitting here and I can’t help but think
—well, that Remus would be perfect for the job.”

Remus suddenly became aware of thirty people on a screen, all looking at him.

“He and Dorcas were on a vampire case that bust a few weeks ago, and he’s still here - in Austin,
that is - and I know it’s not close but, well, Remus is the best vampire hunter I know, sir.”

“It’s true, sir,” piped up Bill Weasley from the opposite corner of Remus’ screen, the scarification
of his face tugging with every word he spoke. “Last time we were on a hunt together he took out
three with one stake simultaneously.”

“Remus!” cried a booming voice - Gideon Prewett, (or Fabian, it was harder to tell through pixels)
who spoke normally at everybody else’s shouting level. “I didn’t know you were in the country!”
(Gideon, then). “We can vouch for him, sir, I would be dead if it wasn’t for him. Or, well, undead.”

Gideon and a few others let out a quiet laugh and suddenly there was a hum coming through
Remus’ laptop speaker, all nodding, humming in approval or speaking praise of their experience
with him.
Remus wished, momentarily, that a hole could appear in the earth and swallow him up.

“Alright,” Dumbledore said, efficiently shutting them up. “I believe we’ve reached a consensus.”

“Sir, I—”

“Lupin,” Dumbledore boomed over him, “I presume you haven’t found a case thus far? Will you
take it, or is there anything standing in your way?”

A million thoughts flickered through Remus’ head at that moment: pureblood vampires, Peter’s
injuries, Sirius, that coffee shop, seeing Sirius again, the coven of slaughtered vampires, the
complete and utter inevitability of seeing Sirius again.

The guilt that had been swallowing him up since this morning over how he knew about the coven,
and that he didn’t warn Peter.

The plane ticket to Gatwick Airport, taking off tomorrow.

You don’t know what you’re waiting for, but you’re waiting.

Remus swallowed. Took a breath.

“No, sir,” he said, as clearly as he could. “I can take the case.”

And for the first time, Dumbledore smiled.

“Excellent."

***

Remus started at the library.

He deemed it easier, as he always did with a new case, to go through the basics at present before
hauling ass across the country with all of his weapons and truck in tow. The library computers
weren’t the best, but they did the job - Remus managed to hack into the NYPD mainframe almost
flawlessly and thought fleetingly about how worrying that fact was before remembering this was
what he had been doing for ten years, and he was pretty damn good at it.

The library offered him solace, also, to sit in silence and think. About the case, about any patterns
he could find in the missing persons. About Peter. About Sirius.

Remus wasn’t entirely sure how this was going to play out yet. How would Sirius know he was
working it? Well, when he went to New York, of course he would, but how would he show up?
Make his inevitable, dramatic appearance and profess them partners-in-crime or something
ridiculous (that Remus would not at all adhere to)? Would he bring up the slaughtered coven?
Would he bring up… the club?

No, Remus told himself. That didn’t mean shit to him, and it doesn’t mean shit to you.

Sirius out the way, there was also the problem of Dorcas - god, Remus hated referring to her as a
problem - who was in New York as of this moment and would one hundred percent want to work
the case with Remus. And working the case with Remus meant that Remus could not conspire with
Sirius - who Dorcas would, in fact, shoot on-sight - and he needed the information. As much as
Remus fucking hated to admit it - a feeling made extremely more prominent after hours and hours
of scouring police records and forum posts - he needed Sirius’ help.
Dorcas wanted to fight for Peter’s honour, but Remus had known about the coven and hadn’t done
anything about it; and wasn’t that worse?

Oh, Peter, Remus sighed to himself. He was only two years younger than Remus, but a late starter
- one of the strangest hunters Remus had ever known, Pete was talented in unconventional ways.
He wasn’t the strongest, or the most skilful - not to demean his strength and skill, of course, they
were more than enough to survive this profession - but he was a big one for thinking outside the
box. Peter was overlooked, but he was brilliant. Remus’ heart hurt the more he thought about him
lying there, injured and bleeding out. He would figure it out. One way or another, he’d kill those
vampires.

He trudged back into his house that night past 11pm (after the library closed), arms full to the brim
with one folder of hundreds of files, printed out, of police records, serial murders and leads in the
city; dating back five years, and then past that, all the way to what he could find of the fifties -
where Sirius had mentioned the leader’s initial defeat and subsequent dormancy.

He threw the files onto the table with an exhausted groan - ready to be matched with the case file
that the borough would send him - and decided to sort them tomorrow; he gave his neck a sore rub
as he made his way upstairs, planning to shower, sleep and get up early to work some more on his
first leads.

Something stopped him in his tracks as he got to the stop of the stairs.

A draft. A tickling blow of the wind, brushed against his neck. He shivered absent-mindedly and
stopped, narrowing his eyes. He knew for a fact that every single window in this house was locked
from the inside.

Not that that would stop him.

He plundered into his room, banging the door handle on the wall, and sure enough - the window
was open. The lock was neatly placed on the side, not broken, not smashed, simply unlocked. The
key was not present.

And there, on his bed, between two neatly placed pillows, was a piece of paper; folded in half and
propped up into a triangular prism shape that was missing the bottom. Remus picked it up,
smoothed the fold over and squinted.

Coordinates. He left him fucking coordinates.

Midnight, tomorrow was all the note said, in tantalisingly neat handwriting; Remus began to get a
sense of déjà vu.

He flipped the paper over, and then unfolded it to see the other side.

Don’t forget that dagger.

Remus sat on his bed and groaned exasperatedly, looking desperately at the lock on his bedside
table as if it was going to tell him what to do.

***

The coordinates led to an abandoned carpark in the middle of nowhere, because of course they did.

Remus drove his car up and parked under a streetlight, taking a moment to brace himself at the
wheel. The entire lot was dark, and gloomy; it was on a peak, shadowed by overbearing foliage,
and Remus could see the tops of the gleaming city down a steep, rampant hill. There were no other
cars. There was only one streetlight, and Remus was under it.

He picked up his gun, sheathed his dagger and opened the door, climbing out and slamming it
behind him. The air was cold - he pulled his jacket tighter around him, puffing and watching his
breath materialise in front of him. He stood still, for a moment, listening to nothing but the
entangling of the trees as they moved in the wind, and an owl hooting in the distance.

“Whatever shit you’re going to pull,” Remus said, slowly, knowing Sirius would still be able to
hear even if he whispered, “Don’t. I can’t be bothered to break your wrist today,” he muttered,
pacing around the front of his car and to the other side, looking deep into the darkness of the
woods. “Too much... effort.”

“I’m not pulling anything.”

Remus whirled around, immediately cocking his gun, and there he was; like a wraith, in front of
him, his flawless skin lit up by the side-gleam of Remus’ headlights. The first thing Remus noticed
was the thick fur coat he had on, paired with a black shirt, jeans and heeled boots that still didn’t
propel him up to Remus’ height. He made a note to make fun of him for that at some point in the
future.

Sirius stared at him for a moment, cocking his head, and Remus let his gun fall. Sirius tutted.

“You’re in an abandoned car park in the middle of the night with a vampire… and you drop the
gun,” he said quietly, voice laced with amusement. Remus scoffed.

“I’m only dropping the gun,” Remus said testily, sheathing it in his belt, “so I can use this instead.”

The familiar dagger glinted under the artificial light, and Remus saw the same glint reflect in
Sirius’ eyes. He remembered, distantly, Sirius talking about how it was attractive, and pushed that
memory aside. Not tonight.

“What is it, then?” Remus asked, impatient, pinching the metal of his blade and running two
fingers up and down. “Why did you want to meet?”

“You know exactly why, Lupin.”

Remus scowled, and Sirius grinned devilishly.

“How’s the case?” he said nonchalantly, and Remus really had to resist himself from throwing the
knife.

“I’ve only just started it. Peter was on it until a few days ago, but of course, you knew he’d take it.”

“Ah, yes,” he said with a hint of recognition, “Little Pettigrew. I heard what happened to him. Poor
sod. He make it?”

Remus bit the inside of his lip. “They’re doing everything they can.” Sirius nodded, and turned to
lean against the side of the hood of his car.

“How did you hear? About Peter?” Remus asked, and Sirius gave him a knowing smile.

“I have contacts in New York.”

“See, this is the thing,” Remus said, circling to stand in front of the vampire, maintaining his
distance away. “How do I know your contacts aren’t the vampires who attacked him in the first
place?”

Sirius shrugged. “You don’t.”

Remus laughed dryly, flipping his dagger between his fingers.

“Fat lot of help, that is. Really makes me want to work with you.”

“Look, pretty boy,” Sirius said, pushing himself off the hood of the car and taking a few steps
forward, “You need me. You know you do. I’m not going to say I’m glad your friend is hurt, but I
am glad it kicked your insolent ass into action because you’re the only person who can do this.
And I… I need you. These vampires need eradicating. I need them gone.”

Remus quirked an eyebrow. “You really hate these vampires, huh? What did they do to you?”

Sirius glowered, a muscle in his jaw twitching slightly. Remus pressed on.

“You know, every vampire coven that I’ve come across have been loyal to each other. Every single
one; they’re not one to run away from a fight if it means abandoning their kind, their kin. Family, if
you will. I almost find it admirable, sometimes, when I forget momentarily that all of your kind are
monsters. But you,” Remus pressed on, pointing his dagger lazily at Sirius like it was a laser
pointer, “you’re not loyal to anyone. You gave up on your nest without a second thought. Some of
them were still moving, you know. Down in the fire. I know you saw.”

Sirius exhaled angrily. Remus could see red, and he was basking in it.

“You’re not like the others of your kind, sweetheart - you’re worse. You’re slippery, and disloyal,
and evil and you mask it all behind sarcasm and cheekbones and glamour, but I see exactly what
you truly are, and I have since the moment you went for that window to leave everyone behind—”

The snap happened in a split second; Remus blinked, and he was slammed up against a thick oak
tree a couple of meters behind his car, and Sirius was breathing heavily, angrily, his pupils dilated
to a ridiculous level. Arm on his chest. Breath on his face. Remus’ arm flew up on autopilot and
there they were in their natural position, dagger to throat, and Remus almost laughed at the
familiarity of it all.

This was what he had been waiting for; the unpredictability of their relationship, the red licks of the
flames outlining every conversation they had, every look they shared; provoking Sirius until he
bled anger and pure, unabridged passion, and Sirius doing the same to him. His heart thumping a
million beats a minute, caught up in the adrenaline of death being so close, and yet the unspoken
knowledge that there would always be one more thing that got in the way.

And in a sudden flow of consciousness that really was probably not all that sudden at all, but
something he had been sitting on for years, Remus realised that life with Sirius Black at his heel
would always last just a little bit longer, because teetering on the edge of death was entirely,
irrevocably what he lived for; what they both did.

“You listen here, Remus Lupin,” Sirius growled, leaning in so close to his face their noses were
almost touching, “I know you think you have me all figured out, but you don’t know shit about me.
You don’t know shit,” he put so much emphasis on the word that a shiver went down Remus’
spine, “about what it’s like to be like we are. You don’t know shit about family, about my family,
about MY coven. You fucking hunters treat us like we have no fucking feelings and then you get to
stand here and call me a monster for it?”
Remus squirmed, huffing angrily and pressed the dagger further into Sirius’ skin, drawing blood
and creating blisters. Sirius didn’t flinch.

“I did what I did for reasons that you will never understand, pretty boy,” he spat, the address to
Remus coming out laced with venom and mockery. “I don’t owe my fucking loyalty to anyone; do
you hear me? Least of all you.”

“Why are we here then?” Remus yelled back at him, jutting out his chin. “Why the fuck am I
here?!” He pushed once more and Sirius loosened his grip, staggering two small steps back,
looking slightly dazed and indecipherably angry. Remus watched as the wounds healed on his
neck.

“Because this is bigger than me and you!” Sirius basically screamed, throwing his arms out in a
wild gesture that made him look deranged, or stricken; or pained. “This is more than just a three-
week case where you stake a couple vampires and burn their corpses, Remus, this is big and if you
would stop being a fucking drama queen for one second—”

“I’m the drama queen?!”

“—you’d realise that! You know, you think you’re god’s fucking gift to mankind, don’t you,”
Sirius hissed, re-closing the distance in three agitated strides and pressing an accusatory finger to
Remus’ chest. “You stand there with your stakes and your gun and your fucking holy water and act
like the world wouldn’t dare to spin without you - guess what, sweetheart, the world spun before
you and it will spin long after I’m fucking done with you, I can promise you that.”

Remus huffed and reached up a hand to grab Sirius’ pointed finger, and Sirius reacted instantly,
pressing him harder onto the rough bark of the tree and twisting their hands so he had Remus’ in a
death grip, holding it against his head, leaning in enough to pin him down completely with no
chance of escaping.

Remus took a sharp breath in as the dust began to settle and the only sound to be heard was two
sets of breathing, shaky and heated and filled with so much overflowing passion that the night air
seemed to thrum with energy; the breeze ceased, and the leaves stood still; the sounds of the city
became distant and all he could feel was shallow breath cascading over his face and the brush of
Sirius’ touch against his skin as he swayed, unearthed, more dishevelled and fucking devastating
than Remus had ever seen him.

The bristling of leaves and the hooting of an owl, unable to penetrate the unshatterable energy
draped over them like a veil, or a shroud.

The feeling of his nimble fingers pressing down on Remus’ wrist, his pulse, where it felt like the
blood flowed for this, and only for this.

“And what,” Remus whispered, biting down on his bottom lip and scanning Sirius’ face once,
twice over, “exactly are you going to do with me?”

Remus locked eyes with him stubbornly, hit with a splurge of adrenaline and pure energy, and this
time he was the one being daring; the look on Sirius’ face, the way his eyes swam - not with tears,
with overflowing electricity, as if he was holding a bomb–he is the bomb–and Remus is screaming
do it, fucking do it in his face and neither of them know exactly what it is, but the bomb ticks down
regardless; three... two… one—

The sound of tires scratching on gravel made Remus jump and look away as a car pulled through
the narrow passageway and past them, hidden in the shadows; and as fast as he could blink his
hand was released and Sirius was gone, a trail of loose leaves swirling the trodden-on grass as he
went.

Remus, on shaky legs, ran a hand through his hair and returned to his car. He composed himself
and drove straight home.

***

Remus awoke the next morning to a cloudy head, a pit of anxiety in his stomach - and very strange,
very loud banging coming from his kitchen.

He was up in a flash - hunter reflexes - and grabbed the closest weapon he could see; he had left
his gun over on his chest-of-drawers, while his crossbow lay unused for a while propped up against
the nearest wall. He picked it up, armed himself and made his way out to the hall, tiptoeing
barefoot in his, rather shabby, pyjamas, eyes still weak from sleep but body alert.

The door to the kitchen was open, and Remus took a shallow breath against the wall before turning
in and shooting; and Sirius caught the arrow.

He stood with his back to Remus, facing the table - where Remus’ weapons were laid out orderly.
He was wearing a white shirt rolled up the forearms and black trousers, slim fit and also rolled up,
enough that there was a stripe of pale skin flashing squashed between where his trousers ended and
the top of his shoes began. He held the arrow in the air for a moment, before turning his shoulders
to the left, just enough to see.

“Morning, sunshine,” he said, flicking his hair and shooting him a dazzling smile. As if they hadn’t
been screaming at each other a mere twelve hours ago. As if the anger had dissipated and sunk into
the natural energy of the earth that neither of them harnessed enough to reach.

Remus lowered his crossbow.

He was fuckin’ tired, man.

“What the fuck are you doing here?!” He felt like he spent a lot of time asking that question
recently.

“Well, I was just looking over your stakes - truly beautiful, you carve these yourself?” he said
amusedly, walking around the table to face Remus front-on, eyeing a particular set of stakes - and
yep, his shirt was, in fact, unbuttoned dangerously low, and Remus suddenly became aware of his
own dishevelled state. Sirius looked at him and suppressed a smile.

“No,” Remus said testily, putting the crossbow down and crossing his arms, feeling slightly
whiplashed. “Moody manufactures them for us. Again, what are you doing here?”

Sirius hummed, picking up one stake and holding it up to the light before pricking his finger with
it, drawing blood. He frowned and put it in his mouth, looking up and rolling his eyes at Remus’
unamused expression.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he said, muffled, finger in his mouth. He pulled the fully healed forefinger out
with a satisfying pop and smiled mischievously. “I’m figuring out what weapons to take up to New
York. You know, for our road trip.”

Remus quirked an eyebrow. “For our what now?”

“Road trip!”
He was now examining a particularly fragile rifle. Remus groaned and stalked over to him, pulling
it out of his grabby hands in anguish.

“Who the fuck said anything about a road trip?” Remus asked, turning on him before taking an
unconscious step back - being close to Sirius was dangerous; being close to Sirius’ open chest was,
apparently, worse.

He shrugged. “Makes sense, doesn’t it?"

“No, it definitely does not,” Remus spat, picking up his stakes and crossing the room to put them
back in the (fucking left open - damn messy vampire) storage units they belonged. “I am going to
drive to New York, and you are going to… I don’t fucking know, turn into a bat and fly there?”

“Ugh—did you have to remind me of the fact that I can’t do that? That’s probably the only trope
from the media that I fucking wish I could do.”

Remus turned, scowling at him and went over to pick up the rifle, hanging it delicately on a peg
directly behind Sirius.

“You’re not coming with me,” Remus said firmly as he leaned - unwillingly - into Sirius’ space to
reach the peg, and the vampire groaned.

“Please? I’m actually saying please. It’d be so much easier.”

“No.”

“You can pick the music.”

“No.”

“I won’t eat a single person the whole way there.”

Remus wheeled around, halfway to the storage unit with three handguns in his arms. “You won’t
eat any people the whole time we’re there, if you want me to fucking work with you.”

Sirius blinked. “What?”

Remus threw the guns in harsher than he should have and slammed the drawer shut. “I have
dedicated my whole life to protecting humans on the street from people like you, Black. How am I
supposed to, morally and physically, live with myself and work with you while knowing you’re out
there killing people and I’m not doing anything about it?”

Sirius groaned. “What do you expect me to do then?”

Remus shrugged. “NYC is infested with rats.”

Sirius actually fucking gagged.

“I would honestly rather you set fire to my testicles than drink rat’s blood,” he groaned thickly, and
Remus rolled his eyes.

“And you called me a drama queen,” he muttered to himself, sorting out some handguns, and Sirius
exhaled sharply in what Remus knew was a telltale sign of impatience.

“Look, I don’t even kill people anymore, Lupin,” he said, a serious tone to his voice, and Remus
scoffed. “I mean it! It’s a fucking faff now that people actually care about murder, and James has
had some sort of stupid vegan epiphany, so he’s sworn off it for life. I just… drink what I need and
send them on their way. They survive, like, ninety-two percent of the time. At least.”

Remus shook his head in disbelief. “You’re still hurting people.”

“Yeah, well maybe people deserve to be hurt,” Sirius muttered petulantly, and Remus actually
laughed.

“Yeah, this?” he started, pointing agitatedly and shoving past Sirius to reach for the last of the
weaponry, “is exactly why this will never fucking work. I swore to protect the people, and that’s
what I’m going to do.”

He was halfway across the room, dusty old crossbow in hand, when Sirius spoke up.

“Why haven’t you killed me yet, then?”

He turned his head to the side, only slightly; enough that he could see Sirius out of the corner of his
peripheral vision, standing solemnly.

“That’s different.”

“No, it’s not,” Sirius said; Remus heard him pace across the room in time with his own steps. He
threw the crossbow into a drawer and turned around to see Sirius, as he expected, within arm’s
reach, almost pressing him onto the set of storage units. “It’s not.”

“We’re not doing this today, Black,” Remus said firmly, pushing and skirting around him to walk
away. Sirius followed him, as he always did.

“You’ve had plenty of chances to kill me, but I’m still here. I’m still hurting people.”

“Yeah, and I could say the fucking same!” Remus said, whirling around, and somehow they were
right back in the pit; fire knocking on the window, singeing the padlocks. “You could snap my
neck right now in a second. Or drain my blood. I’m defenceless; all of this could be over in, what,
five, six minutes?” He took a step forward, eyes blazing. “Why am I still alive, Sirius? I’m still
hurting vampires.”

“I told you I don’t fucking care about vampires.”

“What do you care about then?”

Sirius gaped for a moment, articulation caught so finely on his tongue Remus could almost see it -
teetering on the edge of sweet humanity - before it was swallowed down again, covered with a
vicious scowl, tamed by a deep, long breath. His eyes fluttered shut. Open again.

“I care about killing this coven,” Sirius said steadily, composure regained. “And so do you. But we
can’t do that if all we’re going to do is be at each other’s throats.”

“I haven’t even said yes to working with you yet.”

Sirius’ lip curled, and he shrugged. “But you’re going to.”

Of course he was. There was no question, really. Remus, by now, seemed to have found himself in
so deep that any attempt to clamber out again would simply bring more debris pouring on his
head.

It was only logical to keep digging.

He braced himself on the back of a chair, taking a deep sigh and dropping his head. “You’re so
fucking infuriating.”

“What’s infuriating?” Sirius said dumbly; and Remus couldn’t see, but he could hear the asshole
smile on his face. “My hilarious personality or my beautiful physical demeanour?”

Remus raised his head and gave him a withered look, and the smile on Sirius’ face grew.

“It’s the shirt, isn’t it?”

“No.”

Sirius laughed triumphantly. “It’s the shirt - and I thought white washed me out!”

“It does,” Remus said, shuffling to the kitchen for a dearly-needed coffee. “You look disgusting.”

“Do not,” Sirius countered, shuffling in after him.

“Do too."

“I look sexy.”

“You look irritating, now get out of my house.”

Sirius was silent for a moment too long - Remus thought, for a moment, he had actually obeyed
before turning and seeing him leaning against the fridge, eyebrows raised. Obvious question in his
eyes.

Remus closed his eyes and took a trying breath. “Tomorrow. We’re leaving at 10am. Sharp. Don’t
you dare be late or I swear to god I will leave and you best pray that evolution and popular culture
really has given you the ability to fly.”

Sirius’ face basically lit up. “Of course, pretty boy.”

And with a whoosh that made Remus’ hairs stand on end, he was gone.

The kettle pinged done.

 four
Chapter Notes

alnilamlupin... i will be expecting my tiramisu in the mail within 3-5 business days <3

“Music?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

Silence.

This was how the first forty-five minutes, give or take, of their car journey had gone.

Sirius had shown up at half past 9 that morning while Remus was loading the weapons and
preparing - priding himself in being early, of course, and not helping in the slightest. Apart from
the odd remark or brief, tense conversation about whatever city they were driving through, they
had been mostly silent. Remus, who had spent basically the past 24 hours preparing for a two-day
road trip from hell, was rather put out by this.

Of course, fifty minutes in he fell into his usual, irritable self over the aux cord.

“Come on,” Sirius said, after a five minute silence. “You like music, right, pretty boy?”

Remus’ lips thinned into an intent line, and Sirius groaned.

“What am I supposed to call you then?”

“Lupin is fine,” Remus said breezily. "If you must."

Sirius grumbled something under his breath but continued his tirade.

“Alright, Lupin,” he said, putting emphasis on the word; “you like music, right? I presume you
have a life outside of wanting to end mine?”

“Of course I do,” Remus snapped.

“Let me connect.”

Remus quirked an eyebrow, refusing to look at him, eyes steady on the road. “I thought you said I
could choose the music.”

“You can. That’s the beauty of streaming sites, Lupin; you can listen to anything.”

Remus resisted a snappy I-know-how-they-work retort and simply sighed, reaching down to fumble
with his stereo system. He passed the cord to Sirius; who was grinning, he hated to admit. He had
spent the past almost hour with his eyes strictly on the road. It was easier to simply ignore his
presence than try to be okay with it.
“Right,” Sirius said, typing something on his phone, “Any requests?”

Remus looked down and squinted; Sirius had the newest iPhone. It looked shiny, and new. He
swiped onto his home screen and Remus chanced a glimpse of a picture of Sirius and a messy
haired, dark skinned man with matching grins as he clicked onto Spotify.

“Oh, so you don’t disappear in pictures, then?” Remus murmured, and he heard Sirius laugh
breathily.

“You know,” Sirius said, “you apparently know such little about vampire culture that I’m not even
100% sure that that’s a joke.” He paused for a second, tapping his thumbs on the sides of his phone
absent-mindedly. “You’re probably surprised I even have a phone, right?”

He phrased it as a joke, but Remus’ lip pinching in one corner immediately dropped the hilarity.

“Oh my god.”

“The first one was a joke,” Remus said quietly. Sirius laughed out loud.

“What do they even teach you in… hunter school?” Sirius said with an air of abject disbelief.

“That you kill people?”

“Eh,” Sirius squeaked, flicking his hand in a pish-posh gesture. “Technicality. There’s so much
more to us than that.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

He saw Sirius stare at him for a long, cold minute before sighing and picking up his phone again,
decidedly dropping the subject on account of the ‘being at each other's throats’ conversation
yesterday.

“Requests?” he repeated. Remus pursed his lips, turning onto a roundabout.

“I feel like you’ll judge anyone I suggest since you’ve lived through it all.”

“Unless it’s Nickelback, I won’t.”

Remus actually laughed at this, shutting himself up once he clocked it and forcing out, “Pop
culture is so cruel to them. I’ve a mind to request them now.”

He could hear the smile in Sirius’ voice. “I will actually bat fly out of this car.”

For a second Remus forgot that that was what he was supposed to want.

“Fine,” Remus said, gaping for a moment in decision. “How about—Bowie? Acquired taste or
no?”

Sirius immediately ‘oooh-ed’, typing furiously on his phone. “No, I approve. Good taste, good
taste. Living through Ziggy Stardust was an experience, I’ll tell you that.”

Remus restrained the urge to ask more, humming and nodding neutrally.

“David…” Sirius murmured again, scrolling now. “Good lay, as well, he was.”

Remus’ head snapped around to face him full-on, finally.

“You did not sleep with David Bowie.”

Sirius barked a laugh, and the opening tones of The Jean Genie began to ring through the car.

“I could have slept with David Bowie.”

“You prick,” Remus wheezed, smile growing on his face as he turned to watch the road again.
“You absolutely did not.”

“Alright, I didn’t; but I wish I bloody had for the look on your face,” Sirius said, chuckling, and he
began to tap his fingers against his knees to the beat. “Saw him a good few times though. What a
legend.”

“Mmm,” Remus hummed, “Legend indeed.”

The conversation faded out into comfortability, silence filled with the tones of David as Sirius
queued various songs from various eras; eventually moving down a consistent path with Led
Zeppelin, T.Rex, Pink Floyd; blending into the eighties with The Smiths, one Billy Idol song that
Remus surprisingly didn’t hate, and - the opening tones of Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! giving Remus
the biggest shock of his life - ABBA, who were apparently a guilty pleasure of Sirius’, who had,
verbatim, ‘lived too long to be a pretentious twat tied down to a specific music genre.’

Halfway through Voulez-Vous, Remus’ phone began to ring.

“Ah,” he said, reaching a hand to grapple around the backseat to no avail. The car swerved slightly.
“That’s my personal.”

Sirius put his phone down on the dash and turned to reach it, apparently finding it easily. He
flipped the phone over and squinted at the screen.

“Is it Dorcas?”

“No—someone called Lily?”

“Oh, fuck,” Remus said; he had forgotten to tell her he was coming. “Give it to me.”

“Who’s Lily?”

“Give it to me, Sirius!”

“Why hello, Lilibet!”

He pushed himself up against the window to escape Remus’ grabby hands and grinned into the
phone, where Remus could hear Lily’s voice, indecipherable. He turned down the volume of the
music and scowled at the vampire who had taken off his seatbelt to avoid him; the bloody car was
beeping too, now.

“Remus? Ah, yes, he’s here with me—who am I?” He gave Remus an incredulous look, and
Remus exhaled angrily, swerving a little too aggressively so he fell sharply onto the dash with an
OOMPH.

“Ah—sorry, Lilian, I’m here - my name is Sirius, you may have heard of me?” He paused, face
going from blank listening to a mischievous grin. “Oh, you have?”

“Put her on speaker or I’m kicking you out.”

Sirius scoffed. “No fun. Hang on, Lilith, he’s just here—”

He clambered down to sit comfortably cross-legged on the passenger seat, putting Lily on speaker
and holding the phone up between them.

“Remus?”

“Lily, hi—”

“Hello!” Sirius interjected, clearly finding his interruptions hilarious. Remus glowered at him and
leaned over to sit closer to the phone.

“Remus, are you okay?”

“Yeah, yes, don’t worry Lils—I can explain another time—”

“Is this about what... we talked about?”

Remus sighed, as Sirius perked up.

“What did you talk about?”

“Kind of, Lily, I—”

“What did you talk about?”

Remus hissed and reached out a hand to grab the phone, covering the bottom speaker with his hand
- not managing to rip it out of Sirius’ grip, brushing their fingers together.

“Shut up or I’ll get the dagger out,” he threatened, glaring at Sirius. His eyes twinkled.

“Baby, you know that’s not a threat to me—”

Remus, in this momentary distraction, managed to wrangle the phone from Sirius’ grasp and
propped it up against his ear on the opposite side. Sirius scoffed, but his lip curled - he almost
looked impressed.

“Lily, we’re on the way to NYC right now,” he said quickly, and heard her gasp.

“Oh my god, what, you’re doing the case?”

“Yep.”

She whooped. “I can help!”

“No, you can’t,” Remus said, and Sirius leaned over.

“He’s right, you can’t,” he said, and Remus shooed him away.

“But I’ll come see you, obviously.”

“And you’re working with—him? After—”

Remus inhaled sharply, and said, low; “Lils, I took you off speaker but he’s a vampire, he can still
hear.”

Sirius, who was now looking out of his window, smiled.

“Right, sorry, I’m sorry—but... you are?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Right. Okay,” she said, thoroughly unconvinced, then paused for a moment. “Just—be safe, okay,
Remus?”

“He’s not going to hurt me, Lily,” Remus said, “He needs me.”

“Not that.”

Remus closed his eyes in a half-eyeroll, feeling almost like he was talking to his mother - though,
that’s almost what Lily was. “Yes, mum.”

She laughed. “Go to bed early, eat well. Don’t let your brain explode in the presence of such an
absolute moron.”

Sirius scoffed. “Oi!”

“Bye, Rem - let me know when you get in the city, yeah?”

“Mhm. Bye, Lily, talk soon.”

She hung up and Remus stretched his neck around, bringing his other hand up to remove his phone
and place it in between the two seats. Sirius was still facing the window, but was looking at him
out of the corner of his eye.

“You’re a dickhead, you know that?”

Sirius grinned. “One of us has to be.”

His phone dinged with a text and Sirius immediately beelined for it.

“Lily again,” he read out, “‘You and I are going to have words later BTW.’ What, are we in high
school?”

His phone pinged again and Sirius squinted to read the new entry.

“P.S,” he read, “Suck my big fat human dick, Sirius.” His mouth relaxed into a perfect O for a
moment before contorting into a smile, then a laugh, then a wheeze, hand over his mouth to muffle
his laughter. He dropped the phone back onto Remus’ lap and pointed, chuckling and nodding.

“I like this one,” he said amusedly, and Remus turned his face away to hide the smile attacking his
lips until Sirius was quiet, looking out the window again; only then did he let himself go.

***

Almost fourteen hours found them just on the outside of Nashville, Tennessee, where Remus, quite
frankly, felt like he would collapse if he had to drive any further. The journey had, actually, not
been too bad; it was the most time Remus had ever spent with Sirius consecutively by far, and he
had discovered that the vampire, despite having insane amounts of energy (that he suspected was
just him, and not the vampirism itself), did, in fact, have a cool down period. He had declared
himself hungry about six hours in and Remus had gotten himself some greasy fast food from a
rogue shop in the middle of fuck-all nowhere Arkansas, while Sirius went hunting - promising to
not go for any humans. Remus, of course, didn’t trust his promise for shit, but thought it better to
let him go for now knowing he still had a day as a human blood bank in a confined box with him,
and when they got to NYC he could keep closer tabs. (Sirius offered to bring back a bunny corpse
as proof, but Remus did not think that was necessary.)

He came back with a splash of blood on his collar from where it had trickled down his mouth,
Remus presumed, and was exceedingly mellow as the day became early dusk and they drove
through secluded wilderness with beautiful views. Remus, too lazy to pick or make a playlist and
too stubborn to give Sirius complete free rein, put his entire library on shuffle on a low volume as
they drove. As dusk turned to night Sirius piped up every now and then with an opinion on a song
or artist that Remus would, most of the time, ignore (he was simply unable to not defend
Fleetwood Mac when Dreams came on, which he suspected was entirely Lily’s influence). Sirius
proved to be rather malleable with music, however, and was practically entirely changed after a
fully run through shuffle of Rumours. This was the last conversation they had had, about an hour
ago, as they drove through the lowly-populated areas of Tennessee, approaching Nashville but not
quite.

This time, with Sirius in such close proximity, gave Remus a lot of time to think. His thoughts were
jumbled but there nonetheless - flickering between the comfortability of having him there (to the
point that he forgot he was there entirely a good few times) and the complete absurdity of this
same prospect. It was strange. Remus had become increasingly aware of how little he really did
know about the reality of vampire culture, as much as he hated to admit it due to his stubbornity at
accepting Sirius’ being right; he really did know next to nothing about them outside of their
animalistic instincts. But, see, the thing was, before a couple of weeks ago, Remus hadn’t thought
there had been anything else to know. It was ashamedly close-minded, he could admit that now,
albeit regrettably. He had been ingrained with one perspective his entire life, ideas drilled into him
with no fluctuations; every vampire was evil, ruthless, a murdering machine, as Moody often called
them, but, alas, Sirius was here and was - he absolutely hated with every fibre of his being to admit
- proving him wrong.

It made sense to him, Remus supposed (trying to rationalise this difference in alignment with what
he now understood to be his own prejudices), that life ended with death, and thus his perception of
vampirism did not align with his perception of life because, well, they were dead. It was very two
plus two is four - it had always and still felt to him as though that's how it should work, really. The
two shouldn’t match; they shouldn’t coexist. The venom from a vampire bite, to speak in
metaphors, poisoned the soul - and what was a life without a soul? A life without a soul lacked
guidance, and humanity; looking to pure carnage and animalistic lust to survive, instead of
kindness, or empathy, or guilt. And yes, Sirius aligned with those things too - Remus had witnessed
him act on pure carnage, and his aura epitomised animalistic lust - but he was also here, sitting
next to Remus calmly; cross-legged and constantly shuffling and fidgeting; staring out the window,
admiring the view, phone in hand; floating through experiences and friendships and more and more
that epitomised a life.

He wasn’t surviving, or simply existing, as Remus had thought before; he was living.

His newly open presence in Remus’ life went against everything he believed in, everything he had
ever learned by the people who had weaned him, raised him, taught him, trained him; and even if
he felt like he physically could, Remus wasn’t sure he wanted to unlearn those beliefs. Because if
he unlearnt them, what did that mean for him and Sirius? Where did that leave them, except in an
awkward grey area where the hunter in Remus wanted to stab him, but the empath in him; the
human in him; wanted to keep searching for the flashes of humanity that set him apart from the
rest? Keep searching for the soul that must have been shielded from the venom when he was
turned?

Or, maybe Remus was being entirely and irrevocably dramatic, grasping for straws that weren’t
there.

It was just - well, every time Remus closed his eyes he saw the coven Sirius slaughtered for him.
Every time, he felt the press of Sirius’ lips to his throat again - the entirely unthreatening -
unfamiliar in its lack of threat - graze of his teeth against bare, unpunctured skin. Every time it
chipped off a tiny piece of brick from the wall he had built up between them, eight years ago.

These thought processes (that had been looping in his head for at least nine hours, now) always
ended with their compromise - the firm, comforting belief that this would all be over in a matter of
weeks, that he could go back to the way it was before. That he could rebuild his wall. That it
wasn’t unsalvageable.

Because, quite honestly, above all else, he was simply terrified of what was on the other side.

Remus pulled into a dingy motel car park after finishing one of these thought cycles, and Sirius
perked up.

“Done for the night?” he asked - the first thing he had said in about an hour. Remus nodded.

“I’m exhausted,” he mumbled, twisting the keys and grabbing his stuff from the footwell. “If we
set off early tomorrow we can make it to NYC by sundown, I think.”

Sirius got out of the car, slamming the door and pulling up the hood of his jacket. He looked
strangely small, and Remus felt hatred swirl around his stomach, for a reason he couldn’t fathom.

The receptionist was a friendly-faced young woman with long brown hair, who gave them a
comforting smile as they walked in. Sirius slowed down to let Remus to the desk first.

“Evening,” she said warmly, “How can I help?”

“Hi,” Remus said, shooting her a smile despite his exhaustion. “Do you have any rooms
available?”

“I believe we should,” she said, turning to type something. “It’s been quite busy tonight, though -
lotta people passing through for a festival, nearby, I think. One bed?” She asked, her eyes
flickering to Sirius and back. Remus gaped.

“No- no, I, uh…” he frowned, realising - with an ashamed lurch - he didn’t even know if Sirius
slept. It wasn’t an ignorance about vampirism thing; they had the ability to sleep, but didn’t need
to. Much like they had the ability to eat, but didn’t need to to survive - yet Sirius still loved
cheeseburgers, or whatever the fuck he had said in the club. Remus turned around and shot him a
look, and Sirius’ eyebrows twitched ever so slightly into a frown. He nodded, and Remus turned
around. “Two, please.”

“Alrighty,” she said, typing for a long moment; her face contorted, and Remus knew what she was
going to say before she said it. “Ah, I’m so sorry, we’re out of two beds today.”

Remus exhaled. “Right, er—”

“We have a couple doubles available?”

Remus blinked. “Can you give us a minute?” He turned and walked to the side of the entrance, and
Sirius trailed after him.

He had a million thoughts racing through his head, but the first thing that came out in one, quick,
breath, was; “Do you have to sleep?”

Sirius blinked, taken aback for a moment. “Well—I mean, no, but I’d quite like to if you don’t
bloody mind?”

Remus groaned, and rubbed his eyes with his hands. “But you don’t have to… why do you sleep,
anyway?”

“Immortality gets boring, believe it or not, sweetheart,” Sirius hissed back, agitated, and Remus
dropped his hands and scowled.

“Can you not hang from the ceiling or something?”

“How many times, Lupin, I can’t turn into a fucking bat—"

“Well what are we supposed to do then?!” Remus whispered angrily. Sirius huffed, pulling out his
phone with a dramatic flourish and typing aggressively.

“The nearest motel is another half hour drive,” he said after a moment, and Remus nodded.

“Mhm. Okay, fine.”

Sirius frowned. “You can’t drive that,” he said, as if it were obvious. Remus narrowed his eyes.

“Why not?”

“I—you’re exhausted! You’re barely staying upright—look, I’ll drive—”

“You are not driving my car.”

It was said with such disdain that Sirius actually stepped back, pure disbelief on his face.

“You—I can’t believe you are being such a child, what am I going to do to your fucking car in a
half hour drive?!”

“Precisely nothing, because you’re not driving it. I’ll drive, I’m fine—”

“And when you fall asleep at the wheel and we crash?”

Remus raised his eyebrows. “Well, you’ll be fine, Mr. Immortality, and you want me dead anyway
—”

“You’re not dying until after this case, first of all, and you’re definitely not dying in something as
undignified as a fucking car crash—”

“God,” Remus hissed, closing his eyes and rubbing at his temples; he really did feel like he was
about to topple over. “Do they have sofas, or something…?”

“If you just let me drive—”

“No.”

Sirius took a deep, trying breath to compose himself, closing and opening his eyes.

“You are such a fucking nuisance,” he said angrily, turning around and stalking back to the desk
with so much heart in his step the receptionist looked slightly intimidated. He spoke to her for a
minute, nodded a few times, before turning to come back.

“There is…” he scrunched his face up in pain, “a bench. She said she will stock us up with pillows
to make it comfier.”

Remus blinked. “For…”

“For me, obviously, because god forbid a vampire deserve a nice fucking bed,” Sirius said bitterly,
before pushing Remus from behind the shoulder to go pay.

He bought and paid for the double bed, with a promise that the spare pillows and blankets would
be delivered within fifteen minutes, and went on his way, not even bothering to go back to get
Sirius - who made himself present following him a few minutes later through his ongoing
grumbles, in which Remus caught the words ‘fucking coffin’, ‘as if I were a dog’, and ‘fuck
america’.

Remus beelined to the bathroom to change and brush his teeth once they made it up to the room,
exchanging nothing but tense glares with Sirius and an awkward arm touch as they brushed past
each other when Sirius was going into the bathroom (vampires brush their teeth too, Remus
learned). The pillows and blankets arrived when Remus was in there and he made his way back out
to see Sirius had arranged them accordingly, two for him to lie on and one placed the other way for
his head, topped with a rather ratty old blanket that looked like it itched more than it warmed or
comforted. Remus got into his own bed - which was very comfortable in retrospect - and covered
his head with his arms, attempting to tame a headache that had begun to form behind his left eye.
He heard Sirius exit the bathroom and switch the light off, the cracks between his arms that
flooded the light suddenly ceasing, and he heard the creaking of the bench as Sirius clambered onto
it.

Remus removed his arms from his face and lay them by his side, blinking and letting his eyes
adjust to the low light. The window oversaw another establishment and three streetlamps, which
shone low artificial light into their room, making everything slightly blue-tinged. Remus lay there,
listening to Sirius shuffle - he moved once, rolled over twice, and Remus heard the clash of wood
against skin at least four times as he attempted to get comfortable. He let his eyes flutter shut, but
they opened almost immediately as Sirius huffed, frustrated. Remus groaned.

“For fucks sake, just get over here.”

All movement halted.

“What?” called a small voice from across the room, and Remus exhaled slowly.

“It’s a double, there’s enough fucking room if I just—” he shuffled over to the very edge of the left
side, rolling onto his side, facing away and shoving a hand underneath the pillow. They sat in
silence for a long moment.

“Don’t make me change my mind, Black.”

He heard the tell-tale whipping of a blanket open and the shuffling as Sirius made his way over to
the bed; felt the opposing side dip as he clambered in. Remus pulled himself as far away as he
could, clinging his fingers around the edge of the mattress to give himself as much distance as
possible. He had fully expected at least a remark from Sirius - something cocky, something along
the lines of his usual, big-headed irritating flirty demeanor - but they simply lay for a good few
minutes completely silent, completely unmoving. The only sound was the consistent in and out of
Remus’ breathing. Sirius may not have even been there at all.
And here it was, again - a tame, mellow side to the vampire that Remus quite honestly wished he
wasn’t witnessing. Fatigue overtook him and he tunneled his face deeper into the pillow, mind
whirring and imagination flouncing from one topic to another as it does while trying to sleep; the
common denominator of all of his thoughts, tonight, seemed to be the body beside him. But then
again, recently he was the common denominator for all of his thoughts, perpetually. A question
projected itself in lights in his delirious brain, and it was out of his mouth before he could stop
himself.

“Do you dream?”

A soft murmur into the abyss of the night. There was a long pause, in which Remus thought he
might have fallen asleep, before Sirius answered.

“What?”

“Do you dream? When you sleep,” Remus repeated, eyes still closed; suddenly aware of how child-
like he sounded, question laced with sleep-induced innocence. The bed shifted. He felt Sirius roll
over.

“Sometimes,” Sirius replied - voice no higher than Remus’ own, soft and sweet. Completely
unassuming, a stark juxtaposition to his nature. Remus took a breath, flipped himself over, and
opened his eyes.

Sirius was lying on his side facing him, no more than a forearms length away. His hair was
cascading around his face in waves, sitting neatly on the pillow. The window was placed behind
him, and through the thin curtains came the low, artificial lighting - it haloed him, coating his
features in some sort of soft vulnerability that Remus never would’ve thought to associate with
him.

“Why?” he whispered, eyes trailing over Remus’ features as they were wont to do. Remus almost
craved it.

“I didn’t know that,” Remus whispered, avoiding his wandering eye. He became very suddenly
aware of the fact that Sirius was shirtless. His skin looked like marble.

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, pretty boy,” Sirius whispered back, lip curling. Remus
couldn’t fight the small smile that trespassed onto his face. His eyes fluttered shut.

“I’m slowly finding that out,” he murmured, pulling the duvet up to his chin. Sirius was quiet for a
moment.

“Ask me.”

Remus frowned. “What?”

“Ask me,” Sirius whispered, “Whatever you want. Whenever you want.”

Remus’ breath hitched; he kept his eyes shut desperately, scared of what would happen if he
opened them. He licked his lips, and felt Sirius shift, slightly.

“I think,” Sirius started again; voice shaking with a strange hesitance, “maybe... we can help each
other in other ways that aren’t just killing vampires.”

Remus hummed quietly, nodding as much as his fatigue would let him. He turned his head further
into the pillow, and there were no words passed for at least five more minutes.
On sheer spontaneity, powered by the mustering of the last shreds of feeble energy Remus had, he
murmured, “What do you dream about?”

Remus didn’t stay awake long enough to hear the answer, and wasn’t sure what he wanted to hear,
either. He wasn’t sure of much, anymore.

***

Natural light woke Remus up the next morning. He had slept facing the window, and the first thing
he registered upon waking was the overwhelming, burning light from the sun. He squinted, rubbing
his eyes and giving himself a minute to adjust; the sun retreated slowly, pulling her opaque rays
with it and in their place unsheathed the figure it haloed, barely a metre away from Remus, soft and
sleeping soundly.

Sirius.

He looked stunning in the second-hand sun; his hair glistened against the light and his face was
stable and shadowed, eyes heavy-lidded, cheekbones hollow. The sun hitting his back making his
front seem almost sacred, the real, raw him hidden from anyone siding with the light, and Remus
felt oddly privileged for his position, and simultaneously, oddly uncomfortable. It was wrong, but
it was right.

Remus, in a haze, suddenly registered the error in his thought processes from yesterday. There was
no wall between him and Sirius. Sirius was the wall.

The sun - life, illumination, enlightenment hit him on one side, highlighting everything he was
during the day; monster, vampire; everything Remus had been taught, that Sirius adhered to easily.
He had, physically, never seen Sirius in the sun, yet Sirius in the sun was the only Sirius Remus
had ever known. This was the Sirius that he wished to see. The Sirius that he had expected to see,
based on other people’s opinions; never looking for himself.

And yet, here he was, on the other side where the light didn’t touch him; and Sirius was asleep. He
was asleep, on his right side, hand laying open-palmed and loosely on the pillow, and this was
new; a Sirius hidden in the shadows, a Sirius that was unfathomable to the Remus that had lived his
entire life abiding by the sun’s strict orders. The lines were blurred on whether Remus hadn’t seen
him before because he hadn’t wanted to, or Sirius hadn’t shown it to him.

Either way, he saw him now.

With a sharp breath, their conversation last night came flooding back to him, and the reality of how
far in he was sunk in; yet the fear that had grappled him at the idea of the wall chipping away
yesterday was nonexistent. Perhaps it was the revelation that there was nothing to be scared of
anymore. Perhaps it was the sudden hyper awareness of the foot he had on the other side, that had
probably been there for eight years, avoided and ignored. Sirius had been surprising him for the
whole time he had known him; the difference was that Remus was paying attention, now.

Maybe... we can help each other in other ways that aren’t just killing vampires.

Sirius had, basically, offered himself to Remus - his whole self, comfort-zone light and foreign
waters dark - and... maybe Remus hadn’t been grasping at straws. Maybe there was always
something there, something real and humane; but Remus hadn’t been paying attention. He hadn’t
seen him like he saw him now.

Remus might never know what spurred him on to move closer; to reach his hand up, craving touch
- any touch - that wasn’t laced with the underlying intent of death. A craving, a lust to know more,
more, more. His fingers climbed up to the top of Sirius’ wrist, where his arm connected to his
hand, and he pressed a finger to where his pulse should be; two fingers. Treading waters.

His skin was warm.

Had his skin always been warm? Was his skin supposed to be warm? Remus couldn’t remember.
Every time he had touched Sirius’ skin before had been brief; a brush of fingers grasping hold of a
dagger, a physical struggle of bodies, gunning to kill. He had never had time to touch Sirius and
think about it. Or... he had never let himself.

His fingers moved upwards, so slowly, so lightly; laden with curiosity, like a child discovering
something for the first time. His three middle fingers landed in the middle of Sirius’ palm, brushing
over his smooth skin experimentally, and he relished in the warmth.

Sirius shifted, slightly; Remus froze as he moved, adjusting his position on the pillow and
humming sleepily. He almost whipped his fingers away until he felt Sirius’ hand move - he curled
his fingers, agonisingly slowly, over his own, until they brushed over the top of his fingertips and
pressed them there, non-confining but comforting, the softest interaction ever shared between the
pair that seemed to only communicate between threats and violence. Remus let out a breath he
didn’t know he was holding and relaxed, his stomach doing an odd sort of flip—

Oh.

Oh, fuck no.

The weight of what was happening sent a shock wave darting through Remus’ body in an instant,
trailing up his arm and jerking his hand away before he even had time to process the feeling that
had snaked its way around his chest and squeezed. A lump formed in his throat; Sirius shifted,
slightly, and he hoped to any God out there that he was still asleep.

He tumbled out of bed in a haze and made his way around the room to the bathroom, shutting and
locking the door, hands bracing the sink. His eyes flitted towards the shower - no, not a good idea
right now. He turned both taps so water flowed meticulously and hit the smooth white of the sink,
curling its way down into the drain. He wasn’t even sure what to do with it.

Remus caught his own eye in the mirror, and sighed.

There was no way this was happening. There was no way this was happening. It felt like a battle
had been let loose in his head, or a dam had been broken. Ice cold water and scalding hot water
met, much like they did in the sink, curling and merging into one another, trying to overpower the
other with every breath. He paid attention to the cold first.

He was fully aware that he was attracted to Sirius. Okay, yes, while it had taken a while to accept,
this was something that he knew and acknowledged. Pure sexual attraction. Nothing more, nothing
less. This was what vampires were built for, wasn’t it? Was insane beauty not a part of their genetic
code - to lure their prey in, to fake innocence only to turn around and shed shocked, betrayed blood
with no remorse? And Sirius had absolutely manipulated this in his interactions with Remus. It
wasn’t real. He had utilised it - his main tactic was the mindless, ridiculous flirting that made
Remus’ hair stand on edge and his vision cloud with a million shades of deep red. It was ridiculous
to even insinuate that Remus could care in any way aside from pure lust about such a callous, cruel,
cold-blooded monster. His humanity would not allow it. The ice water fell over his head and
trickled down his jaw in a bursting reality check.
But, said the little devil on his shoulder, a figure made up of scalding water, burning the skin up to
three degrees like the effect of his knife against Sirius’ neck, you have been buttering up to him,
have you not?

Remus turned the hot tap off, leaning over to wash his face with cold water. It persisted.

Go out there and look at the way his jaw slacks in his sleep. Go out there and look at the way his
hair falls, the way his brows twitch. Look at the way the sun haloes him, in some hilarious fake
display of divinity on the person who, by nature, deserves it least.

Because it was only his nature now, really, isn’t it? Remus, with an angry gritting of his teeth,
turned off the cold tap altogether and faced reality. His harsh, lukewarm reality was that he no
longer looked at Sirius and only saw a murderer, a monster; where he was, arguably, still those
things, he looked at Sirius and saw more now. He saw a personality, he saw interests, and feelings
- real, human feelings. He saw a chance to learn more, and he wanted to take it. He didn’t like
Sirius - not in the slightest, he couldn’t stand the bastard - but… he had a longing to find out if he
could. He had a longing to chip it down; a desire to have him, all of him; not just the bad parts
anymore; to himself. Remus had had enough human relationships to know the difference between
lust and innocent desire, and, god bless the poor sod, he was well and truly plagued by both.

With a start - from his position, now, stood at their bedside after a journey (prompted by the little
devil, who was incredibly pleased with himself) that Remus barely remembered; he realised that,
perhaps most importantly, he no longer looked at Sirius and wanted to kill him.

In fact, he probably hadn’t wanted to kill him for a long, long time.

He took a sharp breath in, eyes trailing the slack of Sirius’ jaw, the smooth skin of his elbow and
forearm. The dormant veins that still popped out of the tense set of his hand, where it had flipped
over and was now gripping the pillow. The tips of his fingers - nimble. Even his nail beds were
perfect. Remus hadn’t even realised that nail beds could be ugly or beautiful - they’re nail beds -
but here Sirius’ were; undoubtedly, beautiful. Like the rest of him. Remus’ eyes fell, against his
will, to the shape of his body, curved against the thin set duvet like one of those statues of fabric
carved meticulously into marble. He had avoided Sirius’ bare chest - the duvet was only pulled up
to just underneath his nipples - but the curve of his hip caught him blanched. Oh, this was bad. This
was bad.

“I thought vampires were supposed to watch humans sleep, not the other way around.”

Remus jumped viscerally - his eyes moved shamelessly upwards, to connect with the light grey of
Sirius’. They were darker, this morning, and his voice, though still perfect, was slightly crackly and
gritty. It gave Remus butterflies. He seriously contemplated jumping out of the window. Could two
stories kill you? It seemed worth a shot.

Sirius pushed himself up onto his side, propped up on his elbow, and the duvet fell down to his hip.
Remus coughed and made a show of being unbothered, turning and fumbling with some papers on
the bedside table that were - upon checking - not even theirs, but a letter detailing all of the contact
details for the motel, and advertisements for a car warehouse and a pizzeria down the road. Remus
studied the pizza menu with intense focus. He heard Sirius laugh.

“You’d make a shit Edward Cullen,” came from behind him in a taunting tone. Remus turned his
head sharply to lock eyes with the patron, and saw he hadn’t moved from his position, but a sly
smirk had grown on his face. Remus scoffed.

“And you’d make a good one?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Don’t they live on animal blood?
You threw a tantrum over having to eat a rat.”

“They’re disgusting!” Sirius exclaimed, and Remus had to resist a laugh. He got up and crossed the
room to actually be productive, momentary panic over. Sirius’ eyes followed him across the room.
“I wish you fucking knew, Lupin. It’s like drinking piss.”

“Drank a lot of piss in your day, have you?”

Sirius barked out a laugh and flopped back onto his back in one movement, bouncing a little. “God,
I wish I could kill you.”

“Yeah,” Remus said, throwing him a look of disdain over his shoulder; only for it to soften as soon
he returned to sorting through his bag. “Me too.”

The weight of the words hung thick in the air until Sirius got up for a shower. The door slammed
and seemed to shatter everything Remus thought he knew, until he was standing in ruin, brick in
hand, attempting to put the pieces back together.

***

Not a word was spoken between the two of them after that conversation besides Remus’ suggestion
to go to a diner around the corner for breakfast, and a noncommittal grunt of approval from Sirius.
So they went to check out, put their belongings in Remus’ car and walked, as he suggested, to the
diner; which is where Remus sat opposite the vampire in a booth, now. He had a plate of french
toast in front of him, while Sirius (who had walked under an umbrella and still had sunglasses on
inside the establishment, which was wildly embarrassing) had passed up on food but had ordered a
coffee, black, that remained majorly undrunk in favor of an opaque water bottle that most definitely
did not contain water. Remus wanted to ask what, exactly, it was, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to
know the answer. (He reminded himself for possibly the tenth time since that morning that it was
ridiculous to expect a cold-blooded killer to be moral just because of his stupid, nonsensical
feelings, but couldn’t bring himself to ask the question regardless.)

It was about here that the conversation from last night, in his hazy, half-asleep state, came back to
him; Ask me anything, Sirius had said. And, well, Remus certainly had questions.

“Why are you so quiet?”

Arguably, he could’ve started on a much stronger point. Sirius glared at him through his
sunglasses.

“What?” he said testily. Remus shrugged, taking a bite of his food.

“You’re usually… y’know,” he said, gesturing. “Being a grand old prick by now. I’m waiting for
the snide comment, and it’s not coming.”

He took his sunglasses off to make a statement of rolling his eyes, the dramatic prick, and took
another sip from his water bottle. Remus waited. He looked up after a moment and scoffed;
apparently not realising Remus actually wanted a response.

“I’m thirsty, okay?” he said, moodily. Remus blanched. He had expected a snide comment about
his snide comment about the lack of snide comments, and had only prepared a response for such.

He bit his lip, looking down into his food. “Oh. Er ...Sorry?”

Sirius looked at him pointedly, eyes heavy lidded but eyebrows raised, and then he let out a dry, but
genuine, laugh, shaking his head. Remus felt his mouth upturning and shovelled more food into it
until he calmed.

“There wasn’t much to hunt last night,” he said by way of explanation a few moments later, “and
what there was wasn’t very sustainable at all. This is all I have left.” He brandished the bottle.
Remus frowned, suddenly very aware of his warm, beating heart.

“Am… am I—?” he asked, not finishing the question, but Sirius seemed to catch his gist and shook
his head.

“You’re fine,” he said, “I’m old enough to be able to ignore the urge to rip into every jugular I can
see. Though your pulse was rather irritating last night.”

For the second time in five minutes, Remus felt the need to apologise for something that was
definitely not his fault. Picking up on this meant Sirius would probably pick up on it too and tease
him; then he would probably flush, his pulse would quicken more, and more taunting would
occur… no, no, it was much safer to simply focus on the first half instead of the second. He settled
for a simple, grimacing “Lovely,” and dug into his toast some more. Sirius let out a sharp, almost
exasperated breath from his nose and looked to the side, out the window, where the sun was
unseemly blistering for 9 in the morning. A cloud moved, and a ray of sunlight fell upon one side
of the bench. Sirius sat there a moment, and then casually slid to the other side. Remus kept his eye
on him the whole time.

“So,” he said, conversationally. Sirius raised an eyebrow. “How come you can go out in the sun so
easily?”

“Man of many questions, today, aren’t we?” Sirius said dryly from his corner; in the shadows with
that taunting grin he actually looked rather menacing. And then he took a swig from a water bottle
and the scene shattered.

“You told me to ask you anything,” Remus said. “This is me asking.”

Recognition dawned on Sirius’ face, and for a moment he actually looked concerned.

“Ah…,” he said slowly, looking away, “I thought you were too delirious to remember any of that.”

“No, I was awake,” Remus said lightly.

“For?”

“...You telling me to ask you anything? Did I not just say that?”

Sirius nodded curtly, apparently appeased; though of what, Remus could never guess. He gestured
with a lazy hand.

“Continue.”

“Well,” he said, “Most of the vampires I’ve killed have been unable to go out in the sun for even a
few seconds; direct, or through a window.”

Sirius tutted. “That’s because only the young vampires are stupid enough to get caught by
hunters.”

Remus quirked a brow. “So it’s an age thing? I kind of figured; I’ve seen a few who can endure it
for a few minutes - one even lasted twenty minutes, once - but never one who doesn’t burn through
a window.”

Sirius sighed. “Yeah, it’s an age thing. I used to get third degree burns from barely five minutes in
the sun; now I can last a lot longer, and it’s a lot milder.”

“You use an umbrella, though?”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Do you like sunburn?”

Remus paused; but had to give him that. “Fair enough. How old are you then?”

Sirius paused, pursing his lips slightly. He took a long swig of his bottle, and Remus waited; he had
finished his food, so he sipped on the latte he had got instead. Sirius’ coffee still lay untouched. He
considered asking to drink it himself.

“I was born in the twenties,” Sirius said eventually, after he had set the bottle down and swiped the
twinge of red that lingered on his lips like merlot with his tongue. The sensuality caused a hitch in
Remus’ chest. He prayed that Sirius hadn’t heard it.

“So you’re like, a hundred then?”

“Good job, you can count.”

“Shut up,” Remus grumbled. “You know, you’re very big for your boots considering you’re only
like a hundred. You kept saying you were old, I was expecting like, five hundred plus.”

Sirius’ lip twisted in what looked like a laugh held back, and he inclined his head. “Yes, well…”

“We were born in the same century.”

This got his head to snap up. “Barely,” he sneered. “Nineties baby?”

Remus nodded. “Ninety-three.”

Sirius audibly groaned, and Remus raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“The nineties were unbearable.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really,” he said, scrunching his nose in a look of disdain. “It was boring as hell. The style
was atrocious and the music just went absolutely downhill. I guess the hip-hop was okay, but all
the grunge bands were so irritating.”

“Hm. I would’ve pegged you as a grunge kinda guy. You look the part.”

Sirius shook his head vehemently, before sighing. “I mean—I stand by what I said, I’m not going
to live a- a hundred years on this planet and be pretentious about music; I don’t mind them now.
They just irritated me at the time, so I don’t have the best view of the nineties. I guess… maybe I
was still in mourning over the eighties. The flashiness of it all was much more... me.”

Remus’ lip quirked at the thought of Sirius in eighties fashion. “Surely neon would wash you out
more than a white shirt?”

“I looked fabulous in neon, thank you.”

“Leg warmers?”

“Obviously.”

“Oh my god, did you have a mullet?”

“Okay,” Sirius said, suddenly going to stand up. “We’re leaving.”

Remus gaped. “You did! You had a mullet! I need to see that.”

Sirius glared down at him from where he was stood outside the booth; though the stare had no real
bite behind it. “You will never see it. I’m going to wait outside, so finish your coffee, and then just
fucking finish mine, Lupin; don’t think I didn’t see you eyeing it up this whole time.”

He left a ten dollar and a five dollar bill on the table and stalked out, nodding courteously at the
waitress. Remus watched him go halfway across the car park before pausing, and putting up his
umbrella, and thought distantly that fifteen dollars covered his entire meal and a tip.

***

“So,” Remus said, climbing into the driver seat of his car. Sirius looked up from where he was
lounging on his phone in the passenger seat, feet up on the dash. He looked awfully young. Remus
swallowed the urge he had to yell at him for his feet, having approached the car with one topic on
his mind.

“Yes?”

“Fourteen hours to NYC. And… well, you see, I’m not very prepared.”

Sirius frowned. “What?”

“So, when I go up there usually, we have safehouses for hunters,” Remus explained. “Peter has an
apartment too that he’s not using - obviously. But… well, hunter’s have free range there. They
could walk in at any moment. And… well…”

“You don’t want them to see that you’re working with me.”

It was a simple statement, but it sounded ever so bitter coming from Sirius’ mouth. Remus paused.

“They wouldn’t understand,” he said, and almost laughed at himself - as if he understands too.
“They’d kill you on-sight, you know that.”

“You think I can’t defend myself against some hunters? What have we been doing for eight years,
Remus?”

The use of his first name reached his ears and fell into a pit in his stomach. He turned his head to
Sirius - he had taken his feet down. He was looking blazingly at him, and Remus noticed his irises
were darker than usual.

“Look,” he said quietly, looking back at his steering wheel. “I am going completely off the grid
here with you. It’s not—we don’t do this. I’m going behind Moody’s, Dumbledore’s, Dorcas’ back
because…” he took a deep breath. “Because this is bigger than me or you.”

Sirius’ eyes widened ever so slightly at the echo of his words. He exhaled slowly. Remus went on,
bravery overtaking cowardice.
“You said last night that maybe we can help each other in other ways that aren’t just killing
vampires. I think you’re right. But in order to… in order to unlearn my prejudices, not only do I
need to understand your kind, but you need to understand ours and how deep those prejudices really
run.”

Sirius’ face was impassive; unreadable. Remus felt a rush of both adrenaline at dread at the spoken
acknowledgement of what he had been thinking about for weeks now. He felt himself step out of
the intense denial and into acceptance - he could feel himself edging the cliff into uncontrollable
freefall - but one word from Sirius could shove him back in there. It had to be a team effort.

“This is foreign ground, Sirius. Completely unknown to us. I don’t know why I’m doing it myself,
to be honest, but—and don’t laugh, I swear to God—I... see something in you. You’re vile, and a
murderer, but I think you could cooperate if you wanted to; and I need you to. If this is going to
work you need to earn—even a semblance of my trust. And I want to earn yours. Please.”

Sirius was silent for a moment. Remus saw him swallow, and felt the chill of dread swim up his
spine. He grasped his steering wheel, car still unmoving.

“Well,” came the gruff voice a minute later. “Vile and a murderer, eh? Charming.”

Remus felt rage bubble up inside him like a kettle at boil.

“Don’t you dare let that be your only takeaway from what I said.”

“I mean, it was the most memorable—”

“No, you know fucking what?!” Remus swivelled in his seat to face Sirius, eyes blazing; he hadn’t
meant to raise his voice so much, but it seemingly caught Sirius off guard, so he maintained it.
“You cannot be that much of a fucking narcissist that you ignore everything else I said in favour of
me insulting you. It’s an act!”

He threw his arms up in the moment, and Sirius’ expression was no longer impassive, but flicking
through different emotions like a slideshow; hurt, anger, surprise, confusion.

“How is it an act?” he said, settling on confusion. “I am a vile murderer. You’re not wrong—”

“Because you killed that fucking coven for me!” Remus exploded, finally, spitting out every word
like it was poison.

Sirius went very still.

“And you go out to clubs,” Remus continued, seething, “you dance with attractive men and don’t
kill them; you eat cheeseburgers and like music and have friends and—and family!” He near-
growled in exasperation and hit the steering wheel with all of his might; the horn would’ve honked
had the ignition been on. “You dream and you smile and you complain and you just—you do
everything that a vampire isn’t supposed to do and I just—I’m trying so hard, Sirius, but you
confuse me so much, and I—” he trailed off with a tight exhale, voice mellowing in exasperation.
His veins thrummed with energy, and Sirius was very, very still; face stony, eyes calm.

“What, exactly,” Sirius began quietly, “is a vampire not supposed to do?”

Remus laughed dryly, letting his head droop forward over the wheel.

Make me feel this way, he thought. Make me feel alive.

“Make me laugh, for one.”

Sirius’ lip quirked momentarily, then dropped. Remus took a deep, long breath, and then said
something two parts brave and one part very much quite stupid.

“Care,” he said, forcing the words out through his teeth - forcing them forward to his
consciousness. “A vampire isn’t supposed to care.”

Sirius was silent for a beat. “And what do I care about?”

“Don’t make me say it.”

Sirius’ eyes were blazing into Remus’ own; he felt seen, intimately, on a level no one has ever
really made him feel before. For a second Remus could’ve sworn he saw the others eyes flicker
down to the side of his neck, where the fading scar from the vampire bite that had evoked Sirius’
wrath gleamed white, and bittersweet. He hadn’t understood it then. He did now. It wasn’t
jealousy, it wasn’t possessiveness - not all the way, at least.

Remus found, with a start, that his neck was burning; not the bite, but two inches lower; the feeling
of Sirius pressing his cold lips to Remus’ warm skin that night in the dingy public toilets of the
club festering again. The air hung heavy, and Sirius said nothing.

“Why am I still alive, Sirius?”

He felt like that question was being thrown back and forth between the pair recently, and neither
were brave or stupid enough to reveal the real reason. Sirius grinded his teeth together; Remus
watched the way his jaw moved in anguish and knew that they were still too raw; that today he
wouldn’t get the answer, whatever the answer may be.

“That’s different,” he whispered, and Remus actually laughed; a dry thing, bitter, unbelieving.

“No it’s not,” he found himself saying, shaking his head. It was hard to believe the last time this
conversation had happened was a mere 2 days ago. “It’s not.”

Sirius waited a long minute before speaking again.

“You obviously don’t know very much about vampirism if you think we don’t care about things.”

“Don’t you see that that’s exactly my point?” he asked. He heard the exhaustion in his own voice.
“I thought I had you figured out, but I’m not sure of anything anymore, Sirius. I feel like—like I’ve
been lied to, or something. I see you, and I see what you are, and where before they were the
same... now I feel like they’re two separate entities, and- and I don’t know what to do with that.”

“Who am I, then?” Sirius said; tactically, now, as if guiding Remus towards a specific answer.
“You see me and what I am. You’ve made it clear that what I am by nature is a vile murderer,
but... who am I?”

Remus stared at him for a long time.

“I don’t know,” he said, eventually. Sirius deflated slightly. “But… I’d like to find out. If you’ll let
me in.”

This was, apparently, not the answer Sirius was expecting; his eyes widened, and his bottom lip fell
open slightly, perfectly pursed.
Shocked. A human feeling. And Sirius was not human - not even close - but, it seemed to click in
Remus’ mind then; what had been confusing him so.

That you didn’t have to be human to have humanity.

He had been taught from the age of seventeen that every monster was irredeemable; every kind of
monster was dangerous, feral, acting on pure instinct. He was taught that instinct was the only
thing they had left. He was taught a lot of things, really, and from who? Hunters, who had never
taken the time to speak to a creature? Hunters, who had been taught these prejudices by their
father, who had been taught them by their father before them; where did it end? Who was to be the
person to sit down and say enough is enough? Who was the monster who would shake their hand,
sit them around a campfire and divulge into their twisted, tattered soul? Who would it have been,
other than the two imbeciles sat in an unmoving truck in the car park of a diner on the outskirts of
Tennessee?

They had been trailing circles around one another for almost a decade; orbiting each other's lives,
never fully merging. On a collision course, together, as it always was and always had been. It
would have always ended up here. Remus saw that now.

And Remus was ready to be that person. The fear he had felt yesterday seemed wholly unimportant
when Sirius was looking at him the way he was, now.

If Sirius fucking Black was going to keep proving him wrong, he might as well start paying
attention.

“Okay,” came the quiet affirmation from the beautiful vampire in Remus’ passenger seat. “Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“We’ll go to New York, and we’ll stay somewhere that is marginally hunter-less, and we’ll…
unlearn our prejudices, as you very aptly put it.” Remus stared, and Sirius licked his lips, looking
strangely nervous yet sure of himself. “I’ll drop the act. I can’t promise to not be a prick—”

“That’s not an act, that’s just who you are.”

“—but,” he said, lip quirking at Remus’ remark but staying firm, “I can… teach you? About mys—
my kind. Since your teachers did such an incredibly shit job.”

Remus smiled slightly, eyes locked on Sirius’. The air felt slightly tight. “Yes, perhaps they did.”

“And maybe,” Sirius said, hesitantly, “maybe you could teach me some things too.”

“Yes, perhaps I could.”

“And then, we can use our newfound trust to take down this coven; then you can go gallivanting
back to your hunter friends and tell them about how great vampires are, and I can go back to trying
to kill you.”

Remus started the car and had to suppress a smile from appearing on his face, and a remark of “no,
you won’t,” at Sirius’ future prospects for himself. “And what, I’ll just lay down my life?”

“Preferably.”

Remus scoffed, pulling out of the space they were parked at.
“I still hate you, you know,” came out of his mouth, even though it was, by now, marginally far
from the truth. Sirius laughed.

“The world would stop spinning if you didn’t.”

“You’re the most irritating being on the planet.”

“As are you.”

“I’m only using you to get what I want.”

“Of course you are.”

Remus pulled out of the lot and onto the road, and thought about what he used to think; that he
would kill Sirius Black once and for all when Sirius Black was no longer use to him. It felt like
years ago, but was mere weeks. How long had it been since Sirius had got trapped on his porch and
captured in his living room? An eternity, if Remus had to guess.

It was a stupid sentiment, really. Remus hadn’t known it (consciously) at the time, but Sirius Black
would always be of use to him. He had consumed every aspect of Remus’ life - to the point where
he couldn’t focus on anything he did, any case he took, in the fear Sirius would appear, or the
anticipation of his whereabouts. It was all rather pathetic, really. They had been blurring the lines
from the very start, hadn’t they? The fact that it had taken Remus this long to truly understand it -
even though, as of right now, he halfway resented himself - was ridiculous; it felt, now that the dam
had been rebuilt and the water had washed away, like clarity had befallen him for the first time in a
long, long time.

Absolutely nothing made sense; what they were doing, why they were doing it; Sirius, Remus, their
prejudices, their truce (in one sense of the word); Remus’... whatever the fuck he felt for Sirius
probably the least of the lot, but that realisation triggered a complete unravelling of actions,
obsessions, hunts, and infatuations that Remus couldn’t explain the reasoning for during the past
eight years, until now. A memory struck him, suddenly; his phone call with Lily. It had made no
sense, then, but she was right. He did enjoy the chase, the attention; and now he knew why. And
god, he thought, she knew why too. That is a trifle embarrassing. Remus almost dreaded getting to
New York, knowing that Lily was going to have such a field day with this.

“You know,” Sirius said, breaking the ten minute silence and rolling his head around to look at
Remus. “I don’t remember what it was like to be human.”

Remus bit the inside of his lip. “Really?”

“No,” he said, pausing as if battling whether or not to continue. One side won, apparently, and he
continued; “I think - and don’t take this as any sort of vindication towards humanity - but I think
the realest danger of my kind is becoming prone to a sort of… I don’t know... ennui.”

Remus found himself holding his breath. He hummed in acknowledgement.

“I mean, every day is gratifying for humans. You have to work so hard just to stay alive - to get up,
do your daily things, keep your heart beating. And staying alive is so easy for us, so second-nature
that… well, you kind of forget what the point is, eventually. It’s nice to have… a reminder, every
now and then. Something that makes you have to work to stay alive; a reminder of why we do it in
the first place.”

Remus chanced a glance to find Sirius’ head cocked, eyes looking straight-ahead onto the
expansive road. He took a moment, but when it was clear Sirius wasn’t going to say anything else,
cleared his throat and spoke.

“What was your reminder?”

He kept his voice neutral, his face impassive, trying not to let the flickers of curiosity twinge his
expression, and simultaneously not trying to coerce him into an answer like Sirius had in the
previous conversation; maybe this way, unlike him, he would get the answer he was looking
(hoping?) for.

Sirius huffed and turned his head to look out the window.

“Don’t make me say it.”

Remus couldn’t help the grin that overtook his face, and instinctively turned away to not let Sirius
chance a glimpse, although he was facing away, too. “What?”

His face turned instinctively at the flick of black hair in his peripheral vision, and they met eyes;
Sirius was glaring at him. It was a long moment before he spoke.

“You,” he said simply, and then followed it quickly enough so Remus wouldn’t be able to interrupt
with; “because I’ve had to work at not killing myself every day I’ve known you for eight years
because you’re simply that annoying.”

He turned away again, apparently done with any sentiment. Remus pouted.

“Awww, you ruined it.”

“Shut up.”

“You were almost nice. That was a compliment.”

“I’ll kill you, Lupin.”

Empty words.

“And now—what, you’re flustered?” Remus laughed. “What kind of table turn is this?!”

Sirius whirled around once more, eyes dark, but Remus could discern his genuinely angry face
from his mock-angry face now. He didn’t know when he had learnt to. Regardless, he was glaring
with no real heat; Remus would feel it.

“I’m running on empty. That’s the only reason. Shut up.”

“You sure? See, it feels to me that the cocky, flirty bastard was a part of the act, but real humanity
make you all nervous and sof—MMM—”

The car swerved to a standstill on the side of the road - luckily, a dirt road with no other vehicles in
sight - as Sirius practically pounced on him, clapping a hand over his mouth. Remus yelled and
squirmed, attempting to push him off - but of course, Sirius was ridiculously strong, and he ended
up clambering onto Remus’ lap, fully straddling him. The steering wheel took up so much room
that every single cell of theirs was pressed together. Remus could press his lips to Sirius’ neck with
one simple tilt of the head - provided, Sirius uncover his mouth, first.

He stopped squirming and let his hands fall, attempting desperately to full astral-project out of his
body and be free of the way his stomach swirled, and Sirius gave it a minute before uncovering his
mouth slowly, hand tracing down over his jaw and to his neck. His eyes flickered with mania, dark
and entrancing. He leant forward without hesitation, and Remus’ brain short-circuited - it must
have, because he had a very thirsty vampire on his lap, leaning towards his neck, and instead of any
sort of red alarms or dread all he felt was warmth where their bodies were touching, and all he
thought was he won’t hurt me, over and over, a mantra overloading all of his survival instincts,
filling to the brim and choking every rational thought in his brain.

Except he didn’t; he simply lingered, over the scar, hot breath giving Remus goosebumps. He
stayed there just long enough to drive Remus crazy, just far enough so Remus knew he could lean
forward and make skin to skin contact, but not initiating it himself. He leaned back, after this
tantalising silence, and when Remus’ eyes refocused he saw a ridiculously cocky smirk on his face,
and for the first time that day craved violence against Sirius Black, and wished desperately that he
had his dagger on him.

“Nah,” Sirius said, no higher than a whisper. He tilted his head in a gesture that looked innocent,
mouth turned upwards. “I’ve still got it.”

Asshole. Asshole.

Before Remus could muster up words - grasping blindly in the dark for his voice, floating
somewhere in an abyss - the vampire hummed sweetly, flicking his hair out of his face and turning
to Remus’ window, which was a quarter of the way open. He closed his eyes and took in a deep,
purposeful breath; breathing out through his mouth and smiling.

“And we’ve stopped in a deer habitat,” he said happily, squeezing Remus’ shoulders with his
hands. “God, that smells good. Not as good as you, but, y’know…”

Remus rolled his eyes and, regaining movement in his lifeless limbs, reached up to push at Sirius’
chest and commanded that he get off. He fell backwards onto the wheel, laughing; it was deep and
lovely, and poured itself into Remus’ ears like wine.

Sirius leaned over to pull the door open and then he was outside - Remus hadn’t seen him move, he
was just on his lap, and then he wasn’t. He brushed himself off and then leaned down, hair
blowing slightly in the sparse wind.

“I’ll be like, fifteen minutes. Ish.”

Remus spluttered.

“What- and I’m just supposed to sit here on the side of the road and wait for you?”

Sirius grinned. “Precisely. Don’t go anywhere, gorgeous.”

And with a wink and a rush of momentum he was gone, and Remus was left - as he usually was,
recently - disheveled, confused, and feeling half crazy. The fleeting moment that he had been in
control had shifted, once again, back to the vampire, and Remus wondered why he even bothered
to forbid Sirius from driving his car when he had had one hand on his wheel for eight years now.

Sirius Black is going to ruin me, he thought bitterly, running his hands harshly over his face. And
I’m going to let him.
 five
Chapter Notes

HI EVERYONE!
i just wanna say thank you sooo much for the love on this fic! I have got quite caught
up with replying to comments due to being kinda busy but I read every single one, and
they make me super happy so thank you so much :'( i'm going to try to reply to as
many as I can

The remaining part of their journey went, more or less, smoothly. The deer habitat had apparently
been enough to curb Sirius’ appetite for the day, and enough to restore his spirits, too. Remus
hadn’t noticed how grey his pallor, and how dark his eyes had become until they were no longer
dark, until he was no longer sickly-looking (more sickly-looking than usual; where his face was
always pale and sandy, his lips, at least, had a prominent amount of colour in them, like
strawberries against cream; or something more sensual, like cherries.) (This comparison haunted
Remus for twenty minutes straight.) Reflecting, it was almost as if the lack of thirst shrivelled him
up: his cheekbones hollowed more than usual, his lips were chapped and the skin directly
underneath his eyes was almost bruising, like a peach - probably as easy too.

Regardless, he spruced up and immediately launched into some reprove of a group of hunters he
had watched from afar deep in the woods - something Remus felt was incredibly ironic considering
he was reprimanding hunters for hunting the same thing he was hunting. However, Remus was
against animal hunting of any kind (and yes, he sees how that is ironic, too), so he agreed
regardless and decided against picking a fight and facing the wrath of a now full-strength Sirius -
even though he knew he wouldn’t hurt him. It was more to do with the fact that he didn’t have the
energy to deal with Sirius’ energy - the vampire, after his feed, probably had enough to spare for
the both of them and a third party if he should see fit - and Remus felt rather strange driving
through the border of Tennessee into Virginia, thinking about when his biggest problem had gone
from worrying about Sirius double-crossing and brutally murdering him, to something as simple as
his lack of energy at engaging him in discussion. It was a weird sentiment that he thought heavily
on in the ten minutes Sirius was distracted - texting someone, and smiling at his phone in a way
that made Remus rather angry, though he couldn’t fathom why (yes he could) - though, not
surprising at all, reflecting on the past few days - weeks - in which Remus had often felt like his
world was being turned upside down, back to front, inside out. His default state had grown to
expect the unexpected.

This was emphasised again when they stopped for greasy takeaway pizza at around dinnertime,
and he ended up engaged in an argument (that, quite frankly, lasted entirely too long for the subject
matter) about the difference between Coke and Pepsi. Remus wasn’t even sure how it had come
about - it’s not like he was forcing Sirius to drink the fucking Pepsi, they had every single variety
in the little cooler in the takeaway place - but somehow they ended up arguing, getting their pizzas,
taking them to the car, clambering into the front seat and arguing some more- balancing two boxes
and a shared box of fries on the dashboard (he made it clear he would murder Sirius for any mess
and got the dagger out to drive the point home) and discussing in detail the differences (Sirius) or
lack of difference (Remus) while holding their respective cans.

(They eventually summarised that Sirius had incredibly advanced tastebuds and shook hands on a
truce. His hand was cold, and smooth. Remus didn’t let himself think about it.)

The mundanity of the whole conversation wasn’t lost to the part of Remus’ brain that had, quite
frankly, been freaking out for the better part of a month, but he decided against letting it be
anything more than it was and simply adding it to the pile of shit that was topsy-turvy about his
life that he wasn’t going to let himself be surprised at anymore. Honestly, he wasn’t sure he was
ever going to be surprised at anything ever again, after realising he - said, even in his subconscious,
through the guise of gritted teeth and a pained grimace - liked, Sirius. Whatever the fuck that
meant. The word felt wrong - it was wrong. Remus wasn’t sure how he was supposed to ‘like’
Sirius when he, quite honestly, didn’t like him one bit.

The pile of topsy-turvy shit got higher.

Remus brought up the issue of where they were going to stay later that evening, only a couple
hours out of New York. He wasn’t completely opposed to having to sleep in his car, he had done it
before - granted, not with a vampire who also happened to be his mortal enemy and also the object
of his intense pining in his company - but Sirius said he knew a place; they went back and forth
about how fucking shady that sounds for the good part of ten minutes, but Remus, plagued with
memories of the back pain he had suffered through the last time he had to sleep in his car,
eventually acquiesced, and simply had to hope Sirius wasn’t bringing him to some kind of vampire
dungeon or something (“How many times, Lupin, we don’t sleep in fucking dungeons - your
stereotypes are wildly offensive, you know that?”)

See, this was all fun for Remus to jeer at him about and joke about and push to the back of his
mind, sure, until he was directed by Sirius to drive through Upper Manhattan, through a few pretty
rich-looking neighbourhoods (though, to be fair, anything that wasn’t quaint looked rich to Remus)
and pointed towards a modern apartment complex in Washington Heights that looked like fucking
oozed money. Remus felt like the building itself was about to turn its nose down at his tattered
shoes and inexpensive clothing - never fucking mind his ancient truck.

And then a group of people exited the lobby, highlighted in the cloudy night by the fluorescent
lighting and, Remus may not, apparently, be an expert in the indiscretions and minor details of
vampirism, but fuck if he couldn’t spot a fucking vampire when he sees one.

A chill ran down his spine.

“So, you have brought me to a vampire dungeon, then?” Remus said as he got out the car and
slammed the door, trying not to sound as wary as he was - just because he knew one vampire
wouldn’t hurt him doesn’t mean seven others wouldn’t too.

He could see Sirius roll his eyes even in the dim light.

“No,” he said, as Remus pulled the essentials out of the backseat. It was cold - his breath puffed
tangibly. “It’s just an apartment complex that happens to be frequented by vampires. We have
whole networks, you know?”

The corner of his lip turned - in an “of course you didn’t” gesture, which Remus felt very indignant
towards indeed because actually, yes the fuck he did, thank you very much.

“I did, actually,” he amended snarkily, throwing a bag across to Sirius with a lot more force than
necessary. “Don’t be a prick.”

“I told you, no promises.”

Remus groaned and slammed his door, stalking on his heel away from Sirius, regardless of the fact
he had no idea where he was going or what he was doing there. Sirius caught up to him fast -
fucking vampire speed made him want to rip his hair out - and walked beside him, whistling, in an
annoyingly chipper mood that made Remus want to jump on him and yank his vocal cords out of
his throat, rip the cherries right off his face.

The group of vampires had been loitering around the front door - Remus suspected they had
smelled him - but the nefarious energy surrounding them seemed to hesitate, and then disappear in
an instant as they spotted the pair walking up. There were three of them - two boys and a girl - and
their backs seemed to straighten in tandem to Sirius’, as he picked up the pace and walked a step
ahead of Remus, chin jutting out with purpose. The vampires moved to one side of the wall.

Before Remus could question why the hell the group were being so cagey, one of the vampires
spoke. Sirius obviously hadn’t anticipated they would talk to him (oh, the horror,) - he skidded on
his heel, for a second, before stepping back and turning to them.

“Hello, Mr. Black,” one of the boys said - he couldn’t have been older than seventeen, though who
knows how long ago he had been turned. He nodded stiffly in greeting, his red hair falling over his
face. “We weren’t aware you were returning tonight.”

Sirius huffed - obviously in utter annoyance at being engaged in this conversation (Remus had
heard that huff entirely too many times) - and nodded back. “Did James not inform you?”

The boy shook his head, as did his companion. The girl, who was shorter and also a lot more
withdrawn than her counterparts, did not move, but her gaze flickered around the scene before
landing on Remus. Her eyes blazed. Remus took a slight step to the side, behind Sirius enough to
feel protected (God, that sentence would make the Remus of two months ago lose his fucking
mind) and Sirius apparently noticed her change in demeanour.

“Astoria,” he said, carefully but authoritatively. “How is your transition going?”

She opened her mouth to speak and then closed it immediately; a low sound came from the four of
them, and it took Remus a second to notice it was a growl coming from the deep of her throat.
Sirius laughed.

“You brought a human,” the other boy said. It was a careful statement, but not careful enough;
Remus felt Sirius’ demeanour change, much like Astoria’s had. Felt it freeze up.

“I did,” he said, voice low. “Do you have a problem with that, Oliver?”

The three of them shook their heads vehemently; Astoria stepped back a little more, eyes still on
Remus - he was wildly uncomfortable, but felt a little bad for her at the same time. Her suffering
was evident in the staggered rise and fall of her chest. Remus tugged on Sirius’ sleeve.

“Sirius,” he hissed, as quiet as he could. “Let’s go.”

He let himself be moulded by Remus’ tug, falling to the side a little, and then he turned away and
the three boys immediately mirrored him, as if they were relieved to be relinquished of his
attention. The tall, ginger boy put an arm around Astoria. Her eyes finally left Remus’.

Sirius stalked into the lobby without a word, and any anger or moodiness in his stature was lost to
Remus, who was thrown aback by the sheer immensity of this room - not in space (although it was
ridiculously spacious) but in grandeur. It was themed mainly gold and marble; the floor was
practically transparent; it gave him Victorian Gothic vibes but minus the colour palette. There were
two protruding staircases to either side of the centre that led up to a landing, in which there was a
lift. Sirius called for it - at least Remus was pretty sure he did. He was too busy admiring the
statues at the tops of the staircase railings. Magnificent and gold. He only drew his eyes away from
the décor when Sirius cleared his throat, and the lift had arrived.

It was here that Remus managed to drag his eyes away from the inanimate décor and register the
people; from the top of the landing he could see them all. There weren’t many - two or three people
at a table, a bellhop and a receptionist - but every single one of them either had their gaze on him
and Sirius, or had their gaze specifically focused on something else so that it wasn’t completely
obvious their gaze was, also, on him and Sirius. It was incredibly unnerving. Remus found himself
swallowing nervously, before Sirius tugged the sleeve of his jacket and he fell back into step, much
like they had done outside. He entered the lift without a word.

He didn’t speak until the door was closed, and they had begun to ascend.

“Okay,” he said cautiously, and Sirius inhaled like he was waiting for it. “What, the genuine fuck,
was that?”

Sirius evidently hadn’t been expecting that to be the delivery of the inevitable question - he took
one, quick jerked-up look at him, and immediately burst out laughing.

“What?!”

“I’m sorry,” Sirius said through laughter, “It was just- never mind. Never mind.”

“What the fuck is going on?!” Remus exclaimed, wheeling on him. “What is this place? Is this
Vampire City or something? And why are they all so scared of you?”

Sirius frowned. “Well, I’d think you of all people would know why they’re scared of me.”

Remus scoffed. “I had to point out that you had pizza grease on your chin earlier, you don’t scare
me at all. You know what, you’ve actually still got some-” he trailed off, pointing at Sirius’ face.
He immediately jerked away.

“What? No I haven’t,” he said quickly, rubbing at his chin and then turning to the mirror in the lift
to examine it. He turned back to see Remus laughing.

“You’re a fucking wanker,” Sirius muttered, and it was probably the most informal Remus had
heard him all day. It was weirdly nice.

“Seriously,” Remus said. “Why the fuck were they all… looking at you?”

“Jealous?”

“Please.”

Sirius took a deep breath in, leaning against the back wall of the lift. Remus turned to look
pointedly at him.

“Well, firstly, this is essentially a vampire safe haven, if you will,” he said, slowly. “And they were
scared of me because I own this place. And I am a lot older than any of them are.”

“Okay,” Remus said, slowly. “And who was that girl? Ast...oria?”

Sirius nodded. “Astoria is my cousin’s cousin’s cousin, or something. She’s very young. She
probably wanted to bite your head off.”

There were about a million things there for Remus to process; for some reason it started with: “I
know the feeling.”

He quirked an eyebrow, confused.

“I want to bite your head off all the time,” Remus said, and Sirius laughed - the sound of it
unclogged something in Remus’ mind, and the questions began to rattle off themselves.

“So- you own this place? You live here? Like, when you’re not obsessively stalking me? This is
like - like a vampire hotel?”

“Yes, most of the time, I don’t stalk you, you stalk me, and yes… I guess.”

“And you have cousins?"

Sirius frowned, for a short, short moment, before his face placated and he cleared his throat. “I
mean—not cousins in the sense you’re thinking,” he said, avoiding eye contact. “Term of
endearment, you know.”

Remus did not know.

“You creatures just get fucking weirder,” he said, rubbing at his temples, before the elevator
dinged and opened its jaws to a wide corridor, the walls grey and the carpet neutral. Lamps lined
the wall. Remus was pretty sure they weren’t electric, but actual flames. He laughed chidingly as
they stepped out of the doors.

“Fire hazard, that, no? Aren’t you flammable?”

“Shut up, Lupin.”

Remus rolled his eyes but followed as Sirius sauntered down the corridor with a flourish - it looked
like it would be fitting for him to have a cape. Remus was thinking about this specifically when
they arrived at the only set of doors he had seen, and Sirius entered a key that he had produced out
of nowhere and the doors swung open.

Remus realised, with a start, that he was in a penthouse - he hadn’t paid attention to how high the
elevator was taking him, but realised now from the incredibly open windows that stretched two
stories tall that it was high. New York loomed below him like an ant he could stomp on with his
boot. He swallowed and followed Sirius down a hall and into a living area, matched with the same
open windows and a line of bookshelves across one wall. There was a decanter on an old, beautiful
wooden desk. The sofas alone looked more expensive than Remus’ car.

Sirius seemed quite intent on a destination - the living room being a pass-through - but he stopped,
halfway through the room, with a start. He turned with a frown on his face, not projected at Remus
but at the shadows on the walls. He flicked on a light and took in a deep breath; and it was only
then that a smile appeared on his face.

“You fucking fool,” he grinned, whispering barely loud enough for Remus to hear him. “Come and
get me.”

Everything that happened next happened insanely fast, too fast for Remus to keep up with: there
was a whoosh of wind that skimmed his shoulder and left it burning, and Sirius was pinned against
the wall with a guttural fanged snarl from a man that Remus couldn’t see, but was tall enough to
crowd Sirius from his vision. He immediately cocked his gun but they were moving again - the
man threw Sirius against the window wall (Remus’ heart lurched, but the window didn’t budge)
and then onto the floor, where Sirius tripped him up in immediate succession and hissed, pinning
the man to the floor and slamming his skull into the ground so hard it actually cracked the tile.

They moved with insanely quick momentum across the room, a flurry of limbs and snarls,
probably ready to break anything in their path. Remus couldn’t keep up - he lowered his gun
instinctively, acknowledging his defeat, and waited as they disappeared out of sight down the
corridor.

He had only taken one step to peer around the corner when they came back, and this time it was
quick - Sirius seemed to be in control, hissing maniacally at the stranger, and it all cultivated into
one breath-holding movement as he gripped the man by the front of his shirt and slammed him into
the glass coffee table - shattering it into a million twinkling shards that scattered across the floor.
Remus’ jaw dropped.

The sofa, from Remus’ view, was shielding them both, and he could only see the top of Sirius’
head, motionless, but he seemed to be making some kind of noise that Remus couldn’t pick up on.
He raised his gun again and took a step forward, peering over the top of the expensive fabric, and
saw Sirius, lying with his elbows propped up in shards of glass, his hands still gripping the fabric of
the other man’s shirt, and he was… laughing. They both were - the stranger had been cut, red blood
dripping down his dark skin and lining the curve of his jaw; there were shards of glass in his
unruly hair, and he was absolutely cackling - head thrown back, nose scrunched. Remus frowned.

Sirius pushed himself off the man and helped him to his feet, brushing shards of glass from his
elbows and arms and apparently not regarding the nicks that they gave him, red oozing from his
pale skin. He outstretched a hand and the stranger took it with a big smile; he immediately pulled
him into a huge hug, evidently fond and loving. They swayed back and forth, laughing, and Remus,
with a start at the fond display of affection, realised this was the man on Sirius’ lockscreen - albeit
there he wasn’t dripping blood and covered in glass.

“Fuck,” the man wheezed over Sirius’ shoulder, patting his back forcefully. “I can’t fucking
believe you. That coffee table was so expensive.”

“Oh, shut up, Potter,” Sirius laughed, pulling back and immediately going to pick out shards of
glass from the other’s hair. “As if you didn’t pay for it on my credit card anyway.”

Potter shrugged, laughing, and then in an instant lunged for Sirius again; not in the same play-
fighting way, but to wipe the blood that was trickling down his arm onto Sirius’ shirt. He gasped.

“You fucking dickhead!”

Remus was about 95% sure they would have gone at it again with the fighting and probably burned
the whole building down had he not cleared his throat expectantly. They both froze, Sirius about to
lunge onto his friend, and turned their heads to Remus.

The man inhaled sharply, his eyes flickering over Remus as if reading him. “Human,” he said, first,
after his inhale, and then - more interested - “Hunter,” as he noticed the gun still grasped in Remus’
hand. His jaw dropped; lips upturning in a playful jeer; and he turned to Sirius, raising his
eyebrows. “Is this-?”

“Lupin,” Sirius said quickly, “This is James Potter. James, this is the bane of my existence.”

James gasped indignantly. “I thought I was the bane of your existence!”

“You’re a close second.”

Sirius walked over to the decanter, pouring himself a drink, and James turned to Remus with a grin
and extended his hand - frowning and brushing off remaining shards of glass on his palm before
extending it once more.

“Hi,” he said brightly, “It’s so nice to meet you, Remus.”

“You too,” Remus mumbled, taking his hand. “I think?”

Sirius smiled into his drink from the opposite side of the room, and Remus turned to him
instinctively, taking in his tousled hair and blood-stained shirt - which he evidently was not happy
about.

“I can’t believe you wiped blood on my fucking shirt,” he grumbled at James, who sat down on the
sofa and laughed. “This was expensive, and I actually paid for it.”

“It’s not that bad.”

Sirius laughed mockingly. “And how the fuck would you know? You can’t see.”

“Oh, fuck off,” James said, dryly; he frowned, however, perking up and looking around. “Have you
seen my glasses, actually? I think they flew off somewhere between throwing you into the window
and you attempting to break my-”

He was cut off by Sirius opening a drawer in the old wooden chest that, upon examination, seemed
to be filled to the brim just with pairs of glasses. He threw one at James, who grinned.

“Thanks, babe.”

“You’re welcome.”

Remus blinked.

“Are you not…” he said slowly. James turned to him and, upon taking in his confused expression,
looked like he was trying to not laugh and was failing miserably. “... a vampire?”

Sirius cackled.

“Oh, do tell him, James,” he said. “Tell him why I had to clear out my drawer.”

“Shut up, Sirius,” James sneered with no heat, and then turned back to Remus. “He was joking; I
can see without them, I just like how they look. For… aesthetical purposes.”

Sirius scoffed. James threw a drink coaster at him, and he dodged it easily. It skidded to the floor at
his feet and Sirius caught it with his foot and kicked it up, catching it and skimming it back across
the room, where it landed quite perfectly on an end table.

“You okay?” James said, to Remus, after he put his glasses on. He spoke with a majorly English
accent, but every third other word seemed to have an American lilt, as if he had spent too much
time here. “You look a bit peaky.”

“He’s been driving all day,” Sirius said by way of explanation.

“Yeah, that’s what’s bothering me,” Remus said sarcastically. Sirius grinned. He turned back to the
decanter, pouring another glass of something that Remus couldn’t place, but looked distinctly
alcoholic - and appealing, right now.

“Drink?” Sirius offered, turning and holding it out to him. Remus didn’t even hesitate.

“Please.”

***

Two drinks and a blood bag (that he shook his head disapprovingly at) later, Remus felt the
oncoming’s of a headache manifesting behind his eyes.

“So,” he started, slowly. “You live… here, most of the time? And when you’re not here James
looks after the place?”

“Yes,” Sirius said, taking a sip from his mug (he put his blood in a mug - Remus couldn’t fathom
why, besides it being a weird vampire thing. Or maybe so Remus wouldn’t have to look at it
through a glass and reprimand them.) (Not that he would - he’s a guest, he has manners.) (...
alright, no, he would.)

“Only for the past ten years or so,” James said, and Remus laughed inwardly at the “ only”; “I have
a flat downtown that I live in most of the time.”

“James works as a bartender in the Lower East Side,” Sirius said - putting emphasis on the job title
with an ounce of disapproval. Remus raised his eyebrows.

“A bartender?” Remus said - James made a face that might have been a blush if he had any blood
to blush with. “That’s… normal.”

“That’s the point,” Sirius said, interrupting James to continue with his sneering. “He’s blending in,
aren’t you, Jamie? Animal blood and all. I don’t know how you do it, I barely survived yesterday.”

“I’m exploring my options,” James said with a hint of annoyance at the vampire sitting next to him.
“What’s the point of immortality if you live the same life over and over? You act like you don’t do
the same thing.”

Remus’ eyes flickered to Sirius instinctively; he was looking into his mug stoically.

“Regardless, you really need to move out of that place already,” Sirius said in one rushed breath,
sprucing up. “You can barely pass for twenty-five and you’re supposed to be thirty by now.”

James’ shoulders seemed to sag, only slightly. He took a long gulp from his own mug.

“I know,” he said, and Sirius tutted - not the irritable tut he saves for Remus, but in a fond,
sympathetic sort of manner. Remus frowned.

“What am I missing here?”

Sirius sighed and got up, crossing the room to the decanter in silence. Remus watched him move
like water, and followed his hand as it reached for his blood bag strewn on the side; he was
preparing another sound of disapproval as Sirius’ hand lingered, but he retracted it after a moment,
going for another drink instead. He took a sip and turned in one, fluid motion.

“James is in love with a human, aren’t you, Jamie?”

“Don’t bring this up now, Sirius,” James said warningly, finishing his own drink off and licking
the traces of red that lingered on the curve of his lips. (He had gotten a bottle out of the fridge -
Remus could only presume it was deer, or something).

He sat back and watched as James tutted. “And I wouldn’t say love.”

“I would.”

“And what do you know about love?” James shot back, and Remus felt like he was watching two
brothers squabble; perhaps he was.

“I’m just saying- she’s human.”

“And what’s this, then?” James said, gesturing to Remus - who wasn’t sure whether to feel
indignant over being referred to as an object, or flustered at the implication behind it.

“How is that-?” Sirius began incredulously, “He’s a hunter, and we hate each other. You know this.
He’s only here to help me off Riddle and his minions.”

At the mention of ‘Riddle’ - Remus presumed he would be filled in on who that was later - James
immediately lightened up. “Oh, yeah, you told me that. I’m helping, right?”

Sirius grinned devilishly. It was as if their previous bickering had not even happened. It gave
Remus whiplash.

“Of course you are, Jimbob.”

“Oh my fucking God, you haven’t called me that in like a decade.”

“I’m trying it out again.” Sirius shrugged, “It’s a thing.”

“It was not a thing, it was never a thing, you’re not making it a thing-”

“Hey!” Remus said, finding his voice again. Both heads turned towards him. Sirius walked lightly
back to the sofa, sitting next to James and depositing a bowl of what looked like cashew nuts in his
lap, which James tucked into happily. “He’s not helping?”

“Why?!”

“Don’t be difficult, Lupin, we need all the help we can get–”

“No!” Remus said, unsure of where these defence mechanisms came from. He felt like he was
running on fumes and not an actual sound mind. It had been a very, very long day.

“You agreed to work with me–”

“Barely.”

“–James is just, like, a me-extension. Practically not his own person. Ask anyone.”

Remus huffed, “Well, I didn’t bargain for that,”, at the same time James exclaimed, “Rude!”

Sirius lit up with a shit-eating grin.

“You know, I haven’t seen you in two and a half years,” James said, pausing to throw a cashew at
him, “and every time I think you’re going to be less of a fucking dick, and you never are.”

Now that, Remus could toast to.

Sirius laughed.

“I’m surprised you lasted that long, to be honest. You’ve been clinging to my ankle since I turned
you."

“Wait,” Remus said, “You sired him?”

Sirius nodded.

“Yep,” James said, “All the way back in–”

“I don’t even remember,” Sirius interjected. “A long time ago, right?”

James paused and then hummed, narrowing his eyes slightly at Sirius before turning back to pop a
few cashew nuts into his mouth. Remus yawned inadvertently.

“You tired?” Sirius asked casually, and Remus nodded.

“What time is it, even?”

He leaned back to see the clock in the hallway. “Almost 1.”

“Jesus Christ,” Remus said, rubbing his eyes. “Alright, where… where do I go? I’m staying here,
right?”

Sirius frowned. “Obviously. This is as hunter-less as it gets, no?”

Remus scoffed and stood up.

“Nearest guest bedroom is just up the stairs and to your right,” Sirius said, pointing vaguely. “Can
you find it yourself? I wanna have a word with James. It’s the one with a lamplight next to it.”

Remus nodded, picking up his bags.

“I still think those are a fire hazard,” he mumbled when he was halfway across the room. He heard
a low chuckle and a “Shut up, Lupin,” in return.

Sirius’ penthouse was - at least compared to the rest of the building - relatively modern. The stairs
were the kind that float, sticking out of the wall, and the upstairs flooring was lined with darkwood
and the walls were creamy-coloured. The room wasn’t hard to find; it was, in fact, next to one of
the obscene flame-lights (which was the only gothic-looking item in the hallway), and the room
itself whooshed all of the air out of Remus as he entered it. There was a wall of windows but dark
blinds were cascading over them; the walls were light but the décor dark, the bed itself a regal four-
poster with grey sheets and about a million pillows. There was a black chest at the foot of the bed,
and the bedside table had nothing but a lamp and one, lone flower in a vase - a yellow tulip.

A splash of colour against a monotone room. The metaphor made Remus think of what Sirius had
said in the car; about ennui, about living for something; and he wondered vaguely if that might be
slightly applicable to him too. The monotony of his life before seventeen had been overtaken by
monsters - a hobby - job - that made him feel like he was doing something, like he was being
something worthwhile; contributing something to the dreary, drab excuse of the earth he lived on.
At least, at first it had.

Maybe at some point the act itself had been clouded with monotony, too - hunt, kill, move on, hunt,
kill, move on. The thrill of it all died; the flame flickered out; the tulip wilted. And that felt like an
awful thought, when Remus thought about all of the lives he had saved - why was that not
motivation enough? Was he a bad person for that? For feeling sympathy, for feeling something
more when the rest of his kind had killed so many? Wasn’t that the whole point of his fucking job,
to save the humans? And here he was, all of his focus on the wrong thing. Enabling what he had
been trying to eradicate for as long as he could remember. And yet, he couldn’t look away.

Sirius was like a car crash - horrific, tragic and dangerous. He was a wreck, an absolute wreck; a
mess that cultivated all of his senses. An explosion so enticing that he couldn’t, despite all of his
willpower, bring himself to look away from.

Was it wrong? Was that wrong?

Remus didn’t know up from down. He had told himself to ignore the topsy-turvy shit, save it for a
rainy day, but he couldn’t help it creep into his mind as he lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling;
boring, cream, one block of colour. Was it really so wrong to have just this one thing for himself?
The one tulip, amongst the clouds of hatred and murder and avengement, that was just for him to
water and cater to; to see how big it could grow. What it could become.

And was it his fault that the thrill had turned into… something more? Whatever this was. Whatever
he was doing. Oh, God, what the fuck was he doing—

Lily would know.

Lily. Remus inhaled sharply as he remembered her - it would be far too late to call now, she was
probably on a night shift at the hospital, but he hadn’t spoken to her since the disastrous phone call
with Sirius in the car. He had completely forgotten. He resolved to leave her a text and let her
know he would call her tomorrow.

Remus was working up the energy to dig his phone out of the endless pit that was his duffel bag
when the door clicked and swung open, and Sirius stood in the middle of the frame.

The thrill returned.

“Need anything?”

Remus narrowed his eyes. “What?”

“I’m trying to be hospitable. Humans… need things, right?”

He actually almost laughed, but suppressed it when he realised that Sirius was… serious. He was
trying.

“Uh– a glass of water?”

Sirius immediately disappeared from the doorframe, as if he had blinked out of existence. Remus
heard a single clink from downstairs and just as quick as he had left he was back, glass of water in
his hand - the liquid was sloshing from the journey and a bit tipped over the side and seeped into
the carpet, turning the cream into a dark grey.

“You know,” Remus said, pointing at the stain, “that wouldn’t have happened if you had just
walked.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” he retorted, and then, with an outstretched arm: “Just take your damn
water, Lupin.”
Remus got up and took the glass from his hands, taking a gulp and depositing it on the bedside
table, next to the tulip. Sirius was unmoving.

“Okay, so,” Remus said cautiously, after a minute. He sat down. “How are we going to do this?”

“Do what?”

“This. The case. Working together.” Opening up to each other.

Sirius pursed his lips, taking a step in. “How do you usually start working a vampire case?”

“Well, I look through police records, look for potential patterns. I make lists of what I know and
what I don’t. If I don’t find certain leads I’ll stake out various abandoned houses and usually I can
find a starting point from there.” He paused, smile working its way onto his lips. “Though, all the
vampires I’ve hunted were apparently idiots, so I don’t know how useful that is to the big bad
coven you’re so afraid of.”

“I’m not afraid,” Sirius snapped immediately. “And, well, we’ll do that then. Just because I’m here
doesn’t mean you have to alter your work scheme in any way.”

“I already have a whole file in the car.”

“And I have various pieces of information too.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

He nodded, and they fell into a thick silence.

“James is going to help, isn’t he?” Remus said quietly - accepting the inevitable. Sirius nodded.

“He’s useful,” Sirius said. “Smart, a good fighter - he’s good in general. I think you’ll like him
more than me.”

“That won’t be hard. I don’t like you to begin with.”

Sirius dropped his head and laughed. Remus took another sip from his water. The silence persisted.

Remus swallowed, and looked back up to Sirius, who hadn’t moved.

“You care about him, don’t you?”

Sirius smirked. “Vampire lessons, now?”

“Answer the question.”

He exhaled, leaning against the side of the wardrobe pushed up to the furthest wall. “He’s my
oldest friend. My closest friend.”

“I could tell. You squabble like brothers.”

Sirius let out a breath that sounded halfway towards another laugh. “Yeah, well, in a way we are.”
Remus raised an eyebrow. “Term of endearment.”

“Right.”
He smirked. “Is the concept of me having people I consider family curve-balling your world yet?”

Remus hummed. “No. I know vampires are loyal to each other. I just thought you weren’t.
After…” he trailed off, not wanting to bring up the subject that had been the trigger of such a
vicious argument before. Sirius’ face went stony.

“Yes, well, our relationships work just the same as yours,” he said. “We’re not loyal to vampires
because they’re vampires. You wouldn’t be loyal to a random human on the street more than you
would be with Lily, right? Because you’re close to her, and not to them.”

He nodded. “Right. I see your point.”

(He repressed the urge to say that he wouldn’t leave them in a fire, either, but thought distantly that
there might be a bit more to that story than he had been thinking for the past eight years.)

“I’m glad,” Sirius said, and they lapsed into silence.

Remus, after a moment, suddenly remembered the question he was going to ask earlier.

“Who’s Riddle?”

Sirius paused, took a breath and then met his eye. “Riddle is… the leader, if you will, of the coven.
Or, at least, the figurehead.” The last word translated into a venomous sneer, almost animalistic;
laced with mockery. Remus raised an eyebrow.

“Figurehead?”

“It’s… a lot bigger and more complicated than it seems.”

Remus frowned, shuffling forward on the bed. “Tell me.” Sirius rolled his eyes from where he was
standing.

“It’s a story for another time.”

“Another time?” Remus said incredulously. “This is it, Sirius. We don’t have another time. I need
to know everything about these guys and how to fucking stop them from hurting more people!”

Sirius raised his hands in surrender, a flicker of almost-surprise on his face. “Calm down,
sweetheart. Fucking hell. I meant that it’s a story for when it’s not 1am and you’re not exhausted.”

Remus gaped for a moment, realising his irrationality; his eyes flickered to the clock on the
opposite wall, which read roughly 1:30am.

He rubbed his eyes, realising how tired he really was. “I wish you’d stop calling me that,” came out
of his mouth before he gave it permission to.

“What? Sweetheart?”

“Yes.”

Sirius quirked one, irritating eyebrow. “Well, you haven’t exactly given me a range of options
here. You revoked Remus privileges, remember?”

“Alright, if I give you Remus privileges, will you stop with the pet names?” he asked, hopefulness
in his voice; Sirius hesitated and his face contorted into a slightly sheepish grin. Remus groaned.
“See, that’s what I thought.”
“If you give me Remus privileges, I’ll narrow it down to… two pet names.”

Remus narrowed his eyes. “Which?”

“Sweetheart and pretty boy. And I’ll use them sparingly. Promise.”

He contemplated this for a moment, before sighing and rubbing his eyes again, entirely too tired
for this conversation. “Fine. Whatever.”

Sirius grinned stupidly for a split second and then his face tamed - he nodded. Remus took another
swig of the water and lay back on the bed, taking a deep breath.

“Well,” Sirius said by way of initiating his leave. “I’ll let you sleep, then.”

Remus nodded, and he turned around to leave. He was barely at the doorframe when he called him
back:

“Sirius?”

He froze, his back to Remus, and took a moment to turn. “Yes?”

“Do you promise to tell me everything about these guys tomorrow? Don’t leave anything out?”

His brows knitted together slightly, but he nodded. “Everything.”

Remus nodded, and spoke again despite himself: “It’s just— you didn’t tell me—or I didn’t believe
you—before, and I—I knew, the whole time that Peter was here…” he took a breath, biting the
inside of his cheek nervously. “I’d just like to avoid that again.”

Sirius was quiet just long enough for it to be unnerving. Remus raised his head to see him; he was
still standing in the doorway, face indiscernible - dumbstruck, perhaps. Remus could never read
him.

“You feel guilty.”

It was not a question, but a statement. Remus sighed and let his head fall back again.

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No,” Sirius said. “Guilt is the strongest motivator.”

“I thought it was fear.”

“Sometimes they’re one in the same.”

Remus pushed himself up on his elbows, letting his head sink between two pillows, half propped
up but high enough that he could see the vampire across his room. He quirked an eyebrow. “You
say that like there’s a story behind it.”

Sirius looked down and smiled, placidly. “Yes, well, that really is a story for another time.”

“But you’ll tell me.”

“Eventually,” he said, after an indistinguishable pause. The corner of his lip curled slightly. “I can’t
tell you everything at once, you know. I have to hold some kind of leverage.”
“Oh, so you tell me off for stereotypes and then stereotype yourself as every single enigmatic
vampire in history.”

“Oi, I’m allowed to reclaim those stereotypes. I’ll be mysterious if I want to be mysterious.”

Remus smiled and his eyes fluttered shut. “I think you’re full of shit.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhm.”

Remus heard him hum softly. “Why’s that?”

“If you wanted to be mysterious, you wouldn’t come back after you escape me. But you do. You
always come back.”

Sirius didn’t reply for a long, long moment.

“I’m not having this conversation with you while you’re half-asleep,” he said, eventually; it came
out no louder than a caught breath. “Not again.”

Remus huffed slightly, sensing a missed opportunity, but couldn’t muster the energy to open his
eyes. The light behind his eyelids dimmed to almost nothing as a switch flicked quietly from across
the room. The door creaked, and Remus instinctively rolled over, letting sleep overtake him.

“Goodnight… Remus.”

A whisper swirling into an abyss.

A moment’s hesitation.

A door clicking shut.

***

“So,” Sirius said sternly. “Are we all ready?”

James nodded. Remus, sitting next to him, frowned, chewing his cereal and swallowing.

“Do you have to use the whiteboard?”

“Yes!” Sirius said, whacking his pointer against the big white surface. James laughed.

“You know, he spent five whole years as a teacher in the sixties,” James murmured, leaning across
the sofa. Remus’ head spun around.

“He did not!”

“He did! Posh boarding school up in Edinburgh, I think I have pictur-OW!”

James recoiled with a high-pitched yelp as Sirius strode across the room and whacked him around
the head. Remus covered his mouth with his hand.

“Shut up and listen,” Sirius said, before turning and pointing a dangerous hand to Remus.
“Especially you, Mr. Tell-me-everything-NOW.”

He sauntered back to his whiteboard and Remus’ eyes flickered over to James; he was rubbing his
head with a sullen expression on his face. He met his gaze and mouthed “Cane”, and Remus had to
stifle a laugh.

Sirius rummaged in a drawer and brought out a small stack of photos. He began pinning them up
using magnets, and Remus saw they were photos of people; some were portraits, in the literal
sense; some were low quality iPhone shots, some were professional headshots. One was even a
mugshot. Remus raised an eyebrow.

“Are these our crew then?” he asked lightly, deciding against making fun of the printed out
pictures.

“Yep,” Sirius said, pinning the last one up. “Photos courtesy of our very own James Potter.”

“Well-” James began, looking rather sheepish, but he was interrupted almost immediately by a
voice coming from the second floor.

“That was me, actually.”

Remus’ hand went instinctively to the gun in his pouch and he, along with James, wheeled his head
around to see a beautiful woman with long blonde hair leaning against the railings of the open floor
plan, at the foot of the hallway that Remus’ bedroom was down. She was wearing loose jeans and
a lacey crop top, had her chin held high and her gaze was on Sirius; she was smirking, a cocky
smile that Remus had seen reflected on the other vampire more times than he could count - an I’ve-
one-upped-you smirk.

Remus turned back to the vampire to see his gaze was icy, focused on James.

And James? James looked like he would rather be anywhere - anywhere - else.

Sirius blew.

“You told her?!”

“I didn’t want to go all the way downstairs to the printer, okay?!” James yelled defensively,
whirling around and scrambling off the sofa as Sirius advanced on him threateningly. “She has one
in her apartment, it’s only five floors down, I tried to be vague—”

Remus blinked and in an instant the woman was there, sandwiching herself between the two boys
as if mediating was something she did often. She was facing Sirius.

“You should have told me,” she said, rather testily, folding her arms. Sirius groaned.

“You’re not helping.”

“Why not?!” she yelled, turning to James for help - he winced and shrugged, accepting defeat. She,
apparently, did not notice Remus. “I helped last time! If you’re getting the Order back together then
I want in."

“I’m not– Marls, we’re not doing this. Go downstairs.”

“No.”

“Marlene.”

“You know damn well what they took from me, Sirius. If you’re going after them again then I’m
fucking coming.”
Remus leaned over to place his empty cereal bowl on the coffee table (it had, somehow, been
replaced in the middle of the night - he didn’t ask). It made a low clink as the crockery hit glass,
and as the spoon swirled around the ceramic three piercing different coloured eyes swirled just as
fluidly around to look at him. It was silent for a moment.

“Why is there a human here?”

“He’s with me,” Sirius spat, turning and leaning over to pick up the bowl. He gripped it with so
much force that the ceramic cracked underneath his thumb; if he noticed, he didn’t say anything.

In a flash he was gone, down the hallway.

James and Marlene gave each other a withered, communicative look that seemed to last an hour
before James deflated and gestured towards the hallway.

“Oh, you go,” he said quietly, and she was gone in a second. James sat down exasperatedly on the
sofa next to Remus. It was a long moment before he racked up the courage to ask.

“Am I going to get an explanation for what the hell just happened, or…?” Remus said lightly, and
he heard James exhale a breathed laugh from where his face was in his hands. He sat up and
looked at him, smiling, and Remus found he was smiling back.

“Remus, meet our dear Marlene,” he said, gesturing as if she was still in the room and it was a
light-hearted introduction and not the tense argument it had just manifested into. He coughed
slightly, cocking his head to look down the hall before looking back at Remus.

“You see, Remus,” he started, cautiously, “Sirius has only ever sired two people in his lifetime.”
He brought his two hands up to his chest, signalling himself, and then threw them in the opposite
direction, signalling who Remus now knew to be Marlene.

“Oh…”

“I’m older than her, and I think he feels sort of… well, he’s protective over us both, but more-so
over Marls. There have been… incidents, in the past, that have strengthened that, I guess. He’ll
give over eventually, he just didn’t want to put her in danger. But Marlene’s headstrong like that.”

Remus frowned, but nodded; he had been a hunter for eleven years, he knew exactly what it was
like to not want to put people in danger. His heart warmed slightly at the thought that if James was
Sirius’ brother, Marlene was his little sister.

(He longed to see him, all of a sudden. Just look at him. He wanted to know more; he wanted to
know everything. It was a strange, overwhelming feeling, chipping away at a steel wall.)

“You want to know where Sirius hides the good wine in the kitchen?”

He blinked; James was looking at him with a shit-eating grin on his face, hands positioned to either
side of him as if ready to haul himself up - or pounce.

“What?”

“He keeps the good shit underneath the sink, behind a propped-up dustpan and an invisibility
charm. Hides it from me, ‘cause he knows I’ll drink it. I’ve known where they are for seven years,
now, I’m not sure if he knows I know.”

James got up, crossing the room and darting behind the island seating area to the vast, open-plan
kitchen. Remus took a moment to sit, and comprehend the words that had just left James’ mouth
before getting up and following.

“Isn’t he already mad at you for getting Marlene involved?” Remus asked cautiously, eyes darting
to the hallway. James had picked out two wine glasses from a cupboard and was rummaging
blindly into the cupboard. “Bit risky, no?”

James looked up, flipping his insanely unruly hair out of his face. He pulled a bottle out from
seemingly nowhere with a grin, and poured both of the glasses with ease.

“Sirius Black can never stay mad at me,” he said, smirking, handing Remus the glass. “Take it. He
can’t stay mad at you either.”

Remus frowned, but took it anyway, hoping to all hell that James didn’t hear the way his breath got
caught on his tongue for a second.

***

“So,” Sirius restarted, now - stood before the whiteboard. Remus was sat, sandwiched (loosely -
they were both far enough away to not feel claustrophobic) between Marlene and James on the
sofa.

They had come back to the room fifteen minutes (and two glasses of wine) later, arm in arm. Sirius
had, apparently, given over, and Marlene had exchanged pleasantries with Remus - she, like James,
had known his name before anyone had given it to her, and Remus assumed Sirius had briefed her
during their private conversation.

Marlene seemed nice. She, of all of the vampires Remus had encountered recently, had the
friendliest, most attractive face - not attractive in a romantic or sexual way (though she was fucking
gorgeous) but it was more like a pull. Most of them were stunning - without the fangs they held a
strange sort of innocence about them - but Remus had never seen it pulled off quite as well as
Marlene. It was different with her; her face wasn’t just gorgeous, it was kind. Her face was slightly
round, less-so cheekboned than Sirius or James but still chiselled - her hair looked like gold and her
smile felt like the sun. Remus chided himself at what he of three months ago would think of him
now, being so comfortable surrounded by vampires.

Sirius cleared his throat. He picked up the glass that he had, obviously, stolen from James as soon
as he sauntered back into the room (“steal from me again and I’ll castrate you, Potter”), and
downed the rest of the wine in one, placing the glass on he coffee table and straightening up.

“Right, I’ve assorted the people into who we know for sure is working with them, and who we
don’t.” He licked his lips. “Now, Remus, I’m sure you’ll recognise some of these names - please
do refrain from interrupting til I’m done, cheers.”

Remus frowned, but bit back his sarcastic comment. Sirius turned to the board.

There were many more pictures on the left side than there was on the right, and Sirius started there.

“Malfoy,” he said, loud and clear, and oh, Remus wanted to interrupt.

“Lucius,” he spat, pointing at a picture of a man with long, white-blond hair and the most evil
resting bitch face Remus had ever seen. “Only son of Abraxas - deceased sometime in the 1700s -
and married to… Narcissa,” he pointed at a woman with flowing blonde hair, much like Marlene,
except her face seemed to be imbued with less kindness and more poison. “Daughter of Cygnus,” a
stern looking man with a goatee, “and Druella,” a cruel looking woman with the same blonde hair
and same poisonous smile as Narcissa. Cygnus and Druella’s photos seemed to be portraits -
obviously painted at the same time, and, to Remus’ estimate, no later than the very early 1900s.

Before he even had chance to wonder if they would have changed, Sirius said; “Still the same ugly
bastards they were in 1904,” and James had to stifle a laugh.

Next to Cygnus and Druella was Bellatrix, who looked both nothing and everything like her mother
and sister, and her husband, whose photo was the only action shot - a picture taken from a
cellphone of him, fangs out, blood trickling down his jaw. Remus didn’t even want to know how
that photo was obtained.

Narcissa’s weakness was her son, Draco; seventeen years old and the only male born in over three
hundred years. Lucius’ was his footwork; Druella’s her bloodlust; Cygnus’ his reaction times on
surprise attacks. Bellatrix’s weakness was Riddle - Remus realised rather quickly that her mate
wasn’t really her mate at all, just a convenience. (Rodolphus’ weakness, apparently, was his
“entire, lumpy, ridiculous being”; Remus had to stifle a laugh at that.)

He moved across the board, dropping off names, families, possible weaknesses, vantage points;
Avery, a couple of Rosiers, Nott, one of the infamous Carrow twins (Remus really, really, had to
hold his tongue there), and finally:

“Snape,” Sirius said with much more venom than he had spared for any of the others; James
booed, and Marlene huffed slightly. Remus quirked an eyebrow. “The—”

“Slimiest, most disgusting prick to walk Planet Earth,” James finished comically. Marlene grinned
at him from across the sofa.

“What did he do?” Remus asked, unable to keep himself quiet.

“Snape,” Sirius said, louder, reaffirming his control, “is Riddle’s,” he pointed to the photo of the
most harrowing man Remus had ever seen, at the top of the awkward pyramid, “right hand man,
essentially. Alongside Lucius, of course. Lucius actually sired them both.” He sneered the words
so harshly that Remus shuddered.

“I thought you said that they were all purebloods?”

Sirius’ eyes twinkled. “Yep. Now remember what I said last night about figureheads?”

Remus sat back, mouth falling open slightly. “Shit.”

“Exactly. This is the thing - back in the fifties, when they first tried to rise to power, Riddle really
was a figurehead - he was a pawn for the older pureblood families. The higher-ups. A lot of
them… a lot have died in the seventy years he had been dormant.”

He took a deep breath and looked back to the picture on the whiteboard. Riddle, of all of them, had
the most menacing stare. Remus could’ve sworn he saw James stiffen slightly.

“But his momentum has grown,” Sirius mused, eyes locked on the picture. “People are following
him regardless of the fact he’s not a pureblood - in fact, most people don’t know. Or if they do,
they just don’t care, because he’s backed by them all. He’s just like us but has been given too much
power. And he’s, by far, the most vicious of them all.”

At this, Marlene got up and, without a word, walked away. Sirius stared at the place she had left
and then turned back, bracing himself at the whiteboard. Remus turned to James, eyes wide in a
question; he shook his head no slightly and mouthed “It’s fine”.
“Riddle,” Sirius said. “Weaknesses… unknown.”

Remus exhaled.

“Snape,” he continued. “Weaknesses–” he took a step to the other side of the whiteboard and
whacked his pointer against one of four pictures on the opposing side, of a sour-faced, thin and
sickly-looking woman with long, dark hair. “His mother, Eileen. Status unknown since the fifties.”

“His mother?”

Sirius turned to him, face sallow. “Lucius turned him, he turned her. She disappeared when he got
into the shady business. It throws him off when you bring it up; I’ve fought him enough to know
that.”

Remus nodded slowly, and before anyone could speak again Marlene re-entered, looking as
pristine as ever. She gave the room as a whole a tight smile before sitting rather reserved, swinging
one leg over another.

“So that’s everyone we know, then?” Remus asked, and Sirius nodded. “Who are they?”

Sirius followed his pointing finger to the right side, and hesitated before clearing his throat. The
first picture he chose was of a young woman with side-parted brown hair, down to her shoulder.
She looked significantly less menacing than the rest.

“Daphne Greengrass,” he said, “older sister of Astoria.” He looked pointedly at Remus, who took a
moment to remember Astoria as the young vampire who wanted to rip his head off yesterday.
“Hasn’t been seen since 2013. No contact with anyone in her family.” He paused, taking a breath.
“Her sister misses her.”

Remus was unsure of why this detail was pertinent, but it produced a pang of sadness in his chest
anyway. He straightened up a little.

“Pureblood?”

“Yes.”

He frowned. “But I thought Astoria was sired?”

Sirius shook his head. “Not sired. I said she was young. She looks sixteen because she is sixteen -
she’s the youngest pureblood child, after the Malfoy kid, and the only girl in forty years since
Daphne. Before Daphne, no one for a hundred and fifty years. And let me tell you, three in a
century is marvellous.”

Remus whistled lowly. “And the parents?”

“Here,” Sirius said with a slight smile. “Safe. She just ran away.”

He nodded, taking a sip of the mug of tea that he had, admittedly, forgotten about in the excitement
of this new information. Sirius moved to the left to point at the second, of four, pictures.

“Hannah Abbott,” he said dryly, pointing at a gritty picture of a dirty blonde woman. “MIA since
1997. Parents both died in the fifties. I don’t see why she would join this coven considering they
killed her parents, but people do crazy things for power. Can never be too careful. I have a friend
trying to track her down in Brazil.”
Remus nodded. His eyes flickered to the last photo of them all.

The boy pictured looked no older than twenty-one - he had black, slightly wavy hair that cascaded
in a middle part and landed just above his ears. His nose was straight if a little pointed; his
cheekbones were defined and his lips were pulled slightly apart in the photo, as if he was caught
candidly. His eyebrows were arched royally and his eyes - his eyes reminded Remus of Sirius. So
light blue they bordered on grey, almost a fragile colour; like an ice sculpture, as if they’d break if
he blinked; though he never did, stuck in one position, lips slightly parted, ice never melting.

Sirius blinked a few times, looking down, and then cleared his throat and pointed at the picture.
James stiffened again.

“Regulus,” he said, quietly, as if the word hurt him to say. Remus quirked an eyebrow.

“No last name?”

“No,” came the reply; Sirius looked up at him, and his lip curled. “He’s too old to have one.”

“Oh.”

“He’s one of, if not, the oldest living Pureblood,” Sirius said, slowly, as if he had to re-evaluate
everything he said before he said it. “He’s... he’s strength, and grace, and pure carnage.”

“And he’s not on the other side… why?”

Sirius huffed a breath and looked down, then up again; directly into Remus’ eyes.

“We’re not sure if he’s with them because he hasn’t been seen or heard from for almost eight
years,” he said slowly. “Not since his entire coven burned, in a warehouse, in Cornwall.”

Remus’ lips parted in shock - much like Regulus’ in the photo - and he went through a swirl of
emotions that he didn’t understand; regret, sympathy, confusion, anger. He locked eyes with the
photo and then back up with Sirius. There was kinship, there, somewhere.

“There were two survivors,” Sirius said quietly, face collected and reserved. “I haven’t seen him
since.”

Remus wanted to speak but found his throat was blocked up; although he wasn’t even sure what he
would say. That coven had been such a touchy subject for Sirius before - was this why? Had he
really, genuinely cared for them - as family? Like he cared for James and Marlene? And who,
exactly, was this Regulus to him, then? Was Regulus the one who had sired him?

Remus regretted, all of a sudden, the words he had spat that heated night in the car park. He
realised, with a start, that he truly did know almost nothing about the man in front of him. He
realised that somewhere in him, he wanted to know everything. Down to his bones. Everything.

“So,” he started, after a moment; his voice hoarse. “Does he… uh, have any links to the people on
the left side?”

Sirius’ mouth pressed into a thin line, and he spun, slightly, and reached his arm out - his pointer
whacked against the picture of Snape, right in the middle of his forehead.

“He has a long, long history with Snape,” the pointer moved to the very first, sour-faced white-
blond man. “And Lucius. I’d say there’s a strong chance that he’s with them, but… well, we can’t
be sure.
“Weaknesses?”

Sirius paused, his back hunched. He let out a dry laugh.

“Tell him that you’re the reason his parents are dead. I’m sure that’ll throw him off.”

“Sirius,” Marlene started, breaking her terse silence; he shook her off.

“No,” he said lightly but a little tense, “It’s okay. I think we should leave it there.”

He sped across the room and picked up a big, fluffy jacket from a hook. It was entirely too flouncy
for Remus’ taste but he shrugged it on, and it looked ridiculously good on him.

“I’m going hunting,” he announced. James stood up, frowning; Marlene checked her watch,
frowning harder.

“It’s midday?”

“I’ll take my umbrella.”

“That’s not what–”

“Oh,” he said, messing with his collar, “Not human hunting - animal hunting. Remus and I… made
a compromise."

Remus had, admittedly, completely forgotten about his adamancy for Sirius to not drink human
blood. He gaped.

“Seriously?” James said, breaking the silence. Sirius smiled wickedly.

“What’s the point of immortality if you live the same life over and over, right, Jamie?” He
smoothed down the lapels of his jacket and turned to Remus. “Lupin, call Lilibeth while I’m gone -
I want to meet her."

And with that he strode down the opposite hall to what Remus knew from memory to be the
entrance hall and the front door. James took a few futile jogs and yelled down the echoing space:

“I’m not complaining, but that’s definitely not what I meant by that statement! But I’m not
complaining! Don’t take this as a complaint! Not what I meant though!”

“James, he’s gone.”

“Yeah, I know."

***

Remus, actually, had texted Lily in advance. She was working, but finished early, today - her shift
had been 3am to 3pm, and she offered to meet Remus in a little cafe at 6 after taking a well-needed
nap; he got there around 5:45pm.

He hadn’t seen Sirius all day. His disappearing act had happened on the cusp of the afternoon, and
he had spent the day sifting through his weapons and luggage, and - surprisingly - talking to
James.

Marlene retreated to god-knows-where not long after Sirius left but James kept Remus company all
day, and he found that, actually, James Potter was a very enjoyable person to have in your
presence. He was none of the snark and infuriation that Sirius was - he seemed genuinely interested
in Remus, in his life; and he seemed to live a life of his own. He told Remus all about his
escapades to North India - his home - about two decades ago, spent working as a chef in a
restaurant - and before that, he had spent fifteen years in Romania working in an orphanage (which
sounded way to lovely to be real to Remus, yet somehow fit the image he had of the person in front
of him). If it wasn’t for the vampiric glint in his eyes and the bottle of blood that he popped open
halfway through the day Remus might have been speaking to a friend, a hunter, a man he met at a
coffeehouse. It wasn’t something he thought much about. It was easier, he supposed, to accept this
new version of the vampirism that he thought he knew with someone he had only just met, as
opposed to someone he had spent almost a decade hating.

He had a lot of time to think, in the time between him leaving James and seeing Lily - travelling,
sitting in the cafe with a drink. He thought about Sirius, of course. It felt like he was slowly
connecting pieces of a puzzle together, every day he spent with him. And the Cornwall bombshell
was a huge clump of jigsaw pieces held together, but it was isolated from the rest of the puzzle; it
didn’t make sense in the context, simply a swirl of colours, the bottom left corner of a painting that
had only the top completed thus far. His actions seemed far too touchy for it to not be personal to
him - perhaps they always had, since Remus had provoked him so in the car park and had been
slammed into the tree in retaliation.

The vampire lesson of the day, he supposed - the riddle that he had to answer to unlock another
level of familiarity with the vampire that seemed to take up his every thought - was about family.
What was family, to Sirius? He had said, that night as the red seeped into their visions and the owls
hooted from the trees behind the dim-lit car park; “family, my family, my coven.”

Family. His family. His coven. Two entities; was there a difference? Was it one in the same?

And Remus couldn’t help but notice the physical resemblance between the icy boy in the picture,
frozen in stoicism, and the vampire that he had spent so much of his time with - but that was
impossible. He wrote it off immediately. That was impossible, because Sirius would have told him
- he would have evened out the playing field, right? He would have boasted his superiority in a sly,
lip-curling remark and physical violence. Fuck, Sirius Black would have paraded his blood status
on a blimp across New York City if it was anything to boast about - right?

Well, perhaps he wasn’t in a sane mindset to make these deductions. He was lagging behind - this
is what the Remus of three weeks ago would’ve assumed. There was a far, far cry between the
Remus who had felt Sirius Black’s touch and the Remus who had not. He felt like it had
electrocuted him into an astral realm where everything was up in the air, and he wasn’t sure if he
wanted to go back.

And at this point, it was seriously giving him a fucking headache to try and shove the puzzle pieces
together when they didn’t fit, so he decided to stop trying.

His mocha tasted nice. The decor was lovely - and he could see Lily’s hair down the street.

“Remus!” she squealed; the bell on the door had barely stopped ringing before she had flown into
his arms, squeezing the absolute life out of him with her petite yet ridiculously strong grip.

They swayed from side to side naturally as they hugged; Remus craned his neck to shove his nose
into her hair, and it smelled just as flowery as it looked. Her skin was warm to the touch - Lily was
always warm, she was like a portable electric heater, perpetually - and Remus basked in the
familiar, comforting flames. She pulled back.

“Oh, I’ve missed you so much,” she said, hands still around his torso - she smiled brightly, and
Remus grinned back.

“I missed you too, Lils.”

One more hug was required of her before she sat down flouncily. She was in a white blouse and a
flowy, muted green skirt. It brought out her eyes. They were sparkling.

“Don’t cry, you daft woman,” Remus chided, passing her a napkin, and she laughed thickly.

“I can’t help it, okay, I just missed you.”

Remus smiled. Warmth had poured into his stomach and settled there - he felt like he could never
stand up again and disrupt this moment.

A woman came over and Lily ordered, and brought Remus the sandwich he had ordered which he
ate hungrily. She raised an eyebrow over her tea.

“Those vampires aren’t starving you, are they?”

“Keep it down, Lily!” Remus hissed, looking around. She laughed musically.

“Who’s going to believe me? Stranger things have happened,” she said. He took another bite of his
sandwich in response.

In spite of her objection she leaned forward and lowered her voice anyway to speak again. “So,
what’s been going on then? You’re working with him? You’re staying with him?”

Remus sighed and put his sandwich down. “I have... a lot to tell you.”

Her eyes sparkled again, but with excitement.

The story he launched into began somewhere around him getting assigned the mission and flowed
through Texas; the library, the car park, the road trip; then into Tennessee, and the motel, the bed -
he watered down whatever devilish realisation had befallen him by manipulating the focus to be on
his discoveries of Sirius’ humanity and their agreement, and not the fact that he wanted to pounce
on him and didn’t exactly know what would come after that. He talked about the apartment
building, the penthouse, James; he explained the blood hierarchy system and how he had,
somehow, killed the oldest Purebloods in existence eight years ago and hadn’t even known about it
until eight hours ago (she let out a little gasp at this one). He told her about Marlene, and the runner
Sirius had done earlier. When he was finished she took a moment to speak.

“Wow,” she said, putting her mug down. “Okay. Lot to process there.”

“Yeah.”

“So,” she started, and Remus could see her brain working frantically. “This… coven. What exactly
do they want?”

Remus opened his mouth, and then paused. “I don’t know.”

Lily frowned. “Who have they been killing?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s their aim?”

“I… don’t know.”

She looked absolutely aghast. “What do you know?”

Remus had the strangest urge to laugh. “I don’t even know.”

“Jesus Christ,” Lily mumbled, dropping her face into her hands. Remus laughed bitterly. “What
have you and Sirius even been talking about?”

This was the question that was simplest of them all, and yet, somehow, inexplicably, Remus drew a
blank. What had they been talking about? It felt like everything they said came out as a riddle.
Remus understood Sirius less than he had eight years ago; even now, after they had agreed to put
everything in the open. Sirius had left as quick as lightning earlier, when they had just been getting
started - why?

Remus had the mind to go find him and shake some fucking sense into him. Extract his braincells
one by one and absorb them for information or something equally as violent and unnecessary,
because that was what they did, wasn’t it?

(... No. He didn’t quite think it was, anymore.)

“We argue,” Remus said by way of answering. “Usually about the fact that I know nothing. And
then I try to figure things out and he says something dickheadish and I– I blow up. And we never
get anywhere.”

Lily’s face flickered with pity, and she pursed her lips. “You two are both too hot-headed and
opinionated for your own good.”

“You’re fucking telling me.”

“But I wouldn’t say you haven’t got anywhere. You’re here, aren’t you? And you haven’t killed
him yet. That’s a plus.”

Remus laughed pathetically. “I don’t even think I could do it anymore, you know? I’m too
empathetic. A flicker of humanity and I think he can be saved. Like some fucking cliché - a shitty
villain out of a shitty book. It’s ridiculous. I’m ridiculous.”

Lily smiled, but said nothing. Remus raised an eyebrow.

“What?”

She shrugged. “I just think there’s more to it than that.”

“More to what?”

“You and him,” she said, blithely. “There’s more to you and him than just… the villain and hero
cliché.”

Remus narrowed his eyes, but she didn’t let him interrupt.

“I mean, after everything that you’ve told me, you cannot say that there’s only a flicker,” she
continued. “Sounds to me like there’s a whole ocean in there, he just doesn’t know how to use it.
Can’t you see it?”

Remus stared. “How can you? You’ve never even met the man.”
Lily suddenly went very still; her face flickered through about 50 emotions, before landing on
realisation. “Oh my God.”

“What?”

“Let me meet him!” she exclaimed. “Let me help!”

“Why on God’s green earth–?”

“See, I knew you’d say that,” Lily said quickly, “so I’ve been avoiding asking to help all this time
because I knew you wouldn’t let me without a valid reason but - I just fucking thought of one!”

“Lily, no.”

“Listen to me,” she said forcefully - Remus’ eyes widened. “You don’t know shit about this coven,
yeah, you’re a hunter doing an absolutely shit job–”

“Hey?!”

“–sure, but what do you know they’re definitely doing?”

Remus stared. Lily looked incredibly impatient.

“I don’t know… drinking blood?”

“God, you’re hopeless—murdering, Remus! They’re killing, right?! And where do dead bodies
go?”

“A cemetery."

“Before that, you fucking dumbass.”

It hit him all at once. “A morgue...”

“And who do you know who is assistant to the medical examiner?”

“Lily, no.”

“Why not?!” she said, giddy with excitement. “It would work perfectly. I’m a nurse, I have access
to the morgue, I’m well-versed in autopsy and pathological inspection. I can go through the records
—"

“Would that not put your job in jeopardy?”

“No, you see,” she said, grinning, “because I have jurisdiction to all of those files. And it probably
wouldn’t even come to that - I wouldn’t be giving you them, it would just be leads, tips; I’m pretty
sure that there’s no law against conspiring with vampires. They’re dead, right? Post-mortem
privacy?”

“Lily, that’s not—”

She pressed oh, shushing him - he could see she was bending things where she saw fit, and that she
wouldn’t back down. “And I can keep an eye out for freak mutilations - I’ve seen them before,
remember, two years ago? I called you about the bodies drained of blood? That one coven that
used to savage their bodies to cover up the cause of death, I solved that case for you and that big
ginger guy with the twin—”
“You didn’t solve it,” Remus muttered petulantly, trying to disguise seeing her point.

“I so did. You thought it was a werewolf, or a Siren.”

“In my defence there was a Siren, just in Boston. I was close enough.”

“Call Sirius,” she said, “Ask him if I can help. I want to help.”

“Okay, Lily, calm down,” Remus said cautiously. “First of all, he’s barely even letting his vampire
friends help, never mind a human-”

“But it’s not like I’d be fighting!”

He shushed her. “Second - I… don’t have his number.”

“Of course you don’t.”

“Look,” he said, “let’s just talk about something else for now. I haven’t seen you in a year, Lils.
I’ll bring it up to them later.”

She was peeved, but acquiesced on the promise that he’d bring it up.

It came up sooner than expected.

James texted Remus a couple hours into their meeting, as the sun was beginning to cast red across
the sky (muted only slightly by the industrial air) and offered to pick him up.

(He had insisted on swapping numbers in case of emergencies - it was not Remus’ idea, but... he
hadn’t exactly said no either.)

His shiny car arrived outside the cafe, his face shrouded by the tinted windows, and Remus and
Lily walked out arm in arm - she was in the midst of asking him to promise to ask them and to not
get caught up and become a stranger, and he was in the midst of agreeing to that promise when her
face went cold with shock.

Remus’ head swivelled around to the car, where James had rolled down his windows and taken off
his sunglasses and was currently mirroring - if not more - the shock of Lily’s face on his own. His
jaw dropped.

Oh no.

“James?!” Lily spluttered first, unmoving.

“Lily?” James' eyes were flitting between the two of them.

“Oh, no,” Remus said, utterly exhausted, head falling into his hands.

She turned on him immediately.

“He’s your James?” she asked wildly, mouth upturning slightly. Remus knew exactly why.

“She’s your Lily?” came from the car.

“Oh, no,” Remus moaned, covering the space where he was peeking from between his fingers and
rubbing his eyes desperately. Yep, still there.
“I knew it!” Lily said triumphantly, basically jumping. “I knew it! I knew he was a fucking
vampire!”

“Ah-ah–”

“Lily!”

She cowered immediately, looking sheepish.

“Roleplay,” James said happily to a couple walking past who were looking at them with
bewildered eyes.

“... Sorry,” Lily said after the couple had dissipated. “I think I’m too desensitised.”

“You fucking think?” Remus remarked. James got out of the car.

“Okay, so,” he said cautiously, taking a step forward. “This is… a thing.”

“So you know each other then,” Remus said blankly - not even a question, he knew the answer.

“If you think I’m not fucking helping now, Remus Lupin—”

“Woah, woah,” James said, holding up a hand. “Who said anything about helping?”

“Me. Just then.”

“How could you help?”

Lily harrumphed. “Don’t sound so fucking surprised about it. I could take you.”

“Lily–”

“Look,” she said to James, “First of all, I figured out you were a vampire without even speaking
three words to you. Second; I’m an accomplished nurse and assistant to the medical examiner. I
know the signs, I have access to bodies and files, I can report patterns, I can help Remus if he gets
hurt - I’m valuable.”

Remus had to admit, she was selling it well.

James stared for a moment. Remus groaned.

“You can’t seriously be considering this!”

“I—” he spluttered, “I mean, having her would be handy—”

“God,” Remus groaned. He, in a second of enlightenment, thought he might just feel exactly how
Sirius did this morning with Marlene. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Everything’s dangerous, Remus!” Lily exclaimed. “I wake up every morning and walk down
these streets and there are about twenty ways I can be killed right then and fucking there, and only
one of them I can actually do something about. Something to help. It’s not like I’m going to be
killing vampires - I can just help from the sidelines.”

James grimaced. “She has a point.”

“Fuck off, you’re unfairly biased,” Remus shot at him. Lily frowned.
“What?”

“Look,” James said quickly, brushing past it, “it’s up to Sirius, in the end. Just– just get in the car,
both of you, and I’ll call him and get him to come back.”

“You’re taking Lily back to Hotel Transylvania?”

James shot him a glare. “No,” he said testily, “I just don’t want to get a ticket parking here on the
side of the street. If I use Sirius’ credit card again he might actually murder me.”

Remus rolled his eyes and climbed in the car.

They did as he said and drove - James and Remus in the front, Lily in the back, - and halfway down
the street James fished his phone out of his pocket.

“Two humans in the car, James,” Remus said warningly, and the vampire rolled his eyes.

“I’m just calling him, shut up.”

He dialed with one hand, and the phone rang. It rang, and it rang some more. He didn’t answer.

James let out an exasperated groan.

“Sirius, you fucking dick,” he muttered, pressing call again with more force than necessary.

Nothing.

“For fucks sake,” James groaned. “He’s ignoring me.”

“How do you know?”

James gave him a withered look. “I just do. Look, call him from your phone.”

“I don’t have his number.”

“Take it from mine. He won’t answer me if he knows it’s me. He’s doing the typical Sirius-avoids-
everything-that-stresses-him-out thing, and that can’t fly right now.”

“What is he stressed about?” Remus asked, making a show of typing Sirius’ number into his phone
so James wouldn’t glare at his questions.

“This. You. Regulus. Just call him.”

He didn’t ask any more questions.

The phone rang three times before it clicked.

“What is it, Remus?” Sirius spat testily down the phone. Remus scoffed.

“Well hello to you too. How did you know it was me?”

“James just called me twice. I’m not stupid.”

“Yes you fucking are,” James called, knowing he could hear. Lily shoved her head in between the
two seats, eager to listen in.

“What do you want?”

“Where are you?” Remus asked. Sirius laughed, and it echoed slightly. “Why is it echoey?”

“I’m under a bridge,” he said simply. “Smelled a coyote. Your incessant ringing scared it off,
thanks for that."

“Look,” Remus said, pinching the bridge of his nose. He made eye contact with James, who
mouthed “don’t tell him about Lily“. Remus gaped for a minute.

“Haven’t got all fucking day, Lupin.”

“Can you just—stop being a moody fucking asshole and come back? You told me you’d tell me
everything, Sirius, and so far I know nothing,” Remus said; registering instantly how
unintentionally pissy he sounded. Sirius laughed.

“We have time.”

“No, we don’t,” Remus said, purposefully softer. He went quiet. “Listen, Sirius... I’m stressed
too.”

James’ eyes widened and he turned and gave Remus a tight, frantic shake of his head. Remus
turned away. The phone line was still quiet.

“And I don’t know what that coven was to you, or what it represented,” he said, barely higher than
a whisper. He leant his head against the window. “I don’t know who—who Regulus is to you.”

James let out an exasperated noise. Remus continued; he pushed through.

“And I’m not going to say that... that I regret doing my job. I don’t. But I am sorry for what I
assumed of you. In the car park, that day? That you were disloyal. I don’t know what your
definition of family is, but I’m starting to think that it’s something like mine, and if it is… well,
they don’t deserve your loyalty unless—unless they’ve earned it. You said you’d tell me, and since
that coven is important, apparently, I’m waiting on that promise, but as of right now… I’m just...
sorry, I guess. For any part I played in whatever you’re feeling now.”

It was intensely silent; the only sound came from the car, the way the wheels rolled over tarmac.
Remus actually took the phone away from his ear to check that he was still there. When he put it
back, Sirius took a long, deep breath.

“I’m sorry, too,” he said, finally. Remus frowned.

“What?”

“I’m sorry for breaking your fingers. That day. Eight years ago. That was unnecessary.”

Remus felt it in him to be mad - he felt it in him to be pissed at the complete absolution of feelings,
complete ignorance of the point; and yet all he could do was laugh.

“You sprained my wrist, too,” Remus said lightly. “I had to wear a cast for weeks.”

“Sorry,” Sirius said. Remus could hear the smile in his voice.

“Concussion, too.”

“Sorry.”

Remus couldn’t help himself; the laugh escaped him, grin lighting up his face without his
permission. Sirius chuckled weakly through the phone. Remus hung onto that.

“I’ll come back,” he said. “I’ll tell you the whole story.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.” He paused, for a moment. “I don’t… come off the best in it.”

“In what, exactly?”

“Well, everything. But I mean—specifically what happened in the fifties. The first time we fought
this coven. When Riddle went dormant.” He paused. “I’m not… the hero of my story.”

Remus tutted. “I know,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’m the hero.”

Sirius scoffed. “You bloody well are not.”

“I absolutely am.”

“You’re a nuisance.”

He shrugged, even though Sirius couldn’t see. “I’m that too.”

“You’re a million things,” Sirius said. “You play a million parts. You’re never quite the same as
the last time I saw you."

Remus’ heart was in his throat. “Is that why you always come back?”

Sirius was quiet for a moment; Remus held his breath. The silence was excruciating.

“No,” he said, and Remus was about to speak before he amended; “Not over the phone. Over the
phone is quite possibly worse than half-asleep.”

Remus suppressed a smile. “So, requirements for feelings talk are fully awake and in person. Got
it.”

“Yep.”

“You have to come back for that to happen,” Remus pointed out, hopefully.

“I’m already on my way, you asshole. See you soon.”

The line clicked dead before Remus had a chance to respond, and he pulled the phone down from
his ear dumbly. He turned quickly to James; his face was impassive, on the road. He heard Lily
shift in the backseat and knew that she had leaned forward as far as she could to listen to the
conversation.

James cleared his throat and held out his hand - Remus blanked, for a moment, before realising that
his phone was still in his lap from when he had copied Sirius’ number into his own. James turned
to look at him as he deposited it, and as he turned back to the road and put his phone into his back
pocket, Remus saw the ghost of a smile attack his lips.

“Well,” he said lightly, “I guess we’re taking Lily to Hotel Transylvania after all.”
 six
Chapter Notes

this chapter is essentially 15k's worth of the answers you have been waiting for. do
enjoy :)

also, while i'm here (and I promise this'll be the last long-winded note I just figured
out how to do the link things so yall should be PROUD of me) I wanted to link you
guys to the dstg bot on twitter which is literally my favourite thing (made by hannah
aka fav person ever) go follow it rn AND i literally need you all to look at pestoprongs'
dstg art because. SCREEE LOOK AT THEM GUYS!!! i linked the twt post but you
can find it on all of pesty's socials! i just needed you guys to see it bc it is my
homescreen and I literally stare at it every day i love it sm anyway that is all! ((edit
feb2022: this was the first piece of dstg art ever made. I wish I could link every single
piece made since then and give u all the love but if you're reading this and you've
created something just know you have my entire heart))

as always, lots of love; I hope you enjoy the chapter. it's a big one. :') J X

“Remind me again why we can’t go in?” Lily piped up from the back.

The car had been stationary for about five minutes, in one of the furthest parking spots from the
building physically possible. James had told them to stay in the car, and had been texting someone
(probably Sirius) ever since. They still had their seatbelts on.

“Sirius owns this place,” he said blithely, typing. “You are human. I just don’t feel all that good
about going in there for the first time with you by myself - if their first impression of you is with
Sirius, they’ll leave you alone.”

Remus frowned. “Do humans not go in there of their own accord? It’s not like it’s invisible to them
or anything?”

“Humans on their own are - by the rules, at least - forbidden to touch. We have to keep face, see, to
stay open and all of that. Not that many come by anyway considering how expensive - and, quite
frankly, cult-ish - it is.”

“So what’s the problem?”

James huffed, turning his phone off. “The vampires will see it as a game if I go in with you. A
game to steal you from me, you know. I can protect you, but I’d rather just play it safe and wait for
him so they know you’re his.”

Lily harrumphed. “His. I’m not his fucking property.”

James’ eyes widened. “No, no, I know, I—”

Whatever he was saying was unfinished as something heavy hit the car, causing it to physically
jolt. All three jumped out of their skin; Lily let out a little scream.
It took a minute for the blood to rush back into Remus’ ears before he heard the laughter.

“You fucking PRICK,” James yelled, banging his fist on the roof - but he was smiling.

James got out and Remus and Lily took that as their cue to follow - Sirius jumped down from the
roof with a chortle and brushed himself off, deflecting the abuse James was hurtling at him with no
more than a dismissive hand.

Remus turned to Lily immediately, reaching out a hand and gripping her shoulder comfortingly,
and as he turned to the other side he saw James and Sirius were communicating what seemed like a
mirrored, less overt version of his and Lily’s display of affection. Their heads were low - James
seemed to be speaking at the speed of light and Sirius kept nodding, as if exasperated, and then
pushed him away slightly and fondly, before James’ hand landed on Sirius’ shoulder, squeezing,
the exact same way Remus’ had landed on Lily’s.

The pair of them skirted around the hood of the car, and Remus’ eyes met Sirius’. They were soft,
just for a millisecond as he looked at him and only him. Remus was learning to read the vampire a
lot easier the more time they spent together; he carried himself in the tenseness of his jaw, in how
hooded the lid of his eyes were. In the intensity of his gaze.

For a moment - just a moment - Sirius’ gaze was soft, and open. He seemed free. He seemed alive,
like Remus could cut into him and the blood that would spout from the breakage would be warm,
and it would be an actual loss and not just collateral damage.

And then he saw Lily, and all softness was dropped. Confusion flickered over his face.

“Is this—”

And - to no one’s surprise - Lily stepped forward and reached an unwavering hand into the shark
pit. “Lily Evans.”

“Sirius,” he said, lip quirking, and shook her hand firmly. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“And you,” she said, with a smirk Remus very rarely saw - and oh, this was a bad thing
blossoming, very bad indeed. Sirius inclined his head to Remus but didn’t avert his eyes.

“This is your Lily, then?” he said, and James awkwardly stepped forward.

“And mine, actually.”

Sirius’ head moved so quickly Remus barely saw it happen. His mouth fell open.

“Yeah,” Remus scoffed, “me fucking too.”

“So… the girl in your building…” said Sirius, processing.

“...is Remus’ best friend, yes,” James finished, with a sense of resignation at the whole thing.

Sirius’ eyes were blank for a moment, and then his face lit up and he began to laugh. James put on
a scowl that Remus knew he had practiced.

“Oh, Lilith,” he said, covering his mouth. “Oh, Lilibeth, you’ve really wormed your little way into
my life, haven’t you?”

Lily looked rather proud of her choice of company, actually. Remus wanted to knock some sense
into her - and himself, too.
“Why is she here, though?” Sirius asked James after calming down - Lily cleared her throat. Stood
her ground.

“She is here because she wants to help.”

“Help?” Sirius said in the same chiding voice James had. He caught Remus’ eye, and he shot him
a look of warning. His face calmed. “How would you help?”

Lily explained, like she had James, like she had Remus, the accesses she had. Sirius’ face was
imperceptible the whole time, until the end; Remus witnessed the way his jaw unclenched,
wondering when it had clenched in the first place. If weighed down was his perpetual state of
being.

“I see,” he said; the wind whipped a halo of his hair from behind him into his face, and he brought
two hands up and placed the strands behind his ears. “I think… yeah, I think we could use you.”

“Use her?!” Remus exclaimed.

“I thought you would be against it?” James said at the same time. Sirius shrugged.

“Use whatever she’s offering, Remus, and - I would be, but it’s not like she’s placing herself in the
line of fire. She would be like… a spy. Yeah, a spy.”

“Exactly!” Lily said enthusiastically, and Sirius grinned.

“How are you so unbothered by all of this?” Remus asked, not entirely sure whether he was talking
to Sirius or Lily. Sirius answered.

“I’m not unbothered, I’m being practical. That’s like, the whole definition of bothered,” he said
dryly, and Remus shot him a glare. “She’s useful for leads and she wouldn’t be in any danger; why
shouldn’t we let her help? I’m sure you’ve told her my life story anyway and any detail about the
case that you could scramble together, what has she got to lose?”

Lily crossed her arms at Remus in a very childish I-told-you-so manner, and he recognised when a
conversation was over.

“Okay,” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “alright, fine. Can we just go inside, please? It’s
getting fucking cold.”

Sirius smiled and reached an arm out for Lily to take; she did.

“Of course,” he said, eyes flickering to Remus - and there it was again. Soft. Soft, and following
him; until they had walked so far in front they physically could not anymore.

Remus took a deep breath and followed.

They got stares in the lobby, as always, and the elevator was grandiose and long, as always,
climbing up what Remus saw to be over 70 floors, now, to the very top; Sirius opened the door for
them and as they walked in they were met with Marlene, in silk pyjamas, eating ice cream on the
lounge.

“Oh, hi,” she harpered, swinging her legs around from where they were hanging off the arm of the
sofa and turning to face them. Lily gasped.

“‘Ello, Marley,” James said, speed-running to jump onto the space next to her, causing her to
squeal. (Lily gasped again, this time probably involuntarily.) He stole the ice cream from her and
licked the spoon, and Marlene slapped him around the face. He did not flinch.

Remus walked over as confident as he could manage to the seating area but did not sit, as Lily
trailed behind him. Sirius had disappeared to go deposit his big fluffy coat where it belonged,
apparently, as in a third of a second he was back and coat-less - his black shirt buttoned lower than
it had been.

He had dirt under his fingernails, and– huh, Remus thought. He really did go hunting animals.
What a peculiar thing.

Marlene relinquished herself from James’ annoying sibling-like grabby hands at her and stood up,
and it was then that she noticed - or at least, outwardly acknowledged - Lily.

“Oh,” she said sweetly, looking up to Sirius. “Another one?”

“Marlene, this is Lily,” Sirius introduced her with a grandiose hand, and Lily smiled and nodded -
Remus thought, hilariously, that she ought to have curtsied to Marlene’s glory. “Lily, Marlene.”

“It’s lovely to meet you,” Marlene said - her hair was up, now, in a long, high ponytail. She had a
dainty light in her eyes but her face was set, a soft smile lighting up her features and the apples of
her cheeks were prominent. She shook Lily’s hand, before turning to Remus. “Hi, Remus.”

“Hey, Marlene.”

“Lily is here to help,” Sirius announced, taking a seat in the armchair. “She’s a nurse. Morgue,
autopsies, corpses, patterns, etcetera, etcetera.”

Marlene nodded. She seemed to be used to Sirius’ blasé explanations.

James poured some animal blood for him and some human for Marlene in a mug (Sirius declined)
and offered Remus and Lily a glass of water, which they accepted. Marlene launched into a
conversation about her day - she had spent it with the ‘kids’, whom Remus came to realise were the
three vampires who had loitered outside the hotel his first night here. They had spent about four
hours racing down the Hudson River to determine who was the fastest swimmer, and - though
Remus did not know which one of this it was - she declared that after 150 miles they had
acquiesced that it was ‘Oliver’, to which James clapped heartily and stated that he was ‘absolutely
not surprised’. Everybody listened happily.

Sirius was marginally quiet about his own day - James made a side-eyed comment about the
animal blood, to which he smiled at the floor and announced that it was more filling than he
thought - and… that was that. He avoided Remus’ eye most of the time, placating the conversation
with prompts to add more onto Marlene’s story. It seemed, to Remus, like he was stalling.

Regardless, it was a rather nice conversation. It veered off from the specificities of Marlene’s day
into… Remus couldn’t even remember, honestly. It was simply a plethora of topics and mild
conversation, moving as one does; like a shape-shifter changing so quickly you never get to see the
previous form it took before it is taking on a new one. It was weirdly easy to phase into, however,
and Remus found himself contributing openly - to the point where he almost forgot where he was,
what he was doing, what his purpose was. He was simply a faceless voice, speaking in tandem
with four other faceless voices. It was nice to have that off his back, even just for a moment. It was
nice when Sirius laughed. He hated it, but it was nice.

Surprisingly, it was not Remus who eventually brought it up, but James.
“Mate,” he said, “Are you going to tell the story or not? It’s getting late.”

Sirius’ eyes flickered to Remus, then - they had been making eye contact every now and then, but
Remus could tell Sirius had been making an effort not to, for a reason he could not discern - so
when Sirius’ silver eyes settled on him he felt a strange shiver run down his spine. He locked on
Remus for a moment, and then looked away.

“Yeah,” he said gruffly, making to get up. “I need a glass of wine, though.”

Marlene huffed and stood up, too. “I need three.”

And then, something rather peculiar happened - they met in the middle, as Marlene stood to meet
Sirius’ eye level (she was a little bit smaller than him, but not enough to have to crane her neck)
and his gaze softened yet again. Bags under his eyes seemed to form then and there - they didn’t,
they just seemed to in Remus’ eyes, as if he had never noticed the weight of the world upon Sirius’
shoulders until that very moment - and he frowned.

The peculiar bit was the fragmented words that seemed to hold a million eloquent conversations
between the lines.

“Can you–?”

“It’s okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m fine.”

Marlene grasped the palm of Sirius’ hand with her thumb and forefinger, and his fingers closed
around her own. It felt strangely private; Remus wanted to look away.

“It’s okay,” she repeated, and Sirius smiled before speeding away. He came back about five
seconds later with four surprisingly stable glasses of wine. He handed three to Marlene.

“I didn’t actually mean it,” she laughed - Sirius knew damn well she hadn’t, of course he had - and
passed them down the line; James declined, and so they ended up in Remus and Lily’s hands.

Sirius took three, chaste sips before speaking. “I’m not even sure where to start.”

“The beginning?” Marlene said.

“Where does the beginning start?”

“Well, for the benefit of the human–” James said; Lily shot him a nasty glare, and his eyes
widened slightly in terror. “Lily, I mean– maybe go over the basics? Origins, and such?”

Sirius turned to her.

“Do you know anything?” he asked, rather forwardly, and Lily frowned.

“I know the basics,” she said slowly. “I know what Remus has told me.”

“Right, so you know nothing,” Sirius said dryly, taking another sip of his wine. “Fantastic.”

Remus rolled his eyes.

“Explain how Purebloods work,” Remus prompted, and he did not state that it would be for both
himself and Lily, because that would be embarrassing.

Sirius smirked, and he knew he saw right through him, anyway.

He took a long, deep breath, and began.

“Nobody knows what vampires were borne from,” Sirius said, slowly. “There are legends and
myths and stories passed from generation to generation, but that is all they are - legends, and
myths. It’s like a three way hierarchy system, right? You’ve got your regular chock-of-the-mill
vampires at the bottom–” James did a little salute here, as if he was an example “–your Purebloods
in the middle, and then… whatever came first. It’s rather like your God, I suppose. Anything prior
to the ninth century is myth and legend, let's start there.”

Remus leaned forward. He was interested.

“So, yes, the eldest– the eldest purebloods hail from about 800AD. They have the same premise as
halfbloods - everything works exactly the same, fangs and bloodlust, etcetera - but they’re
inherently stronger. Inherently faster. Less susceptible to weaknesses - the sun, especially. They’re
essentially born hunters - no offence, Remus–”

“None taken.”

“–but they’re built to kill. Built to kill humans. And so, they have… well, they can make you do
whatever they want you to.” He looked up; locked eyes with Lily, then with Remus. “They can
play with you like you’re a puppet.”

And yes, Remus knew this. He knew they had some sort of telekinesis over the human body -
knew that it was one of their party tricks. Knew that it made them the most dangerous. Knew that,
perhaps, the spindly hunter network perhaps did not believe that purebloods were extinct but
kidded themselves with a sense of naivete into pretending that they were. Because the alternative -
the fact that there were these lethal creatures out there - was simply too overbearing to accept.

(He felt uneasy, all of a sudden; uneasy at the thoughts permeating his mind. The reason that Sirius
knew as much as he did. He shoved it away, but it bounced back.)

Sirius looked away.

“And they cannot pass on these abilities to anyone they sire,” Sirius said, carefully; he looked at
Lily, and Remus knew he was explaining the basics for her benefit. “Purebloods were - are - not
created, but born. They grow up as they are. And for the first few centuries they lived as…
superior to the rest of their race, and, quite honestly, why wouldn’t they? They were practically a
different species. Many people believed it divine intervention, and the rest of the vampire species -
the turned kind - to be an abomination. Like… like a variant– a mutant of the, quote en quote, ‘true
vampire’. And for a while they lived peacefully, but… well, Purebloods can't just create and
create. There’s a limit to the amount they can bear. The most I’ve ever known is three children,
and that was a miracle - two is rare in itself. Most families have one child, and then they have one
child, and so on, and so forth. So... they quickly became overpopulated.” He looked up here, eyes
flickering across each person. “There’s only so much that heightened abilities will do against an
army.

“They… overthrew them, that’s to say, in the eighteenth century. Seventeen-sixties, I want to say.
It was an entire, history-book worthy revolt. It was a bloodbath. Not that they didn’t have it
coming,” Sirius said, quickly, as if for desperate clarification of what side he was on. “They were
brutal, bigoted, and murderous. It was not an unfair fight; it was not an unprovoked attack. But they
were absolutely overrun, or outpopulated, and their mental tricks don’t work on vampires, so their
leverage eventually was smothered and the Purebloods who weren’t killed recognised their defeat
and went into hiding. And the timing was quite marvellous for them, actually.”

A smug sort of tone befell his voice, and his lip quirked. “Remus, remind me of your hunter
history? When was the first bureau established?”

He didn’t even have to think about it. “1773.”

His mouth fell open, as if the notion caught up to him belatedly; Sirius nodded, appeased. “Exactly.
Really, it’s not your fault you’re all so misguided. You don’t know shit about purebloods because
the purebloods were not your concern - they had already been taken care of. And trust me, they are
very good at disappearing.”

A contemplative look fell over his face. He frowned, cleared his throat; shook the hair out of his
eyes as if shaking off his interior thought as well; took another sip of his wine, and continued.

“So, they go into hiding,” he said, quickly, to recap, “they try to repopulate. Of course - I’m not
sure if this was evident, Lily - but Purebloods can only create with other Purebloods. And this
hadn’t been an issue when there were more of them, of course, but now, with so many families
basically extinct… it was difficult to find pairs that weren’t too close in relation.”

“Incest?” Lily said, disgusted, and Sirius grimaced.

“Sadly,” he said, nose scrunched. “It’s fucking disgusting, I know. Nature doesn’t allow relations
too close, but I’m pretty sure second cousins and any more distant are fair game.”

Lily looked aghast.

“This is where the motives for the coven we’re threatened by now come in,” Sirius explained
carefully. “It’s the Purebloods getting their revenge. ‘Stronger together’, or whatever. They want to
rule like they used to, in the Middle Ages. They want to eradicate the ‘normal’ vampires and
repopulate with Purebloods. I think the three born just this past century has got them overly excited
- there hasn’t been this many since, like, the sixteenth century. Especially that Draco and Astoria
were born within a year of each other - it’s practically unheard of - no, it is unheard of. It just gave
them more motivation to reform. Divine Intervention.” He tutted, slightly; cracked his fingers. His
eyes took on a dazed look as he said, slowly: “They just had to wait for Riddle.”

“Why?” Remus asked, unable to stop himself. “Why him, if he’s not a pureblood? And why - how
- was he indisposed in the first place?”

Sirius pursed his lips, which were slightly downturned. “That… that all comes into play when we
reflect on the first time they attempted this. It was a build up, really, from the 40s to the 50s. Late
50s is when they truly gained momentum.”

He took a deep breath, and Remus prepared himself.

“You see, originally, he was a servant for the Malfoys. Silly little thing. There are gaps in my
knowledge here, but I know that he was born in the nineteenth century, and Lucius had turned him
by 1875. He and Lucius got close, remained entirely loyal to each other, and when Lucius turned
Snape for Riddle he had his first taste of what a true little bitch boy was, and he loved it. I think…
fuck, I don’t know what I think. I wasn’t there. The remaining Purebloods saw something in Riddle
- a fresh face - and they ran with it. I think maybe they thought his kind could appeal to his kind.
At least, in the beginning.”

“I suppose he just thirsted for more,” Sirius said, simply; Remus remembered, all of a sudden, how
he had been taught that the power corrupts the vampire. That the strength becomes them. That they
would do anything to be invincible. “They formed armies of vampires - sycophant little things.
Fucking pathetic. Armies of vampires had been attempted before, trust me, but it had never come
to fruition. Not like it did in the fifties - and the thing was,” he seemed to be getting a little agitated
here, or perhaps all-encompassed by the story, “It wasn’t even just siredvampires. It was vampires
who were already living. Vampires who had lost their way - they had nothing to live for. Riddle
gave them a cause. Riddle gave them an out from the endless ennui. Something to believe in. I
think the relief brainwashed them. It was like… god, it was like a fucking disease. I lost quite a
few friends to it.

“Of course, it wasn’t just about vampires - they wanted to rule over humans, too, or whatever, but
the vampires were the first step. They were really just–” he cut off, shaking his head as if trying to
come up with an adequate word. He decided on, “–absolutely bitter fucks, because they made a
mess by siring too many vampires and creating the halfbloods that eradicated them in the first
place, and they didn’t want to fucking clean it up.”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just call me a mess,” Marlene muttered, looking at her nails.
Sirius blinked, and then seemed to realise what he had said; he squeezed his eyes shut in
embarrassment and laughed. It was the happiest Remus had seen him in a day. It was ridiculously
endearing.

“Sorry,” Sirius said, “You know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean,” she said, nodding, still smiling. “Go on, then.”

“Anyway,” he said, shaking his head. “What I was saying was, they kill, and they torture, and they
brainwash, and Riddle is at the foot of it all. And that maybe in 1940 he was simply a figurehead
for the Malfoys, but by 1959 he had both hands on the wheel and they were simply... backing
characters in his catastrophe.”

Sirius paused, swirling the wine around his glass before taking a final, big gulp. Marlene got up
wordlessly and took it from his hands, bringing him a new one. He didn’t even acknowledge it.

“So,” he said after a moment. “We fought.”

“We formed a… group, persay. Not exactly like this one here, but not unlike it. The motive was the
same. The Order, we called it; Order of the Phoenix, wasn’t it, Jamie?”

James smiled to the ground, and Remus frowned.

“James came up with the name,” Sirius said, blithely, and then continued; “We essentially banded
together the most powerful vampires we knew - none as powerful as Riddle, I still don’t know how
he got all his power, maybe he sold his soul to the fucking devil - but powerful enough to take
them all on. So we did. It was a few years long, a drawn out process, and it all cultivated in one
battle in 1959. I think there were about a hundred of us, but we were strong. And their army wasn’t
wholly present - they had split up, and I think we were lucky in that aspect.” He took a deep breath.
“It was June. It was sunny. It was a bloodbath. Genuinely.”

He paused, again, except this time he looked stricken. His eyes flickered to Marlene, and then to
Remus. The only movement was James - he extended his leg, ever so slightly, to nudge his foot
against Sirius’. Simple. Reassuring.
Sirius went on.

“I lost a lot of friends that day,” he said, quietly. “I was the leader. It was my fault. Of course, we
knew there would be casualties, we had all made peace with that, but… but it was a lot. See, I got
to Riddle. I got to his throne-room. James was there, and Marlene. He only had two guards, there
were four of us. I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t understand it.”

“Sorry,” Lily said, quietly, and guiltily at the interjection. “You said... four?”

The room was silent for a moment, before Marlene got up soundlessly.

“I’ll be out on the balcony,” she said quietly. Before she went, however, she reached out to Sirius -
he looked up at her faint touch, and she dug her hands into his hair, brushing a strand out from over
his face. She gave him a firm nod; he gave a weak smile. And she left.

He waited until she was gone to speak again.

“Emmeline Vance,” Sirius said, voice no higher than a whisper. “Beautiful, beautiful woman.
Long, deep brown hair, the brightest eyes. Full of life. So much life.”

He took a breath. “She was Marlene’s wife.”

Remus felt his stomach drop in dread.

“Oh, no,” Lily breathed. Sirius took another sip and went on with his story.

“I couldn’t understand it,” he repeated. “It was like he wanted us to be there. And he kept telling
me to do it - he kept telling me to kill him. And it was off. I could tell it was a trap, I think,
somewhere in me - or, at the very least, I could tell something was off. It didn’t feel right. I went
up to him, and he got up and fought me - he fought all four of us, all of us older than him and yet
he was so strong…” He bit his lip; his eyes were slightly glazed. “And I thought, yes, this is
familiar, this is what we were supposed to do. This is right. I’m going to best him, and I’m going to
kill him, and this hell will all be over. And I did. Best him, that is. The three of them stood back,
and I had him by the throat - and his guards weren’t doing anything. They were just standing there.
It’s like they were statues. And he was laughing - laughing, like a fucking maniac, I could feel his
vocal chords moving under my hand - and I didn’t even have time to let the dread seep in before
they brought him in.”

He stopped, jaw contorting wildly as he clenched and unclenched it, moving the glass from one
hand to another, focused on a particular spot on the coffee table.

He looked up to Remus - his eyes icy, as icy as the picture on the whiteboard. As glossy as Lily’s
in the cafe. He blinked, and they shattered.

“Regulus,” he said, as if every syllable burnt his tongue. “They brought in Regulus.”

James took a breath and put his head in his hands, rubbing his fingers over the line of his forehead.
Sirius laughed, bitterly. There were tears in his eyes, and Remus’ heart sank.

“Snape had him, would you fucking believe that? He had him on one side, Lucius on the other -
that’s the only reason he didn’t get away, because Regulus is strong enough to crush Snape with
his pinky - but they had him, and he was thrashing, and there was a stake to his heart. And I had
Tom Riddle hanging by the throat - I could literally feel his bones cracking - and I could see that it
was an ultimatum. It was an ultimatum to be made within a split second, and I made…” he shook
his head, bottom lip trembling ever so slightly. “Fuck, I didn’t even know that I had made a choice.
I saw him there, stake to his heart - he looked so scared - and… I let my grip go slack.”

He looked into Remus’ eyes, and said, quietly; “Riddle flew out of my arms and ripped
Emmeline’s heart clean out of her chest. It was so fast that I didn’t even see it happen. She was
there… and then she wasn’t.”

Remus saw Lily raise a hand to her mouth, and knew she had begun to cry. Sirius’ face was icy,
impassive, two silent tears running down his face, curling together at the line of his jaw. He
downed the rest of his wine in one. James had not looked up.

“Regulus didn’t know what they were going to do,” he said, after a long, tense moment, with a
slight, bitter smile. “He had been loyal to them - or, no they had been loyal to him. He was the
fucking oldest. He was the most powerful. And yet they had used him - and the worst fucking thing
is,” he had started to get heated now, brows knitting together, nose scrunching in agony, “the worst
thing is is it was all a fucking game - it was a game, to figure out my weakness. Just like Lucius’ is
his footwork, Narcissa’s is her son, Snape’s is his mother..”

He took a breath, and then laughed bitterly.

“His mother - that’s how Regulus escaped, you know. Because I brought his mother up and he
loosened his grip. And that's how Tom Riddle escaped and killed one of my own. Because he
brought my brother up,” he spat the word like it was poison, focusing on a point across the room.
His eyes were pained. “And I loosened my fucking grip.”

Brother.

Of course. Of course. It seemed so obvious. The eyes, the nose, the ice in their eyes. The way their
cheeks sit. The way their eyes are shaped. The way their mouth droops at the corners. His brother.
That’s why it was a touchy subject. That’s why he was upset about his family. That’s why he has
such a vendetta against this coven. That’s why, that’s why, that’s why.

Sirius is a Pureblood, Remus thought. I killed his parents. Sirius is a Pureblood. He lied to me. I
killed his parents. Sirius is a Pureblood. He lied to me, but he’s hurting. He lied to me, but he loves
his brother. He lied to me, but he’s hurting. Say something. Say anything.

“Regulus Black,” Remus whispered, and Sirius laughed now, fully, still bitter, the weight of the
world behind it.

“My little brother,” he said, raising his glass to toast, as if there was anything left in it. “My achilles
heel.”

Say something. Say anything.

“You told me you were born in the twenties.”

Wrong thing. Wrong thing.

Sirius looked at him in disbelief, and then laughed again - this one was different. It was slightly
unhinged. “I never said what century, though, did I, sweetheart?”

I prefer nuisance, Remus’ brain thought incoherently. Speak.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

Better.
Both Sirius and James turned to look at him, now - Sirius’ face was slack with shock. James was
completely unreadable - he had tears in his eyes too, but his jaw was locked and his eyes were
blaring in protection, and Remus, in a ridiculous, sudden light, realised the relationship there.
Brothers, not in the blood sense, but every other. James, taking on Sirius’ weight. James, being the
control when Sirius lost it. James, being the balance when Sirius was falling on one side of the
scale.

(The look in Sirius’ eyes was almost too much for Remus. He was so fucking thankful for James
Potter.)

“What,” Sirius whispered; it was more like a statement than a question, a flat word. No emotion.
Remus repeated his sentiment.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he breathed. “They sound like… like sick, sick people. It was their fault. It
wasn’t yours.”

Sirius looked away, focusing back on his corner of the coffee table.

“Marlene didn’t speak to me for a decade,” he said. His head was hung so that the tears dropped
directly onto the glass, splattering like rainfall on a window. Remus shuffled closer - close enough
that he could lean forward and rest his hands on the coffee table. Drag Sirius’ attention to him. He
always needed Sirius’ attention on him.

“Does she forgive you?” he asked. Sirius looked up at him; so, so beautiful; and his lips parted.

“Yes.”

Remus felt his brows knit together, yet refused to look away from him. His eyes rested unwavered,
brown on grey, and for a second James and Lily melted away and all that existed in the universe,
all that grounded Remus to his stretch of existence was Sirius’ eyes, and this glass coffee table.

“Then forgive yourself.”

His eyes widened slightly. His mouth was still open, slightly - white teeth glinting from between
his lips - and Remus watched as his chest moved jerkily, sending a ripple to his shoulders as he
breathed in; he watched as he closed his mouth, pushing his lip muscles ever so slightly, enough
that his chin tensed; he watched as he swallowed, the lilt of his adam’s apple shifting ever so
slightly and then bouncing back to place. He watched as his eyes flickered down. Back up again.
He watched it all.

I see you now, Remus thought, blood pounding in his ears; passion thrumming through his veins. I
see you now. I see everything.

I see everything.

It was a long moment before anyone said anything.

“I, um-” Lily began, and Sirius finally broke eye contact, the loss of his gaze being a strange
absence of warmth to Remus. “Thank you. For telling us all of that. It can’t have been easy.”

Sirius smiled, and it looked genuine. “Thank you for listening.”

Lily smiled as well, sniffing and reaching a hand up to wipe the stray tears that had fallen from her
eyes, evidence of her truly kind heart - the most kind of them all by a mile. It was fitting, then, that
she would be the one to retire to the balcony to seek out Marlene and offer her whatever she had to
offer.

James seemed wary - understandably, considering they were strangers - but Remus wasn’t worried.
Lily wouldn’t say anything wrong. She had a knack of being able to say the right things to flip your
world upside down when everything else seems bleak and wrong; he knew it firsthand.

Sirius called for service to deliver them dinner, for they hadn’t eaten - Remus’ stomach had begun
to grumble, actually, now that he thought about it - and as soon as it came he removed himself to
his own bedroom with his food. Lily and Marlene came back upon the food arriving, and, if the
way they smiled at each other and relaxed was anything to go by, James’ wariness had truly been
for nothing.

No one spoke about the story. It felt too raw a thing to return to, for the time being.

Only about an hour later, after Lily and (her new friend, apparently) Marlene had gone back out to
the balcony to enjoy the pleasantly cool night, did Remus turn to his remaining comrade.

“James?"

He turned from where he was sitting on his phone, sipping on a can of Coca Cola. “Yeah?”

“Er—” Remus started, not knowing where to really begin his query. “I… had a question? That
Sirius didn’t exactly cover in his recount.”

“Go on.”

He cleared his throat. “What… well, what happened afterwards? To send Riddle into dormancy?
It’s rare, right?”

James smiled, but it seemed a little pained. “Yeah, um– well, do you know what dormancy is?
Like, the scientific explanation?”

“Dormancy occurs when a vampire’s body is too damaged beyond repair for the quick-time
healing to kick in,” Remus recited - a textbook answer. James nodded. “It’s an instinctual form of
self-preservation.”

James nodded once. “Yep,” he said, dryly. “From what I know, it essentially short-circuits our
nerve system, right? It can’t figure out what to heal first, so it just… doesn’t. But, we are creatures
made to survive, so as a last resort our body just shuts down completely.”

“Yeah,” Remus continued. “And it can last years.”

“Shortest I’ve heard of was seven years, longest I’ve heard was seventy,” James said. “And it very
rarely happens because we tend to be very high up on the food chain, but some things -
werewolves, for example - can… savage us enough to fall into dormancy.”

Remus swallowed, and read between the lines.

“Sirius,” he said quietly, and James looked down and smiled that pained smile once again. Nodded
once.

“I think Sirius underestimates his own strength,” he said, quietly, after a moment. “He’s repressed
it for so long that he forgets it’s there until someone wrongs him and he rips their jaw clean off.”

Remus’ own jaw dropped.

“He ripped his jaw off?” he said, disbelieving, and James laughed.

“Yeah,” he said, “it was so quick I didn’t even realise what happened. Riddle… well, you know
what happened—and Sirius ran and grabbed him by the neck, and so Snape threatened Regulus.
Sirius brings up Eileen, Snape falters - Regulus is out of harm, thus, the jaw comes clean off. I
believe he took an arm off too.”

Remus, hilariously, felt an urge to laugh. He covered his mouth but James caught his intention and
guffawed.

“It’s fucking brilliant, isn’t it?”

“Oh my God,” Remus said quietly. “How did he not die?”

James shrugged. “We didn’t have chance to burn him. It’s a difficult process, but there are dark
witches all over the place to put our limbs back together.”

“Right,” Remus said airily. “Of course.”

At that point Lily and Marlene walked back in. They were arm-in-arm.

“Um, I think I have to get home soon,” Lily said to the room at large, and Remus checked the time
- it was approaching half past eleven. James stood up.

“If you want, I can give you a lift?” he said, hopefully, before attempting to put on a bit of charm.
“We do live in the same building, after all.”

Lily raised an eyebrow. She seemed entirely unamused. “You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” she said, shrugging, and unlinked herself from Marlene to give Remus a hug and a kiss on
the cheek. “I’m on the seven-seven shift tomorrow, so I’ll call you when I’m done, okay?”

Remus smiled. “Okay.”

Lily left with James in tow, who announced himself her protector from the vampires of the
building - he was met with a devastating eye roll - and Remus realised just how tired he was.

“I should probably go back down to my place,” Marlene said, cracking her knuckles absently,
speaking Remus’ thoughts.

“I’ll probably go to bed,” he admitted, and she shot him a cheesing smile and wished him
goodnight, picking up her things and hopping out the door.

Sirius’ penthouse was possibly more daunting when he was on his own than ever; where, with
others, it felt like more room was taken up and there were less shadowy spaces and overbearing
high ceilings, on his own he felt like an ant in a mansion. He crept up the stairs slowly, keeping an
instinctive eye out for Sirius, lest he lurk in the shadows and scare him (though, after today’s
events, Remus was pretty sure that was the last thing on his mind) and he made his way along the
corridor.

He stopped in front of the room with the wall lamp - his room - and was about to enter when he
heard a soft noise from the end of the hallway. Remus knew threatening noises, and this wasn’t
one - it seemed more of a sign of life - but he had also been of the information that Sirius’ room
was on the opposite side of the penthouse, so he was, admittedly, curious about what he was doing.

Despite his brain telling him that he most likely was not in danger, he palmed his side anyway for
his weapons and clutched onto a small handgun (where was his dagger? When had he put it down?
When had he felt comfortable enough to put it down?). He walked with light footsteps along the
darkening corridor, gun poised but not pointed. Once he got about fifteen seconds down he noticed
a door was ajar, and he pushed it soundlessly open.

It was a huge library - one of the biggest in a living space that Remus had ever seen. It was rather
gothic compared to the majority of the flat, but perhaps that was the stacks of old, leather-bound
books, green and blue and brown and patterned with old-timey gold lettering and swirls, edged with
brown from where they had been worn and agéd. There was a little nook with an emerald green
divan against a magnificently decorated window (the curtains looked like they had come straight
from Buckingham Palace) and a circular similarly velvet-looking seating area, curling around a
table that slotted in and had a lamp poised on it’s head. Real fire, of course. Remus had come to
notice that there was a strange abundance of fire in the presence of someone who could so easily
burn.

He craned his neck; there was a curve in the room, walls still lined with bookshelves and room
halved by a marble pillar; and there was Sirius, with his back to the door.

Remus stepped in quietly (though he had no doubt that Sirius was aware of his presence) and took a
few steps to the right to see the scene fully. The opposing wall, that Sirius was stood in front of,
seemed to be built somewhat like a shrine, or a memoriam of some kind - of what, Remus didn’t
know, but there were candles on the table and a variety of portraits arranged tactically on the walls;
some old, some new. Sirius was stood in front of a portrait that looked like it was from the
Renaissance era.

There were two boys depicted; both with short, black hair, both dressed in fittingly regal clothes for
their regal aura. One of them was sat on a chair, head tilted slightly, and the other was stood tall
next to him, soldier-like but not quite; he had a soft, baby-faced quality to him that even transpired
through paint. The boy sitting down looked wearier, somehow; like he’d seen and experienced
more. Been beaten down; sent to sea and back again, time and time again. The fresh-faced boy
standing up looked like he was ready to wade into a war that he didn’t understand, and Remus
knew exactly who they were.

“You’ve been hiding this place from me,” he said, quietly, turning away from the portrait to admire
the bookshelves. He trailed his fingers along the spines of a couple of travel narratives from the
eighteenth century, apparently, and inhaled the smell of old books and crackling incense deeply.
Sirius chuckled.

“I’ll give you a tour at some point,” he said, still unmoving. “Though I’m afraid this is the most
impressive room, so everything else might seem a bit bleak in comparison.”

Remus shrugged, though Sirius couldn’t see him. “I have low standards.”

The vampire’s shoulders shook slightly with abject, breathy laughter. Remus took a breath and used
it to propel himself forward with a few steps, settling himself into Sirius’ left side. His hands were
resting on the table, as if holding him up, and his eyes were unmoving from the portrait.

“Which one are you?” Remus asked, though he knew the answer. Sirius smirked.

“The handsome one.”

“So, the guy standing up then?”

Sirius let out a sharp breath, lips upturning, and turned away from the portrait to face Remus - who
found he was smiling.

“Fuck you,” he said, and Remus laughed.

He turned back to the portrait, and Remus squinted.

“What year was this, then?”

Sirius inhaled. “1511. They had just let that imbecile Henry VIII ascend to the throne. My father
was a part of his Privy Council.”

Remus stayed silent, giving himself a few moments to re-evaluate his feelings. His judgement had
been clouded before, and he felt his head was straight enough to decide how he felt about the
whole business now.

Sirius had lied to him.

He found he wasn’t as angry at that as he expected to be; or wished to be; and it baffled him ever
so slightly. Was it because he was used to it? Perhaps it was. But how could it be? He couldn’t
think of any other moment that Sirius had outright lied to him - snarky comments and sarcastic
insults, yes, but there was never an opportunity for them to know each other enough to withhold
information in the first place. Until now.

It was rocky ground. It was foreign waters.

And on the one hand, it was fucked up. It was irritating - it irritated him, that he had been sitting
there and Sirius had been so blatantly lying to his fucking face and demeaning the true weight of
the coven. Because it was hefty. It was so much more than Remus had ever imagined - there was
so much more at stake than he thought there was, and they both had vendettas; they both had a
common enemy, Sirius’ more pressing, sure, but common nonetheless; so surely that, more than
anything, should be the motivator to be truthful with each other? Surely the pain he had felt, the
guilt he carried would be motivator enough to cooperate?

Because being straight with him about his past would have made this a lot easier from the very
beginning. It would have saved him a lot of unnecessary confusion - a lot of unnecessary
miscommunication; and wasn’t that exactly what they were trying to achieve? Communication?
Remus felt a bit angry, somewhere deep inside him, that Sirius had agreed to be open to him by
lying to his face about something as fucking huge as him being a part of the specific dynasty of
vampires that they were here to fucking kill.

But Remus couldn’t help but think about himself from two months ago, and how peeved he
would’ve been, then. More than now, and he projected himself back; he placed himself into the
mindset of the Remus who didn’t know everything that he knew now.

Why? Why would he be angry, exactly? Because, in the bigger picture, a lie like that wouldn’t have
mattered - he was a vampire regardless, an enemy regardless. So it would just be the lie itself. The
inherency of withholding such a huge truth. The concept of lying, and the Remus back then
wouldn’t have been as sympathetic as the full-blown idiot he was now; because he wouldn’t have
believed Sirius had needed a reason.

He knew, now, that there was a reason; there must be a reason. He knew, now, that there was more
to Sirius than he had ever thought.
But a small part of Remus’ head was blaring red alarm signals. This was… big. Purebloods weren't
just older vampires - he hadn’t just lied about his fucking age, like Dorcas still trying to pass for
twenty five at a bar - they were stronger, more powerful, more skilled. They were inherently lethal.
They could make a human do anything; and here he was, a human, an idiot, idiot human stood next
to a pureblood vampire who could turn around and reach his hands into his skull. Squeeze his brain
like it was a plaything. Kick it around like a fucking football. It would be entirely telling of his
self-preservation if he wasn’t worried - if any of the building trust that he had gained with Sirius
hadn’t fallen to the ground and crushed like a Jenga tower.

For the older a vampire got, the more their strength gained; and Sirius was, apparently, son to the
oldest Purebloods living.

Until Remus and Mary had killed them, that is.

And in a sudden moment of clarity - and Remus, genuinely, almost wanted to laugh at the
absurdity of it all - he realised how easy it must have been for Sirius to escape him all those years.
How easy it would’ve been to kill him. And yet he kept coming back. And yet, here Remus was,
standing, breathing. Seeing him. Feeling in a position to excuse him from this lie, to understand
why he had done it when three months ago he hadn’t even thought the vampire sentient enough to
form fucking relationships; live human experiences. Hadn’t thought him strong enough to resist
blood due to his animalism, hadn’t thought him courteous enough to not leave a trail of bodies in
his wake, and now here Remus was, and for some reason a part of him that had probably been as
dormant as Tom fucking Riddle for the past 8 years was telling him that he wouldn’t hurt him?

Why? Why? Why? He felt like all he had been doing recently was asking why.

But his questions were pertinent, because he was angry, and yet he was sympathetic. He was wary;
his walls were up; and yet he was open to being swayed. Whatever half-suicidal remote in his brain
wanted to understand Sirius, understand why he had done it. Extend him the sympathy that the
Remus from three months ago would be aghast at. Approach him with the dagger sheathed.

So where, exactly, did that leave them? How was this conversation to go? What did Remus want?
Was he to expect an apology?

That was the last thing he expected to leave Sirius’ lips, in all honesty; so, of course, that was just
what did.

“I’m sorry,” he said, no louder than a whisper, not moving his gaze. “For lying to you. You have
every right to be angry.”

Remus sighed. His brain felt like mush. “There’s a lot to think about, here.”

“I know.”

“This whole time,” Remus said slowly, getting his thoughts in order, “you—I mean, you could’ve
killed me easily. You had no problem escaping. Eight whole years.”

Sirius’ lip quirked slightly, but he stayed quiet.

“Like,” Remus said, finding that the small part of him that was irrationally angry had taken the
wheel, “what, was it all just a game to you? Making me look like an idiot? Trying to get me to trust
you only to throw it back in my face?”

He frowned. “No, that wasn’t it at all—”

“And do you not want me to work with you? Do you not want to take out this coven together?
Because I think that you being exactly what they are is a pretty fucking pertinent piece of
information for us to do that, Sirius.”

“I am not exactly what they are,” Sirius whispered. His face was stoic. Possibly even a little sad.
When he spoke again, he sounded a little like he was going to cry. “I’m not.”

“And I want to believe that, Sirius,” Remus breathed, softer than ever. “I have no fucking idea
why, but I do.”

Sirius was monumentally quiet. Remus focused on the flickering flame. Watched it become a
million things at once. Wished he could get it to freeze, just for a second, so he could pick it apart
and understand it.

“But why did you lie?” he asked. “I don’t understand. I don’t get it.”

“Everyone knows me around here,” Sirius said quietly. “Have you noticed?”

Remus gaped at the change of subject - a month ago he might have been angry, but he had learnt to
pick up on Sirius’ vocalisations, now; learnt to pick up on when one thing led to another. He
nodded.

“They treat you like some kind of fucked up royalty.”

Sirius laughed dryly. “Yep. Well, I’m the closest thing to royalty they’ve got. This place used to be
my father’s, you know? He used it as a brothel for vampires to lure innocent humans to their
deaths; it was disgusting.” He paused, rubbing his lips together. “The last thing my brother did
before he disappeared was file himself legally deceased so the reins of this place would go to me. I
was written out of all Black family wills—what, five centuries ago, give or take?”

Remus nodded again. (He was itching to know more about the wills, but seeing that this was a
conversation with a pointed end.)

Sirius sighed. It felt like his entire essence poured out with that one, lone breath.

“You didn’t,” he said, as if he was forcing out the words.

“I didn’t…?”

“You didn’t care about me,” Sirius said. “You treated me like any other bloodsucking scum. It was
just refreshing, to not have to be… myself, for a while.”

“So, what, you don’t… like it? You don’t like this?”

“I don’t like it,” he repeated, plainly. “The hell that I was born into; my family. I hate it all. I hate
the lot of them. It’s all just… flashy performatism and corrupt authority and blood supremacy -
especially since we’re the oldest living family. They require me to be someone that I’m not.
They’re vile, and no matter how hard I try - and trust me, I have five centuries of running away
from them on my back to prove it - I’ll be associated with them until I die. And I fucking hate it.”

“So,” Remus said, squeezing his eyes shut to try and make sense of it all. “So, you liked me—or,”
he blundered, “I mean, you kept coming back to annoy me, because… I treated you like shit?”

Sirius turned to look at him briefly, and then laughed. “Yes, I suppose I did.”
“That’s…” Remus paused, shaking his head in slight disbelief; possible fondness, “so entirely
backwards that I don’t even know where to start.”

“I never claimed to be stable,” Sirius joked, and, as much as he didn’t want them to, the corners of
Remus’ lips quirked.

Sirius exhaled and looked down, and the air tasted stale, again. Remus’ face hardened into a frown.
Whatever weight, whatever complication Remus had seen earlier resting on Sirius’ shoulders felt
like it was seeping through the air between their shoulders and piercing his heart, and he was
simply letting it in. Enjoying the taste of him, even despite… well, everything.

Remus Lupin was a stupid, stupid man.

Sirius broke the tangible silence.

“I dug myself into a hole,” Sirius said with an air of repentance. “And for that, I’m sorry. I should
have told you earlier, but I didn’t, because… because I didn’t want you to look at me the way
you’re looking at me now.”

He brought his hands up to his hair in one whiplash-like movement and pulled his gaze up with it,
locking eyes with Remus once more - and, god fucking damn, he actually felt his face soften up.
He felt the anger drain out of it like an abscess. The world was crashing and burning around his
feet and he didn’t seem to care.

There was a long, painfully intense moment in which it was just Remus, Sirius, and the glistening
of the candlelight.

“I know you probably have questions,” Sirius said, shattering the air once more. Not letting it built
high enough to forge a wall between them again. Remus was thankful for it; he didn’t think he
could hold it up on his own. “And I meant what I said, in the motel. You can ask me anything. All
of my cards are on the table.”

And at the mention of the hotel provoked the devil and the angel to perch onto Remus’ shoulder
again. The rush of cold water and the scalding hot trickled down his neck. He wanted to believe
him. He didn’t want to believe him. He wanted to trust that he wouldn’t lie again, but how could
he? And yet; yet, how could he build up trust - trust that he knew they had to have, trust that was
pertinent - without acknowledging mistakes and moving on?

Sirius was trying. It was hard for him; even a fool could deduce that; but he was trying. And in a
leap of faith, Remus decided to believe him.

He shuffled through the cards with nimble fingers.

“How old are you, really?”

He wasn’t sure why that was his first question, and apparently, neither was Sirius. He smiled, and
straightened up.

“I am seven hundred and ninety eight years old,” he said, and the air in Remus’ throat froze up.

“You’re eight hundred years old?!”

“Not yet,” Sirius said primly; and Remus had a realisation that kickstarted the wind and almost
forced a hysterical laugh out of him.
“So you were born in the twenties!” he said, and a smile appeared on Sirius’ face faster than
before.

“Okay, that was on you for assuming I meant the 1920s,” he retorted. “I told you, I didn’t say
which century.”

“Twelve-twenty-three,” Remus breathed, bracing himself with two hands on the chest in front of
him. “Wow.”

“Mhm.”

“Are you actually the oldest? What about the ones born in… 900 whatever?”

“Yeah, I exaggerated, slightly,” Sirius said openly. “I am by technicality the sixth oldest. I have an
aunt and an uncle and three cousins - you know them. Druella, Cygnus, Bellatrix?” His face fell,
slightly, into mild, petty irritation as he added, “Narcissa only has six months on me, though and
I’ll forever be angry about it.”

“Okay,” he said, slowly. “Okay, so, did the sun ever bother you? Or were you lying about that,
too?”

Sirius frowned, a little; his face scrunched up in slight embarrassment. “I… may have been lying
about that too.”

“Oh, you fucking asshole. Sunburn? Really?”

Sirius laughed, and it was musical.

“In my defence, it probably would burn me if I stayed out in it for like… twenty-four hours,” he
said, which Remus scoffed at, because he was pretty sure anyone would get sunburn under the sun
for twenty four fucking hours.

Jesus Christ.

“So,” he said, trying to make sense of his thoughts. “My dagger… the holy water?”

“Oh, no, that burns,” Sirius said with a nod. “But the pain is just more of a tickle, by now. I’m
desensitised to it.”

“The diner, two days ago, when you moved out of the sun–”

“Absolute show,” Sirius said, and he was trying not to laugh. “And you stressed me out, so I
walked out and forgot to put my umbrella up until I was halfway across the fucking lot–”

Remus let out a noise of disbelief, and then his jaw dropped; a lightbulb flickered over his head.

“Two months ago,” he said, slowly, “when you got trapped on my porch–”

“I absolutely was just bored and wanted to annoy you, yes.”

“Oh my god,” Remus said, letting his head fall into his hands, and Sirius laughed, sharply and
quickly. As if it had been let loose and he reigned it in.

“To be fair,” he said lightly, “I truly don’t know how you didn’t figure that one out.”

“Shut up,” he said, trying to stop himself from laughing at the sheer absurdity of this entire
conversation.

He pulled his hands down from his face and exhaled; the one, last issue he had tugging at his mind
incessantly. He sighed, and Sirius seemed to sense when a more pressing topic was on the horizon.
He stiffened, and he waited.

“Purebloods...” he started, quieter, now. “I mean, the abilities they— you have. I don’t—I mean, I
need to know…”

He was unsure of how to word this one, and absurdly relieved when Sirius seemed to understand
him.

“I never used it on you,” he said, firmly. “Ever. I would never.”

The devil in front of the fire seemed to take this in his stride, but Remus wasn’t sitting on it
comfortably. He wasn’t sure he ever would.

He tried to calm the amalgamation of questions flicking around his brain, but his thirst for
knowledge simply reached too far. He tapped his finger repeatedly on the desk and turned, slightly.

“It,” he said. “What is… it? What, exactly, can you do?”

Sirius looked at him and smirked, and it held a different kind of energy that didn’t seem to infuriate
Remus as much.

“It’s hard to explain,” he said. “It’s sort of like a… pull? To the synapses in the brain. I can’t
properly explain how at all - there’s no metaphor that even begins to encompass how it feels - but
it’s like…” he held out his palms, flat, facing upwards. Stared at them for a moment. “Like if I
work hard enough, these… reigns materialise in my hand. Not actual reigns, metaphoric ones, but I
can feel them; they’re like puppet strings. And they split off and are connected to millions of little
plugs in the brain, and I can… I can tug on one and make someone do something. Alter memories,
control movement, get people to tell me whatever I want them to. And it only works on humans.”

Remus felt one part disgusted, and one part absolutely fascinated. He felt a slight shroud of unease
come over him, but his feet were still solid on the ground.

“That’s…” he said, making a face instinctively as his brain whirred through the ethical and
moralistic considerations; “absolutely barbaric.”

Sirius grimaced. “It is not without its drawbacks, though, may I add,” he said, inclining his head.
“It’s like - you know a witch, right?”

Remus nodded.

“Have you ever seen her perform one of the forbidden curses?”

He blinked, contemplating, and realised that yes, actually, he had; Mary had performed the Killing
curse, once. They were on a werewolf hunt. It was a last, desperate resort to save Dorcas’ life; it
had taken so much out of her she had collapsed and had been bedridden for a whole day.

“It’s a similar premise,” Sirius said simply. “We have to be, like, drunk on human blood.
Absolutely paralytic on it. And it drains all of our strength. I don’t use it often - ever, really.” He
took a moment, frowned a little in contemplation, and then said; “It’s quite like the Imperius curse,
actually.”
Remus hummed in acknowledgment. The information sat like a rock in his stomach, and they fell
into a painful silence.

“Sirius, I—” he started, before swallowing and taking a shaky breath. He wanted - wanted so hard
to believe that these were all the cards - but he simply couldn’t shake the unease that rattled
through his bones. “I don’t know what to think. I don’t—I mean, how do I know you’re not lying
about everything? How do I really know you haven’t used it on me?”

“You don’t,” he said, simply. Remus groaned in frustration; unsure of what he actually wanted.
Perpetually unsure of what he wanted.

“How am I supposed to trust you?” Remus said, and Sirius looked at him as if the answer was
obvious.

“You don’t,” he pushed, again, firmer this time. “You don’t have to trust me, Remus. You have to
trust that we have a common enemy, and that we need each other. Put your faith in that, and then
ask yourself, logically, if I would do anything to jeopardise that knowing what you know about my
brother, and about Emmeline.” He tilted his head, slightly, and then smirked. “Trust what you
know - that I’m good at strategizing. Casual perk of being a genius.”

“Self-proclaimed,” Remus muttered.

Sirius laughed quietly, running a hand through his hair. Remus took a deep breath.

“I would’ve used it,” Remus said, slowly, after a moment that felt like a millennia. “On me. If
treating you like shit was all you wanted. I mean, you could’ve made me fill whatever fucking
masochistic fantasy you had with ease.”

Sirius hummed. “I don’t know,” he murmured, looking up to the ceiling. “I quite liked you as you
were.”

The words settled deep into the roots of the room, spreading flagrantly through the walls.
Threatening to close in on them, but not. Remus did not let himself entertain that there was
anything deeper there than hollow words on Sirius’ part, and clueless entertainment on his.

Yet, he could not say that he had not used Sirius too. For what, exactly, he wasn’t sure - a fixation,
a target, a hunt. Fulfilment. Excitement. They had intertwined, at some point. Hollow became
whole. Clueless only became knowledgeable with cooperation, and this was cooperation, here,
now, and Remus was too much of an empath to forget the crystal tears that had marked their way
down Sirius’ face and the guilt that had shown itself on his face like a heart beating outside of his
chest.

And, where the lore and the legend and the bombs exploding through Remus’ rickety shelter were
all incredibly complicated, yes, the way that they needed each other was, in actuality, rather
simple. Lungs and air. Sun and moon. He could live a million lifetimes and in every single one
Sirius would come back to him. And while he didn’t understand the flow of consciousness that
they somehow shared, it still seemed to him all of a sudden quite obvious that, no, Sirius couldn’t
have craved him for anything more than the skin and bones that he already was. Because Sirius had
needed the simplicity of his hate as much as Remus had needed the complication of his.

And he wondered, possibly, if that, there, was his incentive to believe him. If that, there, was his
incentive to acquiesce. A part of him wanted to know, for certain - a part of him wanted a vial of
truth serum to materialise on the desk in front of them, for there to be a foolproof way of knowing
that he could trust the vampire - the pureblood - but a part of him, also, didn’t.
Thrill. Chase. Desire. Want. Need. What was Remus’ life without Sirius’ unpredictability? What
was Remus’ life without the complication?

Would he prefer to not know - would he prefer to put his life on the line, without full certainty that
the man standing beside him would go the same way? For what; some adrenaline rush? Some
colour to his life? Yes, he was quite sure he would, actually. He was quite sure he would take
Sirius’ complication as it was rather than try and force them to be something that they were not.

And Sirius needed the simplicity of his hate. The simplicity. As he was, not as he could be. The
words rattled around his hollow brain like they belonged there, and he didn’t know much; he
wasn’t certain of much regarding himself, his life, his practice, the object of his utmost hate and
simultaneously his utmost desire; but he knew that those words were home. He knew no truer
words had been spoken, and thus was simply more incentive for Remus to believe that he truly
wouldn’t have betrayed his agency to make it anything more than the pure hatred that he so craved.
That he wouldn’t use the one thing he hated about himself to pretend not to be himself.

That he could work with asshole pureblood Sirius Black just as easily as he had agreed to work
with asshole normal vampire Sirius Black. That, once the dust settled, it didn’t matter, really.

He had been convinced a few days ago that the complication was going to be his undoing, one of
these days. That it would be his end, and he would crash and burn while Sirius would float
aimlessly beside him as always. He felt different now. He saw wider; he saw in more colours, more
vivacity. He was picking up the complication; learning it like a child learning his mother tongue.
Memorising the curve of Sirius’ nose and the cold, warm, smoothness of his fingertips like it was
meant to be his all along.

Perhaps it had been his all along. Perhaps choosing to trust him, here, was the first step in learning
how to use it.

The flame crackled on and Sirius stood silent, and there was not much that he could do other than
change the subject.

“You said your father owned this place?” he said, tapping his fingers on the wooden desk; Sirius
nodded. He seemed to take the subject change in his stride.

“Yeah. Awful place, it was. The system in New York was dogshit back then - there were all sorts
of disputes between land and territory. My father didn’t care, obviously - he just wanted to get his
rocks off on human blood - but, when I switched up this place and started it as like a… sanctuary,
of sorts, they listened to me. It all settled rather quickly.”

He finished with a slight smile on his face; he was proud. It made Remus’ stomach flip. He tried to
ignore it.

“Well, I suppose that explains all the questionable decorative choices,” he said lightly. The air still
felt tense between them, but a hole was forged with the lightness of a joke and the force of Sirius
laughing.

As said, he laughed, turning to look at him, brows knitted together. “Oi.”

“I mean,” Remus said, lips quirking, “the fact that half this place looks like a suburban townhouse
and the other half looks like a gothic manor.”

“Yes, well,” Sirius said, “I tried to erase as much of the past as I could, but I couldn’t quite bring
myself to change some places. Like here, for example. Too beautiful.”
Remus nodded. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

They lapsed into silence; but it was not as tense as before. The candles continued crackling on the
table below them, and Remus let his eyes scan over the other portraits on the wall.

There was another of Sirius, smaller, and seemingly a lot later than the first if going off stylistic
choices. His hair was longer, long like he wore it now, and - if it were even possible to convey this
via paint - he was free. He was obviously free.

His eyes diverted, and there was a portrait of a woman that was unmistakably a Victorian era
Marlene, and another one from the same era of her and James. There were a mix of paintings and
photographs - a portrait of Sirius and a woman who looked strikingly like him, not just in
physicality but in the strange kind-looking ice of his eyes that he shared only with his brother, and
another one with her further up - a photo, this time, from the fifties or earlier - one of the only ones
in which they were smiling.

There was a picture of James, Marlene and Sirius, and another woman to Marlene’s right - it
seemed to be in the twenties, as her and Marlene were in flapper dresses and pearls. She was East
Asian; her hair was wavy, cascading down just past her shoulder, and she had a bright smile,
contrasting the other three by miles. Her energy was infectious.

Sirius hadn’t lied - Emmeline truly had been beautiful.

And there was a picture. It was not up on the walls - it was actually ripped, slightly, as if it had
been pulled down in a fit of anger. It was strewn behind a pile of books on the side of the desk, and
had Remus been standing a step to the right he would not have seen it.

It was a photograph of four people. It was mother and father and son and son.

He had no clue when it had been taken - there were gaps in his knowledge pertaining to why,
exactly, Sirius had been with his family when he and Mary had burned them to the ground, but it
was obviously during this period, and Sirius looked absolutely miserable. His brother did not look
particularly happy either - Regulus was smiling, but his eyes were not. He looked like Sirius in the
portrait from 1511. He had experienced the war and the carnage that his older brother had, too, and
Remus felt empathy all of a sudden, looking at them there - their father’s hand grasped around
Sirius’ shoulder, their mother’s around Regulus’; they were terrifying, menacingly evil-looking
despite how young they were. Their age showed in the evil set of their eyes, and Sirius was a child.
He was nothing of the Sirius that Remus knew - he was nothing of his Sirius but a pawn, in that
angrily-handled photo, and in a strange feeling of triumph Remus was quite proud of the fact that
he and Mary had killed them, actually.

He sighed and looked down. The person standing beside him had baggage that Remus could not
even begin to comprehend, and whilst he could see the misery in the grainy picture they had still
weaned him, and Remus, who had not seen his own mother for six years and missed her terribly,
could not stop the empath from overtaking him.

All the cards were on the table.

“I’m sorry,” came out of his mouth quite before he realised he was saying it. Sirius turned his head
and frowned.

“What for?”

“Killing your parents.”

Sirius frowned. “You already apologised for that.”

“But I didn’t know they were your parents.”

“I just told you about how much I hated them.”

Remus shrugged. “But they were your parents for eight hundred years.”

“Seven hundred and ninety eight, actually.”

Remus rolled his eyes, and he heard Sirius chuckle slightly.

“I’m sorry,” Sirius started - Remus couldn’t help but feel like some boundary had been broken, and
they were falling into a waterfall of endless and needless sorry’s - “for getting angry with you that
one time when you called me disloyal. Pushing you against the tree, and everything. Troubled
family relationships, you know.”

“You had all the right to do that.”

“You didn’t know,” Sirius said quietly.

“I shouldn’t have assumed.”

“I shouldn’t have expected you not to assume.”

“Isn’t that the point of our truce?” Remus asked - they had never called it a truce, and the word felt
funny in Remus' mouth; he was unsure of whether it was the implication that this was temporary,
and whether he felt that was a good or a bad thing. “I learn more about you to stop throwing out
debased assumptions about your kind, and you understand more of where I’m coming from so we
can avoid… that.”

Sirius chuckled weakly. “Unlearning our prejudices.”

“Yes.”

“Two sides of a centuries-long war putting down their weapons and talking it out like civilised
people.”

“Yep. For the bigger picture. For the bigger threat. It’s quite poetic, actually.”

“So,” Sirius said, turning his body to face Remus, hand still leaning on the table. “When all this is
over, if we, maybe, end up muting the hostility between our kind or something… or even if we
don’t, I guess, either way—”

He trailed off, looking down, pressing his lips into a thin line. (Remus wanted to cup his face and
bring him back to him.)

“Either way...?”

“Where does that leave us?”

The question rang clear and thick throughout the room; the candlelight flickered, and Remus’ eyes
locked on the flame—something that could tear his world apart in a matter or seconds, condensed
down into such a beautiful thing, a sweet, fragile item. He almost wanted to pinch the flame out—
the anger bloomed in his chest like the reverb of a guitar—but he knew in his heart he couldn’t. He
could never.
Sirius’ hand was lying next to it, dainty and pale against the deep gothic-looking wood, and
Remus, without letting himself think about it, found his own hand darting towards it, craving touch
after so long holding himself in neutrality. Craving a way to lay down their cards - a way to settle
their thrashing souls into transquility, just for the time being.

You fucked up, today, he wanted to say with the soft brush of pinky against pinky, but we will keep
swiping our knives through the vines of our complication, and there will be a day when the lights
rise over the horizon and it will not matter.

His fingertips buzzed as they brushed against his skin. It wasn’t as warm as it had been that day in
the motel, but it was warm enough to feel blood-flushed; to make him feel sweet, and fragile, even
though Remus knew very well that he was not - and he found himself realising he would like to
explore Sirius cold or warm; that he wasn’t entirely sure that it would make a difference anymore.

He palmed the ridge of Sirius’ knuckles with his fingertips and felt a return sensation of the other’s
fingers pressing upwards into his palm. A light sensation that sent every cell he had on overdrive.

Sirius curled his pinky around Remus’ own. It felt like a promise, though of what, neither of them
knew.

Today you fit in the palm of my hand, and tomorrow I will fit into yours.

“Is that your answer?” Sirius breathed; he had closed himself off again, self-preservation, but
Remus could tell by the twitch of his eyebrow and clench of his jaw that he was feeling everything.
He exhaled.

“Your skin is warm,” he said placidly, rubbing his pointer finger a tad rougher around the
stretching skin of Sirius’ knuckle. “Did you know that?”

Sirius swiped his tongue over his bottom lip, hand moving as slightly as he could. “The surface of
my skin warms up quickly… when I’m near… warm things– er– the… the candles.”

Remus couldn’t resist the smile that grew on his face. Sirius scowled.

“What?”

“Are you thirsty?”

A blank look appeared on Sirius’ face for a moment, before he, apparently, registered what Remus
was referring to; his entire face darkened, and yet he didn’t move his hand.

“Shut up.”

“What are you going to do? Pounce on me again?”

“I’ll kill you.”

“No you won’t. You can’t even move your hand.”

Perhaps this was the wrong thing to say - Remus immediately mourned the lack of Sirius’ hand
underneath his as he jerked it away almost immediately as the one thing he could control. Remus
laughed and jumped like a little kid to retrieve it, and Sirius entertained him, stepping back and
holding his hand up high - this didn’t affect Remus, as he was the taller one (albeit not by much),
but Sirius was moving it so flagrantly and quickly that he couldn’t grab it, walking backwards as
Remus moved forwards.
They were both laughing like children; Remus gripped onto Sirius’ shoulder to try and heave
himself up and Sirius hit him on the top of the head with the rogue hand in question, causing him to
stagger back, and Sirius followed. The whoosh of air as Sirius propelled himself forward past the
table again blew out three of the candles, leaving a measly two lighting up this corner of the room;
dim and alone.

“Get off,” Remus laughed as Sirius gripped his wrists, not hard, but hard enough, and so much so of
an angle that Remus couldn’t get to the hand he had been jumping for. Sirius grinned and held
Remus vaguely in place as he squirmed, and after a moment or so he began to walk again, pushing
Remus back-first into one of the bookshelves to their left and pinning his wrists above his head,
against the spines of the dusty old hardbacks.

Remus took a sharp breath in and looked over Sirius’ face; his smile had faded, but not completely.
The curves of his lips were still upturned, and Remus thought distantly that perhaps he had been a
terrible judge of appearance in noting that his lips were perpetually downturned, when they were
not; when they were this, and this was marvellous. He wondered if that was really the same smile
he had been looking at all these years, and where the fine line was between a smile and a sneer;
had his judgement of Sirius simply clouded these feelings that overtook him, or was it a change
that he had actively been a part of to evoke this soft smile from him now?

How strange, he thought, that they could ever be in this position and not underlying it with threat
of violence and death. How peculiar that this, with him, could be enjoyable. He hadn’t felt - even
thought - about his gun once since he had sheathed it upon entering and seeing Sirius’ presence. He
hadn’t even noticed the absence of his dagger - the dagger that he used to carry everywhere with
him in case of a chance encounter with the man who was pinning him to this wall, now, in his own
fucking home - and it was very, very strange to be without it; but not scary. Remus had exhausted
his fears; he had encountered hesitation and repression and entertained his close-mindedness for as
long as he was able to before the flood-gates opened, and this new world encased him in its strange
new glory and soothed his worries with grey eyes and flirtatious teasing and pet-names that he
didn’t even fucking hate anymore.

He had gotten used to his life being on the line, and he had long accepted his ruination, so he was
willing to go as far as Sirius wanted to go.

He put their fate in the hands of Sirius Black, and he did it willingly.

“I don’t know how to act with you when I’m not trying to kill you,” Sirius whispered, breath cold
against his face; his head inclined, and Remus knew without looking that his eyes were back on the
scar on his neck.

He let his grip on Remus’ wrists go slack, and they fell to either side of his face, Sirius’ touch
ghosting over his skin but barely touching anymore. Remus swallowed. He didn’t exactly know
either. This was new territory, but there was no escaping the tension seeping between their two
bodies.

“Do you trust me?” Remus asked; a leap of faith in his breath. Sirius looked up from his neck into
his eyes and his mouth contorted upwards.

“No,” he said, residual of the word on his mouth in the form of a pout, and Remus grinned.

“Good.”

“You’re a nuisance.”
“I like that.”

“Nuisance?”

Remus bit his lip. “Yes.”

“Should it replace pretty boy, or sweetheart?”

“Neither,” Remus said, breath caught in his throat. “You can call me all three. You can call me
what you want. You can call me everything.”

“Everything,” Sirius murmured, eyes going back to his neck. Remus scoffed an amused breath.

“I didn’t mean literally.”

“I did.”

Remus pushed his wrists forward and slid them down with a jerk, so Sirius’ hands cupped around
the bottom of his palms. He curved his fingers so that they just gripped onto the sides of his
knuckles. Clinging on for dear life.

“That scar is going to drive me insane,” Sirius said through his teeth, gritting them angrily. Remus
swallowed nervously, throat bobbing.

“Make a new one, then.”

Grey eyes drew back up to his. “What?”

“Make it yours.” Make me yours.

Sirius’ face was blank with shock. Remus begged for him to let himself go, so that Remus’ release
could meet with his somewhere in the middle; where they could figure out how to be whatever this
was and how to not care and simultaneously care with all they had about it.

Shock was replaced by determination; his eyes darkened, in that his lids hung heavy and his pupils
actually dilated; he leaned forward, his breath tickling the underside of Remus’ chin and the pit of
his throat before veering sideways.

(And, maybe he was a stupid, stupid man, but somehow Remus knew he wouldn’t bite him. He had
become so accustomed to knowing when Sirius was going to hurt him that he somehow now knew
when he wasn’t.)

It was a peculiar thing, this, with him.

Sirius’ lips were cold with the absence of the warmth from the candles; he pressed them gently to
the side of Remus’ neck, that sweet spot above the collarbone and below the hard ridges of the
actual throat, and it was all it was before, all the way back in the club and simultaneously not at all
- their bodies weren’t touching, space lingering between their torsos and lower no matter how
much Remus desperately wanted to buck his hips - the only touch was the devastating brush of his
lips and the grip on the bottom of his hand, lingering previously but now firm, as if testing the
waters, as if learning the works of a body that you’ve never known before; or a body you knew in a
different context; different world; different life.

He felt the hiss of breath as Sirius’ fangs popped out of his gums, cold as the feel of them on his
skin - trailing upwards. Remus tilted his head and this was all very familiar, but instead of as
sexually charged as it had in the dingy bathroom, muffled music blaring from behind closed doors.
Here they were alone, completely alone. And it felt tender. It felt real.

He didn’t even flinch when Sirius nicked him, though he inhaled sharply. Sirius moved away
immediately.

Remus closed his eyes and took a deep breath before pulling his right hand down and out of Sirius’
grasp to move to his neck. Sirius dropped both his hands instinctively as he moved, and their touch
was no more; they could have been simply having a conversation, standing just on the verge of too
close. He pressed his forefinger to where mild pain was shooting nerves from and looked down to
see a droplet of blood; as he righted his hand up it trickled down his finger, down the back of his
hand, rolling over his knuckle. He looked up to Sirius, whose face was collected; the underside of
his eyes were dark, though, his pupils dilated, and Remus could tell his fangs were still there, held
in his mouth which was clamped shut. His eyes flickered down to his neck, and then back up to his
eyes.

“It’s not going to be deep enough to scar,” he said, his voice only slightly distorted. Remus
shrugged. He wiped his finger on a tissue in his pocket.

“It’s still something.”

Sirius nodded, but his face seemed pained; he closed his eyes for a moment, pursing his lips, before
opening them and sighing.

“Can’t get them to go back in?”

He scowled. “Your stupid blood smells nice. It’s instinct.”

“Can I…” Remus said softly, bringing his hands up cautiously to Sirius’ face - he ghosted his
fingertips over the line of his jaw, the ridge of his cheekbones. “I’ve never seen them… up close,
like this. When you weren’t trying to kill me.”

Sirius seemed hesitant for a moment, and then frowned. “I’m not a science experiment.”

Remus pulled back slightly. “I know,” he said, with a tight nod and a knitted brow. “I just… I want
to see all of you.”

“All of me?”

“I’ve spent eight years staring at you, and when I wasn’t staring at you I was scowling at you, and
when I wasn’t scowling at you and you weren’t here I was thinking about you,” Remus said
quietly, fingers connecting with a light brush of skin again to test the waters. “And I feel like I’ve
learned more than eight years has taught me - more than my entire life has taught me - about you in
the past three days, and… this is the only part of you I don’t know.”

“You’ve seen my fangs plenty of times.”

“It’s different now,” Remus said, and he knew that he meant the fact that before it had been
vicious, murderous, on a surface level of vampiric understanding that he was delving into tenderly
now, but he also knew, on some level, that he didn’t mean that at all anymore. And he was pretty
sure Sirius knew that too. “Everything’s different.”

Sirius exhaled with force and then nodded, looking down and leaning into Remus’ touch; he
opened his mouth and Remus reached his thumbs to tug his lips upwards, revealing his teeth,
extensions of his canines. Beautiful, white and porcelain. They didn’t look real. He dragged a
thumb over one softly, following the side all the way down to the point where he pressed the pit of
his thumb into it - not deep enough to break skin or draw blood, just for the feeling; he wanted to
feel everything he could, absorb everything, know everything. Sirius shuddered.

“Are they sensitive?”

He hummed and nodded. Remus swiped his thumb over his fangs once more, before pulling back
and letting his lips fall back into place, slightly parted and soft; his hands ended up over Sirius’
cheeks, ten finger pads pressing devastatingly light touch onto his skin - it was beginning to warm
up from where he was touching it. They were closer, now - he had unconsciously pulled Sirius
further in to examine his face - and Remus realised that with one movement he could either kiss
him or kill him, and thought perhaps this is where they had been heading all along, really.

A lifetime and a half later Sirius jerked - almost a jump of surprise, and his head turned sharply to
the left; Remus’ hand stayed in place, and ended up cupping his chin. He sniffed.

“What?” Remus asked, lowering his hands. Sirius closed his eyes and took an exasperated breath.

“James is back,” he said, low, and took an awkward step back from Remus; the moment dropped,
hitting the floor and shattering into a million pieces. He swallowed, and brought his hand to his
neck unconsciously, accidentally palming the new cut (that had already begun to blot dried blood)
and he jerked in surprise.

“I thought he was staying at his place in Lily’s building?”

“I asked him to come back for something,” Sirius said, rubbing his forehead and looking like he
had never regretted a situation more. “I—um, well, it’s late. I think we’re going get started on the
case, tomorrow, so… you should get some rest.”

Remus opened his mouth to speak but he turned, without so much as a goodnight or a goodbye.

He stalked past the table towards the door and the final two candles blew out, plunging Remus into
stumbling darkness.
 seven

Remus woke to hushed, angry voices.

It took him a moment to grasp onto his barings, and realise where he was - even after three nights
here. Sirius’ guest bedroom was even more daunting in the morning, when the sun was fighting its
way through the curtains but mostly shadowed, the illumination falling to a murky shimmer at best
- things seemed bigger, darker. He flipped on his side and turned the lamp on, seeping the room
with warm light at best, and threw himself back onto the pillow. Whatever he had heard had
dissipated - there were no sounds besides a stray car revving outside, and birds, probably perched
on the electricity lines outside his window.

His eyes closed.

And promptly opened again.

Yep, those were voices - hushed and angry, as he had recently discerned. They were muffled, and
the decibel kept rising and falling, as if they were becoming periodically aware of the rising noise
and then becoming too overwhelmed with emotions to care. He swung out of the bed, rubbing the
remnants of sleep out of his eyes and got up. There was one of his stray hoodies hanging on the
back of the door. He grabbed it and pulled it on soundlessly, and then, with an air of nerves
surrounding him, twisted the doorknob and pulled it open.

The hallway was dark; the lack of windows were made up for with the fire wall-lights, but half of
those had been blown out, somehow, in the night, and so in the dark even despite Sirius’
renovations it looked remarkably like the gothic interior that one would expect. And Remus had
seen many a ‘haunted house’ in his day, many an English gothic villa, many a German mansion;
cobwebs draped over the walls like Christmas decorations, and a house as old as those gains a sort
of… sentience to it. He took a step and the floorboard creaked, and for a moment nothing could
convince him that he wasn’t in one of those places; looking for a ghoul. Being accosted by an
apparition. He was where the creaks in the floorboards speak to him. Where the whistle of the
wind through the insulation, so old it has broken down, tells a story. And it was all he could think,
really, as he made it to the end of the hallway and hesitated, staying out of the light, curling a hand
around the wall that exits to the open floor plan and listening for the voices ringing up and down
the walls.

The voices were coming from the living room. He could hear them perfectly now, along with the
bustle of Manhattan and the crackling of the fire from the wall lamp beside him. It tasted slightly
like salvation.

“–this isn’t something you can just– just worm your way into alone, Sirius-”

“Why not?” Sirius’ voice rang harsh and cold, ice against the condensation of the tall, gaping
windows. “They can smell a big operation from miles away. This way, we can keep them on their
toes–”

“Are you hearing yourself?” James’ voice hissed back, spiked with both incredulity and disbelief.
“How can you even think that we don’t need power in numbers right now? They found an entire
coven last night, Sirius. They’re getting sloppy - you know what that means.”

“But they’re not centralising yet,” Sirius said back, a strange smugness to his voice. “They’re still
spread up and down the East Coast. They’re not going to gather for months. We can take them out
individually, one by one, spread them out.”

“We could do it in half the time if you would just call them.”

“I don’t see–”

“No,” James’ voice couldn’t be any colder if he tried. “This isn’t– you’re being selfish, Sirius.
You’re being selfish.”

“I’m not–”

“Yes, you are. You’re being stupid because this is all a bit too much like the fifties, and it’s scaring
you.”

“Yeah, the fifties, when we lost–”

“I know what we fucking lost!” James near-screamed, rattling some china on a table that Remus
couldn’t see. “Do you think it doesn’t haunt me too? Are you that fucking self-absorbed to think
you’re the only person who feels any fucking guilt about everything we lost back then?!”

“Of course I don’t, you fucking dickhead, if you’d just listen–”

“It’ll kill us. It’ll kill him, Sirius. Your stupidity will get us all killed. It’s a fucking suicide
mission.”

It fell very silent for a moment - except the silence was still tense, as if the walls were still being
propped up. The air buzzed with energy; and then all of a sudden it was dropped. Neither of them
spoke for a whole minute, and Remus began to feel cold water flood his ears.

“Remus? Come down, please.”

He gasped involuntarily - stupid, really, because it was only a matter of time before they sniffed
him out - and heard Sirius’ throat clear, heard him speak again;

“Remus, I can hear you breathing.” A pause. “Or– not breathing. Take a breath, please, I don’t
want you to faint and bleed on my carpet.”

He scoffed under his breath, purposefully, so Sirius could hear it, and stepped into the light. Sirius
and James were directed at maybe a 45 degree angle from the balustrade, so he couldn’t see them
until he could a good few steps across the landing - he swerved as soon as he saw Sirius’ head,
taking a left and padding down the stairs, feeling many things; oddly, the most prominent one was
that he was rather shameful of his ratty pyjama bottoms and bare feet.

They stood in the middle of the living room, Sirius closer to the decanter and the back of James’
knees barely missing the edge of the coffee table. Sirius’ face was collected, as it always seemed to
be - James was, apparently, the one who had more trouble covering his emotions. His face was
stony. Remus collapsed onto the sofa as casually as he could, one part not wanting to get between
this strange icy tiff that the two of them had been having and one part wanting to look as casual as
possible (fake it til you make it, or whatever the stupid saying was.) Sirius stared at him.

“Are you gonna ask?”

Remus blinked. “What?”

“I didn’t hear you, but I know you. You were up there long enough to want to ask. Have it out.”
This felt somewhat like a test. Remus searched his brain to get the right answer; hoping he
understood Sirius enough by now, but knowing, really, he didn’t understand him at all.

“Er– well. Do you need me to dispute whatever… disagreement you’re having, or?”

James let out a groan and went to collapse onto the armchair diagonal to him, resting his head on
one hand, gesturing to Sirius with the other.

“Your friend here is being a stubborn shithead.”

“James–”

“My friend?”

“He refuses to ask anyone for help!” James exclaimed. “Fucking martyr.”

“That’s not what it is.”

“I know that’s not what it is,” James said bitterly, eyes narrowed. “I was giving you the benefit of
the doubt with the martyr thing. You ruined that yourself, that was all you, well done. Fucking
coward.”

And, sure, Remus had been just as rude as this to Sirius before himself, but he had the odd feeling
that it stung a lot more coming from James.

Sirius turned to him.

“Okay,” he said, businesslike, as if he hadn’t heard what James said at all. “Past five years. What
did you get?”

“What?”

“You did go through the murder records, no?”

Of course he fucking did. “Yeah, they’re in a folder–”

Sirius gave him an absolutely false grin. “Follow me.”

He was across the room in an instant, walking at a human pace that was still ridiculously fast, even
with Remus’ long legs - he pondered, as he scrambled up; stubbing his toe on the corner of the
coffee table and ignoring the snigger that came from James; if he would be trailing around his
unpredictability like this forever. (He didn’t even stop to process the absurdity of the concept of
forever with Sirius Black. The past eight years had felt like two lifetimes in and of itself.)

Sirius led him down the hall - a different part of the apartment to where his living quarters were.
They passed a few closed doors, a few open cubbies and alcoves and one open door, revealing a
warm little study that Remus would really quite like to get his hands on, but he was whisked away
before he got to even absorb the interior. Sirius stopped before a closed door, finally, opening it
and inclining his head in a you first type gesture. Remus entered and gasped.

It was, more or less, a weapons room - except, perhaps, it was half that, and half a study. Perhaps it
was moonlit as a conference room once every few weeks - it had the energy of all three. It was
large, somewhat lacking in windows (which was understandable) but making up for it with
electrical lighting - it slightly resembled Remus’ own weapons chamber at home, in that there were
guns on the wall, knives on a stand. Machetes, swords, brass knuckles, handguns. A set of drawers
that, at first glance, seemed to be an extension of the weapons corner but was littered with an array
of small bottles, tubes and beakers and glass tubs of substances that Remus couldn’t place by eye.
He could only guess the inside was the same.

There was a large table, one of the tables with glass held up on stands that you could slide things
underneath - there was a map of North America under there, a map of Europe. Pens, paper - it
looked like it had been hastily tidied but lived in nonetheless. As he turned to the other side of the
room (two expensive looking PC’s plugged into the walls, back to back of each other) he noticed
three boxes lined up. Out of one of them poked one of Remus’ rifles.

“My stuff?”

“Marlene brought it all up,” Sirius said, leaning against the door. Remus was already rummaging
through his stuff. “Arranged it all into different categories, too. She’s handy like that.”

Remus nodded, having worked this one out for himself. The box furthest to the left had all of his
papers in; police files that Dumbledore had sent him, tied in with the ones he had discovered of his
own and a few files that he had - regrettably - stolen from the library (but he was going to bring
them back eventually, so it was okay.)

“This is what I have so far,” Remus said, heaving a pretty thick folder out of the box and slamming
it onto the table. Sirius darted around to take a look while he fished his laptop from the box that
Marlene had evidently shoved all technology she could find in there. His hand swam through
endless amounts of burner phones.

“How's it arranged?” Sirius asked, interested; Remus placed his laptop next to it, opening the lid
and booting it up before swatting Sirius’ hand away and opening the folder.

“It’s sectioned,” he explained, as his laptop chimed on. “See, the beginning is stuff I was sent from
HQ, when I took the case.”

“Thicker than I thought,” Sirius remarked, and Remus almost laughed - settling for a crooked
smile, looking up at him.

“It wasn’t when I got it,” he said. “They don’t know shit. I went through all of the murders and
missing persons in all five boroughs since January 1st, twenty-sixteen, like you said, and found a
hell of a lot more than what they picked out. And– I mean, they didn’t even go further than that.”

“And you did?”

“I went all the way up the East Coast.”

Sirius blinked. “I didn’t ask you to do that.”

Remus raised an eyebrow, and an unplanned laugh escaped him. “When have I ever done anything
you’ve asked me to do?”

“When have I ever asked you to do anything to begin with?”

Remus pursed his lips. Crossed his arms, and it was more playful than he had intended.
“Hampshire. About six years ago. I was hunting a werewolf pack that had bitten a young mother’s
little kid and you followed me into the woods. I believe you asked me to, ahem, “just go keel over
and die already”, and as you can see,” he raised his free hand to flourish with a pinch of drama at
his being, “I did not do that.”
Sirius was very obviously trying his absolute hardest not to laugh.

“So you remember that,” he replied, eventually, in a low tone that definitely did not conceal the
humour like he thought it did, “but you don’t remember Germany?”

Remus raised an eyebrow.

“Banshee case, about a year and a half ago,” Sirius continued, “When you cornered me in the
lobby of the hotel I was staying at? And I asked you to go away and you - you’re not gonna believe
this - did?”

“Oh, shut up, I was already halfway out the fucking door,” Remus said, rolling his eyes, and Sirius
grinned.

“Two steps backwards is not out the door, Remus. Two steps backwards is self-preservation.”

“Self-preservation?”

He raised his eyebrows, and smirked that fucking smirk that Remus hated so much.

“I believe I was wearing the white shirt then, too.”

Remus groaned viscerally.

“Fuck you,” he said, turning back to his files and - in an utter betrayal of his body to his sound
mind - chuckling, slightly.

“Yeah, you’d want–”

“So,” Remus said - overly loudly to speak over him. Sirius thinned his lips but he could see the way
they quirked upwards. “Where were we? Files. Pattern up the East Coast. Obvious vampiric trail
that the bureau just didn’t pick up on–”

“Because they’re idiots.”

“Because they are not aware of the weight of the situation, obviously,” Remus said, automatically
coming to their defence. “I wasn’t until yesterday.”

Sirius went quiet, and he immediately regretted bringing the fact that yesterday even happened up
at all.

He cleared his throat. “Or,” he said, carefully. “It could just be because I am the best vampire
hunter they have.”

He looked up at Sirius from behind his eyelashes carefully, and saw a strange look on his face.
They locked eyes and it morphed into something of admirement. He smiled, barely, but it was
there.

“And that’s why you’re here,” he said, quietly, and before Remus could even reply he cleared his
own throat and inclined his head towards the wad of paper in his hands. “Right, what’s this, then?
Give it to me. Lay it out, hunter.”

Remus rolled his eyes, but shuffled his chair closer to the table, and opened it.

“So it’s in organised sections,” he said, opening the folder not even a tenth of the way through and
holding it. “These are the HQ files that I was talking about.” He flipped a marginally larger chunk
and held that. “This is stuff that I’m almost certain on,” a third and final one, “stuff I’m not so
certain. And then the second two are split into subsections of their own, with actual content - ruled
murders, missing persons and miscellaneous. And they are then sub-sectioned even further into,
uh, vampire murders and human murders.”

Sirius leant back to look at him; the movement caused Remus to trail off and look up at him. His
eyebrows were raised.

“You knew they were killing covens?”

Remus blinked. “Yeah,” he said, as if it was obvious. “I figured it out. I mean, they’re sporadic,
sure - enough to keep them off their trail - but there’s only so many mass decapitations that can fly
without it being suspicious. Ooh, speaking of–” he flipped through his files until he found one that
stood out. “Those, in particular, are also colour-coded. As in - green for publically reported
killings, pink for covered up by the government. And,” he let out a little laugh here at the
incompetence of the government, “there is a looot of pink. Obviously a trail of brutal massacres
across the Eastern Seaboard when the FBI don’t even have a semblance of a first lead is a bit
daunting to unload onto the media, is it not?”

His eyes flickered up to Sirius, and he was watching him with a smile.

“It is,” he said, with a sharp nod. “How the hell did you get all of these?”

“I have access through the firewall of every major city’s police department from Maine to South
Carolina.”

“When the hell did you get all of these?” Sirius asked, and where the first question was somewhat
smug, this one seemed to be laced with genuine disbelief. Remus faltered, for a minute.

He shrugged. “I had a day off.”

Sirius stared at him. He blinked, twice, and then burst out laughing.

“What?” Remus demanded. “What’s funny?”

“Nothing, I–” Sirius shook his head. Ran his hands over his face and when they dropped he only
looked content. “It’s just, every time I even begin to doubt you, you do something to make me
regret even thinking about it immediately.

Remus raised an eyebrow. “You doubt me?”

“Not anymore,” Sirius said. “One would not do well to underestimate Remus Lupin. I learned that
the hard way.”

Remus bit the inside of his lip so hard that he was sure he was going to draw blood and had to look
away.

“Right,” Sirius said, with a sort of bustle about him. “How many covens have they hit so far?”

Remus blinked - feeling strangely like he was in training again and being interrogated by Moody -
and a small part of him realised that this was some sort of strange quiz. Sirius was testing him. The
little bastard was trying to catch him out.

He did not hesitate. “Seventeen.”

Sirius hummed in the contradiction. “Eighteen.”

“What? Where?”

He simply smirked at him, and Remus felt himself boiling over with the familiar irritation he had
been feeling for eight years.

“Where, Sirius,” he said, letting his features fall into a cold glare, and he laughed.

“Syracuse,” he said with ease. “Two years ago in December.”

“No,” Remus said slowly, “Upstate NY have everything on one system. I would’ve seen it.”

“Not if it wasn’t an obvious coven hit,” Sirius said. “Five vampires. They were living with four
humans. All nine of them were killed, all via a simple house fire.”

And Remus remembered. “I looked into that...”

“The vampires had adoptive parents,” Sirius continued. “Families. Alibis. They had indoctrinated
their way into human society better than I’ve seen any vampire do ever, but in the end they were
still found out.”

Remus let out a long breath through his teeth. Sirius tapped on the table with his finger a few times.

“But I doubt the covens were your motivator,” Sirius said quietly, by way of segwaying to a new
topic. Remus looked at him and he nodded towards the file. “Brief me on your human murders. I
feel like they’re harder to pinpoint.”

“Not if you know where you’re looking,” Remus said, quietly. He flipped through the pages,
shoving section by section aside. “The covens was where I started, see. Obviously, I didn’t realise
they were vampires at first - I thought they were just killing flamboyantly - but once I did it was
easiest to pinpoint the covens first and then scan the surrounding area for murders within a four
week-ish window. They don’t stay places long, but it was long enough.”

“Long enough?”

“To establish a pattern,” he said. He pointed at the title page of the human ruled murders section,
and then dug his thumb into it and flipped over to the missing persons section. “They seem to come
hand in hand.”

Sirius frowned. He pursed his lips in contemplation, and Remus knew he had something. He would
be lying if he said he wasn’t slightly proud.

“Example?”

The files were in chronological order, so it wasn’t hard to do.

“Amy Spalding,” he said, pointing to a picture of a young blonde girl. “Hartford, CT. Seven years
ago. Body found mutilated and shoved into a dumpster - which is, quite honestly, terrible etiquette
for a gothic society of purebloods, but you know…”

Sirius laughed under his breath, and the corner of Remus’ lip quirked up as he pulled his thumb
over and flipped easily to the other section.

“David Donaghue,” he said, pointing at a picture of a balding middle-aged man with a scruffy
beard. “Hartford, CT, seven years ago. Went missing on the exact same night as Amy’s death -
though, they only found her two days later.”

“So, you’re thinking… they kill one, they take one?”

“Not necessarily,” Remus said. “Sometimes they kill multiple and take one. Sometimes they kill
one and take multiple. Sometimes they don’t even come together - I put it at an almost 80%
correlation - and, besides New York, it’s only ever once in a city.”

“What’s your theory, then?” Sirius asked, pulling the folder towards him to flick through David
Donaghue’s file. Remus clicked his tongue.

“I think they’re hunting,” he said, slowly. “For more than just food.”

Sirius’ eyes flickered up to his. “For reinforcements.”

“For slaves,” Remus said. “I wasn’t too certain until yesterday, when you told us about– about how
they built their army. About how they essentially brainwashed people - and look,” his voice was
rising with the thrill of the case. He pulled the file from Sirius and turned over the page.

“David Donaghue’s entire family died in a car crash three years prior to his disappearance,” Remus
said. “Threw him into a deep depression - which is understandable - but… well, this isn’t an
isolated incident. 66% of all of the missing persons - of those that I have filed, at least - have some
sort of tragic backstory or history of mental health issues. And the thing you said, last night, about
ennui…”

“They’re picking people who they think have nothing to live for,” Sirius finished quietly. He
pulled the file back and scanned it over once, twice. “They’re… doing it systematically?”

“Of course, some don’t adhere,” Remus said, dismissively. “It might just be a coincidence but– I
mean, they took three from Baltimore and they all had an overlapping history in the same
rehabilitation centre. It’s- it’s awful, but it feels too targeted to be a coincidence, right?”

“God,” Sirius muttered, tapping his pointer finger on the table with increased vigour. “Trust Tom
Riddle to think he’s the enlightenment that everyone needs in their lives. Fucking Messiah or
something. Just when I think they can’t get worse–”

Sirius ran his hands harshly over his face in agitation, and Remus watched him carefully. He took a
deep breath in.

“So, do we think they’re creating an army?” he asked, slowly, and Sirius shook his head.

“No. Not an army. They’re creating robots,” he said. He leant back on his chair and looked at
Remus. “They’re creating reinforcements. Mindless protection. They don’t give a fuck about
fighting - they don’t want to fight to take their crown. They want to take out the competition like
assassins until they have the crown by default.”

“That seems…” he pursed his lips, slightly. “Lazy.”

And Sirius laughed. Closed his eyes and stretched his arms over his head.

“They are lazy,” he said. “They find glory in their inherent nature. Even after all of these years
they think that their claimed ‘superiority’ is enough. They’ve deluded themselves into thinking that
the world should bow down to them, and we’re not fucking going to.”

A sharp chill trickled down Remus' spine. Settled itself in the pit of his stomach and spiralled its
way through his insides, roots of thrill travelling up his throat and placing a smile on his face.

Sirius raised an eyebrow.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Remus said quickly, returning to his file. “Nothing at all.”

Sirius stared at him for a moment, but Remus stood his ground until he leant forward again and
shuffled into the table. Remus cleared his throat, and flicked to the subsection focused in on NYC.

“So, since New York was kind of the epicentre I obviously started on it first, right,” he said, back
to business. “I mean, there’s like tenfold more murders and kidnappings here than there is
anywhere else.”

“Better breeding ground, I guess,” Sirius muttered, and he nodded.

“I had two things that I wanted to look into,” he said. “First of all is that there’s been something
freaky going on at the Columbia Irving Medical Center for a year or so.”

“Freaky in what sense?”

“They’re covering shit up,” Remus said. “I mean, obviously most vampiric murders with a body
left behind get covered up in some shape or form because there isn’t really a ‘cause of death: the
undead’ tab, but there’s something odd about this one. The death reports coming out of there are so
far-fetched in comparison to the police reports - which are all private, by the way, even to me; I had
to hack into their mainframe there. Not sure if that’s an oversight on the authority the government
grants us or something bigger, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were trying to keep us out–”

“Give me an example,” Sirius said, again, tapping on the file. “What are they ruling to cover them
up?”

“Mainly suicide,” Remus said automatically, pulling the folder towards himself and flicking
animatedly.

“And you’re sure they’re not?”

“Yeah, look,” he said, pulling out a file he had taken from the NYPD database, stapled to a copy of
the coroner's report. There were pictures.

“Maria Barbieri, twenty-four, killed barely two months ago. Her death was ruled suicide by self-
harm. Look at that. That’s not self-harm.”

The images were gruesome. The skin on her right arm was sliced open and torn, like a hangnail,
but her left was more obviously a vampire bite - and there were three on that side. They trailed up
her arm all the way to her shoulder, ending on her neck; and it was undeniable. There was no other
plausible explanation to Remus, though, he supposed he didn’t know any other way of thinking.
Sirius looked pentative.

“Where does Lily work?”

“The Presbyterian in Brooklyn. She commutes. You think it’s something worth looking into?”

“I think that if it is being covered up for a purpose and it’s only been happening for a year it means
that they want to prolong their stay in the city,” Sirius said, slowly. “Which means they’re
centralising. If someone is stationed there they’re stationed for a purpose, and we need to figure
out what that purpose is.”

“Okay, well, we can follow that lead then,” Remus said, noting it down. “I can ask Lily if she has
any connections.”

“What was the other thing?”

Remus blanked, for a moment, before remembering. He licked his lips and looked around, for a
moment, at their surroundings.

“You call this place a sanctuary, right?”

“In a way,” he said. “There aren’t many covens in the city - most vampires here are lone sewer
turns, or pairs travelling together. It’s our own type of centralisation, I guess.”

“And how have you managed to keep them off your back?” he asked. “I mean, if they want to get
rid of half-bloods, this is basically an all you can eat buffet, right?”

“Well, we have wards,” Sirius said. “To keep out impure intentions. But really, I– well, I didn’t.
They just haven’t challenged us yet. I have no idea why.”

Remus blinked, and it seemed to come to him so easily. It seemed to be the most obvious thing in
the world.

“They’re scared of you,” he said, dumbly. Sirius raised his eyebrows.

“They’re what?”

“You ripped Tom Riddle’s fucking jaw off,” he said, and Sirius’ mouth fell open slightly. “They’re
scared of you, Sirius.”

“James told you that?”

“They want to stay out of your radar. At least until they have enough robotic reinforcements to
ensure their safety–”

“When the hell did he tell you that?”

“Last night,” Remus said dismissively, on a roll. “Took off an arm, too, right, fucking brilliant–”
Sirius’ face softened, “you sent him into dormancy for seventy fucking years. They don’t want to
do another seventy. I presume they don’t know that you’ve been trailing them, right?”

Sirius looked absolutely dumbstruck. “I mean, I guess not? Most of my eyes for the past few years
have been the vampires that live here doing me favours. I only came to get you when they started
to get rampant in the past couple months or so.”

“And that’s our party piece,” Remus finished. “The fact that they haven’t attacked means that they
haven’t got enough reinforcements to feel comfortable in doing so. And with that information we
can get the jump on them.”

“How do we do that?” Sirius asked, and Remus let his mouth close. Let a small smile work its way
onto his exhilarated face.

“You tell me everything your ‘eyes’ have spotted,” he said. “And we work out how to kill these
bastards.”
Sirius blinked at him, and then a wide, roguish smile built its way onto his face.

“Aye aye, captain,” he said, and they got to work.

***

Remus had been in NYC for two days, (three if you count the night they arrived) but today had,
honestly, felt like his first.

After the bust that was yesterday morning (they were definitely supposed to start properly working
the case before Sirius’ dramatic exit) and the overload of information from last night about the war
of 1959, it felt like it had only been right to wait for a new day to even try to comprehend the shit
that he had gotten himself into. Finding out Sirius was a Pureblood – the Pureblood – really
solidified everything for Remus - he blinked and found himself entirely too close to the action, so
close that he was ablaze, so far in that he couldn’t tell which way was up; and honestly, winging it
seemed like his only option, so he was.

He found out very quickly, after his debrief in which Sirius lapped up his information and gave
minute amounts of his own, that the vampire himself had been just as into this case as he had and
for far longer than he had assumed. And then Remus gave himself a pinch, and a dumbstruck
obviously rang its way through his head. This was the chip on his shoulder. This was the guilt that
Remus knew coursed through his bones. He had not tried to move on, to forget what happened the
first time, not for a second. He had been biding his time. Waiting for round 2. It had been he who
had ended it the first time, and it would be he who ended it the second time, and Remus had been a
complete and utter idiot to even entertain the thought that he hadn’t put his heart and soul into it.
That the case wouldn’t flourish under his guiding hand. And it had, throughout the afternoon in
which they brought out tables and pictures and graphs and the fucking whiteboard from downstairs
that was now filled with angstily scribbled notes in one messy scrawl and one beautiful scripture.

And working a case had always given Remus a thrill. He had always thought it was slightly like
maths; the way that everything had a fixed ending, everything was a problem to be solved. A
puzzle to be completed. A hypothesis to be experimented. McGonagall, once, on a visitation from
the Washington Bureau, told Remus that he was the perfect type to be a hunter. Perceptive. Quick-
thinking; good aim; sly and unafraid. Her support was never prominent, but it was there, lingering,
and he always did like her (as a support system, at least) better than Moody. Moody… had Moody
ever complimented him? He had said that Remus was ‘brainless except out on the field’, once, and
that was probably the closest he ever got - he had welcomed it gladly.

His whole life was hunting; why would he need to be smart anywhere else?

Another naivete, Remus supposed, typing his way through Charleston, WV’s police database,
following up on a lead Sirius had slid across the table quietly about twenty minutes ago. Remus
had always given too much of himself to hunting because he never knew where to store the excess.
See Dorcas would go out, get drunk; go on dates to quaint little pubs in London with a girl with
short pink hair and a lined collarbone tattoo, and end up snogging her around the back and sucking
so hard on the tattoo it looked like it had been coloured in. Remus - okay, it would be a lie to say he
didn’t do that, sometimes, but he did it a lot rarer than her, or Mary, or any of the other trainees he
bunked with over his few apprentice years. Come to think of it, he hadn’t thought about them in
months – no, years. He had gotten quite close with a girl called Allison in their later training days -
last he’d heard she was in Germany, although that was probably about six years ago, so god only
knows where she is now. The rest scattered. Hunting was either a solo or a fixed unit kind of thing,
and Remus, Dorcas and Mary fit just fine, thank you very much.

But Dorcas had always known how to balance. She wasn’t, by any means, some kind of mentally
healthy saint - she was actually quite conniving and could be rather manipulative; fierce and
unruly; wrathful and unforgiving. She reminded Remus in a lot of ways of Lily, even though they
were, in most ways, polar opposites. It felt like the three of them were three points of some kind of
strange, ninety-degree triangle. Lily at the bottom corner, the angle itself. Safe, functional. Normal.
Human. Dorcas is the point at the top, directly above her - extraordinary in her work and skillset,
but still on Lily’s line; functional and balanced, an extraordinary person living an extraordinary life
and being able to divulge in less-than-extraordinary things. Not that Lily was any less than
extraordinary, but the way Remus meant it for Dorcas was different. Secretive. Insane.
Supernatural would work best, he supposed, though it didn’t quite hit the mark.

And then there was Mary. He supposed, if Dorcas, Lily and Remus were the three points of the
triangle then Mary was the entire interior. She was the shading; she was what made everything
three dimensional, what saved the structure from collapsing in on itself. She was an ever-present
figure, strong enough to hold her own - Remus had spent so long attuned to the sweet colour of her
magic that he still tasted it even when she had been in the Balkans for six months.

And, of course, Remus was somewhere off to the side of the group of them - the third point. What
angle even was he? He had no idea. He was somehow just floating through life, doing the only
thing he felt he was good at and then when that was over waiting for another opportunity to do it to
arise again. He was living, but he had never learned to live. And his faux life had become
disillusioned to him.

Lily had said to him, once, about Sirius: “You enjoy it, Remus. The chase,” and he had denied it,
but she was right. Of course she was fucking right. Because if Remus didn’t have the chase, what
did he have? What was he supposed to do when the chase ended?

Sirius’ pinky brushed against his as they both went to grab a file from the same folder. Sirius got to
it first - something that wasn’t potent enough to be described as a smirk flickered onto his face and
he leaned back over, making notes on whatever he was doing. Remus, with strenuous effort turned
his eyes back to his computer, where he had been waiting for ten minutes behind an intensely
rigorous security check, and the screen was different.

“Oh, yes,” he murmured, clicking through the newly-accessed tabs; he saw, out of the corner of his
eye, Sirius raise his head and grin at him. He was already looking away by the time Remus looked
back.

It was approaching 5pm, now. James had come to help, for a while, Marlene too. And Sirius had
somehow acquired not only a whiteboard but a huge fucking corkboard, too - it was on the wall,
behind a curtain, and they had been slowly adding to the true mainframe of the case as the day
processed; adding what was already there. Sirius had been keeping an eye on the members he knew
of this coven for years - the Malfoys, the Averys, the Rosiers, and so on and so forth - addresses,
living spaces, safehouses (both potent and abandoned); fifty acres of land that the Rosiers owned
upstate for a reason they could not penetrate or figure out; the three mansions that the Malfoys
owned forming a strange, almost equal triangle of land in Vermont; private and cagey enough to be
protected with not only wards from a witch but a thick layer of guards.

Remus had the timeline pretty much together in his head, perhaps stapled through a thick wad of
paper, coming apart at the seams but it’s there, and it goes like this: Tom Riddle goes dormant in
1959, and the majority of his (non-pureblood) loyal (ha) vampires scatter. He’s preserved by the
dark witches in his stead and moved to a secret location (unfindable, trust him, Sirius tried) and the
Purebloods go into hiding, too. Decades go by, but they stay in the country - the majority aren’t
American, but a strange mix of European - the Malfoy’s hail from France, the Rosier’s also -
Karkaroff is Norwegian. They stay in the country, and bide their time. They’re waiting for now.
They’re waiting for this.

And the dawn of the twenty-first century is where the timeline really crackles and splutters, like an
old steam train on its last legs; Draco Malfoy is born in 2004. Astoria Greengrass in 2005. And
Sirius rejoins his family’s coven - the one he and Mary burnt to a fucking crisp eight years later - in
2006.

He didn’t explain why, and Remus never expected him to, honestly; he didn’t need to know. The
thought of Sirius double-crossing him, unbelievably, didn’t even cross his mind; but the fact that it
didn’t even cross his mind crossed his mind, and thus made it cross his mind by association. And
even then, it wasn’t prominent. It simply… wasn’t the case. Remus didn’t understand Sirius Black,
but he understood roots - he understood having your claws into something; a home, someone you
love, foundations you cannot live without. He hadn’t spoken to his mother in six years because of
that. Sirius had put too much of himself in this - in everything - in the air Remus breathes into his
fucking lungs to be with them in the end. There was nothing Remus was certain of, but he was
edging certain about this, by now.

Regardless of not explaining his own decision to rejoin, he explained their half of the decision, and
Remus actually found himself quite shocked to find that these savage vampires could feel such a
prominent emotion as… hope. Hope. Draco and Astoria sparked hope in them; hope for all of the
wrong things, of course, but hope nonetheless.

So much hope that they would welcome their wayward son back into their twisted, infamous, royal
family? Not for a second, if you ask Sirius. There is a fine line between lingering hope and
festering desperation. (Remus wouldn’t have applied either of those emotions to vampirism two
months ago, however. So. There’s that.)

Point of it all was, Sirius knew the ins and outs of the modern palazzos that the entitled spawns of
himself he called family pranced around in, wearing their eighteenth century ball-gowns and their
volatile, blood-soaked nightdresses. And Sirius Black is not Sirius Black if not a sneaky bastard - of
course he had memorised the places, memorised them like the back of his fucking hand,
memorised them like Remus has memorised the exact timbre of his lips against his cold, tense
neck, a memory that he can recall on autopilot, like machinery, the taut state of being that they both
manoeuvred themselves around in. Because if Remus had one thing in common with Sirius, it’s that
they both put their whole being into something and see through a tunnel until it is completed.

Their day was so full of productivity that Remus almost completely forgot about the fragmented
argument he overheard with James from the top of the balustrade. He had come to the conclusion,
during one of his mindless thought tangents, that it was something about the way Sirius was
thinking of attacking - his plan of action, apparently, that James did not see eye to eye with him on.
And Remus had guessed that Sirius harboured a lot of grief - since it had all come crumbling down
last night he wore it on his sleeve, wore it on the eyeliner smeared underneath his waterline - but if
he knew anything about a war effort he knew that each individual person’s life was hanging off a
cliff by their pinky only after they had climbed down there themselves and knocked off each of
their own fingers for good measure. There was something pathetic about making a bed of sheets
and lying in it, and something beautiful about making a bed of white-hot thorns and lying just as
easily.

But - and this was the important thing, here - this wasn’t a war effort. At least, not yet. It was the
lead up to a battle, perhaps - maybe a stepping stone to a war, depending on who shoots first and
who gets shot last. But this wasn’t a war effort. Remus was here, he was here in fucking New
York, sitting in a fucking tower crawling with undead mosquitoes, not to tackle the blazes but to
dampen the flame before it burned. And sometimes Remus thought Sirius got lost in his head a
little when it came to rationality, but he’d never say it out loud. What did he have against eight
hundred years of betrayal and loss?

But Sirius was not Sirius if not sneaky and irrational, and Remus was not Remus if not persistent,
he supposed. Sneaky and persistent. Irrational and unbalanced. Maybe they were both unbalanced,
really - maybe that’s why he always came back. Maybe that’s why Remus always let him.

“Can I ask you a question?” asked Sirius, quietly, after about ten minutes of no conversation in
which he found himself enwrapped in a back-and-forth walkie-talkie conversation between two
policemen he had tapped into, at the scene of a crime in Queens that they were unsure of, and
Remus found himself staring at the blank police database, having exhausted his persistence,
willing for it to return so he could ask a question himself, actually.

“If I can ask you one afterwards.”

Sirius smirked. “Okay, deal.”

Remus pushed his laptop away from him slightly and turned to face Sirius fully. Nodded, as if
saying go ahead.

“The case in Hampshire,” he said, slowly. “The one you mentioned earlier. I didn’t know why you
were there at the time.”

Remus raised an eyebrow. “Surely you knew about the werewolves in the New Forest?”

“No, I did,” he said. “I meant the kid that got bit. I didn’t know that part.”

His face relaxed. “Oh.”

They were silent for a long time, and the weight of the question they both could visualise hung
sadly in the air.

“You know what I’m going to ask,” Sirius said, as if to shatter the visage that they had put up.
Remus thinned his lips.

“Did I kill him?”

“Yes.”

And telling the truth wasn’t hard. “No.”

Sirius did not look surprised, but he did look interested. “Were you supposed to?”

“Yes,” Remus said. “I– well, in a sense.”

“In a sense?”

“My job, by the book, is that I am supposed to kill all supernatural creatures that could potentially
be dangerous,” he said carefully. “And I don’t know if you know, but when werewolves bite
children… it’s different to biting adults. Their little bodies can’t handle it in the same way, so it
becomes somewhat of a… dormant gene.”

Sirius straightened up. He looked seriously interested, now. “Really?”

“Yeah,” he continued. “We don’t know what triggers it. I’ve read case studies of kids bitten who
never turn their whole life, kids bitten who do at eighteen, twenty five, forty. It’s… there’s not
much research on it, but…”

He trailed off, but Sirius nodded once.

“He wasn’t dangerous.”

“He was eight years old,” Remus whispered. “Only son to a single mother.”

Sirius frowned. “And your hunters… they wanted you to kill him?”

“The bureau didn’t know he was a child. Or, at least, I wasn’t told. I’ve kept tabs on him since
then.”

Sirius nodded again. They lapsed into a strange silence. Remus leant back on his chair and forced
himself to speak after a minute.

“Was that a test?” he asked, and Sirius raised his eyebrows.

“What?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I feel like a lot was riding on whether I did or didn’t kill that kid. I don’t
know why else you would’ve asked me.”

Sirius shrugged. “I just wanted to see if I knew you as well as I think I do.”

“And do you?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking away. “You’re good. I could probably use some of that.”

Remus inhaled sharply. Pulled his laptop towards him, but did not take in any of the words.

“What was yours?”

“What?”

“Your question,” Sirius said as if it was obvious - which it was. Remus gasped at his stupidity.

“Oh, I–” he started, licking his lips. “I just wanted to ask… what you were arguing about with
James this morning?”

Sirius sighed. The line to the walkie-talkies that he had tapped into - silent for ten minutes, over
and out - cut short.

“Whether my intended approach for this case is the best way to go about it.”

Remus’ lips parted, slightly, shocked at the honesty. Okay.

“And that is…?”

Sirius paused for a moment, seeming to contemplate what to say, before shrugging and saying, “To
go at it alone?”

“Alone.”

“Yes.”

Remus exhaled, fully shoving his laptop to one side now so he could rest his chin in his hands on
the table. “And what are our other options?”

“We have… friends,” Sirius said carefully, and Remus raised an eyebrow. He scoffed. “Why is that
hard to believe?”

“It’s you.”

“Oh, come off it,” Sirius groaned.

“I know, I’m joking…” Remus said, feeling rather small, and they fell into a strange lapse of
conversation where everything was up in the air; Remus, on instinct, reached up to grab a topic and
pull it back down. “The Order, was it?”

“It was.”

“And why don’t you want them to help?”

Sirius shrugged. “I just think that we can go at it alone. They’re spread out, still, all the way up and
down the East Coast; we know most of their mansions, most of their hiding spots–”

“How do you know they haven’t moved?”

Sirius blinked, and his lip quirked up; his teeth shone through, canines sharp even when his fangs
weren’t present.

“If you’re going to know one thing about us, know that vampires are nothing if not stubborn
shitheads.”

Remus bit back the You sure that’s not just Purebloods? comment and nodded. Sirius probably
sniffed it on him anyway. He used James’ words, verbatim, for a reason.

“So, what? We take their bases out, one by one, until Riddle is cowering in the corner or
something? You seriously think that’ll work?”

Sirius’ jaw clenched. “I’m debating it.”

And Remus saw what this was, really. The mess on his sleeve, the eyeliner under his waterline. He
could argue that he and Dorcas kill vampires every other month. That they take cases alone or in
pairs and they haven’t fucking died yet. He could argue that he, himself, took out that coven - the
one in Texas - all by himself. His capability matched Remus’ matched James’ matched Marlene’s.
They’re a force to be reckoned with, but so is Tom Riddle.

So it was fruitless, all of it, really, because nothing was as big as this one, and nothing has been
since ‘59. Remus wanted to tell him - he didn’t know what he wanted to tell him. Everything he
wanted to say could probably be better worded, and hammered into him better by James. Except,
perhaps, one thing.

“This is bigger than me and you, Sirius,” Remus murmured, leaning forward slightly, looking him
in the eyes - and he knew he had seen clarity from the look on his face, the way his eyes clouded
slightly. And here, Remus thought with finality that yeah, maybe we are not too far apart after all.
Maybe Sirius is the third point in the ninety degree triangle too. Maybe Sirius is as unbalanced as
he is, too, and that’s why they kept finding each other; taking turns jumping on the scales,
desperate to find the one point of blissful balance in Sirius’ burnt skin and Remus’ hot dagger at
his throat.
Maybe, instead of the violence, and the burning, this is how they can work as well.

Maybe that’s not who they are to each other anymore.

Maybe that’s okay.

“You’re good at that,” Sirius said, eventually, pointing a bitter, accusing finger. His voice had
lowered into something gritty; something angry. “You’re good at making me feel like a hypocrite.”

“Someone has to.” And then, “For what it’s worth, James is right.”

“Not worth an awful lot, not gonna lie, Remus.”

“You can’t simmer in this guilt forever.”

“Or what?” Sirius spat, still bitter. It registered in Remus’ head that this was a moment of stasis -
his guard was down, his weakness acknowledged. Catch him here. Catch him before he goes again.
“It’ll kill me?”

His tone was laced with vicious mockery; this was the vampire Remus had met eight years ago.
Venom incarnate. An arrow in a stone wall. Ash, and ash, and ash.

“No,” Remus said, softly, softer than he had ever offered to Sirius. “It’ll kill me.”

It’s a double-edged sword, Remus thought, briefly; watching the muscles in Sirius’ jaw twitch, his
throat spasm slightly. It’s two hands; it’s his two hands; one clinging onto a cliff by the pinky,
willingly put there, and the other brushing against Sirius’; the cold, callousness of his palm sending
a shiver up his spine, a rush to his ears. It’s the cold stream of acknowledgement. It’s the future;
their future. Their inevitable, painful future, where perhaps they hate each other a little bit less, and
perhaps they have hated each other a little bit less for a little bit longer than they’re being truthful
about.

And Remus felt, inexplicably, for a minute, like he could express this. Like they could find
somewhere on the line of the triangle to begin - to balance, on a fucking tightrope, and not do some
stupid bullshit like push each other off anymore.

“Don’t do that,” Sirius said, warningly, shaking his head so minutely it could be a trick of the light.
“Don’t.”

“What?”

“You–” Sirius groaned and got up, his chair scraping painfully across the floor. “You didn’t even
want James to help three days ago, what the hell changed?”

“You told me the truth,” Remus said, simply. It was true. He had been treating it as any other case,
up until that point, but now he realised how high the stakes truly were - and he got the impression
Sirius was still lingering in the past. “Look, you went through an awful thing that you obviously
hold a lot of guilt for, and I know you’re scared of it happening again, but this isn’t– something
you can take on on your own. You can’t go in there with a glass half-empty. They will not show
you mercy. We’ll all die. I will die.”

“Don’t–” Sirius hissed, and Remus stood, now, chair almost falling with the vigour.

“Don’t what, Sirius?” he said, unsure of whether his voice was bordering concern or malice;
perpetually unsure of where the lines crossed.
Sirius gaped for a second, his face vulnerable and anger incarnate.

“Weaponise yourself against me,” he breathed. “Don’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because you understand it now!” came erupting from his chest; he was shouting now, and the
intensity of the room was a familiar old flame; a singed padlock on a windowsill. “It was fine
when you hated me, because you could be my– my thing, in private, but now you understand. You
see too much of me. You– you see too deep. You’re under my skin and I can’t fucking get you
out.”

“I only see you because you showed yourself to me,” Remus said back, voice rising. “If I’m under
your skin it’s because you fucking put me there.”

Sirius’ eyes widened in complete indignation.

“This was all at your instigation, if you’ve forgotten!”

“You were the one who roped me into this case, Black, not me. You showed yourself to me first;
you planted the seed and watched it grow.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I shouldn’t have,” Sirius sneered, eyes full of malice. “Maybe I should’ve left
you there. Maybe I should’ve finished the fucking job that I started eight years ago and killed you
already; put us both out of our fucking misery.”

Remus scoffed, backing down against his better wishes; being the bigger person. “You’re being
pathetic. You’re scared, and you’re lashing out.”

“You treat me like a child.”

“You treat me like an idiot! You complained when I didn’t see your humanity, and now you’re
throwing a fit because I do? What do you want, Sirius? What the hell do you want from me?”

“I want you to stop–”

“Treating you like a person?” Remus finished; Sirius’ jaw snapped shut. “You want me to keep
treating you like shit? You should’ve thought about that before you invited me here and made this
something real.”

His words hung uncomfortably in the quiet, almost tangible air. Sirius took a step forward; his eyes
blazing, his hands balled into fists, and Remus, in step with him, moved back. Shock flickered over
his face for a split second, but Remus caught it. He shook his head.

“You can’t fix this by getting close to me,” Remus whispered. “You can’t get me out from under
your skin by just burrowing your way further under mine. That’s not how it works.”

There was a long, tense pause.

“I don’t know how we work,” Sirius said, slowly; the words rolled off his tongue like stiff
machinery. “I want to kill you, but I think I’d die too.”

Remus smiled. A sad little thing.

“I know,” he said; barely a breath. “I know.”

But this was something Sirius had to work out on his own. He was a mess; a scribble, a black hole
of everything and nothing that Remus had, really, barely scratched the surface of. He could see it
for what it was; the fear of loss. Hundreds of years of family trauma; the weight of every single
death on his shoulders. The fear, now that he and Remus were becoming something real,
something tangible, and not just an idea woven from a fairy tale. Fear, and guilt, and sadness.

But he couldn’t be selfish at the expense of others. He couldn’t play a losing game simply to
nurture his own anxieties. It was a trauma-spurred tunnel vision; it was a suicide mission; and
Remus would die a hundred times over for him, probably, their hearts so intertwined with the quiet
threat of the end, associates; fangs and a dagger; but he couldn’t let him let others do the same. He
could not allow it. Even if Sirius survived, a part or most or all of him would die, and, inexplicably,
Remus could not allow that either.

They stood in stasis, bodies usually so close now worlds apart, flesh being eaten by the flame that
surrounded them; Remus probably could’ve stayed there for hours, trying to process the mess that
they had made with Sirius’ ice for company, flickering lights like lightning behind his eyes, an
entire storm, but, drawing them out of their trance with a jolt was the phone. Remus’ phone. His
personal phone. From the other side of the table.

This apparently knocked Sirius out of whatever hell his brain had projected him to - he blinked, and
the storm settled down. Remus moved to get the phone, turning it over from where he was face-
down, and frowned. He had been expecting Lily.

Dorcas Meadowes

calling...

“Who is it?” Sirius asked, voice gritty. Remus looked up as the phone stopped ringing, and the call
cut off.

“Dorcas,” he murmured; he had barely unlocked his phone before she was ringing again,
overtaking the space on his phone screen - Remus actually jumped. Sirius’ eyes were boring into
him.

“Have you spoken to her?”

“I’ve been… ignoring her messages,” Remus said quietly, laced with guilt. Sirius groaned.

He hadn’t even been doing it on purpose. Everything had simply been so life-consuming in the past
few days that he hadn’t found the time to sit down and actually figure out what he was going to say
to her. (He had considered setting up a fake workshop in some motel to take her to so it would look
like he was working it alone, but then again, there would be no reason for her not to join up with
him then - and, daresay, Sirius would find it rather insulting.)

The phone stopped ringing for the second time, and the room was plunged into a strange kind of
quiet. Almost anticipatory. The needle dropping came after five seconds; Sirius was staring
intently at him, but Remus was staring intently at his phone. He saw the text first.

“I’m coming to get you,” he read out quietly, picking up his phone and blinking a few times as if
the words were going to switch their letters around before his eyes. “Er- what does that me–”

Sirius had barely taken a step to take a look, and Remus hadn’t even finished his sentence when the
door burst open; and standing there was not James, but Astoria Greengrass.

Sirius straightened immediately. “Astoria, what the hell-”

And then there was James, directly behind her like a flash of lightning.

“I tried to stop her,” James said, giving a unperturbed kind of shrug, “I don’t know what–”

“Hunter,” Astoria squeaked - her voice was high pitched and youthful, but also croaky, as if she
had experienced things long beyond her years. Remus felt his heart drop. “She’s killing them– she-
five of ours, gone-”

Remus turned his gaze to Sirius, panicked, but Sirius wasn’t looking at him. His eyes were trained
carefully on Astoria, his face stony. She had a splatter of blood across her cheek - it looked
meticulous on her clear, tanned skin, as if it was an art piece, but Remus knew better.

“Come on,” Sirius said, moving but not at vampire speed - he grabbed Astoria with one arm, and,
when his other couldn't grasp Remus, spun around to look at him.

And there was residual anger in his eyes. Perpetual anger, probably. There was the ghost of pain,
the droplets of guilt, they were always there; but here, in the rockpool of his eyes, Remus saw
nothing but fear.

He moved.

“Shit,” he whispered, more to himself than anyone.

***

Remus was out of the elevator first. The doors opened and he went for a sprint immediately, racing
in twos down the side staircase, and it was only when he got into the lobby did he realise how
crowded it was - and bloody.

Well, he thought with an evil twinge of pride, watching a small stake from an identical stake-
shooter that Remus had be pulled out of an older vampire’s gushing stomach, if one thing is for
certain, it’s that Dorcas is good as hell at her job.

The vampires seemed to provide a path for him - in hindsight, they were probably avoiding the
smell of his blood - and Remus caught Marlene’s eye as he rushed down the hall. She was sat on a
divan, evidently healed but her white blouse bloody and ripped down the side, the stains of dried
blood on her throat - Remus could envision the blisters and bruising that had been there. He had
created them before. He pushed forward.

As soon as the doors opened he could hear her; and soon enough, he could see her.

“COME AND GET ME, YOU ASSHOLES!” she was screaming, wild and dishevelled - the
vampires had evidently got a few kicks into her, but Dorcas was nothing if not easily recovered.
She was standing in the car park - where the hell the citizens of Manhattan were, Remus could not
even fathom a guess (probably emergency protection warding that went up at the first sign of
supernatural aggression - okay, maybe he could guess.) She twirled her gun in her hands, over and
back again. Remus ran towards her.

“Dorcas!” he yelled, and she turned almost supernaturally fast. He registered the blank shock on
her face, and then relief, and watched her posture relax slightly as she let out a breath and called his
name back.

And then Sirius was behind him - Remus felt him appear - and Dorcas’ face fell so menacingly it
sent a shiver down his spine.
And with no hesitation, Dorcas Meadowes aimed, and she fucking shot.

Remus knew she was an insane shot, and so had absolutely no doubt she wouldn’t accidentally hit
him, but he ducked anyway on instinct. He flipped his head back up and looked back to see not an
injured Sirius, but an injured James - he had been almost directly behind Sirius, who had dodged.
The bullet had embedded into his shoulder and Remus watched the exact moment the blood began
to pool and seep into the cotton of his green shirt, staining it a murky brown.

“Motherfucker,” James groaned, gripping his shoulder in pain. Remus turned back to Dorcas just in
time to pinpoint the exact moment that she decided good enough, and start sprinting.

And he knew what she was doing. This was her technique - she shot from far enough to
incapacitate the vampire as she ran forwards, and then staked them personally. She liked to watch
the light leave their eyes. It was sadistic - It was a retrospective fantasy that Remus had entertain
many a time about Sirius, but had never pulled through. And Dorcas Meadowes had never claimed
to be anything less than brutal and sadistic when it came to killing vampires - she had been
fulfilling them for years, and was entirely set on killing James.

“Dorcas!” he yelled, grabbing her by the shoulders to stop her as she tried to make it. Her eyes
blazed as she jolted backwards. “Dorcas, stop it!”

“Get the fuck off me,” she snarled, and before Remus had even registered her movement she had
pulled a tiny blade out of a crevice of her pocket and slashed him lightly across the arm with it. He
gasped and let go instinctively, and she went to run.

Remus tripped her up.

He thought he saw, distantly, Sirius hold out a hand to a pair of vampires who had emerged from
the doors. They were simply sat there watching as Remus fell to his knees and grabbed her, flailing
and screaming, and straddled her, pinning her arms to the ground.

“Dorcas, stop–” he yelled, but she was faster.

She reached up and headbutted him, loosening his grip yet again so she could slip out and roll him
over, punching him in the face - and then gripping his face with one, strong hand and holding out a
gun with the other, flipping her braided hair up to eye the vampires looming over them.

“What the fuck did you do to him?” Dorcas snarled at Sirius. “What did you do?”

Remus averted his eyes upwards to watch an upside-down Sirius shrug.

“I didn’t do anything."

A gunshot.

“Yes, you did!” she spat, her lips made of malice, and Remus watched as Sirius dug into his
stomach and pulled out the bullet with a gasp. She shot again.

“Dorcas, stop it!” he groaned, except the words sounded incoherent and mushed together with the
way she was gripping his jaw. Sirius did nothing, except stand there, and pull the second bullet out
of his stomach, tearing apart his broken skin with nimble fingers as if it was nothing. Dorcas’ eyes
were swimming with fury.

One of the two vampires who had emerged - Remus could see the other was Astoria - took a few
cautious steps forward, and Sirius held out a hand again.
“Leave it, Percy,” he growled, eyes on Dorcas. The ginger boy backed away. And Remus took a
chance at her distraction.

He reached his non-dominant hand up to the wrist that was holding his neck in place and pulled, as
hard as possible, until her wrist was on the brink of a sprain - she cried out and went to aim her gun
at him (which stung a little) but he propelled himself upwards, throwing her off the low of his
abdomen and punched, full force, across her face, sending her to the floor and in one swift
movement ripped the gun out of her hands, scrambling up while she was still in stasis and standing
above her, aiming at her. She scrambled backwards two paces and looked up warily.

“You wouldn’t shoot me,” she whispered, and the red cloud of betrayal came haunting them once
more.

“You have to listen to me, Cas,” Remus said frantically. “Please, just listen.”

She took a shaky breath in, and when she spoke again, her voice broke. “How could you?”

“Dorcas.”

“It was me and you, Remus,” she said. “It was always me and you.”

“It still is,” Remus said, voice thick with unexpected emotion. “I just need you to listen to me. I can
explain.”

“What can you explain?” she shot back with a bitter, hollow laugh, straight from the crypt of her
lungs. “They almost killed Peter. He’s still not awake. But you wouldn’t fucking know that, would
you, Remus?”

“Stop it.”

“You selfish asshole,” Dorcas said. “You fucking traitor.”

“Stop it.”

She was sitting up, slowly; eyes intent on Remus. He adjusted his hand on the gun, put his finger
on the trigger in warning. Her bottom lip trembled slightly.

“You bastard,” she spat, and it came from deep inside of her. From a secret place, a place only
Remus had ever reached; in a language that only they could speak. A single tear fell onto her
cheek.

“Alright,” Sirius said, taking a cautious step forward. “That’s quite enough–”

A multitude of things happened here, at once.

Dorcas, for one, flashed a victorious grin, and met eyes with Remus - hers sparkled, slightly, but
not from the tears, and he probably knew what she was going to do before she did it; yet he stayed
immobile. Immobile as she pushed herself up with the air of a gymnast, and immobile as she
plunged the stake she had been unsheathing from her jacket pocket up and with one, jarring
movement, straight into Sirius’ throat - it went clean through and out the other side.

It was genuinely horrific - about three screams tore from people’s throats as he staggered
backwards, one of them probably from Remus, though he couldn’t tell with the ringing in his ears -
and the vague voice and stature of a blonde woman appeared in his peripheral vision, not even a
moment after. It wasn’t Marlene, but they bore a resemblance to each other; this woman’s hair was
lighter, a wavy almost white-blonde, and she was shorter, and dainty - small hands, small features,
small everything. She said something that Remus didn’t hear and brushed a hand across Dorcas’
forehead, and her eyes rolled back into her head. She slumped backwards and the dainty woman
caught her, and Remus, at some point, dropped his gun.

“There we go,” the woman whispered, letting her down onto the pavement gently. “Sleep. There
we go."

“What– what?” Remus managed, his feet still rooted onto the ground. Sirius’ horrific choking
came from behind him. It made his stomach turn.

“She’s just unconscious,” she said soothingly, smoothing a hand over Dorcas’ head. “She’ll be
fine.”

“Remus!” came a desperate cry from behind him; it seemed to kick him into action, and he spun
with a gasp, sprinting three paces over to where James was kneeling before Sirius, stake still
embedded into his throat. It was angled upwards. Dangerously far up. There was blood dripping
from his mouth.

“I need your–” James choked, reaching out a grabby hand as Remus planted himself next to him.
He wordlessly gripped Remus’ hand and placed it over the handle of the stake, and he understood
almost immediately - it was wood intensely bathed in holy water, James couldn’t touch it himself.
He splayed his hand over Remus’ fingers and almost crushed them as he pulled, and the stake
came out in one clean swoop.

Sirius groaned and fell forwards, coughing hysterically, spitting up blood; his forehead landed on
James’ thigh and his hair fell forward, parting like the red sea, just enough so that Remus could
actually see the bottom end of the wound stitch itself together, terrifyingly high; terrifyingly close
to his brain. His breath came out wheezy, and his hands were periodically balling themselves into
fists and stretching as wide as they could where they were placed by both sides of his head, palms
scathed with grit from the path.

“Oh, God,” James groaned shakily, digging a hand into Sirius’ hair, rubbing at his scalp. He
slumped forward himself, back folding forwards as he rested his own forehead on the back of
Sirius’ neck, exactly where the exit wound was, still digging into his hair. “I thought– I thought…”

Remus realised, with a jolt, that he was still holding the stake - he twisted his body and threw it
underhand as far as he could to the side. He turned his neck as he did, to where the kind looking
woman was still sitting by Dorcas’ sleeping side, hand still smoothing out her hair - and then he
turned it the other way, to where Astoria and Percy were lingering, youthful eyes wide with fear.
Sirius coughed and retched a few times, and James hummed from beside him.

“You’re fine,” he said, almost as if to reassure himself, not Sirius. “You’re fine. You’re okay.” He
sat back up, took a shaky breath and ran both his hands through his hair at the same time, making it
stick up in various places. “Fuck. I need to go find Marlene.”

“I think I saw her in the lobby,” Remus said, voice hoarse. James nodded, taking another breath.

“I– can you– for a minute?” James said, gesturing at Sirius, who was still reeling on James’ leg; he
nodded, and James shuffled himself backwards, holding Sirius’ head so it wouldn’t fall to the
ground when he got up.

“Two minutes,” he said, his voice quivering, before walking at a fast pace back towards the
building. Sirius’ hands were in fists beside him, and he was breathing heavily.
“Hey,” Remus said softly, going to touch his hair without even thinking anything of it. He ran his
fingers through the strands that were falling forwards, but as soon as he let go they fell back, like a
curtain. After a few long moments Sirius pushed himself upwards, not fully, but enough that Remus
could see his face. He crouched down slightly and pushed his hair back again, and Sirius pulled his
head up with it.

His eyes were blank, and there were tear marks on his face - involuntary, Remus would assume, as
involuntary as the scarlet lining his lips, half-dried blood; his own blood; mangled with spit that
had been bubbling out of the corner of his mouth now trickled and pooled at his chin. His lips were
parted slightly, and he was no longer wheezing - the injury was fully healed, by now - but his chest
was still heaving, his eyes still unfocused and ghastly.

“Hey,” Remus whispered again, letting his hands linger on the sides of his head, not knowing
whether to fully touch; a ghost of a gesture. A ghost of a person. “Are you okay?”

“She scratched my brain,” Sirius gasped, his voice croaky and thick, like he had sand stuck in his
throat. “She scratched my brain. Fuck. Fuck.”

“You’re fine,” Remus said, steadily. “You’re healed, Sirius. You’re just in shock.”

“I’m eight hundred years old, Lupin, I don’t experience shock,” Sirius snapped chidingly, and
Remus actually smiled.

“You experience death,” he said carefully. “So you experience near-death experiences. So you
experience shock.”

“Fucking hell,” Sirius whispered, fully pushing himself up now to slump back on his heels. He
brought one hand up to his neck and squeezed, pinched the skin, rolled it between his fingers.
“Fuck me. I felt it. I felt it.”

“She missed,” Remus said. His hands had dropped to rest idly on Sirius’ knees.

“What if she hadn’t?”

“She did.”

“But what if she hadn’t?” Sirius hissed, wide-eyed. Remus shrugged.

“Then you would’ve died.”

And Remus didn’t understand the ashen look on Sirius’ face; the abject fear in his eyes. He had
been around for centuries. This was a child’s panic; the panic of someone who had barely lived a
lifetime. Sirius had lived hundreds. Sirius had done it all.

“You’ve lived a million lifetimes,” Remus said, brows knitted together. “How have you never had
a near death experience before?”

“I have,” Sirius shot back immediately; his eyes flickered up to meet with Remus’. Ice and fire and
life and death. The colour of ash. The colour of the rainclouds before they parted to show the sun.
May turning into June.

He took a shaky breath.

“But none of my lifetimes have ever had you in them before.”

And before Remus could even process those words Sirius was leaning forward, pulling his face in
roughly, and kissing him.

He reacted instantly. His chest bloomed so aggressively that he was quite sure his ribs cracked; his
lungs shrivelled up into nothing, and yet it was euphoric. It was unlike anything he had ever
dreamed in every way. Sirius kissed him like the eclipsed sun kissed the moon; he kissed him with
the passion of a dying man, gripped his face like it was the last thing he would ever touch.

His mouth tasted salty, bloody, tangy, and it was messy, and absolutely bleeding desperation; his
hands felt like they were made of fire, licking their way up Remus’ cheeks like the fire had licked
its way up the stairs of the warehouse, and yet they felt like ice when Remus reached his own
hands up to hold them there, keep them safe; keep them exactly where he wanted them. Sirius
leaned into him, whining slightly, gently; nothing about him was gentle, but Remus wanted to curl
his arms around his neck, run his fingers through his hair and not pull it out. Kiss him and kiss him
and keep him here always.

He was a kettle on boil. He was an avalanche. Remus had the entire world between his fingertips.

Sirius tilted his head, swiping a bloody tongue along the inside of his lip, leaving his mark. An
obituary of what they had once been, a territory claim on what they were now; whatever that was,
whatever that is, real or not real, he didn’t care anymore.

And entirely too soon, Sirius pulled away; only slightly. Remus’ hands went from covering his
straight to the other’s cheeks, thumbs against his sandpaper skin, determined to keep him there - it
was the only thing he could coherently think. Don’t let him go. Don’t let him leave. Never let him
leave again.

“I had to,” Sirius whispered, breath heavy and mingling with Remus’ own; the blood and the battle
and the white flag waved desperately. “Just once. One time. Couldn’t… couldn’t live– couldn't
die–“

“You’re still in shock,” Remus breathed, not removing his hands; he dragged them gently around
the back of his neck, digging into the base of his skull, where the exit wound had been not ten
minutes ago. Sirius’ lip curled and then fell, as if he was trying to stop himself from smiling.

“I’m healed,” Sirius said gently. “No shock.”

“Vampirism heals you physically, not mentally.”

“Are you calling me crazy for wanting to kiss you?”

“Yes,” Remus said with no hesitation, and Sirius really did smile this time. “We’re both crazy.
We’re both fucking insane.”

“I know.”

“I’m still mad at you.”

“I know.”

“I hate you,” Remus breathed, closing his eyes and leaning in, pulling Sirius forward so their
foreheads knocked against each other. “Fuck you. Fuck you.” Sirius’ hands trailed along his
jawline.

“Hate me,” Sirius said. “I don’t care. Hate me forever, as long as we have this.”
Remus exhaled all that he had and tilted his head up slightly, and Sirius, apparently, could not
resist. He projected himself forward with a whine and kissed him so hard that Remus was pushed
backwards, slightly. He straightened up in preservation and Sirius immediately wrapped his arms
around Remus’ neck and pulled him down; Remus gripped desperately onto his shirt and pulled
them chest to chest. And Sirius smiled into his mouth. Let himself be moulded by Remus’ touch;
Remus’ innocent touch. Remus could taste blood and only blood and thought that maybe he would
be happy tasting blood for the rest of his life.

Someone cleared their throat behind them.

Percy and Astoria had disappeared at some point, and in their stead stood James and Marlene; both
of whom had slight smiles on their faces, Marlene being the only one trying to hide hers. Remus
flushed and collapsed onto his heels again, looking away, but Sirius did not move his arms; he
pulled Remus’ head into the crook of his neck via the hook of his elbows, and he felt the timbre of
his chest as he laughed.

“Ah,” Sirius said cheerily, “enjoy the show, did you?”

“Damn,” Marlene said with mock-sadness. “I had hoped that that stake had jolted your brain out of
place and made you less annoying, but apparently not.”

Remus pulled back and looked at them as James let out a guffaw of laughter; Marlene hopped
daintily past them towards where Dorcas lay, the pretty, petite woman was still hovering over her.
And the weight of the world hit Remus at once, as Sirius dropped his arms. And he couldn’t take
his eyes off his best friend.

“She was worried, really,” James murmured quietly as he strode over to them (Marlene harpered an
off-handed “was not!” from where she was a few strides away), and the both of them stood up.
Sirius’ white shirt was practically red with the blood that had seeped into it.

“We have to leave,” James said, even lower, mainly to Sirius - he nodded slightly. “Boardwalk?”

Sirius nodded slowly, pensive in thought. Remus thought it best to wait to ask.

He made his way tentatively over to Dorcas, Marlene and the still unnamed woman, crouching
down beside her. He let out a breath and stroked her cheek, where a bruise was forming from his
own fist - he didn’t doubt that there was a similar one forming on his. He blinked back the tears
that pricked at his eyes.

“So she’s really just asleep?”

“Yes,” the woman said lightly. “Simple impedimentation spell.”

“And…” Remus stopped, smacking his lips together. “Forgive me for asking but who- who are
you?”

As if on cue, as she was about to open her mouth, Sirius’ booming presence appeared. He crouched
down beside Remus, smiling , irritatingly smug.

“Lupin, this is my witch, Pandora–“ he said, gesturing towards the woman, who scowled.

“Not your witch.”

“–Pandora,” he continued, as if he hadn’t heard her, “this is my hunter, Remus.”

“Not your hunter,” he said incredulously, and he and Pandora shared a wry glance that had him
suppressing a laugh.

“Good, now that we all know and love each other, I think it’s about time we took the lovely lady’s
body out of the middle of the street. Boardwalk awaits!”

“You are so annoying,” Marlene muttered, but followed him anyway.

 eight
Chapter Notes

helloo!! this chapter spans a narrative of about a week and is quite nonlinear - just
putting this here as a heads up to kinda pay attention to when certain scenes are
happening within the week, i've tried to make it as clear as i can but. yknow.

also thank you SO much for 18k hits! that is genuinely fucking insane!!!! every single
comment genuinely makes my day and I know I am terrible at replying to them (i'm
going to go rampage reply to chapter 7 comments after posting this) but i read them all
thank you sososo much I'm so glad you guys like this fic it makes me so :') <3<3<3

Boardwalk was an estate, Remus discovered quickly, up in East Hampton all the way down Long
Island. They packed the essentials - getting Dorcas to a safe space was more pertinent than a full-
blown move - and drove in three; Remus, Pandora and an unconscious Dorcas in his truck, Sirius
and Marlene in another car, and James in the third with the bulk of their essential things.

Remus had been somewhat nervous about spending that time (about two hours consecutively) in
nothing but the witches’ company, but she was actually as lovely as she looked; she had been
friends with Regulus, Remus found out quickly into their conversation, and had been under the
Black family’s employment (though if it could be classed as employment was another thing - it
sounded more like enslavery to him). She, too, hadn’t seen Regulus since his disappearance -
Remus must have looked skeptical, because she truly insisted that she was just as clueless as Sirius
on what he was doing - and, upon the deaths of Orion and Walburga she had taken her chance and
disappeared into the depths of Scotland, where Sirius found her three years later. She noted that he
had been nothing but nice to her in the ten years that he had spent with them which is why she
chose to trust him, and she maintained that she was not his witch, to which her and Remus had a
sort of bonding moment founded in the affirmation that the neither of them were Sirius Black’s
anything, though Remus felt, deep inside him, that he might be lying about that.

(Pandora didn’t seem to know about Remus’ personal part in setting the Black clan alight, and
Remus didn’t want to be the one to tell her, so he stayed quiet. He was rather sure their mishap had
seized the lives of several dark witches, as well; and just like (most) vampires, witches bond to
witches.)

On the topic, however, Pandora had looked only mildly offended when he had asked her if she was
a dark or a light witch - mildly offended being astronomical on a face as friendly as hers (Remus
wasn’t even sure if the question was worth asking, but her presence and her previous association
were two incredibly confusing juxtapositions). Her answer, after a minute of mulling it over, was
quite straightforward - she was neither. She was somewhere in the grey area between dark and
light, good intentioned but quick-handed, skillful in magic that other covens would chastise her for
and - most prominently - an eager experimenter.

In a passing comment here, relayed with a reminiscent smile, she mentioned that Regulus,
apparently, had always told her that she was on the road to getting herself killed with her
experiments. Remus found himself smiling too. He felt strangely eager at the humanisation of the
figure that was Regulus in his mind that came from this comment. He thought, briefly, that it
would be interesting to meet him and form a completely unbiased opinion based on his outlook
now. He felt like his prejudices about Sirius, his opinions, his disdains had been burnt into his cells
by now; he couldn’t scratch them off, persay, but he could simply create more to overpower them.
How easy would it be with his enigmatic brother? So similar, yet so different. His outlook
originally had been bad, associated with the coven that were tearing people apart, but the way that
Sirius spoke about him with fondness and the lingering residue of hope left Remus in quite a grey
area, too; he felt, suddenly, like he and Pandora might have a lot more in common than they
thought.

By the tail end of their journey the conversation had dissipated like a retreating wave, and Remus
found himself following Sirius’ sleek black car down a pastoral, rich and grassy route. Dark oak
trees hung over them like looming threats, and Remus felt goosebumps appear on his arm as the
setting sun peeked its way through the jagged, shadowing branches, as if fighting for her right to be
there. They took a few turns and the house wasn’t a slow and steady reveal, but a jumpscare; it was
significantly isolated, not close enough to the lake to be considered a lake house but close enough
that Remus could look out and watch the amber tones of the sunset seep their way into the water
like an serene old painting.

All in all, his jaw dropped when they turned the corner.

The house itself was beautiful; very homely and modern looking. The front yard wasn’t
exceedingly huge but the driveway could fit all three cars, and there were trailed hedges and rose
bushes that looked exceedingly kempt and cared for lining the walkways and the front garden in an
echo of an eighteenth-century topiary maze. It was huge, the house - huge and a solid brick-
coloured brown with quite a few window walls, the interior seeming just as clean from what he
could see through the glass, and there were a few white stone pillars holding up the structure and a
balcony directly in the middle, above the front door; overheaded by the white eaves of the dark
roof, probably usually lit up with lighting that was off due to the vacancy. There was a chimney,
Remus noticed, and the house extended backwards some - there must be at least ten bedrooms.
Probably more. It could be a boarding house, or a hotel. But it was Sirius’. It was all his.

“Holy shit,” came from Remus’ lips without his intention; a whisper of astonishment, and yet
Sirius did not look at him. James did, however; he turned from where he was climbing out of his
car, slammed the door and raised his eyebrows.

“See why I use his credit card now?” he quipped, and Sirius’ back was turned, but Remus could
almost see him rolling his eyes.

Remus tried to help Pandora escort Dorcas out of the car, but it ended up being Marlene who
picked her up bridal style and carried her into the house, flinging the door open with what looked
like a tiny bump of her hip. Remus followed as she carried her up the stairs, all three of their
companions in tow behind him, and watched as she deposited her gently on the bed. The setting
sun peeked through the open curtains and streaked dim light onto her face. She looked peaceful.
Remus realised with a jolt that he had never actually seen her this at peace.

He only had about a second to admire it before Sirius was stepping in front of him and reaching out
to touch her.

“What the hell are you doing?” Remus blurted, frowning; Sirius simply turned back to him slowly
and pulled his hand up, taking a knife out of a utility pouch on her waist.

He flinched as Sirius’ hand began to burn, but Sirius did not; he simply held it out to Remus, blade
first, his hand still curled around the hilt, skin tearing and blisters forming. Remus pulled it away
from him gently and watched as Sirius’ hand lingered; watched as the burns healed within seconds,
as if they were never there. And he wondered, briefly, how much older Sirius was to James - who
couldn’t touch the stake earlier, recoiled in a knee-jerk reaction like human’s do to hot things -
while Sirius could without so much as an acknowledgement; his tolerance was something Remus
had never seen. He had incapacitated vampires for minutes with a spritz of holy water. Sirius could
probably bathe in it.

“Does she have any more blades hidden?” Sirius asked him blithely, and Remus blinked, not
realising for a moment that this was directed to him.

“What?”

“You’re her friend, I presume you’d know where she’d hide them on her person…?”

Remus blinked again, and then nodded. He did know, but most of all he didn’t want anyone to
manhandle her but him. He had put her through enough, seemingly.

So he touched Dorcas tenderly, under the impression that she’d wake if he touched her too hard
although he knew she wouldn’t. There were two daggers strapped to both of her thighs. It was her
signature - her twin blades, with a spiral black hilt and a shiny, patterned finish on the blade. It was
the first place he went, and then he moved upwards, and unearthed three hidden throwing blades
out of a pocket on the side of her hip. And, as he pushed her sleeves up there were small stakes
strapped in a holster on her forearm. He took the whole thing off.

He placed them all on the regal dresser by the side of the bed and Pandora was the one to take
them, disappearing without a word out the door.

Sirius turned to him, and he didn’t look confident.

“What?”

“Look, you’re not going to like this,” he said, hesitantly.

“I’m not going to like what.”

“But don’t fight with me again. My fragile, elderly eight-hundred year old heart can’t handle it.”

“You’re seven hundred and ninety-eight,” Remus muttered, narrowing his eyes, as Sirius turned to
open up a drawer.

He pulled out a bunch of rope.

“No,” Remus said automatically, taking a step forward; Sirius took a step back. “Absolutely not.”

“Look, it’s just for precautionary reasons–”

“We’re not tying her up. She’s a person, not a-”

“Vampire?” Sirius filled in, eyebrows raised. Remus shut his mouth; he understood his blunder.
Sirius’ eyes were not angry, however. More amused. “She could very well kill us. Is that not why
you used to tie me up?”

“That’s different,” Remus said. “I was torturing you. We’re not going to hurt her, Sirius.” The
words came out strong, each syllable pronounced; almost a threat. Sirius turned to look at him now.

“No,” he said carefully, “We’re not going to hurt her. But we need to keep her stable until you can
sway her, and explain what’s going on. The last thing we want is her going blabbing to the rest of
your people, which she will if we don’t restrain her in some way. She’ll get us all killed, and then
what? Riddle prevails?”

Remus sighed. He was right. Dorcas would attempt to kill them all without a second thought - she
had - and he completely understood why, but he knew how this would look. He knew how awful it
would make her feel - moreso than she already did, assuming his betrayal - and he felt, to put it
simply, guilty.

“Okay, fine. You do it,” he muttered, taking a step back. “But don’t hurt her. And we untie her as
soon as possible. When I say.”

“You know her best,” Sirius replied, and went in.

Soon enough both of her wrists were bound and Sirius was stepping back, making eye contact with
Pandora that seemed to speak a whole conversation. Remus noticed James and Marlene had left
wordlessly at some point.

He leant against the end of the bedframe and stared down at his best friend.

“She’s going to hate me,” Remus whispered, almost to himself. “She’s never going to forgive me.”

“She will,” Sirius said.

“I tied her up!”

“Technically, I tied her up.”

Remus didn’t smile. He simply moved to sit on the chest at the foot of the bed, not trusting his
legs, his eyes not leaving Dorcas’ sleeping figure.

“You can’t be here,” he said, and he saw Sirius nod out of his peripheral vision.

“I know,” he said. Yet he didn’t move. Remus left it ten, fifteen seconds, and then turned to look at
him. He was staring at Remus earnestly, like there was something on the tip of his tongue that
couldn’t fight its way past his teeth. Like his words were bands of criminals.

“You have something to say?”

Sirius exhaled slowly.

“I’m going to call them,” he said calmly, his voice taking on an edge that Remus hadn’t heard
before; was it defeation? “For help.”

Remus let his shoulders slump.

“Good.”

“And I’m sorry,” he continued, almost a little too collected. Like he was holding everything inside
him; like his guts would spill out if he faltered for a second. He was closed again; Remus could see
it; yet his words were open. He was trying to balance the two. “I’m sorry for what I said.”

“We say sorry, now?” Remus said, going back to looking at Dorcas. His chest alleviated slightly.

“Hey. I apologised on that phone call.”

“Yeah, after eight years,” Remus said, “I figured that was how long we had to wait. Like,
Edinburgh was 2014. You get an apology for that in a year.”

He turned back to Sirius, and found immense warmth in the fact he was smiling softly.

“What did you do to apologise for in Edinburgh?” Sirius sneered with no heat. “I kicked your ass.”

“You absolutely did not.”

“I did!”

“Get out,” Remus said, trying to suppress a laugh and feeling immensely guilty for it while his best
friend lay unconscious. Sirius inclined his head, and in a second was gone; the door clicking shut.

It took Remus five whole minutes to work up the courage to wake her up. Pandora sat patiently,
twirling her hair around her finger, and Remus simply sat and stared at Dorcas. A part of him
didn’t want to interrupt her peace; the other part wanted to get it over with. A part of him had no
clue what on earth he could say; the other part just wanted to tell the truth, and hope Dorcas was
open-minded enough to consider it. Once he had worked up the courage Pandora placed a hand
over her forehead, murmured something in Latin, and slipped out of the room before Dorcas woke
- but not before she put a comforting hand on Remus’ shoulder. A ‘good luck’.

There was a split second when her eyes fluttered open that they were soft; confused. She groaned a
little bit, stretching; her eyes flickered around, and she seemed to notice Remus and feel the rope
around her arms instantaneously.

Her expression turned murderous.

“You tied me up?” were her first words, basically hissed through her teeth. She shook her head.
“Oh, fuck you, Remus.”

“Listen,” he said quickly and firmly; not wanting to let her interrupt. Not wanting any more
miscommunication. “I’m going to tell you everything. And you’re going to listen, and I just hope
that by the end of it, you understand. Don’t interrupt, Cas–” he held up a hand to silence her as she
opened her mouth, brows knitted together so harshly her whole face was pinched, a million things
weighing on her shoulders. “I’m serious. Please just listen.”

She pursed her lips, but said nothing. He took a deep breath.

“The first thing I need you to know is that these are not the vampires who hurt Peter.”

“How would you know?” she interjected in a cruel sneer. “Vampires are fucking vampires - they
breed murder. I don’t fucking care who the exact culprit was. They’re all going to answer for it.”

“No,” Remus emphasised. “I can promise you, they’re not. I swear– half of what we’ve been taught
was a lie, Dorcas. The bureau - training - they instilled us with prejudices that simply aren’t true.
Or- are true, but not always. Not all vampires are like the ones we hate. These people are good-”

“Sirius Black?!” Dorcas practically screeched, and Remus deflated slightly at his own, ridiculous
word choice. “Good?! You’ve hated him for the better part of a decade!”

“I hated what he was,” Remus said. “And he hated what I was. But what we are isn’t who we are,
Cas.”

“What the fuck does that even mean?”

“It means,” Remus said, taking a deep breath, “That… not all vampires are the murderous,
animalistic monsters that we were taught they were. Some of them don’t even hurt humans - don’t
even drink human blood. We were taught they were feral, that their bloodlust controls them; that
they don’t have lives, relationships. That they’re more animal than human–” he shook his head,
“Dorcas, they’re not. At least, not all of them. The coven that hurt Peter are an awful, awful coven,
but that’s just them. Their lack of humanity is not representative of their entire species. The
creatures that we were taught to hunt are not representative of their entire species. There isn’t just
good and bad in the world. It’s not as simple as we’ve been kidding ourselves to believe.”

“Humanity,” Dorcas repeated, bitterly, her lips actually curling into a cruel smile. “God, what have
they done to you, Rem?”

“They’ve done nothing,” he said firmly. “I discovered this all on my own. I spent weeks battling
with myself over it -- god, I still am.”

“Weeks?” Dorcas asked, for the first time seeming genuinely confused. Remus nodded.

“Remember the coven in Austin?” She nodded. “Sirius killed them. For me.”

Dorcas’ face could not be more pinched if she tried. “Why?”

“Because–” he started; then cut off. He and Sirius never had actually had a conversation about that
- not one that lay out all the facts, not one that was completely truthful. They danced around each
other; they spoke in riddles, but they always seemed to know what the other was trying to say.

(Did he care? Was that it? Were they at the point where they were acknowledging that they cared
for one another, or would it be something they would dance around forever?)

“They bit me,” he settled for, which was as straightforward as he could get it. “They hurt me, so he
killed them.”

“Because you’re his little fucking pet project!” Dorcas practically screamed, sitting up further; the
bed creaked as she pulled on her ropes. “Because he’s sick, and sadistic, and wants you all to
himself to fucking- fucking torture and play with. You’re a pawn, Remus, can’t you see?! God, all
this time I thought you saw- I thought you got it–”

“Got what,” Remus said in less of a question and more of a statement.

“You’re like– like a puppet to him,” she said, shaking her head wildly. “Or fucking prey. He plays
with you - he follows you around, he interrupts cases. He gets all up in your face because he knows
exactly how you’ll react and he finds joy in your pain, and your embarrassment. So he flirts with
you. He makes you want to fuck him - and you do, don’t you? That’s it, isn’t it? It worked. He has
you right where he wants you. God, Remus, I thought you were stronger than this–”

“Stop it,” Remus said through his teeth. “That’s not what it is at all.”

“It is,” she said, her face coated with sympathy; as if he was a child.

And for some reason, this was what pushed Remus over the edge.

“Stop treating me like a fucking idiot, Dorcas!” he said, standing up and pacing a bit, circling
around to her bedside. “God, you always have, you know that? You treat me like I'm incapable of
making my own judgements - my own decisions. Like I don’t know what he’s like. Like I wasn’t
there when he was following me around, interrupting my cases; when he broke my fingers, my
arms, when he gave me concussion after concussion.” He pointed a finger to his chest. “I was
there, Dorcas. He did that to me. You have absolutely no fucking say in how I feel or how he feels
or what our relationship is - I don’t even know what our relationship is, and you- as if you have it
all figured out– I’m not– you act like I’m this broken thing–”

“Remus,” she said, slowly, carefully. Knowingly. “I don’t know what he has said to you, but it’s a
lie. You must know it’s a lie.”

Remus actually let out a laugh, here. At the irony, really. Because it wasn’t. He knew, somehow,
that it wasn’t.

And he knew that Dorcas wouldn’t be easy. He knew that she would have to be swayed; knew that
she would never trust them, not really. And that was okay - because Remus didn’t trust them either.
What was there to trust? What even was trust anymore besides an opening for infectious lies?
Continuous self-doubt? He did not trust many things, but there was one thing that both he and
Dorcas grasped as a motivator.

For he trusted that little Peter Pettigrew was half-dead in the hospital right now, and that someone
had done that, and he trusted that they all had a common goal for vengeance. Including Dorcas. So
he would start there. He would start from the beginning - the very, very beginning - because Sirius
had blood and fire in his past, and so did Dorcas. And neither of them wished to scrub it out but
simply to finish the job.

Common enemies. Common enemies.

“I’m going to tell you a story,” Remus said quietly, pulling a chair up to sit by her bedside. “And
you are going to sit, and you are going to listen.”

Dorcas looked angry, but she said nothing. Remus took that as an acceptance.

“Okay, so, what do you know about Purebloods?”

***

Remus had been working cases for the better part of ten years, now. A lot of the time they were
pretty straightforward. The world was significantly more overrun with vampires and werewolves
than other monsters. He had had a hand in helping Benjy assimilate yearlong statistics, two years
ago - out of all of the reports submitted to the bureau 41% had been vampire cases, 29% werewolf.
(The remaining 30% had been an assimilation; the wide-ranged apparitions/ghouls section coming
in at 16%, and the rest minor categories.)

Thus, Remus had killed enough rogue, young vampires that he could do it in his sleep; same with
werewolves. And they were easy to track, those ones; huge pawprints and a lack of care for who
they attract or what trails they leave. In wolf form their brain is just go, go, go; and unlike
vampires, whose skills sharpen with age, werewolves in wolf form do not statistically gain any
more sentience whether they are twenty or two hundred years old (quite sad, really, considering
how slow the fuckers age). And it’s easy. Simple. Vampires are a bit more slippery, but they
always - at least, the less strategic, non-Pureblood vampires Remus was used to hunting - had a sort
of pattern, a trail they left too. It was less overt than the wolves - they were, of course, humanly
sentient and thus refined at cleaning up their own messes - but years of practice had Remus pretty
confident in knowing where to look, what to spot.

The more complicated cases - shapeshifters, angsty ghouls (not to be confused with unrested
ghouls or spirits, tied to one place - no, these fuckers could go anywhere), Arachnids (giant sentient
spider-humans who fed on human flesh like mosquitoes. Absolute bastards to kill, they were -
Remus had only managed it once, and they’d had to pull together a tag-team of seven hunters to
manage to take down the entire nest), Basilisks (his and Dorcas’ opus magnum, if you ask them -
she would never tire of telling the tale of how they slayed one together on the shores of Greece a
couple of years ago) - they needed precision. They needed stages, lists and plans of action and a
brave locked-up heart, ready to be thrown into the real world.

And if you’d ask Sirius, Remus was a bumbling idiot who knew nothing about the real world -
Remus wouldn’t go that far, but he was willing to acquiesce about his lack of deeper knowledge
about vampires, unwilling to go deeper than that lest it unravel everything he thought he knew for
a decade. Because yes, his life was unravelling like a broken cassette tape right now, but vampires,
he could deal with. (And no, (he will tell himself time and time again) it is not just because of an
intense attraction (or.. enthrallment) to his (never) mortal (succumbing to the Sirius Black
dramatics) enemy.) (Perhaps he was just the only familiar thing Remus could find in the debris.)
(He doesn’t dwell on it, much.) (Yes he absolutely does.)

Regardless, he had worked easy cases, and he had worked complicated cases; he was rather deft at
feelings and life and being a functional human being, but he was good at what he did. Brainless
except out on the field. He knew what the fuck he was doing. And this case was obviously
different for the period in which Sirius simply decided not to divulge everything they knew (Jesus,
this guy was selfish, what a fucking choice, Remus) but now he had the facts, he had the history,
he had the nerves; complicated to a T.

So, Remus, being Remus, on a complicated case, made a fucking list. Because that’s what he did.

The whiteboard, by the end of their first week at Boardwalk, looked something like this:

What We Know:

Riddle - awake since 2014 - seven years. (sirius: wow, you can count, well done, Lupin.)
18 covens murdered btwn 2013-21.
Murders on a steady, positively correlated increase since 2016. See table (printed by James
☺)
getting sloppy - new turns? **
or they just don't care
or both
Missing Persons – usually young (20-29 avg)
pattern of mental health issues (unsure if correlated)
77% found within 3 weeks and 4-5 blocks of murder.
lily: coincidence?
sirius: nothing is a coincidence with tom riddle
SUSPECTS/LEADS:
Murders being covered up by hosp - Lily on it
[could be gov and not vamps]
[worth checking out - potential suspect ???]
LM (lucius malfoy) – S caught scent in Queens, 16/2 - why is he here?

What We Don’t Know:

Location/Status on Regulus Black

 Source of Tom Riddle’s strength
Daphne Greengrass’ whereabouts [?]
Tom Riddle’s whereabouts (evaluate - see:locations)
What the Malfoy’s are hiding (see:locations)

Locations:

Malfoy Estate! Mansfield, Vermont - three mansions in a triangle, guard increased

immensely around 2017 - suspicious
sirius finding house plans from ‘andromeda’??
send someone to scope them out
Rosier Manor - fifty acres of private land - suspicious - upstate, coordinates tbc

NYC - 3 previously inhabited safehouses

COORDS:
40.794560, -73.923466
40.796139, -73.812611
40.771867, -73.952469
send someone to scope them out
james & sirius
james: partners in crime and prevention of crime! <3
marlene: shut up, loser

three murder scenes from two nights ago - three young girls - bodies moved but scent present
(UPDATE) sirius tracked - trail goes abruptly north then dead somewhere around Hartford,
CT - no scent present
sybil and ophelia (hotel vamps) to stake out

Status (updated daily):

Sirius: Communications [!!!], tracking - best sense of smell (he says with pride)
James: Scope out Malfoy Manor
Marlene: Dorcas Duty
Lily: Investigate Hospital
Pandora: Contact Witches
Remus: Everything Else

And so, in that exact order, was Remus’ list of problems.

Number 1: Sirius.

Their first day at Boardwalk, Remus had spent at least four hours in Dorcas’ little bedroom,
watching the skin on her wrists get rawer and redder as she fidgeted; relaying the story as best as
he could, and then, his own. Omitting all pieces of evidence that Dorcas could use against him for
the whole ‘pet-project’ idea she had formulated in her head - and the thing was, Remus couldn’t
even blame her for it. It was entirely plausible. Remus was not the best person to talk down her
prejudices with vampires - which was where Marlene came in, but that is problem number three;
she was not the bloodsucker of focus as of right now.

Sirius was, to put it simply, avoiding him.

And it shouldn’t be a big deal. It shouldn’t. At all. It wasn’t - they had bigger things to worry about
than the cataclysmic event of them crashing into each other; the cataclysmic event of the world
ending, for example, if they don’t focus on tracking the coven and Tom Riddle and his fucking
coven of cronies, which is much more of a pressing matter, but; Sirius had not said more than ten
words to him per day. He hid himself away upholding communications, and this was not working
together, this was working beside each other - darting around each other, and Sirius Black had
never darted around anything before. Life with Sirius at his heels was always either a wave,
threatening to drown him, or a circle of holy fire surrounding him so there was no way out and he
was choking on the fumes. Today, his windpipe was clear. And perhaps the fact it was unsettling
was simply a marker of the fact that Remus was too in tune with damage and destruction, and
maybe it would ruin him; but he had long accepted his ruination. You don’t go into this job
intending to live a long, happy life. You don’t go into this job intending to live at all.

He had lived, though, in the past eight years. He hadn’t lived in the normal, human sense, he
supposed; but what was humanity to Remus anyway? Mundane life had evaded him; slipped
through his fingers, the ghost of humanity twisting into a ghoul that threatened to incapacitate him
with a jaundiced eye and a million years of lies unravelling in the light of Sirius Black’s undead
eyes, in the soft light of the leaking sun over his pale skin in a tacky motel bedroom; the most
beautiful thing in Tennessee. The most dangerous. And Remus had long since known that he was
an intense all or nothing person; his revelation, in the past four days of next to nothing, was that
Sirius was too. All, or nothing. All; when the red spots of death are still clouding your vision, the
singe of burning wood an itch in the pit of your skull. Nothing; when the spots dissipate and all
that is left is the weight of a million murder files and the world on your shoulders and the person
you hate the most behind your back; except there’s not the cold press of the barrel of a gun pressed
up to your spine anymore. There’s nothing. Nothing, and nothing. Everything; the word on Sirius’
cherry lips in a dim, candlelit corner of a library, wrists pinned to peeling hardbacks; shoved into a
box labelled nothing. A farce.

And Remus got it. They were a myriad of complications, a billion feelings that he could not begin
to explain; the colours that a spider can see, the pitches that a dog can hear. Secluded, special. He
and Sirius, alone; on some kind of strange radio frequency alike to the one he and his two sires
were on, but not quite - something special, something that was theirs, something messy and
completely fucked up and something that could, quite honestly, either make or break them during a
situation where even a chip in a teacup could be cataclysmic; where a crack under a thumb on a
fucking ceramic bowl could bring about the end for both of them.

So, he got it.

Didn’t stop him from wanting. Didn’t stop him from wondering what it was, exactly, that he
wanted. The top suggestion at the moment seemed to flash only one word: answers. For Sirius to
hold himself accountable for the godforsaken mess that he had made them both, the night he had
first pressed his cold arm to Remus’ colder throat. And god, Remus Lupin understood nothing but
damage and destruction, his mother tongue lathered only in the threat of ruination; and now that it
was halfway gone he didn’t know what he was going to do with himself other than destroy it all
over again.
That was Remus’ first problem. Remus’ first problem, since that fateful day eight years ago, in the
dingy alleyway when Sirius had looked at him with those intoxicating eyes and called him ‘pretty
boy’ for the first time. Remus’ problem was him; always, always, him.

Remus’ second problem was a sharp rap on the door the day after they had arrived.

It had been around dusk, and Sirius was in the morning room - why a modern Long Island estate
had Victorian names to the rooms, Remus did not fucking know (you can take the man out of the
aristocracy, but you can’t take the aristocracy out of the man, he supposed.) He knew from the
books he had read that the ‘morning room’ doubled as the ‘communications room’, and oftentimes
he could hear Sirius talking, low and honey-like, on the phone to whichever acquaintance he had
made in his eight hundred years terrorising the planet. Marlene was bringing Dorcas her dinner,
and James was in the back garden - so, Remus answered the door.

And standing there were three of the young vampires that Remus had met (met in the loosest sense)
the first day he had arrived at Hotel Transylvania. Astoria Greengrass stood between two boys, her
long black hair falling down her torso - one of them he recognised to be the stoic-looking ginger
named Percy from a few days ago, the other he couldn’t recall a name to pin at all. He was rather
burly, short brown hair and defined features; a sort of round face, and lips that seemed wholly
neutral; unlike Sirius’, whose were either upturned or downturned - never resting. Not for a second.

Sirius was, as always, the first topic of conversation.

“Is Mr. Black here?” Astoria asked tentatively, looking significantly less like she wanted to rip
Remus’ head off; but she had shrunk back when he had opened the door, so it was definitely still
there. And in a second, Sirius was there, beside him - the closest he had gotten since their
foreheads had been touching.

“No,” he said; no preamble. Remus took a step back as the three vampires tried to enter, and
noticed Marlene coming down the stairs - she made no noise, he saw her out of the corner of his
eye. “No.”

“We want to help!” the burly boy said, in what Remus’ recognised as a thick Scottish accent. Sirius
scowled.

“Absolutely not,” he said, walking away into the sitting room - leaving the door open, however. He
must’ve known that they would not give up that easily, as the boys came charging in, Astoria on
their tail - not moving daintily but charging just as fierce. Remus and Marlene padded after them.

“We’re useful,” Percy was saying as he entered - Sirius had collapsed onto a futon, and was
looking up at them rather exasperatedly. The three of them crowded him.

“You’re children.”

“I’m twenty-one!”

“You look seventeen, you are seventeen,” Sirius said off-handedly. “And you are both,” he said,
pointing to Astoria, who did not have a defence. “No.”

“We don’t have to be involved in the fighting,” the burly boy said. “We can sniff out trails. We can
do stakeouts, and stuff.”

Sirius groaned. “You need to stop watching police TV shows, for crying out loud, Oliver.”

“My parents told me you’re getting the Order of the Phoenix back together,” Astoria blurted,
looking immediately like she hadn’t meant to speak.

Sirius raised an eyebrow.

“And what do you know about the Order of the Phoenix?”

“Enough,” she said, defiantly. She puffed her chest out and flicked her hair behind her back.

“We just want to be useful,” Percy said.

“Yeah,” Oliver echoed.

“No,” Sirius repeated, sternly; and he suddenly sounded just about as wise as his years. “We don’t
need your help. And you don’t need to involve yourselves in something bigger than yourself.” He
ran a hand through his hair and sighed, and when he spoke again his voice had a softer threat laced
through it. “You throw yourself into a fight you don’t understand, you get killed; do you hear me?
And if you die? That’ll be on my conscience. So, no. You can’t help.”

“I understand the fight,” Percy said, quietly. “I, of all people, understand the fight.”

Sirius scoffed. “Don’t play the disownment card on me, Strawberry Shortcake. I invented that
card.”

“But it won’t even be fighting,” Oliver said, persisting - Sirius groaned and turned, ready to
interrupt, but he spoke quick enough to power over him; “We’re not bloody asking to decapitate
Tom Riddle ourselves, we just want to be of use somehow.”

“Are you being snarky with me, Wood?” he said, eyes widening. He took a step forward and
Marlene pulled him back by the shoulder.

“Look, Sirius, maybe they have a point,” Marlene put forth; he turned to her and raised his
eyebrows. But he heard her out. “I know them better than you do. They’re not just idiotic newly
turned’s, they’re strategic.”

“You tutoring them in Math does not give them the skills to go up against eight hundred year old
murder weapons, Marlene.”

“They wouldn’t be going up against anyone. They’re simply a pair of six extra eyes, and lord
knows we need those right now.”

“What the hell am I holing myself up in that room for?” Sirius shot back, gesturing vaguely
upwards towards the room he had claimed to start re-recruiting their old friends and re-assemble
their old alliances. “They’re our eyes. Not these kids.”

“These kids aren’t idiots,” Marlene said, and Remus could tell that she was getting irritated with
him. “I thought you had gotten over your absurd avoidance tactic, Sirius. You letting them help
doesn’t mean they're going to die, stop with the dramatics already. You’re eight hundred years old,
grow a backbone.”

Sirius’ jaw dropped, slightly; almost hilariously; but he said nothing. Simply worked his jaw and
took a deep breath. She had kicked him into line, and he knew that she was right.

There was a long, tense pause, and then Astoria took a step forward. Her innocent eyes twinkled
under Sirius’ gaze.
“I understand the fight, too,” she said; quiet thing. Reserved. For Sirius, and Sirius only. “They
have my big sister. I want her back.”

She hit jackpot. She may not have ever known that she had hit jackpot, but Remus knew instantly.
Knew that that was the thing to push Sirius over the edge, knew that she was the other side of the
coin to him. Big sibling and little sibling. Her hair looked like black silk and her eyes were wide
and she had a baby face, and Remus could see, instantly, that she reminded him of Regulus.

And god, if Remus had a picture of Sirius to put on that damn whiteboard and introduce him as a
potential enemy, sibling bonds would go right under his weaknesses. Regulus Black. Two words
and anything that reminded him of them could incapacitate him completely. It was a hamartia;
achilles heel, he had called it. In play as he pursed his lips and cleared his throat. Eyes flickering
between the three of them, strategising as he stepped over the line of acceptance.

There was a long, long pause.

“You’re not doing anything,” he said, eventually, to Astoria. “You are a child. Tom Riddle may
resort to using children in his army, but I will not.”

He stood up. Percy and Oliver straightened with him.

“Lupin,” Sirius said, not looking at him; Remus jumped. “What do we have? What were the
plans?”

“Er--” Remus stammered, racking his brain for his image of the list. “The Hospital, but Lily’s on
that… the safehouses, but you and James have done three– Malfoy Manor?”

Sirius held a hand up, silencing him. He seemed to contemplate for a moment, and then turned to
where Remus and Marlene were standing.

“Right,” he said, cautiously. And then he spread out his hands in a sort of jazz-hands gesture.
“Who wants to accompany the children on a stakeout to Malfoy Manor?”

“Not it,” Marlene said immediately, and Remus followed on instinct.

Sirius smiled, and it sent pure warmth shooting through Remus’ nerves, up to the tips of his
fingers.

“Jamie!” Sirius called - not loud enough for a human to be able to hear from that distance, but
James was not human. He appeared in three seconds, max. There was dirt on his shirt.

“Yes, my love?” he preened, and Sirius simply looked at him, and then pointed at the trio.

“You’re taking the kids up to Malfoy Manor.”

James’ face fell immediately.

“Why me?!” he complained, looking between everyone in the room in disdain. Remus pressed his
lips together. Marlene simply shrugged, a picture of innocence.

“You weren’t here,” Sirius said simply, and shot him an evil smile.

James pulled his lips up and snarled at him, full vampire mode instantly, and Sirius snarled right
back. Percy actually stepped back slightly at Sirius’ outburst, and James’ face cleared at once. He
pouted. It was almost comical.
“Fine,” he said petulantly, looking between the three young vampires. “All of you?”

“Not Astoria,” Sirius said; he turned and pointed at her. “I have a meeting with your parents
tomorrow. You may come,” his hand moved to point upwards, “once. This will not be a regular
occurrence.”

She looked delighted.

James huffed, brushed himself down and looked between the two youngsters, placing his hands on
his hips.

“Alright,” he said, sounding weary. “Come on then, Weasley, Wood. I’ll be your surrogate dad for
the week.”

“Two weeks,” Sirius said. James flipped him off; Sirius flipped him off right back.

Remus blinked and suddenly the weight of what he had just heard set in.

“Wait– Weasley?” he said, looking between Sirius and Percy. The young boy looked very sheepish,
all of a sudden.

“Son of Molly and Arthur themselves,” Sirius said blithely, and Remus gasped. Bill and Charlie
Weasley were hunters, only a few years younger than him; they had worked a vampire case once,
the three of them, and Remus had helped tame a feral dragon in Romania with Charlie, once.

“Percy,” Remus said, quietly; and the name racked something in him. Percy… Percy was the
trainee. Remus had heard his name a few years ago. He had no idea when he had stopped hearing
his name - only when he had started hearing the younger, the second set of twins’ names instead. “I
know your family. Your brothers. Your uncles.”

Percy’s lips thinned. Oliver took a protective step closer to him.

“Yes, well,” he said, after a moment. It was very reserved. “You probably know them better than I
do, now.”

It was an unspoken end to the conversation. The shock remained on Remus’ face even after they
had left the room. Sirius looked at him gently.

“Disowned him after he turned,” he said quietly, simply. “He was seventeen. They killed the
vampire that sired him and left him there.”

Remus could not speak. He could not speak until Marlene had left the room. He could not speak
until Sirius came up to him, put a hand on his shoulder; pulsed some life into him.

“We have to talk,” Remus whispered; seizing the opportunity to have him close. “We have to talk
about this.”

Sirius simply looked at him; he didn’t look into him, he didn’t look over him. He simply looked.
Observed the superficial.

“We will,” he said, his hand a burning dagger through Remus’ clothes. “Later.”

Later did not come. And James left. And Percy Weasley was a vampire, and his family acted like
he was dead. Remus supposed all three of those were problem number two.

And then there was Dorcas.

Number 3: Dorcas.

And Marlene.

...Mainly Marlene.

She had cornered him the very evening they had arrived, before any young vampire shenanigans -
around 10pm, an hour or so after Remus had gotten done talking to Dorcas (or, more accurately, at
Dorcas). He had been sitting solemnly at the kitchen table with a cup of tea. Pandora had been
sitting with him, but she had had to leave, and so for ten minutes he had been in absolute silence.
He jumped when the door opened. Marlene didn’t notice.

“We have a problem,” she said, no greeting or preamble, pulling out the chair opposite him with a
terrible scrape and collapsing onto the table with her head in her hands. “A big problem. A
humongous problem.”

“What is it?”

Marlene pulled her head back up. Her hair fell in waves over her face like a curtain, but through the
gaps Remus could see that she looked withered.

She ran her fingers through her hair to pull it back and took a deep breath, puffing her cheeks out,
before wincing and saying something that definitely sounded a lot to Remus like–

“You slept with Dorcas?!” he repeated, incredulously, and Marlene squeezed her eyes shut in a
terrible cringe. Remus gaped. “What? When? I only left her an hour ago!”

“Not now!” Marlene hissed, eyes widening. “Jesus Christ, do you think I’m a slag?”

Remus continued to gape, his mouth open against his will and shoved down the remark that he
wouldn’t actually know, considering they had met three days ago. He squeezed his eyes shut and
went for what was obviously a far more eloquent response of: “You– I mean, you -- what? When,
and why - how–”

“Texas,” Marlene said, simply, breathlessly. “I went to meet up with Sirius for a weekend. We
went to a club–”

And “Oh,” came tumbling out of Remus’ mouth before he even registered it - a pool of dread
formed in his stomach. That night. That night.

He knew exactly what night she meant; he still felt it on his neck.

“Oh, my god,” he breathed, “I saw you there. You were–”

The hot blonde that his best friend had been attached at the lips to.

“The skimpy whore that fucked your friend in a hotel room,” Marlene said. “Yeah, that’s me.”

Well. He supposed that worked too.

“Oh, dear god,” Remus groaned, his head falling into his hands.

“Yeah. Me too. I’ll give you a minute.” A moment. “Maybe ten.”

He definitely used closer to ten than one.

“Wait,” Remus said, eventually, pulling his head up; Marlene looked at him attentively. “Wait,
how did she not notice you were a vampire?”

Marlene sighed. “I mean- she was really drunk. And I may have been a little bit high.”

“Okay,” Remus said, supposing that made sense. Finding it quite hysterically hilarious that their
day off hadn’t been a day off for either of them. Vampires, and vampires, and vampires. “Fantastic.
Absolutely brilliant, that is.”

“She’s going to skin me alive,” Marlene moaned. “She’s going to accuse me of being a dark
seductress and stab a blade into my heart while she looks intimately into my eyes - and I won’t
even be mad about it.”

“No, listen,” Remus said, brain suddenly whirring. As if the path ahead had just been blocked up
by a falling boulder and he was left with a shovel to dig a new one. “Listen. Maybe this is, like…
what will work.”

“What?”

“I mean, I saw Sirius that night. And seeing him there, looking so… human,” he cringed at his own
word choice, but continued, “well, it was one of the things that made me really begin to… rethink
everything, y’know?”

Marlene blinked at him. “Okay, cool, but I am not Sirius Greek-God Black. You are severely
overestimating my level of sex appeal, here, Remus.”

“It wasn’t sex appeal!” Remus protested, and Marlene cocked her head and pursed her lips.

“Please. I’m his best friend. You and I both know it was.”

“Stop,” he whined, squeezing his eyes shut and looking to the ceiling; she giggled, and he found
himself smiling too. He shook himself out of it. “Look, regardless of all of that, having sex with
someone is like an intimate thing, right? Maybe she’ll cut you some slack ‘cause she… knew you.
In that way.”

Marlene blinked.

“Look, I know what you’re trying to say, I do, but it’s coming out very no-sex-til-marriage-only-
calls-it-’making’-’love’ type prude; you know that, right?”

Remus almost choked upon trying to restrain a laugh and simultaneously groan. Marlene grinned.
“Am I here for anything else except to be ganged up on by vampires?”

At that exact moment the door swung open, and James Potter sauntered in in a neon green shirt and
shorts.

“Nope,” he said, blithely, heading to the cupboard and taking out a box of cereal. He put a hand in
and ate it straight out of the packaging. “You’re fresh meat. Fun to make fun of. You spend three
hundred years with the same two people, you run out of insults,” he said, muffled while he chewed.
Remus scoffed.

“I’m suddenly remembering why I have hated you people for ten years,” he muttered, dripping
with sarcasm.

James opened his (gross) mouth to retort back, but Marlene turned to him, head in one hand, hair
flicked over her shoulder. She narrowed her eyes.

“Were you listening in the whole time?” she asked, cautiously, and James’ retort was cut off yet
again by the door that he had just emerged from opening - and none other than Sirius Black
entered.

“No, he wasn’t,” he drawled, spinning the chair beside Marlene soundlessly and perching
backwards on it. “But I was.”

“Oh, God,” Marlene groaned. James quirked an eyebrow.

“Why? What did I miss?”

“Marlene fucked Dorcas,” Sirius said casually, and then, “Pass me some O negative, will you?”

James’ jaw dropped.

“Marlene did what now?” he gasped, heading towards the fridge as if on autopilot - he pulled out a
bloodbag and threw it across the room. Sirius caught it easily. James’ smile grew. “Get in Marls!”

“James,” both Marlene and Remus reprimanded. Sirius frowned into his blood.

“It doesn’t have a straw,” he said, looking back up at James. “What am I supposed to do, suck it
out of the corner like a heathen? Pass me a metal straw.”

James made a childish face of mockery and repeated the words “pass me a metal straw” in a high-
pitched voice, and when he turned to open the cutlery drawer Sirius threw an apple from the fruit
bowl at his head.

“Oh, you’re such a twat,” James seethed, turning around and skimming the straw across the room
like a skipping stone on water; Sirius dodged it, and it hit Marlene square in the neck. Remus
watched her skin bruise like a peach and then clear up almost instantly, and she was sent into a
coughing fit.

“So,” James said, coming to sit beside Remus. “Crazy hunter girl, eh?”

Marlene glared at him from where she was coughing. Sirius reached out a fist and thumped her on
the back a few times. “Screw you, Potter,” she choked, and Sirius laughed melodiously.

“Screw you, Marls,” he said, smile growing. Sirius’ face fell.

“If you say it–”

“Oh wait! Dor–”

James’ ridiculously predictable retort was intercepted with a surprised screech as in a split second
Remus unsheathed his blade, twirled it around his fingers and stabbed it, with no hesitation, into
the back of James’ hand, laying idly on the table. Sirius burst out laughing.

And he looked at Remus, for the first time in six hours. And he smiled.

“You,” he said, pulling his hand away from the recovered Marlene’s back, “are bloody brilliant,
Remus Lupin.”

“Get a room,” Marlene muttered.

James screamed again, and Remus pulled the knife out.

“Drama queen,” he jeered as James cradled his hand, and, while James glared at him from behind
his fake glasses, Sirius turned to Marlene.

“You have to use this to your advantage, you know that, right? To sway her. Do what Remus was
saying - intimacy, and all that prudish stuff,” he said, and Marlene groaned.

“But I don’t want to.”

“You were going to anyway,” James said, hand healed, just a little bloody - he stretched it out and
raised an eyebrow at her. “Didn’t we all unanimously agree that Marlene is the only tolerable one
of the three of us?”

“We absolutely did not.”

“Okay,” he continued. “Who here thinks Marlene is the only tolerable one of the three of us?”

James, Remus, and Sirius’ hands all went up. Marlene seemed to give all three of them death glares
at the same time. It was quite impressive.

“If you want to butter her up,” Remus offered, “make her a ham and cheese toastie. She loves
those.”

James scrunched his nose. “British delicacies boggle my mind.”

“You just ate cereal out of the box!” Sirius almost yelled, laughing, and Marlene groaned for what
felt like the millionth time and went to go pull the bread out of the bread bin.

She went up with her sandwich after hordes of good luck’s, and six thumbs up, and Sirius got a call
quite soon afterwards and had to leave, which left James and Remus to be witness to the result.

For Marlene walked back into the room half an hour later with a handful of ceramic shards, and
ham in her hair.

She straightened up precariously. Remus thinned his lips.

“Not a word, boys,” she said, walking tightly to the bin and throwing the shards in. “Not. A.
Word.”

They did not let out a word. They did, however, let out a hysterical laugh after she was gone, which
she technically did not forbid them from doing.

This was basically how the week had gone.

Seven days, and Dorcas was still as stubborn as ever. They talked at her and talked at her but never
with her - she never let them past her walls. Not anymore. And, of course, it wouldn’t be an instant
process; Remus knew this. But it ached - it hurt, terribly, for him to know that she was up there,
and that she couldn’t leave, and that it was his doing.

She was not to be tied up, to be treated inhumanely - that part was very clear. The ropes had simply
been a precaution upon her waking up - she had been untied almost immediately, that first night.
And she had free roam of the east wing to hammer in the message (Pandora had put up some
boundaries, for her safety and theirs. Dorcas Meadowes in a vampire’s kitchen was a recipe for
disaster, regardless of James’ suggestion to put child locks on the knives.)
It was a very difficult situation; a very thin, blurry line. To try to convince Dorcas of their humanity
while, simultaneously, holding her prisoner? It made no sense, but they seemingly had no other
choice - they simply could not risk Dorcas going to the hunters and sending them on James, Sirius
and Marlene’s tail. Sending them on this place, especially, now that she had been brought there.
Sirius’ week, as Remus had understood, had been constant preoccupation with communications;
calling and writing and astral projecting himself around the world; but also in the nearby regions.
He had had an extremely awkward run in with an old vampire sporting a suave goatee who had
come from - as he would later find out from James - Newark, to have a private meeting with Sirius
that lasted over two hours. Over the week Boardwalk had become a sort of HQ - or, at least, a
safehouse for the cogs of the resistance to start rumbling, like a rusty tractor trying to find its
footing again.

Resistance was a fragile thing in its early stages, and they could not risk ruining that before it got
strong enough to resist itself. So, despite how terrible Remus felt about it Dorcas stayed in the east
wing, until they were entirely sure she would not blab.

Remus tried to be optimistic. Perhaps it wouldn’t be a complete lost cause - she had not shown
improvement, but Marlene had brought her all of her meals yesterday and she had only thrown one
plate (not even at Marlene, at the wall.) And she had engaged Remus in a conversation yesterday
about home - about the bureau in London, about Mary, about the Prewett’s and Molly Weasley
and the time they both had to babysit the chaotic, crying red-haired twins and conked out for
twelve hours in her bed afterwards, and it felt like her anger at him was ebbing. Slowly and
carefully, ten years of love was healing up whatever had snapped in her the moment he pointed his
gun at her retreating form.

Remus knew she had every right to be angry. He had been an idiot for not calling her. He had been
an idiot for not trusting her - not trusting her own trust in him, and she never explicitly said but he
had a feeling that that was quite possibly the biggest betrayal. It had always been him and her, and
he had been stupid, and it had all cultivated into one huge outburst founded on her vicious loyalty
to him that he could have avoided had he not broken his ownvicious loyalty to her. So she had
every right to be angry.

But he was quite sure that the terrifying path that he was on might be slightly less terrifying with
his best friend by his side, so he sat by her bedside even when her face was turned away. He knew
that her ultimate entrapment had been his fault, so he did all he could tomake up for it. He brought
her her favourite snacks, put on her favourite movies on her laptop and smiled as she pretended not
to be watching. Engaged her in apologies and technicalities and divulged his own fears and his own
fucked up thought process, because if anyone was to be able to untangle the rusty riddle that had
spiralled its way through his bloodstream it would be her, if she were to just relent the stubbornity
in her life's hatred that she held so near and dear to her heart.

And Marlene worked, too. She was the best example of humanity out of the three of them - she had
groaned when James had decided that she was the most tolerable, yes, but she and they both knew
that he was right. So, she tackled the prejudices. Attempted to unwind them by talking to Dorcas
about her own life; her birth in Southern Italy in the mid 1800s, how Sirius befriended her at
nineteen and, upon finding her half-dead after a horse and carriage accident, turned her at twenty-
three. How she had been betrothed to a family friend but fell in love with a woman who lived down
the street. How Sirius had been the first - the only - person to tell her that that was okay. How they
had ended up in New York, and Emmeline had emigrated to the United States in 1884 through the
Golden door. How Marlene had fallen hard and fast and uncontrollably; for she had lived a life. For
Marlene McKinnon had lived grief and sorrow and happiness and euphoria. She was the girl next
door, and, given their history, she was their best shot.
(Marlene left the room on their sixth day at the estate and whispered “I made her smile today,” as
Remus passed her by. It was, somehow, the highlight of his entire week.)

(And - to give him some credit - James had spoken to her a few times, too. But most times he had
irritated Dorcas so much that she had almost strangled him. So, there was that.)

And he had also been trying to win her over with the story, the history, the case. She still put on a
facade of believing that it was all bullshit, and that it was the vampires that Remus had associated
himself with that were doing the killing; and, to be honest, she had jurisdiction to think that
considering who Sirius Black was to her (a menace, to put it simply); but he had been going
through the files with her, and he had even brought up the whiteboard that had all of the pictures
and gone through them with her, too. All of them, from Tom Riddle, to Daphne Greengrass, to
Regulus Black, brother of Sirius. He could see her intrigued at the famous Pureblood names,
supposed to have died out but still living. He could see her intrigued at the links. He could see what
he saw in himself; her case-face. Hunting was just as much of a thrill to her as it was to him, and
this was the fucking jackpot. They just needed a little more time.

He brought up Percy to her the night that James left.

She was lying on the bed, throwing the remote for her T.V. up in the air and catching it
periodically. Two days into their rehabilitation scheme (James’ name for it - who the fuck else?)
she had still been cold - colder, he supposed - and so she had looked up at Remus and rolled her
eyes instantly. Continued throwing the remote in the air. He decided to cut right to the chase.

“Do you know what happened to Percy Weasley?” he asked, quietly, sinking into the chair beside
her bed. She paused. This was something of interest to her, he supposed.

“Percy Weasley…” she murmured, brows knitting together. She placed the remote by her side. Still
refused to make eye contact. “The third brother? He died, didn’t he?”

“He did?”

“Yes,” Dorcas said, nodding sharply. “Gideon told me. Died on one of his first cases. He was only
seventeen. They were torn up about it for months.” She paused, looking pentative. “I mean,
probably still are. Can’t imagine anything worse than losing a child like that.”

“He didn’t die.”

She looked at him. Her head turned with a jerk, settled deeply into a frown.

“What?” She sat up slowly. “Yes, he did.”

Remus shook his head. “He was turned. He was just downstairs earlier. He’s been living amongst
the vampire community here for four years.”

Dorcas’ face ran through about fifty emotions at once, and settled for disdain.

“No, he hasn’t,” she said, getting angry. “He just died, Remus. He died incredibly young on a case.
They had a funeral. Why would they say–” her face cleared, slowly; her lips were ever so slightly
downturned, her lips parted in slight disbelief.

Because, of course, it made perfect sense to her. Because, of course, they’d rather their seventeen-
year-old son be dead than the thing they have despised their entire life. Of course they would.

“You’re lying,” she said, shaking her head. Remus shook his in tandem, and cleared his throat.
“He was seventeen, and they left him there. I only found out today, too.”

Dorcas’ face began to run through the emotions again. Her brows knitted together deeper and
deeper until she simply looked angry.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to do,” she said, coldly, “but leave the fucking kid out of this. He
was seventeen and he died, Remus.”

“I’m not lying!”

“Okay, even if you’re not, surely they would take his body?”

“I don’t know the logistics, Dorcas, but he’s still here so evidently none of them have ever come
after him. Come on, I know you can see how that’s fucked up. Just ‘cause he was turned doesn’t
mean he wasn’t still their family.”

“He was a vampire–”

“He was a child,” Remus replied firmly.

And he wasn’t sure what he expected to happen next, but it definitely wasn’t Dorcas beginning to
laugh.

“And what about that child in Austin?” she spat; defenses up. “The little girl, the one turned by the
coven we were hunting. She must’ve been– what, fifteen? Sixteen, maybe?”

Remus didn’t reply - simply held her blazing gaze. She scoffed.

“What, no rebuke to that? No ‘it was different’? You’re a fucking hypocrite, Remus.”

“No,” Remus said simply. “I’m not. Of course, it was different, because we weren’t her parents,
but if I could go back, now, I would give her a fighting chance. It wouldn’t have to end badly with
her. We could’ve helped her, but we were hardwired to kill first, think later. There could’ve been a
future for her, but we were trained not to entertain possibilities. And how many futures have we
killed, Dorcas?”

“They weren’t futures-”

“They could have been,” Remus said, almost pleading now, watching her absorb his words. “You
know Sirius runs a sanctuary for vampires here? That place you sliced up. It’s a safehouse for
vampires with nowhere else to go. They have their own society and it works just like ours. I mean,
Astoria Greengrass is a Pureblood child and she has a life, Dorcas. Friends, family, hobbies. James
lives in an apartment in Manhattan and works as a fucking bartender. Percy Weasley was left for
dead by his family and now has friends who will step up to protect him in an instant, and he would
do the same for them. Marlene tutors them in fucking maths and takes them out to race up rivers
and stretch their legs like some sort of dysfunctional Auntie. And Sirius keeps them safe. He
watches over them, because he cares, Dorcas. Though he’d never admit it. He cares about them the
same way you care about me; not in words, but in actions. Isn’t that redeemable? Isn’t there
something in that that is human?”

“Stop it, Remus,” Dorcas said weakly.

“I just wanted you to know,” he said simply. “I just wanted you to know that Percy Weasley may
be undead, but he is alive. I just… wanted you to know.”
And with that, he stood up and left Dorcas’ room.

He had no more energy to think about the rest of his problems.

***

That night was the first night in a while that Remus couldn’t sleep.

It was mid-February, and the air was biting - New York winters were very much alike to London
winters, and Remus, who had grown up in Wales, was used to unpredictable weather and cold, cold
air. It was marginally warm, of course, inside his room; but he could hear the wind whipping and
whistling outside his window, and his sheets were irritatingly clingy to his skin, and there were
probably a million things on his mind that he couldn’t seem to shake. So he got up.

They had been there for a week and Remus had barely explored the house. It was pretty fucking
huge - his bedroom was adjacent to James’, which was obviously empty right now, but aside from
that Remus had absolutely no idea what lay around him, besides the bathroom. He pulled on a
hoodie, put on his slippers and opened his door - it was soundless. It closed with a click, so quiet
Remus could barely hear it. And someone had left the hall light on - it was a long hallway leading
to an open area and the main staircase, but if Remus went the other way and left he’d come across
another smaller seating area - an octagon of space, almost tower-like, with a fireplace, three futons
and a white grand piano, candles lining the windowsills that were big enough to sit on. He had
come across this space a few days ago, after endeavouring upon the side staircase. He did not know
where it led from there.

Of course, the hallway he was in now was dark, and familiar. The door to Remus’ left opened
James’ bedroom. The door to his right opened to a bathroom - that door tended to stay locked, as
there was a door directly to his bedroom, too, and it had just been generally accepted to be an
ensuite. Remus presumed the door next to James’ bedroom, two on his left, had the same function.

The door opposite him was a study. It was small, and seemed not to be used very often - there was
dust coating the desk, and the books were fragile and hard, not touched in a long time. Remus had
discovered this two days ago. He had found it rather homely, and had been back twice already - the
walls were a dark brown, and the carpet was comfortable under his feet. There was a strong
residual smell of pine in the room; it smelled like he was in a forest in Wales, camping with his
parents. A strange pang echoed in his chest at the thought of his mother. She always smelled like
grass, and dirt; woodsy, was Hope Lupin, she had a whole garden of her wacky and wonderful
creation. The last time Remus had been home, she had been growing a pumpkin patch; it had been
August, he believed, and she had been growing them in preparation for Halloween; to carve them,
line them up her walkway. To let the kids in the village know that her house was open; that she had
sweets for them. That she was kind. That had been six years ago, now. He wondered whether she
still grew pumpkins. He wondered if his dad even knew he was alive. He wondered if he cared.

He had dropped active contact with his mother after a particularly nasty case went sideways, and
the monster went after her. It was for her own good - for her own safety. He checked in
periodically a couple of times a year over email. He was twenty-eight, and he had chosen a job that
you don’t go into intending to live, but Christ, did he miss her.

There was one more door down this stretch of the hall, more isolated than the rest, and then a sharp
corner that led to the previously established small seating area. There was a dim blue light shining
from that end of the hallway, and Remus walked towards it - he intended to get to the end and turn;
he intended to go admire the grand piano if anything, but something made him stop in front of the
closed door. Something made him open it.
He could tell, immediately upon entering, that this was Sirius’ room.

It wasn’t anything overt - not at all, at least not at first glance. The room was large, and rather
regal; the bed was a four-poster, and there was a walk in wardrobe to the side, an en-suite to the
other. There was a desk with his laptop on there, the chair untucked in, and some drawers; this
chest was rather old compared to the rest of the room, and housed one hand mirror that looked like
it was from the Victorian era. His sheets were ruffled, his bed unmade. The only markers of this
being Sirius’ room were in the way Remus recognised his laptop, the way that Remus knew he
would have the biggest room, because of course he would; and the smell.

He hadn’t realised Sirius even had a smell until he had come in here.

Sirius smelled like an old book - the way the pages smelled when you flicked through them, the
way they were brown, tinged with every single finger that had turned them, every person who had
touched them in their long life. But he also smelled strangely pungent - he smelled like if there was
thyme tucked between the pages of the book. Mint sprinkled on every word. He smelled almost
like spice; no spice that Remus could put his finger on. His own invention. He smelled like nothing
he could describe to live up to it; he smelled like Sirius, and that was enough. It was here that this
smell lingered.

Remus was about to leave the room - feeling awfully intrusive, and also strangely intrigued as to
where Sirius was if he wasn’t in his room - when he noticed a picture on the side table of his bed.
Curiosity overtook him.

It was James, Sirius and Marlene; it was an old picture, Remus would estimate around the nineties
based on the hues of the photo. Marlene was smiling in the middle, wearing a white V-cut top with
a red stripe through the middle, a matching red hairband pushing back her long blonde hair, and
low-rise jeans with a shimmery belt. James was in a bomber jacket to her left - he had thick-rimmed
glasses on, and a blinding smile; he was leaning half on her shoulder, his arm around her back. And
Sirius was on her right side. He had a glass of something vaguely alcoholic in his hand, and was
wearing blue jeans, and a black shirt, topped over with a suave leather jacket. His hair was tied
back, into a bun on the back of his head, and he was kissing Marlene fiercely on the cheek - she
was squirming, slightly, in the midst of laughing and leaning into James, and his own lips were
upturned, slightly, from where they were pressing onto her cheek. He was raising the glass in a
toast to whoever was behind the camera. His other hand was around the other side of her waist.

And Remus smiled, instinctively, at the happiness radiating from the photo. He smiled at the
normality; at the image of this picture somewhere in a photo album, shown to someone precious,
filled with hundreds of photos just like this of the “good old days”. It made him happy. He was
unsure of why.

This was too far - he put the photo down hastily and exited the room, closing the door with a soft
click and instinctively walking down the hall and turning left. He registered vaguely in the back of
his mind that Sirius would be able to catch his scent there, and also registered that he didn’t really
care. He continued walking, slowing down slightly, absorbing his surroundings; the futons, the
grand piano. There was a draft catching him, and he shuddered slightly, shrinking into his hoodie.
He took a few more steps, around a winding corner, and stopped dead still.

He had never noticed this before. There was a landing at the top of the side staircase, and at the
head were huge, white curtains. But now there was a pair of double doors, here; they had
obviously been hidden behind the curtains, and Remus had not thought to look. They were open,
outwards; the curtains were tied to posts in the walls. Remus shuddered again. Took a few more
steps.
There was a figure, stood, hands braced against the stone wall of the balcony. And Remus would
recognise it anywhere.

He debated on what his next move should be. Should he go and join, wordlessly, like he had at the
library? Should he bother to leave - pretend he wasn’t there? Sirius would know he was there, of
course he would - he would have heard him coming. And Remus had become very familiar with
the prospect of no way back recently, and so he went forward.

He settled into Sirius’ side wordlessly, resting his own hands on the cold stone; and for a moment
forgot just what he was doing there, and just who was standing beside him.

It was beautiful. This side of the house overlooked the lake, in the distance; weeping willow trees
over the rippling water, only just growing their leaves back in the recovery of winter. The sky was
cloudy, but not so much so that all of the stars were invisible - they were there, twinkling
sporadically, on show to whoever craved them. The moon was a thick crescent; almost
stereotypically beautiful. It was quiet - strangely quiet for New York, but, Boardwalk was rather
isolated from the rest of the town, and regardless it was not as bustling as Manhattan, anyway. It
felt, for a moment, like they were the only people in the world.

Sirius said nothing for a long, long moment.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” were his first words; a murmur carried by the wind, by his hair moving gently
against his jawline. Remus nodded.

“Stunning,” he whispered, latching onto the brightest star he could see in the sky - watching it
twinkle all of the colours of the rainbow in an electromagnetic haze.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Remus pressed, trying to be casual. Sirius exhaled quietly.

“Haven’t tried,” he said, fingers drumming against the wall. “You?”

Remus shook his head. “Nope.”

Sirius hummed, letting out another sharp breath that manifested itself before his face in cold
smoke.

“We haven’t had a moment alone together in a week,” Remus murmured, testing the waters. Sirius
did not tense, though he did not turn.

“No,” he said in acknowledgement. “Things have been… busy.”

“James thinks he has something,” Remus said. “Though he won’t tell me what it is. And Lily is
coming by tomorrow. She’s managed to persuade her boss to put in a temporary transfer for some
booster course Columbia are holding, so she’ll be able to investigate a bit.”

Sirius hummed again, nodding. “I’m glad,” he said, focusing on some speck of dust on the stone
wall.

“How are things your end?”

“Okay,” he said, nodding. “I have a few people from the hotel scoping out various crime scenes,
seeing if there’s a connecting scent. Most of the original Order is scattered across Europe and Asia,
so I’ve been going through every kind of communication I can to try and get in touch. Some have
gotten back to me. I think a few should be arriving in the next few days.”
Remus nodded. The conversation fell quiet.

Surprisingly, and yet not at all, Sirius was the one to break the ice.

“But this isn’t what we should be talking about right now,” he said carefully, and Remus turned his
whole body to look at him; not letting him back out.

“No,” he breathed, “It’s not, is it?”

Sirius smiled tightly, still looking downwards, and then with a long breath turned his body to
Remus’ too. His eyes twinkled the same colours as that brilliant star. It was probably his namesake.

He licked his lips. “You and I… we’re something.”

“We’re enemies.”

“We’re more than that,” Sirius said; flat out. No lies. Not anymore. “I just… don’t know what
more than that is.”

Remus sighed. “Well, if you’re looking for answers, I can promise you I have no idea either.”

“I wasn’t,” Sirius said quickly; and then, carefully: “I don’t think there is an answer to you.”

Remus quirked an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” he said, hand still tapping on the stone rhythmically, “That I’ve been trying to figure
you out for eight years, and I’m not any closer than when I started.”

“…And?”

“And, I don’t think you’re someone that I’m destined to figure out,” he said, looking directly into
Remus’ eyes, now. Boring into him like lead. “I think you're someone that… that is just always
going to be there. And we… mould around the other. But one day, your tidal wave will drown me.
Or my flame will burn you.”

“I’m burnt,” Remus said, breathlessly. “I have been burnt for as long as I can remember.”

“And I’m choking,” Sirius said, sadly. He turned his head, then; out to the lake. As if it was
mocking him. “My lungs only carry you.”

Remus was waiting for the but. There was always going to be a but.

“We’ll ruin each other,” Sirius whispered, and at some point Remus’ hand had moved, had trailed
over to Sirius’. He dug his fingers in between the others; they were cold, yet soft. They warmed
underneath his fingertips, as they always did. “We’ll ruin everything.”

“Maybe everything deserves to be ruined.”

Sirius’ eyes flickered to Remus, and he smirked. “Very pessimistic.”

“I learn only from the best.”

His smile fell, but his gaze didn’t move. Remus was stubborn enough to keep his unmoving, too.

“You can’t,” Sirius said, and all of a sudden his face contorted; he looked halfway like he was
going to cry. “We… can’t. Not now. Not in the middle of all of this.”
“I know,” Remus said, because he did. He did know. But god, was it painful.

“I shouldn’t have been ignoring you,” Sirius said, brows still furrowed. Their hands were moving
fluidly on the stone wall; their fingers now completely interlocked, understanding each other.
“That was rude of me. I’m sorry.”

“We need to work together, not separately.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying sorry,” Remus said, his nose wrinkling. “I don’t like it. You keep doing it and it’s
strange.”

Sirius smiled. “I learn only from the best.”

Remus took a small step forward; a tiny step, really. The wind blew through his hair and carved
against Sirius’ skin. His lips were full, downturned slightly. Remus didn’t like it.

“I think,” Remus said slowly, “We need to figure out a middle ground. A… not enemies, but not…
more. To be able to fight this battle together, properly.”

Sirius’ lip quirked. “I believe that’s called ‘friends’,” he said, and Remus couldn’t suppress his
own smile; he squeezed Sirius’ palm slightly.

“Friends,” he repeated, the word rolling off his tongue, feeling almost too big for his mouth.
“Friends. We can be friends.”

“We can be friends,” Sirius whispered, nodding slightly. The wind whistled a low theme of sorrow.
The jostling lake cackled in the breeze.

“We can be friends. That’s good. Middle ground.” The circle of holy fire seemed to be closing in on
them. Remus couldn’t look anywhere but him.

“I should…” Sirius said, looking down and breaking the spell. Remus might even say he looked
flustered. “I have a meeting with the Greengrass parents tomorrow.”

Remus tried to swallow the disappointment building up his throat; for what, he didn’t even know.
He nodded.

“Yeah,” he said, hoarsely; the wind was choking his vocal chords. “Yeah, I’ll just—”

He turned to his right, tearing his eyes away from Sirius and looking down and, in his flushed state,
not even remembering their fingers being interlocked; it took him a second to register the feel of
them slipping between his fingers as he pulled their arms off the stone wall; and it took maybe half
of one to register Sirius gripping and pulling him back, spinning him slightly as if they were
waltzing.

And then, in one swift movement, he hooked his other hand around his waist, pulled him into his
chest and kissed him fiercely.

Remus reacted with a gasp and his entire body shuddered with bliss; his free hand snaked up from
where it was trapped between his and Sirius’ chests, up and around his cheek, to the back of his
neck. He dug into his hair, his other hand clasping back around Sirius’ fingers, revelling in the heat
of five fingers pressed to his waist and the intoxication of Sirius’ tongue in his mouth; he kissed
him like he was thirsty and Remus was water, Remus was blood, Remus was everything. Their
interlocked hands separated, eventually; through a shared hunger, perhaps, as Remus went to match
his opposite hand and pull Sirius in via the back of his neck as hard as he could, their teeth clacking
together messily as they pushed, back and forth, and Sirius’ went to match his down by his waist,
except now he was gripping - in an act that both pulled obscene noises from Remus and was bound
to leave bruises over the soft skin of his pelvis; he found he didn’t care. Sirius’ tongue swiped
across his bottom lip, one of his sharp canines biting into it and pulling, pulling with it a whine;
eliciting a choked noise that Remus hadn’t even known he could make; his hands went up further
into Sirius’ hair and tugged, more and more and more and more.

Sirius pulled back and instantly back in, trailing his lips across Remus’ face and into his jaw, and
somehow he turned him so Remus was backwards against the stone wall, bent slightly as Sirius
kissed every inch of skin he could find, slotting a knee between his thighs and gripping harder and
harder, fingers tugging with the hem of his shirt and pressing cold fingers to his stomach, making
him shudder. Remus moaned slightly at the sensation of Sirius sucking at his neck, innocently, no
teeth involved; going straight to his scar, as if he was born to be there, trailing his fingers along a
different scar on Remus’ bare back that he was pretty sure he had gotten from a Goblin, of all
fucking things. Sirius trailed up to suck at a ridiculously sensitive patch of skin just behind Remus’
earlobe, where his jaw connected to his skull; his back actually arched slightly and he whimpered,
dragging his hands using the very last of any energy that he could muster to tug at Sirius’ face,
pulling him back to his, knocking their foreheads together, breathing in each other’s air.

“This is unfair,” Remus breathed shakily, and Sirius pressed a soft kiss to his lips. “This is unfair.
You can’t– you can’t tell me we’re going to be friends and then do this to me.”

“I’m sorry,” Sirius whispered, kissing the corner of his mouth.

“Stop apologising!”

“I had to,” Sirius whispered, trailing his hands up and down Remus’ sides. “I had to, one time,
when I wasn’t out of my mind with shock and you weren’t still angry at me.”

“I’m always angry at you. I’m perpetually angry at you.”

“I know.”

“Fuck you,” he whimpered, pulling him in, fingernails on the nape of his neck, cold skin against
his lips. “Fuck you. Fuck you.”

“I know.”

“I told you vampires could experience shock. I told you.”

“You did,” Sirius said, smiling. “My pretty boy.”

“I hate you,” Remus breathed, feeling quite unable to process anything else. Kissing him and
kissing him and kissing him. “I fucking hate you.”

“I hate you more,” Sirius said, through laughter and kisses and everything uncharacteristic of
hatred that one could ever fathom.

He kissed him, and he kissed him, and he kissed him until they both decided to pretend it was
enough of something that was impossible to get enough of.

Friends. Friends. Friends.

 nine
Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

Lily came by for about 9am sharp. She had managed to latch onto a two week course with the
medical examiner at New York Presbyterian in Washington Heights - the exact hospital where the
coverups seemed to be flowing from and she began that day, for the overnight shift.

She had been absent for a few days, now; caught up in work and life and New York City; and so
Remus and Sirius briefed her to the best of their abilities, a struggle with both how convoluted the
case was becoming and how convoluted their own relationship was. But Remus had gotten used to
pretending, and he knew that Sirius had - or, maybe, he was just easily recovered. He thought about
the time that they had absolutely ripped each other to shreds in the dreary parking lot in Texas a
million years ago and how Sirius had appeared the next morning talking about a road trip like
nothing had happened. He was a total enigma. Remus was unworking him slowly.

With that done - there wasn’t too much to update, considering James hadn’t checked in, yet - Lily
prepared to make her leave around 11. She was meeting her sister for brunch. Petunia was in the
city for a few weeks - she settled back in Rochester after her marriage, and Lily had not seen her
for years. It would not a warm meeting, Lily assured him - she was only there to sort out some of
the technicalities of their grandmother’s will, including the lonesome apartment in Queens that Lily
was quite sure she was just going to sell, if she managed to keep Petunia’s selfish, grubby little
hands off it.

However - speak of the devil, and the devil may appear - James called at around 11:15am, just as
Lily was about to leave, and the three of them crowded around his pixelated face on FaceTime on
Sirius’ laptop.

“Okay,” he said, from his position in the passenger seat of a moving car. “So, boys - and Lily - we
think we’ve figured something out.”

“What?” Sirius asked, and James moved the camera closer, as if it was a secret.

“They’re hiding something,” he started, and Sirius scoffed and interrupted with a snide “no, shit,
sherlock,” to which James rolled his eyes. “Let me finish, you asshole. Look, Malfoy Manor isn’t
just used as a home. They only actually live in the one furthest north. The other two - six miles
south-east, six miles south-west, triangle, we all know - they’re just safehouses. We don’t know
what they’re guarding, but whatever it is, they have equal amounts of guards at the two empty
houses as they do at the main one, no matter where the thing actually is.”

“How do you know where the thing is?”

“We didn’t,” he said, “Not until last night. We– see, I was scoping out south-west, and they started
getting antsy around midnight, right? And see we’ve been here for a week, and they never do
anything, so... I summoned the boys, and we… may have kidnapped three of the guards and stole
their outfits to blend in.”

Sirius grinned. “Brilliant.”

“So we slinked around a little bit,” James explained, in the flow of the story, “and basically they
moved whatever the thing is from south-west to south-east. Moved it in a huge stone box, hauled
up on something that looked like a fucking stretcher, but stone - we couldn’t get closer than fifteen
feet, but a group of them marched it all six miles to the other one, and then went in. I managed to
get it out of one of them that they move it every two weeks.”

“Whew,” Lily wheezed, and Sirius nodded.

“Right,” he said, “Okay. That’s useful. If you gather more information, try and figure out what the
thing is…” he trailed off awkwardly, and Remus barely got time to crane his head before Sirius
was pushing himself forward to peer into the screen. “Are you driving?”

“Er–” James cut off, and looked to his side quickly. “Well, I’m not-”

The camera turned, and a smug, small ginger boy was at the wheel. Sirius’ jaw dropped.

“Percy fucking Weasley, if you dare crash my car–”

The line cut off shortly after that.

And five days passed. And, at least case-wise, it was five days of almost radio silence. There was a
body found upstate that Marlene checked out and deemed wholly unrelated to their cause. Lily
checked in once a day, sometimes twice, with information that was appreciated but, on the whole,
really not fruitful. James, Oliver and Percy were still in Vermont, and, after their first extravaganza,
nothing happened. Things were slow. Time was being bided. No murdered vampires, no murdered
humans.

House-wise? Order-wise? Marlene, ever the better host, was busting her ass off.

Remus had never seen anything like it.

They had guests. There weren’t many - so far, three parties had arrived out of Sirius’ call for help.
Boardwalk, although not in the best location, was, as of current, the best option for a temporary
HQ due to the sheer number of rooms as the newer parties settled in. Hotel Transylvania (Remus
wasn’t sure when that had caught on, but it was all he called it in his head, now) was an option, but
there were too many ‘innocents’, reportedly, to call it a safe HQ - so, Boardwalk it was.

It was strange to be surrounded by so much vampirism. All three of the parties had arrived in pairs.
It was Frank and Alice Longbottom first - husband and wife; both rather lanky and awkward
looking for vampires but reportedly some of the best fighters they had. Alice had a similar kind of
soft face to Marlene, except her hair was shorter and choppy, and her temper seemed to flip up and
down a lot more; but she was kind. Extremely kind - generous and warm, the kind of person who
would smile at you on the street once and you would think nonstop about it for the rest of the day.
Frank did not speak but let himself be molded by his smaller wife, and Remus appreciated the pure
vibes. It wasn’t often he met vampires that he liked instantly, but he liked these two.

Remus met Astoria’s parents for the first time on the second day, in which they made their official
move-in with Astoria herself after flicking in and out via meetings with Sirius. When he questioned
him about it he said that the three of them had conferred and decided it would be best not just for
them, but Astoria herself (who was so closely bonded to Oliver and Percy she refused to stay in
Hotel Transylvania without them.) The three of them were staying in the west wing, far away from
Dorcas and Remus. He wasn’t sure if that was a personal choice.

Astoria’s mother was named Miyuki Greengrass; Japanese, tall and sleek with collarbone length
black hair and the consistent air of a businesswoman. She was reserved, weary beyond her
(physical) years. She was taller than her husband but not by much, and did not make the matter any
greater by wearing heels. Remus hadn’t spoken to her, but he could feel her presence and hear the
click of her heels before she even walked in the room, and prepared himself to cling onto the last of
the energy he had before she sucked it all out like a vacuum as she entered.

Ambrose, Astoria’s father, was a light-brown haired thickly-accented Russian man. He was stout
and angry-looking all the time and he always had his hair slicked back, as if it was afraid of his
narrow eyes and goatee (which aged his physically young body significantly, and gave him a dad
vibe that Remus thought was quite accurate). There was a sort of benignment about him; a sort of
acceptance, as if the flow of life and his orderly wife and the Moskva river passed around him and
he let it bend up and down.

Astoria had, evidently, got the dark side of her looks from her mother; but she had her father’s soft,
malleable eyes, and Remus hadn’t quite realised how much of an impact they had had until then.

And the third pair were not partners, but uncle and niece; Edgar and Susan Bones, the last of their
clan after Susan’s (adopted) parents died in 1959; the mother of which was Edgar’s (biological)
sister (a double-turn in 1784, Sirius told him; he had met them only ten years into their vampire
lives, and he had, maybe, possibly, threatened Amelia Bones so viciously that Edgar still held a
grudge two hundred years later.) Regardless, he respected Sirius, and Susan was lovely and made it
clear upon their first meeting that he did not blame Sirius for her parents deaths which, though he
would never admit it, meant more to him than she could ever know.

The witches were another situation. Pandora had a lot of contacts, and they swept in every now and
then, but none of them aside from her stayed. Their philosophy was very private, and they kept to
themselves on principle; witches in long-term covens formed bonds so strong that their magic
bonded to each other’s, and if one died, all of them suffered - physically and emotionally - for it,
and so it made sense that they were cagey and sat awkwardly and uncomfortably in the room with
the vampires (an almost hilarious juxtaposition to Pandora, who was (regrettably, in her words)
very close and comfortable with Sirius and did not hide it.)

It felt like the start of something. It felt like a spark. It felt like vines growing from Remus’
fingertips; intertwining with Sirius’ own. The thick rough green being set alight and it burning off
the outer shell to reveal something harder. Something silver, or red; something threatening. And
Remus knew enough to know that if one side was blooming like a forest fire, so was the other, and
so on philosophical principle he was happy that things were starting to come together and
reinforcements were being made. It felt safe, in a hilariously objectively unsafe way.

But, fuck. It was a lot of vampires.

Day four came, the evening of which Dorcas and Marlene ate dinner together with no obstructions
or violence whatsoever, Sirius and Alice played chess with quite the opposite (Sirius crushed a
pawn between his fingers. It shattered into a million pieces, and Alice won with a lot of gloating),
and James checked in with the boys by his side, sat comfortably in the cargo bed of a truck that
they had definitely stolen; Sirius was preoccupied, going through some 50’s files with Miyuki (her
maiden name was Yamazaki but half of her family had migrated to America a couple centuries ago
and Yaxley was the family name that Remus knew from the board; dark vampires under the thumb
of pureblood mania, though she, herself rebuked it.) Thus she, of everyone, had the strongest links
and the strongest motives with a missing daughter and forlorn family, and though she was
definitely a handful, Remus was quite sure Sirius had taken a liking to her due to their shared
uptight nature and family-related incentive.

(Also, they were some sort of distantly related. Sirius hadn’t been lying when he had said that they
had all inter-produced.)
Day five came. Remus woke up to murder, and he was delighted.

“Midtown Manhattan, approximately 6am,” Remus recited to Dorcas at around 8, sitting with his
feet up on her bed as she sat cross-legged and tried to balance her plate on her knees, which were
entirely too far apart. “I can go and get you a tray, you know.”

“It’s fine. I’ve got it. John or Jane Doe?”

“John,” he said. “I don’t know much right now, Sirius is monitoring the walkie-talkies in my place.
So far all I’ve got is the crime occurred in the lobby of an office building a couple of blocks away
from Times Square, but the body itself was found in the dumpster outside. And get this - murder
weapon discarded in a bin. A bin. Like it was a sandwich wrapper, or something. Still bloody,
apparently.”

Dorcas frowned. She chewed some more, and swallowed. “Okay, that’s weird.”

“Right?”

“But if it was us, why would there be a murder weapon in the first place?” Dorcas theorised. “And
why would they be so messy about it?” Remus shrugged.

“They’re not above being messy just ‘cause they’re purebloods.”

Dorcas made a fair-enough face and took another bite of her fried egg sandwich.

“I don’t know about the weapon, though,” Remus continued. “That’s why we’re waiting a little bit.
Trying to get more information before we actually go out and see. I’m not sure it’ll amount to
anything.”

She hummed around her food. Remus could see her mind going 100 miles an hour, and waited
patiently.

“I mean, you said Black thinks they’ve been tailing Hotel Transylvania, right?”

“Miyuki thinks so,” Remus replied. “Sirius isn’t sure. He has Frank and Alice trying to find out.”

“I mean, if they have been, maybe they noticed that they all aren’t there anymore. Maybe they’ve
noticed that people are onto them and so that’s why they’ve been quiet for a while.”

“But now a man has been murdered,” Remus deadpanned. Dorcas shrugged.

“In a dumpster,” she said. “With a murder weapon thrown in a bin. All signs point to no vampire,
right; but maybe that’s them trying to be smart about it. Cover their tracks, now they know you’re
onto them.”

Remus frowned. He focused on a corner of her bedding and listened to the whistling of the wind
outside her window.

“Or maybe it’s just another murder in New York City,” Dorcas said, admittedly, and Remus
laughed. “God knows they happen all the time.”

“Yeah,” Remus murmured. They fell into silence, and it was comfortable. For the first time in a
while.

Until Dorcas let out a strangled yelp.

“For fuck's sake,” she groaned, licking her thumb and using it to wipe off the hot egg yolk that had
spilled out of her food and onto her bare ankle. She shoved it in her mouth and made an angry
noise, looking at where it had also dropped slightly onto her sheet.

Remus laughed; he couldn’t help himself. She glared.

“Shut up,” she muttered, wiping the bit on the sheet with her finger, and Remus sighed.

“You know you can go sit at the kitchen table, right?” he said. She betrayed no emotion other than
a pursing of her lips as she rubbed at the fabric, avoiding his eye. “You don’t have to eat in here.
You’re not trapped in here.”

She sighed and sat up. “Yes, Remus, I know I’m not trapped in here. But, quite frankly, I would
much rather you do trap me here than go downstairs and sit and eat my food amongst those–” she
cut off, and Remus could see the word ‘bloodsucker’ on the tip of her tongue. She sighed. “Them.”

“They’re not that bad,” Remus said, solemnly, and Dorcas groaned and rolled her eyes.

“Can we not?” she asked, rather exasperatedly. “Please, Remus, can we not talk vampire ethics?
I’ve just gotten to a point where I can look at you without wanting to murder you - metaphorically -
and I’d like to keep it that way.”

Remus shut his mouth and thinned his lips. He nodded, once.

“I mean, you’re already keeping me prisoner here, at least make it an ethical sentence and don’t
torture me with vampire morals–” she said, chidingly, and she was joking - she was obviously
joking, but Remus sighed.

“You’re not–”

“I know.”

“There was no other–”

“I know,” she said, and it was softer. “But you can’t bring me here and expect me to play ring-a-
ring-a-rosie with them just because you like them and because I met one in a club one time.”

Remus stared, for a second. And then his lip quirked up, slightly.

“I mean, I think you did more than just meet her in the club.”

“Shut up,” she said, and he laughed. She had refused to talk to him about Marlene for the past two
weeks, and Remus got the vibe she wasn’t going to start now. It was funny, regardless.

Remus raised his hands in surrender and she scoffed a derivative laugh.

“Let’s talk about something else,” she said, placing her mostly-finished plate on the side table.
“Like all of the times I’ve saved your life.”

“If you bring up–”

“Greece? Yeah, that Basilisk’s fangs were almost the same size as you, you lanky bastard–”

“Stop,” Remus groaned, laughing, and she laughed too. She laughed too.

It was nice. It was them.

Dorcas… well, she had been a whole other situation. Pandora had loosened her wards, then put
them right back up again upon the arrival of their new accomplices. And she was still pissed off.
She was still uncertain; she still refused to engage Marlene in more than brief, broken conversation,
but after almost two weeks she sat and she listened with less death threats than ever, and it was the
first step. It was the first.

She had grumbled for hours nonconsecutively upon the arrival of the other vampires - she had
barely gotten used to the idea of three, and Remus couldn’t blame her for that; he used to think the
same. She was still angry, still irritated, but most of all Remus knew that she was bored. She had
taken up a keen interest in the case because it was what she loved to do and she couldn’t do it
anywhere else, and so it was what they had talked about, and had been the groundmark for other
conversations to seep into the cracks until they were reminiscing and talking like normal and
Remus thought that things might be okay. That she might not tell. That she might understand why
he felt like he had no other choice for keeping her there.

He left her with a book and - for the first time in two weeks - a hug.

Sirius and Remus decided on going to the crime scene in the early afternoon.

Manhattan was bustling when they arrived, as always. They passed Times Square on the way,
down what was about eight blocks towards the closed-off murder scene down the road. They had
both dressed smart, in suits - Remus was wearing his typical FBI disguise suit (a disguise he had to
utilise due to the gross underfunding of the hunter’s bureau - but at least he had a valid keycard to
scan) and Sirius was probably wearing his everyday attire, and it probably cost like a million
pounds, and it looked way too good on his arse. So stupidly fucking good that Remus kept
unintentionally walking faster so he’d be in front and wouldn’t have to look at it.

That, and he was still keen to give Sirius a piece of his fucking mind after the shit he pulled the
other night. Friends. Friends. Friends joined at the fucking lips. It was like giving a child candy
and then ripping it away after they had only had one bite. Fucking asshole. Look at my arse,
Remus thought, pettily; fully aware he was acting like a teenager and feeling, quite honestly, fully
within his right to do so.

As soon as the crime scene was in sight, however, he went into stealth mode.

An entire block was cut off from the public - the space around where the body had been found, and
the building itself. Completely isolated save for the police cars and the detectives. They got under
the tape easily enough with their identification (why Sirius had a badge on hand, Remus didn’t
even want to know) and split off temporarily; Sirius investigated the outside, trying to pick up
scents, and Remus went inside, and was pulled aside by one of the crime scene investigators.

“So, who reported the victim?” Remus was asking, now, trying to build the entire timeline on the
fragments he had heard through the hacked wires. The detective - a latina woman of about thirty-
five, with long, dark hair - sighed.

“The caretaker,” she said. “Mrs. Duttle, her name is - seventy-nine. She came in at 5:30am and saw
the blood on the floor. The victim couldn't have been there for more than two hours by the time she
arrived.”

“Fingerprints?”

The woman shook her head; Remus had expected that. “Nothing. Of course, it hasn’t been very
long, so we’re still going through it, but so far we’ve dusted absolutely nothing. My partner thinks
they burnt them off.”
“What are the crucial pieces of evidence, then?” Remus asked. The woman walked him over to a
table, sifted through some files and spread out three blown up pictures of evidence on the table. All
of the physical pieces had been bagged and sent to the labs. He peered over to get a closer look.

The first picture showed a piece of torn fabric on the floor - simply black felt, from what Remus
could see. Nothing seemed to be special about it - it had not gone in for DNA testing yet, according
to the detective. The second picture showed what Remus could see to be three pieces of dark hair,
and had been sent off for testing to a private lab company for time efficiency due to the brutal
nature of the case.

The third picture was a dagger. Blood smeared over on the blade, all the way to the hilt.

Remus’ first thought was that it was not a hunter dagger - it was a Cinquedea, with a black and
silver hilt. The blade had two perpendicular ridges, as most Cinquedea’s do, and the dried blood
ran thicker over the lumps. He turned and looked at the woman, whose face was stony.

“Murder weapon?” he asked, and she shook her head. She leaned in slightly, as if she was
divulging a big secret.

“It’s not even his blood,” she said, and Remus raised his eyebrows.

“What?”

“We ran the tests on it and the blood on the floor - you see that one?” She pointed, now, at the
splatter of blood in a trail going towards the door. Remus nodded. “That’s the John Doe’s blood.
But you see that?” Her hand turned slightly to the left, now, pointing at an almost perfectly circular
pool of blood by the receptionist's desk. “That’s not his. And neither is the blood on the dagger. It’s
like two completely different murder scenes in one.”

“Whose blood is that, then?” Remus asked, frowning slightly. “You got the DNA results back?”

She nodded her head solemnly, but didn’t look helpful. “Yeah, abnormally fast, actually, just as
abnormal as this case, but - between you and me, it’s just stumped us more. Both times it came up
with someone deceased. Someone who has been legally deceased for a while now.”

“Who?”

She sighed and turned back to the tables - there was a lone box on the left side, and she rummaged
around in it and pulled out a case file. She gave it to Remus wordlessly.

He thumbed the tab, and opened the file.

And the icy blue eyes of Regulus Black, d. 2014 stared back at him.

***

He practically bumped into Sirius upon immediately exiting the revolving doors.

“Sirius–” he started, the case file still clutched in his hand, but he cut him off.

“Lucius fucking Malfoy,” Sirius growled; his eyes were blazing with anger. “I can smell him. It’s
Lucius. I’d recognise that scent anywhere.”

“No, Sirius–”

“We need to call James as soon as we get back,” he continued, eyes defocusing slightly, looking at
a point over Remus’ shoulder. “He needs to keep tabs when he gets back - why is he here? I can’t
catch Riddle’s scent, I don’t think he’s here, either… I thought he would be at Malfoy Manor-”

“Sirius!” Remus hissed; he jumped, almost, as if he’d forgotten Remus was there. They were
getting looks, now; blocking the revolving doors, but he didn’t care. “I found something too.”

“What did you find?” Sirius said, his eyes flickering down to the file cautiously. “What is that?”

Remus gaped, trying to find the words.

“Sirius, I–”

A policeman walked out of the revolving doors to Sirius’ left, and a low breeze threaded its way
through his hair.

He stiffened. He inhaled.

“No,” Sirius all but whispered, shaking his head minutely. “Fuck. That’s–”

“It’s his,” Remus breathed - he didn’t even get the chance to finish before Sirius did a full 90
degree spin and was pushing his way through the doors.

Sirius was already halfway across the room when Remus made it in. An old policeman was on his
tail, calling; “Oi, do you have jurisdiction to be in here?”. Remus whipped out his badge and
showed it apologetically, and the man backed down - though he looked sceptical. Sirius was at the
evidence table, breathing heavily, in and out like he was having a panic attack.

He jumped when Remus placed a hand on his shoulder, turning around in such a sharp movement
that he almost hit him. “He’s here,” Sirius murmured, taking another deep breath and exhaling.
“He’s everywhere in this room… but he’s not outside. Remus, how is he not outside?”

“You said you smelled Malfoy, right?” Remus said. He nodded. “Maybe he got rid of the body,
and Regulus went the back way to catch up with him or something.”

Sirius frowned, and then shook his head slowly.

“I should be able to smell him,” he said, pausing between each word as if his brain was buffering
the statement. “I know his scent better than anyone. I would catch it.”

“I mean, surely scents are more pungent inside than outside, right?” Remus offered. “Extraneous
variables. It got… caught with the wind or something.”

“Yeah,” Sirius murmured, very obviously not present, taking periodic deep breaths. “The wind…”

His eyes fluttered shut, and he took another deep breath; his brows knitted together, slightly, and
his lips pursed for a moment as if he had smelled something utterly repulsive. He took one, two
breaths, and then his eyes flew open.

“There’s something else here,” he muttered, turning on his heel and walking away. Remus almost
fell with how quickly he jumped into action.

“Way to be inconspicuous,” Remus hissed at him, as he sniffed down the far wall. “You look like a
fucking sniffer dog.”

“Shut up,” Sirius said monotonically; he stopped in front of the lift, took a deep breath, and then
called for it.
The kind CSI woman that Remus was talking to immediately came bustling over.

“Hi, do you need any help?” she said, warily. “We’re not letting anyone take the lift right now.”

“We’re not going up,” Sirius said, turning to her. His pupils were dilated massively. “We’ll keep it
on the ground floor. We’re just going to look inside.” He paused, as the woman stood completely
still; and then Remus had to heavily suppress a laugh as Sirius put on his most charming smile and
said, “If that’s alright with you, love.”

She bit her lip, looking between them both - at Sirius’ smile, then at Remus’ badge - and then
nodded, giving them a dismissive hand gesture. “Oh, alright then, go ahead.”

The lift had already opened by this point, and Sirius stalked in immediately, Remus on his heels -
he pressed the close door button.

“What the hell is it?” Remus demanded quietly, as soon as the doors were closed; painfully aware
of the woman not even two feet and a door between them. Sirius put both his hands against the side
wall, then the mirror, placing a hand over his own reflection.

“There’s something here,” he said quietly as he searched. “Blood. Human blood.”

“The John Doe?”

“No,” Sirius said. “It’s sweeter. It’s… I think it’s witch blood.”

“Witch blood,” Remus said, processing. “Witch blood. A witch like Pandora? One of Riddle’s
servants?”

“I don’t think so,” Sirius murmured - he jumped up soundlessly onto the railing, gripping onto the
fancy faux-chandelier light to steady himself as he balanced, and ignoring Remus’ whispered cries
of indignation. “This seems too... particular.”

He pushed at the roof. Each corner, twice upwards. It wasn’t until he got to the last of the four - the
far left - that the tile moved.

“Bingo,” Sirius whispered, sliding the ceiling tile to the side with what would probably require
immense effort to anyone not, you know, Sirius Black. He reached his hand up there and frowned.

“What is it?” Remus hissed, turning and looking worriedly at the elevator doors. The panic was
slowly bubbling in his throat, along with the adrenaline. They could be opened any time. They
wouldn’t even have any warning.

Sirius took a sharp breath in, and Remus heard the ruffling of plastic - no, paper. Sirius jumped
down, hitting the ground with barely a sound, barely a jolt, and he had a brown paper bag in his
hand, folded up. His eyes were bright and alive with adrenaline.

“What’s in it?” Remus asked, and Sirius crouched down to the floor gracefully. Remus mirrored
him. He unfolded the bag and emptied its contents on the patterned ceramic flooring.

It was a balled-up piece of paper.

“What-” Remus started, but Sirius shushed him.

“There’s something in it,” he said quietly, and, with cold, nimble fingers, began to pull apart at the
piece of paper, taking care not to tear it as he unfolded it and smoothed out the corners.
The piece of paper was a map; a map of Europe. It wasn’t a standalone; the edges were jagged. It
had obviously been ripped out of an Atlas or something. The countries were all in different, bright
colours, generic to differentiate them but none of them red. None as red as the blood on the paper.

And in the middle, encased within the paper, was a ring.

It was huge, and chunky; looked like a family heirloom to Remus. It glinted in the artificial light.
The stone was one part black and one part green, and the actual band looked like it had been gold a
long, long time ago, but now was more like a faded copper, lathered with grime and dirt so much so
that it was almost as black as the stone itself; almost as black as the heart that revealed it.

Remus reached out a hand.

“Don’t touch it!” Sirius hissed, pushing his hand away - Remus retracted it immediately and raised
his two in surrender. “I can feel the magic.”

He looked up at Remus; they met eyes over the paper. His were soft. Light. On the precipice of
something incredible.

“Can’t you?” he whispered, and Remus took a deep breath and felt a chill go down his spine.

And ah- yes, he could. He could feel it. He had become so attuned to magic, so used to magic in
his life - in the bureau, in his home, in the man crouching in front of him - that he could feel the
waves brushing off of him like water off a mossy rock. Soaked like a sponge and drained like a rag.
But, at the same time, it was different. Wrong, somehow. As if it wasn’t water soaking into the
sponge but sewage. Or poison. Either or; both made the hairs on his arm stand up in mitigated,
soldier-like defence.

Sirius’ own hands hovered around the map, as if he didn’t know what to do with them. He closed
his eyes and took a deep, purposeful breath in.

“Witches blood,” he said; affirmed. “Definitely.”

“Let me see,” Remus whispered, going for the corners of the A4 sheet of crumpled up paper. It
was facing Sirius and thus the countries were upside down to him where he was sitting. Ignoring
Sirius’ hovering hands, he tugged the corners of the page gently and spun it around.

The ring lay unmoving over Ukraine, halfway onto Belarus, barely touching Russia. There were
two bloodstains on the map.

The first one was a circle - it must have been done messily, with a finger, or a thumb. It leaked red
onto Romania, covered Serbia completely. It was a circle. It was a circle around Bulgaria.

The second stain was hastier, and a lot smaller - it was half of a thumbprint, actually, now that the
blood had dried. The sporadic lines prominent in the top half, the bottom a thicker wad, as if it had
trickled down someone's wrist, their fingers, and leaked a little too much there.

The second stain was mainly in the Atlantic Ocean, but a small, small part of it covered the very
bottom of England. The left side - the part of the island that jutted out. The part that pointed down
towards South America. The part that chased the sun.

Cornwall.

“Oh my God,” Remus breathed, leaning in closer to verify. “Oh my God, I know who it is.”
“What?” Sirius said, leaning down too. “Who?”

Remus looked up, and their faces were barely ten centimetres apart, their chins shadowed by the
gloom of the ring and the red cloud of blood painted over the paper.

“Mary,” he said. “Mary Macdonald.”

***

The pair of them were such a mess by the time they got back that they didn’t even register the
newcomers.

Sirius grabbed the paper bag and immediately sped into the house, the door flinging open and
almost off its hinges. Remus ran in after him and immediately yelled for Pandora, who appeared at
the top of the stairs, concern written all over her face.

“Get Dorcas, bring her downstairs,” he said, and Pandora frowned deeper.

“But the wards- the vampires–”

“It doesn’t matter,” he breathed, shaking his head, “Bring her down. Kitchen.”

And with that he followed Sirius into the kitchen, where, all of a sudden, at least six pairs of
undead eyes were looking at him. Sirius was halfway down the table, the bag was placed in the
middle. He had already begun debriefing.

“So we arrive at the scene-”

“Er– Mr. Black?” came a small voice from the end of the table - Astoria. She looked nervous. He
shot her a glare.

“What?”

Her parents shushed her, but she traipsed on.

“I think there’s someone here to see you,” she said, turning to the open door at the opposite end to
the room - the one Remus had come from led to the entrance hall, but that one led directly into the
morning room, connecting the living room.

And out of the door walked a young woman that looked so much like Bellatrix Lestrange, Remus’
hands actually twitched towards his gun.

Sirius’ mouth fell open.

“Andy?” he murmured, in complete shock, and there was a moment where neither of them moved -
and then the woman ran across the room, let out a melodramatic cry and flung her arms around
Sirius, pulling him into a loving embrace.

And then, she pulled away and slapped him.

“Six years!” she shrieked, her eyes wide and full of emotion. “Six years I thought you died in that
fucking fire! Six!”

“I’m sorry,” he said sheepishly. She went on.

“No call! No text! No ‘hey, Andromeda, I’m alive, by the way!’ Nothing! You asshole. You little
asswipe. Putain de merde. Mon dieu. Va te faire foutre, Sirius fucking Black. Ah– je t’aime, come
here, you fucking wanker. I hate you.”

Astoria Greengrass’ mother had covered her ears for her. Sirius was laughing.

“Je suis désolé,” he said, pulling her back in for another hug and laughing over her shoulder. “Tu
m'as manqué, you crazy bitch. Je suis vraiment désolé.” His eyes lifted from where he was situated
on Andromeda’s shoulder, and he grinned. “Hey, Ted.”

Ted, who had come in behind Andromeda, gave him a little two finger salute. “Hey, Sirius.”

Remus felt something brush against his side and looked instinctively; Dorcas was beside him,
dagger in her hand. She was looking at Andromeda and Sirius hug with a strange expression on her
face. Pandora was panting behind her, and caught Remus’ eye.

“I tried- she wouldn’t come down without a weapon…”

“It’s fine,” Remus said, almost laughing; and then Marlene walked into the room, brushing past
Pandora, and her face lit up like a Christmas tree when she saw what was happening.

“Marlene!” Andromeda gasped, pulling away from Sirius with a squeeze on his shoulders and
running to embrace Marlene. She was taller by quite a bit, and she actually picked Marlene up,
spinning her around a few times - it was picturesque.

“God, I don’t think I’ve seen you since…”

“‘59,” Marlene answered as she put her down, and they lapsed into a momentary silence;
Andromeda ran her fingers through her hair and cupped her cheek. Pinched it, slightly, like a
mother and her child.

“Where’s James?” she said, whirling around to look at Sirius; she took a few steps, ruffling Alice
Longbottom’s hair while she passed - who smiled and swatted her hand away. Susan Bones got up
to embrace her.

“Are you done swearing?” Miyuki Greengrass asked rather irritably, and Andromeda’s face cleared
instantly; a look of repentance appeared on it.

“Yes, oh, goodness, I’m so sorry,” she said, bowing her head, and Miyuki dropped her hands from
her daughter’s ears.

Remus really, almost believed her.

“Fucking cockwomble!” Andromeda yelled, turning to Sirius and pointing as he did the same thing
simultaneously and yelled “Cuntified wankhammer!”

They both collapsed into rabid laughter - both of the Greengrasses looked absolutely appalled, but
Astoria was laughing, too, her apple cheeks pushed so high up her face that her eyes were smiling
with her.

“That was good,” Andromeda wheezed, whacking the back of her hand against Sirius’ chest. “That
was a good one. You’ve never used that one before.”

“Yeah, cockwomble’s outdated now,” Sirius said blithely. “You need to top up on your English
swears, Andy.”
“Behave, salaud,” she grumbled, taking a seat. “Seriously, where is James?”

“Vermont,” Marlene answered, taking a seat beside Alice. “He’s staking out Malfoy Manor.”

“Ah!” Andromeda gasped, clicking her fingers, and Ted seemed to know what she wanted before
she even turned to him; he was already rummaging in the duffle bag on his shoulder, holding out a
thick roll of paper held together with a rubber band. Andromeda grabbed them with a cheesing
smile and turned and extended them to Sirius. “Floor plans. All three of ‘em. Hopefully they
haven’t changed anything since ‘59.”

“Oh, Andy, I could kiss you,” Sirius breathed, awestruck, taking them from her.

“Do not. I will beat you.”

He grinned a lopsided, childlike grin at her, and gave the plans to Marlene to keep safe.

He launched back into what he was saying - with some prompting from the table, as his brain was
a bit fumbled after Andromeda’s appearance - and relayed what they had been doing in Manhattan,
and what they had found. Remus and Dorcas were still stood by the door - Dorcas looked
apprehensive, but she had, at some point, sheathed her dagger, and Remus nudged her with his
shoulder and went to sit down on the far end of the table, where there was nobody around them for
at least three chairs. She eventually moved to join him, Pandora on her other side, at about the
point Sirius was telling them about Regulus.

There were at least three gasps across the table at the mention that Regulus had been there - but
Andromeda didn’t look confused.

“Not the first time in eight years,” she said, interrupting for the first time - Sirius looked down at
her. “I saw him. He came to visit us in Nice, didn’t he, Ted?” Ted nodded.

Sirius’ mouth fell open. “When?!”

Andromeda pursed her lips. “Two years ago. That’s how I found out you weren’t dead, you fucking
wankhammer. He dropped in, just for the day. Was passing through.”

“What was he doing?” Sirius asked. “Where was he going? Was he okay?”

“Seemed alright,” Ted said. “Wouldn’t tell us where he was going, though. Not a thing.”

“But I caught him snooping around in our library,” Andromeda said, turning to him and nodding.
“Once my mother settled in the U.S. I went and took a lot of the books from the old Rosier estate in
Bordeaux.”

“Stole, is perhaps a better word,” Ted said blithely. Andromeda huffed.

“No one was missing them!”

“What books?” Sirius asked.

“All kinds - I took all of my favourite fiction, all of our theory books, history books, Grimoires. I
took a lot of the books on dark magic. I didn’t want them to fall into the wrong hands.”

“Did he take any?”

“Not to my knowledge, no. Though I could have missed one.”

Sirius bit his lip, and then pulled the paper bag towards them - he unfurled it and emptied out the
paper ball that he and Remus had carefully put back together on the floor of the elevator, and
pulled it apart carefully, revealing the hunky ring and the blood-stained map. Pandora leaned over
instinctively.

“We found this,” he said carefully, “Inside the ceiling of the elevator. We only found it because I
could smell the blood smeared on it - witches blood. Remus thinks someone put it there intending
for us to find it.”

All eyes went to him, including Dorcas’. He took a breath.

“I have a friend,” he said, “a witch, who - to the last of my knowledge - was undercover with a
coven of dark witches in Bulgaria. Bulgaria, on the map, is circled,” he got up here, now, leaning
over and gesturing to where exactly he meant on the paper. All of the eyes followed his pointing
finger. “And so is Cornwall. Me and this friend worked a… a very important case together in
Cornwall. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

Sirius stared at him, for a moment; they locked eyes, and his were gentle. And then he cleared his
throat, and said, “Remus and the witch in question killed Orion and Walburga in Cornwall.”

He looked down, eyes fixing onto the ring. It was awkwardly, painfully silent.

And then, Andromeda started to clap.

“Thank you,” she said, light blue eyes directly on Remus - they had the same soft quality as Sirius’
- and an earnest smile on her face; the most earnest he had seen her since she entered the room.
“Thank you. My dear aunt and uncle were the ultimate scum of the earth - I hope they are fucking
rotting in hell.”

Sirius mimed raising a glass. “Hear, hear.”

“It could be for Sirius,” came a quiet voice. A whisper into an abyss.

Dorcas. She was looking contemplatively at the map, whipping her hair out of her face and
speaking, desperately trying not to make eye contact with anyone.

“What do you mean?” Remus asked.

Dorcas looked at him. “Think about it. Me and you are the only two people in the world who know
about Mary’s mission in Bulgaria. That’s a clear message for you - but both you and Sirius are
associated with Cornwall. Maybe… maybe Bulgaria was for you, from Mary; and maybe Cornwall
was for him,” her eyes flickered up to Sirius, “From Regulus.”

“You think they’re working together, instead of Regulus working with Lucius?”

“It’s a possibility,” Dorcas shrugged. “That ring - it’s cursed, somehow, right? You didn’t say, but
I’m presuming it is.”

“I don’t know,” Sirius said, “but I can feel - smell - dark magic in it regardless.”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “And if Regulus was in France… looking through books on Dark
Magic... “

“Who’s to say he didn’t make it to the covens in Bulgaria,” Remus finished. He turned to look at
Sirius. “Who’s to say they’re not working together.”
“They wanted us to find this,” Sirius said, eyes glazed over. He licked his lips in thought. “They
knew I’d be there– they knew I would smell it–”

“Regulus probably stabbed himself,” Remus said, lightbulbs flickering. “To keep the scent there.”

“And Mary–” Dorcas cut off, all of a sudden. She gasped.

“What?” Remus asked.

“Oh, my god.”

“Dorcas, what is it?”

“Wait,” she choked, getting up from the table abruptly. “Just wait here.”

She ran from the room and it fell silent. Remus and Sirius locked eyes and didn’t let go for a long,
long time.

About three minutes later, the telltale sound of Dorcas running down the stairs reappeared.

“I have spent,” she said, haughtily, stomping into the room, “two weeks in that fucking room.”

She slammed something heavily onto the table. Sirius rushed over to see what it was - and,
following him, was Andromeda, Ted, Alice, and curious little Astoria.

It was an Atlas.

“I have spent two weeks staring at that fucking bookshelf,” she continued, opening the book - the
hardcover banged against the table, but she paid no heed to it. She simply kept flicking through
until she found what she wanted.

She pushed down about ten pages with a firm, flat palm and there it was. A ripped page. Right
where the Europe map should be.

“Oh my god,” Marlene breathed, and Remus gaped.

“How would they even get in here–?”

“Regulus can go anywhere,” Sirius said, absently; he pulled the Atlas from Dorcas’ grip to his side
of the table, and started to flick through it some more.

“And he can do anything,” Andromeda murmured, and Sirius paused.

She was standing on the opposite side of the table, and so he raised his head; he looked up and
caught her gaze, pure determination in his eyes. He nodded. She nodded. Something was unspoken.

And for a moment, the entire room was silent as Sirius flicked through the pages, looking, looking,
looking.

He stopped with a sharp inhale. Remus gripped onto his shoulder and leaned over to see.

It was a map of the East Coast of America, and someone had drawn, in black biro, a thick circle
around Vermont. In the space beside the map, where the ocean was, there was a drawing of a
triangle - except the points were made of three dots, and the sides were made of three arrows. A
rotation.
And in a regal, calligraphic scrawl, were written the words;

Attack all three. Don’t risk it. Get the diary. You’ve seen it before.

You can do anything, Sirius.

R.A.B

***

Sirius was pacing.

By the grind of the evening most of the house had dispersed. Remus was sitting with Dorcas on the
sofa, in front of the crackling fire, watching Pandora levitate the ring. Sirius was in the next room
over. And Remus could hear him pacing.

Pandora had cast a protective, translucent bubble around the ring so it wouldn’t cause anyone any
harm - it was practically undetectable, unless you looked really hard at the way the embers of the
fire split into two when they flew past it. Pandora had examined it thoroughly in the few hours
since Sirius and Remus had returned with it, and had not gotten anywhere thus far - it was nothing
that she had ever seen in her life, she said, and Remus noted the way her expression was less fear
and more intrigue at the mystical object.

They had registered this, already. Pandora’s love for experiments, challenges; Regulus’ knowledge
of this. He had planned it all out. He had put it in capable hands.

The door swung open, and Marlene entered. She sat down warily on the armchair to their right.
Dorcas stiffened, but didn’t speak.

“I just got off the phone with James,” she said. “He, Percy and Oliver are going to set off home
tomorrow.”

Remus nodded. Dorcas was still staring at Pandora levitating the ring in her hand across the room.

“What if it’s a weapon?” she asked quietly. “What if… what if we can hurt him with it?”

“Or what if he can hurt us with it,” Remus said, pessimistically. Dorcas turned to look at him.

“Mary wouldn’t give us something that would hurt us,” she said, shaking her head. “She wouldn’t
do that. Vampire’s influence or not.”

Remus sighed, nodding. It had been a long day, he supposed. He had his doubts - who wouldn’t -
but the majority of his body had complete faith in Mary, had had complete faith in her for eleven
years.

He turned to look at Dorcas. Her eyes were sunken, slightly. The low light of the fire lathered itself
on her skin. She looked like she was made of gold.

“So,” Remus said apprehensively, tugging on his sleeve. Dorcas turned to look at him.

“So.”
“Everything that’s happened,” he said blithely, gesturing casually around them. “The ring. Mary’s
involvement. The case.”

“Everything that’s happened…” Dorcas repeated, as if she wasn’t getting his gist, and Remus
raised his eyebrows.

“Does this mean that… you’re in?”

He looked up at her hopefully. Her face was entirely incomprehensible for a long, painful moment;
and then a small smirk crawled its way up her lips.

“Yeah,” she said with one sharp nod. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

Remus completely deflated - he leant to the side and rested his head on her shoulder. “God, I
missed you.”

“Don’t get it twisted, Lupin. I’m still fucking angry at you,” she said, and oh, he understood anger.

“I know.”

“This doesn’t fix everything,” she continued. “I still don’t trust them. I will never trust them.”

“I don’t either.”

“Rude,” Marlene muttered, and they both turned to look at her - but she was smiling.

“But I… I won’t go to the bureau,” Dorcas said, only slightly apprehensively. throwing Remus’
head off her shoulder and making him look at her. “I’m going to help you kill this coven. For you,
and for Mary. And for Peter, and the John Doe, and every other human they’ve hurt.”

“His name was Chuck,” Remus said, softly. “Chuck Simons. His girlfriend identified him at the
morgue.”

Dorcas smiled. “For you,” she repeated. “For Mary. For Peter, and for Chuck Simons.”

Remus nodded, and, reluctantly, a grin fought its way onto his face. Dorcas let her head drop, a sly
smile crawling onto hers.

“We’re gonna give ‘em hell,” she said, cupping his cheeks with her hands. He laughed and dug his
hand aggressively into the back of her head, pushing her forehead against his, like a football
huddle.

“Fuck yeah we are.”

They pulled apart, laughing quietly, and Remus turned and watched as a soft smile grew on
Marlene’s face. He turned to Dorcas, who was looking at Marlene, and watched as the corner of
her lips quirked. They held themselves there for a second, two, bordering on three and then fell,
and she turned her back to flick absent-mindedly through a book she found on the side table.

It was a million times better than nothing.

“So,” Marlene said, and Dorcas stiffened once again. It took her a moment to realise that Marlene
was speaking directly to her, until nothing happened, and she turned.

She blinked. Looked as if she wanted to say something horribly rude but restrained herself. Remus
was proud.
“Yes?” Dorcas replied amicably, swivelling her body around. Marlene thinned her lips in
apprehension.

“If you’re in, now,” she said, and Remus registered a sense of nerves around her that he had never
seen before. “I was thinking– that is, if you wanted to… we could, uh, maybe, start over?”

“Start over,” Dorcas said blankly. Marlene’s eyes widened only a smidge and she licked her lips.

“Yeah,” she enthused, nodding as if to reaffirm herself. “Pretend that, uh… well, you know what,
didn’t happen. Like– I’m Marlene. Nice to meet you.”

She held out an outstretched hand.

Dorcas simply looked at it. Remus had the evil impulse to laugh.

And then - just as Marlene’s hand and smile began to falter, and the air truly reverted back to icy -
the friction of Dorcas’ arm moving spruced it up again and she cupped her hand around Marlene’s
in the loosest semblance of a grip one could ever enforce when shaking hands with someone. But it
was miles better than stabbing her with the knife Remus could see her other hand itching towards
(both now and perpetually) on her hip. It was a step.

Marlene beamed. They shook hands, and Dorcas bit her lip and dropped both palms onto her knees.
Rubbed her right hand against the fabric of her trousers as if it was tainted; or as if she didn't know
what to do with it.

The air was silent for three seconds. It may just have been the most awkward three seconds of
Remus’ entire life.

“I’m going to go to bed,” Dorcas said, quietly, turning to Remus. He nodded and wished her
goodnight, and as she stood she extended a nod towards Pandora (who had, of course, been
watching from afar, feigning interest in the ring) and then looked at Marlene. Blinked. And
extended a nod towards her as well.

Marlene watched her go. All the way out of the door, until it swung shut.

“Smooth, McKinnon” Remus commented as soon as the door closed, and Marlene turned around to
glare at him, her long blonde hair swishing over her shoulder. “Really smooth, that was.”

“Shut up, Lupin. I’ll eat you. Don’t try me.”

The door to the next room clicked open, and Sirius appeared in the doorway.

“No one will be eating Remus, thank you very much,” he said blithely. “Unfortunately, I need
him.”

“Vai a prenderlo in culo,” Marlene muttered under her breath.

“Ci sto provando,” Sirius shot back, inclining his head slightly to Remus, who blinked in
monolingual confusion. Marlene smiled and raised both of her hands in surrender, and Sirius
locked his eyes back on him.

“Hey,” he said, softly, and Remus returned the greeting. “Can you come in here, for a second?”

Remus nodded and obliged.

Sirius turned back into the warm room, leaving the door open. He clicked it shut when he got in
and Sirius was already pacing again by the time he turned around.

“What is it?” he asked, and Sirius paused. There were only candles lit in this room - it was awfully
low, but Remus could still see how stricken his face was.

“Friends give each other advice, right?” he asked. “They help each other out?”

“Generally, yes.”

Sirius nodded. “Right. Okay.” He walked up to Remus, so they were barely a step apart, and said;
“What the fuck do I do?”

Remus stared. “Elaborate on that, please?”

“I just-” Sirius cut off, pulling both hands over his face. “I don’t know. Something about this
revelation has thrown me off.”

“Have you fed?”

He paused at the question, and then seemed to pause in surprise of his own pause. “I… Not for two
days, actually.”

Remus nodded. “There you go. You’re always more anxious when you’re thirsty.”

“I fucking hate that you know that,” Sirius grumbled, walking away and collapsing into a chair
behind a desk. Remus walked over and sat gingerly in the chair on the opposite side.

“Look,” he said, quietly, “Whatever Regulus and Mary are doing, we’re believing that they’re
doing it for a good reason, right?”

“Unless Mary was corrupted by the Bulgarian witches,” Sirius interjected.

“She wasn’t.”

“How do we know Malfoy Manor isn’t a trap?”

Remus sighed. “Do you trust your brother?”

Sirius pursed his lips, and averted eye contact when he nodded.

“Good,” Remus said. “And I trust Mary. With everything I have.”

“They could be Imperius’ed.”

Remus shook his head. “No witch would ever be able to hold them for that long.”

“How are you so certain?” he asked, quietly. Remus took a second to think about it.

“I’m not, really. I’ve spent my life faking it til I made it,” he said with a smile. “It’s a gamble. But
this case would never move forward if we only did things we were one hundred percent certain
about, right? And I think we have enough information to take it.”

“Do we?”

“We have the floor plans,” Remus started, putting up a finger for each point. “We have James,
Weasley and Wood’s intel. And we have exactly what we’re looking for. A diary? Regulus said
you’d seen it before?”

“I don’t remember where,” Sirius muttered. “I can’t think where I would’ve seen it. I don’t know
what he means.”

“What did he say?” Remus prompted. “Any clues?”

“Attack all three. Don’t risk it,” Sirius spewed, like a mantra. “Get the diary. You’ve seen it
before.” He took a deep breath, and then finished in barely a murmur; “You can do anything,
Sirius.”

“What’s that about?” Remus asked, softly, and Sirius bit the inside of his lip.

“It was something Andromeda used to say to us,” Sirius said, looking away. “Growing up. When
our parents were being… our parents. She’d tell us that it didn’t matter, because we could go
anywhere, and we could do anything. Anywhere we wanted and anything we liked. She left the
family a hundred years before I did, and in her absence we began saying it to each other.”

“Do you think that means something?” Remus asked. “Did you say it to each other when you saw
him again? In Cornwall?”

“What was the point?” Sirius asked, gruffly. “We were right back and just as trapped as we were
when we started - or, I guess, I was. I saw no reason to tell myself we could go anywhere when I
was in the one place in the whole world I wanted to be least, and I was there willingly.”

Remus pursed his lips. He wanted elaboration, but Sirius ran his fingers through his hair with a
sense of vampiric angst and he decided that it could wait.

“Either way,” he said, trying to be optimistic, “a diary can’t be that hard to spot. It’s just a book.
Probably bland and leather-bound, right? I doubt the Purebloods would stoop so low as to own one
of those sequin ones from Claire’s that changes patterns when you rub it.”

Sirius barked out a laugh at this, and nodded slowly. “You’re right.”

“I know I’m right.”

“You’re also fucking big-headed.”

“Nope,” Remus rebuked sweetly, leaning back into his chair. “I just trust my instincts on a case. I
trust logic, and this seems logical enough to me to be something that we indulge in.”

“And if your instincts are wrong? If your logic is wrong?”

Remus took a moment to think about it.

“Then,” he said pentatively, “We fight.”

Sirius leaned back, looking distantly at some point over Remus’ shoulder. “We fight,” he echoed,
barely a whisper, and Remus knew exactly what was playing back in front of his eyes.

“Listen,” he said, “There’s no point worrying about this now. Especially when you’re in this state.
Pandora is getting into contact with people who are going to try and help her figure out what the
hell that ring is. She told me that she had a certain… affinity for experimenting, right? Your
brother literally couldn’t have left it in better hands. It’s too specific to be a coincidence; or to be a
bad thing.” Sirius nodded, and he went on. “Also, we’re not storming Malfoy Manor tomorrow.
Take a breath. Bake a blood cake. Go hunt - or, honestly, just go to fucking bed, Sirius. No offence,
but you look awful.”

“Charming,” Sirius drawled, leaning his chin forward on both hands. He looked impossibly small.
“Thank you for that.”

“You know me better than to expect kindness,” Remus said, but he knew he was lying. Their
kindness was unconventional - it lingered between them, spoken in a dead language that neither of
them quite knew when they’d learned to speak. Go to fucking bed was the furthest stretch of
kindness he had ever offered.

“Friends are supposed to be nice to each other, you know,” Sirius said with a particularly shit-
stirring look in his eye. Remus huffed.

“Should’ve thought about that before you kissed me,” Remus retorted. “I’m not going to treat you
like a friend now.”

“I kissed you once.”

“Twice.”

Sirius threw his hand up dismissively. “The first one doesn’t count. I was having a moment of
weakness. A human moment, if you will.”

“Emotions aren’t human moments - you spent weeks trying to convince me of that,” Remus said,
snappily. “And they’re not weaknesses.”

Sirius simply stared at him for a moment.

“You’re so easy to rile up,” he said, a sly grin appearing on his face, and Remus scoffed - a smile
on his own face as much as he tried to suppress it.

“You’re such an asshole,” Remus said.

“It’s adorable.”

“I hate you.”

“Yeah, you do,” Sirius murmured, tilting his head slightly from where it was still propped up by
his hands.

He looked at Remus so attentively that he started to feel a little uncomfortable.

“And now you’re giving me come hither eyes,” Remus complained. “Friends don’t give friends
come hither eyes.”

Sirius frowned. “I’m not giving you come hither eyes?”

“You are a master at come hither eyes, Sirius Black,” Remus said, standing up agitatedly, “don’t
think I don’t know what you’re fucking doing–”

“What am I doing?!” Sirius laughed; he was suddenly in front of Remus like an apparition,
grinning wider than he had seen him smile all day. Remus pushed his chest to try and get past him
to the door and Sirius staggered backwards easily.

“You know what you’re doing,” Remus whined, smiling too, “You’ve been doing it for eight
 years.”

“You’re crazy,” Sirius said.

“Am I?”

“Mhmm,” he hummed, biting his lip in a smile and gripping one of Remus’ hands as they went to
push him. “Completely bonkers.” He stood in front of the doorway.

“Move.”

“No,” Sirius said, actually giggling as Remus tried to pinch him.

“Move you- fucking–!”

It ended up being a stupid, full blown tussle. Sirius grabbed his wrists as he tried to move, jerking
himself around and stomping on his feet, and Remus ended up with his back to the door and Sirius’
head slumped forward onto his chest. They were both laughing like children.

“Get off me,” he said, pushing him back; Sirius went willingly, this time. “Go hunt. Go sleep.”

“Of course,” Sirius inclined his head. “Whatever you say.”

“Goodnight,” Remus said primly. Sirius nodded again. His smile didn’t fade.

“Goodnight.”

Remus reached to the doorknob, placed at his side, without taking his eyes off of Sirius - he pulled
it open and practically fell backwards through the door, not taking his gaze away from him until the
very last second. He closed the door and paused, as Marlene and Pandora both looked at him
intently. Marlene looked down as soon as he locked eyes on her, trying to cover her smile with her
hand.

“Goodnight,” he said, nodding curtly. The two of them repeated the notion, and Remus managed to
contain his smile until he had swiftly crossed the room and closed the door behind him.

He let himself go in the dark, airy hallway, laughing and laughing into his hand. It was the sheer
absurdity. The absolute insanity.

Oh, god, this was bad.

Chapter End Notes

first of all, i do not speak french or italian. sorry if i botched it LOL you get my gist

for those who didn't google translate, the translations:

Andromeda's French: “No call! No text! No 'hey, Andromeda, I'm alive, by the way!'
Nothing! You asshole. You little asswipe. Holy shit. My God. Fuck you, Sirius
fucking Black. Ah– I love you, come here, you fucking wanker. I hate you.” (very
vaguely along the lines but you get the gist)

and the Italian is:

Marlene: Go take it up the ass
Sirius: I'm trying

second of all, this chapter breaks 100k words! and we only just hit the main plot! oh
lord! anyway just wanna pop in here again and say thank u sooo much for reading i
truly love you all so much

third of all, I'm pretty sure we can all guess what the ring is.. right?? yeah? yeah. Sooo
basically the main concept is very canon-adjacent but I've twisted the concept of
Horcruxes a LOT so like... just keep an eye out don't expect them to work exactly like
they do in HPcanon

and FINALLY, there was definitely something else i wanted to say but i have forgotten
bc i am so gd exhausted soooo jude sending love and signing off and if I remember ill
be back x

(edit, feb2022: I did not remember.)

 ten
Chapter Notes

c/w for Spice™ aka slight sexual content at the end except I'm /me/ so it's in the form
of slam poetry... enjoy x

They were not residing in Hotel Transylvania, but the longer Remus stayed at Boardwalk, the
longer he started to feel like a fucking receptionist.

By the end of the week, the house was, essentially, packed; vampires in his peripheral vision;
vampires around every single corner. Most of, if not all of Sirius’ reinforcements had arrived - not
all of them were staying at Boardwalk, some (namely the Americans, or the ones who resided there
longest) had accommodation of their own somewhere nearby, but most had come from scattered
places across the world; thus, all of the guest bedrooms were completely filled up, and everywhere
Remus turned he was face to face with death.

It was… an interesting place to live. Hunters and Vampires and Witches under one roof. That could
be the start of a very bad joke.

Pandora had been completely roped in, obviously - it was unwilling, she would assure you, but the
prospect of the unknown paired with her fierce loyalty to Regulus (and Sirius - again, unwilling,
she’d assure you) put her in a strangely landlocked position as The Witch (as Oliver Wood called
her). (Behind her back - she’d hex him if she heard that and he knew it.)

She had, in the past week, brought help of her own; she was not the only witch standing on the
tightrope of dark and light, Remus discovered, the day he walked into the living room to see eight
solemn faces staring back at him. Not that new faces were anything special to him, now, but
witches all seemed to have a strange eccentricity to them. Maybe Remus had spent too much time
around them, but their eyes were always a tad too bright, a tad too attentive - their fingers seemed to
be constantly twitching, as if waiting for a chance to expel their power. And they tended to stick to
themselves, which Remus understood, too; witches were, most of the time, incredibly distrusting of
people who weren’t their own, which made sense, with the whole… burned to the stake thing in
their history. Remus simply found it unnerving how they seemed to see past him, he supposed.
Like he wasn’t really there; or not that he wasn’t really there, but that what was there was far less
interesting than what lay beneath. The conscious and the subconscious. Perception was an odd
thing. Remus had come to the realisation that he struggled with it a lot, since Sirius had started
seeing him - really seeing him. Sometimes he would stare at him from across the room, and it
would make Remus wriggle, like his skeleton was too small for his skin - like there was all of this
extra space weighing on him and grinding against his bones.

Or, perhaps, that was the want. The sheer want every time he and Sirius brushed past each other,
one on the way to the conference room to add this and this to the whiteboard, one on the way to the
comms room to tinker with the wires, scour some police database, tap into a phone line or a signal
that they shouldn't be in. He squirmed at perception, because perception led to want, and want led
to touch, and every time he touched Sirius he felt like he was being tased, or burnt alive, or
drowned in a murky bay. It was so easy to lose yourself in him - so easy to escape - that Remus
worried one day he would fall in too far and never come back. So, the best course of action was no
course of action; and he had gotten used to the liminal stage they were both in, anyway. The
purgatory they both occupied. Glass walls between them both. Walls of acknowledgement. Walls
that could be shattered to bits by a simple look - a glance across the room, face highlighted by the
fire, a clap on the shoulder, a smile, a laugh, a frown. Remus had learned to feed off of these small
interactions. To feed on the warmth when Sirius would smile at him with his guard down; live off
being in the know of how hard he had to force himself to put them back up. They had much bigger
problems to weigh.

James had returned the day after they found the ring - and he had brought not only Percy and
Oliver back with him, but a whole posse of vampires. Four, in fact, one of which included the long-
lost nomadic Hannah Abbott; the enigmatic daughter who had disappeared off the face of the earth
in the nineteen-seventies. Apparently she had been in Brazil - whatever vampires Sirius had sent
had come up empty only for James to run into her halfway through Massachusetts; she brought
with her three vampires that she had apparently been living with for the better part of fifty years.
Or, two that she had been living with and a stowaway.

They were a brother and a sister, - twins, to Remus’ acknowledgement - mid twenties apparently
but looking much older and also severely cold-looking, and then a girl with long, strawberry
blonde hair who couldn’t have been turned older than nineteen; she was apparently a new turn,
four or five years ago, and had somehow bonded herself to Hannah and the twins (Mariana and
Eduardo, he would come to learn were their names) like a fungus until they had accepted the way
she unwillingly endeared them and let her come along. This was the only girl who introduced
herself to Remus and Dorcas. Her name was Isabela, apparently, and she was born and raised in
Brazil and was turned, hilariously, on a night out, in which she woke up alone in a sleek black
dress and actually tried to make her way back to the club, only noticing something was off when a
man bumped into her and she almost killed him right then and there.

She sat with them the first night she arrived for almost two hours and told them about stories of
their travels - Dorcas, who had travelled a lot more than Remus (though he had a substantial
amount, that was only for hunting) ended up falling into the comforting aura that she emanated and
sharing her own stories, too, and they bonded over their hatred of both Paris and Argentina. It was
quite endearing to watch; Remus understood Hannah’s dilemma. So would James, in days to come.

Remus was introduced to countless new vampires over the week yet Isabela, Andromeda and Ted,
Alice Longbottom (he walked into her braiding Lily’s hair one afternoon while in deep discussion
about some trashy reality TV show) and Susan Bones (who was, quite honestly, an angel in a
pinafore) were the only ones who really engaged him in conversation outside of Order meetings.
Astoria Greengrass - who had not had the best first impression on Remus, considering she wanted
to, you know, rip his head off - really tried, though. She seemed to be absolutely enraptured by the
amount of motion around her; she seemed to wish to know all of the strangers but was too afraid to
interact with them. She stayed away from Remus but had her eyes on him a lot, and he would offer
her a small smile each time that she would, had she any blush to do so, most likely flush at.

A lot of the time she had Percy and Oliver stuck to her sides, too, who tended to stay out of
people’s way and were wildly appreciative of any small job they could be given. And their familiar
dynamic was something he registered a lot of that week amongst the hubbub of new faces. It was
sweet, the way the three of them protected each other. Percy and Oliver fought Sirius tirelessly for
Astoria’s inclusion in their meetings, insisting that it was only fair considering her parents were
fighting. And when they weren’t in order meetings or traipsing around the house together they
were out in the back with James - the boys had bonded in their week-long stakeout of Malfoy
Manor, apparently (if Sirius was the exasperated vampire dad, James was the fun vampire uncle)
and so he was giving them unofficial “Vampire Fighting Lessons” down by the lake, peppy James
vs rowdy Oliver and sleek Percy, overseen by Astoria who had a tendency to climb from trees and
jump down onto people's shoulders to blindsight them, and, eventually, Isabela too, who was just
as immature and fit in rather nicely. Astoria’s parents did not approve of her learning to fight
(which, in Remus’ opinion, was rather stupid - of course, they wouldn’t be sending her out on
missions or to go to battle, they weren’t raising child soldiers, but in such a tense climate Remus
personally believed she should at least have some sort of teaching), but James (fun uncle) tended to
wait until their backs were turned, and then spar with Astoria until one or both of them ended up
being thrown into the lake.

And of the witches and their unnerving auras Remus had made one friend - a person called Jul,
who hailed from Wales, not even thirty miles from where Remus grew up. It was an instant bond.
They had dirty blonde, spiky hair and blue eyeliner lining their waterline at all possible points, and
had an affinity for wearing flowy skirts, lined with beads that clicked and announced their presence
in the room before they actually entered. It was Jul who broke through with the ring four days into
their investigation and discovered that it was not cursed in and of itself, but a placeholder - holding
what, they did not know, but it, according to Pandora, ruled out about half of the countercurses and
lore searches that they were considering, so it was a triumphant day for them all.

Not everything had been going smoothly, however.

There had been a big debate over the raid on Malfoy Manor (Remus wasn’t sure why they
continued to refer to it as one, when really there were three manors, but he left it be).

“I think we should wait until they move it again,” James had put forth, and Sirius had been, to put
it simply, adamantly against it.

“No,” he said, “There’ll be way more reinforcements then - that’s what they’ll be expecting,
James. If we go inconspicuously.. If we attack all three… we know it's in south-west right now,
right?”

“Unless they’ve moved it early,” Dorcas said, from where she was sitting next to Marlene and
Alice at the other end of the table. James shook his head.

“They wouldn’t have.”

“But if they did,” Sirius insisted, “We’d get to it regardless by infiltrating all three. It’s foolproof.”

“We don’t know what it’s like inside,” James said, “Not physically - I mean traps. Reinforcements
that we can’t see. That’s a lot of what got us the last time.”

“We have witches now,” Sirius said; turning immediately to Pandora and giving her a look that
could only transpire as sheepish, or “sorry to use you.. again”. “It’ll work.”

“Shouldn’t we wait until we actually know what the thing is?” Andromeda asked.

“How do we even know they’re connected?” Marlene asked, and Edgar Bones and his gratingly
low voice piped up in response.

“Well, Regulus and the witch–”

“Mary,” Dorcas said, firmly and almost agitated.

“–gave the order in the book that was found with the ring, so surely they’re connected.”

“Coincidence?” Miyuki asked.

“Regulus doesn’t do coincidences,” Sirius muttered, and Ambrose tutted disapprovingly.

“You seem to have a lot of faith in your brother,” she said, in a very sceptical tone. Sirius’ eyes
narrowed, but it was Andromeda who spoke up;

“Hey,” she said warningly, “Regulus Black could crush your windpipe with his pinky and you
wouldn’t even see him coming. You don’t have to trust that he’s good, but don’t underestimate his
intelligence.”

Sirius closed his mouth, and he and Andromeda shared a brief glance that seemed to speak a whole
conversation.

And the only way that Remus could describe Andromeda Tonks was that she was like Sirius, but
older, wilder, and female. They shared the same sense of humour, the same sarcasm, the same
hatred for their family. They matched each others energy levels in some strange Bluetooth - if
Sirius was energetic, Andromeda was a fucking sparkler; if Sirius was dejectedly popping open a
bottle of wine in front of the fire, Andromeda was right next to him, holding out her glass, glances
and never words. They looked similar, too, except Andromeda’s hair was lighter, and her nose
wasn’t as long; Sirius’ sat regal on his face, sloped slightly, upwards at the tip ; it looked like it
had been carved with clay. Remus didn’t know what the fuck an ‘aristocratic nose’ was supposed
to be, but if he had to guess, it would be Sirius’ nose.

(Of course, he had only put this much thought into it to compare it with Andromeda’s - obviously.
He had definitely, not at all spent quite a bit of his time staring at it. Nope.)

Regardless, Sirius’ personality had become… not watered down, persay, but he was the leader of
the Order, and having to wrangle about twenty vampires in his home, a coven of witches and the
impending doom of his worst enemy and a mystery that he couldn’t solve involving his brother
who hadn’t come to him for help would, naturally, weigh a person down. It was a lot to handle.
Remus felt like everything had simply been happening all at once - it was all so absurd, he was half
expecting a pack of werewolves to knock down the door and for Sirius to have to wrangle them too.

His asshole-ness hadn’t been fully lost, however, but Remus wasn’t getting the whole brunt of it,
and part of him felt a bit odd not constantly bickering with Sirius; but the other half felt it was
completely natural. He welcomed this new, softer dynamic with him - he and Sirius had long
banished official establishments and boundaries and ‘what were we then’ and ‘what are we now’
and ‘what are we going to be’, and it felt better that way. You’d think Remus would be good at the
establishments considering he spent his life sorting things into categories while on cases, but it
didn’t seem to work that way with feelings; or, perhaps, they had just had enough of the casey type
bullshit in the past four weeks and the moments at the end of the day where they could collapse
next to each other in front of the fire, or share a drink in the kitchen. Sirius teasing him about
something or other or Sirius telling jokes and making light of their situation or Sirius - and this was
the fucking worst, the cheeky bastard - tickling him until he was laughing like a schoolgirl and
kicking at his stomach to push him off. Remus liked him. Oh, he liked him so, so, very much, and
he hated how much he liked him, and he hated how much he hated it - he wanted to kiss him so
hard and do things to him that made him feel absolutely boneless, but he also just wanted to sit with
him and perhaps put his head on his shoulder and lace their fingers together; feel as the warmth of
the fire heated up Sirius’ cold skin - or maybe the warmth of his own. They probably could’ve
gotten away with a no-strings hate fuck a month ago, but whatever path they were going down now
was a no turning back point; strings were attached, and they were attached well.

It was during one of these nights, winding down in front of the fire, almost exactly a week after the
ring came into their possession, that Remus got the text.
Marlene and Dorcas were going through some of Andromeda’s books on Dark Magic (Ted, bless
his soul, had flown to France and back during the week and brought them), Pandora was outside
with Jul and a few more of the witches, performing a blood ritual to try and extract the heart of the
ring, and James was, apparently, on his way back from Boston with Ambrose and Mariana
following up on a murder in Queens and tracking a trail that went cold, but brought in one
interesting development. Bellatrix Lestrange was in the area.

Andromeda had just finished gushing about how deranged her lovely older sister was when
Remus’ phone buzzed, and he went to check it; Sirius was on the other end of the sofa, sipping
from a mug that could either be tea or blood. He turned instinctively.

It was from Lily.

Remus! Need you to come to the hospital now. I think I’ve found something. Come in through the
big entrance on 168th. Bring Sirius. Don’t tell anyone else please.

Lily X

He frowned, and turned his phone to Sirius; watching as his eyes scanned over the words, frowning
once he got to the last sentence.

“Don’t tell anyone else?” he murmured, eyes flicking back up to Remus. “That’s weird.”

“That’s worrying,” Remus amended, rereading the text for himself. “I can’t think of anything that
she would only want us to see - James, Marlene, and Dorcas, at the very least? Right?”

Sirius nodded, leaning forward to put his cup on the table. He whipped the blanket strewn across
his lap off and in a second was up, in front of Remus, extending a hand.

Remus rolled his eyes (natural instinct) but took it anyway, letting himself be hauled up.
Andromeda had turned and was now in deep conversation with Astoria and Isabela - the both of
them looked absolutely enraptured - so they simply walked out, Sirius closing the door with a quiet
click behind them.

His eyes flickered to the clock. 11pm. “If we drive, we won’t be there til one.”

“I mean, Lily’s on all night,” Remus offered, but Sirius shook his head.

“Pandora’s busy…” he murmured, looking down the hall to where Remus knew the back door was
and then he let out a groan, shaking his body, like a child having a tantrum. “Why can’t I do
magic?” Sirius grumbled, letting out a dramatic huff.

“Or turn into a bat,” Remus said, bringing back a conversation that it feels like they had a lifetime
ago - he was ridiculously happy to know that Sirius’ reaction was the same; that the Order hadn’t
sucked out all of his stupidity.

“I hate you,” Sirius glowered, “Fuck me. What is the point of my existence if I can’t turn into a
bat?”

Remus gave him a patronising pat on the shoulder, and then noticed movement pass an open door
down the hall. He gasped.
“Wait, that was-” he said, before turning and speed-walking to the door. “Jul!”

Jul turned from where they were stood in the kitchen - they were holding a bowl of cereal and
wearing bunny slippers.

“Oh, hi!” they said; Sirius appeared in the doorway, looking confused, and their gaze became
slightly wary. “You… need something?”

“Jul,” Remus said, “Look - I know it’s a lot to ask and I promise I’ll explain when we get back,
but… can you make us a portkey?”

Jul simply looked at him for a second, and then the corners of their lips pulled up slowly into a
devilish smile.

“I would fucking love to,” they said, and kicked into action.

***

Remus had travelled by Portkey before - a handful of times, a few done by Mary, a few by the
various witches working with the Hunters association at various points of his career, but he didn’t
think he would ever get used to the way it tugged at him - it felt like he was on the end of a
fishhook, like he was bait. It also made him ridiculously dizzy, and he actually fell into Sirius’ side
when they landed in a dismal alley in Manhattan.

“Whoa,” Sirius said, catching him and barely staggering. “Steady on, sweetheart.”

Remus almost hated Sirius’ nicknames even more, now, since they actually meant something, but
he let this one wash away with the waves of nausea that overtook him. It took his vision about
twenty seconds to clear.

“You okay?” Sirius asked, looking genuinely concerned; Remus nodded.

“Too dizzy… always messes me up,” he murmured, but shook himself off. They walked out onto
the main street and found they had landed a good couple of blocks off from the hospital; they set
off into a walk.

“You know,” Remus said, making idle conversation as they dodged a group of drunk people, “I
always wanted to live in New York.”

Sirius turned to him and quirked an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yeah,” he said, “Picture me: ten years old, growing up in dreary, boring Wales, seeing all of these
shows set in NYC on the telly. I wanted to be there so badly. It looked so... exciting.”

“Is it not exciting anymore?” Sirius said, digging his hands into his pockets as they walked.

“I’m not sure I would say coming here to hunt down vampires with my enemy of eight years is
exciting, more like... absurd.”

Sirius scoffed, and turned around to look at him, walking backwards.

“Friend,” he corrected with a smirk. Remus rolled his eyes.

“You weren’t my friend until a week ago,” he pointed out. “Before that you were my enemy.”

“Don’t lie,” Sirius said blithely. “Before that I was your wank bank.”
“Hey!” Remus said, shoving him with his hand - Sirius simply used the gesture to turn himself
back around, walking at Remus’ side again.

“I was,” he shrugged, and they turned a corner. Remus prayed that the blue lighting emanating
from the stores they were walking past cancelled out the blush that he knew was on his cheeks.
“Don’t think I’ll ever forget the look on your face when I came to your house - remember, wearing
that white shirt? You looked like you wanted to jump on me.”

“I always wanted to jump on you,” Remus grumbled. “Jump on you and– and stab you in the
heart.”

“With your dick,” Sirius preened, and Remus shoved him properly this time - he fell into raucous
laughter, bouncing back to Remus’ side like an excited puppy.

“That– how would that even work?”

“I don’t know.”

“You should know. You’ve been alive eight hundred years, you’re the one who should know the
weird sex stuff.”

“Oh, I do,” Sirius grinned - he didn’t get a shove, but he did get an eye roll.

Remus pursed his lips. “Are we forgetting when I touched your hand and you had a meltdown and
couldn’t even get your words out?”

“Okay,” Sirius rounded on him with a pointed finger. “I was thirsty–”

“You can’t just use that excuse all the time!”

“And I was going through a lot of emotional distress, okay, I feel things, remember?! Dead
parents? My poor, wayward brother?”

“You hate your parents, and you’re the wayward brother.”

“No, I’m the disappointment,” Sirius grinned. “Anyway, it wasn’t my fault, technically it was
yours because you’re the one who killed–”

He cut off, abruptly, and almost tripped over his own feet as he looked down; Remus had
interlocked their hands together.

“You’re– the one who killed the coven–” he continued, in a desperate (and impressive, to give him
some credit) attempt to cover over his blunder, but Remus had seen it.

“Big bad vampire,” he teased, squeezing Sirius’ palm. “Eight hundred years old; all flustered.”

If looks could kill, Remus would drop dead.

“The amount of murder threats I’m refraining from spitting at you right now,” Sirius said, turning
another corner; still not dropping his hand. Remus smiled.

“That’s how you show your affection.”

Sirius rolled his eyes, and they walked in silence for a few moments; the wind whipped through
Remus’ hair and sent goosebumps down his arm, but he didn’t miss Sirius tightening his grip on
his hand, pressing his fingers in between Remus’ knuckles.
“Friends don’t hold hands,” he said, quietly. Remus resisted slapping him one and shrugged.

“Nobody on this street knows who we are,” he said. “We could be boyfriends.”

The look of absolute incredulity on Sirius’ face could honestly send Remus to an early grave.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“To them,” he said, inclining his head across the street to a gaggle of people talking around a
motorcycle; to three girls walking down the road, their arms linked; to a father and a young son,
tugging on his hand. “We’re just two humans, two guys walking down the street holding hands.
We could be on our way home, or something. To the - frankly, ridiculously over expensive -
apartment we own. One of those girls might tweet that she saw a gay couple on the street today.
About how cute they were.”

“I’m not interested in playing human with you, Remus,” Sirius said, but Remus pressed on.

“You have to have thought about it,” he said, swinging their hands and turning to him. “At least
once.”

“Why would I? I have a magnificent undead experience, thank you very much.”

“Not even once?” he asked. “Especially since you were born this way - it’s all you’ve ever known.
Have you not… wanted to be human?”

Sirius took a long, long moment to reply. The three girls walked past them - one of them made eye
contact with Remus, and he gave her a tight smile.

“Yes,” he said, eventually, when they had gone past. “I did want to be human, once. For a while.”

His voice was lower, now; solemn. Remus squeezed his hand - which he still hadn't dropped.

“Look, I didn’t mean–”

“No, it’s fine,” Sirius said, breezily, looking at him and smiling slightly. “Honestly. It’s just - I
don’t know, I always forget that literally everyone around me, undead or no, has actually had a
human experience at some point - except for me. Besides Andy, obviously. It’s strange to think
about… especially since mine was miserable for so long.”

Remus swallowed, opened his mouth and then closed it again, debating what to say.

“How long?” he landed on. “How long were you… with them, I mean. Before you left. Got
disowned, or... whatever.”

Sirius frowned, and his face pinched in a way that signalled that he was chewing on the inside of
his lip.

“Hmm,” he said, “so, I was around for Henry VIII’s coronation. I’m pretty sure I oversaw Edward
and Mary’s - I was at Anne Boleyn’s execution, fun fact,” he said breezily, “But I don’t think I saw
Elizabeth. So, somewhere in the 1550’s, I suppose. That's about three hundred years of miserable,
vampiric brooding.”

Remus resisted the urge to call him pretentious based on the fact he measured time via the
monarchy. “What did you do after that?”

Sirius hummed. “Well, I fucked off to France for about a hundred years, travelled on my own.
Think I must’ve ended up back in England at some point in the early sixteenth century, but I
remember doing all I could to avoid London; then I took a boat to North India and met James in the
late 1700s in a small merchant town in Rajasthan, and we've barely been separated since.”

“Merchants?” Remus said, off-handedly at the thought of James as a merchant, and Sirius laughed.

“The Potters were very profitable, actually,” he said. “One of the richest merchant families in town,
but they got very sick and died when James was barely twenty. They doted on me a lot - I will
always swear to you that his mother knew what I was. She used to call me
affectionately. She told me to look after him, after they’d gone…”

Remus blinked. “So you turned him.”

“I made him wait four years,” Sirius said, quickly. “To make sure it was still what he wanted. He
was an only child, you see, and the legacy he inherited, it wasn’t… what he wanted. He had
everything left to him, but he had nothing left. So when I was sure, yeah, I turned him.”

“And what about Marlene?” Remus asked, genuinely invested now.

Sirius sighed. “Marlene was different,” he said, “It was about a hundred years later - somewhere in
the 1850s this huge rebellion against the East India Company happened; James went back home to
help fight and then he stayed there for a while. I wanted to help but I couldn’t, so I travelled a bit
for the decade. I ended up in Italy and met Marlene in Milan. She was nineteen, engaged to a man
that she hated, and in love with a woman who lived down the street. I was the first person to tell
her that that was okay.”

“Oh,” Remus said, softly. “I know this story, I think.”

Sirius raised an eyebrow and looked at him. “She told you?”

“She told Dorcas.”

Sirius blinked. “Huh,” he said, contemplatively. “She… never really tells people about Clara.”

He blinked and they fell into a short silence amongst the bustle of the city. Someone yelled
something drunkenly behind them and Sirius shook himself back into the story.

“Well, anyway, we were friends for… oh, I don’t know, five years maybe? When she was twenty-
three - 1863, I remember that date - she was riding down a backroad at night and her horse got
spooked by a deer, and she was thrown off and trodden on. I smelled the blood. She was very
nearly gone when I found her - she told me to let her go, that there was nothing she was living for
anymore - at least, nothing she could ever have - and I was fully prepared to respect her wishes.
And then in what should have been her very last moment she went back on it. Started to panic. She
gripped my hand and told me that she didn’t want to die, not really, and so I bit her. No hesitation.”

Remus exhaled with a whistle. “Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“And they’re the only two?"

“I don’t turn people lightly,” Sirius said in response. “I am fully aware of the miseries that come
with being my kind. So yeah, I guess I did think about being human before, but I’m okay with what
I am now. And, besides, if I was human…”
He trailed off, and Remus prompted him with a squeeze of his hand.

“If you were human…?”

“If I was human,” Sirius huffed, “then there wouldn’t be an annoying hunter holding my hand and
making me fucking stutter like a schoolgirl, so maybe I lied and I do wish I was human again.”

Remus laughed quietly; he looked down, relishing in the feeling of Sirius’ palm against his, Sirius’
shoulder and arm brushing against his own.

“And, for the record, we would have a penthouse in Brooklyn,” Sirius said stubbornly. “And a dog.
And I would run a hotel, and you would be an exterminator.”

“Very discreet.”

“And we’d also own a flat in London,” he pressed on, ignoring Remus’ comment. “And we’d stay
there every summer, and James and Marlene would come over, because they would probably live
in Florence or New Delhi - they’re homebodies, the both of them.” He hummed happily, flicking
his hair out of his face and letting his eyes flutter shut, the glow of the streetlights illuminating his
face so he looked like an abstract art piece. “But us? We’d like it here. We’d like… this.”

“I like this,” Remus blurted out. Sirius looked at him, and their hands suddenly felt like boulders.

“I like it too,” he barely whispered back, and the words were caught in the wind, a memory passed
on. But Remus caught it. He always did.

Sirius turned away first - they had stopped walking, and Remus looked up to see the entrance to the
hospital.

“Well,” Sirius said, and detached his hand from Remus’ to flourish it towards the door. He smiled.
“Humans first.”

***

The Hospital was huge - miles bigger than any other Remus had ever encountered. Lily hadn’t
actually told them where exactly she’d be, but it seemed likely that she’d be in or around the
morgue which, they discovered, was on the seventh floor. They rode the lift in almost silence -
Remus used the time to put on his black fingerless gloves (he had near picked up Dorcas’ novelty
pink ones in his rush on the way out, which would have been a sight) and make sure the
suppressors were tight on his guns, not wanting to send a ninety year old patient two floors down
into a heart attack if the need arose - and the bustling crowds of the ground floor dissipated into
what was almost a menacing silence as the doors opened onto the seventh.

The corridors were more or less clear, besides a nurse pushing a trolley who smiled at them as they
passed. The hospital was huge, and so the different departments were strictly cut off from each
other, but the seventh floor had been split into an Autopsy and Pathology department to the right,
and the Burn Center to the left. The two of them veered off right and turned down an empty
corridor and then another, following signs. Remus kept a covert hand on his gun, in a pouch
clinging to his hip.

It was down a corridor labelled “Morgue and Pathology laboratory” that Sirius stopped. Another
woman walked out of one of the doors, gave them a smile that seemed a little wary (understandable
- they certainly didn’t fit in) but didn’t press, slipping past Sirius, who was unmoving.

“What?” Remus hissed when she’d gone. He took a deep breath in.
“Vampire,” Sirius near-growled, taking off down the corridor with a propelled spring in his step so
much so that Remus had to jog to catch up. “Can’t clock who, but it’s familiar. Keep up.”

They made it a few more steps before Sirius stopped, and turned so sharply the friction almost
burned Remus’ shoulder. He turned in step.

Sirius was frowning, staring down the door that they had just come into - the corridor was wide,
with next to no obstructions; there was a trolley to the side, underneath a room with a window
covered with light blue blinds. On another side further down was a set of double doors. Remus
turned and the blinds moved gently with him, as if guided by the wind; except there was none.

Sirius closed his eyes, breathing deeply. Opened them again.

“Text Lily,” he murmured.

Remus took out his phone and unlocked it, typing a quick “where are you?” and pressing send,
watching the message load, the blue line agonising; and then deliver.

The tell-tale iPhone text chime came, loud and bell-like, from inside the room with the blinds;
Sirius’ head turned sharply, and it was a mistake - it was their plan.

Remus saw her coming a split second before Sirius did, but a split second was all it took.

Bellatrix Lestrange flung open the double doors and darted like a wraith, an inanimate blur down
the length of the corridor and her one-up on Sirius took him by surprise; they flung into the
hallway wall, slamming against a locked door in a mess of ferality, and in the time it took Remus to
cock his gun Lily was there. She was held from behind by Rodolphus Lestrange, arm tight around
her throat; in the time it took Remus to pull out his other gun Bellatrix had Sirius on his knees from
behind, her hand gripped onto his hair, pulling his head back so far that it looked about ready to
tear at the throat. Her foot was digging into the back of his calf, and Sirius was old, and he was
strong, but there were four people still in this world older and stronger than him, and Bellatrix
Lestrange was one of them.

They stood in stasis for a moment; Bellatrix holding Sirius to his left, Rodolphus with his arm
around Lily to his right. Remus stood in the middle, two guns pointed at opposite angles. Two
fingers on two triggers. Bellatrix smiled, a mad glint in her eye, and looked him up and down.

“Dear cousin,” she preened, her voice throaty and harsh, twinged with surprise; “You brought
food.”

“This isn’t a very courteous family reunion, is it, Bella?” Sirius choked, and she pulled back on his
hair harder.

“Working with a hunter, now, Sirius; you stoop so low?” she said, crouching down to press her lips
next to his ear, her flouncy, rabid curls brushing down Sirius’ shoulder. “You’ve been careless,
cousin,” she hissed into his ear, “Careless with the girl. I could smell you on her from a mile away.
Careless, careless, misguided boy…”

Remus took a breath, and his eyes flickered over to Lily. Her chin was tilted up, slightly, with the
weight of Rodolphus’ arm around her neck; and even despite the danger of the situation her face
was calm and collected. The tear marks on her cheeks had long-dried, and she was making pointed
eye contact with Remus. He met her eyes, and her hand twitched immediately; it was held up in a
fist to her chest, unwilling to make contact with her entrapper, but from where it was positioned
underneath the vampire's gaze her pointer finger slowly extended from the fist, pointing up to his
forearm. His eyes moved back up to hers, and she nodded - a jerk of the head, so subtle that it
might seem like a movement of defence; it might seem like nothing at all. Remus shook his head in
response.

He could hit it. He knew he could. But his arm was so tight around her neck that he wouldn’t be
able to guarantee the effect wouldn’t hurt her too; he wouldn’t be able to guarantee that his arm
wouldn’t slam into her windpipe, crush it to nothing. He couldn’t guarantee that the force of the
vampire’s insubordinate strength wouldn’t take her head clean off.

“The Dark Lord is very angry with your brother,” Bellatrix was saying, now, into Sirius’ ear. Every
syllable she pronounced was laced with venom; her tongue lapped against her teeth like a snake.
“He believes it to be your corruption that has befallen him. His once, loyal servant… my worthy
baby cousin... now nothing more than a scoundrel, a blood traitor, a thief…”

“Regulus was never anyone’s servant,” Sirius gasped, straining against her pull. “And neither was
I.”

“Oh, you have been a lost cause from the beginning,” Bellatrix said dismissively. “But he… he was
loyal… he tore people apart and put them together just for the fun of it,” her voice moved into a
whisper, a low, raw thing from the back of her throat. Sirius’ hand reached up to his throat - he
pulled at the tight skin there, rolled it between his fingertips.

“And what are you going to do?” he said chidingly. “Kill us for my brother’s transgressions?”

“Happily,” Bellatrix snarled into his ear, and Sirius tutted.

“And what if we are exactly what you need?” Sirius continued. He was bargaining. He was
bluffing. “What if we know where it is? What if we have what your Dark Lord so desperately…
wants… back?”

His last three words were choked out, barely coming into form as Bellatrix pulled harder; but
Remus saw her jaw working; her eyes flickered maniacally around the room.

“You do not know what you are talking about,” Bellatrix spat, and Sirius let out a laugh from the
hollow mortuary of his chest. It rang like impending doom throughout the room.

“I know exactly what I’m talking about, dear Bella,” he said, and his face turned stony, his voice
low and growling. “You will never find him,” he spat. “He was always the best at hide and seek;
you do not remember? When we would play as children… the time he ended up in the top room of
the tower… had managed to squeeze through a loose brick on the ceiling of the floor below... he
stayed there for… mmph... three days before dear old Cissy found him, starved and st-
stubborn…”

Sirius turned his head slightly; as slightly as he could; it clicked, but he turned, his parted lips
against Bellatrix’s cheek, and he smirked.

“Who do you think gave him a fucking leg up?”

Bellatrix, whose face had pinched more and more as he spoke, let out a roar of agitation and
wrapped her hand around Sirius, pressing a palm onto his sternum; and, as she pulled back, he
looked at Remus. And then he looked at Lily.

It was like a relay system; from Sirius, to Remus, to Lily, and once Remus’ eyes landed on her she
nodded again, stronger, more frantic. Her eyes flickered to Bellatrix and Sirius; she was hissing
something incomprehensible into his ear, and Remus heard a click from his neck and he groaned -
or growled; and then back, and Lily opened her mouth slowly. Lips moving so slow they barely
moved at all.

“Trust me.”

Remus did not trust her. He did not trust her one bit, but Bellatrix was one tug away from ripping
Sirius’ head clean off. He had no other option. Bellatrix was stronger than Sirius, but she had used
the split-second of his surprise to get a one-up on him, and Remus could only hope that he could do
the same.

He pulled the trigger.

The gun went off; and shot straight into Rodolphus Lestrange’s arm.

Every single person kicked into action all at once; Lily pulled her chin up higher, and the impact of
the bullet was negated by the position of her head as she slammed it backwards into Rodolphus’.
The shock made him stagger, only one step, but it was enough; his grip was loose enough for Lily
to turn, to pull her hand back and punch him, hard, in the stomach - her sleeve flew backwards with
the impact, and she had a stake shooter tight around her wrist. It triggered and embedded itself into
Rodolphus’ stomach - he let out a strained howl and staggered another few steps.

One glance at Sirius and Bellatrix was enough - Remus had not watched them, but it was clear that
his plan had thrown her off enough for Sirius to get the upper hand. In a span of two seconds he
had her thrown against the wall, snarling in a manner so feral that Remus almost recoiled; she
pushed back, gripping her hands around his throat, but he had other ideas; he leant forward and bit
into her neck, eliciting a grained howl from Bellatrix, and then he twisted his head so un-humanlike
that her hands flew off his throat and in half a second he had flipped her over and she was on the
floor, hair a halo around her head, both of Sirius’ hands in her mouth, pulling apart her jaw. The
skin began to break, pulling her mouth into a perpetual smile. Almost mirroring Sirius’ own. Huge
and terrifying.

Remus ran at Lily and Rodolphus.

She kicked him backwards, and Remus yelled “Behind!” at her, which was all it took; she darted
behind him, out of the way as Remus unsheathed his blade and swiped it against his neck; he
lurched forward and grabbed both of Remus’ arms with his own, but Lily punched him once more;
the stake embedded closer to his heart, this time, and he staggered forward right into Remus,
bleeding onto his clothes.

He was able to pull his arm out of Rodolphus’ grip and stab the blade into his stomach, leaving it
there - leaving the holy water to weaken his bloodstream - and went to get another from his pouch,
but the vampire was old, and fast, - even despite the two small stakes and blade embedded into his
abdomen he lurched for Remus, punching him square in the face - so hard that Remus fell to the
floor, and heard his nose crack - adrenaline became him and he kicked the vampire with both feet
in the stomach, either side of the dagger, calling for Lily as he did. She worked seamlessly in time
with him, punching him with her third and final stake and embedding it into his chest, yet again,
and in that time Remus jumped back up, gripping back onto his gun. Rodolphus came for him
again.

“Where the hell–” Remus yelled, dodging a punch and using the advantage to grab and twist the
blade in his stomach, pulling apart the skin and eliciting a strangled howl from the vampire, “did
you get that stake shooter?!”

He punched the underside of his neck brutally with the handle of his gun and sent him staggering
backwards, back towards Lily.

She had reached out her hand desperately and grabbed the first thing she found on the trolley - IV
tubing - and ran forwards and jammed the needle into the side of his neck, once, twice, three times
- she wrapped her arm around his thrashing neck in an eerie reverse of their previous position and
gasped.

“I stole it!” she gasped over his shoulder, digging in the needle as far as it would go. “I took it from
- fuck - your car!”

The vampire leaned forward and dug his teeth into Lily’s forearm, and she pulled it away
instinctively, causing his teeth to drag all the way down, tearing the skin and leaving two deep
gashes. Remus punched him to unhook his teeth from her flesh and Lily let go completely, the IV
needle still in the side of his neck - he stumbled towards Remus, the injuries evidently weighing
him down.

“Stake!” Lily cried from behind him, holding out her hands. “Stake!”

Remus, without even thinking, pulled one out and threw it - Lily caught it seamlessly with her
uninjured arm, charging forwards, and just as Remus pressed the barrel of his gun to the underside
of his jaw she pressed the point of the stake to his back, right where his heart was, and they met
gazes over his shoulder, the vampire pressed between their bodies like a sandwich, or the butt of a
horrific joke.

And in a split second - Remus wasn’t even sure he had seen it, to be honest. That it wasn’t a trick
of the light, or the tinge of blood dripping from his head down over his eyebrows and into his eyes,
for he looked into Lily’s eyes, and they were red. Red like her hair; red like fire as she panted,
adrenaline almost tangible in the air, crystals through her veins; and then it was gone. He blinked,
and they were emerald green again.

Remus frowned slightly, and then Rodolphus jerked, and he pushed his gun deeper.

“Wooden bullets,” he whispered, bringing his eye contact back to the vampire, who was breathing
heavily and erratically. “And a stake to your heart. One wrong move and we’ll do it.”

Bellatrix screamed, all of a sudden, but, apparently not at her husband’s impending death; she and
Sirius were still fighting, though Sirius was obviously winning. Remus flickered his gaze over just
in time to watch four deep fingernail gashes on her face heal, blood seeping red and sticky on her
cheek. She had evidently put up a fight - Sirius’ nose was bleeding, or had been bleeding, and he
had blood on his throat and coming out of the corner of his mouth. Bellatrix’s jaw had not fully
healed, either - Sirius had obviously pulled her an inch from death, and it lay slightly open and
floppy, the corners of her mouth ripped open far further than they sat naturally. She was about
halfway to a Chelsea smile; she looked like a bad Halloween costume, a 2015 stereotype.

Sirius bit into her neck from behind again and she screamed; he pulled back, pulling her flesh with
him, spitting it out grotesquely. Remus watched as it re-materialised on her neck, and then he did it
again, his arms tight around her stomach as she thrashed manically, and he kicked the back of her
knees in so they fell as he sank his fangs into her skin, pulling back just as she hit the floor;
bringing one hand up to the back of her neck and pushing her down entirely so her face was
smashed against the cold, laminate flooring, white and stained with pearl red blood.

“I could kill you,” Sirius said, breathy and erratic, her blood dripping thick from his mouth, “but
I’d much rather let you go and parade my beautiful work on your jaw to your little minions, so–”
He pulled her up by the hair, in another imitation of their previous position but switched. She was
breathing heavily, teeth bared, jerking and moving but Sirius’ hold was too strong.

“Tell your Dark Lord,” Sirius hissed into her ear, “that me and my scoundrel, blood traitor of a
brother are coming for him.”

She jerked, and he shushed her patronisingly, tightening his grip on the back of her neck.

“And when we do,” he whispered, blood pooling from his mouth and dripping onto her shoulder.
He leaned in, his lips lined up with the tear of her jaw, “I’m going to rip him apart so badly that not
even his little reinforcements and his bad taste in jewellery will be able to save him this time.”

“We are going to burn you to the ground,” Bellatrix gasped, the words muffled and clunky from
her broken jaw. Sirius laughed.

“Oh dear, dear Bella,” he said, slowly, readjusting his grip on her as she squirmed. His mouth
stayed red against her skin, but his eyes flickered up to Remus. Just for a moment. “I am already
burnt,” he whispered, smiling. “I am already charred. I am damnation, and I do not pretend that I
am not - and that is my advantage over you, dear cousin. For when I finally kill you, it’s going to
be long… and slow...” he trailed a hand down to press against where her heart lay. “And when my
hand grips around your cold, shrivelled heart,” he pushed in, and his nails dented her flesh; his
fingers pushed into the hollow of her empty chest. “You will know that damnation has already
judged you, and even he did not deem you good enough for the eternal torture that you’re used to.
Instead, there will be nothing.” His hand pulled out of her chest, and she let out a languid breath;
his fingertips were lathered in deep red blood. “You will be empty. No pain, no fire. You will just
be… nothing.”

Sirius let out an unstable laugh, but it died quickly on his lips when Bellatrix whimpered, he
shushed her, humming patronisingly, brushing her hair out of her face and licking his lips. His eyes
flickered up to where Remus and Lily stood, Rodolphus in their clutches; all three of them staring,
unbreathing, unmoving.

“Kill him,” he said, and Bellatrix didn’t even have time to cry out before Lily was plunging her
stake into his back.

Rodolphus Lestrange let out one, last, low cry before the light flooded out of his eyes, and he
slumped over, dead.

Sirius let Bellatrix happily out of his grasp and she did not crawl to her husband’s corpse; she
simply scrambled up to the wall, snarling, eyes flickering between the three of them. Sirius stood
up straight. Dusted himself off.

“You may go,” he said, breezily, running two blood-coated hands through his already blood-coated
hair. “Give Narcissa all my hate. And Lucius…” he let out a slow breath, and the corners of his lips
perked up. “Give Lucius this,” he said, holding up his middle finger.

And in barely three seconds she was gone, a ghost down the corridor, out of a window that Remus
heard smash in the distance.

The three of them stood in silence for a minute, blood and dirt and broken bones, and then Remus
whirled on Lily.

“That was insanely reckless,” he hissed, “You could’ve been killed!”

“That was insanely brilliant,” Sirius said, walking forward and pulling Lily’s face into his hands,
smearing blood on her face as he kissed her forehead fiercely.

“Don’t encourage this,” Remus said as he pulled away, and Lily narrowed her eyes at him.

“I saved your asses,” she said, leaning over to pull out the stake from Rodolphus’ back. “I was
great.”

“You were,” Remus acknowledged, “But it could’ve gone so wrong so quickly.”

“Everything can go wrong quickly,” Lily said casually, kicking Rodolphus’ body over and pulling
the knife out of his stomach, handing it to Remus. “But this one went right, and that was the best
fucking villain speech I’ve ever heard.”

“I prefer the term ‘morally grey’,” Sirius said absently, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. Remus
rolled his eyes.

“What are we going to do with him?” he asked, pointing to the corpse; both pairs of eyes followed.
Sirius frowned.

“Give me a second,” he said, leaning down and scooping up the body as if it weighed nothing. In a
second he was gone, down the same way that Bellatrix went. Lily turned to Remus in his absence.

“Are you okay?” she said, reaching out to touch his face. “Are you hurt?”

“I–” Remus said, sniffling (with an immense amount of pain). “I think he broke my nose.”

“Hang on, I got it,” Lily said, businesslike all of a sudden; and without any prior warning she
reached out, placed both hands firmly on both sides of Remus’ nose and clicked it back into place
before he even got chance to cry out in the defensive.

“Fuck,” he hissed, shaking his head. “Oh my god. Jesus Christ. Some warning, next time?”

Lily shrugged. “Less of a stress with no warning.” She pulled up her own arm, where the gashes
had stopped bleeding - they weren’t as deep as they looked, but still rather worrisome. “I’m gonna
have to find some fucking bandages around here…”

“We don’t have time,” Sirius said, suddenly back by their side and empty-handed - Lily let out a
quiet scream. “We have to get back. I have information for Pandora.” He started off on a brisk
stride down the corridor, and both Remus and Lily paused before jogging to catch up.

“The body?” Lily said, once she got to his side.

“Taken care of.”

“You put it in the dumpster, didn’t you?” Remus asked. The corner of Sirius’ lip quirked slightly.

“I may have.”

“God,” Remus scoffed as they got to the lift and called for it. “You vampires are all the fucking
same.”

***

Walking through a hospital covered in blood was one thing; walking the streets of Manhattan
covered in blood was another, although only slightly. Not many people paid them much heed -
stranger things have happened, Remus supposed - and they set off walking down the backroads so
as to not attract as much attention.

“So,” Lily said, turning to Sirius. “You know what the ring is, then?”

Sirius exhaled. “Nope.”

“But you said–” she started, before clarity apparently befell her and her eyes cleared. “Oh. Shit.
You were bluffing.”

They turned a corner sharply. “Yep.”

“But it worked,” Remus said, trailing after him. “You got out of her… er, what did you get out of
her?”

Sirius sighed, and cracked his fingers absently. “Well, for one, there’s no question of Regulus
being on our side now. Riddle is angry, apparently, that the ring has been stolen - he sent Bella,
who is practically his first-in-command here to stalk and kill me out of spite, so it must be
something very important to him. Logic suggests that it’s something that can hurt him, because the
only thing Tom Riddle cares about is immortality and power, so it is leading me to suggest that the
ring - and, in turn, the diary at Malfoy Manor - is something that can take away both of those
things.” He let out a sharp breath, turning another corner - they were walking at a very brisk pace.
“I completely bluffed my way through it - the whole Dark Lord desperately wanting it back was a
complete guess, but I was right, wasn’t I? Problem is, he assumed before that myself and Regulus
weren’t working together, and now he basically has it confirmed that we are - and he basically has
it confirmed that we have the ring, so he’ll...”

He stopped dead in the street. Lily and Remus actually walked two solid steps out of momentum
before stopping and turning to him.

A distant siren bled through the air.

“What?” Remus said. “What is it?”

Sirius' jaw fell open slightly, and his eyes flickered around various points on the ground. “Burn me
to the ground…” he mumbled, and Remus took a step forward, leaning down to get into Sirius’
eyeline.

“Burn what? What do you mean?”

His head snapped up. Another siren sounded.

“Oh my God,” he said, “Oh my God, they think we’re staying– they think the ring is at–” He
gasped, focusing on Remus’ eyes for only a split second, but long enough for him to tell that Sirius’
were frantic. “Oh my God.”

And then he took off, running, and Remus and Lily took one look at each other and ran after him.

Hotel Transylvania stood tall in the middle of Washington Heights, Manhattan - the neighbourhood
itself wasn’t huge, regardless, but the distance from the Medical Center to the Hotel was about
fifteen minutes, max, at a walk - and about a third of that at a sprint.

They didn’t even have to go the full way to know, though. The flames were present from four, five
blocks away.

They emerged from a street that led them directly into the car park that they had driven into
multiple times, except it was filled with people. The hotel itself was burning - it can’t have been lit
more than half an hour prior, perhaps even less, and yet it was unsalvageable. The hellish hand of
the flames crushed the building like a seed between two fingers; the floors were already collapsing
in on each other. Glass windows were shattering, shards hitting the ground with such a painful
finality that it felt like a second death, and for the vampires standing huddled together in the
parking lot he supposed it felt like a third.

Remus and Lily made it to the scene just when the firefighters had begun to hose it down. It was
chaos, shouting and yelling and ash, clouds of it, lathering the sky in thick coats of gloom - but
even in the catastrophe it was obvious to distinguish who the residents were.

Sirius pushed through countless humans and almost knocked a cop down in his attempt to get to
his people (Remus yelled a quick apology as he brushed past, too) and a strong few vampires
turned as he approached, running - Remus saw some of their faces light up, and some of them
crumple.

“What the hell happened?” Sirius was yelling when they got there, over the roar of the flames -
although he knew. “Who–”

“It was Lucius Malfoy,” one of them piped up - a girl, dark brown hair. She was holding a laptop
and stray pieces of clothing to her chest, and her face was coated in soot. “Not even twenty minutes
ago. Sybil saw him from the ground floor.”

“Sybil,” Sirius wheezed, scanning the crowd. “Sybil. Can someone find her for me?”

The word immediately rippled through the crowd; a few people turned and marched through the
wave, obeying orders.

“Ana,” Sirius said, dragging the girl's gaze back to him. “Did everyone get out? How many did
we…”

Her face contorted, slightly, and Sirius let out a low exhale.

“Quite a few,” she said, brokenly; and then she looked up at him, and nothing Remus had seen that
day - nothing of Bellatrix, nothing of Rodolphus - could match the fear in her eyes.

“Sirius,” she whispered, “it’s Fiendfyre.”

He let out a short breath, and then another, and ran both hands over his face, cracking the dried
blood that was smeared across his cheek, on his chin, on his lips. Before he got to answer, a man
appeared with a dainty, pale woman with bushy, sandy hair that Remus recognised to be the
receptionist in tow.

“Sybil,” Sirius said, pulling her close and putting his hands on her shoulders. She nodded, tears
streaming down her face. She was holding onto a sooty stuffed Teddy bear and what looked like a
jar of crystals. “There is a portkey in an alley on the corner of 161st. A Cheerios box - I need you
to go find it. It’ll take you to a house, and you need to get James, and Pandora, and all the witches
and tell them what’s happening, bring them here. Go. Go.”

She nodded efficiently and took off sprinting; Remus watched as she disappeared into the crowd.

The male vampire who had brought Sybil locked onto Remus; he watched as his eyes went from
his face, and seemed to acknowledge his bleeding nose; he took a step forward. Sirius’ head
snapped up and in a second he stepped in front of him, and gripped the boy by the front of the shirt,
pulling him close.
“Don’t you fucking dare touch him,” he spat. Remus grabbed onto his shoulder.

“Sirius, it’s fine–”

He shook the boy, who seemed to be quivering, now, his face cleared and back to human - Remus
tugged three times before he acquiesced, dropping the boy’s shirt. His hands were shaking.

“Control yourself,” he spat, “Get out of my sight.”

The boy scampered off, and Remus pulled Sirius around to face him, and not the crowd.

“You need to calm down,” he said firmly. Sirius glowered at him for a moment and then slumped
slightly, gently; he let out a breath and his eyes fluttered shut, and then open, and clear.

“Guys,” Lily said warily; her head was turned, and she was watching the building with intense
curiosity; the way the hose water was bouncing off the building as if it was a repellent. “What’s
Fiendfyre?”

“Cursed fire,” Remus responded, his voice hoarse with the smoke. He coughed a few times. “Can
only be put out by magical means. They must have had a witch.”

“I didn’t think…” Sirius breathed, looking up at the flames devouring the building, the glass of the
windows breaking and the outside blackening with utter death. “Shit. Fuck. They knew we had it
the whole time. They knew we had it, Remus, she was stalling.”

Remus felt tears prickling in his eyes; he brushed his shoulder against Sirius’ and looked up, too,
watching the building fall to pieces. Begging for a win. Pleading.

“They don’t know about Boardwalk, though,” he said, grasping for an upper hand. “They don’t
know about that, and they don’t know that we know about the other one. Your brother has the
upper hand, not them.” He turned to Sirius; his face was crumpled, on the way to falling apart. He
turned him and placed two hands on either side of his cheeks to try in a desperate attempt to try and
keep it together. “We’re closer to figuring out what it is, right?”

Sirius nodded.

“And– and the closer we are to figuring out what it is, the closer we are to figuring out how to use
it - how to destroy him.”

He nodded again. Remus wiped the dried blood from his mouth with a tender thumb.

“And,” he said tentatively, “if all else fails, at least you pulled off a fucking awesome villain’s
speech.”

Sirius barked out a raw laugh, a strange noise, muted by the smoke; it rippled through Remus’
hands and up his arms and into his own chest, and when Sirius’ face crumpled once more and a
tear or two fell from his eyes Remus simply gripped him tighter, pulling together the broken pieces,
not letting go.

“You cannot fall apart on me right now, Sirius,” he whispered, closing his eyes and knocking their
foreheads together roughly. “They need you. They need you to be their leader.”

“What if I don’t want to be the leader?” he said, taking short, sharp breaths, and Remus gave him a
sad smile.
“You don’t have a choice, sweetheart,” he said gently. “Not here. You gave them their home and it
is burning to the ground - it’s up to you to give them a new one.” He paused, rubbing his thumb
over Sirius’ cheekbone. “But at home, at Boardwalk; on the back streets of Manhattan; on that
balcony looking over the lake, you have a choice. You can choose the apartment in Brooklyn; you
can choose the dog; you can choose to run the grandest hotel in New York, and not have it burn to
the ground.” He swallowed, his throat raw and painful with the smoke, his skin and Sirius’ skin
seething in the flames. “You can do anything. You can do this.”

Sirius let out a sort of choked sound, halfway towards a sob, and Remus pushed his head forward
that short amount of distance so their lips collided; he tasted like dirt, and blood, and pain, but he
kissed him back, and that was effort - it was synchronised movement, it was the broken pieces
sewing themselves together and trying, really trying. And so Remus kissed him. He drank him up
like he was water and Remus was burning, and damnation had never felt so good, damnation had
never felt so pure.

He pulled away after a moment, stared deep into Remus and then squeezed his shoulder and
pushed him away, turning around with purpose, a deep breath and walking deep into the group of
homeless, devastated vampires, saying something about Islington and something about Grimmauld
that Remus eventually tuned out of when the ringing in his ears became too much.

He and Lily dragged themselves over to a bench a street over, where they collapsed and tried to
evade questions by the police over why they were so bloody. Remus had his head between his
knees possibly about ten minutes later when he heard a cry of his name.

Dorcas was running over to them, shadowed carefully by Marlene; Remus barely had time to stand
up before she crashed into him, digging her head into his neck.

“Oh my god, I thought–” she gasped, pulling back with fond anger (the default for her) on her face.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone you left?!”

“They couldn’t,” Lily replied, “Bellatrix Lestrange–”

“Bellatrix was here?” Marlene said, sharply. Remus’ eyes drifted over her shoulder and he saw
James shuffling the vampires along, and the band of witches began to form a line at the opposite
side to the human firefighters, just out of their eyeline. Dorcas moved to give Lily a hug, too.

“Yeah,” Remus said, eyes still unfocused; he coughed and blinked back into existence. His lungs
were backed up and burning in the smoke. “Her and her mate. It’s– the ring– Regulus-”

“Sirius will explain,” Lily said, clear as ever, “but we killed the mate. Sent Bellatrix on her way.
Sirius got her good.”

“She knew we had it,” Remus continued, watching as Dorcas and Marlene’s eyes widened even
more. “They thought– the hotel. That’s why they set it alight.”

“So it was a weapon?” Dorcas said. “It’s a weapon that they want to destroy?”

“No...” Marlene said contemplatively. “No, something’s not right. Something’s really not right.”

“What do you mean?” Lily asked.

“Pandora doesn’t think that the ring is a weapon,” she explained. “Not in the classical sense. She
was telling me, just now, before Sybil appeared - the blood ritual checked off like five more of the
boxes; basically ruled out any sort of actual usage. She thinks that the ring is something different–
some kind of old, dark, protection magic.”
“Protection? Protecting Riddle?”

Remus gasped, looking up to the burning building; the flames had eaten up most of the top, now,
and debris was falling and twirling through the air. Disintegrating into nothing as it spun like a
ballerina; like a fighter. Like a warrior. So fast it could not even be there at all.

“They didn’t think we had the ring in there at all,” he said, lightbulb-like clarity befalling him.
“They didn’t think we were using the hotel as the Order HQ at all. They aren’t that stupid.” His
eyes refocused onto his three companions, and he shook his head in disbelief. “It was a statement.
They burnt it down to make... a statement.”

All four of them turned, shoulder to shoulder, to look up at the building. The flames were
rescinding, now. Slowly but surely. The firefighters thought it was their work, but they knew better
- they always knew better.

“Somehow, that’s worse,” Dorcas mumbled.

Marlene sniffed, slightly. Remus turned and her bottom lip was trembling; her eyes were
swimming against the heat of the dancing warriors burning through her home and her entire life
like a meteorite. He went to give her something; a comforting smile, a hand, anything; but Dorcas
had turned, too. Eyes soft and lips parted. He watched the thoughts churn through her head, and he
practically felt it like the glass hit the ground as the spanner was hurtled into the works of her
prejudices. He watched her step over the point of no return in the typical Dorcas “fuck-it” attitude
that she wore on her sleeve and her empathetic, selfishly protected heart, as she tugged, gentle,
gentle, gentle, at Marlene’s elbow.

She fell into her chest and Dorcas threw one firm arm around her shoulder and stroked her hair with
the other as Marlene cried, and stared into the blaze.

***

Remus was lying on his bed, wide awake, three hours later at about 4am when there was a light
knock at the door.

He, Lily and Dorcas had been shuffled away pretty quickly - which was irritating, but also quite
relieving for Remus, who hadn’t suffered from asthma in a very long time but felt like his lungs
were about to burn inside out by the thirtieth minute of smoke inhalation.

The flames dissipated leaving nothing but ashes in their wake and the vampires cleared out. Remus
couldn’t get ahold of Sirius, but he managed to pinch James who told him that Sirius’ family estate
in London was the plan, apparently; it was completely empty since the seniors of the Black clan
had died out, and was spacey enough to keep most of them, or at least let them take refuge until
they were able to find places of their own; or if Sirius was able to find a new place. Start up a new
sanctuary. Regardless, they were London-bound. The story was a gas leak and the fire was put out
after about forty-five minutes, thanks to the witches, and the humans went on with their day being
sympathetic over a disaster that they would never be able to understand - or, felt proud at
diminishing one that wasn’t theirs to feel proud of.

Dorcas helped patch Lily and Remus up while nobody was present - a lovely medi-witch named
Poppy had shown her the ropes of healing a few days ago; not with magic, but with potions and
breweries. Something called essence of dittany healed up Lily’s arm quite nicely, but Dorcas
wasn’t well versed in broken bones - those were actual spellwork. It was fine, though, because
Pandora had come home and even despite the bags under her eyes and the paleness of her lips she
insisted on healing him (though Lily had done a lot of the work, Pandora simply reduced the
swelling and bruising). She then proceeded to retire to her room and announced to the company at
present that she was not to be disturbed for a minimum of sixteen hours, which, honestly, Remus
thought she truly deserved.

James got back with Marlene, the Longbottoms and the elder Greengrasses, who had all insisted on
helping due to the fact that it had been their home too (the Greengrasses) or just general
benevolence of the heart (seriously, the Longbottom’s were just so nice), and Andromeda gave
Marlene a hug and whisked her away; while James drank half a bottle of whiskey and whisked
himself away.

Sirius didn’t come back with them. He didn’t come back for hours. Remus thought about waiting
up; he wanted to but then he fell asleep on the sofa, and woke up to Dorcas gently shaking him
three hours later.

That three hour long nap was all he was fated to get, though, for he had clambered into his bed and
had suddenly been as awake as if it were midday, today playing over and over in his head, fire and
fangs and damnation.

Nothing had been said about the ring - of course, there were slightly more pressing issues to attend
to, such as the dozens of homeless vampires and the cursed fire threatening the city - but it was
there, a looming force over them all. And Remus felt like they had learned so much, and yet they
knew so little. He had lain there, two hours straight, thinking and thinking and thinking so much
that eventually he resorted to listing what he knew, and what he knew was this:

Regulus betrayed Riddle and stole the ring.

Riddle desperately wants the ring back.
Bellatrix did not know that they were in possession of the ring.
She knows now.
The coven want to protect the ring.
The ring must be destroyed.
There are probably more objects out there.
One is at Malfoy Manor.

And, the last point that ruined the rhythm in an eerie parallel of the way hellfire was ruining the
rhythm of everyone's lives in all kinds of strange, different ways;

They were all completely, eternally, royally fucked.

It rolled over and over in his head. One by one by one. Branches diverged off of them like it was a
mindmap, or the oak tree that shakes her sad little leaves onto the peaceful water of the lake, and
yet he got nowhere - he had nowhere for them to go next. He had gotten to about point five, for
about the fifteenth time when the slender knock came.

He frowned and reached over to turn on the lamplight. It was ridiculously bright, and he was
squinting slightly as he padded over and opened the door a crack.

Sirius was standing there. Of course he was.

He looked a mess, an absolute travesty; there was blood and ash in his hair, blood and soot on his
face. His clothes were torn, his fingernails dirty. His face was solemn; his eyes were soft.

“Hi,” Remus said gently; feeling quite like he was handling a mug that had been cracked and put
back together, and if he spoke too harshly he’d break it all over again.
And it was stupid, especially in retrospect of what had happened today. The absolute ferality as he
had attacked Bellatrix, the lengths he was able to go to and the way he would walk them with ease
displayed before him with porcelain fangs and deranged smiles, but Sirius in battle was Sirius in
defense - Sirius in battle was more animal than human, and Remus had no idea how he’d ever seen
it as anything other than beautiful, in a truly sickening kind of way. Remus had no idea how he’d
ever tried to tie the animalistic Sirius to the overflowing person before him. To the heart that didn’t
beat but reached out for the one that beat for the both of them.

Sirius had once told him that he was a million things, that he played a million parts; but Remus
thought that that was him. Or, perhaps, it was the both of them. It was the both of them eight years
ago, it was the both of them now. Blood and ash. Fire and water. A cursed blaze and a tidal wave.
Everything, and everything, and nothing, and both; both, both, both.

“Hi,” Sirius said, now; his voice was hoarse. “I– did I wake you?”

“No,” Remus whispered back immediately. “I was awake. The light was just out.”

“Right,” he said, nodding. There was a definite pause.

“Are you–”

“I’m not–”

They both gaped, for a moment, words overlapping each other; Remus smiled sheepishly. “I’m
sorry, you go.”

Sirius licked his lips - at some point someone had attempted to wipe the blood off, but there were
still crumbs, remnants. “I was going to say that I’m not sure… I didn’t plan this far ahead,” he said;
Remus raised an eyebrow. “I just wanted to see you. I just ended up at your door.”

Remus inhaled sharply. “I’m glad you did,” he said. “Did everything turn out okay?”

He shrugged. “They’re on a plane to London. It was a hassle trying to get rid of the police -
wanting to put them into homes and shit, but they’re going to stay at my family home while I figure
out- I don’t know. Everything, I guess.”

Remus nodded, and watched as Sirius ran a stiff hand through his hair, rubbing at his temples.

“The ring–”

“Don’t talk about it,” Remus said quickly. “Just… don’t. Give yourself tonight. Just don’t think
about it.”

“I have to–”

“No,” Remus insisted, standing up straighter. “What you have to do is have a fucking bath. You
smell like a bonfire and there’s blood in your hair.”

Sirius frowned and tugged at a strand of his hair, pulling the stiff strands apart.

“And get some sleep,” Remus said, suddenly quite aware of the fact that he was twenty-eight and
ordering an eight hundred year old vampire to partake in healthy self-care instead of dwelling on
his problems in the unhealthy manner he usually does for the second time in two weeks, and for
some reason, for a second, the absurdity of it all made him want to scream.
“Is this going to become a regular occurrence?” Sirius said, apparently reading his mind.

Remus shrugged. “Start taking care of yourself and it won’t.”

“I don’t need to take care of myself,” Sirius said blithely; in the way he always did when he didn’t
actually agree with what he was saying, but simply wanted to oppose what Remus was saying to
rile him up. “I’m dead.”

“You have a human body,” Remus said. “Give yourself a few human seconds.”

And, before he could even open his mouth to retort some absolutely irritating comment that Remus
was going to roll his eyes at him for, he grabbed the side of Sirius’ arm and hauled him into the
room, pulling him towards the bathroom and sitting him down on the lid of the toilet.

“What are you doing?”

“Running you a bath,” Remus said from where he was already hunched over the tub, turning on the
faucets. “Obviously.”

Sirius, to Remus’ surprise, didn’t even argue - he just sat there, taking long breaths and dirtying
Remus’ bathroom with his general presence.

The water ran like crystals into the porcelain tub and Remus put a ridiculous amount of bubbles in
there, throwing every kind of soap he could find under the pouring water until it was full, and hot,
and clean. He felt rather nurturing, bustling around with his little soaps and his little loofahs for
this man who is probably about his age squared, but he tried not to think about it. Sirius simply
watched him. Tired eyes, but he watched him.

“Alright,” Remus said, turning the water off with a last little swish of the surface and turning. “Get
in.”

Sirius raised an eyebrow. “What, you want me to strip right here? I mean, I will, but–”

“I’ll turn around, you imbecile,” Remus groaned, walking over to the other end of the room and
scowling to himself as Sirius chuckled and muttered something that sounded like “Nuisance.”

“I’m in,” Sirius announced, and Remus frowned at the wall.

“Are you covered?”

“What the fuck do you think ‘I’m in’ means? You put enough bubbles to cover up every naked
man on this side of the Atlantic in here, Remus.”

He scowled and turned around to see Sirius, who was, in fact, in the tub, covered up. He leaned his
head back and closed his eyes as Remus walked over and pulled a small stool over, sitting beside
the bathtub.

“Is there a reason you’re staying in here?” Sirius asked, eyes still closed.

“I don’t know. Thought you might drown yourself or something if I left you.”

“I can’t drown myself. Like, I physically can’t do that, Remus-”

“I know,” he snapped with no bite, resting his elbows on the side of the tub and putting his chin in
his hands.
He sighed, and Sirius opened his eyes and raised an eyebrow at him.

“You were… sad,” he said, quietly, dismissively. “Wanted that to change.”

“I wasn’t sad,” Sirius said - automatically on the opposition again.

“Yes, you were,” Remus said, “and you’re allowed to be, but I don’t like it. So… bath,” he finished
pathetically, with the air of a child going ‘voila!’ at the most unimpressive thing you’ve ever seen.
Sirius laughed bitterly.

“So I can feel, but only feelings that you like me to feel. Well, that’s a step up from not caring
about anything, I suppose–”

“Oh, for god's sake, you know that's not what I meant,” Remus complained, and Sirius tutted and
treaded his hand along the water, filling the airy, echoey room with soft splashing noises as it
lapped against the sides of the tub.

“I know what you meant,” he said, eventually. “I just don’t like the implications.”

“What implications?”

Sirius paused, and then actually laughed dryly. “Would it be hypocritical of me to say, you
caring?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“Then I guess I’m a hypocrite,” he said, sinking his head into the water; his hair floated around and
haloed him. He was pure beauty.

“Come here,” Remus muttered, pulling aside a shampoo bottle when Sirius resurfaced. He
frowned.

“What?”

“You still have blood in your hair.”

That was a good enough explanation, apparently.

Remus rubbed the shampoo into his hands, leaning over. He hesitated and his hands ghosted over
Sirius’ hair for a moment - almost unwilling to touch, averting from the intimacy - before he dug
his fingers into his scalp, rolling and kneading the soap in, lathering it down the lengths of his hair
and digging his fingernails into his scalp. Sirius hummed and closed his eyes, relaxing instantly.
They were quiet for a long moment. The only sound was Remus’ elbows hitting the wall.

The bath was in an awkward position. It was not his fault.

“Stop it,” Sirius said, sitting up, hair half-covered in shampoo. Droplets falling off of his body like
pearls. He turned and gave Remus a dry look. “It’s not relaxing if you’re huffing and puffing every
two seconds ‘cause your elbows don’t fit.”

“I wasn’t!”

“You were,” Sirius shot back. He pursed his lips, and then the corner of the left side upturned. It
pinched slightly at the same time and made a sort of dimple-like dent in his skin, shimmering from
where the water had lapped thinly onto it. “The bath is in a weird position, you’re going to bruise
yourself on the wall.”
“Just swivel a bit and face this way.”

“What, and bunch my knees up? This is supposed to make me feel happy, not want to kill myself.”

“Jesus, you’re high maintenance, has anyone ever told you that?” Remus muttered. Sirius was
lying back in the water again (all of Remus’ hard work wasted), eyes closed, but he grinned.

“Thank you.”

His eyes opened. They surveyed Remus’ face and then his soapy hands, and he could see the idea
form before he even said the words.

“Get in.”

Remus’ eyes might as well have bulged out of his head and splattered on the floor.

“What?”

“Just get in. There’s loads of room longways. Wouldn’t want to waste all of that soap on your
hands.”

Remus gave him a condescending look and stuck his palms into the water; shampoo melted away
into froth on the surface, and no one's hair was any more washed.

Sirius gasped indignantly.

“Hey! I paid for that.”

“No you didn’t.”

“Just get in. What are you scared of?”

“I’m not scared of–”

“Never seen a man’s crown jewels before?”

“Oh my god–”

“What are you, a virgin?”

Remus closed his eyes in total exasperation and the only sound was the sloshing of water and the
only feeling was the heat of Sirius’ gaze on him. He bit his lip to try desperately to stop it but the
laugh escaped him anyway.

He put his head in his hands, and Sirius laughed as well.

“You know, if you’re happy enough to tease me,” Remus said, dropping his hands, “then surely
you’re happy enough to wash your own hair.”

He made to get up and Sirius gripped him on the wrist with such a violent movement out of the
water that it lapped viciously up the sides. He looked up at Remus, and his eyes were wide. His
face was serious again; almost pleading. He sort of shrugged, and looked away.

And above all of the jokes and the defensivities, he was sad. Authenticity bled in his eyes and
sorrow carved the curve of his lip; Sirius Black was sad.
“Turn around,” Remus muttered, and he didn’t protest this time.

He pulled off his shirt in one motion, and placed it gently over the towel railing. He began to
unbutton his pants and he, quite honestly, couldn’t believe he was doing this. He undid the top
button and his eye caught the motion of a bird flying out the window. It perched on a coniferous
oak tree that shook its branches gently in the existential breeze, and the sky was still black but
tinged with a sort of greyness to it. There was not a star to be seen. The clouds painted over the
ether like smoke rising to the top of a boxed room, and he felt incredibly claustrophobic, all of a
sudden.

And there was something melancholy in the space between midnight and 4am. Something tender
and fragile in it. Something in the air that made Remus’ head feel light; that made him feel dainty,
like he could hop on sunflower petals and rise outside of his body and claim every particle of the
free, encompassing air as his own. Something peaceful in the small sounds of the water sloshing
against itself as Sirius breathed. Something alive in it. Remus felt, inexplicably, quite enraptured by
the entire concept of this sacred, sacred time period, in which it felt like the universe contained of
only him and the moon and the stars; he supposed it was this lightness and the gravitational, earth
shattering pull that he fell to the star bleeding his golden juices and damned blood on the world’s
rich and opulent soil that led him to acceptance so quickly, and that his brain was loopy from the
smoke and from Sirius Black, just as beautiful, just as dangerous.

He nudged Sirius with his hand and he scooted to the left, still not looking at him. Remus climbed
into the pleasantly hot water in his boxers (because he still had some small sliver of pride, mind
you,) and found that it was actually quite a happy fit. He curved his legs into himself and turned to
grip onto Sirius’ shoulder.

“Come here, then,” he said, and Sirius turned his head to smile at him before swivelling
completely around. Remus snapped open the shampoo bottle again and squirted the glossy soap
into his hands, not hesitating this time to dig his fingers into Sirius’ rich hair and massage it, try to
knead all of the knots in his hair, shoulders; all of the thoughts in his head away so that they could
be aligned in the complexity and serenity of 4am, in which it was just the two of them and the
moon, and nothing else mattered.

They were quiet for a long moment. Sirius took deep breaths and exhaled them via his mouth as
Remus kneeled, giving himself a bit of a standing point to wash his hair.

And then, because he couldn’t help himself and because the purging of everything that is not 4am
tends to result in hanging onto the 4am like it is grains of sand slipping through your fingers,
Remus muttered, “You know, it’s rather rich of you to implicate that you don’t like the fact that I
care about you and then to invite me into your bath.” Sirius scoffed, and Remus pressed on. “You
see the intimacy in this, right?”

“I am a selfish man, Remus Lupin,” Sirius said, quietly. “I am a selfish, stupid man.”

And then, probably because they were not looking at each other and it is easy to divulge your
broken vulnerability when you can pretend you’re not being perceived, “Figuring out how to
balance you might just be the most difficult thing I’ve had to do in 800 years. You’re like a
hurricane wind in my eardrums at all times.”

Remus didn’t know how to answer that, really, so he didn’t. He continued to knead and roll and
scratch Sirius’ head softly with his fingernails, and the water was their friend while the lake was
their enemy.

“Will we ever be able to do this right?” Remus said softly, after a minute or two. “There’s… I
don’t know. One of us always pushes too hard or pulls too hard. I’m under your skin and you don’t
like it but you keep me there.”

“I’m in your life and you hate me but you don’t kill me,” Sirius countered.

“You didn’t kill me either.”

“No,” he said, almost regrettably. “No, I did not. I saved you more times than I killed you.”

“When the hell did you save me?”

Sirius seemed to stiffen, and he moved his head as if going to turn to him and then rethinking it.
“Cornwall,” he said, as if it was obvious. Remus’ hands stopped moving.

“That was you?”

“Who did you think it was?”

Remus felt himself begin to flush slightly and continued to lather his hair. “I… me.”

“You thought you ripped that door off the hinges?”

He thinned his lips. “Adrenaline makes people do crazy things.”

“You were half dead,” Sirius said, all in one gritty breath. “You burnt out of adrenaline. The smoke
took it all.”

Remus let his hands slow, running delicately through the strands of his hair, squeezing out white
and red.

“Why?” he breathed, after a moment. Sirius’ jaw clenched and unclenched.

“I…” he started, vulnerability incarnate. Gripping the side of the tub and staring resolutely at the
wall with a stiff set to his shoulders that Remus wanted to knead out like dough. “It was strange. It
was a strange thing. I was leaning over that railing, watching my family burn - listening to my
mother scream in pain as the flames ate her alive, and I realised that I didn’t care. Regulus wasn’t
there - I checked - and there were my parents… my parents, and people that I’d known for years
and years, and I knew I hated them, but I expected to feel something. But… there was nothing. I
felt… absolutely nothing at all, and I was stood there, trying to make myself care enough to save
them, and then you…” he exhaled a wry laugh, here, and his head tilted as if embarrassed; “You
fucking coughed. You coughed, and I turned, and there you were, you were choking on the smoke,
and I realised– I realised I cared more about whether you lived or died than whether my parents
did. You, the stupid, ridiculous hunter that I’d known for about a year - it made no sense. It makes
no sense. It was instinct, I guess.”

He paused, let the air run cold as if in retribution to the flames in his wake, and then opened his
mouth for the final blow. “You were my instinct. You always somehow have been.”

Remus’ mouth was dry; his hands stopped working, submerged into Sirius’ hair, lathered in sweet
smelling shampoo and yet all he could smell was reality shifting. It was painfully quiet as they sat,
on the same wavelength worlds apart and in tune with each other like a willow to the breeze, and–
and the water stopped sloshing and 4am began to feel less like serenity and more like suffocation.

“Remus–”
“Rinse,” he barely choked, pulling on Sirius’ head slightly and he obliged, sliding forwards to fall
backwards into the space he was previously and submerge his head completely, underneath the
bubbles, as if he were not even there. Remus took a breath and ten claws to his scalp as he kneaded
at his hair, staring resolutely at the wall as if it would give him answers. Wringing all of the blood
and ash and devastation out of Sirius, letting it float unclaimed in the murky, tame waters. Letting
it absorb into his system like it was meant to be there.

Sirius emerged again like a phoenix out of ash and sat up; the water falling off his chest like it was
repellent. His hair was clean, slicked back, and the water had washed the last of the dried blood and
dirt and muck from him; he was clean enough to have, to hold, and Remus had the startling and
devastating realisation that he would have the Sirius in front of him just as easily as he would have
the Sirius at his doorstep; just as easily as he would have the Sirius, one jerk away from ripping
Bellatrix Lestrange’s jaw off; and it terrified him.

He would have Sirius - he would have him all, every part, purity and damnation - and it terrified
him.

And the thing was. The thing was, here, that everything terrified him. Everything about this case
since the day Sirius had been tied up in his stupid living room. The road not taken and the road
indulged. The rocks lining the manor and the flames eating the hotel; the murky waters of the lake
and the intrinsic smell of a motel bedroom, barely a foot apart as you are now. It was terrifying,
when it came down to it, but there was one thing and one thing alone that kept him standing tall
and not hunched over as if his abdomen would fall out; and it was the curve of a jaw and the
protrusion of a nose that slid upwards slightly at the tip. Parted lips in what seemed to be a question
and an answer at all times and icy eyes that could rival the arctic and freeze every volcano on the
ring of fire with one look, like Medusa. Turning towards him, disturbing the peace of the water and
disturbing the peace of Remus’ life until the past was irretrievable and the particles had to find a
new place to settle.

Sirius turned, and he looked at him. He didn’t look too far, he didn’t look too little. He just looked.
And really, the audacity of being the one to mess everything up and expect Remus to know how to
deal with it. Expect Remus to make the first move, in hilariously immature speak. In a fucking
bath. Water trickling down his neck that Remus wanted to catch on his tongue. A part of him
wondering if he had crossed the line and the other part knowing there was no line to cross, not
anymore.

Remus took a deep breath and leaned forward, slightly. Or perhaps Sirius did. The bubbly water
reached up to the top half of their chests and nothing underneath mattered when Sirius let his arms
pop out from their confinement and marked Remus like a bloodstain with watery, pruned up fingers
on the delicate skin of his chest. Fingertips dipping into his collarbone. Palm, palm, up the side of
his neck, fingers splayed against his cheek and around his ears and Remus took a deep breath and
closed his eyes, knocking his forehead against Sirius’ for the second time that evening, and they
did not kiss. His own hands, unbeknownst to him, had ended up pressed against the ball of his
sternum; his fingertips only just able to curve around his shoulders; and Sirius’ bottom lip grazed
against his.

They breathed each other's air. Heavy breathing and a heavy life. Sirius seemed to be pouring his
soul into Remus’ mouth and it tasted so sweet and sorrowful he could get paralytically drunk on it.

“You kissed me, today,” Sirius breathed; barely a whisper. A vibration against his mouth.

“Yes, I did.”

“You haven’t kissed me before,” he continued. He pursed his lips and adjusted his hands, cupping
Remus’ face. “I always kissed you.”

“Yes, you did.”

Sirius let out a shallow breath.

“Do you regret it?”

Remus gave himself a moment to think about it. (He didn’t need the moment. He was the moment.)

“No, I don’t.”

Sirius closed his mouth and inhaled slowly through his nose.

“Would you do it again?” Sirius whispered. And Remus almost laughed, really.

He tilted his head with a dangerous tongue and pressed in with a ferocity about him, and Sirius
kissed him back, wholly, unintelligibly; and it was violent but it was tender. Something about it
was stark and tender and supple, 4am delirium and hallucinations of a time and a space and a
reality that was not this one as Sirius sunk his nails into the nape of Remus’ neck and sunk his
fangs into the tensile skin that was the inside of Remus’ bottom lip, and he could taste blood and
spice and smoke.

He pulled back, only slightly, slotting their noses together and Sirius gasped in what seemed like a
completely unprecedented reaction. His mouth was still open, heavy breaths, and his fangs
glistened.

“Sorry,” he whispered, and Remus smiled. Shook his head.

“It’s okay,” he said, leaning in closer to repeat the words into Sirius’ mouth until they bled into his
bloodstream. It’s okay. You’re okay. Everything is okay. When, when, when will you believe it so I
can believe it too?

He kissed him and kissed him and swiped a tongue against his lips and dragged it over the tip of
his fangs, revelling in the shudder that evoked from Sirius and the shudder that evoked from him
again when Remus trailed his hands down and gripped onto his hips, pulled him forwards. He still
had the high ground on his knees and so Sirius wrapped his arms around his neck, while Remus’
went down, digging into the soft skin of his hips and finding his legs open and lovely, and the
sound he made when Remus wrapped a hand around his hard cock and stroked a thumb over the
head was something that he would probably burn into his brain; never forget.

He pressed his nose into Remus’ silky skin and his open mouth onto somewhere just below
Remus’ bottom lip and off to the side, hands digging into his hair and breath trickling down
Remus’ neck like the sweet pearl droplets of water that caressed his own. He pushed desperately
into Remus’ touch and made the most delicate noises as he sped up the pace that reverberated
around the room and ended up lying idly upon the water bed and stabbing small knives into
Remus’ gut with every breath, and it was increasingly hard to reconcile the Sirius that was
damnation and utter vitriolic terror, lethality and inhumanity and death with the Sirius who was
putty in his grip and was breathing life into Remus’ soul with every soft moan and whimper; it was
intoxicating. It was electrifying. It was knowledge in his hand, and that was all that Remus had
ever been after; and along the way he had developed some sort of mortal coil in the form of the
most mercurial being that might ever grace the planet, and he felt, in the shadow of 4am, that his
delicacy in the soft splashes of the water and the bruises that Remus was bound to have on his
neck, crescent moons from his nails, hickeys from his mouth, was a gift rather than a convenience.
It was an opening; a crack in the door. It was the sun clambering out of her hollow grave every
morning and it was the most beautiful thing in Tennessee, in Texas and in New York; the danger
bypassed him.

He reached up with one hand, popping out of the water’s kiss to pull Sirius’ head all the way back
via his hair and trail his lips down, wet and breathy and blistering open mouth kisses down to the
pit of his throat. Pulled Sirius onto his lap and moved as he moved, hot into his hand, twisting the
waters and grinding his hips in a desperate circular motion that felt like a whirlpool. And no matter
how hard he sucked and he sucked Sirius’ skin would not bruise but he kept doing it anyway, to
make a metaphorical mark that only he would be able to see; and perhaps that was even better than
the scar. Perhaps Remus could make him his silently and slowly and all at once instead of parading
him alongside blood and guts and gore. Give him a break from his predetermination. And wasn’t
that, really, what they were to each other?

Sirius had his time for blood and guts and gore; every day he stormed by and left bitter ashes in his
wake. But 4am was serenity. 4am with Remus’ hand around his cock and his mouth pressed to his
throat was a sort of relinquence that he was quite sure Sirius craved desperately.

He wanted to take care of Sirius in some odd way and Sirius wanted to take care of him, and that
was balance. He kissed him, deep into his hollow mouth and it tasted like balance; the precise
twinge of everything and nothing. And there was something sweet in that. There was something
special.

“Do you…” Sirius whispered, breathy and hot after he had come with his dirty legs around Remus’
dirty waist and his hand, squeezing at his throat, pulling a choked sound out of him so orgasmically
fatal that the world had spun on its axis; a few minutes of Remus’ hand kneading into his back
untied a knot that was rusted and rotting. “Do you–”

“It’s okay,” Remus said, to be courteous of the thing in his arms that was so very lethal and so very
lovely - trying to decide what to do with it. How to act with it. (I don’t know how to act with you
when I’m not trying to kill you. I don’t know how to act with you when I’m trying not to fall in love
with you.)

Sirius pulled back a little bit more so Remus could see every inch of his clandestine face, and he
smiled. And it was a shit-eating smile. It was a Sirius smile.

“I don’t have to breathe underwater, you know,” he murmured, vibrations bouncing off Remus’
lips like a ricocheting bullet; and he bit his lip.

“Oh, go on, then…”

Sirius spread his legs with finger pads burning into his inner thighs and plunged himself under the
water with a laugh that sounded like heaven and hell all in one, and Remus ended up with a bruise
on the back of his head instead of his elbows and a new enemy that may just outrank Tom Riddle
in the form of Sirius Black’s fucking mouth.

***

Unsexy exits from baths became waist towels hanging low by the skin of a happy trail became a
scavenge for clothes in Remus’ bedroom became one Sirius Black on the right side of his bed and
one Remus Lupin on the left.

“I’m sorry about the hotel,” Remus whispered, addressing one of the many elephants in the room
as the room in question turned as grey as their trunks in retaliation of the 5am sun’s deadly hand.
Melancholic spice prickled at his lips. He was unfamiliar with this one.

Sirius said nothing. The light accentuated the curve of his nose and lay grainy on his ever grainy
skin like he was a marble statue.

“You’re allowed to be sad, you know,” he continued, a breath of ice across the pillows; an eerie
mirror of Tennessee. “It doesn’t make you any less. To feel things. And be sad about the loss of
something you cared about.”

Sirius took a deep breath and his eyes fluttered shut. His mouth betrayed his consciousness by
pinching in arbitrary disgust at the mortifying ordeal of being known.

“A momentary distraction doesn’t solve everything,” Remus whispered, reaching his hand out to
brush a piece of hair that was falling over Sirius’ face; his eyes opened.

“I know how feelings work, Lupin,” Sirius muttered angrily. Remus ignored the misplaced
animosity and brushed the piece of hair anyway.

“I know,” he said. “But I don’t think anyone has ever really told you that it’s okay to have them.”

Sirius said nothing to this. The lack of protest was a win and the lack of acknowledgement was a
loss. It was unspoken and unconfirmed that he was the first but they knew each other on a strange
sort of frequency that unencumbered them day by day with a bulldozer to the chest and the secrets
to the universe written on the back of a game show host’s cue cards.

He rolled over onto his back and stared at the ceiling.

Remus shuffled over in a craving of closeness that was so far from the last time they had shared a
bed it felt almost cataclysmic. Sirius shifted an arm to accommodate him and he dipped his head so
it rested on his chest and murmured, “Sleep,” into the skin of his collarbone.

Sirius did not protest.

 eleven
Chapter Notes

hi! jude here! sorry the wait was a bit longer than usual! uni work caught up to me and
also this chapter gave me HELL - editing usually takes one night and this one took 4
days.. gosh. the ending was the most difficult scene I've had to write thus far I think so
I do hope you like it lol

also can I just say thank you so much for 50k hits! that's genuinely fucking insane and
SO many people, thankyouthankyouthankyou I'm not gonna make this one long-
winded just. <3

The climate of war creeps up fast. Remus hadn’t been alive for the first and second World Wars,
but he had gathered enough knowledge over his decade of travelling around the world to have been
able to estimate, even slightly, the unrest that occurs beforehand. The moves, moves and
countermoves. The things that lock you into an all-out war. The bloodshed that masquerades as a
ticking time-bomb. The explosion that occurs as the light fades and the world goes slick and glassy.

A month ago, Remus had not thought that this was a war. A month ago, Remus had not considered
the level of aggression that they would sink to; and, perhaps most vitally, the effect it would have
on everyone around them.

Because this war wasn’t well-known. It was a war fought in the shadows, battles in the dead of
night. Soundwaves dancing around mortal ears and then dissipating, repelled as if they were two
sides of a magnet despite the fact they could not be more different.

The humans believed that Hotel Translyvania burnt down due to a gas leak; that the cloud of soot
that hovered over Manhattan for days afterwards due to the veracity of the Fiendfyre’s torch was
normal, if a little lingering. They believed that the long-lasting effects, the asthma attacks, the five
human casualties when the flames licked down the street before the witches could cultivate it, was
simply the result of a truly sad, but wholly natural disaster. Innocent.

(They could not be more wrong.)

Remus couldn’t exactly be sure when the war had begun - when the white flag had been soaked
deep scarlet. Perhaps it was Sirius’ declaration - his ‘villain speech’ - to their antagonist's right
hand. Perhaps it was in the spasm of his nimble fingers, the crack as her jaw dislodged and the rip
in her skin as her head almost severed from her body. Perhaps it was in the fiendfyre, crawling up
the side of the building, taking over a dozen innocent vampires with them; charred from the inside
out, catatonic before they could even register what was happening.

The start of the war could have been all of those things, but the realisation didn’t hit Remus truly
until they found Petunia Dursley’s body floating just off the pier of Hudson River Park.

(Moves and countermoves.)

It hadn’t been Lily who had called Remus, rather her co-worker and friend Alysia, to tell him that
Lily had been courted off by the police at about seven a.m. Because, of course, Petunia lived in
Rochester, and was only in the city on a visitation. A week's stay, and what more; to settle a
financial dispute with her estranged sister? It was too obvious. She was the obvious suspect. It was
all too meticulous, and Remus felt sick to his stomach with guilt. He had not wanted her to get
roped into this. He had not wanted it at all, and yet here she was.

They held her for twenty-four hours - twenty-four painful, terrifying hours - but could not find the
evidence to apply to detain her for longer, as she had a solid alibi (she was working the night shift -
multiple co-workers and hospital patients had seen her). Jul had portkey-ed him, Sirius and James
to go pick her up the morning of the next day (Remus, as she was his best friend. Sirius, so he
could speak to the officers and convince (cough) them of her innocence, or at least sway it. James,
because he had insisted.)

Lily held it together rather well, all things considered - she was pale and breaking apart, her skin
dry and her eyes red-rimmed - but, the second they got down the street and around the corner into
the mediocre safety of an off-road alleyway, she burst into tears.

“They killed her!” she cried, hysterical, into Remus’ chest. “They killed her, because of what I did!
She– her son, her son is barely a year old, Remus–”

“I know,” he murmured, stroking her hair.

It was obvious, really - Lestrange had been tracking her since the moment she had stepped into the
hospital; had seen her at lunch with Petunia that morning, had listened to their bickering about the
apartment and such nonsense that seemed so incredibly trivial now. They had smelled Sirius on
her, and she had instantly become their pawn; to play with, to knock over in the most fun ways their
sadistic little brains had come up with. Crush between their thumb and forefinger and scatter the
pieces across the chessboard.

Remus supposed it made sense, then, what they did next.

“No,” Lily had gasped - she pushed back from Remus, a wild light of clarity forming in the
glassiness of her eyes. “No, Remus, you don’t understand, you–”

And then, for reasons to become clear, she turned to Sirius. She said this information, directly, to
Sirius.

“They found her address book,” she said shakily, sniffling, “They weren’t going to release the
information until they knew she was safe - it was the only thing that Tuney didn’t have on her. It
was about seventy yards to the right of where she was– where she was found, just placed on a
bench, and it was bookmarked on my mom’s address. She lives in Rochester, too.”

“Is she okay?” asked James, grabbing her gaze. “Did the police–”

“Yes,” Lily said, breathlessly, a legion of panic underneath those orderly eyes. “For now - but she
won’t be, don’t you get it? You have to hide her. You have to–” she turned to Sirius again. His
brow was furrowed. “Wipe her memory or something. Send her to Australia, or- or the Philippines,
or something. They’re going to kill her too. Sirius, they’ll kill her too.”

“We can send both of you away,” Remus said automatically.

Lily turned back to him, blinking in shock.

“No,” she said, harshly, as if it shouldn’t even be an option. “No, what–”

“Lily, this isn’t your battle to fight,” Remus said.

“They made it my battle when they murdered my sister,” she said, incredulously.

“I know, but–”

“No, Remus,” Lily said firmly. Tears still lingered on the edge of her waterline. As if they were
afraid to fall and face her wrath. “This was an attack on me. I’m not going to back down. This is not
your decision anymore.”

And Remus was pretty sure he would carry guilt for involving her in this spiralling conflict forever,
especially if she were to get hurt, but Lily had never been one to skirt around things. Lily was one
of the most headstrong people Remus had ever met, fiery and ardent, but underneath that all was a
tender, mortal lean toward compassion. She had never got along with her sister, hadn’t seen her for
the better part of a decade, but Remus knew Lily would grieve for the people who had loved her.
Lily would grieve for the life that had been lost, and when it comes to lives lost there are no faces
or names, just tragedy.

Lily would face that guilt for the rest of her life - multitudes more so than Remus - but she would
channel it, and use it to do good, because that is all Lily Evans ever wanted to do.

She had been roped into this war unwillingly - her choice had been made for her the minute the soft
skin of Petunia’s neck had been split open, blood seeping into the murky river water - and it didn’t
matter how unfair it was. She had sat beside hundreds of unfair situations in the hospital. Life
wasn’t fucking fair. She would wade through the swamp because there was no way out than
through, and she would pray that there were crystal skies beyond the veil, because, as she had told
Remus many a time, a repetition of something her father would tell her, when their grievances had
exhausted them to the very end; “hope is all we have. Without hope, how could we get out of bed
and dare to go on?”

So many things had come up that Malfoy Manor came and went.

The two week rotation date fell on the Sunday that Sirius was in Rochester, finding Lily’s mother.
He had departed on a two day round trip to make sure she was in a safe location and to also give
himself enough time to recuperate. Marlene was out with Hannah, the twins and one or two others,
tracking a trail in upstate Connecticut; Whilst James was working on tracking Regulus with a witch
that Remus believed was called Charity, who specialised in scientific sorcery and bloodbending,
and thus had an efficiency for location spells using vampire blood and the ability to astral project
further than most by aligning herself with the particles in the air. They had been in Marlene’s room
for four hours.

See, it was a waiting game. A lot of it tends to be during a war. Waiting for their next move, or
waiting for your own next move to hit you. It felt a lot like playing chess, dancing a waltz; the
effort needed to know what your next move would be, the calculated effort to make sure it
wouldn’t ripple back onto you in the form of a checkmate, or your partner consequently taking a
step to counter your step and landing on your shoes, squeezing your toes within an inch of their life
in large, silvery heels. Everything was consequential. Remus felt like every breath he took, every
book picked up might be the one to topple down the king and queen, all of their rooks, bishops,
pawns in a terrifying domino effect that could lead anywhere it wanted, riches or ruins.

It was that Sunday. Three days after Hotel Translyvania fell, two days after Petunia Dursley was
murdered; it was that Sunday that Dorcas hit jackpot.

“Remus,” Dorcas gasped, running into the sitting room as fast as she could with a voluminous,
leather-bound book without having it tear apart at the seams. The room was rather large; Remus
was sitting on the sofa, in front of the fire, but there was a wide amount of space behind him,
including a couple of bookshelves and a couple of seating areas around it. There was a chest, a
desk, portraits hung up on the walls. It was suitably furnished for such a manor house.

Percy Weasley and Astoria Greengrass (she had become much more able to sit in the same room as
him, though she wouldn’t come too close) were perched beside one of the bookshelves, talking in a
low, fact pace that Remus couldn’t pick up - he had given up trying, not all that interested in
comparison to the book about Dark Arts that he was tunneling his way through. He had been
reading about a potion that could create unbearable hallucinations within minutes and suck out all
of the happiness in the world (often, resulting in physically impairing one to actually see in black
and white forever) when Dorcas rushed in.

“Remus, I think I’ve got something,” she said hastily, placing the book down in front of him -
Percy and Astoria’s heads perked up, but they did not move. She flicked through a few wispy pages
and settled on a spread with a huge, swirling dark header and very small writing that Remus had to
squint at. He had seen various images and diagrams in the pages beforehand, but for this particular
spread, there were none.

“What is this?” he asked, and she took a deep breath.

“Just– just, listen to this,” she said, pulling the book up with difficulty and squinting to read aloud;
“To achieve true immortality and tyrannical reign one must never look further than the
implementation of splitting one’s soul,” she read, confidently. “It is a subject so dark that it must
only be spoken of to the strongest of ears. To split one’s soul successfully one must harbour a deep
electrical dark energy, lack of compassion or guidance of the mortal realm and a source of black
magic to cling onto forevermore; preferably natural, but may be manmade with the most
superlative of witchery.”

She cleared her throat and continued. Remus sat up straighter.

“The Horcrux guarantees the utmost protection and heightened strength, abilities, and the talent to
recover from damage that would be most fatal upon disparate souls who have not subjected their
life to the darkest of causes.” By the end of the paragraph her words had become aimed, pointed;
aligned to the cause they were fighting, a clear mirror to the information they knew thus far. She
looked at him with a clear question in her eyes.

“Let me see,” Remus muttered, pulling the book onto his own lap and pouring into it. He skimmed
the paragraphs as fast as his eyes would go.

“Heightened strength and abilities,” she said, giddy now. “Abilities like a Pureblood. Talent to
recover - how could a normal vampire recover after their jaw is ripped off? Two of their limbs?
Dark Magic or not, it doesn’t seem possible.” She watched as he skimmed over a paragraph of
historical context, regarding someone named Herpo; nudging him with her elbow and pointing to a
paragraph two below where he was. “Read that.”

He obliged, finding it and starting; “The Horcrux, as seen in common mythology, may be
embedded into any inanimate object, with the proviso that the object may hold some sort of
significance to the creator. This, thus, creates a paradox; it is a marginally difficult feat to achieve
substantiate sentiment towards an object alongside the requirements of the creation of the
Horcruxes themselves, which necessitate little to no feelings of import towards the world around
them to fulfill the clean splitting of the soul without any further side effects. However difficult the
process is, it is possible with the acquired correct mindset and devotion to the cause.”

Remus felt a shadow over him and turned his head to see Percy had approached, crouched down
next to the coffee table the book was on; his eyes wide with possibility. Astoria was a few steps
behind him, but she looked similarly curious; or possibly terrified.

“So,” Remus said, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to rationalise his thoughts. “What– it’s…
splitting your soul so that, even if your mortal body ‘dies’ your essence can linger on?
Implementing yourself into an object… inanimate, like the ring…”

“For protection,” Dorcas continued. “Only able to be done by the darkest of mindsets--”

“And only with a dark source of magic for it to feed off of,” Percy interrupted.

They both turned and looked at him.

“Vampirism,” he said, simply, looking up at them both. “Vampirism is the easiest source of dark
magic. We’re, quite literally, the walking dead.”

“Get Pandora,” Remus said gruffly, turning back to the book. “Get her now.”

“She’s not here,” Astoria piped up. “The witches are in Moldova with the ring. I think she said
she’s trying to find an old coven she was acquainted with who might know something.”

“Who is here?” Dorcas asked.

“Isabela is sparring with Lily in the conference room,” said Percy. “When dusk falls we were
planning to go outside and do our lessons, provided James joins us.”

“Where is James? Isn’t he upstairs?”

“Well, yes, but he’s in a sort of trance,” he replied. “I went in there to get a book - he’s sat with the
witch, who’s floating like– two feet in the air, and his eyes are open but he doesn't see anything.”

“Her name is Charity, and they’re trying to astral project to Regulus,” Dorcas explained, and
Remus raised an eyebrow.

“Wouldn’t that be easier to do with Sirius?” he asked. Percy shrugged.

“Apparently they have a history.”

“You cannot be the only people in this house,” Remus said. They shrugged nervously.

“Marlene took half of them upstate,” Dorcas said, always the more orderly. “Frank and Alice left a
note - they’re going up to Pennsylvania to meet an old friend who swears he has information about
Riddle’s hiding spot. Edgar and his niece have been in Queens for four days now, trying to
intercept a lead they got from the police wire. Andromeda and Ted are in Philadelphia, and who
knows where Miyuki Greengrass is. Like, ever.”

Remus’ eyes instinctively flickered up to Astoria, who caught his own back. She frowned slightly
and shrugged.

Several moments later, the door flew open and Isabela herself walked in, her light coppery hair up
in a ponytail; she was followed by Lily, her own hair up too in what was an eerie mimic. They
were both dressed in cycling shorts and Lily in a black hoodie. Isabela was in an oversized pale
yellow shirt with a frog on it. Remus was quite sure it was James’. She had made herself very
comfortable.

Lily, dealing in the aftermath of her sister’s death, had spent a day in sorrowful mourning and then
had decided to light the spark in her drive and channel it all into anger, or, perhaps, accomodation.
Self-assurance. Remus, situated in a world bigger than his own imagination, knew very well what
helplessness was; Lily and Isabela had clicked significantly well and she was coping with her own
helplessness that she had encountered via learning how to fucking fight back, and he could not fault
her for it. She was admirable.

Astoria stiffened when Lily walked in, took a step back, and then retraced it. As if she was fighting
her own battle against helplessness. Power of will ran thick through the air.

Isabela sat down, cross-legged, Lily on her tail.

“What are we saying?” she said. “I heard ruckus. And my name.”

“We think we might have what the ring is,” Dorcas said off-handedly, going back to pandering
over the book. Both women gasped.

Remus explained as much as he could, shuffling over so they could both read over the pages -
Astoria and Percy shuffled back to their position across the room, and after ten minutes or so and
full filling in of the discoveries Isabela followed them, heads down and words spat fast. Deeply
etched forehead wrinkles and contemplative behaviour.

The group of them had gotten rather close in the small amount of time they had been residing at
Boardwalk. Isabela and Percy and Oliver were all aroundabout the same age, and even despite her
previous affiliation she pandered towards the three youngest vampires due to the substantial age
difference between them and everyone else in this house (the youngest, after her, were the twins
and then Susan Bones, who were 93 and 99, respectively). Isabela doted on Astoria like something
caught between a mother and a protective older sister, and she and the boys seemed to have
become something akin to friends, or at least, had been spending most of their time together; Oliver
matching her energy, Percy perpetually in an eye roll.

The divide was never so obvious as it was, then. Three vampires in the corner, three humans in the
other.

“Can’t we just… wake James up?” Lily asked, from where she was sitting on the floor, in front of
the fire. Her hair seemed to blend in.

Remus shook his head. “Doesn’t work like that,” he muttered, looking over the paper again.
“Especially not at the level they’re attempting it at.”

“Wait,” Percy said, loudly, holding up a hand. Isabela looked at him and her mouth curved
upwards into a smile.

“Oh, that is beautiful timing,” she murmured.

“What?” Dorcas and Remus both asked, looking over to them; and then they heard the door slam
shut.

“The only witch that can tolerate us, that’s what,” Percy said, getting up; Isabela was already at the
door.

“Jul!” she called, back turned away from the group. Remus’ eyebrows raised and he watched as
Isabela left the room and returned promptly two seconds later, arm slung around Jul, who looked
perplexed, dishevelled, and comically small, being almost a head smaller.

Remus, Lily and Dorcas all chorused to greet them and they smiled.
“Hi!” they said. Isabela fell onto an armchair and Jul perched onto the arm itself.

“I didn’t know you two were friends,” Remus said, off-handedly, and Jul grinned.

“This place gets lonely,” they said, pointing at Isabela with an accustory thumb, “And she talks all
the time. Like. All. The. Time. Kinda hard to tune it out.”

“I’m sorry for not sleeping in coffins and sulking about the terrible pain of existence,” Isabela
drawled, sarcastically. “I’m not Sirius.”

Dorcas snorted, immediately stifling a laugh.

“No one tell him I said that,” she said, soberly. “He kind of scares me.”

“He shouldn’t,” Remus muttered, his lip quirking. He looked up at Jul. “Where have you been? Is
it just you? Where are the other witches?”

“What is this, twenty questions?” they asked, jokingly, but answered in a speed-run anyway,
seemingly noticing the severity of the atmosphere. “The Romania Rejects went out into the city to
swab a crime scene, essentially. But, like, the magic way. And it’s not just me, but Imane doesn’t
really speak English and Andrew is kinda scary and I swear he was involved in the mafia in his
past life; he has this scar–”

“Oh, we’ve all got scars, he’s not special,” Dorcas said, jokingly; the scar trailing over her own
cheek seemed to sparkle as she said it. Remus was pretty sure that it was from a vampire - he had
been there. He didn’t remember for sure, though; he doesn’t remember most of them. He and
Dorcas both tend to forget the other’s scars are there.

“Look, Jul,” Remus said, beckoning them over. They sat gingerly beside him and he heaved the
book onto their lap. “Can you read through this? Tell me if it feels… familiar. Viable.”

They frowned but leaned over to read, and the tension in the room became palpable.

“I’ve never heard of this before,” Jul murmured, and Dorcas nodded.

“I don’t think many people have,” she said. “I mean, me and Ted have been pouring over these
ancient high-vampire-society evil grimoires for weeks and this is the only thing that sounds
remotely like–”

“–it could be the ring,” Jul finished, pensively and Remus felt his heart speed up. They sat up.
“Pandora’s not back?”

A few of them shook their hands.

“No, of course she’s not, I knew that– I think we’ll have to call her…” they said, sort of absently,
peering down at the very bottom of the page. “Get her to confirm– hey, guys, did you see this bit?”

Dorcas peered over. “Which bit?”

“This bit. Right there, at the bottom. The bit in size 7 font.”

Dorcas picked up the book and held it close to her face in order to read the fine script.

“Read it out,” Lily said, pushing herself up onto her knees. She cleared her throat.

“Let it be known,” she read, slowly, “that the creation of a Horcrux does not come without
significant ramifications. More than one is not advised, due to the way they may work together…
more than three is the limit to our pallor of knowledge, and it is believed more than that may be
able to cause a tear in reality’s lining...” she trailed off, here, her eyes flitting back and forth. “If the
symptoms listed below begin to occur upon the Horcrux creator, they are advised to destroy one or
more until they dissipate for the dark one’s safety using the methods below—”

Dorcas cut off and gasped softly. She looked at Remus, and he shook his head in confusion.
“What? What can destroy them?”

She lowered the book from her face and looked at him. Her expression was one part triumph, one
part terror.

“Fiendfyre,” she said, slowly. “And Basilisk venom.”

Remus brought a hand to his mouth. Lily’s eyes flickered between the both of them, confused.

“What? What is it?”

“Basilisks are supposed to be extinct,” Isabela said, moving forward. She folded down like a chair
and sat beside the coffee table. “Right? There are old tales about them in Brazil. The King of
Serpents. Extinct for five hundred years; there are people trying to breed them, but no one knows
how.”

“They’re not extinct,” Dorcas said, quickly. She looked at Remus, and finished, quietly; “We killed
one.”

Her jaw dropped. “You killed a Basilisk?”

“A young one on the shores of Greece,” Remus said. “Five years ago. It almost killed me. Dorcas
saved my life.”

“What happened to it?”

“We harvested it,” Dorcas said, carefully; her eyes were slightly glazed over, as if she was working
through a million things at once. “They didn’t have the tools at the English bureau, so we had to
get in touch with Dumbledore, and the American hunters came and extracted the venom.”

“So it’ll be at HI2,” Remus said. “Washington. We have to go.”

“Right now?” Lily said, standing up as Remus did.

“They might not even have any left,” Percy said, coming up behind Isabela. “It goes for hundreds -
thousands, Basilisk venom. On the same level as dragon eggs. My brother rehabilitated a dragon
that had been experimented on with ancient Basilisk venom about ten years ago - it was worth
around four thousand. Got all these offers from people in Ukraine and Slovakia.”

“They wouldn’t sell it all,” Remus insisted, “They’re too smart for that. I’ve never been to HQ in
D.C., but I’d assume there’s an apothecary like there is in London?” He turned to Dorcas, who
looked stricken.

“Well, there is, but I don’t have jurisdiction to enter it,” she said, “Only the senior hunters can get
in. And, besides, we can’t just show up. You’re supposed to be in New York on a case, and I’m
supposed to be back in fucking Texas now that they sent Peter back to Germany. Moody’s been
trying to assign me to a demon case in Houston since last week. I’ve been dodging his emails.”
“God, I’m a report behind,” Remus groaned, running both hands over his face. Hunters were
required to submit regular brief reports to HQ while on a case. The recipient depended on whatever
side of the Atlantic you were on - this case being in America, Remus’ reports were scheduled to go
to HI2 - the headquarters in Washington, D.C. - either weekly or bi-weekly. Lengthier
investigations such as Remus’ were more lenient towards bi-weekly but more important
investigations were strict on weekly, and Remus’ investigation being the cause of near-fatal
injuries in one of their own meant that missing a report (while trying to keep up a guise) was
something to worry about. Slightly.

And he was aware that he should’ve sent it in, but they were completely off-book with this one. He
had felt it apt to lie (white lies) and appease HQ for the past few weeks, but he had gotten so
caught up with the intricacies and the arson of their latest leg of the war that it had, quite honestly,
slipped his mind.

(And he wasn’t exactly on the best of terms with HQ, either. Although it was completely one-sided
and perhaps simply Remus taking out his anger at the way his stomach flipped when Sirius looked
at him, but it was anger nonetheless, and it needed a place to go. It was residual resentment at the
structuralist bleeding of hatred through webs of people who were too impressionable to know any
better, and it had left a really, really sour taste in his mouth that he couldn’t seem to shake.)

“Well, that’s it!” Jul cried, interrupting his thoughts. “Go in and say you’re giving them an… in
person report.”

“That wouldn’t work,” he said, “It’s much too far a journey - and what would I even say?
Everything that’s happened since my last one is confidential.”

“You’d come up with something,” Lily said. “It’s not like they’re going to fact-check you from
four states away. Right?”

“You’d be surprised,” Remus said grimly.

“As long as you could stall, I could go find the venom,” Dorcas put forth. “You chat shit all the
time, it shouldn’t be hard.”

Remus shot her a death glare.

“Well, you’d still need a senior hunter,” he said, pressing forward; but his voice died out as soon as
the words had emerged. Who else?

“Benjy,” Dorcas said, speaking his mind with a promising smile. “He’d help us.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t,” she said. “But it’s a gamble I’m willing to take. Of all of the stuck-up pricks to choose
from, Benjy is the least likely to shoot me on sight when I reveal to him what we’re doing.”

Remus, in a moment of hilarity, recognised the irony in Dorcas saying these words after what had
happened at the Hotel, but blew past it quickly. He bit his lip.

“When?” Remus asked, and Dorcas’ face lit up.

“I’ll call Benjy now,” she said, giddy with the budding plan, and pulling out her phone. “I think he
should be in D.C, but if not he’ll be there in the next week.”

She called, and, miraculously, Benjy picked up almost instantly.

“Hey, Ben, it’s Dorcas,” she said. The room was near-silent, save for the low, static murmuring
coming from Benjy on the phone. Remus couldn’t make out what he was saying. “I know, I know!
You’re not still in Texas, right?” A pause. “Oh, that’s great, actually - me and Remus are planning
to get down there…” she trailed off, here, and her expression fell. “Oh?”

“What?” Lily said. Dorcas shook her head.

“Right. Right, okay. And you have to go tomorrow? Oh no, no problem at all - we just wanted to
check in.” There was more low humming, and then Dorcas seemed to interrupt him. “You know
what, Benjy - actually, would you mind if I called you back? I just have to take care of something
really quickly. Right. Yeah. Cheers.”

She hung up, and instantly deflated.

“He’s in D.C.,” she said, “but he’s leaving tomorrow. Caradoc’s helping out on a werewolf case in
Alaska - he’s flying up there to visit.”

“Fuck.”

“Who else is there?” Lily asked. “There has to be someone.”

“No one we’re particularly close to.”

“Maybe we could swipe a card off of someone,” Remus suggested, but Dorcas shook her head.

“Too tricky. It’s not worth it. God damn, if only–” she paused, abruptly. The air seemed to suck out
of the room all of a sudden.

“What?” Lily pressed, and Dorcas stood up.

“What time is it?” she asked, after a moment; Lily responded with a helpful 2:55. She pursed her
lips. “Plane to D.C. is only about an hour. We could be there in two if we get the next one.”

“Today?!” Lily said, looking between the two warily. “You can’t go today?”

“If not today, when?” Dorcas asked. “We don’t have any other way in.”

“Dorcas,” Remus said warningly. She raised a fatal eyebrow.

“Think about it, Remus,” she said. “When the hell else are we going to get a chance to break into
HI2 and get out alive?”

“No, I know what you’re saying,” he said, “but doing it on a whim? Shouldn’t we at least get
Pandora’s say-so? One of the other witches?”

“Pandora won’t be back until gone midnight,” Jul said. “I could contact her, but I don’t think she’ll
give a say-so until she sees the evidence for herself.”

“And who knows when Charity will be out of her weird trance,” Isabela interjected.

“Astral projection,” Dorcas said off-handedly; Lily frowned and stood up to match her.

“Look, Cas, are you sure you’ve thought this through?” she asserted. “I mean, we don’t even know
for certain… and what if something goes wrong–”

“If something goes wrong, we can handle it,” Remus said. Dorcas’ face lit up.
“Remus,” Lily groaned.

He hadn’t even known he was going to make the decision until the second he did - his instincts
moved for him, the words rolled off his tongue without prior warning. He scrunched his face up,
battling with his own inherent rationality against the decision that had already been made.

“I mean, it’s not like they have any reason to be suspicious of us,” he offered, wincing at the words
when Lily narrowed her eyes.

“Missed reports,” she said, counting off her fingers. “Undisclosed location.”

“Dodging emails,” Percy put forth, and Dorcas whirled around and pointed at him.

“You shut up, Weasley,” she said, and he thinned his lips, obviously trying not to smile.

“We’d be in and out.”

“In and out,” Dorcas repeated. Lily sighed, but accepted defeat. Isabela looked wary, but she said
nothing in opposition.

There was a moment of basking in the decision, and then;

“I’m coming with you,” Percy announced. All three human heads turned in his direction.

“What?”

“No–”

“See, that’s suspicious, Weasley–”

“I know that HQ,” he interjected, forcefully. “You forget I was a trainee there. Neither of you
trained there - I did. ”

“You did?” asked Remus, slightly bewildered by the very British accent that was coming from
him.

“My dad got stationed out here when I was fifteen. Bill did half of his here, I did all of mine. And
they’ve got huge amounts of security measures. Maybe more than HI1. If something goes wrong,
you’re not getting out.”

“They’ll know you’re a vampire immediately.”

“I wouldn’t go inside,” he said, petulantly, as if that was obvious. “I’d lurk. I’m good at that. And
if anything goes wrong, I'll hear it and come help. I can be your getaway car.”

“You need ID to get past the doors,” Dorcas pointed out; and for the first time that day, Percy
smiled.

“Good thing I still have my brothers, then.”

“You do?” Astoria said, for the first time in a while; coming up to them all, now, closer than she
ever had before.

“Yeah,” he said. “Bill - he used to give me it to sneak out and meet him when I was curfew-ed as a
trainee. Only thing in my pocket when…” he trailed off, but Remus got what he was saying.
“And the wards?”

“I can handle them,” he said, simply. And either he was a master bluff or had the biggest head in
the world; Remus couldn’t tell. Perhaps both. Probably both.

Dorcas turned. Took a step towards him, and pointed a threatening finger.

“You can’t be seen. At all. By anyone.”

Percy nodded.

“And, if anything should happen, you use that fucking vamp hearing and come straight to me,
okay. I’ll be the one with the venom - if something were to happen, you would need to get out with
it and go.”

“Dorcas–”

“I mean it,” she said, turning to Remus. “It’s all we’ve got. We can deal with hunters, Remus, but
this stuff is once-in-a-lifetime.”

She was right. He nodded.

“When does Sirius get back?” Lily asked, absently; she was typing on her phone.

“Supposed to be about five,” Isabela said. “I overheard his convo with James.”

“Okay,” Lily said. “Well - if you’re absolutely insistent on going, and I’ll have you know I still
disapprove - there’s a flight at four-forty-five, at JFK. If you leave now you can make it and avoid
him.”

“I can’t believe you’re actually going,” Isabela breathed, getting up to stand with Astoria; while
Remus, simultaneously, said “Avoid him?”

“He’s gonna want to know exactly what we’re doing,” Dorcas said, already starting towards the
door. “And he’s not going to want you to go.”

“He’s going to be furious at James ,” Percy said, smiling again and following her.

“It’ll just be difficult,” Lily said blithely. Remus was pretty sure there was an undertone to all of
those, but didn’t question it.

They left quickly, regardless. Remus left a vague note with Lily, tucked into the Horcrux page of
the book, and the tickets were booked before they even got out of the door.

***

Dorcas called Benjy back from the car. He was rather wary - more so than he had been, apparently,
on the phone before - but, after Dorcas explained the situation, he agreed to meet them around the
corner from HQ. Remus, in turn, called HQ itself - the receptionist referred him up to Albert
Higgins, who was a big, burly, frankly rather terrifying demon specialist and also a senior hunter
(quite literally - he was well over sixty and could still snap your neck with his bare hands). He got
in touch with Dumbledore, who agreed to meet with Remus - he was rather sure, had he been
anyone else, he would’ve been declined at such short notice, but Remus had not given them an
update recently, so they grabbed at the opportunity.

The plan, in its simplest terms as they got off the plane at DCA, was this:
 1. Convince Benjy to help.
2. Get in unscathed.
3. Split off.
4. Stall while Dorcas retrieves the venom.
5. Get out unscathed.

There was a vaguely proposed stage four-point-five, in which the plan went completely askew and
they would have to fight their way out, with Percy’s help. There was stage four-point-seven-five, in
which Benjy would turn on them; stage four-point-eight, in which Percy was brutally murdered by
a bunch of trained vampire hunters (the plan got stupider the more Remus thought about it, but
they were on the plane now) and there was plan four-point-nine, which consisted of all three of
them dying, the venom being destroyed and Tom Riddle taking over the world and all of its
inhabitants.

But, hey, at least Benjy Fenwick was happy to see them.

Benjy was tall - almost as tall as Remus, but not quite - lean, Korean-American. He was thirty-five,
turning thirty-six in a mere amount of months; one of the youngest hunters on the senior team. He
was most often partnered with Caradoc Dearborn, another wizard and hunter who was recruited for
correspondence by Moody and eventually just became a part of the team. (His grandmother,
Annika, had been a notorious dark witch living in their home country of Sweden who had tried to
stage a coup against the non-magical royalty; but no one seemed to talk about her. Remus
suspected that Moody had simply wanted their coven under his thumb to keep an eye on them, and
honestly, he couldn't blame him.)

Caradoc was nice enough as he was - Remus had only met him once, on a case in Switzerland - but
he was currently and had been on a werewolf hunt in Alaska for three months, and thus, Benjy was
alone.

“You two!” he called from down the street when he saw them. Remus had parked the car they had
rented in a parking garage around the corner to give Percy the benefit of the darkness as the sun
began to set. The plane had flown in just on the cusp of nautical twilight, at around 6pm - it had
been a ballache getting him on (umbrellas only go so far - and also, quite frankly, look ridiculous
when it's overcast) but it had paid off, and the sun had set enough for him to go out in it by the time
they had parked and got out (it ached a little, but that’s nothing half an hour’s orbit couldn’t fix).
He had stayed in the garage while Dorcas and Remus had gone down to meet Benjy, who was
meeting them in a little park a block away from HQ.

“Dorcas!” he exclaimed, pulling her into a tight hug. “How are you! It’s been so long!”

“It’s been a couple weeks,” she laughed, twinged with nervousness.

“Eh, our time was cut so short in Austin it feels like years ago - Remus!” Upon noticing him Benjy
reached out his arms again and Remus obliged. Their heights were somewhat awkward for a hug;
their faces almost knocked together. He pulled back quickly - he didn’t know Benjy the same way
that Dorcas did.

“So,” Benjy said, businesslike, when he pulled away from Remus. “What did you need to meet me
for? You guys are on that vampire case in New York, right?”

“Yes,” Dorcas said. She paused for a minute, pressing her lips together. “Say, Benjy, you
remember when we hunted that Kappa off the Ohio shore of Lake Erie?”

Remus almost rolled his eyes.

“Yeah,” he said, thoughtfully. “Oh yeah, that thing was nasty - took a whole chunk out of my leg,
remember that?”

“Yep,” Dorcas said.

“Still got the scar. Awful thing. Had to have twenty stitches.”

“Right,” she said, “Only reason it let you go was ‘cause I had that cucumber, remember? Absolute
whim–” she turned to Remus, now seemingly invested in this story. “Don’t suppose you’ve ever
hunted a Kappa?”

“Can’t say that I have. Though I did read your report.”

“Ah!” Her eyes gleamed with intent. “It was a while ago, though, so I don’t suppose you remember
the whole cucumber fiasco.”

Remus definitely did remember the cucumber fiasco, but he caught her gist now, so he stayed
quiet.

“Awful, nasty thing it was - near dragged Benjy into the water, and, see, they’ve never been
spotted in America before then. Never since then, actually; they’re resident to Japan, you know,”
she prattled on, “but there was nothing in the records, and you know we’re not on the best terms
with the Japanese Hunters Society, so we had to go off the lore, y’know? Big, old, badly translated
books, and we bored through about ten of ‘em and they all talked about the fact it liked cucumbers,
right? But, see, we’d tried to lure it out with cucumber and it hadn’t taken it, so we’d assumed that
it had adapted to American soil, or perhaps it was just a whole other variant of the monster that
we’d never seen before. Tried all sorts of fruit and veg - aubergines, carrots - and we even tried a
load of Japanese foods, thinking maybe it was a native, and it took nothing. And then, the last
night, we’d figured out how to kill it but couldn’t get it to the surface until it appeared and took a
huge ol’ chomp on Benjy’s leg, and it was about to pull him in and drown him, and what did I
have? Fucking cucumber slices in a tuna sandwich in my bag.”

She burst out laughing here, and so did Benjy, and so Remus played along.

“A fucking tuna sandwich!” he said with a flourish. “And so this one here pulled them out one by
one and threw them in as a last resort, and whad’ya know, the Kappa let me go and jumped to catch
them. It was like a dog. Guess it must’ve liked the added mayo flavour; picky bastard.”

“Picky indeed,” Dorcas said, grinning. “I’m so glad I thought of that, or you might not even be
here.”

Benjy laughed, and then he sighed; the laughter died and he grew a pentative, yet playful look on
his face.

“You’re buttering me up,” he said accusatorily, pointing at her. “What is it, Dorcas? What do you
want?”

Her smile dropped immediately. “Look, Ben, there’s no easy way to ask this–”

“What?”

She sighed and dug her teeth into her bottom lip.

“We need your help,” she started. “To get into the apothecary in HQ.”
He stared for a moment.

“There’s an and to this. Spit it out, Cas.”

“And,” she said, “We need you to help us… smuggle some Basilisk venom out.”

His eyebrow raised meticulously high. “Smuggle it? Can’t you just apply for some like everyone
else?”

“No,” Remus said. “We… ah, well, we can’t let HQ in on what we’re doing.”

“What are you doing?”

“We... can’t exactly let you in on it either.”

Benjy took a breath. His eyes flickered between the both of them for a moment, his face impassive;
and then he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

“Oh, what kind of shady shit have you kids gotten yourself into?” he muttered.

“You’re only seven years older than us, Benjy,” Dorcas pointed out. He was not happy with this.

“Not when you’re trying to steal from HQ I’m not; I feel like I need to reprimand a child on
stealing. I’m serious, by the way,” he said. “What kind of shady shit are you guys doing up in
NYC?”

“We can’t tell you, but I promise it’s for good,” Remus said.

“We’ve discovered something,” Dorcas said. “Something– ah– black magic, Ben. Something that
can only be destroyed with that venom. Me and Remus killed the fucking Basilisk, anyway, it’s
rightly ours.”

“What, you’re working with dark witches now?” he retorted.

“Not exactly,” Remus said, face screwing up, and Benjy’s face dropped all expression; his eyes lit
with recognition.

“No,” he said, disbelieving. “Do not tell me you guys are working with vampires. Don’t tell me
that.”

“Okay,” Dorcas said. “We won’t.”

“You–” he whirled on her, angry and exasperated. “You basically just fucking did– no, guys, come
on now. Vampires?! Didn’t your little Pete get absolutely mutilated–”

“Yes,” said Remus impatiently. “But not by the ones we’re with. You’ve been in this business
what, sixteen years now; they’re more sentient that we give them credit for. We have a common
goal, Benjy; but we need that venom.”

“We just need your identification to get in and get out,” Dorcas continued. “Though it’d look better
if you were with us, too. Less suspicious.”

“Oh, God,” Benjy groaned.

“Look,” Remus said. “Dorcas freaked out when she found out. Took her a whole two weeks to get
used to the idea. And I understand that it seems impossible to you, but when there’s such an
overbearing big evil as the one in NYC, the others… pale in comparison. It’s easier this way.
We’re saving more lives than they’d be taking.”

“And,” Dorcas said, cutting in before Benjy could interrupt. “I trust Remus. That trust lingered,
during my… adjustment period, but it wasn’t destroyed; and I made a guided decision. You trust
both of us, Benjy; right? That’s two people. And you know we’re not idiots. You know we’re some
of the best they have. So, please. We need your help. If there was another choice, we would make
it.”

Benjy shifted, slightly; he looked incredibly uncomfortable, the larger-than-life bubbly exterior of
a few minutes ago wiped down. He took a cautious look around and then leaned in, slightly.

“Okay, fine,” he said through his teeth, “I’ll get you in, and I’ll get you out.”

“And you won’t tell anyone?”

“I won’t tell anyone,” he said. “I don’t like it, but I know you both. You’re good kids. Whatever
nasty business is going on up there, I trust you both to deal with it.” He sighed, and then something
resembling a smirk appeared on his face. “And, don’t tell anyone; but you are our two best. By far.
Best things to come out of Moody, that old codger.”

“Hear, hear,” Remus said, a smile making its way on his face.

“He may be an old codger, but he’s lethal,” Dorcas said primly. “Taught us to be that way too. It’s
all or nothing, out here, you know that, Ben.”

“I do,” Benjy agreed. “That’s why I’m trusting your guts. Come on, and don’t you dare let me
down, you absolute menaces.”

He turned and made his way down the road, heading towards HQ; Dorcas turned to Remus, and as
she went to go after him she reached out a hand that he met in a low, sly high-five.

Stage one: complete.

***

Stage two was, to put it simply, slightly more difficult to pull off.

Remus’ meeting with Dumbledore was at 7pm; they made it in there for 6:35, through the wards
and the necessary procedures (which included identification, a squirt of holy water, a wall of
warding that digressed intent (Remus was very worried for this one, but they made it through just
fine) and, finally a jinx or hex test, identifiable through a balsam mist that one had to step through
that made you smell strangely like coconut for five minutes.)

(Remus worried, slightly, about the holy water, should Percy be provided to come in - but it was a)
with prior warning and b) so late in the proceedings that he was quite sure it would be pretty easy to
override it. Or perhaps he was being overly critical, but regardless, Percy knew the measures better
than he did so he trusted he’d find a way.)

HI2 was a large building - not overly large, only a few floors, but substantial enough for a bureau of
monster hunters. It was funded by the government; they didn’t give much, fucking them over as
the government tended to do to organisations that sincerely needed it, but that alongside their
(coming up on 50 years old, now) partnership with MI5 (spawning HI1, Remus’ hometown) in the
U.K. gave enough to keep the place up and running, alongside the safehouses across the country
and the weaponry distributors. Hunters did not have to pay for rent in houses they lived in, so long
as they had their identification, and weaponry was also manufactured for free; the U.S. and U.K.
bureaus had an even trading system, in which Moody specialised in the stakes and daggers, and
Dumbledore traded the guns. It was all high risk and top secret (if you were to ask someone on the
street what HI2 specialise in, they’d trail off spluttering) and, in Remus’ ten years, the system
seemed to have held up pretty well.

The ground floor was small and rather bland - there were a couple offices off to the side and a
canteen, and in the middle stood a desk and a receptionist, who, honestly, was not needed for much
besides directions (that were on the wall around the corner anyway) but, she evidently got paid a
lot, if the Gucci blazer she was wearing was to judge, so Remus suspected she had no complaints
for her rather boring job. She evidently knew Benjy, and she gave him a nod as he passed. Aside
from her there were no other people on the ground floor. The bureau was open pretty much at all
times - the job never stopped - but it was a Sunday evening, he supposed.

“Listen,” Benjy said, low, as they got into the elevator - through yet another cloud of mist. He
pushed the 2 and 4 buttons. “Your meeting with Dumbledore is on the second floor, west wing; the
apothecary is on the fourth, east. They’re lined with laboratories but the one we’ll want has a black
door and says “No Entry” on the front, which is bullshit, really, but they have to protect their own.”

Dorcas and Remus both nodded as he went. Remus began to get the feeling that Benjy was actually
enjoying the heist. He wouldn’t put it past him. Disillusionment in hunting was something he was
finding to be rather common.

“There are wards to get into the apothecary, as it’s so heavily stocked, but only the mist - and we
got through that just fine - and the wards won’t go off on identification ‘cause I have jurisdiction
on my pass, and you’re with me. We should be in and out. Now you,” he said, rounding on Remus.
“You have to keep face. Fourth floor is the most populated, and we’re gonna have to go down the
stairs to not risk the wards on the elevator. Won’t go off out of the room, people transport stuff all
the time, but elevator signals leaving, which is what they don’t want us to do.”

“I think people are going to question my being here, too,” Dorcas said. “I’m supposed to be in
Texas. There was no agreement that I would be working the case with Remus - if I was, everyone
would want to. They all want their brownie points with Dumbledore.”

“I can deal with that. We just need to keep a low profile. In and out.”

“But we can’t look suspicious, either,” Dorcas said. “If someone strikes up a conversation we’re
gonna have to talk.”

“Well, what’s your alibi?”

“Collecting a couple things for my demon case in Houston.”

“See, that’s perfect. We’ll be fine.”

“What about you?” Dorcas said, turning to him. “When - and if - they find out what we stole -
they’re going to know you helped us.”

“I think you’ll find, Dorcas Meadowes,” Benjy said with a wry smile. “That I am very good at
disappearing.”

The hallway was empty when Remus got off on the second floor. He had never been here - it was a
lot more reserved than the London HQ, a lot more monotonal and office-like, where the London
HQ seemed to look a bit more like a strange, mismatched home. He walked past a plethora of doors
with names of people he didn’t recognise - there was a training centre to his left with open
windows; it was empty, and the curtains were pulled to the side. Remus peeked in and saw on the
other side of the hall the entrance to what looked like a simulation room; where the headsets can
throw you into virtual realities so vivid and real-looking it actually evokes phantom pains when
you’re hurt in it. Remus had gotten #1 at those simulations for three years straight during his
trainee years - by his last year he would kill every vampire he came across. He only ‘died’ three
times over all of those years. He had felt bad bragging, so he hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, but
that was one of the first times he had ever felt proud of himself - getting #1 for the first time at the
end of his first year was one of the first times that he actually felt secure, that he felt like he knew
what he was doing and he was doing it for himself, and not for someone else's pleasure or
contentment.

He moved away from the rooms and crept down the hallway, passing one person who didn’t
regard him at all, and another young woman around a corner who gave him a smile. He asked her
for directions and she pointed him left - and sure enough, right at the end of the hallway was
Dumbledore’s office.

He checked his watch - six-fifty. Seemed fair enough. He knocked twice, and a low voice told him
to come in, so he pushed down the handle.

Dumbledore’s office was a lot more cosy than the rest of the building; it was warm-toned, cream
walls and a red carpet. His desk was darkwood, and so was most of his bookshelves and storage
units; intricate Victorian furnishings and eccentric decor to accentuate them. He had stacks upon
stacks of paperwork to one side of his desk, a new-looking laptop on the other. To the side was a
small wheelie table, with a tea spread on it - a pot and two mugs - and to his back was a window
wall. The first thing Remus caught sight of, strangely, was the White House - from where he was
standing he could only just see it, the tops of the house over all of the buildings sandwiched in
between them in the city of D.C.

Dumbledore himself was sat behind his desk, smiling.

The man had long hair, down at least to his torso and a beard to match it. It was grey and wiry like
wool, and he wore a purple shirt with a rather eccentric coat that seemed to be a bit out of touch
even inside, never mind the pretty okay weather. His face was sunken with age - Remus didn’t
know how old he was, but he would guess around seventy-five - and his piercing blue eyes peered
over half-moon spectacles, blinking slowly, as if reading him once over and then twice.

“Hello there,” he said, croaky and pleasantly from behind his desk. “It’s so good to see you,
Remus, so good indeed.”

“Hi, sir,” Remus said, inclining his head. He had only met Dumbledore a handful of times - he
respected him as a hunter and a leader, but every problem he had had gone to Moody for for the
majority of his career, so he was unsure as to where his boundaries with Dumbledore began and
ended; how much of his hand he would extend to help.

“How are you doing? Take a seat, take a seat.”

“Good, sir. Very good.”

“Surviving well in the New York air? Pretty polluted, I believe.”

Remus laughed nervously. “Well, the pollution isn’t all that great in London, either. You could say
I’m used to it.”
Dumbledore smiled, and then gingerly pulled something in front of him - it was, Remus recognised
very quickly, a copy of the file he had been sent at the beginning of his taking the case. He began
to flick through it aimlessly.

“So - and let's just start by cutting straight to the chase, shall we, no more of this riff-raff small talk
- I was very glad of your getting in contact, I have to tell you, Remus. We seem to be missing a
cohort of information from you about this case you’re handling.”

Remus swallowed, feeling ‘cohort’ was a big extreme, but he digressed. “Yes, I do apologise, sir. I
thought an in-person meeting should be able to make up for it.”

“I hope it shall,” Dumbledore said with a tight smile. “So, tell me, what has been going on, exactly?
What progress have you made?”

Remus took a deep breath. He had figured, coming, that it would make sense to simply say what
had been happening and omit the things that would land him in hot water.

So he explained, to the best of his abilities, the workings of the coven from what he knew. A lot of
it he had to fill in blanks, and make up sources - for example, where he got the information about
the 1959 battle - but Dumbledore seemed to go along with it, nodding his head and placing
“hmm’s” at respectable points where hmm’s should be.

He told him about the retaliations, once that had realised they were onto him - the Hotel burning,
though he did not specify it was chalk full of vampires, and murders being ramped up (an easier
way to say Petunia’s death). He did not mention Sirius, or James, or Marlene; he did not mention
Dorcas; he did not mention Regulus. Horcruxes were omitted completely. Dumbledore began
taking notes somewhere around the Malfoy Manor stakeout, scratched down at such an angle that
it was hidden behind his laptop, and Remus couldn’t see them.

He spoke for about ten minutes without stopping. His eyes lingered on the clock warily - he wasn’t
sure of how long it would take Dorcas and Benjy to find the venom. He wasn’t sure of whether
they had already got out - Dorcas said she would text him, but he couldn’t exactly check his phone.
He blundered forth, therefore, taking extra care to note some details that really weren’t pertinent to
potentially give them a bit more time.

After he was done - after he had fully exhausted the topic, come to a natural stand-still -
Dumbledore placed his pencil down, and smiled at him. His face was imperceptible. So
imperceptible it almost seemed trained. It almost seemed menacing.

And, to Remus’ surprise, instead of saying anything he simply leaned over, poured two cups of tea,
and offered him one.

“Tea?” he said pleasantly, and Remus nodded. He took his, and waited instinctively until
Dumbledore had taken a sip of his to take a sip of his own.

“So,” Dumbledore said firmly while Remus was still drinking. “It is good to know that you’re
taking all the precautions you can and working this case as meticulously as a hunter of your valour
should be.”

“Thank you, sir,” Remus said, taking another sip.

“I believe that I will form a timeline based on the information you gave me - tell me, when did you
arrive in New York, again?”

“Almost five weeks ago now, sir.”

“Yes, yes,” he said, looking down and then back up. “And tell me,” he said, “what was the name of
the Hotel you mentioned? The one that burned?”

Remus put down his teacup and smacked his lips. “I’m not sure. Sirius called it the sanctuary
colloquially, but I tend to just call it Hotel Transylvania in my head.”

He watched as Dumbledore’s face went from calm to pleased; watched until his eyes glazed over,
and his mouth fell open. He gaped.

“You–”

“And who is this Sirius?” he asked, with the casual air of an interviewer.

“He’s a vampire,” Remus said casually. “He’s been my enemy for eight years, but now we’re kind
of friends - I’m not sure how that’s supposed to work, considering he kissed me twice and I also
kissed him twice, but we’re trying to keep it on the low for the sake of the c–mmmhph.”

Remus shoved his own fist in his mouth to stop himself from talking, but the words simply kept
coming out, garbled and unintelligible. Dumbledore nodded, rather patronisingly, until he stopped
making noise. Remus dropped his hand.

“You drugged me,” Remus said flatly. Dumbledore tutted, finishing writing down whatever the
hell he was writing.

“Not a drug,” he said lightly, looking down at his writing. “You took Potions 101 in your trainee
years, yes? You know what it is.”

“Veritaserum,” Remus said, automatically. “Serum. Truth serum. You serum-ed me.”

“That’s more like it.”

“How?” Remus said. “You drank out of it, too?”

Dumbledore smiled up at him. “I am the principal of an organisation that kills monsters. I think
you’ll find I would be in serious danger if I hadn’t taken precautions - built up immunities, if you
will - over the years.”

“This is illegal,” Remus seethed, breathing quickening with panic. “I could get you arreste–”

“Tell me more about this Sirius,” Dumbledore instructed.

“He’s a Pureblood,” Remus spat before he could stop himself - he shoved his fist in his mouth
again, making muffled noises; but he had, apparently, said enough in those three words.
Dumbledore was looking at him in near-astonishment.

Remus stood up.

“You– this is illegal,” Remus repeated, and Dumbledore stood up to match him.

“It’s not, actually,” he said gently. “Veritaserum is allowed to be used on an unsuspecting person
provided the distributor believes they are in serious danger and/or are endangering others by
lying.”

“I’m not endangering anyone!” Remus said. “We’re trying to stop further danger from occurring!
We–”
“True in your mind, I am sure,” Dumbledore said.

“It is true!”

“Give me names. Who are you working with?”

“Sirius Black, James Potter, Marlene McKinnon–”

“Where are you staying?”

Remus opened his mouth to speak instinctively, but no words came out - he simply gaped, his
throat constricting and almost triggering his gag reflex as it strained to speak; but no words would
form. Dumbledore’s eyes widened.

“Interesting. Interesting. You have a very powerful witch. What is her name?”

“Pandora– fuck!”

“Pandora who?”

“I don’t know her last name. I’m leaving.”

Dumbledore reached out and held a firm grip onto his wrist. “What’s your aim?”

“To settle our differences via a common goal and to kill Tom Riddle and his coven,” Remus
choked, his throat burning with the effort to constrict the words, and Dumbledore’s eyes seemed to
glisten with shock and recognition.

“Riddle,” he breathed, with a sense of familiarity. It sounded like returning to roots. It sounded
almost like he was relieved. Remus gaped, and as he went to speak he looked down at his arm and
all words seemed to suddenly stop in the back of his throat.

Dumbledore had grabbed his arm with his right hand and in the movement the sleeve of his coat
had ridden up; and his hand was blackened. Seeping in from the tips of all five of his fingers, worse
in some areas and better in some but ultimately it was dry and black, rot clinging to his skin. It was
grotesque. Remus’ mouth fell open.

“What the hell happened to you?” he murmured, in shock, and Dumbledore simply stared at him.

“Do you know where Riddle is?”

“No,” Remus spat, pulling his arm away from Dumbledore’s corpse-like hands, and he realised
how manic the man looked. Remus had only met Dumbledore a handful of times over his ten
years, but all of the other times he had been the most put-together person in the room. Remus
realised, all of a sudden, how untidy he was. His hair was messy. His eyes were wild and unhinged,
almost like Sirius’, an inch from homicide; and his face was sallow and sunken unlike normal. The
composure was a farce.

Dumbledore straightened himself up. Brushed off his sleeves as if nothing had happened; covered
his blackening hand.

“Now tell me, Remus,” he started, and Remus found he was rooted to the spot. Waiting for the
request to befall him. It was an absolute violation.

Dumbledore looked at him from behind those fucking glasses and finished; “What are you really
doing in D.C?”
Remus opened his mouth to speak, but the words were drowned out; drowned out by a loud,
wailing siren, attacking the room with sound and making anything he was saying
incomprehensible. It was not Dumbledore’s doing - he looked even more perplexed than Remus -
which meant only one thing.

Dorcas. Dorcas.

Remus was out of the door before he had even stopped speaking - the hallway was red with a
blaring alarm, on one end of the corridor. People were coming out of their rooms, guns at the
ready, and Remus pulled his out and cocked it - he ran instantly down the corridor, pushing past
people and going for the staircase.

It was evident that the protocol for this alarm came with a meeting point, much like a fire alarm,
and that that meeting point was on the ground floor - the staircase was flooded with people, dozens
and dozens of them, making their way downstairs like a tidal wave. Remus scanned the crowd to
see if he could find Dorcas but it was futile - there were too many people - and he simply pushed
through, almost knocking people over and legging it up the stairs, two at a time, gun in hand, until
he got to the fourth floor.

The corridor was cold, and empty - the blaring red light and deafening alarm sent chills down
Remus’ spine, and he walked down it slowly, gun pointed, ready at every opening or potential
snipe point.

Dumbledore had obviously lost him at some point in the floods of people - that’s his own fucking
protocol’s fault - going off the lack of movement from where he came from, but soon enough the
source of the alarm would become evident; they would be trapped. He needed to find Dorcas and
Benjy and he needed to find them now.

And for a moment - a terrifying moment - he thought that maybe they had gotten out, that they
weren’t up here, as he turned a corner, gun pointed, to an empty hallway. Doors were flung open,
and there were stray papers on the floor. It looked like an apocalypse and for a moment he thought
that’s what it was, until he heard a yell of pain from behind him.

He turned and sprinted, sprinted as fast as he could, and wheeled around the corner to see Dorcas
and Benjy, fighting four hunters - three men and one woman, all tall and strong. Dorcas had a
duffle bag in her hand, and, from Remus’ estimate, the venom, from how she was trying to keep it
out of harm's way. Benjy - he hadn’t turned against them, thank God - was fighting two people
with a blade. His was about the size of a forearm’s length, and the woman was weaponless, but the
man had a knife, too, around the same size, possibly bigger. He had been nicked - there was blood
coating his cheek from just underneath his eye.

Dorcas was fighting the other two at once, and Remus immediately went to go help her out - not
because he had any sort of little faith in her, but because she only had one free hand, and every
devastating punch she sent to one of the men left her open to receive one from the other.

“Remus!” she gasped, dodging a punch from the man she was sparring and kneeing him in the
stomach, knocking him back with an undercut to the chin. “Where the hell–”

“Did you get it?!” Remus yelled from over his opponent's shoulder; he punched him clean in the
face with the handle of his gun for more effect. He did not want to point his barrel at him in order
for submission - he was hoping he would simply stay down, but the guy kept getting up.

“Yes!” Dorcas yelled. The woman that Benjy was fighting fell back into her, and she wheeled
around and, in one swift movement, switched the duffle bag to her other hand and elbowed her in
the ribs, sending her flying. “The wards went off when we got out the room!”

Remus kicked the man down and, accepting defeat and feeling awful, aimed his gun. “Stay down,”
he commanded. The man’s eyes were hallowed with the flashing red light, but Remus could see the
fear.

Dorcas kneed the man she was fighting again and kicked him further down the corridor, giving her
an out to run to Benjy - he was currently straddling the woman, trying to wrestle his knife back out
of her hands. Dorcas wheeled around the man before he could advance on Benjy’s unblocked back
and punched him straight in the nose, causing him to stagger backwards - it began to bleed. She
kneed him in the balls and pushed him backwards, turning to Remus and, in what he knew was a
cue, beginning to run.

“Benjy!” she turned and screeched; he had managed to wrestle his knife out of her hands and got up
as swiftly as he could, running and screaming “I’m so sorry!” behind him at the disaster in his
wake.

Just as Remus was about to worry where the bastard was, Percy appeared in a flurry - his red hair
was almost comical in the red light, but his eyes were wide with worry. He had a pretty big
grotesque burn on the side of his neck and his jaw that Remus could only guess was from the holy
water. He actually deflated slightly upon seeing him. Any thoughts of how the hell he had
overridden the security systems flew right over his head.

“Did you get it?!” he yelled over the alarm - Dorcas nodded her head yes, and gave the bag to him
to take gracefully.

“Go!” she yelled, as they turned a corner; and Remus was very sure that he would have, had they
not been at the end of the long, initial corridor, with the stairwell at the end; out of which was
emerging about ten hunters, all clad with stake shooters and guns.

Dorcas stopped, eyes wide, and immediately turned them around.

“Don’t go, don’t go!” she yelled, running down a different corridor - Benjy overtook her, yelling
something about another exit. They were running down a corridor and Percy ran ahead, speed-
running to the corner and Remus watched in horror as, from a position out of sight, a stake was
shot and just missed the side of him. Bullets followed; Percy staggered back, and then over to the
other side of the wall, his back to the corner as more bullets pelted against the metal panelling,
ricocheting so smoothly that all four of them cowered. One of them hit Percy in the leg, and
another skimmed Dorcas pretty badly on the forearm. She swore profusely and held it, red blood
seeping through the gaps between her fingers.

“You need to go out the window!” she yelled at Percy - Benjy, on instinct grabbed the kid, as
Remus grabbed Dorcas, and flung them into the nearest door. It was an office - whose office,
Remus didn’t know - but it had a window wall, just like Dumbledore’s office did. Benjy threw
Percy towards it and he staggered, looking up at them with pure terror in his little perpetually-
seventeen-year-old eyes.

“I can’t leave you!” he shouted, shaking his head. Remus took a step forward, holding onto
Dorcas’ arm with his other hand and jabbing at Percy with his free one.

“You have to,” he said. “This is more important. We’ll be okay. Take it to Sirius - he’ll know what
to do.”

Dorcas heaved, slightly, her chest rising unevenly as she lost more and more blood. She peeked
through her hands to examine it; her arm had been over her face and the bullet had ricocheted off
the floor and up, against it, a gash trailing up her forearm oozing hot blood onto her shirt, which
was near-drenched, now. Percy’s face was stricken.

She opened her mouth, probably to yell at him, but before she could the door flung open.

Remus could see a flurry of people passing, too preoccupied to notice the four figures in the room -
or perhaps the figure in the doorframe was so huge it blocked it well enough.

Because, standing at the door, a flurry of ginger hair, the stubble of a stress-beard and a gun aimed
and loaded in his hands, was Gideon Prewett.

Remus tensed immediately.

“Remus?!” was Gideon’s first exclamation - he seemed to zero in on him; they had been on a case
together not even seven months ago. “What the hell– what’s going on?!”

“Gid,” Benjy said, loudly over the arm, hands outstretched and palms visible. “Gid, lower the gun.”

Gideon took a step forward, and the door swung shut behind him. They were alone.

“What the hell are you doing?!” he hissed, eyes wild and incredulous. “We were told there was a
breach, and a vampire - but I didn’t think it would be any of–”

His voice died, all of a sudden; it wasn’t a gradual death, more of a complete shutdown, as his eyes
flickered between them and landed, finally on Percy. On his nephew. His very dead nephew.

“It’s a long story,” Remus said loudly, but Gideon wasn’t listening.

“Perce?” Gideon said, lowering his gun, ever so slightly. Dorcas leaned back onto the desk,
groaning, and Remus tried to keep her steady, but kept his gaze on Gideon, untrained.

“Look,” Remus said, struggling; it was here that Benjy jogged over, putting an arm around Dorcas
- she insisted she was fine, but she had lost too much blood - and giving Remus an outlet to move,
stand in front of Gideon, directly in front of the barrel of his gun. Percy said nothing. Gideon’s eyes
only moved back to Remus’ when they had to.

“It’s him,” he said, “He’s a vampire. He’s a vampire, and his family left him when he turned - he
didn’t suspect you’d know.”

“I didn’t know,” Gideon said - there was a banging on the door, but it seemed to have locked
automatically. They both jumped.

“He’s a good kid,” Remus said, desperately, now. “He’s a good kid, making the most of the
situation he’s in - we’re here to try and stop a coven from murdering people and destroying
everything in New York, but we can’t do that if we’re stuck here. Gid– Gid,” he said, bringing a
harsh, sticky blood-stained hand to the man’s face to draw his attention back to him. “He’s a good
kid. Look at him. He’s still Percy. Please, please, help us.”

Gideon took a deep breath; let his eyes flicker from each pair of terrified eyes in the room; and then
lowered his gun.

Remus let out a breath.

“I have to get Fabian,” he said, and, it was apparently at this that Percy decided to speak.
“No time,” he said, assertively - he stomped forward to his Uncle, Remus watched as he inhaled,
once, and then his chest stuck out - holding his breath, but also, being brave; as brave as he could.

“I have to–” Gideon said, seeming utterly bewildered at the fact that Percy had spoken, that it was
Percy’s voice.

“You can’t,” Remus said, “You can get Fabian after, when I’ve explained everything. For now -
we need to get out.”

Gideon hesitated; for a moment. A long moment, and Percy took another step forward.

“Uncle Gid,” he said carefully, “Please.”

Gideon blinked, nodded; snapped into action.

“There’s an emergency staircase,” he said, robotically. “Can’t risk the corridor, but I think they’re
adjoining–”

He moved across the room, to where there was a door to another, adjoining room, locked from the
side they were in. He opened it cautiously, but there was no one there. As they entered the
adjoining room Remus heard bangs coming from the other door, once more; Benjy hauled Dorcas
in and Remus shut it behind them, just quick enough to feel the bang as the door slammed open,
the lock broken.

“There’s a door directly opposite this one,” Gideon yelled, pointing to the main door of the office.
“There’ll be people in the corridor, and it’ll be locked, so I’ll go first– kick it down– then you
follow, and you run. It’ll bring us right to the entrance.”

“Okay,” Remus said. He turned to Dorcas, who was still very much present, eyes blazing, but she
was weak enough that Benjy had to hold a firm arm around her waist, and she seemed to be
tourniqueting her arm with her other hand. Benjy gave him a tight nod - that he was alright with her
- and Remus prepared to go after Gideon, Percy sandwiched between them.

Gideon opened the door and, quite literally, ran; he kicked the door once and it flew open,
revealing an incredibly dark room and a metal, spiral staircase, and Remus didn’t hesitate - he ran
after him, listening to the echo of the room as his feet hit the stairs, the subsequent footsteps from
the people behind him and the yells from the hunters in the corridor as they noticed them; the
footsteps grew louder. Remus didn’t think - he just ran.

Gideon knocked down the door at the bottom, too, and - to their absolute delight - there weren’t
many people at reception. There was only the receptionist - who now looked flurried and terrified -
and maybe four other people. One of which ran at them - Remus ran forward and rammed him by
the sternum with the handle of his gun, knocking him flat on his back and proceeding - and the rest
stayed back, only one or two, evidently not trying to break a bone or something of the lark.

It was only when they got to the wards that Remus heard Dorcas yelling.

“Percy!” she was saying, from where she was sturdy against Benjy’s side. “The bag! The pods!”

Percy frowned. Gideon got through the wards, and Benjy and Dorcas went for the ones on the other
side, but before they could get through Dorcas ripped her blood-stained hand from her injured arm
and mimed throwing something on the ground, and an explosion.

Remus and Percy stood, side by side - their heads turned, almost instinctively, as the yells of the
hunters grew closer - and Remus pulled Percy towards him, in an instant reaching his hand into the
duffle bag. When he pulled it out his palm was full of small, metal pods with strange engravings on
them. He didn’t think.

He just threw.

The mist of the wards as he shoved himself and Percy through them and the front doors definitely
muted the effect of the pods, but the flash and the explosion was still heard - it was not substantial
enough for anyone to get hurt, but it was dramatic - enough to throw someone off. Enough to buy
them time. And time was of the essence.

Percy was gone almost the second they were out, and Remus was thankful - he watched, dazed, as
the blur moved down the steps and along the dark, evening street, and past Gideon, Dorcas and
Benjy - and then he ran. Sprinted, in fact, to catch up. He looked back as he reached them; they
were just turning a corner, and, as he looked, one person emerged, looking insistently bewildered
and at the wrong end of the street.

He kept running.

“What the hell was that?!” he yelled, overtaking Benjy - he was carrying Dorcas, now, bridal style,
as it was faster - and looking over his shoulder. Dorcas grinned.

“Flash bombs!” she shouted back. “Brilliant, aren’t they?!”

“You’re absolutely fucking insane!” he screeched as they ducked underneath a low-hanging tree
and made their way back to the parking garage.

“I know!”

Percy was already at the car - he was shutting the boot as they made it, the duffle bag secure and
safe. Remus legged it for the driver's seat and wrenched the door open, climbing in as swiftly as he
could.

“Oh my god,” Gideon was saying, over and over, as he clambered desperately into the passenger
seat. “Oh my god. Oh, fuck.”

“Yeah,” Remus muttered, starting the car, blood smeared over his keys. “Me too.”

Percy got in the back, and then Dorcas - which, in retrospect, was definitely an absolutely awful
idea; Percy rolled down his window and stuck his head out like a dog, squinting and grimacing in
immense pain. Dorcas did her best not to bleed on him, at least.

Benjy was the only one who lingered.

“What are you doing?!” Remus yelled. “Get in!”

“I was gonna go!” Benjy cried, gesturing backwards, and the car exploded - all four of them.

“Get in the car!”

“Don’t be a fucking idiot, Benjy–”

“Get the fuck in this car right now–!”

“Okay!” Benjy said, clambering in and shutting the door. “Okay. Okay.”

“Drive!” Gideon shouted, and Remus did.

They sped for about thirty miles before deeming it safe enough to stop for a minute - mainly so
Percy could get some air, and Dorcas could clean herself up, properly. Benjy stitched up her arm
on the side of a dusty freeway, under the dim light of a streetlamp, with a needle from the first aid
kit in the bag of supplies Remus had brought. He cleaned her wound, placed gauze and a bandage
over it and deemed it the best he could do until they got to wherever the hell they were going, and,
where were they actually going, Remus?

“Long Island,” he said, “There’s a place. Can’t tell you more than that - like, I physically can’t.
Sirius is probably going to have to let you through the wards–”

“Sirius,” Gideon said, flatly, whirling around from where he was pacing. “Sirius Black?”

“Yes.”

“The vampire?”

“Yes.”

“The dude who's coven you and Mary obliterated in Cornwall? The one who made it his life's
mission to destroy you? The one you used to never shut the fuck up about?”

Remus winced. “Well, yes–”

“Oh, Jesus fucking Christ,” Gideon groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What the fuck have
I gotten myself into?”

“He’s not that bad,” Remus offered. Percy frowned.

“He is.”

“Oh, he is,” Dorcas piped up from the floor. “He is absolutely that bad.”

Gideon looked absolutely stricken.

“Look, it’ll make sense when we get there,” Remus said, increasingly wary of a police siren
bleeding through the air that may or may not be for them; “now can we please just– get in the
car?”

Within ten minutes they were on the road again - Percy got the front seat on account of wanting to
be as far away from the blood as possible (no one could really dispute with that) and the fact that he
and Remus both knew that Benjy and Gideon were wary - up until two hours ago the neither of
them had come into this close proximity with a vampire without it being a murderous encounter,
and now here he was; perpetually seventeen, on their side; not killing anyone; and, to top it all off,
Gideon’s nephew that up until two hours ago, he had believed to be dead for five years.

There was a very heavy air to the car as they drove (they were going to fly back, had the expedition
been without hitches, but it seemed more pertinent now to drive; the rental car was tomorrow’s
issue). Every topic that they could talk about felt just a little bit too heavy after the events of that
evening; Gideon and Percy were at a sort of stalemate, unable to explain or talk things out no
matter how much Remus knew Gideon wanted to - it was simply not the time. They were all too
shaken up.

It was unrealistic of them to expect the two older hunters to sit in a car for six hours and not ask
questions about where they were going - not even that, it was unrealistic for them to uproot their
entire lives based on flimsy trust of two old friends and a dead-but-not-dead nephew and not ask
questions about where they were going - and, so, Dorcas (upon noticing Remus was very much not
up to the task) explained the best she could about the case. About Sirius, Regulus, Mary, whom
they both knew and let out a short gasp at, and the entire sequence of events leading up to their
discovery of the true identity of the ring (she did not mention the word Horcrux - perhaps she was
starting to feel as uncertain as Remus did) and Benjy and Gideon sat, quietly; reacting at times that
seemed appropriate, and eventually her words drifted off into garbled nothingness and the only
thing Remus could focus on was his hands on the wheel and the grey of the road.

Guilt and uncertainty began to flood Remus’ senses. It had been a reckless thing, putting their lives
on the line like that for a mere possibility. It had felt pertinent at the time - their only way in was
leaving, and this was their only option to destroy it. Logic. And Remus knew fiendfyre - he had
worked with it, witnessed it years before it tore down Hotel Transylvania. Mary had bended it,
once, a long time ago; her speciality was fire (her outburst that lead to the deaths of the Black
coven was an automatic response, her body going back to its default) and she had moulded it
between her hands - Remus had watched her try to contain it, try and fail. Remus had watched it
almost - almost - burn her literally fucking alive - thank god that they were in the training centre,
that there were witches on hand nearby to help her destroy it. It was uncontrollable - it spread like
wildfire, even the smallest amounts. It wasn’t viable. The Basilisk venom had been their only
option.

And had it not felt, almost, like divine intervention? Their Basilisk case was very hushed up in
general. Percy wasn’t wrong when he said it went for thousands, and Isabela wasn’t wrong when
she said they were widely thought to be extinct. Remus and Dorcas were probably two of the only
hunters who knew that it was there. It had felt like an opportunity that wasn’t worth missing, and
now Dorcas was suffering from a gunshot wound, not only were the hunters but the vampires were,
more than likely, hunting them as they spoke due to the fact they now were driving and plastering
their scents all the way up the country, and Dumbledore knew that Remus was working with
vampires. Dumbledore knew Riddle. He had drugged him for it.

Remus had fucked up. He had fucked up.

“Oh, God,” he moaned, leaning forward onto the steering wheel at about 11:30 - they were parked
in a gas station, and Benjy and Gideon had gone out to get some food from the store while Percy
was hunting (he didn’t say that’s what he was doing, but everyone seemed to know). Dorcas had
clambered into the front seat in his absence. She turned to him, frowning.

“What?”

He hadn’t told her yet; it felt like something that shouldn’t be said in front of the crowd, in case
they freaked out. He didn’t know what to do with it. Sirius was going to kill him.

“Dorcas,” he said, turning to him; his mouth was dry, his eyes not meeting hers. The tips of his
fingers were tingling slightly. “Dorcas, I fucked up.”

Her face shifted through about ten perceptible emotions. “What did you do?” she said, quietly.

And - if he had thought the serum had worn off, this was his friendly reminder that no, it hadn’t -
he told her.

Her mouth fell open halfway through. She was silent for a long, tantalising, angry moment
afterwards.

“That’s illegal,” she said. “We could get him…” she trailed off. Remus laughed bitterly.
“Arrested? You and I both know the bureau work under different rules. The government barely
even funds us - they don’t know half the shit that goes on in there.”

“Moody could do something.”

“And what am I meant to say to Moody? He’s not exactly the most progressive person on the
planet.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s going to stand for you getting fucking drugged!” Dorcas said, shrilly. She
had tears in her eyes and a forest fire on her tongue; their gazes met for a short moment, and then
she clasped her hands together and rested her forehead on the fist, squeezing her eyes shut and
rocking slightly.

“Okay,” she breathed, “Okay. Okay, what exactly did you tell him? Go through it.”

Remus’ mouth was clockwork. “I told him me and Sirius kissed.”

Remus had, quite honestly, never seen her head snap up that quickly.

“You–” she gasped, eyes wide. “Could you not have waited to tell me that last? I can’t deal with
any more melodrama right now, Remus!”

“I’m sorry! It works in chronological order.”

“Just… mmmh,” she groaned, rubbing her temples. “Just keep going. What next?”

“I told him about the Hotel,” he said. “I told him Sirius, James and Marlene’s names. Pandora’s
too. I told him Sirius was a Pureblood.” Dorcas let out a quiet gasp. “And I namedropped Tom
Riddle and told him that we were trying to settle our differences to take him down.”

Dorcas was quiet for a long minute.

“Sirius is going to kill you,” she murmured, and Remus really, truly thought she might be right. It
was eight years ago; it was London; it was Edinburgh; it was Cornwall.

“Oh, God,” Remus whined, letting his head fall into his hands. It was too much. It was all too
much - too much to figure out, too much to sort.

Horcruxes, Regulus, Mary, Basilisk Venom, Sirius, Veritaserum, Tom Riddle, Petunia Dursley,
Sirius, Fiendfyre, the Hotel, Boardwalk, Sirius, Vampires, Sirius, Sirius, Sirius, Sirius.

He hadn’t realised he had been panicking until the heel of Dorcas’ palm dug into the back of his
neck, and rubbed slightly. It was comforting. It grounded him in a way that the air did not. He let
his body collapse completely forward, folded in half, almost. It was all numb fingertips and black
spots and ringing ears until Dorcas shifted her weight and leaned forward to wrap him in her arms,
resting her head on his back. Her hair fell like water and brushed the side of his face, and his tears
fell with them.

***

He had had four hours to prepare the storm that would befall him when they arrived back at
Boardwalk, but nothing could truly prepare him from turning the corner to see Sirius standing,
arms crossed, beside the tree that signified the outer bounds of the wards.

Remus sighed.
“Prewett, Fenwick, stay in the car,” he said, turning around to the two hunters in the back; he
didn’t even wait for a reply before opening the car door and clambering out, hearing the echoing
click twice as Percy and Dorcas mirrored him from the passenger side and the back.

He took three steps forward, so that he and Sirius were maybe six feet apart.

“What,” Sirius said, tensely, “the fuck did you do.”

“Listen–”

“No,” Sirius said, shaking his head, a look of incredulity on his face. “No, you listen, Remus. What
the fuck were you thinking?!”

“We figured out what the ring was,” Remus said. “And we figured out how to destroy it, and this
was our only chance–”

“It was not your only chance,” Sirius said. “We could’ve found another way.”

Remus shook his head. “There wasn’t another way. We had to– we had everything planned–”

“Evidently, you didn’t,” he sneered, mockingly. “You didn’t even consult a witch.”

“We did.”

“You could’ve been wrong!”

“But we weren’t,” Remus whispered, sensing the words between the lines. “Were we?”

Sirius was silent for a moment.

“You weren’t,” he affirmed, and Remus felt a miniscule amount of the weight on his shoulders lift.
“But that doesn’t make this worth it.”

“Sirius, we can destroy them, now,” Remus said, in what was almost a plea; he took a step forward.
A twig underneath his foot snapped. “His source of power. His source– his fucking soul. There are
two ways to destroy them and only one of them was viable and we have it; don’t you see how
brilliant this is for the future–”

“Remus,” Sirius said, slowly. His face was ice. “I don’t think you understand the severity of what
you did.”

“I–”

“You–” Sirius parrotted, “broke into a government building. That’s what you did. And then what–
you stole from them. You fucking beat half of them up; bombed them, if the news is right? Got us
on a watchlist. Smeared your scent up the entire East Coast. Endangered not only yourself and
Dorcas but Percy–one of mine–and in consequence everyone living here. What else?” He looked
over Remus’ shoulder, at the car, and threw a hand out in a vicious gesture. “Led a rental car right
back to us, visible license plate– along with whoever the hell is bleeding; I could smell them from
miles away, so there’s no doubt any of Riddle’s minions in the vicinity can too.”

Remus swallowed, throat burning, chest swirling and Sirius groaned, rubbing a harsh hand over his
face and dropping them like they were made of lead.

“You have literally endangered this entire operation,” he said, lower. And then his face screwed
up, ball of his palm to his head, and when he dropped it it was softer and yet somehow even more
seething. “I mean, Christ, Remus, Bellatrix has your fucking scent, you could’ve been killed–”

“It would’ve been worth it,” Remus whispered, and Sirius’ face darkened.

“It would not,” he said, low and dangerously. “It would not have been worth it. You can’t just
fucking run off like that.”

“What was I supposed to do?”

“Wait for me!” Sirius exploded. The birds flew out of the tree overhead. “You were supposed to
wait for me! This was supposed to be me and you!”

“What would waiting for you have achieved?” Remus asked, shaking his head. “What could you
have done?”

“Stopped you from sending yourself on a suicide mission?” Sirius spat.

Remus huffed and spread his arms out wide; gesturing vaguely to his being. It was hard to find a
point where he could stand on his own two feet between Sirius rightly berating him and feeling the
need to defend himself but he swayed a little. Stabilised. Toes curling into hot sand somewhere on
a beach far, far away from here.

“Does it look like it was a suicide mission?”

“You have no right to be snarky with me right now,” Sirius said, shaking his head.

Remus sighed. He softened his voice. “Okay, but I have the right to hold my own. Because you
can’t act like there wasn’t a massive advantage to this. It wasn’t aimless. Right? And you– you
need to stop catastrophizing and acting like there are vampires already knocking at our door. It
might not even be that bad.”

“I think I have the right to–”

“I know,” Remus breathed, “I know you do, and you can be angry with me all you want, but just
think about what we have. Think about how it felt like I had no other choice. Where else would we
get basilisk venom? Who could bend fiendfyre? It’s– this is how we win this, how we–”

“None of that matters!” Sirius screeched, pupils dilated, lips trembling with anger. “Winning
doesn’t matter! Not when you–” he faltered, swallowing viscerally. Looking into Remus’ eyes like
he was the only thing grounding him; like his rage would swallow him up like quicksand. Rage at
Remus. Rage at himself. Rage at himself for caring; weakness dripping from his tongue.

“Not now,” he whispered, shaking his head.

The world shifted on its axis. It did that a lot when Sirius looked at him.

Remus took in a shaky breath and tried to stand straight again. “Listen,” he said, squeezing his eyes
shut to try and disentangle his brain, “I know we have more problems, now, but this is just a
bump–”

“A bump,” Sirius scoffed.

“–but ultimately it’s nothing we can’t handle, right? We knew this was going to be difficult. We
accepted we’d have to fight. And the hunters know but we can handle hunters,” Remus insisted,
finding he was trying to convince himself more than anything. Finding that his hands were sort of
shaking and Sirius was looking at them and then looking at him and he wasn’t surveying the
superficial.

He saw through Remus like he was a two way mirror. Always had.

“What did you do?” he whispered. Barely even a question.

Remus gaped. “I didn’t–”

“You’re not telling me something,” Sirius said. Always the logist. “You said hunters. So. What did
you do.”

Remus shook his head, and his face crumpled. He took a breath and tried to compose himself but
the breath seemed to trigger the serum still flooding through his veins, crystal and clear and laced
with venom. His tongue moved for him.

“Dumbledore drugged me,” he whispered, brokenly, “and I told him everything. Essentially. Your
name. Marlene, James, Pandora, and our aim to take down Tom Riddle and he seemed to recognise
him but I don’t know how and he–”

“Fucking hell,” Sirius breathed, hands over his face.

“–wouldn’t let me leave and it wasn’t my fault and I think he’s somehow involved in a deeper plot
and I’m scared I’ve just given him the ammo to ruin everything and I know I’ve fucked up badly–”

“You have,” Sirius said, coldly.

“–but at the end of the day I just wanted to– save people, and this– this can save people, and we can
deal with the consequences, we always have.” He paused to take a long, overdue breath, and it
caught in his throat. He swallowed and it burned. Red, red, red flames.

And Sirius looked like he was contemplating the reason that the universe existed. The wind
threaded through his hair and the light shone on his eyes as they twinkled with budding unshed
tears. His eyes were cold and dead but his mouth was down curved and it carried so much weight
and want and sympathy and regret that Remus felt like he was either going to throw up or kiss him
and never stop.

He didn’t speak for a long time. When he did, it was preceded with a sharp exhale. As if all of the
enlightenment in the world had come crashing down on him like the sun crashing into the dark
glossy skies.

“You’re going to kill yourself,” he said, as a revelation. Shaking his head in angst. “Trying to save
the fucking world. You’re going to kill yourself and you’re going to kill everyone around you too.”
He paused, and then; “You’re going to kill me.”

Sirius looked down, mouth slightly ajar, and breathed life into Remus’ lungs with a bitter laugh as
his tears fell into the grass and bloomed before their eyes.

“It’s hilarious, actually,” he continued. He looked up at Remus and his eyes were a hurricane. They
sent melting ice trickling down Remus’ back. “How someone can have such a huge martyr
complex and at the same time be so fucking selfish.”

“I have never claimed to not have a martyr complex,” Remus replied, so, so terrifyingly calmly,
words unleashing unbridled rage into his chest. “But don’t you dare call me selfish when all I do
is–”
“Try to save a select few by fucking over the majority,” Sirius finished for him. Remus’ mouth
closed instantly. “You’ve put yourself and all of the rest of us and me–” hand to his chest, palm to
his heart, “you have put me in hot water by condemning yourself– it was irrational and reckless and
selfish, Remus.”

“And you’re a hypocrite!” Remus seethed, taking a step forward. “I know that I fucked up and I’m
going to fix it, but I’m not going to stand here and let you call me names as if I’m the only one of
us who is fucking selfish when you would let the world burn for– for–”

“You,” Sirius said. “I would let the world burn for you, Remus.”

Remus’ breath caught in his throat. His face flickered through a million different emotions; his
chest was on overdrive; and he landed back on anger or perhaps nostalgic sorrow. The familiarity
of helplessness and isolation was sweet and savoury on his tongue. Everything and nothing.

“But I have never claimed not to be selfish,” Sirius continued. His voice grated and echoed around
the pit of Remus’ chest like soundwaves hitting a crumbling tunnel wall. Back and forth and back
and forth. Over and over and over. “Not when it comes to you.”

“And there’s our problem,” Remus murmured, completely deflated. A shell of himself. “You’ll kill
yourself because you’re selfish and I’ll kill myself because I pretend that I’m not. We don’t work.
We never did.”

And they stared at each other. So different yet so similar. It was almost bitterly comedic how well
they fit; like yin and yang, like puzzle pieces and roots in the earth and birds in the sky. Ready to
kill for each other and kill each other all in one breath. To destroy themselves and let the poison
seep through their pinkies, interlocked for eight years. To give themselves more time to find the
balance that’s there; it’s there; unreachable in the abyss of a subconscious ready to self implode,
craving self-reflection. But every second that ticked by was a second of stolen time. And every
breath that was taken was a blessing and a curse. To put the world above everything and to put
everything above the world; this was their dilemma. Because Remus wanted to save the world,
damned be their two kindred souls, and Sirius wanted to let it burn and have them be the only two
souls immune to the flames.

And it was something bittersweet. Something nostalgic in the taste of coconut hands in hair and
will we ever get this right? Something unfair in the balance and the imbalance and the imprudence
behind their every move, because this dance was deadly and the both of them had known and yet
they had gone backwards. Three steps back.

(A look. A touch. A smile. That fucking smile.)

That is all it had been to unravel any sort of martyr complex they thought they could have because
the potential of whatever great fire was burning on the shores of Remus’ chest sent lightning bolts
through his nerves, and his hand would move every time. Every single time to save him. He’d
jump off a cliff and Sirius would save him. He’d give his life and Sirius would wake up and give it
right fucking back.

Selfishness in the form of altruism; it was truly a hilarious paradox. A ticking time bomb and they
had exploded; crumbling limestone and they had disintegrated; and if the blood and the gravel on
Remus’ hands were anything to go by it was ending and yet he knew he’d go right back to the start,
all Sirius had to do was ask, and he was selfish enough for that, too.

Remus would die with him but he would die without him and maybe it wasn’t him that was the
issue. Maybe they would die anyway; their fates had just been tragically intertwined like an
invisible string of two colours knotted together so tightly it was hard to know where they began and
ended. And would it be better to indulge in the dream and speed up the waking or to bathe in the
nightmare for a glorious martyrdom?

Remus didn’t know. He didn’t know.

“But you know what,” Remus hissed, bottom lip trembling. The weight of eight years and eighty
souls on his back and the fire that Sirius had kindled in his gut, unable to back down, stubbornity
incarnate. “I may pretend that I’m not selfish but I am not pretending that we’ll all make it out of
this alive, and I am not pretending that I’m above taking risks for the greater good. That’s you.
You’re the one pretending that this isn’t bigger than the both of us because you want this to stay the
same; and it can’t, Sirius–”

“Don’t you dare turn this around on me when you fucked us over here–”

“You fucked us over!” Remus yelled. Feeling tears prick at his eyes. The overwhelming feeling of
too much, too much, too much crawling up his throat like bile. “You fucked me over! I never
wanted any part of this. I never–”

The words got caught in his throat. As if someone was grabbing them, calloused fingertips, and
shoving them back down. As if there was a boulder pressing onto his windpipe. Sirius’ eyebrows
raised, though his face remained icy.

“You never what?” he probed.

Remus, hilariously and bitterly and feeling rather unhinged, began to laugh.

“I can’t say it,” he choked, laughing, two crystal tears falling onto his cheeks like a renaissance
painting. “I never wanted any part of you. That’s the end of the sentence, but I can’t say it, because
it’s not true. It's not true in the slightest because you’re all I want.”

Sirius gaped for a moment. His face was completely indecipherable. His hand twitched, as if he
wanted to extend himself but he didn’t know how.

“Remus,” he breathed, “this isn’t about us.”

“Are you still kidding yourself into thinking that?” Remus laughed. A grating sound from the
hollow of his soul. “Everything is about us. Everything I do is about us. Every breath I have taken
for the past eight fucking years has been about us.”

“And this? What about this?”

Remus exhaled and it burned. Words straining against his sandpaper throat.

“This,” he said, angrily, “was me trying to do something - anything - that wasn’t about you. And it
didn’t work. It never works.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Sirius hummed, and Remus felt about ready to explode. He saw
red and he tasted it. Crimson fucking wine.

“What, am I a fucking game to you?” he seethed, venomous, and Sirius, for the first time, looking
genuinely taken aback.

“No–”
“What does that mean, then?”

Sirius licked his lips and closed his eyes tryingly.

“It never works,” he repeated. Emphasising each word. “We always end up here, Remus. I need
you to see that! Clashing and fighting. I told you we’d end up in ruins and we’d bring everything
else down with us and– me, I’m fine with, but this I can’t do–”

“Oh my god,” Remus groaned, a strangled sound. Straight from the back of his throat and through
his teeth. Through his tears. Through Sirius’ own. “You are the worst. You’re the fucking worst.
You are a hypocrite, and you are awful, and you are terrible, Sirius Black.”

“Good,” Sirius spat.

“And I hate you,” he said, thickly, pushing forward and pressing a finger into his chest. Pushing
him back. “I hate you. You made this happen. You made me into what I am now and you wash
your hands of all of the blame like I’m something to fucking play with.”

“Hate me all you want,” Sirius whispered, tears tracking down his face, now, completely
oppositive to the words coming out of his mouth. Curling underneath his chin as if to cling onto the
hope burning between their two numb bodies.

“I cant!” Remus yelled. Staggering backwards, hand to his throat. “I can’t hate you. That’s the
worst part. That I can’t hate you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m in love with you, you fucking prick!” Remus exploded. “And that’s what I hate you
for. It is the worst thing I have ever let anyone do to me and you won’t even take the fucking
blame for it.”

There was a moment. A brief moment in which all of the air on the earth projected itself outside of
the atmosphere and no sound, no noise, no breath was taken. Remus’ mind caught up with his
throat and he brought one iron-veined crystal drugged hand to clap over his mouth. Eyes wide.

Sirius was simply staring.

His lips were very slightly parted and his eyes were glistening. His nostrils were flared and the only
movement was the tilt of his throat as he swallowed down the world instead of spitting it out all
over the both of them; because that was exactly what he had been running from, and yet Remus
pulled out the last card.

It was Sirius who was to lead them to the cliffside but Remus took the first jump.

Stubborn, stupid, stupid boy.

And all Remus could think was will you look at me now? All he could think was can you see me
now?

Can you see me like I have been seeing you? Can you feel me like I’ve been feeling you? Can we
skip the pretenses and work through our maze instead of letting it grow and wind over our feet;
around our legs and around our throats? Can you offer me this? Is it the least I am owed?

And Remus would do anything to take back the words, absorb them back into hollow bone, take
them and chew them up and spit them out somewhere into the lake and watch as they sunk, but it
wouldn’t make him mean them any less. He hadn’t known, but he had. And Sirius hadn’t known
but of course he had, and it had only amplified what was already there. The drive to push away the
one who held him the closest. Remus’ drive to mould him around his touch.

They were selfish and they were broken but they– surely they could learn not to be. Sirius had been
learning not to be. One hand in his hair, one hand on his heart. His throat. Stale lukewarm water
and stars scattered across the night sky; the seclusion of four walls and two hearts and openness
that Remus knew they could find, had to find, needed to find because this could not be their mortal
coil.

Sirius was an anagram he couldn’t seem to figure out or an incantation that got caught in the back
of his throat and lodged itself there for him to practice until it was perfect. The words were golden
and viney and sprouting flowers up and down his limbs and it would take one touch to kill them all
but Sirius would not give him that, either, and didn’t that mean something?

(He didn’t know. He didn’t know much. He’d gotten used to it.)

Sirius seemed to exhale his entire being and closed his wet eyes. He put his head in his hands and
whispered, “Why did you have to say that?” so softly that Remus almost missed it; but he didn’t.

“Because I’m on truth serum,” he replied, instantly. An imperative. The truth. It was almost
comedic that it was not the technicality but the feeling that Sirius wanted.

Remus took a deep breath.

“And I want you to remember that,” he continued. His throat burned. “When you think about what
we could’ve had, don't you dare blame my lack of wanting because it was yours. You ruined us
before we even tried. I wanted to try.”

He didn’t let Sirius reply. He turned and he got back into his car and did not pay him a second
glance. At some point Dorcas and Percy had gotten back in and he drove silently past the silhouette
in his peripheral vision, tears following the yellow brick road down his sandpaper skin, and
nobody said anything.

***

Dorcas played out her orderly duties and ended up being the one to lead the hunters to a spare room
that they could stay in for the time being. She spoke to James who called Marlene who called
Pandora and they all decided that it would be tomorrow’s problem. Sirius did not appear for this
discussion.

And Remus wanted to be left alone, but Dorcas wouldn’t have that, really.

“You didn’t even know, did you?” she murmured, after walking into his dark room at about
1:45am and perching at the end of his bed, at his feet, where he was very much not asleep. He had
been trying to ignore her but he sighed inadvertently at this.

“Please don’t,” he said, pulling the quilt over his head. He heard her sigh back.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” she whispered. “But that was unfair. That was an unfair way to
find out. Everything about this is unfair and I’m sorry it happened to you.”

He pulled the cover down from his face and squinted at her. Her features were barely present in the
light seeping in underneath the crack of the door.
“No snarky comment?” he spat. He wasn’t sure why he was being so defensive and rude and felt
immediately guilty afterwards. Dorcas seemed to know, though. She didn’t flinch.

“No,” she said, carefully. “Remus, I’m your best friend above anything else. Right? Anything.”

He took in a deep breath. And then he nodded.

“Get some sleep,” she murmured, rubbing a comforting hand over his quilted shoulder. “I texted
Dora and she said with the small amount you had the serum should wear off within eight hours
max, so you’ll be fine when you wake up.”

She got up and made her way to the door, clicking it open. He stopped her and she turned back,
golden light shining upon her face like she was being haloed by the heavens.

“Yeah?” she said after he had called her name, and Remus smiled.

“I love you,” he said. And it was the truth. The truth dripping comfortable crimson from his tongue
instead of fire red, controlled and real.

She grinned.

“I love you too,” she said, and she departed with, “Get some sleep, stupid.”

Remus was not fated to do this. Someone knocked at his door not an hour later.

He pulled the door open, bleary-eyed and staggering slightly and didn’t even have the time or the
energy to process why a gaunt-faced Sirius was standing at his door before he spoke, and of
course, what he said was wholly unpredictable and actually rather annoying.

Remus just wanted to go to bed.

“Are you okay?” Sirius said. Immediately. Remus opened his mouth and then closed it again.

“What?”

“Are you okay?” he replied, slower. The words sort of flowed through the air and absorbed into
Remus’ skin like warmth and he was– he was going to cry.

“I’m fine,” he managed, swallowing viscerally. “I’m tired. What do you want?”

Sirius gaped for a moment. He seemed unsure of what to say.

“You were drugged,” he said, simply. “That’s not– that wasn’t– your fault. At all. I wasn’t clear on
that. I was harsh.”

Remus blinked. “Okay.”

“And we can deal with hunters,” he continued. Remus brought two hands up to rub at his temples
and groaned slightly.

“Thank you for acknowledging that my being spiked with truth serum wasn’t my fault,” he said,
dropping his hands, “but– it’s late. Sirius. What do you want?”

Sirius thinned his lips. “I wanted to know if you were okay.”

Remus scoffed. He opened his arms wide, making a spectre of himself.

“I’m not,” he said. “How could I be any semblance of okay? I fucked up and you’ve berated me
enough, and now you’re just here to– what? Beat a dead horse?”

“No,” he said.

“You want us to fuck each other over some more?” he asked. Sirius screwed his face up in what
seemed like frustration and ran two vicious hands through his hair.

“Why can’t we communicate?” he muttered.

“You communicated what you wanted just fine earlier,” Remus said, “so I don’t know what the
hell you’re aiming to achieve here besides ruining it all over again–”

Sirius’ eyes flickered from his eyes, to his nose, his lips. He let out a strangled groan and strode
forward in the midst of Remus’ ranting, grabbed his face and kissed him, hard.

It effectively shut him up.

Remus let out some sort of sacred noise and dug his fingers into his hair, kissing him back
hungrily, and then used all of the willpower in his sad little bones to push himself away from
Sirius’ lips on his own and Sirius’ hands on his hips to stagger backwards. Shaking his head.

“You can’t do that,” he said, pointing. “Unless you mean it. I’m sick of the games. You can’t– I
mean, it’s one and then it’s the other and I can’t–”

“I’m sorry,” Sirius said. Moving forward and taking Remus’ face in his hands. “I’m sorry. I’m
sorry.”

“I’m sorry,” Remus breathed. “I fucked up. I should have waited.”

“You did,” Sirius agreed, “you were irresponsible and I’m still so mad at you but I shouldn’t have
been that harsh.”

“I deserve your harshness,” Remus laughed. “I want you to be angry. Your anger feels like the only
thing I’m familiar with.”

Sirius sighed. Took a deep breath, as if trying to regulate the beating of his non beating heart.
When he spoke, it sounded like he was forcing every single word out.

“I want you to be familiar with it all,” he whispered. “All of me. I just can’t–”

“I know.”

“When you do stuff like this,” he said, closing his eyes, as if it would make it easier. And it would.
Temporarily. The wind knocked against the window and he held Remus’ face in his hands so
tightly it couldn’t slip away from him even if he wanted it to. “My entire life flashes before my
eyes because I don’t care about anything except you being okay, and I can’t– the more people I
care like that about, the more chance–”

“I know,” Remus said. “I know. You don’t have to–”

“No, I do,” he said, firmly. “Because I can’t have you sitting up here thinking I’m not– I’m not in
like you are. But we’re bad for each other and I can’t change that straight away.”

“It’s not just you,” Remus said, half-deliriously, chuckling. “I have a martyr complex, apparently.”
“Saviour complex more like,” Sirius murmured. “Bad word choice.”

“Hypocrite,” Remus whispered.

“Selfish bastard,” Sirius said, knocking their foreheads together. “I don’t like you.”

“I don’t like you either.”

“But–” Sirius cut off. He licked his lips nervously. His fingers were digging into the hair on the
nape of Remus’ neck. “Whatever happens, we can handle it. Okay? Hunters and vampires.”

“I made it all more difficult,” Remus said, and Sirius sighed.

“You’ve been making my life difficult for eight years, I’m used to it,” he said. “And yet I can’t get
rid of you.”

“I gave you your chance.”

“And here I am,” Sirius said, a hint of amusement in his voice. “At your door.”

Remus felt the stupid quirk of a smile attack his lips and Sirius pushed forward, only so much so
that they stepped back, arms around each other. Remus pulled away to look at him.

“You’re not going to run away again tomorrow morning, are you?” he asked, and Sirius smirked.

“As long as you don’t.”

They were two sides of a dirty coin. Two hands pressed against glass. Metaphorical and figurative.
Ridiculous and trying.

“I’m sorry,” Remus breathed, looking away. The weight of the world and the heist and the fight
seemed to hit him all at once and it twisted the remnants of uncontrollability flooding through his
veins. Tears pricked at his eyes.

“I know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Come here. Shhh. Come here, baby.”

He held him.
 twelve
Chapter Notes

had to rewrite this chapter essentially from scratch amidst mid semester assignments
and general life-ness but here she is! it's 10k more than it was as a first draft! u are so
welcome! pat on the back for me!
sending so much love to all of u.. I may not respond to the comments in a respectable
timeframe but I love them all i cannot EXPRESS! hope you've missed my
monologuing cause I'm throwing u guys right back in there!!!! J xxxoxoxxo

(edit,april2022: minor dialogue edits made. if u spot what it was i’ll give you a cookie
xo)

An uncharacteristically bleeding sun rose over Boardwalk the next morning. The biting New York
winter seemed to be ebbing, clinging onto the prospect of Spring.

It was strangely optimistic. Spring would not come for weeks, yet it shone. And Remus–poor,
battered Remus, his blood finally his own, his memories not, his agency not–was everything
opposite of optimism.

And yet the sun shone through the windows and woke him up that morning.

It shone on Sirius.

Sirius did not run away in the morning.

This was the second time - no, third, counting the motel. He wasn’t sure how he had almost
forgotten one of the most formative experiences of his new life. It was crazy how different things
were, now. How detrimental they were in comparison to the light energy Sirius had carried on the
road - and to think, it was only a couple of weeks ago. Barely a month.

They had been weighed down with mysteries and conspiracies and fire and ash in a matter of
weeks. Their first meeting about this case, in that little coffee shop in Texas, felt like a million
years ago, now.

And Remus couldn’t articulate what it was about the concept of sleeping next to him; about the
closeness of being with him in their unconscious states. It was some sort of fucked up trust
exercise. It was longing for normality in the chaos that reigned around them. He thought, often,
about that figure of Sirius in the nightclub - about the Sirius that his brain had created, a story
flashing through his synapses within the seconds they had locked eyes. Of course, back then, that
was a fairytale. Falling asleep with Sirius in his bed - innocently, the only touch being sad mouths
and sadder eyes, hands to hands, head to collarbone - it almost grounded him to that Sirius. It was
still slightly crazy to him now that he existed in a way that could be real instead of the fairytale.

He and Sirius were everything big in the world - natural disasters seemed to reigned wherever they
stepped foot - and, as defining as it was, the softness of his peaceful features, now, bathed in
golden daylight, seemed to be required as a sort of balance.
Remus couldn’t pick out what, exactly, he felt as he looked at him. Unmoving; neither of them. As
if if he didn’t move, blink, breathe he could capture this moment - the brief moment upon waking
where the events of yesterday didn’t happen, where the fight wasn’t happening, where their lives
were not on the line. It caused a sort of confusion in his chest. He could taste residual anger. Grief
and bitterness. Want. Need. Longing and some sort of ribial connection, latticed together like the
science experiments that they fucking were.

And Sirius was more complex than he had ever imagined - more complex than he even knew, now.
He picked and chose his battles like clothing items; his own life was something trivial to him.
Remus’ seemed to be standing in its place–Remus, James, Marlene. Regulus. A closed door,
bleeding through his hinges, drops on Remus’ aching forearms last night and they would leave a
mark but it was a mark that had been expected, just as the mark on Sirius itself had - the bloodstain
smeared like thick paint across his ribs that drew him closer. Tunnel visioned him from the world.
It was– they were a heavy load.

Remus didn’t want to think about last night. Briefly. Just for a moment. He couldn’t bear it.

Looking at another angle, Remus knew that the Order was weighing him down. He was not a
natural born leader - that had, at least he assumed, been part of the reason that he had left his family
in the first place. It wasn’t a badthing. He did what he could; he had a face for every occasion.
Remus knew that now. He had had a face for the eight years they had known each other - not to
say that he wasn’t a cocky asshole, oh, how he was, but he had amplified it with Remus, and that
had been them. It had, as he had said all that time ago, been an act. Remus was pretty sure that
there were about a hundred layers of masks over the vampire at almost all times, and the fact that
he was getting closer and closer to unveiling him felt both amazing and terrifying. Painful and
beautiful.

So, he guessed, Remus sleeping beside him meant something to him too - he just wasn’t exactly
sure of what. Sirius suffered with a lot that he didn’t like to acknowledge. He carried guilt with him
everywhere he went, a constant dark cloud of suffering with an unsatisfactory ending - a temporary
fix. He was a flight risk. And Remus knew he hated the way he had gotten under his skin - he had
seen it. Inexplicable want in the early hours of the mornings turned to dust and blood in the late
hours of the night. Back and forth and back and forth. It was unfair on Remus, he couldn’t stand it,
and yet there was something–– No.

No, he would not acknowledge that. They were not his words.

And yet they were. And yet it was true. And yet it was why he was fucking here, lying beside him;
and why Sirius had not left this morning, and why they had put up, time and time again, being on
top of a mountain and at the bottom of an ocean in the blink of an eye. But there was something
about the loss of control that made Remus feel so alien in his own body. And there was something
about Sirius. He wasn’t ready.

Remus sometimes felt like he knew Sirius better than he knew himself, even though he didn’t really
know him at all. It was a paradox. Knowledge and truth was finicky in these waters, but if he knew
anything he knew that, for both of their sakes, he wouldn’t bring it up. And he knew damn well
that Sirius wouldn’t. And they would still sit with the air of acknowledgement that they were
marks, bloodstains, the spot on Lady Macbeth’s bloody hands; too intoxicating to get out,
channelling too much guilt. But it was different. Sirius could mask it behind hot and heavy
breathing and caring about Remus more than he cared about himself but they both knew it was
something far worse now. It all depended on what he chose to do with it. Remus’ sanity depended
on what he chose to do with it, because he wouldn’t let himself be trodden over and settle for less,
but he was so deeply intertwined to him that he wasn’t sure what he’d do without more.
The line they were walking on was thinner than a tightrope. Stiller than the body, yet, sleeping
beside him still.

(That point, there, is what made Remus smile slightly, lying cosy in his king sized bed. For
whatever trust lingered between them - whatever acknowledgement of weakness in that action;
sleeping together, unconscious together - felt like twenty five masks at once. An entire masquerade
ball.)

(It was complicated. Remus was quite sure they would never, ever stop being complicated, but
what wasn’tcomplicated was the glow of golden sunlight streaming on Sirius’ face and his hand,
idly beside his head, from the curtain that he forgot to close last night. What wasn’t complicated
was the brush of his soft skin against Remus’ calloused fingertips as he brushed his wrist. Traced
light circles on his palm. It was warm.)

Sirius’ eyes stayed closed but his lips contorted, and Remus knew the jig was up.

“Good morning,” he murmured, half exasperatedly half amusedly, and Sirius’ eyes opened. They
were gentle. They harboured no grief for at least a minute, and they had never been more beautiful.

“Hi,” Sirius whispered, and his eyes flickered up to where Remus’ fingers were still lying on his
skin. “Having fun?”

Remus rolled his eyes and made to move his hand away; Sirius grabbed it.

“I didn’t say move it,” he said, voice still croaky with sleep. There was a moment of hesitant
silence between them, like the air had been sucked into a vacuum, and then Sirius crawled his
fingers slowly upwards and slid them between Remus’. As if one of them would break if he moved
too fast. Remus wasn’t sure that it was him.

The silence hung heavy.

“Can do this now,” Sirius said, and his lip quirked upwards. “Not like that one time in the motel.”

It took Remus a minute.

“Oh, god,” he groaned, splaying his other hand over his face and rolling onto his back. He heard
Sirius laugh gently. “You were awake for that?”

“You really are an idiot, you know,” Sirius commented, fondly yet still feeling incredibly uncalled
for until he continued, “I’m a predator. You touch me, I wake up instantly.”

“Shut up,” Remus muttered, dropping his hand, knowing his face was red. Sirius smiled. “Why did
you just let it happen?”

“Wanted to see how far you’d go,” Sirius replied, shrugging slightly. “Not far at all, evidently. You
touched my hand then disappeared.”

Remus felt his face flush even more upon remembering his moronic realisation in the bathroom,
running the taps, and resolved to never, ever tell Sirius this. Ever.

It ran quiet, and it ran heavy.

“We need to talk about this,” Remus whispered, and Sirius nodded immediately, ruffling the
pillow.
“Now?”

“No,” Remus murmured, squeezing his hand and shaking his head. “Not now.”

“I have meetings all day, today.”

Remus smiled. “That’s okay,” he murmured, shuffling forward. Sirius reached out his other hand
and laid it gently on Remus’ shoulder. “You’re here. For now. Just… be here until you can’t
anymore.”

Something in Sirius’ eyes went dark. He took a deep breath.

“I’ll cancel all of them,” he said, resolutely and Remus grinned, exasperated.

“Go to your fucking meetings, Sirius,” he breathed, and Sirius laughed, too, moving his hand
around so that Remus’ curls caught between the cold skin of his fingers, kneading and toying.

“I’ll never go to a meeting again.”

“Shut up,” Remus said, still laughing, and leaned in to kiss him. It was chaste.

He took a deep breath. Circled his thumb on his cheek.

“I’m not asking you to drop everything for me,” Remus murmured, seriously, now. “It doesn’t
have to be all or nothing all of the time.”

Sirius was quiet for a moment, and then; “That’s all I know.”

“I know, honey,” Remus whispered. “It’s all I know too, but there’s… there’s another way. Surely
there’s a middle ground. Between all or nothing.”

Sirius thought for a moment, and then said, contemplatively, “Something.”

Remus sighed. “Something,” he repeated, in a breath. “Something.”

Not everything. Not nothing. But something.

He pushed forward, leaning slightly on his forearm, and captured Sirius’ lips with his own as the
sun glittered like dangerous possibilities on their forlorn skin; Sirius dug his hand into the back of
Remus’ head and cupped his face with the other, as if he was something precious. And then he
pulled back.

“I would, though,” he murmured, eyes wide and seeking. “Drop everything.”

“I know,” Remus said, kissing him again.

“I’d give you everything,” he whispered, against his lips. Remus smiled.

“I know.”

“I’d give you the sun if it wouldn’t burn me,” Sirius murmured. He pulled his hands around
Remus’ head to cup his face, and looked at him like he was the only speck of light in a terminally
glossy galaxy.

“You don’t have to give me anything–”

“But I need you to know that I would.”

“I know,” Remus whispered, kissing him again. Kissing his cheek, his forehead, his temple. “I
know, I know, I know.”

“And it scares me,” Sirius whispered, the words falling out of his mouth like they had tumbled out
of his trembling hands.

And it was tenderness, in the soft spring sun, and Remus had the sort of sudden realisation that he
didn’t have the gravitational urge to catch him like this. He didn’t have the urge to keep him here,
because a part of him knew that he’d come back eventually.

He smiled.

“You don’t have to do anything other than kiss me right now,” Remus murmured, and he watched
Sirius’ jaw tense, where he carried his grief. He was so close he could kiss it. He didn’t.

“I–”

“Just kiss me,” he whispered, shaking his head. Sirius thinned his lips. “Just this. Nothing more.”

Sirius ran one sad little hand through his hair and he kissed him. He just kissed him.

It was bliss.

He left about half an hour later, as the sun began to rise to her natural apex and life began to spruce
up the barren streets down below. It had been half an hour of joined peace. Half an hour’s escape.

He stopped at the door, and turned.

His eyes looked like the sky and his face was carved like the moon; he was so fucking beautiful
that Remus could feel the phantom paper of his skin on the buds of his fingertips for how
desperately he wanted to cup his face and never let him go.

“I’m sorry,” he said, simply.

“I know,” Remus said, because if he were to say it was okay it would be a lie, because nothing
really was. “I’m also sorry.”

“I know,” Sirius replied, and if he were to say it was okay it would be a lie, too, because nothing
about this was to him, and yet there was no other way to live.

He jolted, slightly, as if he was about to go but something like hesitance had tugged him bodily
back to this space, and then he strode forward once, reached out for Remus’ face and kissed his
forehead, firmly. Remus wrapped his arms around Sirius’ waist and let his head dip for as long as
Sirius wanted them there and they could be statues; captured in this moment forevermore.

He pulled back, swiped his thumbs roughly over his cheeks, and left.

***

The day was mellow. It always was after a mission. Sirius was ushering people in and out like it
was nobody’s business, shooting Remus sly smiles, his hair brushed and his clothes ironed;
parading himself around as Vampire Sirius Black, no semblance of the sweet creature in Remus’
bed under the morning gleam to be seen.
He called what was rapidly becoming a sort of inner circle of him, James, Marlene, Dorcas and
Pandora into a kempt study on the second floor at around midday to discuss the game plan. Really,
it was a meeting for Sirius to hold but for Pandora to lead; the witches had whispered and the cogs
were grinding, like a production line, pulling piece after piece of magical lore together to find a
way to imbue the newly-acquired basilisk venom into weaponry. The detailing was mainly for
Dorcas and Remus, who were, of course, very familiar with daggers and knives and such; it was
over rather soon with the promise of updates, and Dorcas and James (dangerous, dangerous pair)
left at 1 for a routine sweep, taking the two new hunters with them before Remus even got to see
them, whilst Sirius kept Marlene in for an extra hour and then brought Andromeda in for an hour
and a half.

Remus, on the other hand, was cornered by Lily in the hallway.

“Lupin!” she called, skirting past a pair of witches and around an end table to get to him.

“Hi, Lils.”

“God, I haven’t seen you since you left yesterday,” she said, approaching him. “And then you get
whisked away by vampires. I only just found out what actually happened from Benjy and Gid.”

He pulled her in, tightly; she was only up to his shoulder, and her forehead pressed onto the open
skin of his neck, where his shirt pulled down under her weight. He frowned.

“Are you okay?” he asked, pulling her off him and putting a hand on her forehead. “Lily, you’re
burning up. Are you sick?”

“I’m always warm.”

“You’re warmer.”

She jerked her head away from his hand and shrugged. “I’ve been sitting in front of the fire for like
two hours. Stop making this about me, I was so worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” he said. “You’ve seen the other two; we’re fine, aren’t we? Got the goods.” He flashed
her a smile that she did not appreciate.

“You’re lucky you’re good at what you do,” she muttered, “It was worth it, I guess, but it was so
scary seeing them talk about you on the news, under the guise of some sort of… renegade terror
attack on HI2.”

Remus grimaced. “It was that bad?”

“Well, not bad enough for them to track you down here, apparently,” she remarked, beginning to
walk casually with him to god-knows-where. “But if the past five years has taught me anything, it’s
the fact that something will always have the one-up on humans.”

“By something, you mean Pandora.”

“Of course I mean Pandora. Girl’s a fuckin’ genius.”

Remus chuckled, and Lily turned to look at him, squinting, with intent.

He raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Are you doing anything right now?”

He craned his neck to check the clock at the end of the hall; for what reason, he wasn’t even
entirely sure. He was rather aimless for the day, actually. “No.”

She rocked on her heels, once, and then cheesed up at him. “Do you want to go outside and spar
for a little bit? Isabela’s busy; she’s upstairs, doing god-knows-what with Oliver–”

“Oh, Christ, that’s not a safe mix.”

“–and I’m bored and have too much energy to be cooped up in this stupid house anymore,” she
sighed, running her hands through her hair and flicking it over her shoulders. “I can’t believe I’m
stuck here indefinitely.”

“If it makes you feel better, I guess I am too, now,” he remarked, and some realisation seemed to
befall her.

“Oh my god,” she laughed, turning to him. “We’re both fugitives, now.”

“Lily,” Remus said, slowly, “you didn’t actually commit murder, remember?”

“The law thinks I did, same difference,” she shrugged. They were walking, casually towards the
back door; he hadn’t even said yes, but he supposed he would never say no. She was gesturing
outwardly. “We’re vigilantes! Oh, I love that word.”

“I should’ve known that out of everybody I knew you would be the one to go to jail first,” Remus
remarked, picking up on her dark humour; Lily gasped and shoved him.

“Rude.”

“Maybe, but wrong? No.”

She laughed, and linked her arm with his as they walked out into the crisp, dwindling air. There
were two girls sitting beside the lake and a witch drawing some sort of rune into a tree and then
erasing it periodically, but besides that, no one. The skies had turned cloudy but it was still bright
and willing, and they went a few moments without speaking, attuned to the soft mulch underneath
their feet, before Remus opened his mouth again.

“I know you weren’t close with her,” he murmured, and he saw her swallow. “But you know you
can always talk to me, right, Lil? I know that being thrown into all of this was incredibly…
unprecedented.”

“My effective immediate resignation to the Brooklyn Presbyterian was definitely unprecedented,”
she replied, predictably unable to refrain from the joke - any joke - and then she nodded. Cleared
her throat, awkwardly. “But– thank you. I’ve been… coping, but it’s always nice to have an ear.
The vampires aren’t exactly the most therapeutic. Besides Marlene, I guess; she’s amazing.”

“And James?”

Lily turned to raise her eyebrows at him, and then burst out laughing. “He’s wilful enough for all of
them twice over. He keeps knocking on my door to check on me. Like, three times a day. He keeps
interrupting my reading. I’m just trying to get through Emma.”

Remus hummed. “Well, that’s kind of him. The thought.”

Lily took a breath, and turned to look out over the lake, of which they were now within mere feet
of the bay, and frowned sort of indecisively.
“His heart’s in the right place,” she settled on, and Remus thought that was fair - Remus thought
that was something.

In preparation for the afternoon’s events, and because Remus was feeling quite mischievous and
light; uplifted, perhaps, being around Lily, as he always did and always would; he gave them a
moment of tranquility. And then he snuck up on her.

It was a mistake.

He grabbed her shoulder with his left hand, intending to turn her around and attempt a punch (that
he wouldn’t hit - simply to examine her reflexes) but he got his wish and truckloads more, as she
turned in mimic of a leaf being spun around majestically by an unseasonable autumnal breeze and
grabbed onto his wrist with her heated hand and pulled it off her shoulder. Remus’ mouth opened,
intent on saying something, but he didn’t get far enough before she wrenched his wrist backwards
so that it actually began to hurt outside of the warmth from her palms sending prickles up and
down his back, and then she kneed him straight into the crotch. All within two - maybe three -
seconds.

He fell to his knees, and she let him go.

“Unfair,” he choked out, clenching his fists and attempting to recover. He keeled over, rested his
forehead onto his knees, and raised his right forearm to flip her the bird. “Unfair.”

“Absolutely not unfair. You think vampires will avoid your balls out of common courtesy?”

He (slowly) straightened up, jaw still dropped with what felt like mostly shock but a bit of being
genuinely impressed, and looked up at her. She was very obviously fighting a laugh.

“Fuck you.”

“Hey, okay, peace offering,” she started, raising her hands in surrender,, “I have really sensitive
nipples. You can have a stab at them if you want. They’re very often disregarded, to be honest, but
that shit hurts like a mother–”

“Yeah, okay.”

“–fuuuu––Remus, hey, we’re vigilantes in petty thievery, okay, no stooping to murde– put your
dagger away right now or so help me God–”

***

Lily spun his jaw so badly he had to go to Poppy the resident medi-witch for a salve, but he made
her spit blood as red as her hair and blocked her at least thrice as much as she blocked him, so it
was not a wholly uneventful or uninteresting afternoon out there by the lake.

(The two young girls even came to watch from a safe distance; one of them had brilliant bleach-
blonde coily hair to match her sun-soaked smile and the other linked her arm and mimed moves for
Remus to do from over Lily’s shoulder, the sun gleaming over her tawny brown skin, and once -
only one time - did Remus actually take her advice. She grinned a storm and jumped up and down
and he didn’t even get their names before they were called to leave, but the audience was
appreciated.)

Poppy was a kind-yet-exasperated-faced woman of perhaps fifty, and she had made a makeshift
office up the stairs and down the left corridor. Remus went there to nab a salve from her to find Jul
spinning round and round on a chair, which was a lovely intrusion to his day, if perhaps not a
lovely intrusion to Poppy’s, and he left with them in tow to go find company and was almost
certain he heard a sigh of relief from Poppy; was also almost certain that that relief would not last
long. Regardless, they ran into Isabela (Jul’s centrefold, at any point, apparently) who had a
conspicuous amount of blood on her collar that she swore down and out was a squirrel. Watching
them go upstairs together had Remus feeling quite insane for a multitude of reasons, because that
was definitely not squirrel blood, and he didn’t really care.

Dinner was a two person event - the two people being him and Lily, for they had been outside too
long and had to microwave the pasta that, apparently, Ted Tonks had cooked for everyone whilst
Andromeda and Sirius were upstate for the remainder of the day (a surprise to Remus) on call to
Miyuki Greengrass, currently in Utica, trailing her beloved cousins up route 12. Dinner led to
calling Dorcas and finding out she was on her way back from a Brooklyn patrol with Susan Bones
and that led to meeting her in the doorway and trying to walk three people with three mugs of tea
through a door made for one; a door leading to a room that had, apparently, been sieged by
humans.

“Evening!” Benjy Fenwick grinned back at them, raising the bottle of beer he was drinking. “Nice
of you to finally show your face.”

“His bruised face,” Lily remarked, skipping through the little gap between armchairs to sit on an
ottoman in front of the fire. Gideon held out a hand unconsciously and she high-fived him. It was a
very close sentiment for two people that had met not twelve hours ago, but Remus supposed that
was just what Lily did - made you feel like you’d known her for your whole entire life.

“Hi,” Remus said nervously, falling into an empty seat beside Gideon on the sofa. “Dorcas caught
you both up, then?”

“Yep,” Gideon said, lounging back onto the sofa with his arms outstretched on the back. He looked
up and around the room, as if he was still absorbing it. “Christ. Trust you to get yourself into this
kind of bollocks, Remus.”

“Trust me.”

“I guess we’re stuck here now, huh?”

Remus sighed. “I guess.”

Gideon made a sort of fair-enough face, leaning over to pick up a strange little gold ornament on
the coffee table. “At least it’s hospitable.”

In one way, Remus thought, eyeing the door and noting that there were definitely at least twenty
people on the grounds right now and none of them were coming close to this room.

“They were thinking,” Dorcas said to him, flipping her beaded braids over her shoulders, “of
bringing Fabian and Caradoc over. Roping them in. People closest to them, you know; then maybe
branching out. People we’re not so close to might listen if there’s more of us to speak for them.”

“Isn’t Caradoc on a werewolf case?” Remus asked, and Benjy grunted.

“Yeah,” he said, “But they’ve got most of ‘em - just trying to track down one rogue, I believe - and,
besides, he doesn’t even have any obligation to Dumbledore, he’s just a helping hand. And I feel
like this is a bit more important.”

Remus nodded.
“And Fab isn’t doing anything,” Gideon said. “He and Ben were on a case in Louisiana–”

“Oh, yeah, he knows,” Benjy interjected. “Went and visited these two when we finished. Had a
nice little weekend, didn’t we?”

“Oh,” Gideon said. His eyes moved to Remus. “Fabian didn’t mention.”

Remus thanked all of the gods for the firelight to disguise his red face.

“Mmm,” he said from behind his mug. Dorcas snickered slightly, and he wanted to slap her. He
was not about to be outed for sleeping with this man’s twin brother. “Yeah, had a fun time. Haven’t
seen ‘em since. He’s not up to much, then?”

Gideon shook his head. “Some work for Minerva. Processing work, mostly; job at HQ. He was
trying to get back into the field, though - he gets all antsy, you know - so I’m sure he’d take this.”
He paused, looking down. “And… well, I’m sure he’d love to see Perce.”

There was an uncomfortable silence.

“Have you spoken to him much?” Remus asked. Gideon shook his head.

“He’s ignoring me, I think,” he muttered, laughing bitterly. “I don’t hold it against him. Wouldn’t
blame him for not trusting me again, never mind his actual family.”

Dorcas shook her head. “Something’s fishy about that whole situation, you know,” she said,
quietly.

They all looked at her. Remus raised an eyebrow.

“What do you mean?”

“I just,” she started, eyes flickering over all of them, “Does Charlie Weasley seem like the kind of
person to be okay with something like that? He bloody breeds dragons, for fucks sake. And Bill?
Isn’t he, like, twenty five percent werewolf or something?”

And, honestly, Remus had never thought about it like that. He knew the Weasley boys - of course,
he knew their uncles a lot better, but regardless, he knew them - and he hadn’t even taken into
account Bill’s lycanthropic gene, even despite the amount of gene-splicing experiments that had
gone on in dark corners of HQ he was privy to four years ago; when it happened, Remus had been
on a three month home-based research job for Moody. They seemed like a picture perfect family,
but he supposed all families did from the outside. Remus’ family had.

“I don’t know,” Gideon said, sounding utterly exhausted. “I never would’ve thought Moll would
do something like that, but– I mean, I haven’t really thought it through. This changes so much.
And she mourned him awfully, you know? I feel terrible that I know he’s… well, he’s here, and
that she doesn’t.”

Dorcas frowned. “I’m sorry, Gid. You…understand why we’re asking you not to tell, though,
right?”

He sniffed and nodded. “‘Course. This case is fucking insane. Feels like an underground war that
no one really knows is happening that I’ve just somehow got roped into.”

Lily let out a dry laugh. “You can say that again.”
“Have you heard anything from the bureau?” Remus asked, and Benjy grimaced.

“Kinda,” he said. “A couple calls from the landline, except it doesn’t seem to be going through. I
think the wards of this place are messing it up.”

“Yeah,” Lily said gently. “It’s the principle. Pandora was telling me about it. Communication
inwards without good intent automatically gets skewed. The magic just… knows.”

Benjy nodded in acknowledgement and settled back. No one had any objections to HQ having
corruption laced through it, now, dangling in their faces like the nail-stabbed stalk of a rotting
daisy chain. It was something hard to unlearn made easy, by fuzzy phonecalls and crumbling,
rotted fingertips. Remus felt slightly sick thinking about them curling around his arm. His arm that
had not been his own.

They were quiet for a few moments.

“Can I ask…” Gideon said tentatively. Remus nodded, indicating for him to go on. “What we did
yesterday - what you guys went to get - I know we’re not in the know of why, or what you’re
gonna do with it. But… just tell me it’s something good. Something that can stop these vampires.”

Remus swallowed, and made eye contact with Dorcas. She smiled tightly.

“It is,” she said. “I promise.”

He smiled, and Benjy sipped on his beer, and the crackling of the fire echoed breaking twigs and
controlled destruction.

***

Remus was applying the salve onto his jaw when there was a tight knock at his door.

It was approaching midnight. Perhaps surpassing it. He had stayed in the living room with the
guys, Dorcas and Lily for a good hour or two, catching up, and then when 10pm had hit Dorcas had
dragged his trailing legs out to ‘sweep the area’, which, on Marlene’s orders, was a bi-hourly
sweep to catch trails or find any potential lurkers.

But on Dorcas’ orders? It was an excuse to drag Remus out into the middle of nowhere, stick her
hand into his chest and extract all of his deepest secrets that he would only tell her.

Okay, he succumbed to the dramatics. Sue him. She brought him out in the cold to a scenic little
dirt road leading into the foreign lights of the town and managed to squeeze every little thing that
happened between him and Sirius out, chronologically, start to finish; the rusted hardbacks of the
Hotel Transylvania library to the soft glitter of a gentle hurricane in Remus’ bed in the morning,
kiss goodbye, kiss goodnight. Dorcas Meadowes was not particularly a gossip-y person, but Remus
was Remus; she basically had claim over half of his limbs and 25% of his organs. They wouldn’t
be running if it weren’t for her.

It was hauntingly dark by the time they made it back. The slight pressure of passing through the
electromagnetic, majorly invisible warding made Remus’ ears pop, and the first thing Dorcas did
on safe grounds was nudge him with her shoulder and mutter something incomprehensible.

“What?”

“Can’t believe we’re kissing vampires, now,” she muttered, louder; half embarrassed, half jokingly
scornful. The ‘we’ felt personal. “What would Moody say?”
“He wouldn’t say anything. He’d raise his trusty Berretta and have at our skulls.”

Dorcas laughed, and then she fell quiet.

“You really think so?” she said, softly, after a moment. Remus shrugged. Turned to her.

“You did, didn’t you?”

Dorcas huffed, remembering that day. The barrel pointed out and the barrel stared down. “Well, I
wouldn’t have gone through with it.”

“That’s because you are my family. Moody is not my family. He’s my mentor and we have a sort
of fatherly relationship for the sole reason that my dad left and I craved the validation. He didn’t
give a fuck.”

She laughed again. “I think he liked you more than you’re capable of acknowledging, you know.
He’d barely punish you for things he’d have mine and Mary’s guts for garters. You bathe in
Moody privilege.”

“Moody privilege does not match up to Moody’s hatred for vampires. He’d have me wrangled and
then Sirius dead, too.”

They were quiet, for a moment.

“Not Sirius,” said Dorcas.

“Not Sirius,” agreed Remus. “That guy won’t fucking die. I would know.”

“Mmm,” Dorcas hummed, linking her arm into his. “Don’t act like you’re not glad about it.”

“What’s that ‘we’ about, then?”

It was a true testament to his and Dorcas’ parallel wavelength that she knew exactly what he meant
even with such a harsh subject backtrack.

“Shut up.”

“You acknowledging that that happened, now?”

“And it will never happen again,” Dorcas said in the sweetest threatening tone he had ever
encountered.

Remus groaned and pulled her closer; she staggered, slightly, yelp drowned out by the hoot of an
owl. They were walking up the pathway, now, faces lit up by the beams of outdoor lighting. It felt
peaceful, and he felt love, clinging onto her upper arm. He loved her a lot.

“She’s lovely, though,” he offered, knowing she was rolling her eyes without even having to look
at her face. “Marlene. She’s good.”

Dorcas sighed, pursing her lips in contemplation, and then said, “Her heart is in the right place.”

Remus gaped for a moment, lips quirking up in the knowledge of where he had heard that phrase
uttered before today. She turned to him, scoffed and rolled her eyes.

“You’re such a vampire kiss-arse, now, Remus,” she laughed. “There is no way that Sirius Black is
that good at head.”
“I am, actually,” came an earthy voice from behind them; they both wheeled around, in the
business long enough for earth-shattering reflexes and the ability to hold back a yelp.

And sure enough. The cunt himself.

“How are you always everywhere?!” Dorcas groaned, shrill and irritated. Sirius stepped further into
the light and grinned.

“This is my house, let’s not forget,” Sirius said, walking further into the light. He was wearing a
white button-up and a black blazer. There was blood on his collar. There was never not blood on
his collar.

Dorcas blinked. Irritably.

“I hate you,” she said, and Sirius flashed a goldmine smile.

“Well, I love you,” he replied, preening. His eyes flickered over to Remus, whose stomach tensed
with something mimicking terror, and adoration.

He hopped up the three steps onto the porch and smiled at the both of them. Dorcas made a,
frankly, very childish mimic-y face at him and he stuck his tongue out at her.

“Are you gonna move?” he asked her, and she did. He took one last look at Remus, smiled to the
ground and then walked through the front door. He didn’t slam the door, so Dorcas took it upon
herself to do it, even though they were still on the outside.

“Bloody hate that guy,” she said. “I forgot how much I hated that guy. You like him too much. It’s
rubbing off on me. Stop it.”

Remus grinned. “I don’t think so.”

“Stop it. Stop liking vampires. You’re wounding me, Remus, you’re murdering me in cold blood–”

“I’m not doing anything!”

“You’re getting your dick sucked by a fucking pillock, that’s what you’re doing–”

“I’m never living down telling you that, am I? What about Marlene’s big heart, huh?”

Dorcas’ face relaxed completely and she fell into utter silence. Remus bit his lip to stop himself
from laughing.

“Do not,” she said, voice wavering, and it was all so stupidly comedic he was drawing blood,
“mention her big heart to me, Remus.”

Remus burst out laughing. Full, unabated cackling.

“When you know I’m fragile––” she was saying under the guise of being upset but her shoulders
were heaving, too, and oh, god, it was all so very ridiculously absurd.

He slung an arm around her shoulder and pulled her through the threshold, and she muttered
“Vampires are going to be the fucking death of us,” and Remus thought that was about right,
actually.

That was two hours ago. The tale of this story took a turn, but the roots lingered and at the core
was that knock on his door while Remus was applying the salve to his face, for it was a knock that
had extensive possibilities behind it, and yet only one he knew he was going to have to entertain.

He blinked, watching the green aloe vera-like paste absorb into his skin as if timelapsed - magic,
man - and then cleared his throat, hopped over a pair of shoes and made his way to the door, pot
still in hand. He grabbed onto the handle, and he opened it.

He didn’t even make it halfway open before Sirius was pushing forward and kissing him.

It was deep and tender and passionate and so, so sudden, that he dropped the little glass jar of salve.
It broke into three large pieces and splattered green paste everywhere.

His hands were in Sirius’ hair before he even registered them being there.

Remus pulled back, tearing his mouth away and it felt like the loss of a limb, regrown when Sirius
smiled, pressed his forehead against his own, and murmured, “Hi.”

“Hi,” said Remus, absolutely bewildered; mouth open, lips upturned. He leaned back a little to see
him in full perspective. “What the hell is this for?”

“Pandora sent me upstairs to tell you that there’s a meeting at nine tomorrow morning.”

“And when were you planning on taking your tongue out of my mouth and actually telling me
that?”

Sirius shrugged. “In twenty minutes, maybe?”

“You’re ambitious.”

“You’re beautiful,” Sirius murmured, and Remus just about felt his insides melt.

“Oh my god,” he choked, feigning disgust, unsure of how else to deal with him, “You’re just– just
a huge headache.”

“Flattering.”

“Following me around–”

“Like a puppy.”

“I hate you.”

“Mmmm,” Sirius leaned in again, kissing him, hands trailing up and around his neck.

Remus pulled back first.

“Are we–” he cleared his throat, nose to nose, holding him so close that if it were to be any closer
he might just absorb the whims of Sirius Black into his bloodstream and be better for it, “Are we
supposed to talk about this?”

“Mhm,” Sirius said, nodding. Remus was just glad for the confirmation. He didn’t want to fall
down a helter skelter slide anymore. The spiral was beginning to make him nauseous. “But I was in
and out of meetings with stupid Order members and spies and on the phone to people on missions
and up and down the fucking state and not here, with you, today, because of this stupid,
inconsiderate war.”

“How rude of the war,” Remus muttered.

“Absolutely appalling, isn’t it?” he replied, voice clear, throat clear, “and, so, I didn’t get to talk to
you outside of shit like whether the basilisk blade should be a fucking poignard or a Scottish dirk–”

“I still think the poignard would be an easier hold––”

“Oh shut up, you beautiful bastard,” he breathed, continuing, “this is my recompense. This is me,
not running away.”

Remus squinted at him. Looked him up and down.

“You’re oddly optimistic,” he said. (Oddly open, he supposed). “Why?”

Sirius grinned, not even arguing against the implication of his abject pessimism. “Okay, listen,
you’re not gonna like this–”

“Like what.”

“But I drained a guy in Utica, but it’s fine ‘cause I made sure he got to a hospital before he bled out
entirely–”

“Sirius.”

“And now,” he breathed, leaning in to press his forehead against Remus’, “I feel rejuvenated and I
absolutely could not stop thinking about you all day, it was horrendous, really.”

“I bet it was.”

“And I can’t stop thinking about–” his breath hitched, and Remus could practically see the clouds
engulf his visage, but he was doing so well and so he pressed a kiss to his lips and pulled the words
out of him like they were attached to a red string around his heart, “–what you said. The last thing
you said.”

Remus swallowed, hard. “The last thing I said…”

“It’s not my lack of wanting,” he breathed, shaking his head. “God, do I want. I want, I want to be
your– vampire boyfriend and have that be that, but neither of us are made for simplicity. But what
we have– what we do have isn’t less real because it’s not conventional. And I’m still just as crazy
about you. So, so much so that I don’t know what to do except push you away and then
desperately, chronically want you back when you leave. You’re… you’re just––”

“I’m under your skin,” whispered Remus.

“I think I’m getting used to you being there,” Sirius breathed back, shards and splinters. They dug
themselves into Remus’ bones and solidified there like cement. A dull, cathartic, joyous ache. “I
don’t know what you did,” he continued, choking a stupid, disbelieving laugh, “I’m helpless. I’m
— terrified. You menace. You absolute menace, look at what you did to me.”

Look at what you made me. Look at what we have become. They coated the blame over their
shaking fingers and Remus wouldn’t share it for the world. Hands trailing up and down his sides
and shallow breaths on his cheek. An open door.

“Ask me,” Sirius breathed, after a moment of silence. His eyes were something manic. “Ask me
what you did. Ask me what you are. Please.”

“What did I do?” Remus asked.

”Everything.”

“What am I?” Remus whispered, feeling it but not hearing it. Holding the noncorporeal mist in his
playground until the winter came to freeze it up again; Sirius’ cold, cold lips opened.

“Everything,” he repeated, as if it was obvious. “Everything I see. Always. Everything out of reach
and this thing,” cupping Remus’ face, “between my two, stupid hands,” a shaky breath in, “you’re
my pretty boy.”

He exhaled, taking a break from speaking but Remus was drinking his words up and they were all
and everything.

“You’re mine,” he said. Firmer than anything. “And I thought long and hard about you, all blasted
day long and all horrific night by, and I know I’ll just continue to think about you all blasted day
long and all horrific night by regardless of whether we try or not so we might as well. We might as
fucking well.”

Remus blinked, gaping, leaning back so he could look at Sirius properly. “What are you– I mean,
what are you saying—?”

“I don’t know,” Sirius replied, laughing; and Remus was laughing, and they were laughing. “I
don’t fucking know. Whatever the hell you want me to be saying. I’m all yours. I can’t not be,
even though you make me want to pull my teeth out one by one and stick my fist in a pot of molten
lava.”

“Romantic.”

“Some people say I’m a charmer,” Sirius schmoozed, and Remus rolled his eyes and felt like he
never wanted to leave this moment again.

His face fell into something more solemn and he bled authenticity like he’d never spoken it before.
An owl hooted outside and it was an echo of lost and found, and words tended to fail Remus
spectacularly. Sirius knew this. He led and he leads even if he doesn’t want to. Bravery and
cowardice in one breath.

“As it turns out,” he murmured, lower now, “I have succumbed to the curse of underestimating
Remus Lupin, and for that I am sorry.”

Remus frowned. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“You’re brilliant,” Sirius breathed. “You are a brilliant, brilliant man, do you know that? And I
cope via the knowledge that my brother is practically indestructible and James isn’t fucking going
anywhere and Marlene is a force to be absolutely reckoned with but you, you— you’re like this
little thing that I could never catch. You disappeared into the shadows like you became something
noncorporeal and I guess my brain still thinks that one day you’ll vanish. And then– then you
break into a government building or kill a pureblood and act like you’re so important that the world
would stop spinning without you and I’ve come to realise that I think my world would.”

“Sirius–”

“The thought of having you makes me spiral but the thought of losing you—?” said Sirius, and it
seemed as if he was forcing every word out at the speed of light— “I think I’d go crazy. A whole
whirlpool. I’d kill everyone I lay eyes on for you.” —as if if he paused, the moment would shatter
like cool glass and sink, anchored to the darkness that chased him with a raucous eye, a red soul
and a cinquedea.
“But I don’t want you to do that,” Remus emphasised.

“I know,” Sirius said, shaking his head, “I know, and so I won’t. I won’t. That’s what you are.
That’s what you do. All you are is power,” swallowing, confessing, “And so there’s really no point
in me pushing you away when you’re just going to boomerang back to me with twice the force. I’d
rather stand by your side and watch you tear through mountains than sit idly ten feet behind,
knowing what I could have had. I think it would ruin me.” He took a breath. “I think you already
have.”

Remus gasped a shaky breath. He couldn’t open his mouth for fear that he was going to cry, but
those words. Oh, those words.

“We’ll burn together,” Remus whispered, feeling that was the best he could do; clinging to Sirius
like a lifeline, holding him like a cradle.

He pushed in to nod their foreheads back together again, feeling like it was the best place to be,
perpetually; here, this moment. This small space. These entangled breaths. These entangled lives.
These violent delights.

“There’s no going back,” Sirius breathed, and it felt like he was giving everything to Remus with
that one breath. His essence, his spirit. His vulnerability and his heart. In the palm of one calloused
hand. “I know. I know. I can’t promise perfection. I don’t know how to handle you. Still. But it
feels— it feels earth-shatteringly important that I keep you here.”

Remus bit on the inside of his lip. Willing his eyes to stop prickling. Sirius smiled, and it was
helpless.

“God–” he whispered, stroking a thumb over his cheek, “how could I ever let you go?”

Remus shook his head, planted his hands firmly on the sides of Sirius’ face and kissed him. There
was a sort of melancholy there that had never been there before. It was almost calm; no minds
buzzing, telekinetic and electromagnetic wavelengths ringing feedback into Remus’ ears like the
shrill sound of an alarm, red and blaring; this was pretty. Pastel. Perfect, lukewarm hands to
lukewarm skin. He wanted to memorise every cell on Sirius’ body. He wanted to count his pretty
eyelashes. He wanted to kiss him like this because no words could describe it. It was like salvation
on a battlefield. Remus Lupin did not know innocence but if he tried hard enough he could taste it;
he was a million things unspoken and Sirius was a million things unleashed.

“You— you–” he gasped, pulling back enough to speak. His hands were on Sirius’ chest and he
grinned, holding his wrists there in the small space that liaisons lingered.

“Mmm?”

Remus gaped for a moment, trying to find the words and falling too hard to grab any of them,
frustration bubbling at the back of his throat.

“I can’t articulate the things you make me feel,” he settled on, and Sirius smiled.

“You don’t have to,” he murmured, holding him and holding him. “Just kiss me. You don’t have to
do anything more.”

He just kissed him, and more was not most, it was just more. He just kissed him and it was a soul
for a soul. He just kissed him.

And what was unsaid: you burn and I dampen and you scream and I mourn and we’ll simmer
together, too. Down to an earthy, crisp, cadaverous bone, nestled into ash, taken by the wind.
Wherever you go. Wherever I go.

And what was unsaid: I won’t be perfect immediately, but I’ll try. I’ll try. I’ll try until I fail and
then I’ll try again, because we have time. We can make time. We can steal time. We can get high
on it, if you want. Life’s too short. Entirely too delicate.

And what was unsaid: we’ve been heading this place a while, love. And it won’t be easy, but the
road not taken is too calamitous to even consider. The walls can collapse around us and I will
protect you with my last breath and then some. You’ll kill me and I’ll smile; it’s okay. It’s okay.

And what was unsaid: I love you. Down to the fucking bone.

***

It is safe to say that Remus was quite bewildered when he woke up the next morning.

He woke up feeling light. Like the world was within his guiding palm - like gravity did not hold
him back but held him up. It felt strange to wake up to the sun that rose every day and the ceiling
that did not change when he felt, inherently, changed. Changed and alone.

Slightly alone.

Sirius had slept in his bed again, but he was not there in the morning. What was there, however,
was a glass of water on his bedside table, and a new, unbroken pot of the green salve from Poppy.

Remus wanted to suffocate himself with his pillow.

A part of him - it - didn’t feel real. He couldn’t exactly pinpoint it but something had shifted last
night. Some sort of understanding; some sort of climax, cataclysmic. Some sort of denouement
inbound twist that signalled the end of a tragic play, martyred hero and his murdered mistress
except they were both the martyred hero and their story had only opened onto the first page.

It was such a strange paradox that Remus almost felt like his life should end. Like it could, now.
Like the war should not exist when Sirius Black made him feel the way that he did. He felt like this
war, here, storm rumbling through his bedroom, a wisp in and out of his bedsheets and on his
hands and his lips and all over him should be all that mattered. Because somehow it was and yet it
wasn’t. It was everything and it was nothing. He had kissed Sirius until his eyes had drooped and
closed and not opened, exhausted from giving all he had and Sirius had cradled his frame and
brushed through his hair and they had settled in the mitigated fumes, and the world should have
caved in upon them. Fireworks like that don’t fucking match. Gasoline and sweet, sweet mercy are
a concoction to end in so close but so far heartache.

But it wasn’t. Remus was awake and there was an unbroken pot on his bedside table. Remus was
awake and Dorcas was at his door, reminding him of the meeting, and he got up and went on, still
in a haze. A bloody circus. He projected forth.

The house was eerily quiet as he made his way down the staircase. Dorcas pushed open the kitchen
door first, and Remus went in after her - he was surprised, but also not at all surprised, to see a
substantial amount of people missing.

Hannah Abbott and the twins, Mariana and Eduardo, were still missing, and so were the younger
quartet; Isabela, Percy, Oliver and Astoria were not present. Frank and Alice were gone too - which
was confusing, as Remus was sure they had gotten back from a mission only last night.
Of the witches present there only stood Pandora, Poppy, two strangers, a young man with long,
white hair that Remus had seen in passing once or twice but did not know the name of and a young,
kind-faced woman with short, dirty blonde hair that Remus was about 75% sure was called
Charity, or Chastity.

There was a cauldron at the very end of the table, on a wooden board. Pandora was in animated,
pre-meeting conversation while stirring (telekinetically, of course) with a consistent circular wave
of her hands. The other two were setting out various pieces of potion equipment in an organised
manner on the end of the table, alongside a few glass tubs; a few of which containing what looked
like teeth, and thyme, and one containing a murky, yellow-brown substance containing sporadic
black spots, and a test tube of what looked like porous, silver Mercury.

“Alright,” Sirius announced - Remus hadn’t even noticed him behind Pandora - “Everyone’s here,
please, do sit down, we have a lot to go over.”

Lily was sitting next to James, who was next to Andromeda on one side of the table. Marlene sat
alone on the opposite, and so Remus and Dorcas took seats either side of her. She gave Remus a
warm smile, and Dorcas a more tentative one. He locked eyes with Lily, and shot him a smile, too,
that he reciprocated, before pulling her hair into a ponytail and turning to face Sirius. He cleared
his throat.

“So,” he started. Pandora stopped stirring and peered over to check her cauldron. Remus took a
breath in and noticed smelled somewhat sweet. “First of all, I want to make it clear that everything
in this room is confidential. Everything said here - with the exception of the Longbottom’s, who
are on a mission I assigned them - cannot be repeated anywhere.”

His eyes scanned the room briefly; everyone nodded, or stayed silent.

“You should all be aware, by now, of the discovery of the ring’s true nature,” he said; then looked
directly at Remus. “A Horcrux. Essentially life insurance for Riddle - as long as they are out there
and not destroyed, he physically cannot be killed. His essence lingers on in the tearing apart of his
soul. My brother, evidently, figured this out a long time ago,” he added, quieter. “Whenever he and
Mary decide to show themselves, we will hopefully get more information. However,” he said,
more spritely, and circled the table a little, pacing. “We are aware of the location of two of them.
How many he has made, we don’t know - the book says that more than three is dangerous, but I
believe that that restriction is only set in place for the living, not the undead, so… we’re in foreign
waters, here, is what I’m saying. But we have one, and we know the location of one.”

His eyes scanned the room, and Remus suddenly knew what he was going to say before he said it.

“The Malfoy estate,” he said quietly, leaning forward onto the end of the table. “Three mansions -
three lots of reinforcements. One Horcrux. We know where it is kept as of right now, right,
Jamie?”

Each head turned to James, and he nodded. “The Horcrux should, unless anything has changed, be
moved in eleven days; next Sunday, from the south-east safehouse to the northern main estate.”

Sirius nodded. “We have to get there before it does. Ambushing it while it moves was an idea
before Bellatrix knew we had the ring, but now they’re going to be on red alert. After ruminating
between… given advice and our own deliberations, we have decided that it’s safer to attack and
disable all three reinforcements at once, find the Horcrux and destroy it then and there.” He licked
his lips, and they curved up a little. “And this is where our lovely hunters have come in.”

“Horcruxes can be destroyed by Basilisk venom,” Pandora said, bustling forward to restart stirring
the metal ladle against the black cauldron. “Dorcas and Remus have acquired some for us, but not
much. There will be enough for five daggers worth of imbuement, with a small amount left over,
once I’m done with the potion.”

“What are you doing?” Remus asked. “What’s in the cauldron?”

She smiled, as if she was happy he had asked. “I’m creating, essentially, a binding agent. We can’t
coat the daggers in it like you do with your Holy Water - Basilisk venom is so corrosive that if we
were to try that, the dagger would simply disintegrate. It has to be diluted by a number of different
ingredients, and so for our first trial, based on blown-up measurements of the mimic poison
Aconite in potion-making, we are adding 0.62oz of the venom every hour for forty-eight hours,
and every other ingredient every eight hours.”

“What are the ingredients?” Dorcas asked. Remus could see that she was just as intrigued as he
was.

Sirius stepped aside and allowed Pandora to pass him to get to the ingredients that were laid out
orderly. She picked up the tub of the claw-like objects first.

“Wyvern claws,” she said, holding them up. “The venom went into two pints of distilled water, and
then we ground up five of these into fine dust and poured it in. If it were to go in on its own, the
venom would destroy it instantly, but as fine dust it bonds itself to the molecules and settles itself
in the venom, making it slightly less angry - enough so that, after eight hours, we can put in,” she
put down the jar and placed a hand over the one next to it, containing the cloves. “Garlic cloves.
One of the biggest herbs with medicinal properties; four and a half of them go in diced. By then the
venom should be more porous, and less angry - not much, but the poison of the wyvern claws
should be enough to open the molecules and let the garlic stick, to tame the venom enough that it
doesn't burn through the cauldron.”

“It would do that?"

“That’s why we’re only adding in 0.62oz every time,” she said with a smile. “So, next up we’ll
mix Betony and Mercury together and add the mixture in two, 60ml intervals - the Betony does
essentially the same as the Garlic cloves, whereas the Mercury reacts with the venom’s poison
positively. Thus, the two poisons should, hopefully, bind together happily, as the venom clouds the
binding agents and consistency adjusters. Our endgame is to tame it enough so that it will stick.
The Mercury is essentially there as a guise while the healing properties do their work. Betony and
Garlic work well together, so the hope is that they create a sort of.. shield around the venom.”

“The dining hall and all surrounding rooms will be closed off for 24 hours after that to humans,”
Sirius piped up. “Mercury poisoning, and all.”

“Correct,” Pandora said with a nod, before turning to the final ingredient present. “This is Syrup of
Arnica. It’s the final binding agent. It is, essentially, what we will have been prepping the venom
for the whole time - what will allow it to sink into the daggers instead of repelling, or burning
through them. And after that, we need Illicium verum and Illicium anisatum - or, Star Anise, if that
term is more familiar to you?”

“That’s where Frank and Alice are,” Sirius said. “They’re native to China and Japan, but they grow
it in controlled labs in California. Set off last night in the hopes that they’ll be back in time.”

“Illicium Verum will form the base of shikimic acid, which I’m sure will mean nothing to you,”
she said with a smile. “It’s found in a lot of healing potions and human drugs for influenza and
such. Anisatum, however, is highly toxic, so what we’ll do is put together a little side potion with
the leftover Arnica to, again, mimic the basilisk venom, and the shikimic acid - if we’re lucky -
should take on the role of resisting the coordination of disease progression, sort of how antibiotics
do, and then - if our luck continues - take on that role when we add the final concoction into here.”
She gestured towards the cauldron. “Path of disease progression being halted means it works on
our terms, and thus can be imbued into the daggers without any lasting effects on the metal.”

Remus felt like she deserved a mic-drop for that.

“So,” Lily said, breaking the silence, eyes wide. “Potion-making is just… science? It’s literally just
biology?”

Pandora shrugged. “In a way. The ingredients don’t work in a conventional science-y way, but
witches have used scientific hypotheses and baselines of biological gene configuration to
manipulate concoctions for years. We probably did it before you did, actually.”

Lily gaped. “I fucking love magic.”

Pandora smiled, wide, and began stirring once more. “Oh, me too.”

Sirius cleared his throat and got to his feet again, and Pandora sat down - the ladle kept stirring
even when she put her hand down.

“So,” Sirius said to the room at large. “The potion won’t be done for forty-eight hours. We don’t
know how many attempts it’ll take, but luckily we have about a week of leeway. In the meantime
of waiting for a confirmed date, I’m going to put you all into three teams. The first, going for the
south-east safehouse, will be led by me, along with Dorcas and Pandora.”

Remus watched Dorcas stiffen slightly from across where he was sitting.

“The second will be led by Andromeda,” Sirius went on, “alongside James, and Remus, at Malfoy
Manor. These two will be similarly matched in strength, because, although the article will not be
there, the Malfoys will.”

“My darling sister,” Andromeda murmured, mockingly. “What a lovely family reunion it shall be.”

“And the third will be led by Marlene,” Sirius continued. “When I assign you your groups there
will be some people alongside you who are not present at this meeting - they will not be aware of
the ulterior motive, which is to destroy the Horcrux, and you will not tell them.”

Sirius’ eyes moved to Marlene, sitting at the other end of the table. She nodded.

He took a deep breath, resting his arms on the end of the table again. He looked over everyone
briefly, like they were simply tapestries, nothing deeper. “We have the floor plans for each - once
you get your placements, I want you all to strategize. I want you to work together. Eleven days will
pass quickly. Don’t kid yourselves into thinking we’re on anything but borrowed time.”

Remus swallowed. Everyone was quiet. The deadline loomed over them like passing smoke.

Sirius went on to brief them all about the most recent happenings - there was another, solitary
murder in Queens and had been three massacres over two days of three different families across the
state. There had also been a minor explosion - and he detailed this one with gritted teeth - in the
apartment building opposite the Hunters HQ in Washington. It had happened overnight - at about
4am. Sirius theorized that it was the vampires who had caught Remus’ scent - that, or saw the
commotion in the local news and picked up on it - and, regardless, the wards of this place have
been extended a mile and a half thanks to the work of Charity (that was her name) and Pandora that
morning.

Remus was starting to think that they would be dead twice over had it not been for Pandora - it
reminded him of the way he used to feel about Mary, and he felt a pang of her absence.

“You’re all free to go,” Sirius said at the end of the meeting, “Except for Dorcas and Remus.”

They looked to each other immediately. Everyone around them got up casually - Lily’s chair
scraped as she got up, and she gave him a squeeze on the shoulder as she passed, before leaving -
and then it was just them.

Or; them, James and Marlene, because why would ‘you’re free to go’ ever include Sirius’ two sires
who were, basically, joined at the hip.

Sirius cleared his throat when the last person left, and the door slammed shut.

“First things first,” he said. “There will be five daggers that can destroy the diary, and they will be
with the five of us.”

Remus raised his eyebrows.

“Myself and Dorcas,” his eyes flickered over to her, “James and Remus, and then Marlene. We’re
expecting the Horcrux to be in the south-east, so, Dorcas, destroying it will be our job; but,
regardless, the dagger will kill everything it comes into contact with. You use it on a vampire;
vampire’s dead. It’ll be slow and painful due to our healing receptors, but there’s no coming back
from it. Be careful.”

All four of them nodded, and Sirius nodded back. He sat down at the head of the table; obviously
able to relax in present company.

“It’d be preferable to be able to take the diary somewhere secure to destroy it, but I’m aware that
might not be viable with a few dozen vampires up our asses,” he said, running his hands through
his hair in slight anguish. “Pandora is going to try and apparate us out, but, regardless, the five of
us are going to be the ones to destroy the ring.”

A collective breath was sucked in.

“Where?” Remus asked.

“Somewhere secure.”

“Do we know what kind of an impact they’ll have?” Dorcas asked. “I mean, it’s his soul - it’ll fight
back, right?”

“That’s exactly why it’s going to be us five, and only us five,” Sirius said. “Dora’s going to take us
upstate - population density in the mountains is like, ten per square mile. It’s the most abandoned
we’re gonna get. I have no idea what the reaction will be, but I don’t think it’ll be pretty.”

The room lay in uncomfortable silence. Remus focused on a small marking on the table, trying to
sort through his thoughts - to no avail. His eyes flickered at the sight of movement, and he saw
Dorcas’ hand twitch; it was laid, flat on the wood, about two inches from Marlene’s. Her pinky and
her ring finger twitched, seeming to be almost unconscious, as she cleared her throat after a
moment and pulled her hand back, placing it in her lap. Marlene’s hand balled into a fist.

After a moment, the cauldron began to stir itself again. Pandora was nowhere to be seen.
“Well,” Sirius said, clapping his hands together. “That’s that, then. Andromeda will give you the
floor plans you need. I should have your groups drawn up by the end of the day.”

Marlene got up first, and the rest of them followed suit. Remus was halfway to the door by the time
he called out.

“Wait, you two,” he said, and Remus and Dorcas both stopped. James paused for a moment and
then left as he was.

“Your hunter friends,” he said, looking directly at Remus. “I wasn’t too sure what to do with them.
I mean, are they going to be as difficult as…” he trailed off, but his eyes moved to Dorcas. She
took this in her stride.

“No,” she said, standing up straight. “I’ve caught them up. They’re both all in, seemingly. You can
include them - they’d be a good asset.”

Sirius seemed to bite the inside of his lip. “You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

Sirius took a breath, and then nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “Thank you.”

“So, we can start on plans for our ambush later,” she continued, “I’ll get the floor plans, and
you…” She took a long breath, looking at Sirius deeply. “Go down a bottle of Brandy, or
something.”

Sirius laughed dryly. “God knows I need it.”

Remus looked between the two, somewhat surprised. Hostility felt different; muted, as if buried
deep, deep underground. Dorcas shot him a smile, and yes, Remus should have died last night. The
world was fucked and he was riding the shockwaves out into dark, foreign waters.

He smiled, nonetheless.

***

It was a waiting game.

With most of the inhabitants of the house having their own tasks to get on with, the house ran like
clockwork; smooth and uninterrupted except for the periodic thumping (figuratively and literally)
from what Remus had come to describe as the baby-quartet, despite the fact that Percy and Oliver
were barely a few years younger than Remus, and Astoria was the only actual ‘baby’, whatever
that entails towards a pureblood vampire who could rip his throat out on sight, though Remus was
quite sure, now, that she wouldn’t.

(They, being unable to go outside before 7pm at the risk of being burned alive by sunlight, had
stolen the biggest bedroom on the third floor and relocated all of the furniture to give them room
to, essentially, tear each other apart in what they called ‘fight training’).

Sirius had sorted the teams by the evening and so a Tuesday spent idle turned into a Wednesday
spent manic. Remus, Andromeda, James and the rest of their designated ‘team’ (James wanted to
call them Team Devastation, for all the murdering that they were apparently going to do; one look
from Andromeda was enough to shut him up (it was possibly more devastating than the
murdering)) had congregated around the table and had spent quite a few hours strategizing and
working out the best approaches.

Their group consisted of the three of them, alongside Charity, Jul, Percy, Miyuki, Mariana, Susan
and Benjy. It was a slight imbalance of six vampires to two witches and two hunters, but, looking
around the table throughout their meetings, Remus thought that it was matched up skills-wise.
Benjy, of course, unfamiliar with the sort of energy that comes with sitting civil in a room of
bloodsuckers, stood by him, staying quiet for a long while until the gambit conversations got
heated and he practically exploded with stratagem. Mariana was opinionated and experienced,
having fought in every war she could get her hands on since her turning, but in spite of her scary
appearance she was also soft-spoken, at the sort of decibel that enchants you. She and Remus
ended up in a hearty conversation, bouncing plans off of each other like the rain pelting towards
the floor outside. It was a collective effort, even including Miyuki, who, unlike Mari, was
terrifying, period. She sort of sat there, absorbing everyone’s ideas and information and
conversement until the voices sort of lulled down to an open door, in which she would jump in with
the drip of her transatlantic pureblood etiquette that she had yet to get rid of and say something so
unbelievably smart Remus could not believe he hadn’t thought of it before.

There were quite a few arguments over the plan, but including Andromeda’s intel, they eventually
figured out a plan that they all agreed on.

They were going to walk through the front door.

The Malfoys have always been paranoid creatures was what Andromeda explained to them, when
they were aghast at such a simple prospect. Where the Horcrux safehouse will be most heavily
protected with their guard, Malfoy Manor itself will be one big snakepit. Less guards, more
inanimate traps - on every window, every door. It was what their mother used to do, she explained.
She taught them to think as a hunter to survive, and, thus, place her and all of them into the mindset
that if their enemies were one step ahead, they had to be two.

Andromeda Tonks was three.

So, they would go through the front door. Take out the guards and slip in and let the fight come to
them. This would be better, it would throw them off. Make them think that it was an unrelated
attack to the Horcrux. God knows that Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy had enough fucking enemies
for it. Andromeda stole a marker and a bunch of pins from god knows where and drew all over the
plans; the front doors of the manor opened into a huge entrance hall, and, directly ahead, a grand
staircase - directly upstairs were two slim corridors that separated the east and the west. Through
the hall and around the corner led to two bathrooms, and next to those, a third door that led to the
basement. If they were going to hide anywhere, Andromeda said they would hide there.

But she didn’t think they would. By the end of the day (it was really quite productive, actually)
various plan B’s, plan C’s had been settled on - strategies that made just as much sense as the first.
Splitting up was one option. Scaling the walls was another. But Andromeda was rather positive
that, given the circumstances, taking out the guard at the front and calling attention to themselves
would cause less problems and enough havoc to keep the fight there in time for the diary to be
found and destroyed. She had utmost faith in Sirius to pull it off.

(And Remus wished he could trust her, but he wasn’t sure he trusted anyone, really. He almost
dreaded the feeling of that blade between his fingers. Sirius had told him that all he was was power
and a part of him was somewhat scared that such an extension of electricity would cause a short-
circuit.)

Things were a bustle. Jul portkeyed themself and Dorcas back to Texas on the Thursday to pick up
leftover weaponry from the safehouse that was still under her name. Remus’, that Kingsley had
leant him, would be out of bounds by now, ridden with curses and entrapments to hell and back - he
had worried the whole day that Dorcas’ would be too, but her house had been a permanent
residence, and so it had been left alone, albeit staked out by a fake cop car. They had had to sneak
in. Apparently it was thrilling.

Remus took a case on Friday alongside James - nothing too public, as his name was projected in
blinding lights to at least two of their enemies and James Potter, best friend to Sirius Black, was a
walking liability. It was a safehouse excavation in White Plains. There wasn’t much to be found
aside from scraps of fabric that held scents that were foggy to James, a sort of echo of 1959, but it
was nice to get out of the house and away from the confinement of that one room regardless, even
if Remus did feel bad about leaving Benjy subject to the vampires.

(This, though he didn’t know it just yet, turned out not to be a problem. He struck up an odd sort of
friendship with Andromeda. Where she pretended to be blasé towards the human race the truth was
that Andromeda had lived amongst hovels and lived amongst queens, and there was nowhere that
she had loved more than in the bustle of human life, in the subways of Paris and the markets in St
Tropez. Benjy endeared her. He reminded her of James, and James reminded her of Benjy. Remus
would go on to find out that they had a shared love for banana bread and electric guitars, though
this was not presently relevant.)

They got home upon nightfall and Remus could hear the quartet screaming in the field by the lake
before they even entered the threshold.

“I’m not parenting them today,” James muttered, opening the door for Remus to walk through. He
laughed. “Don’t laugh at me! Have you ever tried single parenting?”

“Can’t say that I have,” Remus said, walking backwards towards the kitchen.

“Don’t. I have been bitten so many times I feel like I’m a teething toy.”

Remus burst out laughing, pushing the door to the kitchen open with James directly behind him,
and stopped dead.

Marlene, Dorcas, Sirius, Pandora and Lily were sitting around the table, and Pandora had a hand
up, as if to ward them away.

“Oh, it’s just you.”

“I told you it was them,” Marlene murmured.

“Can never be too careful,” Pandora replied, sitting back down and leaning over to look at
something that Remus couldn’t see on the table. He frowned. Sirius was looking directly at him,
and there was something beautifully terrifying in his eyes.

“What happened?” asked James, and Sirius spoke.

“It worked,” he said, and as if on cue Lily and Dorcas turned to the side, parting their heads like
curtains to reveal the five daggers laid out on the kitchen table, steaming slightly, on a thick beige
cloth that had a few holes burnt into it. “It worked.”

“First time?” Remus asked, gaping.

“Second time; measurements were off but ingredients worked perfect, exactly how we
hypothesised,” said Pandora. It was hard to notice if you didn’t know her but she was almost
vibrating with excitement.

James’ jaw dropped. “You’re–”

“A genius, I know, you don’t have to tell me,” she replied, whipping her blonde curls behind her
back. She looked up and grinned at James, who shook his head.

“I was going to say that you’re insane,” he muttered, moving to sit between Dorcas and Lily.
Neither one seemed to have an issue. “You have too many braincells. Sharing is caring, Dora.”

Pandora retorted something back, playfully, and James grinned, but Remus didn’t listen. He circled
the table to the other side where there was more eyeview, next to Sirius, who was looking up at
him in wonder. Remus was staring at the blades.

They had decided on the poignards. Remus had known he was right. They were longer and thinner
- not too thin, not as thin as the traditional, Renaissance-era daggers, but long and thin enough. His
hypothesis would have been that a longer, more lightweight dagger would be easier to penetrate
and would reach further and excrete more venom than a shorter one. It would cause the kill time to
be shorter. Where any dagger would work for the Horcrux, they would be, inevitably, taking lives
with these, too. Dorcas had argued but he knew it had been the best decision.

“Poignards,” Sirius murmured, looking up at him. Like he could read his mind. He probably could.
“Congratulations.”

“Shut up,” Remus breathed, fighting a smile. He collapsed into the seat next to him and leaned
over, staring at them.

They were beautiful. Where the style was Remus’ suggestion Sirius had not used any old blades,
but a set of five identical, ridiculously expensive-looking ones (of course, digging into his family’s
stock was for precaution - the more expensive/durable the metal, the less likely the venom would
be to disintegrate it - but the flashiness was not lost on Remus.) The hilt was black with gold
weaved through; it was a twist texture, but only subtly; not so deep that it would be uncomfortable
to hold. The cross-guard flicked upwards as freely as a paintbrush stroke, and a small jewel was
embedded right at the top of the hilt; it was a stoic silver, and it glistened under the dim light.

He reached out, cautiously, and when no one stopped him he went to touch the hilt. He traced a
finger over the cool metal, around the twisted texture. He felt like he couldn’t do much more. Like
it was sacred.

James did not feel that way.

“Look at this,” he breathed, holding his blade in his hand. The metal of the actual blade was still
hot - it was common sense not to touch it - but he held it so close to his face that it steamed up his
fake glasses. He turned, probably more aggressively than he should have even without being able
to see - Dorcas yelped and jumped back, scraping her chair some. The dagger wouldn’t have hit
her. She looked furious anyway.

“You come near me with that thing, Potter, it’ll be the last thing you ever fucking do,” she said,
eyeing the blade. James took off his glasses. Placed them on the table. He held the dagger in his
exploring hand, and there was a moment of silence.

The hilarity seemed to hit everyone at once.

Remus noticed it when he looked over at Sirius and he was fighting a smile so hard that he had a
fist pushed up to his mouth; he smiled, looked at Marlene just as she closed her eyes and began to
laugh, and the chuckles encapsulated all of them.

It was ridiculous. It was, genuinely, ridiculous, but James let out a harsh lip-trill and leaned
forward, laughing loudly, and Dorcas cracked a smile. She leant her elbows onto the table, put her
head in her hands and laughed silently, as Pandora took the dagger from James and put it back on
the cloth, covering them up. Her lips were thin, and there were tears in Lily’s eyes, and Sirius
leaned sideways and buried his face into Remus’ shoulder for a moment, and they were eternal.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have one,” James remarked, after the giggles had cooled down.

He simply set it off again. Laughter bounced off the walls like opera soundwaves; long live
infinity.

***

“Alright, Marley,” James spat tauntingly, from where he was standing just in front of a weeping
willow tree. “Give me your worst, bitch.”

Marlene cracked her knuckles under the incandescent moonlight. She looked oddly, incredibly,
like Sirius.

Malfoy Manor had been set for Monday. They had converged in the kitchen and collectively
decided that (it being Friday evening) three days would be sufficient enough to compile plans and
intelligence and prepare thoroughly, though Remus wasn’t sure of Sirius’ complete concurrence.
He seemed somewhat anxious. He hadn’t been sure if anyone else had noticed, but James had
scooted a place closer than usual to him at the dining table and had pulled him aside to talk quietly
and rapidly in a dark corner of the hallway, leaning against the rim of a carved Georgian table
holding a single glass vase, for half an hour. That had been half an hour ago.

Now, Remus was standing in the cold.

“Get on with it, already,” he groaned. “I’m cold.”

“Don’t rush perfection, Remus,” Marlene jeered, twisting and cracking her back, her neck. He was
standing alongside Lily and Dorcas, hands shoved into his pockets as the biting early March winds
threatened to gash his face.

He made a mimic-y face at her, and she stuck her tongue out at him, back. Then she seemed to
break her finger and click it back into place.

Vampires.

There was a thud, to the right of them, and Remus turned to see Oliver Wood crawl down the
willow’s drooping lifeline like a spider. Isabela was already on the ground, hands on her hips,
watching them clamber. He twirled on the vines and she smacked his ass so viciously that the
sound reverberated, and he shouted some broad Scottish expletive that began with “Disrupting my
virtue” and ended with “You mangy wetwipe.”

“Oi, losers,” James called. “Stop assaulting each other and pay attention. I’m literally about to
murder Marlene for your benefit.”

“You wish,” muttered Marlene.

This was their current placement. The lake lay idle and the trees blew with a slight breeze as they
stood opposite each other, preparing for a fighting stance. Sirius had fucked off into the small
library with Dora, thus leaving the three of them and Marlene (though, she had gone absolutely
willingly upon learning she would have a chance to kick James’ ass) to be dragged outside.

Their mission was Monday, but today was Friday. Today was commonplace-adjacent, potion
master celebrations. Today, as the sun went down and the monsters began to prowl, was, more than
anything, James Potter’s Fight Club Friday.

Another gust of wind hit Remus and he squinted, huffing aggressively. He did not do well in the
cold. James was shrugging off his coat, Percy was on Isabela’s back, being faux-protective over
the ass that is his, and Lily was rolling her eyes at him.

“Come here, you plebeian,” she said, pulling his hands out of his pockets and encapsulating them
in her own. Remus gasped with pleasure at the warmth.

“Oh my god,” he groaned, leaning forwards; he nuzzled into her, shoving his cold cheek onto her
neck, causing her to yelp. He shuddered into her collarbone. “Oh, I forgot you were a human
fucking fireplace. Fuck me. Oh, fuck, that's nice.”

“Stop it, Lupin, or you’ll turn me on,” James threw over his shoulder.

Remus wrenched his cold hands out of Lily’s cozy grasp and flipped him off.

Lily laughed, genuinely, warmly, and tried to wrap one hand around both of his while snaking her
other around his waist, under his shirt, to warm him up. He closed his eyes into her neck and only
opened them when Dorcas smacked him around the head.

“They’re starting,” she muttered, scarf wrapped tightly around her neck. Remus opened his eyes
and positioned himself so that he could see, curved over like a fish hook, sideways upon Lily’s
shoulder. The kids shut up and huddled together to watch.

Marlene licked her lips, and then ran.

She moved at the speed of light and, while James moved too in opposition, Marlene had different
ideas. She grabbed his shoulders and jumped, just missing his grip on her ankle and twisted in the
air so that she sat on his shoulders, thighs tight around his neck, pulling his head back with one
rapturous hand in his hair. He grunted as she strained his neck, but made a run for an opposite oak
tree - he ran two steps up horizontally and threw her off, jumping backwards and turning so that he
landed beside her. He, in a flash, was on his hands and knees over her, pinning her hands to the
grass above her head.

She hissed, fangs ablaze and he hissed back, and then she laughed; she laughed and headbutted
him, headbutted him again; laughed and kneed him in the crotch and, when his hands slacked,
gripped the front of his shirt and turned so they lay facing each other sideways.

Before James could even react, she brought her knees up to her chest, booted him with both feet to
his chest and sent him flying straight into the lake.

Astoria began to clap.

“Thank you,” Marlene said, jumping up and bowing. Her hair was mussed. “Thank you very
much.”

James’ head emerged from the water - the shore of the lake, or the lake in general, really wasn’t
that deep, and he clambered out and ran towards her non-threateningly. She turned around, and he
shook his head like a dog, right in her face.
“Oh my god–” she spluttered, lakewater splattering her face. “James!”

“You had it coming,” he grinned, whipping his soaking, crazy hair out of his eyes and wringing his
shirt, exposing the bottom of his stomach slightly and the dusting of hair below his navel. “You
cheated.”

“I did not cheat!”

“You used the lake!”

“It’s a huge body of water and you look like a drowned rat when you get wet, how am I not
supposed to use the lake–”

They were interrupted by Oliver Wood. Remus hadn’t spoken to the boy much, not as much as he
had Percy and Astoria, but he knew he had a streak for trouble, and it was made evident, as he ran
through the gap between James and Marlene in a rush of momentum and catapulted himself into
the lake, cannonballing under the surface with a catastrophically loud splash.

Lily laughed out loud.

“Well, what the hell was that for?” James yelled at him when he surfaced, and it was dark, but
there was enough outdoor lighting that Remus could see the grin on his face.

“Looked fun,” he said, clambering out, and Remus looked over to see Percy smiling and shaking
his head, Astoria sitting cross-legged at his feet and laughing like the little kid that she was.

“Right,” James said authoritatively, shaking his head one last time. He was still dripping. Marlene
moved out of his way in a sidestep and walked over to them, linking her arm into Remus’ other
side. “Kids! Assemble! Today, we’re going to do something different. Today, we have a lovely
hunter for you to savage.”

He grinned at Remus, who felt his stomach drop out of his ass.

“Me?” he said, jerking his head up from Lily’s shoulder and shaking it. “I didn’t– I just came to
watch.”

James shrugged. “It’ll be fun, though. Come on. You have a dagger on you, right?”

He did, by sheer luck. He had found his old holy water dagger in his duffle bag and sheathed it into
his pouch just that afternoon, so he wouldn’t lose it again.

Lily and Marlene looked at each other, both with a hold on him, and then they both pushed him
slightly.

He turned. Gave them a look that he hoped conveyed complete and utter betrayal. Looked
pleadingly to Dorcas.

“Go on,” she said, grinning, settling into Lily’s side. “Entertain the kids. Don’t disappoint them.”

Remus narrowed his eyes at her, but stumbled forwards anyway, defeated. James grinned as he
approached.

“I’m usually more decked out than this when I’m fighting vampires,” he said. “This isn’t a fair
fight.”

“Well, we’re trying to train the kids, not actually hurt them, so we can’t use stakes.”
“But you’re fine with them hurting me?”

James grinned blindingly at him. “It wouldn’t be a fight club if someone’s ass didn’t get kicked,
now would it, Remus?”

He rolled his eyes. “This dagger has holy water imbued in it,” he said, pulling it out of his pouch
and twirling it in his hand. “And– oh, shit,” he said, pulling out a tiny, tiny pistol from his person.
“Didn’t even realise I had this. Wooden bullets okay?”

James smiled. “Brilliant. Just don’t go too near the heart or the head.” He turned and cleared his
throat. “Right, we’re gonna do a sort of relay - like you guys do with me, except tamer, ‘cause he’s
human. You can rough him up a bit–”

“James!”

“–but no biting. No scratching. No breaking skin in general, at all, if you can help it. I quite like
Remus, actually, and I don’t trust you lot not to eat him.”

“That’s comforting,” Remus murmured, and James laughed.

“I want you to mainly focus on hand-to-hand combat, okay? In the field you’ll be able to bite the
enemy, sure, but in the future you may not have the facilities or the reach to do that.”

Remus twirled his dagger in his hand and watched as the four of them stood in an orderly line.
“They've done this before?”

“Yeah, they do it with me,” James said. “One at a time. As soon as they get hurt - or, in my case,
bit - they retreat and the next one comes forward.” He paused, and then turned to the line. “Once
the one in front of you gets stabbed or shot, make sure you give good old Remy here a good five
seconds to recuperate before you go ahead, alright?”

The kids all nodded, and James clapped him on the back. Remus crouched slightly, readying his
dagger.

“Have fun, mate,” James said, and Remus sneered at him jokingly (or, maybe not) before he took a
few steps back to stand with the girls, by Dorcas’ side.

“Go!”

The first vampire was Oliver Wood - he was the burliest of the four, big and muscly, but his
fighting performance was predictable. He went for Remus’ face first; he blocked him, and Oliver
went for his stomach, which Remus blocked again with a step back and landed a punch across his
face. In the momentum he swung his dagger and landed a light cut there, too. Oliver flipped his
hair over and did a typical fake-move, in which he pretended to swing left and then swung right -
Remus didn’t fall for it, but Oliver prolonged the movement so much so that he didn’t move quick
enough, and his next punch landed on the side of his jaw, catching his ear. He raised his arm again
and Remus ducked underneath it, moving as daintily and as quickly as he was used to while
fighting vampires and he caught Oliver from behind before he could swivel around fully, wrapping
an arm around his neck and plunging his dagger into the bottom of his stomach.

The boy laughed as he did it, and Remus found himself laughing too.

“Christ, that fucking stings,” he said, low and gruff as Remus removed the dagger and turned him
around. He nodded. “Good game.”
And in an instant he was standing beside James, and Isabela was in his eyeline. She linked her
fingers together and stretched them, smile growing on her face.

She was, evidently, a much better hand-to-hand combat fighter. She caught Remus twice within
five seconds (he was going to have bruises everywhere) and she blocked well. She used her blocks
to her advantage; where Remus was going would always leave him open somewhere, and she’d
find a vantage point; however, he and his fast reflexes adapted quick. After the third one he caught
her hand as it was coming towards him - she was too close to penetrate, so he stuck his blade flat
against her throat, blistering it and causing her to cry out - it would hurt a lot more than Sirius, or
James, due to her young age. She immediately retreated and staggered back a few paces, to which
Remus hunched over slightly and underhandedly threw his dagger; it soared through the air and
plunged into her stomach. Completely in the moment he kneeled on one knee, whipped out his gun
and aimed it, one eye closed. Isabela was in complete stasis.

She looked down at her abrasion, her mouth a perfect O.

“Go on, then,” she laughed, sticking out her abdomen. “Take it, caçador.”

Remus laughed, spun his gun back into his pouch and moved forward to remove it from her
stomach. The moment he pulled it out, she hit him with an upper-cut underneath his chin. Remus
felt his teeth clack against each other and groaned.

“Hey, Bel,” James called. “That’s cheating!”

“Sorry!” she said, seemingly half genuinely concerned and half proud of herself. “Reflex.”

Remus massaged his pained jaw but grinned, shaking her hand, and she made her departure with a
skip and a bow.

Percy was next. Remus was most familiar with Percy of them all, not only from spending the most
time together, but because they had trained under the same teachers. Percy had spent the first
seventeen years of his life training to fight hand-to-hand just as Remus had, and so he was
practically a mimic. Remus, thus, changed his own fighting style. He made it a bit more
challenging for Percy, knowing that that was how he improved his own skill, and hand was to
forearm, dagger slicing through the air; they were no longer vampire and human but hunter and
trainee. His upbringing may hold disdain to him now, but these internalisations will stay forever.
Remus may as well help him refine them.

He shot Percy through the shoulder. The boy scowled at him, but there was no real heat.

Astoria was last.

She was shorter than him, but incredibly agile. She ran up to him so steadily that, had her legs been
out of his eyesight he might have thought that she was flying. Her fighting style was much more
unpredictable - she was marginally less trained than the others, of course, given her age, but
vampirism and the life that she had been born into had had its perks and she was, undoubtedly, able
to hold her own. She got one or two punches in - weaker than the rest, but substantial (at least
Remus would find good use for that healing salve) and Remus got a cut on her arm when she
reached it up to block him, and she staggered backwards slightly.

She ran back at him, and they resumed their stances, but when she went to hit him her fist wasn’t
close enough; Remus’ arm reached up to block and in some sort of terrible lining up she skimmed
his forearm dragging her nails unintentionally over his skin, drawing blood.
She stiffened immediately. Remus hissed and pulled his arm back, taking a step with it as he
examined it - they were just worse than grazes, really, tiny pools of blood bubbling up, but Astoria
was young, and her eyes were dark.

She opened her mouth slightly in shock, and in the split second that it took for James to run over,
she ran the opposite way, and hurtled herself into the lake just like Oliver had done.

The two boys ran to the edge of the lake and kneeled against it, while James just stood, shell-
shocked.

“You okay?” Marlene asked, jogging to catch up - Remus nodded and showed her his arm.

“It wasn’t bad,” he said; he heard a splash and Astoria surfaced, spluttering with the water, and the
boys waded in slightly to reach her, Isabela on their tail. James turned to him.

“That’s the first time she’s ever been able to resist human blood,” he said. “I’ve been trying to help
her - telling her to take herself out of situations - but that was the first time she actually managed
it.”

Remus let out a slow breath, and turned to watch the group of them, bobbing heads in the moonlit
water. They were evidently celebrating the same thing. Percy gave her a squeeze and she laughed,
and Oliver threw his arm around her. Isabela did a run up and the three of them yelped as she
cannonballed as far as she could, and it was all laughter.

“Tell her I’m proud of her,” Remus said, chuckling, finding that he actually meant it.

And then, in a second, he locked eyes with Astoria, and her smile faltered into something softer.
She nodded her head, and he knew she had heard.

“Right,” James said, grinning, “She did amazing, but we don’t wanna risk it another time, do we?”

“Not with them,” Dorcas piped up, taking a sultry step forward and conjuring her two identical
knives out of what seemed like thin air. “You and me, Potter. Now you don’t have those stupid
foggy glasses in your way.”

James gaped, and then grinned.

“Let’s fucking go, Meadowes,” he said, and Dorcas’ eye twinkled with something that Remus
hadn’t seen in a long, long time. Fury.

She eviscerated him. Of course she did. Remus pulled Lily’s little toasty frame into his chest and
watched as Dorcas emptied an entire Emerson Knives factory out of her little pockets and pouches;
as the four in the lake became five, Marlene swimming out to join them, Astoria on her back
looking up at the stars; as James Potter took five push knives to the stomach and the twin of
Remus’ dagger to the throat and wailed that he needed a blood transfusion for the rest of the
evening.

***

He was halfway through applying the healing paste to the underside of his chin when his door flew
open.

It was almost 11:30, and the house was quiet. Lily had gone to bed, feeling - in her words -
vicariously tired after watching them fight.
(James had, in fact, complained to both him and Lily as it ended up just being the three of them in
the kitchen, and it went something like this:

“Tea?” Lily had asked, voice echoey as she stood on her tippy-toes to open the cupboards that the
mugs were held in. “Coffee? Hot cocoa?”

“Tea, please,” said Remus.

“I’m good,” said James.

“You sure?” She looked over her shoulder at her, two cups in her two little hands. He smiled. It
was gentle.

“Yeah,” he insisted. He made his way around the table to the freezer. “I’m sorted, actually.”

Lily shrugged, and turned to scavenge for the teabags. Remus filled and flicked the kettle on, and
they both turned at the same time, to James, sitting at the table, sucking on a red ice pop.

Remus took a deep breath. Closed his eyes. Opened them.

“Please tell me that’s not what I think it is,” he said.

James shrugged.

“Oh my god,” Lily said.

“It’s nice!”

“It’s–” Remus scrunched up his face, feeling half hysterical in the good way and half in the bad.
“Is it even good frozen?”

“Oh my god,” Lily repeated, palms pressed against her eyes. She was fighting a laugh but it was
wildly unsuccessful.

“It’s very good frozen,” he remarked. “Helps with teething.”

“Teething–?!”

James threw his head back and let out a guffaw so infectious that Remus pressed his hand over his
mouth. He shook his head, and then nodded it.

“No, I’m entirely serious,” he said, through entirely un-serious giggles. Lily was looking at him
like she had never seen a stranger being on the face of the planet. “Oh, fuck. I’m completely not
joking in the slightest. Ask Sirius. Just ask Sirius.”)

So the door flew open, maybe three hours later, at 11:30pm, Remus - as a reflex - reached and
aimed his gun, except he was holding the small, glass tub of the pale green healing paste in his
hand, and Sirius was in front of him and caught it in the blink of an eye. And Remus didn’t care.

“Did you used to teethe on frozen blood?” came hurtling out of his mouth before Sirius even
straightened up. His expression morphed from something horribly harried to something
anthropomorphically confused.

“What?”

“Did you freeze blood and then chew on it to teethe when you were a kid?” he asked, feeling
slightly insane. “I need to know. You don’t know how much I need to know this. It feels so, so
imperative that I am given this information right now.”

Sirius blinked at him. It was a very similar look to the one that Lily had given James.

“Who even told you––”

“Oh, God, you did,” Remus said, putting his gun down and letting his head fall into both hands. He
was laughing, for some reason.

“Look, it really hurts when your fangs come in, okay–”

“Oh, God,” Remus said, tears in his eyes.

“––and my mother had a witch–”

“Stop talking,” Remus choked, “Stop, oh my god, I’m going to get a stitch.”

Remus braced himself on his dresser, still laughing; he took a shaky breath in to compose himself
and then locked eyes with Sirius and burst out laughing again, a fatal hand to his mouth, his giggles
morphing into silent wheezing as Sirius watched him, smile growing on his face no matter how
much he tried to hide it.

“No, take your time,” Sirius said, half irritably, smile denoting any sort of hostility he had in his
pretty bones, “keep laughing at me, it’s okay. Not like I had anything important to say.”

“Teething–” he squeaked.

“We were kids!” Sirius exclaimed, laughing despite himself. “It wasn’t teething, just like… when
your wisdom teeth come through and you soothe it. Or when people on TV get their tonsils taken
out and eat ice cream. Except we have two more teeth than the average human and, if you haven’t
noticed, they’re a tad sharper too. That shit hurts.” He bit his lip, and then, “I cannot believe James
told you.”

“I didn’t say it was James.”

“James is the only one who knows, you fucking acorn,” he said, fondly, breaking into a daft smile
as Remus broke into more laughter. It took a solid two minutes to calm down again.

“Are you done?” Sirius said, arms crossed, now. Remus nodded.

“Yes.”

“Promise?”

“Promise,” Remus said, and then, “just… don’t show me your teeth for a while. I don’t think I’ll
be able to stop it if I start again.”

“Christ,” Sirius muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You’re insufferable.”

“You still suffer me.”

Sirius dropped his hand and squinted at him. Remus thinned his lips.

“Oh, you know what I mean,” he hissed, at the same time that Sirius muttered “I definitely do,”.
“What did you come in here for?”
He, looking at Sirius, now, watched as the remnants of what he would almost call panic - a
subdued form of it, anxiety, agitation - bled back into his features. He sighed, squeezed his eyes
shut, one hand firmly on the side of the dresser as if he’d fall if he didn’t hold himself up.

“I remember,” Sirius said. Remus blinked.

“You what?”

“The diary,” he said, turning on his heel and pacing. “The diary, I know where I’ve seen the diary
before. What Regulus was saying - the Atlas, you know– I know–”

You’ve seen it before. You’ve seen it before. Get the diary. You’ve seen it before.

“Hey,” Remus said, stopping him with one hand to his shoulder. He gaped for a moment, and then
nodded. “Okay. Calm. Where do you know it from?”

He let out a sharp breath and walked around Remus to sit on the side of his bed. Remus followed,
sitting next to him tentatively.

“In the fifteenth century,” he started, “me and Regulus used to have these pieces of parchment,
right? They were charmed. Magic was different back then, things have evolved, but they were
charmed in sort of a weird manipulation of the Fidelius, in that the words disappeared directly after
we wrote them, and only whom the scribe chose and trusted could see what was written. Me and
Regulus only trusted each other, and so we used to talk through them - it was essentially like
passing notes in a classroom, except we could never, physically get caught. It would just be a
blank piece of parchment.”

Remus nodded, feeling a sense of hilarity wash over him at the idea of Sirius and his brother
passing notes like schoolchildren. He went on.

“I think my mother found them, figured out what we were doing and burned them after seventy
years or so,” he said, “I don’t know, that doesn’t matter, but what I mean is that I haven’t really
thought about them since. Right? Until,” he said, louder, looking into Remus’ eyes. And then he
blinked. “Have I ever told you why I was even with my family when you killed them?”

The transparency of his murder (if you could call it that) took Remus aback, for a moment, but he
shook his head.

“No.”

Sirius licked his lips. “Right. So– so it was 2006 when my brother found me. I hadn’t seen him for
fifty years. I was in Berlin, on my own and he– well, I didn’t go out of my own volition. He begged
me to come.”

“He begged you?”

“Ten years,” Sirius continued, “ten years, he said, like an ultimatum, and then, if, at the end of ten
years I didn’t want to stay, he would leave with me. He promised that he would leave with me.” He
took a breath, and then said, “To this day I don’t know if it was true. We didn’t make it to the ten
years, as you know.”

Remus did know. He swallowed down something guilty in his throat. 2014, Cornwall. The
pinnacle. The endgame.

“Anyway,” Sirius pressed, “one of the first things he did to sort of- I don’t know, patch up our
relationship, was show me the updated versions of that charm that we utilised for so long when we
were young. There was a book, in our estate in London, that was just like what we used to use;
except the magic had been refined, you know, the edges were smoother than they were six hundred
years ago. It essentially had a password. Like I said, it was a rendition of the Fidelius. My brother
just showed it to me ‘cause he thought it was cool that they were bringing back the magic that we
used to use. But the witch who created it died, you see,” he was breathing heavily now, eyes wild
with sudden clarity. “Staged a coup, or something. Was killed. She only made two of its kind, and
no one knew what charms she had used and mixed and what magical sources she had drawn to mix
jinxes, so they just stayed as two.”

“How did you remember all this?” Remus asked, astounded, and Sirius smiled.

“Sybil,” he said with a laugh. “You remember her?”

The little eccentric looking frizzy-haired receptionist. Remus nodded.

“The vampires from the hotel are in my family estate, aren’t they? She sent me a photo of a
window in the library, asking whether she could fucking change the curtains cause they were moth
eaten - obviously, she could, but there was a bookshelf on the left hand side of the photo and the
book was there. I got her to send me a video of it - a completely blank book. It’s the same one. I’ve
seen it before.”

“Fuck,” Remus breathed. “So, what, you think–” he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to process the
information. “If it’s this specific diary-”

“Then logically–”

“There’s something in it?”

“Hidden,” Sirius said, eyes beseeching, “Being protected by–”

“The Malfoys,” Remus murmured.

“That’s why it’s with the Malfoys. That’s why it's so meticulously protected. Lucius is one of his
most trusted. I can bet you everything that Lucius doesn’t even know what it is, truly, and I can bet
you everything that he can get into it.”

“What are you going to do,” Remus laughed slightly, “kidnap Lucius Malfoy?”

Sirius said nothing. His smile faltered.

“Oh my god, you’re going to kidnap Lucius Malfoy.”

“I’m not going to kidnap him,” Sirius hissed. “I just need your team to keep him alive, and I need to
get him out of the Malfoy wards. James clocked the perimeter and he said they go five miles out,
but the houses are almost six miles apart - which means there should be a square mile of free space
right in the middle of the triangle. He’ll be away from any protection of the mind. Pandora can
charm him silly, we can get it out of him–”

“Get it out of him there?” Remus asked. “That seems risky? Why can’t we bring him back here–”

Sirius raised his eyebrows.

“Okay, somewhere else. Anywhere else.”

“We could,” Sirius nodded, looking out into space. “We can. I just don’t know how hard he’ll be to
wrangle. I’m three hundred years older than him, but still…”

He trailed off, biting his lip. Remus took a deep breath in.

“I mean, they know we’re hunting them anyway,” he said, logically, letting the branches intertwine
in his head. “So it wouldn’t be a case of he’s not allowed to leave because he’ll send intel that we
have Riddle’s deepest, darkest secret, because Riddle knows we have his deepest darkest secret.
It’s a case of doing it and trying to stay alive. For… an opportunity we don’t even know will
amount to anything.”

“But might,” Sirius whispered.

But might. It might. Might, might, might. Everything was a hedge of bets these days. This house,
these fangs, this world was a tidal wave that you don’t know if you’ll surface from. Burning lungs
were perennially familiar.

“Regulus does everything in riddles,” Sirius murmured. “He writes in riddles. He speaks in them.
It’s infuriating and confusing when he says one thing that could mean another thing that
completely negates what he’s screaming through his eyes, but it’s how he’s survived. He would
have died, in that family, if he didn’t learn to say what was imperative and keep the details to
himself. There’s no way he would’ve emphasised the detail that it was this specific charmed book
unless he thought we could make use of it.”

Remus nodded. He reached out and rested his hand gently on top of Sirius, and it was agreement.
Linked their pinkies together, and his feet seemed to become all of a sudden aware of how they
were being pulled towards the ground instead of flung into the cosmos. He orbited Sirius. He
always had.

Sirius orbited him too, with a gentle hand over his cheekbone. He frowned and swiped a thumb
over what Remus knew was a dwindling bruise.

“What happened, here?” he asked, eyes flickering over to the salve, lying dormant on the dresser.
“I replaced that for you out of common courtesy, not as a motivator to get yourself all roughed up.”

Remus rolled his eyes. “It was the kids at James’ fight club.”

“Ooh,” Sirius hissed, face scrunching up as if he’d just heard something disgusting. “That’s even
more embarrassing.”

“Hey!”

Sirius laughed, and it was music.

“Look,” Remus said, flushing, “you’re going to have to tell James and Andromeda about your plan.
Pandora, too. And you’d better tell Dorcas so she doesn’t destroy the Horcrux, and then we’ll make
sure tomorrow that everyone on our team knows not to kill Lucius Malfoy, may the opportunity
arise. And we’ll go from there.”

Sirius nodded. He leaned back, and then scrunched his nose, thinking about something. “Not sure
you’ll be here tomorrow, actually.”

“What? Why?”

“They want you out on the field,” he said, squeezing his pinky. “Series of explosions up in Orange
County. Where the old Lestrange mansion is. Frank and Edgar’ve been out there but they want
hunter eyes.”

“My hunter eyes?”

Sirius hummed. “Apparently.”

“Why?”

Sirius looked up at him, and scoffed. They were incredibly close. “Because you’re a genius, idiot,”
he murmured, thumbing Remus’ collar, “and the best vampire hunter I know. I didn’t go all the
way to fucking Texas to find you for this case for some second-rate scared-of-taking-risks pussy.”

“There is a knife in my pouch that is dangerously close to being jammed into your jugular,”
whispered Remus, leaning closer.

Sirius’ eyes glinted. “Do it,” he said, and then he kissed him.

His lips were cold and Remus’ were warm and it seemed to create some sort of static that set
Remus’ bones alight. Or turned them to jelly. He might as well be a puddle. Be the rain pattering
against a palm tree and be the tidal wave crashing onto an unsuspecting shore, two fingers in the
sand, two fingers in his hair, two fingers at his waistband. Sirius and the life inside of him. He’s so
alive, was all that was going through Remus’ head; he’s so alive, he’s so alive, you are so alive, so
alive, so much, so much.

Remus seemed to unconsciously shuffle back to accommodate Sirius - he had been unconsciously
making room for Sirius for years, shoving aside the entire vitriol of his flaming being to make way
for this monster, gripping his hair and kissing the corner of his mouth, wet and wistful, knees
clumsy either side of his own. Sirius could not be anything other than the weight on Remus’ lap
and the hand curled around his beating heart. His arm shuddered with a pulse, reverberating,
through ribs and femurs and necks and skin so papery and so tangible he was anything but a
monster. And yet he was alive enough without the heartbeat. Remus’ offerance was charity. Sirius
didn’t need it. He burnt bright enough for an entire continent of beating hearts to feel his warmth,
probably, and there was something beautiful in the mess of that. A blinding fucking orbit.
Gravity’s truthful centrefold.

Pretty. Arms around his neck. Sirius dipped his head and neither of them moved for a long, long
moment.

“I should not be this close to your neck,” Sirius said quietly. Remus laughed a sharp breath.

“What, are you going to bite me?”

“One day,” he said simply. “One day I’ll have you all.” False. You already have me all and then
some. “But right now I just…”

He trailed off, leaning in slightly, so that his nose lined up with Remus’ ear. He sucked at the
tender skin behind it and travelled his way down, his hot breaths tickling Remus so pleasurably he
bucked his hips and groaned, gutturally, at various feelings he did not want to enunciate because he
would prefer to last longer than five minutes, thank you.

“Want to make you feel good,” Sirius murmured, trailing his hands up Remus’ shirt. “All the
time.”

“You think that’s guilt?” Remus breathed, hands tugging in his hair. Sirius whined. He wasn’t sure
what he was saying. He wasn’t sure how his lips were moving when he couldn’t even feel them.
“For eight years of making me feel like shit?”

Sirius hummed, shook his head. Sucked at the most sensitive spot. Remus knew exactly where he
fucking was.

“I didn’t make you feel like shit,” he murmured, wisps of air against Remus’ skin. His thighs were
clenched and his mouth was dry. Sirius’ was wet, wet, wet.

He pulled back, and leaned in, close to Remus, so their lips were practically touching.

“I made you feel alive,” he whispered, and Remus kissed him.

And he tasted like smoke, and some sort of spice, and Remus felt his brain begin to fog up slightly
and wondered if that was Sirius’ hands on his hips, Sirius’ tongue in his mouth or Sirius’ name at
the back of his throat in a sort of embarrassing affirmation that seems to be pulled out of him along
with his entire essence and probable soul when Sirius kisses him.

Sirius found his dagger.

“Oh, shit,” he said, leaning back and pulling it suavely out of the pouch. “You weren’t kidding.”

Remus blinked. He was lying further back on the bed and Sirius was straddling him and he
probably wouldn’t be able to count to ten if asked, but Sirius, thankfully, didn’t seem all that
curious about arithmetics in favour of the glinting metal and his body.

“I wasn’t,” Remus said, taking it from him easily and twirling it around his hands. He sat up from
where he was previously laying on his elbows and shifted, holding Sirius more comfortably in his
lap. He trailed the tip of the knife against his jawline and down to the tip of his chin. Tilted it up.
Sirius viscerally shuddered.

“That do it for you?”

“Mhm.”

Remus hummed. Pressed it flat under his chin. His skin burnt. Sirius closed his eyes and breathed
in, heavily.

“That, too?”

“Mmmm.”

He pulled the dagger away. Sirius licked his lips and opened his eyes, and they were dark.

Remus brought a finger up to tuck a lock of fallen hair behind Sirius’ ear. He trailed his hand down
his jawline until his forefinger reached his lips, traced over his bottom lip, raw and bitten and
cherry.

And then Remus brought the dagger up, pulled his hand back, and pressed the point of the blade to
his forefinger. He bit his lip, deep enough to draw blood on his own - oh may god bless the fucking
irony - as he twisted it until he drew blood. A small, tiny, tiny cut at the tip of his finger. A fat glob
of red blood. It looked like a teardrop.

Sirius inhaled sharply. “What are you–”

Remus reached his finger up, hovered before his lips, and Sirius stopped breathing. His eyes were
lustful and hungry and his mouth was pouted and pretty and Remus smeared blood along his
bottom lip.

Sirius actually laughed. His fangs glistened in the low light.

“Oh, fuck you,” he choked, and Remus put his finger into his mouth.

Sirius sucked immediately. A low, helpless whine came from the deep, hollow back of his throat,
and he bit, slightly, into Remus’ finger with his front teeth, swiping his tongue up and over and
around it until Remus pulled it back, out of his gorgeous gaze and Sirius let out the unsteadiest
breath and tightened his grip on both of Remus’ shoulders, air breathing air, lungs breathing lungs.

His chest was heaving. His top lip was twitching, ever so slightly, from the lust or the thirst Remus
didn’t know - maybe both - probably both. And Remus felt so fucking drunk in the control. He felt
intoxicated in the gorgeous little shuddering thing he had at his beck and call, under his lamplight,
enraptured and aroused by his guiding little finger, bloody and bruised and beautiful, beautiful,
beautiful.

He cupped Sirius’ face, and his lips pressed against his palm. His teeth pressed against his palm.
Sirius closed his eyes and opened his mouth, letting his bottom lip trail up his skin. He bit and
rolled his skin lightly between two front teeth. Let it go.

He looked at Remus. With a question and an answer.

“You can have it,” Remus whispered. “You can have me.” His thumb over Sirius’ parted lips. His
fingers being held by Sirius’ own. His truth. His agency. His autonomy. His Sirius.

“My pretty boy,” Sirius murmured, pulling Remus’ hand gently off his face. Turning it around so
that his lips were aligned with the outer side of his palm. Eyes fluttering shut. “My pretty, pretty,
pretty… pretty…”

He pulled his top lip back, exhaled slowly, and sunk his teeth into Remus’ hand.

And no one had ever told Remus how this was supposed to feel. Remus had never felt it before, not
really. Not with the vampire in Austin. Not with the vampire before him. Not with the one on his
arm, trailed upwards, bloodshed and bone; not with the very first vampire who bit him, on the
shoulder. That scar wasn’t visible anymore. This one will be. This one will be.

It felt euphoric. Euphoria did not encompass it. Remus knew pain. He knew pain like - ha, haha -
like the back of his hand, he absorbed it. He took it and he churned it and he spat it out with a tooth
and a blood clot and a part of his psyche. He took it and he churned it and he had a beautiful boy
sitting on his lap, and he had a part of him in his flesh, digging into his skin, and where Remus had
felt pain and pain and only pain and churned pain and fury, fangs in his skin, his bone, his mind,
Remus, with Sirius here, holding him, felt pleasure and he felt madness. He felt hysteria and he felt
adoration. He felt–– he felt–– he felt so much. So much, so much but not too much. More and more
but not most.

Life. He was so alive. Remus was so dead. Remus was bleeding death and Sirius was not affected.
They’re a perfect match. Sirius’ mouth belongs, wet, around his skin. Remus has just realised this
is where it belongs. This is where he belongs.

Remus moaned and let his head fall forward onto Sirius’ shoulder and let his free hand move up,
up his treeline spine, his mountainous shoulder blades. He was a map and Remus was a
cartographer. He was a God and Remus was a worshipper. Idolatry is not ideal in the best of
circumstances, he’s aware, but Remus thought that they could make it work if this was how it felt.

Oh, God. Oh, Lord, and Oh, fuck, Sirius.

“Sirius,” Remus gasped into his shoulder, and he pulled his mouth away.

“Y’okay?” he breathed, nuzzling at Remus’ forehead with his own to pull his face up, and Remus’
hand was stinging, bad, but everything was okay. He pulled his head up and nodded. There was
blood on Sirius’ bottom lip. He kissed the corner, he kissed his lip, he kissed him and he tasted
himself.

“I––”

“I know,” Sirius murmured, nodding. Remus’ hand was hovering in mid air. The abrasions were
not terribly deep and they were not seeping badly, but one of the wounds bled a trickle down and
around Remus’ wrist, and Sirius caught it with his tongue.

He licked up Remus’ arm, sucked again on the wounds. Kissed them. Kissed him. Remus was so
high it was heavenly.

So when Sirius pushed him back to lie down, scooted down and unzipped his trousers, Remus
lifted his hips and helped them off. And when his wet, saturated, devilish mouth swirled its tongue
around him and took him in, all Remus could think was that every philosopher everywhere had
been looking in all the wrong places.

Everything epistemological begins and ends here. With his back arched and his hand bloody and
Sirius Black all over him, everywhere, everywhere.

It’s hell-inducing. Remus never stood a chance.

 thirteen
Chapter Summary

malfoy manor, part one

Chapter Notes

missed yall! sorry it's been ages! big chapter!! enjoy!! ah!!!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

With the nature of the ambush everyone had agreed unanimously that it was too risky to drive, and
sidealong apparition took too much out of the witches on such a large scale, and so Remus
portkeyed into Vermont alongside the flustered bodies of his team. He landed on dark, slightly
dewy grass with a thud and rested his head in his arms for a few moments as he recuperated. There
was a slap on the back and Remus knew without looking that it was James.

“Come on, Remy,” he said, pulling his hand, strained as he helped him to his feet, “Up you get.”

Remus blinked, and took in his surroundings. They had landed about a three-mile distance directly
north from the northern point of the triangle - a three-mile distance from Malfoy Manor itself. It
was only the group of them there; the south-east team had arrived three miles south-east, the south-
west team three miles south-west. It was a triangle around a triangle.

The air was bitterly cold. He shuddered, slightly, and straightened up; they were in a heavily
wooded area, and it was basically pitch black, aside from the low shine of the near-full moon
through the wispy branches overhead.

“Everyone make it?” Andromeda said, taking on the role as leader; she did a head-count and
confirmed everyone's presence, and then they got to moving. James linked his arm around Remus’
as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, which was a small, sweet gesture that was wildly appreciated,
and they set off walking.

They had set the departure time for 9:30pm, the date of early March falling into the dark of the
early spring evening before the nights got shorter and the days got longer. The day had been spent
making preparations and bundling up to avoid the gnawing anxiety, really. Remus, who had
checked his weaponry thrice over, patted himself down to ensure that the various blades and stakes
he had disguised on himself had not disappeared into thin air or something.

Of course, the most important was sheathed on his hip. The most important was the easiest to
reach.

The basilisk blades were… a beauty. Remus had been staring at them, lying on the table on Friday,
had held them in his hand out past the treeline with Dorcas after his mission on Saturday. It had
been hard to get used to them, but he was used to Dorcas, they were used to each other and their
styles. They had made themselves get used to holding them without fear, sheathing and
unsheathing without stress. He had even spent about two hours with James at his stupid fight club,
sparring with him (not with the blade - way too risky - but with a venom-free duplicate that Sirius
had dug out of god knows where). The practice had been the only thing to get his mind off it,
really, and it was also a way for him to regain his dignity after Friday night, slitting Isabela’s throat
so deep it leaked blood like a waterfall. She high-fived him for it. It’s a weird arrangement.

In a total juxtaposition to his anxieties, Pandora had been light on air all weekend, and Remus
didn’t blame her. The potion was a gamble, an experiment, and where he had known Pandora was a
prolific experimenter and was insanely smart and scientific, seeing it in action had been something
worth remembering. She alongside Benjy were the perpetual optimists for the weekend, and and
had been quick to reassure and, even, distract them, drawing a page from Dorcas’ book and
relaying story after story of hunts they had been on, and things she had witnessed in an act that
eventually gathered a cohort of listeners, human and vampire alike; Remus realised that a lot of the
Order vampires had never met supernatural creatures that weren’t their own species, and their
interest was almost endearing.

Lily had given him a long, long hug before they had left.

“Be safe,” she had whispered, hot breath into his neck. “Get it and come back.”

“I will,” he said back. “Take care of the place. Maybe try talking to Astoria again, she’ll be
lonely.”

The vampire in question was crowding her friends, wishing them all luck as Lily wished him - she
was still not entirely comfortable around humans, and Lily’s previous reachings out had been
mostly blanked, but Remus knew that she was a good kid. She was just lacking control, and scared
to hurt anyone. That came from goodness.

“I think I’m supposed to be spending the night with Poppy, actually,” Lily replied, drawing back.
“We’ve been trying to find time to cross-reference magic medicine and… would you call ours
human medicine? I was inclined to say ‘normal’, but I guess that’s a bit ignorant, isn’t it?”

Remus smiled at her lightness. “I guess it is,” he said. “God knows I know about ignorance,” he
muttered, and she gave him one last tight, empathising smile and a warm squeeze on the arm
before turning to embrace Marlene, who was putting on a leather jacket and tying her hair back.

Dorcas slid into his vision.

“Right,” she said, haughtily. “Now I don’t wanna hear anything about you challenging eight
hundred year old Purebloods, alright?”

“Isn’t that the whole point of the mission?” Remus laughed, and she rolled her eyes.

“It would be you,” she muttered. “Going there and not where I’m going.”

“You’re better for it,” he said. “You’re fucking savage. Most of that guard won’t be experienced at
all - you can kill them in seconds.”

“Yes, I know,” she said, exasperated, “but I’d still rather put myself in your position a million
times than watch you get hurt.”

Remus pretended to gasp, trying to keep the mood light. “You have such little faith in me, Cas.”

“You know that’s not what I meant,” she muttered, shoving him.
“And, besides,” said Remus, keeping it up, “bonding time for you and your favourite person.”

His eyes flickered over the crowd, congregating on the back lawn; he spotted Sirius’ head almost
instantly over the other heads. Dorcas followed his gaze and then scoffed.

“Never in a million years.”

Remus shrugged, standing beside her and watching. “He’s not that bad.”

“He is absolutely that bad.”

“You grow fond of it,” Remus said, and Dorcas narrowed her eyes.

“You grow fond of it,” she said. “I tolerate him. For you. And for the sake of finding Mary.”

Remus hummed. “And Marlene?”

“Shut up,” she said, brushing herself off. “No more speaking for you.”

Remus laughed as Dorcas turned to Lily and the woman herself, and he found himself shivering
slightly. He rubbed his hands together and sunk into his coat, pulling out his phone with some
difficulty to look at the time.

21:25.

He breathed out, watching the leaves on the trees wave in the breeze that was tickling his neck, and
looked over at the lake. It was beautiful at night. The light from the house and the exuberant
outside lights reached just about enough to glitter over the water, not necessarily tinging it a
specific colour but simply illuminating it, making its divinity known. It looked different to how it
looked in the daytime. There were different sides to everything. Remus knew that damn well by
now.

He checked his phone quickly again before shoving it into his pocket - 21:26. Andromeda and
James were crowded around their portkey - the crowd had naturally dispersed into their positions.
He took a step on impulse towards his own; while his gaze flitted uncontrollably towards another.

Sirius was already walking towards him.

He turned just in enough time for Sirius to envelope him into a hug, wrapping his arms around his
back and placing his head on his shoulder. Remus let out a surprised breath, but reciprocated his
movements; he clung onto Sirius’ back, gripping onto his shoulder blades. He had to lean forward
slightly to rest his cheek against his shoulder. It felt slightly desperate. His stomach did a flip.

“Don’t get killed,” Sirius murmured into his shoulder. Remus smiled.

“I would never,” he said, a humorous twinge to his voice. “Not when you called dibs.”

Sirius’ shoulder shook slightly in a gruff laugh.

“Exactly,” he muttered. He clung harder. “Remember their weaknesses. Use your blade. Don’t let
them get you when your back is turned. You remember our plan?”

“I remember,” he said, nodding. “I’ve got it.”

He pulled back, hands on the sides of Sirius’ shoulders. He scanned his face quickly. Every lovely
inch.
“See you in the clearing,” he said, quietly.

“See you then,” Sirius replied. A smirk quirk its way onto his ghostly lips, and he said, “Don’t be
late.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Remus said, and then he leaned forward and kissed him.

Sirius kissed him back immediately, hands moving back down to the small of his back where they
had been while Remus cupped the sides of his face, tips of his fingers breaking through his
hairline. It was deep and brief, intense and warm on stolen time as the print of Remus’ phone in his
pocket burned the time through onto his skin.

They pulled away and took a breath. Just one. Sirius pulled himself backwards; his hands dragged
around Remus’ back, his fingers trailing on his waist as if trying to find something unattainable to
cling to. He took a step and his hands dropped by his sides like iron, and his face was
indecipherable.

“We’ll continue that when I see you again,” he said, smiling.

“Remus,” James called sharply, pulling him out of his haze as Sirius disappeared into the masses
and he walked with a spring over to the portkey, slotting himself in between James and
Andromeda. He placed a hand on the object - it was a long, black umbrella - and everyone fell into
a sort of odd silence while waiting for it to go.

He looked at Lily. Her hair shone red and beautiful with the light from the house, and she held both
of her hands to her chest, clutched in one, as she watched them all. Her eyes fell onto Remus, and
she gave a sad, encouraging smile; and then they flickered over to James. She nodded, and Remus
felt him reciprocate.

His gaze moved again, not of his own accord, and he looked to his far right.

The people he was so seeking were mainly obscured by Ambrose. It took a minute of anticipation
bubbling in their guts as people shifted gently, and he turned, he tilted his head slightly and the last
thing that Remus saw before he was pulled backwards, hooked like a fish into the abyss, was
Dorcas nudge Sirius’ hand to the side, and the both of them look at each other and smile.

And if that wasn’t something.

***

The walk took forty five minutes before the manor was in sight.

It was, admittedly, beautiful. At least from where Remus was. Situated at the end of a long,
winding road, back facing the treeline in which they emerged from, Malfoy Manor stood tall. It
was slightly dreary looking as far as the colour scheme went - grey and white, marble and stone -
but it was extravagantly large. There was a fountain outside. Vines crawled up the side of the
bricks like fungi, and there were barely any lights outside or in.

The plan was simple. Attacking all three simultaneously was a precaution. There were vampires
present everywhere; if they were to attack just the one, they’d come running. It would also be
marginally obvious what they were going for if they all went with Sirius; for now, this could be a
run of the mill vampire attack. This could be revenge for Hotel Transylvania burning. It could be a
simple retaliation.

(Remus noticed with a twinge of guilt at not being fully truthful, a lot of the vampires thought it
was.)

The plan was to attack from the back; they were currently lurking in the trees, watching the house
stand tall across a vast back field. Remus could see figures at the back entrance. He couldn’t
pinpoint how many. It was understandable that they had such a strong guard, he supposed. A
Malfoy-Black pairing was royalty upon royalty. Not that the supernatural world had any of those
hierarchies, but Remus knew damn well that that's what they thought of themselves, at least.

Andromeda had one of those communications devices, much like the ones Remus had used before
while hunting. It was easier than phones, or walkie-talkies; smaller, more inconspicuous, and easier
to use. One button from Sirius went instantly to both of the other parties. A small buzz. Go time. It
had been a simple aspect of the plan to figure out.

A not so simple aspect, however, had been their scents. The vampires were okay. The only
vampires old and developed enough to have a sense of smell strong enough to scope out other
vampires and place them was Narcissa, three hundred years her husband’s senior, and they would -
hopefully - be deep in battle long before she arrived.

Remus and Dorcas had been a different story. Their blood coursed, human and alive, through their
veins. It sweetened up the entire forestry; it was a vampire’s primary sense. More so than the
vampires or even the witches, a muted must; they were liabilities.

It was a continued conversation throughout the entire week. Sirius had contemplated not letting
them come - to, of course, outrage - and when that was scrapped, he had come up with… another
idea.

“No,” Dorcas had said, from where she was sitting at the table at approximately 6pm that evening.
“Absolutely not.”

“There’s no other way.”

“It’s disgusting,” she said, scrunching her nose. Sirius sighed and looked at Remus.

“It’s the only thing that will mask the scent enough so they won’t smell you coming,” he said,
exasperatedly. “Trust me, I don’t want to do it either.”

“Can’t you just like… smear it on our arms?” Remus asked, scrunching his nose at the disgust of
what he was saying. “On our necks? They did that in The Walking Dead.”

“You watched that show?” piped up Marlene, quirking an eyebrow.

“It was good study material,” he shrugged.

“It wouldn’t work,” Andromeda interjected, flicking back to the conversation at hand. “Your scent
comes from deep inside you. A superficial covering won’t do anything. You have to change the
inside.”

“By shotting vampire blood like it’s fucking vodka?!” Dorcas exclaimed. She shook her head
maniacally. “I can’t. I’m gonna throw up. This can’t be real. I feel like I’m in a terrible vampire
movie. What the hell is this–”

“Look,” Sirius said, brushing past her outrages with nothing more than an exasperated eye roll. “It's
mine, so it’ll be potent. Potent enough that you shouldn’t need much. It’s so brutally unscented that
it’ll, hopefully, mask your scent.” He paused. Thinned his lips with intent, before adding on;
“...Hopefully.”
“So this is... a hypothetical?” Dorcas said through her teeth. The air grew cold. “You don’t even
know if it’ll work?”

“It’s not like this is something I do often!” he exclaimed, rather shrilly. “I don’t fucking know what
will mask your scent, the only thing I’ve ever done to blot out a human’s scent is kill them–”

“Delightful,” Dorcas interjected.

“–but this seems like the most viable option.” He huffed, and his face turned snarky. “Forgive me
if I’m not particularly well-versed in ambushing one of the five living purebloods older than
myself with two irritating pulses yapping away in the background.”

“What did you just call me?” Dorcas said threateningly, and made to stand up; Remus physically
had to pull her back down. She collapsed back into the chair with a loud thump, and Sirius rolled
his eyes once more.

And he had to admit, it was understandable. It wasn’t like anything they had been doing - anything
since the first day he and Sirius had got into his fucking car and road-tripped up to NYC - was
anything that any of them were well-versed in. Wasn't everything a hypothesis, recently? Wasn't
everything up in the air? Wasn’t this entire operation one huge fucking gamble, because none of
them had ever experienced anything like it before? It wasn’t fucking appealing to him, either, but,
unlike Dorcas, he understood Sirius’ frustration. He understood that they had to do something.

“What if we get killed?” Remus asked, offhandedly; he had long grown used to asking and
anticipating that question, and thus it did not shock him how fluidly it came out of his mouth. What
did shock him was the jolt in the deep of his stomach at the way that Sirius flinched.

“You won’t.”

“I know we won’t,” Remus said testily, “but, I mean, what are the possibilities of it turning us if
we did?”

“Almost nothing,” Andromeda said. “The blood was taken directly from the vein of his arm. Our
venom secretes itself in our parotid lymph nodes, so it’s mostly potent around our throat. It phases
out the further down you go. You should be fine.”

“Fantastic,” Dorcas muttered. “Makes me feel so much better.”

Remus pulled the cup towards him, and grimaced. It was only about a third of the way full - not
much at all, really, possibly three gulps max - but it… well. It was not enticing.

“Just pretend it's whiskey,” James said casually, from where he had been lounging and observing
the chaos. He had pushed his chair back and kicked his feet up to rest them on the table, and Lily
had huffed and swatted them with her hand until he relented and put them down again. He shot her
an eye roll right back, but Remus didn’t miss the way they both smiled to themselves afterwards.

“Whiskey,” Remus said, flatly. He shrugged.

“Or, like, a milkshake?” he said. Dorcas scowled.

“Shut up, Potter,” she grumbled, pulling her own cup towards her, and he shot her a brilliant,
arsehole grin that she did not reciprocate.

She turned to Remus.

“I am so fucking sick of vampires,” she said, in a room full of vampires, and Remus couldn’t stop
himself from bursting into laughter. He raised his glass and indicated for her to raise hers. She
narrowed her eyes but he could see the way she was desperately trying to stifle a smile.

“Cheers, then,” he said, knocking her glass against his own, and she grimaced and raised it to her
lips.

And the James Potter decided to be… well. James Potter.

“Chug, chug, chug,” he started chanting in a mantra, and Lily rolled her eyes so far it felt like they
should have rolled back into her head, but before she could even turn to reprimand the annoying
little man that would, in all fairness, shut up if she told him to, Dorcas whipped a thin throwing
knife out of, quite honestly, nowhere, and in one quick flick of her wrist it flew across the room and
embedded itself into James’ shoulder.

They was a stunned silence, and then Sirius burst out laughing.

“Okay,” he said, placating, as Lily held a hand up to her mouth to cover her own laugh and Dorcas
smirked, evidently pleased with herself; “Okay, yeah, I deserved that. Fair play, Meadowes.”

Dorcas nodded her head and James gripped the blade and pulled it out of his shoulder, covered in
his blood. He held it out and waved it slightly.

“Wanna lick it? Vampire popsicle?” he said, and Marlene was the one, this time, to take two steps
forward from where she had been standing in the corner of the room and whack him around the
head. She took the blade from him and slid it across the table soundlessly, back to Dorcas, who
smiled.

“Thank you, Marls,” Dorcas said sweetly, and Marlene did a sort of faux-courtesy. Her eyes were
heavy on Dorcas.

“You’re welcome,” she said, and they held eye contact for perhaps 1.5 seconds longer than what
was universally necessary.

Dorcas turned back to Remus and re-picked up her glass. They clinked them together.

“Cheers,” she said, glumly, and with the eyes of four vampires and Lily on them they both raised
the glass to their lips.

It had been disgusting, obviously. There were no two ways about it. And Dorcas had been right - it
had felt incredibly stupid, and Remus had taken a moment as Sirius’ blood - Sirius Black’s fucking
blood, dead and metallic-y and uncomfortably thick - lathered his throat to sort of bask in the
circumstances of his life. It had also been just as difficult a process to convince Benjy and Gideon.
Think: exactly what just happened - including Dorcas stabbing James, again - but with a bit more
gagging. Courtesy of Gideon and his weak gag reflex.

It was fucking ridiculous, but it had worked, he supposed, as Andromeda came zooming back from
where she had set off running to secure the perimeters.

“There’s no one there,” she said, whipping her hair out of her face gracefully. She had come to a
skidding halt; the mud beneath her feet curdled. “I went five miles around the perimeter and didn’t
find anyone. Couldn’t smell you two, either,” she said, nudging Remus with her elbow, eyes
flickering to Benjy beside him. “If I try hard enough I can pinpoint that it’s Sirius in you, but
Narcissa isn’t as familiar with his scent, so I think you’ll be fine.”
“Lucius?”

“Oh, he’s not an issue,” James said blithely. “To him - to everyone apart from this old hag and her
slightly less haggard sister - you simply don’t have a scent. It’s so minute that only the most
advanced could pick up on it.”

“Great,” Remus said, sarcastically. Percy laughed quietly from where he was poised at the treeline.

“How long have we got, then?” Susan Bones asked. She, along with Mariana (who Remus was not
used to separating from her twin, Eduardo) were two people that Remus hadn’t really spoken to in
his time with the Order. Susan was plump, and kind; sometimes she spent time with the kids out
with James’ training club, and thus Remus knew by association that she was also fucking vicious,
and actually quite brilliant. Mari, on the other hand, was tall - almost as tall as him - and, quite
honestly, fashioned herself as a corpse. Her hair was dark brown and flowing, her eyes narrowed at
almost all times. She was quite terrifying, but once you got into a conversation with her - as he had
learned in the past few days - she was a cold one cracked open with intelligence.

“Not long,” Andromeda said. “We’re waiting on Sirius’ signal.” She turned to the witches, and
then to Remus. “You remember the plan, right?”

He remembered the plan.

See, the issue here was that they were a group of six beings who had inhuman super speed, and
five beings who did not. Thus, to truly be concealed until the last moment to achieve the element of
surprise that they were bargaining for, they had to stay in the tree lines - and thus, the witches (and
Remus) would apparate in first. They would get a ten second head start before the vampires caught
up to them, and they would use the surprise as well as they could.

They went over this once and then fell into a lapsed silence, marred only by the swishing of the
trees. Susan climbed a tree for a better viewpoint and Jul fell into a low conversation with Benjy
and a witch that had been added last minute just in case after Charity injured herself in training.
They cast a muffling charm over the general vicinity that Remus could see exude gold glitter if he
concentrated hard enough.

James crouched down. Remus crouched beside him, a twig breaking beneath his feet.

“You nervous?” he murmured, and James inclined his head in acknowledgement but did not look at
him.

“Yeah, but not for us,” he muttered back. The wind whistled - it was so dark he could barely see.
“We’ll be fine. It’s them I’m worried about.”

Remus nodded. He knew what he meant.

Sirius & Dorcas. Two inextricable pieces of Remus’ body chipped off like drywall, six miles
somewhere south-east.

“But they’re brilliant,” Remus pointed out. “You said yourself that Sirius underestimates his own
strength. He’s a bombshell.”

“And your Dorcas is a mighty fucking dynamite, let me tell you that,” James murmured back, and
they both grinned. The wind whistled ominously. Someone moved about behind Remus, he heard
the footsteps in the crushed grass.

“We’ll be fine,” James said, after a moment. As if trying to reassure himself. “They’ll be fine.
They’ll get the thing and destroy it, and we’ll rip the shit out of some Malfoys–”

“And you’ll be home by midnight to fall back into the routine of making eyes at Lily across the
room and having nothing come of it,” Remus finished, and James scoffed, but he was laughing.

“Fuck you,” he said. “You have absolutely no room to make that remark.”

Remus pursed his lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, come off it,” James muttered. “You two lock eyes and everyone else in the room suffocates.”

Remus let out a slow exhale, and looked up. He could see the moon.

“You two,” James said, slowly, “it was a long time coming. You know that?”

“I know,” Remus said, hot around the collar with embarrassment. James had no idea how much he
knew that.

“Like,” he continued, smirking, “so inevitable. You have no idea how exhausting the past eight
years around him has been.”

Remus let out a breathy laugh. “You and Dorcas could bond over that. I’m pretty sure it's been
exhausting for her, too.”

They fell into silence, and Remus turned slightly, to see James was already looking at him. He had
one eyebrow raised. A question.

He sighed.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he hissed. “Two, three months ago I wanted him dead
and now I’m…” he paused, trying to find the words, “under a different orbit.”

James hummed in approval. “Poetic. Nice.”

Remus hit him gently. He barely budged.

There was a moment of silence, breaths in and out and wind whistling through their ears.

“But,” Remus said, mouth caught around the word, the click of his tongue, “it’s not… exactly a
good time to get into something serious right now, is it?”

James turned to him. His brown skin was highlighted in the moonlight, his eyes glittering in the
dim light as they blinked the air away. He gave Remus a soft look; as soft as the grass between
their fingertips; and shrugged, slightly.

“I don’t know,” he murmured, looking up to the starlit sky. “Maybe it’s the best time. Who knows
how long we’ve got?”

Before Remus even had a chance to reply, or process the words in his head, Andromeda’s
communications device went off. It buzzed, once, twice, three times, and James’ head flicked up so
quickly he barely saw it move.

He looked in his eyes and they were blazing. They were in game mode.

Jul was storming towards Remus as he stood up, and all of the vampires, bar Andromeda, poised
themselves at the treeline. Remus could see the two guards out of the front of the door. He knew
the plan.

Jul took his hand.

“You remember–” they started, but the both of them nodded and cut them off.

Andromeda looked over her shoulder at the house, and then put their hands on the sides of their
shoulders. “You have ten seconds. Go. Go.”

Jul grabbed his hand, and Remus looked into their wide eyes and nodded.

They took a deep breath, and the world went black.

***

The world went black, and then it went white, and Remus Lupin landed in front of the back door,
barely an arms length away from the guard who was so surprised to see him he staggered back into
the door handle.

Remus smiled.

“Hi,” he said, pleasantly, letting go of Jul’s hand. “Bye,” he said as he twirled his blade around his
fingers and, before the vampire could even blink, stabbed it back-handed directly into his skull.

He died instantly, and Remus, blade still embedded into his head, jerked it and pushed his body
aside. It came loose as the body fell, and the blood smeared upon it twinkled under the low outdoor
lighting.

He pulled a tissue out of his pouch and wiped it. Three seconds.

Jul was a whirlwind.

Remus took a step to the side, instinctively turning with his blade in hand incase they needed him
for the other one, but they were doing amazing - Remus noted, quickly, that they were a witch just
like Mary, in that they had a certain specific forte, a certain connection to the earth, and theirs was
air. They seemed, with their fists balled up menacingly, to be restricting the vampire's air pipe -
except, no, they don’t need to breathe, anyway, and yet the vampire was choking. Choking on
something intangible, and his face was red, his veins black, and the blood vessels in his eyes
seemed to have popped. They were bleeding red.

Jul was burning him from the inside out; squeezing until he was nothing left but skin and bones.

Jesus Christ.

The vampire keeled over after a moment, and they, with a flourish of their hand, sent him skidding
across the ground and out of their way.

“I’ve always wanted to use that spell,” Jul said, turning to him, sort of breathless and half-laughing.
Remus was still blinking at the bag of bones to his side.

Six seconds.

There was a crack directly behind them, and Remus turned to see Charity striding up the porch
stairs, the other young sepia brown skinned witch and then Benjy directly behind her. Her palms
were already sparking and he was wielding a blade the size of his forearm.
She looked at Remus and inclined her head.

“You might wanna move,” she said, and he did.

He took two steps back as she took two steps forward. Jul reached out their hand and she gripped it,
reaching out to grip the younger witches in turn, and, with a moment to grow fiery momentum that
seemed to choke the air and a flourish of both of their hands, every single glass window on this
side of the mansion blew out. Remus instinctively put his hands on his head but the other three
witches thrust their hands up above them and created a shield of sorts - the glass bounced off it,
keeping them safe, and landed with thuds onto the ground.

The door, in the blast, had been burst wide open, and he did not hesitate.

Ten seconds.

And, perfectly on cue, as soon as he crossed the threshold of the house he felt a blow of wind - a
blow of momentum - on his back. He unsheathed his gun and pointed it to the roof of the grandiose
hallway, knowing that he had his army behind him.

He shot three times into the roof. There was a moment - a tantalising moment - of silence.

And then, as he jerked to the side when James’ figure came into his peripheral, a pair of huge
double doors lined with golden marble flourishes swung open with a bang, and about five vampires
poured in.

And five from the other side.

And five from the staircase. Five from the other side of the staircase.

“Okay,” Remus murmured to himself as he locked eyes with the group of them coming down the
stairs. He cracked his neck and cocked his gun with one hand. Blade in the other. He took a breath.

“Do your very fucking worst,” he muttered, and the last thing he heard before he ran into action
was James Potter laughing.

He shot twice before he made contact, directly into one of the vampires heads and then another’s
heart, and by the time he had swerved his gun one of them was on him. He curved his body and
reached out with both hands to grip onto his shoulders and stop him from biting him, and with a
duck to try and avoid momentum or backlash he contorted his wrist and shot upwards into the
vampire's jaw, killing him instantly. He shoved his limp body away and a woman was next - she
came at him from his left side, and he kicked her back on the stomach and then again, but she was
fast - she got up and crowded his face, snarling so viciously that Remus was quite sure she was
actually spitting on him, and, in one tactile movement he unsheathed it from his pouch, reached up
and slit her throat, deep, with the basilisk blade.

He shot two vampires to his right (not fatally, but enough to send them staggering back) in the time
it took the female vampire to stagger and fall to her knees. He watched as the blood that poured
from the slit in her neck turned from red to black in an almost magical waterfall down her torso.
She reached her hand up to grip it, choking, choking like Sirius had on the sidewalk outside of
Hotel Transylvania, except there was no coming back from this one for her. Remus was almost
transfixed on the way it worked - he registered, vaguely, James ripping someone's head off in the
background and Percy pouncing on someone's shoulders, while Andromeda kicked his body out
from underneath him. But in front of him was basilisk venom, killing someone slowly. His eyes
were focused, but his body did the work for him.
A man toppled onto him and he fell, instinctively holding his gun hand out to break his fall, while
his knife hand went to the vampires throat and he stabbed him up the chin through to the brain; he
died instantly, and as Remus threw his body off him the body of the woman with the slit throat
finally died, too, and their bodies slumped next to each other on their backs in some eerie mortuary,
except one had died instantly, and one had suffered so badly that her veins were black and still
pulsating against her ashy corpse-like skin.

He turned, and before he even got halfway around he witnessed one of the witches levitating a
thrashing vampire who looked to be in his early forties, though his temperament suggested to
Remus he had been turned rather recently. Levitation magic was often intangible but there was a
sweetness to her magic, and her palms were tinged pink as she lifted the vampire off who Remus
could now see to be Percy Weasley, who pulled himself up in a sit-up with a slowly healing gash
across his neck that was a deeper red than his hair. He locked eyes with Percy, and they both, in
sequence, surveyed the scene. And he saw, of course, that James was gunning for the kill.

However they were not the only two surveying the scene.

Two vampires were gaining on the witch, one on the right, one of the left. The young girl -
Lavender, that was her name, a flowery and bouncy name like the tangling mess of bleached coils
on her head, powerful like the magic emitting from her palms as she contained a creature of the
night - seemed to be panting with both power and fear, and there was a strange sort of camaraderie
that the three almost-strangers shared in that moment.

Lavender looked to Remus, stricken, and then to Percy. He looked to Remus; while Remus looked
to her, and then to Percy.

He jerked his head to the right, and Percy was up before he even blinked.

The boy went straight for the vampire on the right, grabbed him from behind, and sunk his fangs
into his neck so hard that the vampires knees buckled and he fell to the floor; and in the split-
second between the vampire falling and his knees hitting the floor Remus aimed his gun and shot
directly into the back of the vampire on the left’s head. She collapsed forward in an almost
animated kill, and her blood splattered violently across Lavender’s skin, but apart from a gasp of
surprise she did not falter.

Percy dragged his fangs around the back of the vampire's neck creating hugely large gashes,
oozing blood down his back, and in a flash he spun around to his front and grabbed him by the
throat, jerking his hand outwards towards Remus, and he ducked.

Remus aimed and shot him in the head, and the jolt of it did not even move Percy.

He relinquished his grip and let the vampire crumple, pathetically. The blood had skimmed the top
of his hair and was holding it down, dripping over his eyes. Remus met his gaze, and the kid
grinned so fucking wide and mischievously that he reminded Remus of his uncles.

His attention was jerked away by a scream, and Remus turned just in time to see James jump from
where he had fucking scaled the side of the hall and onto the older man floating in mid-air. He
gripped onto him, wrapping his arms around his waist, and Lavender gave him perhaps about three
seconds before she let her arms drop and staggered back, and the both of them fell.

James landed on his knees, the vampire on his back below him, his palm splayed against his chin.
The tile cracked underneath his skull, and in a swift movement James ripped the man's head from
the rest of his flailing body.
And then he stood up, did a run up, and kicked the rolling head with the side of his foot like a
football. It went soaring over the crowd of bodies and flew meticulously out of the glassless
window.

He cackled in triumph.

Remus darted through the crowds, past Andromeda who was seventy-five percent of the way
through ripping someone's jaw off, and he raised his gun and shot down a vampire approaching
Susan Bones, who was currently fighting off three vampires at once and doing it marvellously (and
while he was quite sure that she could handle a fourth, he thought it best to not gamble when he
had such a clear shot.)

James was already fighting someone else.

“Do you really need to play fucking footie with the heads, here, James?” Remus yelled over the
noise as he stabbed the vampire that James was fending off in the back of the head with his blade.
He let his grip go slack and the body crumpled between them; James met his eyes and let out a
mighty laugh.

“What else are you supposed to do in a hall full of loose heads?” he called, cutting off a vampire
speed-running past him with one outward jerk of his arm. The vampire fell flat onto his back, and
James cut off his circulation by placing a hard foot on his throat. He threw his arms out. “Let them
fucking fly, Lupin!”

Remus rolled his eyes and fell to his knees to stab the vampire in the heart and cease his struggling.
James let his foot drop and Remus took one, exasperated (but not surprised) look at him, and then
aligned his knife to his throat, pressed his palm to the top of his blade and chopped it clean through
the vampire’s neck.

“Go crazy, Ronaldo,” he said, already turning to hastily rejoin the fight. “And don’t fucking die!”

“When do I ever?!” James called, and Remus turned around, but not before he saw James pick up
the head and kick it across the room with so much force that it broke right through a canvas
painting, ricocheted off of the wall behind it like a boulder and comically took out another one of
the vampires.

Hm. Perhaps it was good for something.

He made his way past Charity, who was burning one of the vampires inside out again, and
Lavender who was slashing her hands in front of her with an aggressive scream alongside each
movement - the slashes were materialised on an old male vampires chest, where blood was seeping
through his clothes. He fell to his knees; Lavender slashed his throat; and Andromeda Tonks came
zooming in, falling to her knees behind him, and ripping his heart right out of his chest. She
discarded it to the side in a gesture so incredibly blasé it looked comical, and she shared a tight
smile and a nod with Lavender, before the witch ran off to make herself of use somewhere else.

She turned, wiping her hand on her (Sirius’) leather jacket, and caught Remus’ eye. She beckoned
him over, and pulled him to the side of the staircase, where the battle wasn’t as pulsating.

“Have you seen Lucius or Narcissa?” she called over the ruckus, and he shook his head. “I haven’t
either. I thought they would’ve joined by now, but instead there’s just more and more of the–”

She cut off, instantly, as three vampires appeared beside them, quite literally, from the sky - they
had heard them on the stairs and jumped over the railing. Remus moved back on instinct and shot
two of them in the head and Andromeda seized the third vampire's wrists so hard that they seemed
to shatter between her palms, and bit into her neck. She pulled back, spitting her flesh out of her
mouth to the side, pinned her wrists together and threw her across the room, directly into the same
destroyed painting that had faced the wrath of James and the beheaded vampire, too.

She turned back, and she had blood trickling down her chin. Remus watched as her fangs went
back in and she became herself again, but the uncanny resemblance of her to Bellatrix’s animalistic
fury in that moment was not lost on him - except, one sister used it for good and one for bad.

Andromeda licked her lips and looked at him. They were about the same height.

“There’s more of them,” she said, quickly, gesturing to the staircase in which vampires were still
pouring down the steps. “I don’t know where they’re fucking coming from. I need you out there,
now.”

“Where are you going?” he said, already turning to walk back out there.

She grinned, blood on her teeth.

“I’m going to make my bastard in-law of mine show himself.”

And that was that, he supposed.

Remus flicked his arms out beside his hips, gun in one hand and blade in the other, and he was
ready. He was fury. He was in the zone, and nothing could rip him out of it.

He killed three more vampires slowly, in the five minutes of fighting that he had, next, with the
basilisk blade. He watched - continuing to move, but keeping his observance very close on his
victims - as they choked, black blood on their lips, the veins coursing venom and drying up
underneath their skin. Of course, the paler they were, the more it was evident - he stabbed a
particularly freckly ginger girl wearing a low cut v-neck directly into the sternum and watched as
the veins began to materialise in black almost immediately.

It was fascinating - slightly sadistic, too, but Remus had never been one to shy away from that side
of him. He had known that he had wanted, all of the time he was intent on killing him, to see the
light leave Sirius’ eyes; he had, in the past few months of inactivity, perhaps thought that maybe
that had been a sick fantasy that stemmed from his infatuation with Sirius, and Sirius alone.

No, he rediscovered. It wasn’t. He stabbed an old, balding vampire in the heart, chest to chest to
the man. His free hand moved to hold him close by the back of the head and he watched with an
open, heaving mouth as the man took his last breath, and it filled him with an adrenaline he wasn’t
sure any other situation could replicate.

Regardless of how disillusioned with hunting he was, there was something addictive in the taste of
another's blood - another’s life - on your tongue. As long as they were not fit enough to wield the
life that they had been extended, shedding them of that privilege would always be something that
sent a sick shiver of excitement down Remus’ spine. To make the world a better place.

Yet, it was an odd grey area, morally. At what point do you stop caring about taking lives and start
caring about how many you would be saving? At what point is the threshold for no return - at what
point is a vampire too far gone for redemption? Was he a hypocrite for killing these vampires for
trying to kill him when there was a possibility they could be brainwashed or worse, but then falling
in love with Sirius fucking Black, of all people?

He plunged his blade into the raucous skin of a hissing woman and found, quite honestly, that he
did not care anymore.

He had had enough of the ethics and the good and bad and the spiral of confusion that his life had
been plunged into. There was a line between good and bad that made sense to him, regardless of it
making sense morally, and so he would balance on it like a tightrope, do flips like a trapeze artist.

Fuck it. Fuck it all. He would kill what he needed to kill and he would protect what he needed to
protect and those lines were boundaries that he created, himself, that only he understood, and he
would let no one say shit about it.

Because who cares about ruins? Who cares about remnants? Who cares about messing things up?
Were things not messed up to begin with? Has the world not been a mess since the beginning of
time, since twelve-twenty-three when Sirius Black came into the world, since three hundred years
before that when his makers did? There was a built up layer of dirt and grime and grit, of pain and
evil and murder beneath Remus Lupin’s feet, and every vampire that he killed, here, was one hard
scrub through the muck, and morals did not matter. He understood how to make his world a better
place. Regardless of the casualties along the way.

Because, if he knew anything, he knew he would not become one of those casualties.

And neither would Sirius.

Maybe it’s the best time. Maybe it’s the best time. Who knows how long we have left?

He fell backwards on top of a thrashing young female vampire and stabbed the underbelly of her
chin, directly into her skull. He watched as her eyes clouded over, and she left the earth, and
thought about how easily that could be him.

Who knows how long we have left?

Who cares? Who cares? Who cares?

He fought, back to back with James Potter, allied with Percy Weasley; splattered the side of his
face with blood as Miyuki, powerhouse, ripped a vampire's head off with her teeth. He fought,
locking eyes with Mariana as she stuck her hand clean through a vampire's chest and out again; he
fought, watching as Jul and Lavender set a vampire on fire, holding hands, pulsing magic into one
another like a funnel so they could be bigger and better.

He fought, and he wished to be fighting with Sirius.

It was Sirius that he wanted. Sirius that he had always wanted. Sirius that he would always want.
Nothing would ever, ever make sense without Sirius - he realised that, now, killing vampires,
killing erratic, thrashing, evil creatures with no language except the lap of their tongue and the
point of their fangs - that it wouldn’t make sense, but it would keep going. He would do what he
knew how to do, but he could do it better with Sirius Black by his side.

You don’t know what you’re waiting for, but you’re waiting.

Remus was waiting for everything. He was waiting for this. He was waiting to get to the point
where he wanted Sirius Black by his side, for as long as they could have each other; to the point
where he stopped caring about corruption and stopped caring about murder and stopped caring
about anything except the goal that they shared, and the tunnel vision to get to it.

The ethical motives kept him in place, but Sirius Black was what kept him moving.
Because he knew he had to come home to him.

Murder and blood and venom and anguish bled onto his tongue as he kept fighting his way through
the crowd, and there were simply more and more coming - more vampires, pouring in from
upstairs mainly, and he could not understand how there were so many. How they were so overrun,
even with the corpses on the floor. How they were still standing, in all honesty, besides the fact
that the majority were inexperienced - but that was not supposed to be his job.

His job was supposed to be difficult due to the two old, vicious purebloods that could kill him in a
heartbeat were he not on his best guard, and yet they were not present; in replacement of about a
hundred guards coming in segments. Keeping them fighting. Keeping them going.

Dread started to seep into his stomach.

He was jerked alive and present by a loud noise - louder than anything that he had heard on the
battlefield, the open hall that they were using as their battlefield - and the two vampires that he was
fighting halted too.

And the voice of Andromeda Tonks, nee Andromeda Black, boomed throughout the room.

He found her immediately. She was standing next to Charity in the corner of the room beside a pile
of bodies, and the witch had her hand in an upside down grappling position, her fingers tensed, and
out of her palms was shining what looked like a wispy translucently white microphone, and
Andromeda was speaking into it.

“Lucius fucking Malfoy!” she called loud and proud; her voice pouring into Remus’ ears like lard.
“I know you can fucking hear me. You slimy shitbag. Get your fucking ass down here right now or
I am going to come upstairs and fucking find you. And bring my worthless sister down here, too. I
think it’s time for a family reunion.”

She leaned back, as if she had finished, and then, just as Charity was about to end the spell, leaned
back in.

“You piece of shit,” she added, for good measure, and then the spell ceased and she immediately
launched back into an attack.

It was five minutes before anything changed.

Remus was so caught up in the chaos that he did not notice her, at first; it was James who ran to
him. Gripped him by the shoulder. He was bleeding from his nose, and he had blood - probably not
his own - trickling down his chin, from his mouth. His eyes were wide, and not looking at him but
over his shoulder.

“Remus,” he gasped, panting, pointing. “Look.”

Remus turned around and there, at the doorframe - no one seemed to have noticed her, such a wisp
of a presence hiding a volcanic powerhouse - was Pandora.

Pandora. Pandora, who was with the Horcrux crew.

Pandora, who was covered - covered - in blood.

He went to run over, trying to drag James, but he did not budge. He turned with wide eyes.

“I’ll take your place,” he said, gesturing to the battle roaring around them. “We won’t survive if
two of us go.”

Remus gaped, and James nodded - his eyes were wide, and he could see the worry in it - the worry
for Sirius - but he acquiesced, nodded, and turned to dart through the bodies and run to the door.

Pandora was panting, he noticed, as he got closer. She was holding onto the doorframe like it was
the last thing holding her up.

“Pandora, what–”

“Remus,” she gasped, breath shaky. She gripped onto his jacket in desperation. “Remus, it’s not
there. The diary isn’t there.”

“It’s not there?”

“It’s here,” she said, her eyes wide. Remus’ blood ran cold.

“That’s why there are so many,” he said, realisation befalling him. He ran a harsh hand into his
head. Tugged a little. “Are they okay?”

Pandora grimaced. “Yes, but they won’t be for long. There’s just as many there as there are here.
They’re trying to kill as many as they can and then centralise the fight here, all three, but Sirius is
putting it off because you need to find the diary first.”

“Fuck,” Remus breathed. He looked her up and down. She was still panting, slightly, but standing
tall. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “Not my blood.”

“Are you okay to help me, then?”

And just then came a whoosh of momentum from behind Remus. He turned, instinctively, gun
raised, but before the vampire could even get to him his body was contorting. His arm bent the
wrong way and his legs seemed to shatter beneath him. He let out a cry, and then Remus turned,
and with a grandiose hand jerk Pandora threw him out the window.

She looked at him, and her tiny, dainty features contorted into a wide grin.

“It would be my honest to god pleasure, Remus Lupin,” she said, and he nodded, somewhat dazed,
and smiled back.

“Okay,” he said, breathlessly. “Good. Okay. How are we going to distract them all enough to make
it upstairs?”

Pandora frowned, and then her eyes focused on a point directly over Remus’ shoulder. She raised a
hand, and she pointed.

“Like that, probably,” she said, dreamily, and Remus turned to see.

Through the chaos of the fighting and the crowds of vampires, Lucius Malfoy was there, at the top
of the staircase. Standing tall and regal and fucking lethal in a suit. His hair was in a ponytail down
his back, and his eyes were focused on the lone woman standing at the bottom of the stairs, her
brown hair messy, blood dripping down her front.

“Sorry I didn’t call in advance,” Andromeda said, shrugging. The fighting did not cease, but it
seemed that both sides were slightly more interested in what was going on there than their own
petty battles. “But you didn’t invite me to the wedding all of those years ago, so I believe we’re
even, now.”

Lucius scowled and took one step down.

“You’re here because you hold a five hundred year grudge,” he said, in exacerbated Queen’s
English. He laughed. “Pathetic, Andromeda.”

Remus could not see her facial expression, but he saw her blasé shrug from behind.

“No, not really,” she called, running her hands through her hair. “I’m here because my cousin holds
an even longer one.”

Lucius took another step, and the hall was so quiet by now that the reverberations of his shoe
clacking against marble seemed to vibrate through the ground. Andromeda tutted, and then exhaled
sharply.

“And also because you’re just a really fucking shitty brother-in-law, man,” she said, and Lucius
did not hesitate.

He lunged at her from ten steps up and they toppled backwards, rolling into an empty space.
Snarling and hissing at each other like rabid dogs; Andromeda rolled over to straddle him, mouth
open, lip curled and her fangs glinting in the oppressive light from the chandelier, and she licked
her lips along her top row of teeth. Smiled, slightly. He kicked her back and she flailed in the air
and then skidded, grating her nails across the floor, and whipped her hair up to look at him. She
smiled again, except this one was dangerous.

And she was not Andromeda Tonks. She was Andromeda Black.

With that the fighting resumed, and Pandora gripped his hand as they teared across the floor, and
pointed to the open staircase.

“Come on!” she called, and Remus took a deep breath and went in after her.

***

Malfoy Manor was a huge estate, but - and this was a fact that was absolutely in Remus and
Pandora’s favour - it was a mansion that happened to be wide, in favour of being tall.

It was wide, and thus there were only two main floors. And the vampires were coming from the
top, which meant the Horcrux was somewhere at the top of the stairs.

They made it up the stairs with only a hitch or two in the road - a vampire came up behind them as
they were running up the steps and tried to stop them, and before Remus could even cock his gun
and fire Pandora had already thrown him over the railings. She didn’t even use magic. She just
gripped onto the lapels of his jacket and threw him over the side. Another came from behind her as
she caught her breath and Remus, in a double shot that Dorcas would go fucking mental for, got
him in both eyes and sent his blind corpse tumbling down the staircase. He had a moment to blink
(and appreciate this bullseye) before Pandora was yelling “Come on!” at him, and they were
running back up the neverending steps.

The landing was open, and exquisite. It was so clean and pristine that you honest-to-god would
never have thought, besides the noise, that there was a bloodbath just down below. The windows
were grandiose and gold-plated - there were two statues lining them, and the curtains were black
and rather gothic. The whole place was rather gothic, actually - so much more than Hotel
Transylvania had been. This place felt like it sucked the happiness, the colour out of you and
replaced it with grey skies and monotonous music.

Remus had been hearing monotonous music all of his life. He knew when to tune it out.

Two vampires came out of a room and came running up to them. Remus threw his blade into one
of their skulls with ease, while Pandora, quite literally, set the other on fire with a flick of her wrist.
She brought her fingers into a fist when the flammable vampire had been reduced to nothing but
bones and ash, and the fire dissipated as if it had never been there.

“You check the west wing,” Pandora said as she turned. She pointed to her left, where there were
two doors and a corridor lining the front of the house. “I’ll go to the east. If you find it,” she
shoved a communications device into his hand, and showed him her own. They flashed green at
the same time. Linked. “Call me.”

Remus nodded. “Got it.”

She took a deep breath, and then smiled at him.

“You know the plan?” she asked, breathlessly, and Remus nodded. He knew the plan. He knew the
damn fucking plan, it was him and her and Sirius and Lucius Malfoy in the endgame, five miles
out. Ideally, Pandora would ward the place. The three of them would restrain him, get the lock and
key, jimmy it and shoot it until it broke clean off and whatever Regulus was hinting at, whatever
information he thought was stored in there was theirs for the taking.

He knew the plan. Risky and stupid and a leap of faith, he knew it. How it would unravel,
however, would be a different story. He and Sirius had already switched places; he was the guiding
mastermind, now, and he needed to find that fucking diary.

“Good luck,” she said, appeased and she turned to walk down the east corridor. She stood at the
end of it and flicked her hands out, and all of the doors flew open with a thunderous bang.

Remus laughed - at what, he had no fucking clue - and turned to continue his own investigation.

He yanked his blade out of the dead vampire's head and decided to go for the doors, first.

He kicked open the first, blade poised and finger on the trigger of his gun, and it was empty. It was
a dusty, regal looking study, with a glass case filled with what looked like beakers and test tubes of
magical substances. There was one that was porous, a black goo. It seemed to have a life of its own
and was lapping against the walls of the beaker like a wave crashing against the seas, trying to get
out before being pulled straight back in.

He did a full sweep of the room, making sure it truly was empty. He sifted through a few papers on
the front desk, but they all seemed to be in a language that he did not understand.

As he was walking back towards the door, something caught his eye.

One of the test tubes was glinting. It was placed next to one that contained a mystery silvery wisp,
looking something like a semblance of a soul in popular culture, but he wasn’t interested in that one
- it was her sister that caught his eye.

It was red and it was crackling in the glass. The flames licked up and down the glass as if knocking
politely to be let out, and he knew in an instant what it was.

Fiendfyre.
(He left the glass cabinet alone, and shut the door cautiously for good measure. He was not risking
that being let loose - not at fucking all.)

He killed three vampires in the hallway as he exited, and once they were all dead (one of their
bodies fell over the railing and onto the staircase, and he simply hoped that nobody noticed) he
made his way to the front of the house. The landing was open, too, and there was a huge circular
window - one of the ones that juts out, looking somewhat like an eye. As if they were in a
sanctuary. There were two divans and a sofa, and they were red against the grey walls. Remus
looked up for the first time and noticed, above the renaissance paintings hanging up that were
probably double his height, that the ceiling was filled with renaissance painting, too. Like
something out of the Palace of Versailles - something out of an old English castle.

But it was all fake.

He couldn’t pinpoint what it was. There was something unauthentic about the whole thing. If he
were to be teleported into this exact room, having never been here before, and having not been told
where he was going, he would not assume that he was in a palace. He would not assume that he
was in England, or France, or anything of the sort at all, really.

He would assume that he was in the house of somebody who had a little too much money, and
wanted to cover up the dirty business they had found themselves in obtaining this much money by
decorating their house with so much splendour it made them seem stable.

It was all fake. The entire thing was a facade. The paint was peeling and the frames were fake and
Lucius Malfoy was downstairs being wrecked by his sister-in-law, and anything fucking noble in
his blood was injected there, not born.

He was not what he pretended to be.

Remus kicked the second door in.

He couldn’t really tell what this room was for. It had a desk, a sofa, a wide, open window and yet
the blinds were shut, the only light coming from the hall. It was the most explicitly messy room
that he had been in so far. There were papers strewn across the floor, and there seemed to be some
sort of liquid, too - he wasn’t sure of whether it was water, or alcohol, but it blotted against the
papers. There was an intensely musky smell within this room, and Remus cringed against it. It
smelled somewhat like rotting carcasses, and he was ready to leave, unwilling to stand it for much
longer, when he saw movement.

Papers were rustled against the floor, obscured slightly by the desk. Remus frowned and inclined
his head; craning it to try and make out what it was. He pointed his gun and his knife with
wavering hands, and swallowed the fear down. The papers rustled some more.

It was quiet. For a moment. A tense moment.

And then in a split second, out of the shadows pounced what was probably about a twelve fucking
foot long python - body as long as Remus’ body doubled and as thick as his thigh or probably
more. Her fangs were almost as big as Sirius’, and Remus yelped instinctively and staggered back
as she shot at him, hissing maniacally, tongue forked and laced with venom that Remus couldn’t
see, but knew was there.

He fell onto his backside. The snake loomed over him, and his brain was whirring, but he had only
three coherent thoughts.
His first thought was, hilariously, the logistics of what, exactly, this snake could be. His neurons
fired a million miles a minute and he decided that, based on the markings, it was either a fucking
huge black mamba or a fucking huge king cobra, and he wasn’t sure which was worse when both
would be fully able to kill him, really.

His second thought was that he would not be able to shoot the snake, and so he discarded his gun
almost on a reflex. He threw his blade from his non-dominant to his dominant hand and held it out,
knowing that it was his only chance, really, even if the snake had the advantage and he was
absolutely not fast enough to stop it.

His third thought was of Sirius. The snake loomed over him, teeth large and threatening, and he
thought of Sirius. Of course he thought of Sirius.

He would not go out without a fight - that had never been the Remus Lupin way - but he
unconsciously made sure that his final thought before instinct kicked in was of Sirius. Just in case.

He scrambled back and the snake followed him, and he swiped at her, slightly, with the blade. She
lurched backwards, and slithered back towards him. He swiped at her again, and just as she was
about to slither back into his space, possibly bite him, possibly kill him; she stopped.

He held out the knife in front of him, blade first, and she held herself barely ten centimetres from
it, and… stopped. She stopped hissing. She stopped moving, and Remus stopped breathing. But she
did not.

She can smell the basilisk venom, he thought, with a sudden air of clarity. She knows I’ve got the
one up on her. She’s backing down.

And sure enough, there it was. She cowered.

She lay down, belly flat on the ground, and, with one last hiss at him - probably of irritation - she
turned and slithered back to her corner. All twelve feet of her, gliding into the abyss of darkness.
Within a minute she was curled up in her corner, pretending like he wasn’t there - he could only see
her due to the fact her eyes and a few of her scales were glistening from the light shining through
the cracks of the black-out blinds.

Remus got up and practically ran out of the door - closing it nicely behind him, but closing it,
nonetheless. He considered figuring out a way to lock it to prevent her from going and joining the
fight but decided against it. It would take entirely too much time, and he had already wasted
enough - besides, she didn’t seem to be interested. He was quite sure, racking his brain for the
limited amount of knowledge about the cold-blooded, that she had only rounded on him because he
had disturbed her nest. He hoped his show of dominance was enough.

He turned to round the corner down the hallway and the rest of the west wing, but almost
immediately heard footsteps. He paused and took backwards steps the way he came, before
bumping into a bookshelf, curved against the wall next to the little seating area with the red sofas.
He slinked behind the bookshelf and sheathed his blade, raising his gun. He pressed it against the
wood, his own face pressed so close to it only one eye could see around it, and waited.

He waited. He aimed.

Dorcas may tell you that she’s better, but Remus Lupin was a good fucking shot.

Three vampires rounded the corner, and he had them all before they even made it to the staircase.

Bang, bang, bang.

Impeccable aim across about twenty feet; splatters of blood hit the wall, and Remus felt slightly
triumphant looking at it ruining the paintings on there, looking at it splatter against the window of
the front of the house, where the glass hadn’t been blown out. It was like a trophy.

He smiled.

He stepped out of his hiding place, hopped over the bodies daintily and began his descent down the
hallway.

It got quieter, the further he went. There were rooms lining the hall - he checked every single one.
Studies, bedrooms, a games room, a library. There was another little open seating area with a grand
piano, next to a room that was, undoubtedly, a music room, and this was where he sensed life.

For the rest of the rooms had been impeccable, so impeccable that there was dust lining the
mantles and the pillars, the fireplaces and the table;, but there was a violin on the floor, here.

An expensive looking violin, on the floor. Like it had been discarded in a hurry.

Remus surveyed the room, found no one inside of it, nothing suggesting horcruxes. He kicked the
violin, for good measure. It slid across the glossy floor and came to a screeching halt, and that was
that.

And then he heard movement.

Then he heard life.

There was a small bang, from Remus’ right, and he inhaled sharply, attentive - if he was a canine,
his ears would’ve physically perked up, probably - and swivelled. He surveyed the room. He listed
what, exactly, he could see.

Grand piano. Discarded violin. Dusty cello. Bookshelf.

Bookshelf.

Oh, God, it was too easy.

If this is a secret door, Remus thought to himself, approaching it with soundless footsteps, I swear
to fucking god, I will never doubt James Bond ever again.

He had seen enough movies to know the signs. The books were dusty. They were old, and
obviously disregarded. He trailed his fingers across the peeling hardbacks, blew, slightly - as
soundlessly as he could, and some of the dust ebbed away. He stood on his tiptoes to observe the
top shelf. Moved downwards, and down some more, to the shelf below.

There was a red leather hardback. Absolutely no dust.

“I cannot believe this is my life,” Remus murmured to himself, and he pulled the blasted thing.

His eyes flickered upwards to the corners of the bookshelves, and sure enough, something clicked
open. The bookshelf - the door, he supposed he should call it - creaked, and with one tentative push
to the side of the wood, with the fist of the arm that had the hilt of his blade wrapped precariously
around it, swung open completely. It banged slightly against the wall, and Remus blinked.

It was a panic room. It was a regal looking one, to give them credit - it was about the size of an
average bathroom, perhaps, with metal walls as a normal panic room would but accessories, too.
There was a chess table, a sofa. A pile of books in the left corner, and a young, blond vampire
cowering in the right.

Remus aimed his gun immediately, but the vampire did not attack.

They just stared at each other. Remus took a step forward, and the vampire snarled, but again, did
not attack; simply stood there. Pressed as far into the corner of the room as physically possible, as
if trying to absorb himself into the steel wall. Staring at him with wide, terrified blue eyes, and
Remus was looking at his face from behind the barrel of a gun, but he had gotten a good, solid look
at Lucius Malfoy on the top of those stairs.

He knew exactly who this was.

“Draco,” Remus whispered, so very carefully, not lowering his gun, and Draco jumped. His eyes
had trailed down to the knife in his left hand, but they flickered back up in an instant and widened
at the usage of his name. It seemed to be an involuntary reaction; Remus could see the way he tried
to placate himself afterwards, rid himself of emotion like they had undoubtedly been training him.

He took another step forward, and Draco snarled at him again. But he was so small. It barely did
anything.

“Draco,” Remus said again. “You’re Draco Malfoy.”

“And you’re a piece of scum,” he spat, in a much lower but ostentatiously still boy-ish tone. His
accent was pure, aristocratic, just like his father’s. Remus raised his eyebrows. Even despite his
outburst and the way he had puffed out his chest to look tough, Remus could see that the kid was
scared. His hands were shaking.

He moved his gaze back up and looked him in the eye, and there was a flicker of weakness. A
flicker of terror, and, honest to god, Remus might not have done what he did - taken the risk that he
had taken - if Draco had not, in that moment, reminded him painfully of little Astoria.

He twirled his gun so his finger was off the trigger, and held both of his hands up in surrender.

They locked eyes for a long, intense moment, and Draco’s brows twitched, slightly. He was
confused.

“You’re a kid,” Remus said, emphasising every syllable, as if it was obvious. “You’re seventeen
years old, and you’re in a panic room. I’m not going to hurt you, Draco.”

He didn’t trust him. Remus could see that the kid was nervous - that he was debating whether it
was a trick. Whether Remus was going to twirl the gun right back between his fingers and shoot
him in a cruel surprise attack.

And so Remus, in an extensively slow movement, crouched down, and placed his weapons on the
floor. He took a deep breath and straightened back up. Took a step backwards. Draco followed his
every move.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Remus affirmed, and the kid was still on guard - he had spent
seventeen years being on guard, he would probably forever be on guard - but his hands had stopped
shaking. His jaw was working, slightly, and his eyes were wild.

There was a scream so loud from downstairs that the both of them flinched. Remus inhaled sharply,
and then turned to Draco, and in the moment before the kid’s eyes drew back to him he saw the
terror. Pure terror.
He stepped aside. He had made his decision.

“Go North,” he said, and Draco frowned. “My people are at both safehouses to the east and west,
so you go any other direction and you will probably get intercepted. North should be safe. Go. Run
as far as you can, and don’t come back until it's safe.”

“My mother,” Draco said, and Remus sighed, inwardly. It would not do to lie to the kid, he didn’t
want to, but he would have to do what he had to do. The Horcrux was more important.

“I’ll send her for you,” he said, nodding. “If I see her, I’ll tell her.”

“If you see her, you’ll kill her,” Draco said with an air of venom to his voice, and the corner of
Remus’ lip quirked upwards.

“If I don’t kill her,” Remus said, “I’ll tell her.”

Draco edged forward, slightly. Eyed the weapons on the ground and looked Remus once over.

“If you don’t want to leave her, you can go hide out somewhere else in the house,” Remus offered.
“Or you can stay here. But I can’t guarantee you’d be safe unless you leave completely. We have
purebloods, they’ll sniff you out, and they won’t show you the same mercy that I am, I can promise
you that.”

His cheeks hollowed in anguish, and Remus bit his lip, listening to a raucous noise of the battle, so
faint now.

“In all honesty, I don’t care what you do,” he continued. “Just get out of my sight. I’m sparing you
this, Draco Malfoy,” and his voice took a sort of soft turn. He sighed. “Because you didn’t ask for
this life, and it’s clear that you’re terrified of it.”

Draco stared at him. He stared, imperceptible, for a long, long moment; and then he was gone. In a
whoosh past Remus’ side, a run that sent the violin on the floor skidding across the room.

Remus exhaled everything he had, gave himself a moment, and then picked up his weapons and
continued along.

***

The corridor to the west wing of Malfoy Manor was long, endless, and fucking empty.

Remus did not see any more vampires. Whatever filtration system had had them coming out of thin
fucking air had disappeared, and he kicked in door after door to find literally nothing, to the point
where he was almost positive that he was going to get a buzz on his comms and that Pandora will
have found the diary, instead.

That was until he kicked a door at the end of a hallway down, and within it was a ridiculously
regal-looking dining hall.

It was empty, too, but it had Remus curious. It was a lot to go through to get to whatever was at the
far left of this house - it felt like a maze, in all honesty. He scanned the long table - there were quite
honestly about twenty places, which felt ironic for a three-person family who didn’t even have to
eat - and the fireplace. The huge mirror above the mantle. The tall windows, shadowed by red
curtains. The large rug, some sort of imported fabric most likely, red and gold. The ceiling was
pure white, here, with no paintings, but it was cornered with pillars that were carved into the
corners of the room. There was one set of double doors across the room, and they were locked.
Remus had to pull out the thinnest blade he had and jimmy the lock, which took a minute or two,
but it opened.

It opened into another hallway, except this one felt different.

It was darker, for starters. There were no ridiculous faux-chandeliers lining the ceiling (which was
strangely low), just an array of wall lights that looked more like flames in a cup, like the lights at
Hotel Transylvania had been. The walls were grey, and so was the flooring, and as Remus walked
down it he started to feel less like he was in a vampire’s mansion and more like he was in a horror
movie - and then he laughed, inwardly, because, honestly? They were the fucking same.

He peeked around a corner and hit bingo.

There was a pair of large double doors at the end of an extremely long hallway - it was a dead end -
and four vampires were guarding it. They looked slightly nervous - at least, in the few seconds that
Remus peeked around the corner at them - and were, obviously, a bigger army before the battle had
commenced. This must have been where the rest of the vampires came pouring out from. This must
be their final level of defence.

Remus turned and immediately began to run, as light on his feet as he had been trained, a wraith
running back to the dining hall. He waited until he was right at the double doors to alert the comms
device, and he had just pressed it when the doors opened, right in front of him, and a vampire was
standing there.

In the time it took the device to fall out of his hands and the vampire to open his mouth to yell,
Remus had unsheathed his blade quicker than he had ever done it before and stabbed it through the
underside of his jaw.

“Shhh,” Remus said, patronisingly, holding him by the back of the neck as he gargled and fell
forward. He shook his head gently, mouthing the words “be quiet,” and as the light left the
vampire’s eyes the comms device hit the floor with a resounding bang, and Pandora apparated into
the room with a crack that made the glass on the doors shake.

Remus pulled his blade out of the vampire and flicked his hair up out of his eyes.

“You couldn’t have just ran?!” he said, accusatorily, and she opened her mouth but had no time to
respond as a presence appeared behind Remus, and grabbed him with one arm around the neck.

Pandora yelled and did what seemed like the first thing to come to her mind, by throwing out a
dangerous palm and flinging the vampire against the far wall, with Remus in tow. The wall
cracked behind the vampire’s skull, and Remus’ windpipe was crushed so hard that he saw stars.

The surprise force of the impact was enough for Remus, however, to pull the hand with his gun out
of the vampire’s firm grasp. He raised his arm blindly, very nearly sliding and pressing the barrel
to the side of his head, but he grappled around and got it, still choking. He shot the vampire, and
the pressure on his windpipe immediately dissipated as they both fell to the ground; the vampire a
pool of blood, Remus a nauseated wreck.

Pandora fried the other vampire from the inside out, though Remus did not see that until the
vampire was long-dead, for his vision was still blurry and he was coughing maniacally, gagging on
nothing, and he could taste his own blood in his mouth. His eyes were watering so much that it felt
like he was crying. He did not throw up, but only fucking just.

“Are you okay?” Pandora cried as she got over to him, when his vision had started to clear - he dry-
heaved a few times more, banging his fist against his chest and shaking his head no. Pandora
pulled him to sit back on his heels.

“Here, oh gosh I’m sorry, here, let me,” she said, and she wrapped her palms gently around his
throat.

A tinge of pink filled the bottom of Remus’ peripheral vision, and he felt a lot better almost
instantaneously. His throat was still scratchy and he still felt halfway to hacking up his lungs, but
there had been a pipe cleared out, and he breathed in a deep gulp of cold, fresh air and realised just
how much he fucking depended on it.

“Better?” she said after a moment, loosening her grip, and Remus wiped his eyes with his sleeve
and took in a deep breath and only coughed once.

“Slightly,” he croaked - barely even a sound, really, but it was better than nothing. Pandora
grinned.

“Slightly is better than nothing,” she said, standing up, and it was then that Remus noticed the
second vampire - his eyes completely burst, blood pouring from every orifice perceivable.

She held out her hand. He took it.

And walking down that corridor with Pandora Lovegood by his side, on his way to rip a part of
Tom Riddle’s soul out of a bunch of mindless vampire’s cold, dead hands, Remus had never felt
more alive. This was what he had come to New York for. This was why he had joined Sirius’ case.
This was what he was doing it for, the way it felt, the power.

It was almost too easy, really. Pandora took the left one, he took the right, and they were dead in
seconds. They fell to the floor with two, terrifying, sequential thuds, and the hallway was eerily
quiet.

There was no noise. They were far enough away from the battle that it could have simply not been
happening; perhaps it wasn’t, anymore. Perhaps they were all dead. Remus couldn’t let himself
worry about that right now - the thought physically couldn’t penetrate the walls of the tunnel that
had materialised around him, his only focus on the door in front of him.

He exchanged a glance with Pandora. Her hair, in two plaits, was a mess; there were bags under her
eyes, and blood on her cheek. It was all down her neck, soaked into her clothes. Remus knew he
wasn’t much better. He could still taste it on his tongue.

They locked eyes, and as if on cue - as if they were linked at the hip - they got into position.

Remus, right hand aiming his gun with the trigger finger lingering; left hand gripping and re-
gripping the hilt of the blade of destruction. And Pandora, not needing any of those. Pandora and
her palms, outstretched by her sides. She tensed her fingers, slightly. Clicked her neck.

Remus pried his last three fingers off of his gun so it was in stasis, only supported by his thumb
and the trigger-happy forefinger.

He looked at Pandora.

“Three,” he mouthed, soundlessly. She rolled her shoulder blades back.

His middle finger went down.

“Two.”

He rolled his left wrist around. Tapped the entrapping fingers around the hilt of his blade, almost
impatiently.

His ring finger went down. His lip curled around the syllable, and, in a hilarious adjecentery of
thought, he registered the hilarity of raising his pinky like the Queen while the rest of his hand
curled around a gun.

“One.”

He jutted his chin out barely a centimetre, and Pandora flicked her wrist.

The doors flew open with a haunting crack.

And, to be honest, a part of him probably knew that she was in there. A part of him knew that there
was a missing puzzle piece. That father and son were not complete without mother, standing in
front of a shimmering glass cabinet in a satin light blue gown that fell to her ankles, two slits letting
the fabric fly as she pounced; eyes dark and throat gurgling as she bared her lethal eight hundred
year old teeth.

Narcissa went for Pandora first.

Perhaps she sniffed out the danger of the witch, who was, admittedly, more lethal than Remus even
despite the shot he got into her stomach as she flew across the room. Remus did not let himself be
taken aback - he had prepared for this, he had watched Andromeda, five years older than Narcissa,
run like she was flying for weeks - but it was always a wonder to see such an elevated sentient
being after spending an hour or so ripping newly-turned imbeciles to shreds. Narcissa looked regal
- her hair was waved and flouncy around her shoulders, her skin smooth and young - she looked no
older than twenty-five - and her dress rippled behind her in a belated reaction to her movements.
She was slender; she reminded Remus somewhat of a cheetah; and Pandora barely had time to hold
her back before she was pouncing on her. They rolled across the room, and Remus could not get a
shot in without endangering his friend so he watched for the three seconds that they were in a
tussle.

Narcissa ended up on top of her and, in the split second that would make or break the lethal sinking
of her fangs into Pandora’s thin skin, the witch spread her hands apart and brought them together
again; the clap read like a thunderstrike and Narcissa flew across the room.

She pirouetted in mid air slightly and landed in a fighting pose - skidding across the room, leaving
trail marks with her nails as she slowed herself down, and it was two against one.

Pandora squeezed her hand into a fist in an attempt of the inside-out burn that she had succeeded to
take out multiple vampires with, and Narcissa let out a strangled cry; she was more animal than
human as she began to run, only slightly slower than she had before - only slightly hindered by the
weapon that had been so incredibly lethal on others - and Remus threw his blade while she was
focused on Pandora.

She dodged it easily.

She got to Pandora and wrapped her arms around the witch from behind before she could even
open her fist, and she jolted with a scream, hair sticking to her face in a depiction of a truly mad
woman - there was a sickening crack. Pandora screamed in agony and fell to the floor; and with a
jolt as the witch fell into a sagging pile of useless limbs he realised that Narcissa had dislocated
both of her shoulder blades.

She took her out of the playing field.

He did not have time to even process this information before she was on him, too, and his arm flew
up on instinct.

She threw him four feet into the wall with a fluid jump and before they had even hit it his gun was
on her neck, and he shot twice; both bullets went straight through and out the other side. Glass
shattered somewhere from where they ricocheted, and Narcissa was thrown off guard just long
enough for Remus to worm out of her grip and dart behind her before the holes in her neck had
even filled back up again.

She turned and he instantly threw one of the holy water throwing knives that he had shimmied out
of his pouch; one lodged itself into her sternum, another into her stomach. He raised his gun and
aimed for her heart, still stepping backwards but she had garnered his thirst to kill; she was too fast.
She was darting around the room like a fly on the wall; like a breeze of air catapulting through the
dusty desert in search of a coastline to whirl around on. She scaled one of the walls and flipped off
it and he followed her every move; he shot twice, and both missed, and the second one ricocheted
and skimmed his thigh.

He walked backwards into the far wall to avoid the potential of a sneak up from behind and saw
his basilisk blade out of his peripheral vision, just over an arms length to his left. His arm reached
out - fingers outstretched painfully - and just before he could take a small step to reach it, Narcissa
appeared beside it.

She was there, and then she was not. There was a tense, tense moment, in which everything seemed
to go in slow motion - her eyes, which had parted, went cloudy again; she opened her mouth and
her lips curled up menacingly, her fangs on full display, and she grabbed his wrist.

She grabbed it, and she squeezed.

The crack made Remus feel sick to his stomach; it took a moment for the pain to bloom in his
bones, but when it did, it was like a thousand hot knives in his chest.

She had broken it. He knew, right then and there, she had broken it.

And yet he could not stop. He groaned, feeling halfway to throwing up and yet with a shaky right
hand he pointed his gun, and she frowned. She dropped his hand; he couldn’t stabilise his arm
before it fell and banged against his side, and he let out a blood-curdling scream from the back of
his throat; perhaps the hollow of his chest.

His knees buckled.

And she caught him, by the throat; let him down gently. She crouched in front of him, blue satin
dress ripped and blood-stained and yet still regal, and she cooed. It was patronising. It was evil.
Remus gagged at the pressure and spluttered, his breaths coming out in pained heaves; and with the
strength that he could muster he raised his gun and pointed it at her heart.

She froze, but did not move. Brave, or stupid, Remus could hardly tell the difference.

“I can smell Sirius on you,” she crooned; a light voice for such a lethal creature. She tightened her
grip around his throat, and Remus took a deep breath in. Closed his eyes.

“He says hi,” he spat back. “It’s been a long five hundred years.”
“It’s been a happy five hundred years without the vermin of the family,” she hissed. “Can’t even do
his own dirty work for him. Had to send a stupid little hunter.”

She said his title with so much venom that the back of her throat crackled a little. Remus jutted his
chin out.

And then - in an act that felt like the millionth leap of faith that he had taken that day - he decided
that he would be brave, or stupid, too.

Just like he had in the panic room, with the smaller cowering version of the woman crouched
before him, he dropped his gun. He pulled his finger out of the trigger, and, with the rest of his
remaining strength not taken up by avoiding passing out from the break in his wrist, he tossed it to
the side.

Narcissa did not drop her hold, but she dropped her eyes. She watched the gun slide across the
glossy wooden floor. She watched it halt a few feet away.

He smiled.

“Were you intending to prove my point?” she said, as if speaking to a baby; her fingers squeezed,
slightly, and Remus choked a little while trying to get the words out.

“No,” he spat; barely a wheeze. And he had spent enough time studying Sirius’ closed-offness to
witness the falter in her eyes. The confusion.

“You made yourself defenceless while I have my hands around your throat,” she pressed on.
Remus felt slightly like he wanted to laugh; yes, that is what is happening, congratulations on
being caught up. “That was an incredibly stupid thing to do.”

And here was where it cultivated. Here was where Remus could either be too big for his boots, or
swimming in an intoxicating puppeteer's control.

“I don’t know,” he said, as casually as he could. “It seemed like a smart thing to do in the little
panic room attached to the music study.”

Her hands slacked on his throat immediately, and the desperate breath he took was one of triumph.

Her pupils were dilated so large that her eyes looked black as they bored into his own. Remus
watched her throat shift as she swallowed, and craved to put his foot to it. Craved to cut off her
windpipe the way she had cut off his, standing, this time; a physical manifestation of the leg up he
had on her.

I’ve got you, he thought. I’ve got you now.

“What did you just say?” she whispered, still inches from his face. Her hands were still around his
throat, but there was no pressure. Just shock.

“It’s a bit obvious, isn’t it?” he pressed, adopting her patronising tone. “I mean, you could have at
least turned the room into a study so the bookshelf wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb. Eight
hundred years old and that thought didn’t occur to you?”

“Shut up,” she hissed, gripping again; she growled from the absolute pit of her throat, her chest
heaving slightly as her breathing deepened. Remus wheezed, slightly, raising his chin as far as he
could to try and clear his windpipe; but he couldn’t lose this moment.
“Draco,” he spat, and he watched her lip tremble slightly at his name; “he was terrified, wasn’t he?
He doesn’t– ah, he doesn’t really want this life, does he, Narcissa?”

Her eyes were wild, now. “What did you do to him?”

His answer was simple.

“I let him go.”

“Don’t lie to me!” she screeched; her hands relinquished his throat and she grabbed him by the
scruff of his shirt and pulled him up like he was nothing. She pressed him against the wall and
hissed right into his face, and the pain of his wrist moving made his vision cloud a little bit, but he
did not falter.

“I let,” he said, slowly, “him go. He is a child, Narcissa. I told him to go North and that I would
send you after him.”

“You’re lying,” she said, erratic and breathy; she let go of him and turned. Paced a little. Her
shoulders were heaving. She whirled back around to him, where he was leaning against the wall,
palms outstretched.

“You’re LYING!” she screamed - a blood-curdling thing - and a sense of warmth washed over
Remus, all of a sudden.

It was strange. It was different to the truth serum that he had been manipulated into ingesting; this
felt like honey was seeping down his throat. It felt like he was floating; like his bones were
somewhere else, away from his body, not weighing him down anymore.

There was no pain. There was only what Narcissa Malfoy wanted, and so he opened his mouth and
he gave her just that.

“I put down my weapons and I let him go,” he said, in a voice that he did not recognise. “He was
obviously terrified. He is a child who had no business in the middle of this fight.”

Narcissa froze. Every single cell that she seemed to have in her body seized up; she could have
been a statue.

“Where is he, now?” she said, lips moving against stone.

“I don’t know,” Remus replied, still floating above his body. “I told him to go North to avoid the
two other ambushes - it would be safest. But I don’t know if he actually went. That is the extent of
my knowledge.”

They stood in stasis for a long, long moment; he could only make eye contact with her, his maker,
and so they simply looked at each other. Narcissa, scanning his eyes to see any sense of a lie.

But, of course, she knew he wasn’t. She knew it.

She let him go.

Remus squeezed his eyes shut and fell back against the wooden pane he was pushed into with a
gasp, and a low cry as all of the pain that he had encountered darted through him like a lightning
bolt at once. He heaved slightly, once, twice, and then looked up again.

His eyes met Pandora’s. She had shuffled herself to the corner of the room, cradling her arms
together, and she looked terrified.

And then they met Narcissa’s. Her eyes were calmer. Her jaw was locked. She looked tired, or…
resigned.

They let out breaths simultaneously, and Remus realised quickly that he might just have a lot more
in common with Narcissa Malfoy than he thought.

She turned and strode across the room, and Remus did not hesitate to lunge for his blade and his
gun - holding them both in his un-injured hand - and by the time he was straightened up again,
leaning on a windowsill for support Narcissa was already striding towards Pandora; her hair
bouncing in the momentum behind her.

“Leave her alone,” Remus managed, barely, pointing his gun; she turned and glowered at him as
she crouched down.

Pandora scrambled slightly away from her, near-tears; both of her arms flopped beside her from
where her shoulders were dislocated, and her palms began to twinge a glistening red against her
control. Narcissa scoffed.

“Come here, witch,” she spat, and - in one, absolutely horrific movement - gripped onto Pandora’s
right shoulder and clicked it back into place.

She screamed, and it sent about five shudders down Remus’ spine; he took a few steps forward,
gun poised, and watched as Narcissa shuffled around to Pandora’s other shoulder despite her pleas
and her heart-wrenching sobs, wet and tortured, streaming down her face.

She popped that one back into place, and Remus cringed inadvertently.

“Stop!” Remus cried, as Narcissa - without any gentleness at all - grabbed Pandora by the shirt and
pulled her to her feet. She turned and glared at him. “You’re hurting her!”

“Do you want the fucking diary or not?!” she spat, and Remus felt his face go slack.

Pandora staggered backwards on her feet a little, but took a deep breath and planted them on the
ground.

She locked eyes with Remus and smiled, as the tears poured down her face.

“It’s okay,” she whispered, nodding. All of the colour had drained out of her face. “I’m fine.”

Narcissa walked them over to the glass cabinet on the other side of the room, and Remus followed,
gun still aimed. There was a gold shimmer shrouding the box, and Narcissa turned to Pandora.

“Hands on here,” she instructed; but Pandora could not lift her hands. Narcissa groaned and placed
herself behind her; gripping onto her wrists and lifting them for her. Her closed fists banged against
the two doors of the cabinet, and Pandora’s desperate cry of pain hit Remus straight in the gut.

It was a slow show, but Narcissa was impatient. She took two long, deep breaths, and spread her
fingers, slowly; Remus watched as her blood-stained palms pressed against the glass, and Narcissa
leaned in over her shoulder. Remus took a few more steps; close enough to hear what she was
whispering.

“You can feel it, can’t you?” she was saying; Pandora squeezed her eyes shut. “The magic.”
“It’s too intricate,” Pandora breathed, frowning slightly. “There are too many spells. I can’t disarm
them all.”

“But you can siphon it,” whispered Narcissa.

Pandora’s eyes flew open.

“I can’t,” she spluttered against ragged breaths. “I’ve never done it on such a large scale–”

“Yes you can,” Narcissa said; Remus could tell she was losing her patience. “I know you. You’re
the Black’s girl.”

“Not anymore,” said Pandora. Remus had almost forgotten about all of the years she had spent in
their service.

“What’s your name?”

“Pandora,” she choked, “Ollivander.”

“Yes,” Narcissa breathed, in recognition. “You were spoken highly of. My cousin was your
benefactor. You were the one to cast half of the wards. You were the protégé. That’s what these
are. They’re just wards.”

Pandora whimpered, her hands sliding down the golden glittery glass, too weak to keep them up.
Narcissa put her own hands on top of them to keep them stable, and spoke over her shoulder.

“Picture it, witch,” she hissed, “Materialise it, and make it your own. Let it fill the holes that are
gaping through you. It belongs there. The magic belongs, over everybody, with you.”

Pandora whimpered softly, and caught Remus’ eye in the reflection of the glass. She took a deep,
shuddering breath. Her tiny features seemed to engorge as she straightened up, even despite her
shoulder injuries, and she clenched her jaw together, squeezed her eyes shut, and began.

It was ten seconds. Ten seconds of silence, before Pandora’s palms began to glow gold.

“Yes!” Narcissa gasped, and she immediately let go of her grip on Pandora’s wrists; her hands
lurched down, slightly, but stayed on the cabinet. Stable.

Remus took a shaky breath and watched as she walked across the room; followed her with the
shaky barrel of his gun as she raised her hand in a closed fist, and let it rain upon a small, wooden
coffee table.

It snapped directly in half.

She fell to her knees, picking up one side by the leg and turning; she raised her knee and snapped it,
sending flurries of dust up in the air around her, and she threw the rest of the table aside.

“What the hell are you–” Remus started, but he did not finish; for Narcissa Malfoy gripped her
hands around the sharp table leg, raised it high above her, and plunged it directly into her stomach.

Remus’ jaw dropped.

“What are you doing?!” he yelled, as she pulled it out; then plunged it directly back in again with
an agitated groan. She flicked her hair back and looked up at him.

“Making it look realistic,” she growled. “Now do what you’re fucking made for and shoot me,
hunter.”

Remus had no time to ask the questions flashing through his mind. He had thought she would have
joined Draco - that she would have disappeared. Lord knows that Purebloods know how to
disappear.

But, perhaps, Tom Riddle knows how to find them.

“Are you sure?” he asked, realising belatedly how absurd asking permission to shoot an evil
vampire is. She glowered at him.

He pushed himself up. The pain from his wrist was foul, a metallic taste in his mouth, but he got
up, because he always did. He staggered the few paces across the room, past the warmth of
Pandora’s magic.

He aimed.

It took a little under ten minutes for Pandora to siphon all of the magic out of the cabinet, while
Remus sat on his knees, stabbing every last throwing knife that he had into Narcissa Malfoy’s
chest; shooting holes into her gut. She was wheezing by the time he whipped out the last one; he
placed his hand on her shoulder, intending to plunge it into the side of her neck, but she stopped
him.

“Before I can’t speak,” she choked. There was blood dripping from her mouth onto her satin dress.
She raised a hand and placed it on Remus’ neck; pulled him close. “Thank you, hunter.”

“Remus,” he said, on complete instinct. “My name is Remus Lupin.”

Narcissa wheezed something that might have been a dry laugh. “Thank you, Remus Lupin, for
sparing my son. I hope this makes us equal.”

Remus nodded, and they shared a strangely tender moment in which the sides they were on were
blurred; and where Narcissa Malfoy was inherently bad, Remus saw himself in her. Through the
overwhelming desire to protect what is hers. The twisted mess of morals that swirled between them
was strained through a sieve like grains of rice, and down to the bare bones was family.

And what was his family and what was her family may not be so different, after all.

He plunged the knife into her neck and lodged it in tight, feeling strangely bad about it, and
lowered her to the ground as she choked. Pandora gasped from behind him, and he turned.

Where the glass cabinet had seemed empty and bare before it was now glowing slightly. It was as
if a curtain was being pulled upwards, like on a pantomime stage - except, instead of a shroud
being taken off it the contents of the cabinet were materialising, particle by particle, before his very
eyes. He pushed himself up with his good hand and staggered over, numb to the pain by this point,
and watched as the nanoparticles fit themselves together like wool being unravelled, but reversed;
so intricate it didn’t feel like it was real.

The cabinet held a multitude of things. It held a few conspicuous vials; two very dark looking
books and a lot of gold.

In the middle, on a golden stand, was a plain brown, rather ratty-looking diary.

Remus’ eyes glinted.

And just like that, once the objects had materialised; the magic drained out of it like a squeezed
sponge; the door opened a fracture. It cracked open, and it was his for the taking.

He grabbed it.

“Are you okay?” was the first thing he said with a part of Tom Riddle’s soul in his hands. The tears
on Pandora’s cheeks had dried and her face had regained some of its colour. Her palms were still
tinged gold, slightly; a mist omitting from the deep crevices of her magic. She smiled.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Better than ever actually.”

She flexed her fingers, moving her arms with ease. “I healed my shoulders when I was taking it. I
didn’t even realise I did it. Wait–”

She cut off and grabbed Remus’ good arm; turned so she was facing his bad one.

“She broke it,” Remus murmured, and she wrapped a palm around his floppy wrist; it shot pain that
he had, in the adrenaline, almost forgotten was there. It was so much worse than he had registered
beforehand now that there was no exterior stimulus to deflect his attention onto.

And, before he had even gotten a cry of agony out, it was better. Not fully better - it felt warm, as if
she had just wrapped a heat pack around it, and he felt a strange taste of spice in his mouth. His
wrist jerked automatically and he gasped, but with shock more than pain, and the gaps between
Pandora’s fingers turned a slight pink mixed in with the residual gold.

Once the heat in the depths of his skin calmed to a lukewarm hum she let go, unclenching her
fingers jerkily, and he held it up. He flexed it.

She had healed it.

She was already halfway to the door before he had even gasped.

“You are a fucking genius,” he called, jogging to catch up with her. His eyes flickered to Narcissa.
He wasn’t sure if she had fallen unconscious or if she was just closing her eyes for show; and he
didn’t have time to check.

“I know,” Pandora harpered, striding down the corridor - the two vampires were blocking the
corridor, and with one flick of her hand the corpse’s flew to each side of the wall, parting a path
like the red fucking sea. “God, that was a lot of magic. I’m on a high. Feels like a sugar rush.”

“Are you going to crash?”

“Probably,” she said, blowing her arms out beside her and opening the doors to the huge dining
room and, subsequently, the doors on the opposite side of the room, too. She -walked around the
table and Remus almost tripped trying to keep up with her. He was gripping onto the diary with
everything he had. “But that is future me’s problem.”

He supposed that made sense.

As of right then and there, he had to find Lucius Malfoy.

He had to find Sirius.

***

The noise of the battle crept up on Remus like a firework.

He traipsed down the hallways that he had come, running after Pandora, diary clutched to his chest
like he had never clutched anything before and the yelling felt like a comet, wheezing through the
air and getting progressively louder and more whiny until it exploded, and Remus was standing at
the top of the stairs to an empty (beside the bodies and the gore) hall.

The front doors were wide open, and the sounds of fighting came from the abyss of darkness
outside.

They loitered at the top of the stairs - evaluating, and preparing, perhaps, to hurtle into the fight -
when a blurred figure that made them both jump out of their skin came flailing through the open
double doors, hitting the staircase so hard that it broke the stone and created a dent - although,
when Remus looked closer, it was a dent that looked like it was already there.

James Potter groaned in what sounded like utter annoyance and wiped the fine debris from the
marble out of his face. He sat up, not seeing them.

“Bellatrix you ASSHOLE,” he yelled, slamming his palms onto the steps beside him. “That is the
THIRD TIME–”

“James,” Remus gasped, running down the steps and causing the vampire to, seemingly, jump out
of his skin.

“Holy shit, Remus!” James said, pulling himself up by the railings just as the two of them reached
him. He surveyed them for a split-second, and then said “What the hell happened to you?!”

Remus held up the diary. “This happened to me.”

James’ jaw dropped.

“Oh fuck,” he breathed, as if nothing had been real to him until that very moment. “Oh, shit, you
got it–”

“Yeah,” Pandora said; she was a step above James, and looked very authoritative standing over him
- though, in retrospect, she was the most authoritative of them all. James shut his mouth instantly.
“We got it, and we need Sirius, now.”

If he wondered why, he did not ask. “He’s out there. Last I saw he was taking on a couple
Rosier’s.”

“A couple?!” spluttered Remus.

“How many Purebloods are here?” asked Pandora.

“Eh,” James said, scratching the back of his neck. “About seven, maybe? Bella and her parents and
a couple Rosier cousins who were nearby. The rest are the vampire guard from the other two
houses. They all centralised–”

“Potter!” called a rough voice, and Marlene ran into the doorframe. Her fangs were still out and
she had blood trickling down the two corners of her mouth, so perfect it looked meticulous. Her
fingertips were dripping blood and her black shirt had ripped, slightly, but she didn’t seem to care.
Her sleeves were flared and they wavered in the breeze as she gripped onto the doorframe. “James,
you bastard, walk it off and get back out here. Bella thinks she finally got you and she’s getting a
bit big for her– oh!”

Her face cleared up and then darkened with worry as she caught sight of Remus and Pandora, and
she ran to the bottom of the stairs. Her thick soled boots clanked on the wooden flooring. “Are you
guys alright?”

Remus held up the diary, and her face relaxed in realisation. She nodded once. “What do you
need?”

“Finally, someone efficient,” Pandora muttered, and Remus huffed and took a few steps down. The
other two followed him.

“Sirius,” he said with force. “I need eyes on Sirius and eyes on Lucius Malfoy.”

“Malfoy’s on the right hand side,” Marlene said. “Last I saw he was being tag-teamed by Miyuki
and Ambrose.”

“Hang on, I’ll look for Sirius,” James said, and he took a breath and ran to scale the frame of the
portrait that he had so horrendously obliterated with the rolling head and swung his way up onto a
high window ledge.

Remus turned to Marlene.

“Have we lost anyone?” he asked, and Marlene faltered.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “There’s too much chaos, I can’t see which body is who except…”

Her eyes flickered to a place behind Remus, and there was Mariana, the scary, enthusiastic woman
whom Remus had remarked dressed like a corpse but had not wished for her to become one. Her
heart had been ripped out of her body. Remus’ own sunk as his eyes washed over her lifeless body.

“Oh, no,” he breathed, and Marlene nodded.

“Her brother’s on a rampage.”

He turned back to her, frantic, now. “And– is she…?”

There was a moment - a slow, tender moment when Marlene’s face did not move, and Remus
thought he might have lost her - and then she lit up. Positively lit up like a fucking firecracker.

“Your Dorcas is fucking brilliant,” she breathed. “An absolute fucking wonder; Remus, she
brought a machine gun. She took out three vampires with one bullet. I’ve never seen anything like
it.”

And Remus, in all of the chaos and absurdity, actually laughed. He laughed, and Marlene laughed
with him, and there was a moment of joint comfortability in the respect they shared for the mighty
fucking wonder that was Dorcas Meadowes.

James jumped down with a loud bang that made the dust fly around again. He was by Remus’ side
in seconds.

“Got him,” he said. “Smack bang in the middle. You’ll see him.”

“He’ll have to see us,” Pandora muttered, grabbing Remus’ arm. “You hold that diary and you hold
it tight, Remus Lupin. Avoid any of the Purebloods who might recognise it except Sirius.”

“Give us a head start,” offered Marlene, looking to James for agreement and then back to them.
“We can clear a path.”
Remus took a deep breath. The air was thick with smoke and dust and death, and he was quite sure
that a fire had started outside. There was blood splattered on the glossy wooden floor, a vase
smashed to the right of the door. A pillar had been broken clean over; it was simply a floating
stump of broken china; much like the broken pieces in the middle of the stairs. There were corpses
everywhere. One of the witches that he had never spoken to was slumped dead next to the door. He
wondered if Jul was okay. Benjy, Gid, Percy and Oliver and Isabela. He hoped everyone was okay,
but it wasn’t the time. It wasn’t the time.

He blinked and noticed the chandelier had fallen at some point. The only lights were wall lights,
now, and it bathed the room in a feeble, intimately incandescent glow.

Remus was noticing a lot of things that he shouldn’t. The only thing he should be noticing was the
diary in his hand, and the war waging on outside.

He nodded, absently. Took a minute to unfocus his eyes from the black abyss of the door and look
at the two vampires in front of him, marking their way through battle to get him to his nation, to
Sirius.

“Go,” he said, nodding. “Go.”

James and Marlene exchanged a quick look, and devilish smiles grew on their blood and soot-
stained faces. He clapped a solid hand on her shoulder and in a second they had turned and were a
blur, running out of the door. The last thing he heard was Marlene’s laughter.

Pandora positioned herself in front. She seemed to be counting under her breath. Ten seconds.
Everything came down to ten seconds.

She moved and he fell into action; Remus clutched the diary to his chest and ran.

The porch outside was completely battered; there was debris scattered across the floor, and the
wooden tables had been absolutely obliterated, quite like Narcissa’s table. There was a body lying
across the stairs with a chair leg in the heart. Remus could not easily pick out his side from theirs,
besides the fact that they were all vampires, obviously, but the centralised glow of witches gave
him a hint. He had to duck to avoid a blast of golden energy from the palm of one of them, who
seemed to be electrocuting a vampire, and he had to hop around a pile of five bodies as the wizard
on Marlene’s team with long blond hair summoned fire within his palms to set them alight,
shadowed by two witches whose veins were glowing red as they pulsated their magic into him.

He clutched the Horcrux tight to his chest and followed Pandora as she skirted past Oliver Wood,
knee to a thrashing female vampire’s throat, and he watched as Isabela plunged her hand into her
chest and ripped her heart out, her sunset-ash hair waving with the energy coming from the
growing bonfire beside them. Oliver gripped the girls legs and flung her onto the flames, and the
neither of them noticed Remus and Pandora; Isabela wiped her blood stained hand on his face with
a laugh and he gripped her wrist, speeding them both off, and behind them he saw, finally, Marlene
and James after rejoining the fight.

Marlene seemed to be choking a man with her thighs. It all happened rather fast - she squeezed
them around his neck and plunged her thumbs into his eye sockets, and James kicked his knees out
from underneath him and ripped his heart out. Marlene twisted on his neck with a yell and the
man's head came off and fell to the ground as she backflipped off of him, and she laughed and
rubbed her thumbs on James’ jacket.

“Where is he?” Pandora gasped, drawing their attention to him. A vampire saw them falter, the
four of them in a group amongst the fighting, and began to run at them; James raised a gun that he
seemed to procure out of nowhere and shot him in the head without even looking.

Remus gaped.

“Where the everloving fuck did you get that?” he gasped, and James laughed heartily over the
chaos.

“Dorcas gave it to me,” he said, taking a step or two back to rejoin the fight. “Said I’m a good shot!
Nicest thing she’s ever said to me!”

As if to prove his point, he turned and shot a vampire in the head from six feet away, and ran into
oblivion.

Marlene turned back and rolled her eyes.

“He’s that way,” she called, pointing with blood-stained fingertips to her left.

They turned and their vision was crowded as Andromeda Tonks screeched and dragged them all
out of their stupor with her legs wrapped around who Remus saw, when they turned, to be Bellatrix
Lestrange. She was clawing at her sister viciously, and Marlene hissed and seemed to be poised to
help until - out of nowhere, really - a shard of glass lodged into Bellatrix’s neck. She gasped and
dropped Andromeda, who snarled, ripped it out and bit flesh out of her sister's neck, and Ted
appeared behind her with glass still lodged in his palms and pulled her hair back, one at the front
and one at the back. He smiled, watching Andromeda tear her apart.

Bellatrix let out a blood-curdling screech as the tense skin of her neck almost reached ripping point
and it was then, and only then - when Remus was thrown back to Sirius in the exact same position,
in the hospital corridor with his dear oldest cousin - did he spot him.

Sirius Black was a fucking sensation.

He was a firework on the battlefield, moving so fluidly it could have been a dance floor. He was
bathed in the moonlight and the dim lighting from the house but he was a light of his own making.
He was fighting with someone indecipherable to Remus - arm to arm, hand to hand combat - and
his eyes were ablaze. There was blood on his cheek, blood forming a slit across his neck and blood
on his bottom lip, trickling out, drooling from his mouth as he grunted and gained the upper hand
on the person he was fighting. He gripped their wrist and twisted it the entire wrong way - it
almost comically looked like he was twirling the person around, as if at a ballroom dance - and
Remus did not hear over the chaos, but he felt the snap, deep in the hollow of his own bones as the
vampire cried out, his arm bent the wrong way; Sirius bit into his neck. The vampire thrashed for a
moment, his head banging against Sirius but nobody could move him; he was an artifact, a
monument, something Remus felt like he should bow down to. He softened his thrashes and Sirius
pulled back.

Blood bubbled from the vampires neck in voluminous qualities and before the vampiric quick-time
healing could even think of kicking in Sirius was behind him, arm dropped, and before it even hit
his side he broke his neck, and ripped his heart out as he fell to solidify the kill.

He kicked the corpse to the side in an act that seemed so comically blasé it wouldn’t have worked
with anyone but Sirius, and Remus didn’t realise he was yelling his name until they locked eyes.

He was about twenty feet away, but the moment they locked eyes Sirius moved. Within five
seconds he was by his side, and within another five they were at least another twenty feet away
from the outskirts of the battle, closer to the tree line.
And Sirius was holding him around the waist; he had wrapped his arms around the small of his
back and essentially carried him out of harm's way, and they were on the floor, now; Sirius
kneeling to let him down gently. Remus had never felt more protected in an environment more
dangerous with Sirius’ arm around him and the weight of the world in his one hand and so, with
one hand tight around the diary he flung his other around Sirius’ neck to pull himself up, plunge
forward, and kiss him.

Sirius kissed him back immediately, and it was nothing like the way they kissed before. And he
tasted of blood - so much fucking blood, metallic and rough on his tongue - and smoke and soot,
and possibly mint; his hair was a mess and his clothes were ripped and he had discarded his jacket,
somewhere, and was now in nothing but a grey t-shirt, blood-stained and dirt-stained and
something gorgeous, diary pressed to their two chests, and their teeth clacked together as the war
reigned on behind them. Remus kissed him like he was the sun and Remus was drying out. Sirius
kissed him like he was the moon and Sirius was a crashing wave.

“Are you okay?” Sirius gasped, pulling back, and Remus fell back; he kept his arm around Sirius’
neck and held him there, just for a moment of tranquility before they plunged into their next battle.
He nodded. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’m fine,” he said, shaking his head as Sirius thumbed a deep gash on his cheek. He hadn’t even
noticed he had been cut. “I’m okay. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Sirius whispered. “I’m fine knowing you are.”

Remus took a deep breath in and pulled back, raising his other hand. Sirius’ eyes widened as he
looked at it; Remus shuffled so he was on his knees and they were mirroring each other. Sirius took
the diary.

“You fucking genius,” he breathed, eyes twinkling. “Remus Lupin, you fucking genius,” and
before Remus could even say anything in return he was kissing him again, his tongue loud and
present in Remus’ mouth as if it fucking belonged there.

There was a crack, and neither of them noticed.

“Is now really the fucking time?” Pandora spat, and Remus pulled away to see her drop in front of
them and take the Horcrux from Sirius’ willing hands. “We need a plan. How am I going to nab
Lucius from her?”

She turned and pointed, and the two of them followed.

Lucius Malfoy was in battle with Dorcas.

Remus’ mouth fell open, but before he could even get anything out Sirius grabbed the diary from
her; his jaw was clenched, and his eyes were focused.

“Leave it to me,” he grunted, standing up and beginning to run - Pandora watched after him with a
stricken expression.

“That’s not a fucking plan!” she screeched, and any passing thoughts of Pandora going bald before
she turned 30 due to stress that Remus may have had was negated when Sirius started yelling.

“Be ready,” Remus said, standing up - she followed. He grasped her on the arm. “Be ready.”

“Malfoy, you utter fucking twat!” Sirius screamed. He was leaning back, slightly, unhinged and
glorious where he had reached a few metres away from the fighting. No one seemed to take notice
except for Lucius, and Dorcas.

Sirius looked erratic - he was reflected in the flames that were growing slowly but surely to his
right, and he had his arms raised out wide, diary in his right hand that he was waving around. He
looked as though if he had a gun he would be shooting it maniacally.

And Dorcas locked eyes with Remus.

Her blade was poised, and her face was wild. She was rugged, too - she had a machine gun, just
like Marlene had said, in her other hand - and she could kill Lucius in a second. Basilisk blade
wielded, she could do it. He had just caught on to what Sirius had in his hand, and there was a split
second in which he was in stasis, and Dorcas could end him once and for all.

Remus shook his head. A tiny, tiny jerk, but he and Dorcas had always been in tune.

And with the feel of a wraith Dorcas Meadowes slinked back into the shadows, and Lucius Malfoy
began sprinting for Sirius.

He toppled him over with a bang - they fell backwards, at least fifteen feet, skidding on the grass
and the mud and Sirius held the diary close to his chest with one hand and punched Lucius square
across the face with the other, sending him flying another six feet to the side and he was up before
Remus could even breathe; before Lucius could even roll over; and he kicked him like a fucking
football into the air, his body flailing as he hit a few of the vampires in some sort of hilarious
mock-semblance of a bowling ball.

Sirius was by their side in a second, and instead of taking Pandora’s hand, he grabbed the hand that
Remus was holding and shoved the diary into it.

“Grab her shoulder instead,” he instructed Remus, and he did. “Keep this hand free. Be ready.”

Sirius took off running and Pandora gaped for a moment, before Lucius came emerging out of the
crowd like a phoenix rising from the fucking ashes and went straight for Sirius, and Pandora
outstretched her hand, ready.

Ten seconds.

Lucius toppled Sirius over again, except he managed to flip them over before they even hit the
ground. He hissed at him and punched him across the face; Lucius spat at him, and Sirius laughed.

“Where is it?” he growled, and Sirius shrugged, before looking very obviously at Pandora.

Seven seconds.

Remus let his arm fall to Pandora’s upper arm, under her armpit, to grip it tighter as Lucius began
to flail across the grass with Sirius on his tail, and they were a blur - a flurry of two bodies. Pandora
swallowed nervously.

Three seconds.

“This better fucking work, Black,” she muttered, holding out a hand, and they grew closer.

They grew closer, and they grew closer.

And Lucius pinned Sirius to the floor, not four feet away, and he kicked him in the stomach, hard;
Remus watched as he skidded across the grass and was up in an instant, directly beside Pandora but
 not touching her, and Sirius waited.

Lucius ran at him, and Sirius waited.

One fucking second. One fucking second, Sirius fucking Black.

He grabbed Pandora’s hand, and Lucius grabbed onto his shoulder, and they disapparated with a
sickening crack.

Chapter End Notes

sorry for the cliffhanger LOL

 fourteen
Chapter Summary

malfoy manor, part two

Chapter Notes

CW's:
- near death experience

See the end of the chapter for more notes

The world was black, and then it was not. And Remus was thrown to the ground with his face in
the grass.

He dug his fingers into the muck and scrambled up, coughing slightly with the impact. It was hard
to make out anything at first, but as his eyes adjusted the first thing he saw when he flipped his hair
up out of his face was Sirius. He was straddling a still-vicious Lucius on the floor, simply a
continuation of their battle; attempting to hold him down and doing it adequately, but visibly
struggling.

Remus crawled over to Pandora, who had thudded a foot or two away from him, on instinct, and
grabbed her by the shoulder. It was sticky. He pulled back his shaking hand in what seemed like
slow-motion, and blinked at the dark tint to his pale grey moonlit fingers.

“Oh my God,” he said, croaky, realisation dawning on him. Lucius had bitten her as she had
apparated. “Oh fuck, Dora. Oh– are you– can you stand?”

He moved his hand upwards and she whined; feeling the trickle of more of her spouting blood trail
down his fingers, he pulled down the fabric of her clothes and pinpointed the actual wound, just
where her head met her shoulders; right on the curvature of her neck to her body. Whispering a
string of words that were unfamiliar to his ringing ears, he pulled her up to a sitting position with a
sturdy hand to her back and she reached her hand up and clung to him.

He saw, out of the corner of his eye, Lucius escape Sirius’ bounds. He threw him backwards and
Sirius landed with a thud against a tree, though he sprung up immediately. Lucius ran for him
straight out of Remus’ eyesight, and as his eyes flickered back to Pandora’s blood seeping through
the gaps of his fingers and into the fabric of his fingerless gloves, he heard a strangled howl as they
fought. He pressed down on her neck for pressure, trying to abate the trembling in his hands. He
was not very sure where it had come from.

“I don’t have any- anything,” he whispered to her, not even able to conjure up the words. Her face
contorted and she panted in pain, once, twice; and shook her head. “I don’t have anything, I don’t
—oh, gosh, can you heal yourself?”

“Diary,” she wheezed, scrunching the fabric of his shirt and letting it loosen, “focus on that. I’ll be
fine.”

“You’re going to bleed out if we don’t do something,” he hissed, trying to be quiet behind the tell-
tale fight that was going on behind his back. Sirius couldn’t hold him off—keep him there—for
long. Pandora was supposed to help trap him, wards, the Ollivander girl and her specialty. Now she
was bleeding all over Remus’ hands and under his fingernails.

Her eyes softened and she shook her head, letting go of his shirt, though her hand did not fall. It
shook a little bit in the air and then moved upwards with tremendous effort. She placed it over his.

“It’s too bad,” she said; as she said it her hand began to glow a gleaming pink, warming his
knuckles. “But I can try and stem the blood-flow.”

He slipped his hand out from under hers and watched as she grasped onto her wound, taking deep
breaths. Remus hovered for a moment, to make sure she would not fall. She had saved his life and
he felt a tremendous amount of acrid guilt curdling in his gut like being unable to help. She locked
onto his hesitation, and then onto a point over his shoulder.

“I’ll be fine,” said Pandora, firmer. “Do what you came here to do. Don’t you dare get derailed
when we’ve come so far, stupid hunter.”

Her tone dwindled into something soft by the end of the sentence. Remus watched as she let her
head drop back, one leg outstretched and one bent in front of her. He exhaled sharply at the conflict
of interest but he knew he had to turn. She was right. His eyes swam a little and he went to wipe
them away before realising his hands were covered in blood.

He peeled his gloves off. Dropped them beside her. Patted down his side for his dagger; got up,
and turned.

Sirius and Lucius were still fighting; they were feral, though not quite as much so as when he had
fought Bellatrix. Lucius, Remus had noticed—in the brief battle and ever thus, now—had a
more… meticulous fighting style. He was full of self-preservation. Almost selfish. Throwing tight
swings that were retracted quickly and going for power moves, attempting to increase his levels
and using his strengths not to hurt Sirius but to throw him off. But Sirius was not one to be put
down.

It was about a minute of watching them fight across the clearing, as Remus gripped the hilt of his
blade, before an opportunity arose.

In the ultimatum, Lucius ran and tried to slam Sirius to the ground but, as ever, Sirius held it,
skidding across the mud for a second before gripping him and full body swinging him, throwing
him against a thick tree with a jolting crack and not even letting him fall before appearing behind
him in a rush of wind. He pulled him up onto his knees and splayed his hands halfway over his
face, heel of his palm underneath the right side of his jaw. Lucius tried to bite him, but Sirius held
him like a fucking dog.

“Open the book and I might not kill you,” Sirius hissed into his ear. Lucius thrashed, and Remus
got up, took a deep breath and approached, blade drawn in one hand, diary clutched in the other,
nothing prying them away from him even dead and cold and endlessly decrepit.

“Fuck you, Black,” Lucius choked, and Sirius laughed; it reverberated around the clearing, zig-
zagged off the trees until it dissipated into nothing. It sent a shiver down Remus’ spine, waved
with the trees as they tried to run and found they were immoveable.
“He means it,” said Remus, pointing his blade. “One thing, Malfoy. And we have all night to get it
out of you.”

Remus took a step, and in the same breath Lucius headbutted Sirius and flew out of his arms; by
the time the breath exhaled he was on Remus. He went flying backwards and the soft grass did
next to nothing to cushion Remus’ fall. Lucius hissed—he was disgusting, really, perpetually
twenty-five and sick in the head, wrinkled cheeks as he hissed brutal and sharp in Remus face—
and the instinct kicked in as he pushed the blade with both hands against his neck. His skin
immediately began to blister. All within the span of three seconds he fell and fought and in one
grand swing that would make Moody proud, slit his throat, deep and unencumbering—the skin
flapped and blood splattered all across Remus’ face; mainly his chin, tinting his bottom lip, sour
and spluttering. It trickled down the side of his face and it left Malfoy limp for a split-second as it
hurt and then healed, which was enough to kick him the fuck away.

The diary had fallen to his side and he retrieved it anxiously as Sirius, upon Remus pushing Lucius
away, gripped him by the shirt and pulled him up onto his knees. He, without hesitation, punched
him square across in the face so brutally that Remus felt the crack in his jaw reverberate through
his own bones like a church bell. He went down instantly, skidding two feet or so, and Sirius
followed him.

“Diary,” he spat with so much anger it was tangible, and went to punch him again; Lucius, healed,
dodged it and threw his arms around Sirius, one underneath his armpit and one around his neck,
and he squeezed.

Sirius screamed a strangled thing, and in one, sharp crack that Remus had heard not even an hour
ago he knew that he had dislocated his shoulder. He felt a flame light somewhere deep inside him
and it illuminated the entire place, iridescent; he dropped his blade to fish his gun out of his pocket,
aiming and shooting three bullets into Lucius’ shoulder. It was not fatal but enough to throw him
backwards and away from Sirius, who almost folded in half, falling onto his knees and
subsequently backwards. He was groaning but it felt more like frustration than pain. Knowing
Sirius, that’s what it was.

Sirius reached one hand over his back and, with a jerk, clicked it back into place. He pushed
himself upwards via only his core and got up. Shook himself off.

And when Lucius went for Remus again, they were ready.

This is what bodies are made for. The instinctive parallel of a pattern, someone else's forearm,
elbow to elbow with yours, swatting the threat that posed them as they dance to block the eye that
bites you. Remus felt like a different person, he could practically feel the adrenaline, tangible and
metallic and a bit bitter, yet euphoric. A fight or flight system that only ever chose fight; the same
system, the same conquest and the same feeling that seeped up his throat in the halls of Malfoy
Manor, pulling the trigger and knowing himself more than anything in the moment it took for the
wound to seep. And Sirius was the warrior, the warrior in all of the questions, Achilles under the
moonlight. Paving the conquest, ulterior motives that leave the walls broken down like a bad set
design, now, as the bastard had Sirius on the floor, he took the second of faltering to gain the upper
hand, again, and they were thunder and lightning in a ruined colosseum.

Protect the diary, kill the enemy. The hunter bureau may not have taught him much, but it built
him from scratch and the new body he was in itched for the chase that he knew.

Sirius was a dance that he had, on the one hand, never prepared for, and yet had been preparing for
for as long as he met him. They knew each other. Remus knew him inside out and back to front and
frostbitten in deserts run clavicle dry like the water caught in lips to his collarbones; they had not
intended to know each other. It was years of intuition, knowing exactly where the next bishop was
going to move, the axel landing and the dent of the ice. He had memorised Sirius’ fighting style
like the veins on the back of his hand. As brazenly as the feeling of the rough skin on his knuckles,
the silk of his hair between Remus’ fingers. And he, absurdly, surrounded by trees with a Horcrux
to his chest and the moonlight glinting from behind a cloud remembered the advice that Lily had
given him on the phone, a million years ago. He had been frustrated that the dance was changing.
Unfriendly to change and indifferent to excitement. The toxic violence that had lingered between
them for years had been twinged with something new; fresh, tragically akin to diamond bathed
sunlight; the way it brought clarity to settings like this, the dark and dim wooded areas, where
anything could be lurking. The concoction had tasted bitter on his tongue because he had not
wanted to accept it.

He had thought it would make him weak. All, all, all he felt was strong.

And Remus was rather certain all of a sudden that he had never understood Sirius quite like he did
now, fighting together. He had never understood Sirius quite like he did when Lucius Malfoy
lunged at them and every move they made complimented the other. He had not understood Sirius
quite like he had in the hall when he had snapped, spurred by James’ guiding hand—because
what had they to fucking lose? What had they to fucking ruin? They were in ruins. He was a ruin,
the both of them were, debris and blood and bone mangled together, choked through the esophagus
of a manic tornado because that was how they worked. And every gunshot echoed, every scratch
broke; every punch, hit, hiss, scream, it was better, so much better with understanding. It was like
gasoline lining the bay of the ocean. Sand in his eyes. The only connection to the core of the Earth
that exists is when you’re being burnt alive.

He had cradled their fate within Sirius’ bloody, scuffed up hands, all of those weeks ago in the
library in the hotel, but it had not been safe there. Their fate was only safe on the battlefield; this
was the only place where all of the cards were truly on the table, and as the dealer flipped them
over one by one they all said the same thing. All of their cards all seeped violence and
complication. Spiritualism and martyrdom was weaved between the laps of their tongues and the
glints of their eyes, brown on grey, dead and alive; but they bled side by side.

The world fell on its axis with Sirius beside him like this, like this, like this, like this; Remus almost
had the fucking nerve to say forever.

Sirius ended up holding Lucius back from behind, twisting his arms so horribly that Remus was
pretty sure one of them was broken. It was a struggle. Lucius wasn’t as old as Sirius was, but he
was old enough.

Remus circled them on light feet, his mouth contorted into some sick semblance of a smile. He
unsheathed his basilisk blade; held it to Lucius’ throat, flat. It burned, and he thrashed against it
instantly.

“Ah-ah-ah,” Remus tutted patronisingly. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. If you want to live.”

“You know what that is, Lucy,” Sirius sneered. He kicked the back of his legs so Lucius fell to his
knees, grunting as he fought back. Remus fell with them in one fluid motion. “You can smell it,
can’t you?”

Lucius stilled for a moment. Merely a moment.

Sirius’ face crept into a devilish smile.

“Oh, yes,” he crooned, leaning in to speak just behind his ear. “Your beloved Dark Lord hasn’t
confided in you like you hoped he would, but you know exactly what that diary is, don’t you? Ah; I
give you too little credit, dear Lucius. I’m sure your estate has exactly the same books on Dark
Magic that ours has if you know where to look.” He tutted as Lucius thrashed again, hands
gripping for Sirius’ wrists. “And I don’t doubt you’ve come across dark creatures in your life. Put it
together. You’re smart, Lucius.”

And it was as if the clouds cleared in his eyes. Two plus two became four; the dominoes came
tumbling down, from one end of the clearing all the way through to the other in a stream of
absurdly controlled fire, and he stilled against the blade. Distant prickles of smoke tickles at
Remus’ senses just as venom tickled at Lucius’, and Sirius laughed, absolutely fucking unhinged,
good God, he lay waste to all he touched.

“There we go,” Remus breathed. “You don’t want to move now, do you?”

“I’ve heard it’s excruciating,” whispered Sirius. “Eats you up from the inside.”

“We might let you go,” Remus said, drunk on the adrenaline, “if you cooperate. And if you
don’t… well,” he pushed the blade in that tiny bit more; “You won’t be the only one to pay the
price.”

Sirius caught Remus’ eye. They lit up with recognition and then his face contorted into a wide,
pleased grin.

“Oh, how I’d love to see Narcissa again,” he continued, following Remus’ lead. “It’s been years.
How did she look, Remus?”

“Absolutely splendid,” he said, bringing his gaze back to the snarling vampire at his feet. “Picture
of royalty in that gorgeous blue dress—although, I suppose it’s ruined now. Bloodstains truly are a
bitch to get out of silk.”

“Pity,” Sirius pouted exaggeratedly, and Lucius thrashed once more, trying his absolute hardest to
lean backwards.

“She will be protected,” Lucius spat, “you will never find them.”

“I think you’ll find we can be very persuasive,” Sirius whispered. “Given that Remus here quite
literally holds the essence of your Dark Lord’s soul in his beat-up, hunter hands, I’d say that we
have leverage here; wouldn’t you, my dear?”

Remus smiled. “I would.”

Lucius thrashed, and Remus shushed him. The air hung low like icicles around their faces, in place,
in anticipation.

“And as for finding them…” Remus continued; he let out a laugh that was really just a menacing
glow of breath, and leaned in. Tilted his head a little. Flipped the blade over, and over again. Let
the burns on Lucius’ throat heal while others emerged, and then burned him all over again. An
enlightening preview to Hell. Remus was nothing if not courteous.

“I already did,” he whispered, eventually, his lips curling around the words. “Your son’s little
hiding place in the music room was all too easy to find.”

“And Narcissa?” hissed Sirius. “You really think he will show her mercy after she let the Horcrux
get away so easily?”
“We can go back and finish the job, if you’d like,” said Remus, primly. “Putting them out of their
misery would be my absolute honour.”

And the mild twisting and manipulation of the truth was all too easy for the flare of anger in
Lucius’ eyes; so much so Remus didn’t even think about the very real possibility of Draco Malfoy
becoming an orphan at their hands. He didn’t seem to fucking care. Perhaps he is woe in itself. His
skin does not burn. He does not get a preview. He does not see empathy when he is being torn at,
rib to throat, he sees red.

Lucius panted, slightly, trembling with anger, and then something shifted in him. The corners of
his lips perked up and—to all of Remus’ annoyance—he began to laugh. An actual laugh, throaty,
dry, and disconnected; it was a hollow cackle. Sirius exhaled sharply through his teeth, and Lucius
turned to attempt to look at him, side-on.

“You are a joke, Sirius Black,” Lucius spat through laughter. “You’re pathetic. You will not kill
me or them. You’re just like your fucking blood-traitor brother. Weak. How your parents ever
created such a pair of weasels–”

“Shut up,” Sirius growled, yanking his head backwards by the hair. “I know what you’re doing,
you slimy shitbag. It’s not going to work.”

“Pathetic,” Lucius spat, “worthless—”

“And I do admire your willingness to die for the cause,” Sirius continued, louder, completely
unperturbed by Lucius’ speech; “it’s noble. Trying to protect the last piece of information that you
hold over us. But–” he crouched down slowly, leaning forward, “–you don’t give me
enough credit, Lucius. I may not be as brutal as my father, or as callous as my mother, but you
know what I am?”

He paused, eyes flickering up to Remus. “I’m braver.”

In one providential motion he let Lucius’ arms go and, with a circular-like movement of his arm
plunged his right hand through his back, deep into his chest. Remus staggered back as Lucius
swiped for the diary in the jolt, protecting it his first priority, and Sirius jerked his head slightly,
indicating for him to get out of the way, which he did; the vampire cried out in agony while Sirius
gripped his other hand on his shoulder to stabilise him. He twisted his arm, deep in his back, with a
sadistic laugh.

And Sirius shook his hair out of his face, as if absolutely nothing was awry. As if the clouds had
gathered above their heads to cover up the stars in the sky because the universe needed to make
room for him. As if they weren’t allowed to coexist.

“I,” Sirius said, primly, jerking his hand again and ignoring the strangled cries from the vampire at
his heed, “am officially calling your bluff, Lucy. See, I don’t think you’d die for this at all. I don’t
think you’d die for anything. You’re the furthest thing from noble that I have ever had the
displeasure of dirtying my hands with. So cooperate,” he leaned forward. “Or die.”

And Remus gripped both of his hands into the grass and pushed himself up, he leaned forward.
Watched the curves of Malfoy’s lips move into a smug smile. Watched as he stopped moving. Like
a puppet moved only by Sirius’ guiding hand. The face of a person who was waiting to watch
someone get their just desserts.

It was wrong.
“Sirius…” Remus said, warningly, but he wasn’t listening.

He twisted his arm once more and Lucius screamed, throwing his head and arms back, looking half
like a corpse on a stick. His hair fell behind him and he laughed, again, except this one was high-
pitched and menacing. It sent a shudder up Remus’ spine, and the trees stopped waving.
Everything seemed to stop moving except the curve of Lucius’ lips, up, and up, and this
was triumph. It was very, very wrong.

“Sirius–” Remus started again, but he didn’t get a chance to finish.

The air grew cold, all of a sudden, and then very, very warm. Sirius, in a burst of energy coming
from somewhere behind Remus, was flung backwards into a tree. Lucius was free for barely a split
second before he was incapacitated once more, except this time it was by someone different.

About five shimmery ropes made of pure fire came whipping out of the darkness, wrapping
meticulously around both of his arms and his throat like snakes. They hailed from the same place
behind Remus; his head only narrowly missed one of the ropes and in a tasteful show of fight or
flight he fell backwards, scrambling back as far as he could, acknowledging when he should be out
of the way. Lucius, face shadowed by the leaves, was still thrashing against the mysterious bounds,
but they were unmoveable. He looked like he was being crucified.

Remus hit something and turned to see it was Pandora’s legs. She had hauled herself up further,
leant against a tree trunk, and was, now, deathly pale under the glittering moon, stark red coating
one side of her body and the lining of her lips. Her hands were still tinged pink and clamped over
her wound. Remus blinked in shock.

“I thought that was you,” he said, forlorn, and she shook her head. Her eyes were terrified.

He had barely gotten as far as asking if she was okay and receiving a terse nod before a twig
cracked to the side, and both of their heads turned, hearing the soft sound of someone's footsteps
break the collectively held breath, coming from the dark of the woods. Remus scrambled up and
went for his blade, holding it at the ready; in a split-second Sirius was behind him, holding a
cautious hand on his shoulder.

“No,” he whispered, softly, “this is no threat.”

The footsteps grew louder. The fire danced meticulously, and Remus saw her palms before he saw
her. Illumination incarnate.

Mary Macdonald walked brazenly into the clearing, the air around her shimmering with tangible
heat and crackling electricity, and her eyes were set on Lucius. She was in all black, a linen skirt
billowing in the wind behind her, and she looked almost a wraith against the dark gloom of the
treeline. There was a knife hooked to a pouch at her waist. Another in a holster around her forearm.
She clenched her burning hands, clad with iron-knuckled gloves, into a fist and pulled him via the
fire towards her, meeting in the middle, barely a foot away.

“Hello,” she said pleasantly.

Lucius snarled. “Who the hell are you?"

“Mary,” said Remus, a sort of strangled sound, unable to keep quiet. His hands had fallen lifeless to
his sides. He didn’t quite believe it was her until she turned her head and looked at him. The fire
glowed a beautiful mock sunset-hue in the thrum of the darkness against her face. Like some sort
of messiah.
She smiled.

“Hi, Remus,” she breathed; barely audible over the crackling of the flames. “I missed you.”

“Mary, oh my God–”

He started for her, but Sirius pulled him back, taking over and striding two long-legged paces over
the half-dead grass.

“Why are you here?” he asked, getting straight to the point. Lucius thrashed some more, and Mary
wrangled him like a puppeteer. Her face grew cold.

“He’s here, Sirius,” she said, wrapping a rope further around her palm to gain a tighter grip. It
crackled as she made contact. “He’s here. Riddle showed up. And he wants the Horcrux.”

Sirius’ mouth did not move, but his jaw tensed. His eyes fell down—almost unconscious, like a
mother looks to her baby upon an inquest of peril—to the diary, clutched in Remus’ hand.

And, in this split second of rehabilitation, Remus looked to Lucius. Mouth dry, panic inflating his
gut—we had planned for this, we had prepared—had they? Yes, they had. It had been dependent
on the parties, Pandora’s magic to get him—Malfoy—out of there—Plan A gone to shit the
moment he had bitten her. That had been no coincidence. Taking her out of the playing field was
calculated, but that had been considered. Of course it had. Their deaths had all been put onto
pedestals. And Remus had been on standby to destroy the diary the moment, and not two seconds
before, retaliative force was picked up—by Sirius, his ears had been perked up, attuned to two
places at once, so Riddle could not have been there for long– and if Mary was here– and if anyone
would be able to hold him off– then he must– it would be–

“Where’s my brother?” asked Sirius. The origin and end of all of the games.

And Remus could not take his eyes off of Lucius. His triumphant smile, the light behind his eyes, a
ghastly scene on a creature more skin and bones than body and soul. There was a clock ticking
above their heads, and Mary, her burning soul, spoke again.

“He’s there. Helping to get them out. Hold him off.”

“How much time do we have?”

“Not much,” she said, sadly.

They stole a moment. It was almost as if the world could have stopped, as if they could tuck
themselves into the pause button and manifest an answer.

“Do you have it, then?!” Mary asked, breaking the silence, very agitated. Remus raised his hand—
it had been too dark for her to spot. Her eyes widened. “There it is,” she breathed, straining against
Lucius. “He’s there, and I’m here” –another breath– “for that.”

Remus, for reasons he might never know, tightened his grip instinctively on the little book. As if it
was his own property. A part of him, or something. Mary did not notice. She simply stared.

And then, upon simple observation of why they were there and what they were there for; “You
figured it out, huh? He knew you would.”

“Barely,” Sirius growled, two hands over his forehead as he tried to work out the next step, “there
was no need to make it so fucking vague.”
“Oh, come on,” Mary jeered, awfully comfortable considering she was talking to someone she had
never met before. “Seventy years of passing notes not enough to leave a lasting memory? You’ll
wound him.”

“Not when you’re as old as we are, witch.”

“Can we focus on the problem at hand, please?” said Remus, voice shakier and more shrill than he
intended. He still couldn’t seem to fathom that Mary was standing in front of him, and he still
could not relinquish his grip on the book. Her smile dropped.

“Please,” choked Lucius from across the way, patronising annoyance laced in his tone. Sirius shot
him a look that could go up against the goddamn killing curse.

“We don’t have time,” Mary said quickly. The power of the flames made her harried coily hair
wave like a breeze in summer. “We have to destroy it, and I have to get you three out of here.”

“But the charm–”

“The charm won’t be worth jack-fucking-shit if he gets it back, Remus,” Mary hissed. “They’re
trying to hold him off at the Manor, but you know it won’t last long. We don’t have time. It was a
long shot, we all knew it was, and it’s not worth losing all of our lives, which is what will fucking
happen if we don’t get rid of this thing.”

Remus turned to Sirius. “Can’t you persuade him?” he asked him, knowing it was nonsensical.
Sirius shook his head.

“Doesn’t work on other vampires, you know this.”

“I don’t–”

Lucius roared, seemingly done with being incapacitated, and pushed with so much strength that
Mary actually staggered backwards. Remus and Sirius both instinctively reached out a hand
towards her that collided with the bounds, and where Remus felt nothing but a twinge of warmth,
Sirius yelped and jerked his hand back. Mary’s hands shook slightly as she straightened up, looping
another rope around her palm. Remus turned to Sirius, examining his hand.

“Holy fire,” he whispered, “only works on our kind. Genius.”

It was perennial; a lot of things only worked on his kind. Remus could only use holy water against
Sirius’ burning throat. Or, Sirius could only reach his hands into Remus’ entangled brain. His
hands, carved and gentle and brutal and persuasive. It was persuasion. And where there were a
million ways to get someone to do what you wanted them to do—a million ways to blackmail,
manipulate, and scheme; get drugged with truth serum, have a vampire spout reins out of their
almost in that moment beating hearts and plug it into you like you’re a fucking plug socket, a hop
that would for just anyone be a mountainous regime, but they were not just anyone, they were not,
they were–

Remus stopped. Mary adjusted her grip on the ropes of fire that she was in full control over, and he
remembered, thinking of who they are and what they have in common—as all of the blood rushed
out of his head and probably gushed out of his ears and onto the floor—of what Sirius had
compared his affliction to, in the library. A curse for a curse.

“Mary,” said Remus frantically, turning towards her. He could feel his pulse beating in his ears and
he was quite sure his breaths were not breaths at all. “You could persuade him.”
“What?”

“Imperius.”

Her face relaxed in realisation, and her jaw went slack. A felonious moment passed, then she shook
her head slightly. Beads of sweat were forming on her brow and her nostrils flared. “I don’t know,
Remus…”

“Remus,” said Sirius, slightly worn.

“It takes too much out of me,” she said, and Remus knew. He knew of the power it took to use one
of the curses—to actually succeed at them—but he trusted her. As she trusted him. As they both
trusted the younger Black—the acentric bust—his understanding of the spidery web that does not
fizzle when you set fire to it but spread, and as he in turn perhaps took for granted just how willed
they all were to this, and just how willing they were to protect each other and give themselves up in
one.

Sirius was wary, but Remus knew if he was not there he would take the chance with no hesitation,
and he could not let himself be accountable for that.

Mary gaped, trying to formulate her words. “I can’t– I wouldn’t be able to hold it for very long.
He’d break out of it.”

“Five seconds is enough.”

“Or– protect you afterwards!” she cried, pulling Lucius closer; he was moaning, now, his neck
jerking from side to side. “I don’t know if I’d be able to get you out!”

“We can protect ourselves,” said Sirius, reserved but confident, and Remus felt like a madman—all
three of them were, standing in a clearing on stolen time attempting to follow a lead that may or
may not work, and yet, in the climate of the battle and the feeling of fine sand slipping through his
fingertips it felt like–

“It’s all we’ve got, Mary,” said Remus. “Please.”

–it was all they had.

She screwed her face up, and then let out a heaving breath, unclenching her palms. She looked
close to tears.

And, God,–

“Oh God, I missed you so much, Remus.”

–he had missed her so much.

“I missed you too.”

“You have to grab him,” she commanded. She straightened up and roped the bonds in, around her
palm. “I need to let him go to pull off the spell. Five seconds max.”

Sirius placed himself behind Lucius. “I’m ready.”

“Okay,” she said, breathing out shakily. “You got it?”

“We got it,” Remus said, taking his place.

“Three,” Mary counted, grunting as Lucius writhed with anticipation.

The leaves flickered on the trees.

“Two,” she gasped.

The wind picked up, and the clouds had begun to move.

“One.”

And Sirius was not the only star on the battlefield anymore.

The flames dissipated and the clearing plunged into nothing but pale moonlit darkness, and two
pairs of incandescent hands—living for the feeling of their hearts beating at the back of their
throats—gripped onto Lucius Malfoy’s flailing being as he pushed with all of his strength into
making a run for it. Sirius plunged his hand into his chest once again and Remus kicked his knees
out, and, as he thrashed and became a threatening weight, a sort of shockwave occurred.

He turned, and there Mary stood, except it felt like the pale grey of the moonlight had become her.

Her knees almost buckled but her face stayed incredibly strong, thick-skinned, stoic as she was and
would forever be. With a gasp of air that felt like it sucked all of the wind in the planet away like a
fucking vaccum her palms glistened with a slight, dancing grey light; delicate and stringy. The
colour of Sirius’ eyes. The colour of May into June, except it was March. Something that felt so
ceremoniously off, but right, in that moment, so right.

The magic pirouetted its way through the air and into Lucius’ open mouth. He went limp instantly.

Remus let go with precaution, and he felt the jolt as Sirius did, too; they circled him on both sides
like mirrors to go stand beside Mary, watching him from the front. It was quite a harrowing sight
—his eyes totally blank, and his mouth slightly ajar, like he was a hyper-realistic dummy, or the
human corpse he had never been.

“Diary,” Mary choked into the grey darkness. “Open it.”

Remus kicked into action, placing it on the ground beneath the witch and the vampire, open on a
random page deep in the middle. He backed up quickly and Mary gasped for air. She was almost
choking on it, on the fumes that were not visible. Her bottom lip trembled but she still remained
standing tall.

And he presumed it was wordless. Her commands for him. He moved jerkily, like he really was a
puppet this time (he supposed, now, he was) and knelt forward, bracing himself on his arms over
the diary, eyes still blank and glassy. No sentience whatsoever. Remus held his breath.

And out of Lucius’ dry, pale-lipped mouth came a strangled hiss that Remus had only ever heard
once—from the mouth of the Basilisk he and Dorcas had killed.

Whatever it was, whatever he said, it didn’t matter—what mattered was the black ink forming on
the pages, from the inside out. Lit up by the strings of light waning their way in between the witch
and her prey. Remus fell to his knees and grasped it, flicking through it, trying to catch words.

It was all in code. Some sort of amalgamation of Greek lettering, a multitude of things that looked
important and yet felt insufficient against the bounty weighing down his back.

“Fuck,” he whispered to himself, and he felt Sirius fall beside him; rip it out of his hands. “Fuck.”
“Remus,” Mary called, somewhat frantically. “I can’t–”

“What do we–” he choked, coughing on nothing, as Sirius flicked through the pages, “what do we
do now?”

They exchanged one look. One look. Remus could taste loss on the underside of his tongue. All
escapes seemed to be behind drywall that would take too long to kick down, but Sirius, looking at
him, threw his chin up and tensed his jaw and:

Sirius: “You take this,” affirmed, terrified, shoving the book into Remus’ hands and clasping his
fingertips over it, “I kill him,” a sentiment to a plan gone awry and the blessings they had
encountered to find their way here, “and then we run like hell.”

Mary: “Remus!”

She cried out one last time and the connection disappeared; they were plunged into darkness once
more. The sentience in Lucius’ eyes returned and he ran for her, instinctively, and Sirius moved
faster than Remus had ever, ever seen him move before; across the clearing with Lucius held by
the throat before the diary had even thudded on the ground. I kill him.

They got back into fighting again. Remus tuned back into the diary.

“What is it?” Mary gasped, crawling towards him on her elbows. “What does it say?”

“It’s all in code,” Remus managed, the echoes of the battle across from him rattling through his
ears like metal on metal. “It’s correspondence, but it’d take weeks to decipher, and–”

“He’s coming,” she said, halfway to a sob. “I can feel him. He’s coming. You have to destroy it.”

“But–”

“Remus,” Mary choked out. Her dark brown eyes were swimming with tears; her voice was thick.
“You have to. We have no other choice. Destroy it and run like hell. Both of you.”

And that was it. Martyrdom. Mary, the Hanged Man, upside down on her pyre, and she was setting
it alight to keep them from burning into even more ash to shove down Riddle’s throat; the buoy
between the badlands.

“No,” he said, understanding her implications, “no. No. Mary. I’m not–I’m not leaving you.”

“You have to.”

And he knew–

“You can go–”

–it was a lost cause. She was fighting to stay conscious, gripping onto his shoulders like it was the
only thing anchoring her to this plane of existence. Perhaps it was.

Her eyes glistened with tears, and she smiled sadly. “I can’t. I’m not powerful enough. I can cloak
myself, evade him until Regulus comes to find me, but you two can run.”

“We can’t leave Pandora either,” said Remus in one sharp breath, no breaks; rationalising. And
every time that Sirius had ever called him stubborn flashed before his eyes and he didn’t care for
any of it. He didn’t care for anything. He didn’t even care for his own survival. In the grand
scheme of things, one step closer was one step closer. And he had just got her back. “We can’t–
no. No. Mary–”

“Remus,” she almost shrieked, and he fell quiet. The last of her energy seemed to linger between
them.

She opened her mouth and noise didn’t come out for a long five seconds, but tears fell from her
eyes like holy water. It seemed to blot out the surviving flame.

“Please,” she choked, barely even a breath, falling onto her elbows; Remus tried to grip her, but
her eyes had already rolled back into her head and she fell. Unconscious.

And he was alone.

“No,” he gasped—all he could give—and checked her pulse; it was still there, albeit weak, and his
hands were shaking. They felt alien to his psyche. He scrunched his face up and rocked forward on
his heels, holding his head in his hands, breathing heavily at the ruins around him.

Sirius was screaming. He wanted to scream too. He wanted the Earth to fit into the palm of his
hands. He wanted Mary to wake up replenished and to be given five minutes just to memorise the
exact brown hue of his best friend’s eyes after not looking into them for so long. He wanted to
leave and he wanted to stay and he wanted to kill Tom Riddle.

He wanted to destroy the bastard. He was going to destroy it; he decided in that moment. He was
going destroy the diary and he and Sirius and Pandora and Mary were going to run like fucking hell
and they would figure it out. They would figure it out, because they always figured it out, they
always did.

He took in a shaky breath, reaching for his blade with frostbitten fingers that he couldn’t feel,
coughing on the smoke that still lathered the air, and felt an overbearing sense of dread wreak
havoc through his bones as he realised it wasn’t there.

No. No, no no no no no, not now. Not now.

He scrambled across the grass; checked all around Mary’s absent form. Dug his fingers into the
crumbling dirt and looked in the darkness, and he didn’t even really care about the possibility of
nicking his finger on the venom. He wondered if that made him brave or suicidal, and then realised
that it had always been both.

He had dropped his blade. When Sirius had plunged his hand into Lucius’ chest, he had dropped it,
protecting the diary, a few feet in front of where he was sitting now.

He only noticed it glinting in the pale moonlight when Lucius stepped on it. Lucius only noticed it
when he stepped on it, too.

And there was a moment where everything stopped; all three of them froze. All three of them
paused the tape—gave themselves a collective minute to link up their brains, power lines forming
like the ropes from Mary’s palm and crackling like the electricity, and the table was wiped clean.
The cards fell on the floor.

And then as the acknowledgement surged white hot into the dinge of Remus’ skull Sirius lunged
for it, but Lucius had already kicked it up and into his hand.

And they were fighting, blade to blade, venom to venom. Hand to hand combat. A fair fight.

An endgame.
Remus clutched the diary to his chest and watched helplessly, the weight of Tom Riddle appearing
at his back an impending force that he did not even think about (Brave? Suicidal? Martyr?
Coward?) He watched as Sirius went for him, and he blocked it; he watched as Lucius near-missed
stabbing Sirius in the shoulder. He held his breath as Sirius snarled and went for him, and Lucius
stepped backwards, and back again, and back again, until Sirius’ force was too much. Until he was
a drowned man. The twigs snapped underneath his foot—the moonlight cascaded over their skin as
they moved in and out of the shade, weaving through the shadow of the hollow leaves overhead, as
if their discrepancies would not be just as hounding in the dark as it would in the light. As if dark
and light were not a blur at this point; a blur, like the bodies of the two vampires as they darted
around each other with the voluminosity of an arrow and the poise of a snake.

With a sharp intake, Remus realised what Sirius was doing.

He was strategizing, dancing around the thin-lipped rogue with the air of a ballet performer,
because Lucius’ weakness was his footwork.

You brilliant, brilliant man.

He watched as it all played out, and Lucius fell in slow motion. The younger vampire stumbled
over, flat onto his backside, sitting up and attempting to scramble backwards in a poor attempt of
escape like the fucking coward he was and Sirius—always faster—reached his arms up to go for a
swing.

He watched. He watched, helpless.

He watched as, for not even a split of a second, Sirius left his abdomen clear. He watched as Lucius
propelled himself upwards, recovering as fast as he had fallen.

He watched as Lucius Malfoy lurched forwards, and plunged the blade deep into Sirius’ stomach.

He could do nothing.

And time stopped. It just… stopped. Whatever God-given-science-given-big-bang-given concept

of time and space and life and death and good and bad simply stopped, ceased to exist,
disintegrated into the sand that was forcing its way through the cracks between Remus’ fingers no
matter how hard he squeezed his hollow knuckles shut to try and save everything. Because it all
stopped. Remus’ hollow heart came up into his hollow throat, and every single cell in his body
froze up, eyes only on that protrusion, that wreckage, car crash, bombed colosseum.

There was a moment in which none of them—none of all three of them—moved, and Sirius took an
autonomous breath in. He looked down, dumbly, at the wound. The hand, his hand, was still mid-
air, just held there. A farce. He could be a statue, or he could be an ice sculpture; pulverulent
granite, or delicate limestone, except thrown into a dimension where every single cell and every
single particle that made up someones being was pulled apart into a million pieces, and upon
returning it was all put back together without the sustenance to sustain it. As if he was fragile. He
was not fucking fragile, and yet his arm—his arm was about to crumble like the debris of a badly-
built castle. A refuge too broken to fight the sawtoothed rolling stones of the avalanche fated to
choke the nation. Like the glint of the knife was going to choke the life out of Remus, one by one,
windpipe body and his halted heart.

He looked down. And then he looked up. He was blood and bone and ash, and somehow that was
sustenance enough.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he whispered, and in one, perfect swoop, Sirius brought his hand
down.

The harbringer of justice prevailed one last time, and Lucius Malfoy’s smug head fell right off his
shoulders and onto the floor.

Remus didn’t have time to react. He didn’t have time to do anything but sit, taste the smoke and
bile in his mouth, embrace the rot like a friend or a co-worker or a body lying beside him that he
wished could be his. All he had were his senses, and so when Sirius turned to him, blade still
embedded in his stomach, and yelled his name, Remus moved. He could not lose his mind. It was,
unquestionably, all that he had that was still his.

Sirius, without question, threw the blade in his hand across the clearing.

Time and space distorted like the reflection of a funhouse mirror as the blade hurtled, leaving a
trail of venom and blood and pain in its wake. Remus, as the shadows turned to grey, caught the
hilt in his hand skilfully, and, without even pausing to think about it, brought it up and back down
and sliced right through the distortion like an executioner; straight into the diary’s spine.

Another shockwave hit Remus, except this time it was deadly—it was the death of a soul.
Something rang or something screamed and out of lady grey came hands of darkness, gripping him
by the shoulders and pushing him, throwing him, with so much force the wind was knocked right
out of his unsustainable lungs.

The last thing he registered before he hit the tree was Sirius collapsing to the ground.

***

Remus landed in the grass with a thud, his back spasming as a result of the impact.

He gasped, dry-heaved, fingers gripping into dirt; dirt under his fingernails, on his face, in his
mouth, in his chest. He could not see but he could hear, and, for some reason, all he could hear the
roaring of the flames at Malfoy Manor, now—whatever fire had been lit now raged and travelled
all of these miles, so close he was quite sure he could see it behind his eyelids—but the woods
were deep enough that it could almost be background music, it could almost not be there at all.

All he could think about was this clearing. The only coherent thought that his brain could string
together was Sirius. Sirius. Sirius. Sirius. One, two, his third thought. In case the sun does not rise
on us tomorrow. In case the stars go out and the air runs cold for lack of crackling fire. Incase you
slip out of my palm, Sirius fucking Black, I grasp the dirt and I’ll have you back, in case of that. In
case—in case—

And, as his senses regained grip on themselves, he strained to open his bruised eyelids, trying his
hardest to push himself up. His elbows ached. His wrist ached. Every single part of his body ached
pure lightning, and his sad little eyes opened just in time to see the diary.

It was where he had left it—the dagger still protruding—and there was pooling black ooze, or
blood, pouring from the wound. And as his eardrums bellowed and hacked up whatever was
whining into them he registered the bellowing, agonised screeching some semblance of choked,
garbled noises. Haunting and inhuman. And from what he could see—he pushed himself up on
shaky arms to get a better look—light was spilling out of the wound, bright, white sunlight, pure
and streaking at all angles like a sporadic flashlight, or a mirror breaking and reflecting a million
lifetimes at the sun.

It was not the fire, but light. Against his broken body, he welcomed it. He welcomed it as
salvation.

And then, almost as quick as it had come, the screaming got louder, and the light burned up the
dagger, unravelled it at its very core and dissipated into nothing. Remus watched through strained
eyes as the entire thing, blade and hilt, crumbled into pure ash, disintegrated like the image he had
of Sirius’ unravelling arm, crumbs and debris and—it was gone. It was quiet. Any and all stimuli
for Remus’ senses dissipated like water against a spark. Or breath in the winter. Darkness choking
him, nausea pooling into his cheeks. He could not breathe. He could not breathe and he did not
care, he could not bring himself to care about anything at that present moment in time, stumbling
blind in the clearing looking for– for—

Sirius.

The scenario was tranquil. The stars had not gone out; the moon had not rolled over and gone back
to sleep as the curtains closed. The trees stood tall and straight, parting enough in the clearing that
the moon shone over it completely, bathing every blade of grass in the grey mist. Moonshadows
glorified over the bodies that lay there. And while Lucius Malfoy lay decapitated underneath the
shade of an oak tree, Sirius was on his back, out, under the light, the red of the blood on his hands
muted in the hue as if it was not bad at all.

Remus almost fell over him, landing on shaky knees and gripping his shoulder with shaky palms.

“Hey,” whispered Remus, gripping onto his shoulder, “Sirius. Hey, you’re okay. You’re fine.”

Sirius shook his head, face scrunched up in pain. There was blood bubbling at the corner of his
mouth. His beautiful, cherry mouth was pale as it shuddered. He opened his eyes and looked at
Remus like he had never looked at him before. It was insubordinate and pliant at the same time.

“Remus,” he wheezed—barely even a sound, spat through blood-soaked teeth—and he shook his
head vigorously. He ran on autopilot. He would not allow Sirius to be the martyr. It was not how
he was going out.

“No,” said Remus, through his teeth looking away from him and down at his blood-soaked shirt.
He was going to throw up. “No. Come—let me, here—”

His hands moved before he willed them to and he pulled the blade out, ignoring the cry from
Sirius, and pulled his shirt up from the bottom. It unstuck as he pulled it, some of the blood drying
already. The result was horrific.

There was a long stab wound where Lucius had stabbed him just left to his navel except it wasn’t
healing, and it wasn’t red, it was black. It was all black. Remus had seen this before. He knew
exactly what this was, but he was Remus Lupin, and who was—he was nothing if he did not have
one hand on the Earth’s axis. The waves, they crashed, they crashed for him, the moon his servant,
he was so fucking naive. Had he tried to pacify fire? There were simmers and they were stinging
him. And, looking at the scene, he felt increasingly nauseous at how sadistic this had made him,
earlier. Saliva pooled in his mouth, he gagged, he was going to fucking throw up, he did not have
the time, he didn’t have the time.

Black and navy-blue streaks protruded from it against his pale—paler—skin, snaking their way
sporadically in every direction of Sirius’ stomach, following his veins like a blood displacement.
Remus trailed one with a trembling finger, found he was crying when water dropped beside his
navel. Swiped the tear with his thumb and found it burning, Sirius’ skin on fire, something horrible
choking him from the inside out, a Greek and egregious king ripping apart his cobras. Remus
shuddered but he pressed his hand over the wound, he kept his guiding palms cupped around the
fucking world.

He kept his stubbornity because if he didn’t have that—if he didn’t have his mind—then
what did he have? Tragic fucking lovers? He would not have it. They were so much more than a
drive-by. They were a fucking hecatomb.

“Put pressure on it,” he said, hastily, pulling Sirius’ limp hand up to try and place it on the wound,
“Sirius, hey, come on–”

“Remus.”

“Just–” he choked on his words, “–do this for me now, honey, then when Mary wakes up she can
make a portkey and get you to Poppy, she’ll know what to do–”

“Remus,” Sirius hissed, pulling his wrist out of Remus’ grip and letting his hand flop on top of his.
His hands were like ice, so, so different to the way his stomach felt like it was on fire. His eyes
were somewhere in the middle ground. Bathing in lava. He laced their fingers together, and Remus
shook his head. “I don’t have time.”

“No.”

“Sweetheart–”

“No,” Remus insisted, tears pouring down his cheeks. He clung to Sirius’ hand like this fading
man was his lifeline. Like he was a child. He needed him, ultimately, like he was a child, and it
would be the death of him if trying to survive this didn’t grip its talons around his neck and take
him first. He would not be left. His throat was closing up.

Remus, registering the importance of Sirius’ lovely hand, here, now, wrapped both of his trembling
palms around it in a fist and brought it to his own trembling mouth. “You’re not. You can’t.” His
voice broke.

Sirius’ face crumpled, and that was it.

“I don’t have time, baby,” he repeated, tears trickling down the sides of his face. Blood smeared his
bottom lip crimson, and Remus—he could not think, he could not breathe, he was just sobbing, the
droplets smearing the dirt on his knuckles.

“You can’t die,” he sobbed nonsensically. He shuffled closer, pressing Sirius’ fingers to his lips,
moving his cupped hand to trace the curvature of his face, as light as possible. It infuriated him. He
wanted to grab him and shake him and make him do the same, hurt him like he was hurting. Have
him strong and leave him be if that was what the universe fucking wanted.

He tried to speak. Everything that he said was garbled, because it wasn’t– it wasn’t– oh, God,
he couldn’t–

“You’re not– allowed to die,” he choked against the visceral pulsing of his own chest as his lungs
heaved for the sweet salvation it would not receive. In and out. Head shaking of its own accord.
Back and forth. These trivial delights.

Sirius laughed. Whatever sad, severed semblance of a laugh he could pull off.

“And who says?”

“Me,” said Remus, with all of the fire left in him. As if he could somehow seep it through their
attached, clammy palms. As if he could siphon it from Malfoy Manor like Pandora had siphoned
the magic and use it to keep Sirius here alongside him forever.

He loved, he loved like a child, and of years of memories he ended up back there—to when he was
twenty and Sirius was the enemy. Twenty-one, Cornwall, twenty-two, Edinburgh, up and back to
when he was twenty five and he was supposed to be the one–

“I was supposed to be the one–”

—to kill him, it was supposed to be me, Remus wasn’t sure why he had latched onto that. Why, in
the face of death, he saw it as a loss that it wasn’t him doing the killing.

Except it was because he never would have. It was because if he and Sirius had stayed the way
they were—the way they had been for eight years, hot encounters and seethed arguments and
murder attempts—he would not be here, now. And how Remus wished to go back to when he
hated Sirius Black with all of his heart and soul, because hating him was so much simpler than
whatever the fuck they were now.

Sirius groaned, leaning his head back and scrunching his eyes in pain. His left hand tensed, splayed
out as far as it could, hovering over the wound like it wanted to do something about it but didn’t
know how. Remus’ mouth was sweet and his hands were sour. Clinging onto respite like a
drowned man, living, he would not receive it.

So he let out another sob and let himself memorise. Let himself grip the edge of Sirius’ jawline, the
side of his face. It was an acquiesce, and Remus was stubborn and he was stupid but he had known
loss, and he had known regret. So he let himself memorise it all, by touch, by sound; the curve of
his lips, the bone of his cheek. The blades of his eyebrow, pulled back and smoothed over. The
rough, brutal skin on his rough, brutal person. Sirius Black was not fucking fragile.

“Oh, God,” Remus whispered, rubbing his thumb over one ridge on his face over and over and
over, and the words came tumbling out before they made sense, “oh, God, Sirius, I’m in love with
you. I am so, so horribly in love with you, and I can’t do it without you, so you can’t– you’re not–
you can’t leave me now–”

“I’m sorry,” he wheezed, shaking his head so minutely Remus barely even noticed it. “I’m sorry.”

And he ran his fingers through Sirius’ hair. His loss of composure pulled itself together like a
needle and a thread and hysteria fell flat on her toes at the way Sirius looked up at him. He owed
him this. He owed his mind this, to hold onto it until he was—until it was done.

He smiled, tears dripping down to the end of his nose. “What are you sorry for, sweetheart?”

“Everything,” he whimpered back. His bottom lip was trembling, and he looked like a corpse
already. “Us. This. Everything. Everything.”

Remus thinned his lips, tasting the salt, and leaned forward. He felt as hollow as the trees
surrounding him, and with shaking hands he created a foundation behind his back and sat him up.
Remus closed his impartial eyes and rested his forehead against Sirius’, and in all of the empty it
felt like it was where he belonged.

“I’m not sorry,” he whispered against the chill of the night. And he found it was true. “I’m not
sorry for anything. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

Sirius let out a strangled sort of sob and reached his hand up to cup Remus’ face.
“I...mmph,” he moaned, choking slightly and swallowing viscerally. “I wish we’d had more time."

His voice broke on the last word, and Remus leaned forward to press a firm, trembling kiss his
cheek.

“More time…” Sirius continued. “Less complication…”

“I know,” Remus whispered, nodding. The tears pooled at the end of his nose. His chest felt like an
abyss. He felt so much that he did not feel anything at all, but he knew asphyxiation would come.
“I know, baby.”

Sirius groaned again, a nonverbal thing; his lips were pressed so tightly together they were white,
and Remus nuzzled his nose against his cheek. Felt him every way he possibly could. It would
never be enough.

“Fuck, this hurts,” Sirius managed to spit, humorously, “they weren’t fucking kidding.”

Remus let out a bitter laugh that was more of a sob, his throat backed up with the beat of his pulse
that he wished with everything he had would cease, and let his head fall gently back onto Sirius’
forehead. He rubbed his hands, the ball of his palms over his chest, and it was warm for all of the
wrong reasons, but it was still warm. It was his warmth.

“Hey,” came the creaky voice, and Remus raised his head again. His voice was urgent. It was
clinging onto that urgency. “You–you have to win. You have to win, and you have to live.”

“Unlikely,” he murmured, resigned with his own fate. Brave or suicidal had always been two in
one for him. “Tom Riddle is coming for us right now. I’ll be right behind you.”

Sirius scrunched up his face, and shook his head jerkily. His chest heaved a little as if he was using
all of his energy in this one gesture.

“No,” he moaned, blood on his bottom lip. “No. You have to live.”

“There’s no way out–”

“Then you find a way.” Sirius widened his eyes; growled the words slightly through his teeth; and
for a moment they were clear, and everything was fine. “It’s what y–” he choked on something,
coughed a little bit, “–you do be—mmh—best. You survive. You live.”

He inhaled so sharply it wheezed, and Remus nodded, tightening his grip on his hands, closing his
eyes and feeling them burn. “I’ll live,” he breathed, nodding frantically, “Okay. Okay, honey. I’ll
live.”

Sirius pursed his lips, and then didn’t move for such a long moment Remus’ heart dropped until he
chuckled something harrowing and murmured; “You won. Do you realise that?”

Remus was going to be sick. “Don’t you dare joke about that right now.”

“Oh, I always knew you would,” he continued, as if he had not heard Remus at all. He raised his
hand; let his thumb graze the curve of Remus’ jaw, the rest of his fingers trail lazy behind. He
wiped his tears with trembling fingers, and smiled. “I felt like every day I spent with you was going
to kill me.”

Remus sniffed, leaning into his touch, lips trembling. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I love you too, you fool,” Sirius choked, laughing humorlessly. “You—mmmh, you
made me want to continue my existence out of something other than obligation. I hated you,” he
coughed, here, and Remus kissed his knuckles with trembling lips, “but I loved you. I loved you so
fucking much. I would—God—I would do it all again, to–to have you here, looking at me like that.
Gorgeous. So… so–”

He whined again in pain and let his hand drop, digging it into the grass below. His whole body
shuddered and arched slightly, his lips and deep of his jaw quivered, and the weight of the world
hit Remus like a freight train, leaves wilting from the trees as summer died and he sobbed,
properly, now. He didn’t hold anything back. He didn’t have anything left to hold except his
forever aching heart, Sirius’ aching heart, oozing through his ribs, eight years late in its attempt to
beat outside of his body and suffocate him. He wailed and reached both hands down and cupped
Sirius’ cold, deathly pale face. Gripped it tight, trying to hold him together. Doing what he did best.
Trying to live enough for the both of them. He couldn’t understand why his beating heart could not
be enough.

“Do you remember,” whispered Sirius painfully, throat tensing and untensing. Remus caressed his
cheeks with his thumbs in time to the wind’s familiar, vitriolic tune of sorrow. “The motel. The
bed… that night…”

“Yeah,” Remus choked, sniffing and nodding up and down. The music was pouring down his
throat like sulfuric acid, yet he did not stop rubbing circles around Sirius’ hollow cheeks. “You
told me that we could help each other in other ways.”

“And you asked m-me,” he continued, “what I dreamed about.”

And Remus laughed, though it came out more strangled and obsolete, at the memory. “Mhm. I
didn’t stay awake long enough to hear what you said.”

Sirius smiled, and oh was it grace. It was incandescence while the fog nipped at their skin; it was
music against the chime of mortality reverberating through the willow trees.

“You,” he whispered, lips pouting around the vowel, as if to hold them in this moment forever. “I
dream of you, my love. It’s always been you.”

Remus’ throat felt like grinding sandpaper; he was almost certainly suddenly aware that something
was breaking, inside of him; something incredibly, stomach-churningly important; and in his
festering desperation to fix what had been cracked, what had been trapped like an arrow in a stone
wall in the catacomb of his chest, he leaned forward and pressed his lips, softly, to Sirius’. He
leaned forward and sought damnation, salvation, both, both.

And it was not hunger. Nothing elemental. It was innocence. It was damp, and tragic; calamitous
and wretched and some semblance of a goodbye. It was barely-there and yet the rush of water fell
obsolete.

“And I’ll dream of you when I go,” Sirius whispered against his lips. “I’ll carry you until the end.”

And he wanted to scream, all of a sudden, at the monstrosity of such a sensational supernova being
pinched out like a measly flame. He wanted to scream until the air release choked his grating
windpipes; retired itself from the dirty little hollow cell of his two lungs. He wanted to scream until
he expelled enough energy to coat the entire Earth in some sort of protective sheen—and this was
elemental. Fire and bombs and fucking tsunamis. Until the wind aligned her misery with his own.
Until she didn’t have to knock at the broken ribs that barred his entirety; until she could just dig her
hands inside of him and take him with her, who he was, who he had been. A dove in headlights,
taking him home.

He sobbed. Sirius kissed him back, and he wanted to scream until his pathetic little fucking heart
gave out.

And it was sick, really. That he was so beautiful in death. That death danced around him like a
manifestation of angelic grace. Curtseyed in front of him like he was royalty; welcomed him into
his open arms like he was a friend—not that he wasn’t—Death was all he had ever known. Perhaps
it was fated, that handshake, the beauty in it. Even as the moon went behind the clouds and the
foreseeable future crumbled in their hands, Remus knew Sirius Black was beautiful in death, and he
would be beautiful beyond that. Wherever that may be.

Sirius brought an arm up with, probably, tremendous effort, and collapsed his fingers around
Remus’ wrist. Squeezed, slightly. The pressure grounded him. Remus wanted to eat him alive. Or
press him so close to his body that he passed straight through, became his, a puppet show. His.
What a strange concept, to be nothing of your own. He’d give it over in a heartbeat, but
unfortunately his heart had stopped working.

But that was that. Their sentiment of ownership—the jealousy that flared through them both at
another’s touch, the dynamic they shared, cupped in shaking palms like something sacred, or
something broken—was touch and go, but ultimately, Sirius was, and always had been, his. Each
other’s enemy. Each other’s thing. The language that only the two of them spoke, wrapped like
vines around their vocal cords, petals winding up Remus’ throat and killing him slowly—he had
always expected he would be the first to go. Actually, he had almost craved it. He had never felt
mobility and vivacity quite like he did with Sirius—they had never been watered quite like they
were with Sirius—and so he faded away, and the vines drooped and petals fell, dead, to the pit of
his stomach. Weighing him down so heavily he felt like he might not move again, that this was
where he would be left, a photographic sentiment in the vague shape of a mourning man. Achilles,
the spectacle of loss, in power comes glory and in glory comes disembarked misery, it was always
going to lead to this. But it was the simple fact that he had lived, breathed, and died as his; the last
thought before his body hit the ground, now, and long after the sunset. Remus held on to that. Until
the sun exploded, he would hold on.

He wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that. He leaned forward far enough to press his lips to
Sirius’ forehead, held him with bleeding fingernails around a cold, dying arm, and feel his sharp,
sick breaths brush the pit of his throat. He ran his fingers through Sirius’ hair. He did everything he
wanted to do.

Footsteps cracked the twigs behind him, but he did not look. His fate was written in burning stars.
He was resigned to his photograph.

“Oh my God,” came a familiar yet foggy voice, walking around and falling onto her knees opposite
Remus, frantic, “oh shit.”

“Lily?” he croaked, and Sirius’ eyes opened.

It took them a while to focus. He was barely present, heavy-lidded and choking on nothing,
hiccupping every now and then in his attempt to cling on; Remus had been going with him, dusting
away, and so it took him a moment to squeeze his eyes shut and open them and register that Lily
was here, it was actually Lily, her hair and her hands and her knees and her kit.

She bustled as he groaned, and Remus could do nothing but simply stare. She was out of place. He
contemplated whether he had died and she had died too, on the battlefield, but she shouldn’t even
be here.
“This is wrong,” he murmured, but it fell upon dull ears.

“Fuck,” Lily breathed, entirely ignorant to his confused eye, pulling out a pouch from nowhere and
squeezing Sirius’ arms, sternum—finding the source of his injury and pushing his shirt back. He
shuddered, and she pulled the lid off a sheen blur bottle; some liquid poured out of it and it hissed
actual steam against his wound. It made him whine in pain, and this was what gave the statutory
Remus his voice back.

“Lily, what–” he gasped, tasting smoke now more than ever. He held Sirius closer to him, hushing
him, shaking hands in his hair; “What are you doing here? Wh–what is that?”

“Poppy,” she said, swallowing viscerally, pulling out a strange mix of magic and human healing
treatments—potions and dittanies and bandages and tweezers—she placed some gauze against
Sirius’ stomach. “Portkeyed us in to help the injured. I insisted.”

“But how are you here–” said Remus, acutely aware of the six miles from the battlefield to here,
but he was interrupted by–

“Regulus,” Sirius wheezed with what seemed like everything he had in his lungs, eyes refocusing
—barely—in on the conversation. His voice trailed off at the end so much so that the word might
have been incomprehensible to a stranger, but the first syllable was enough for them. “Regulus.”

“He’s okay, love,” said Lily in her nurse's voice. It was shaking. Everything was shaking, the
world and the trees and everything except for Lily’s hands—stoic and strong—applying a mauve
paste to his black stomach. “He helped a lot. Got us out, easy peasy.”

It took a minute for Sirius to process the words, or perhaps to hear them, but once he did he
physically deflated. His eyes fluttered shut again and his breaths were coming out as wheezes. Lily
tried another paste and Remus, bewildered and broken down, had had enough. He was hysterical.
He could not watch aimless pain.

“Lily, it’s not going to work!” he cried, sobbing a little, taking it out of her hands and lobbing it to
the side. She turned to look at him and her hair blew over her shoulder like a whip; he was still
choking slightly on his tears. Hers were manifesting. He held Sirius closer to his chest.
“It’s Basilisk venom, for fuck’s sake.”

“Well, something has to work!” she replied, frantically, and her hands began to shake then, too. Or
perhaps they had the whole time, but Remus had not noticed it. Maybe they always had. Had they?

And in a moment of enlightenment echoed by the uncovering of the moon from behind the black
rainclouds he realised how much she really cared. How, when he went lax on him, she brushed
Sirius’ hair away from his sweaty face with trembling hands; how she traced her finger over his
forehead and around to his cheek as she worked with some tool that Remus’ eyes were too blurry to
see properly with her other hand.

Sirius squirmed again, and Remus felt rage build up at the back of his throat, but when he opened
his mouth to expel it found that he simply couldn’t. All he did was tremble, and hold out a hand to
her, a comfort.

“Lily, it's not–” and he reached out to place a hand on her bare forearm—with the intent of
comforting her, he supposed—but jerked it away immediately. She did not notice. She simply
continued to pour a liquid with a thin, dewy consistency over Sirius’ wound that simply merged
with the rest and trickled down his side.
He looked at his fingers, dried blood breaking off in clumps, and back to her.

“Lily, you’re– you’re burning.”

“I’m fine,” she said, breathing heavily. She placed two fingers to Sirius’ stomach again, trying to
clean off the mess of gunk and paste with antiseptic, and he whined with discomfort again. Her
hand jerked—spasmed—and she dropped the wipe with a groan, but Remus did not notice, he was
still about ten seconds ago, she’s burning.

“No, you’re not,” said Remus. He shook his head, he could feel the hysteria building up again,
“you’re– that’s not–”

“Dora,” Sirius panted as an unconscious interjection. Slurred as if his tongue was too big for his
mouth, and he jerked his hand to the side, a spasm just like Lily’s and it took Remus a moment to
realise that he was telling her to leave him. Telling Lily to help someone who had a fighting
chance.

But: “I helped her already,” said Lily, still working. Her voice had reached a higher pitch. She
oozed red with her mechanic hands. “Mary’s okay, too. I didn’t see you two because it was so dark,
and then the—the, the moon came out—God,” she cried, in what felt like the snap. A snap of many
snaps. She traced the veins with shaky fingers, shaking her head as viciously as Remus had. “Fuck.
Fuck, fuck!”

And where Remus’ hands and limbs were numb the back of his neck, the hairs there, they danced
with the flaunted danger running through the air. Riddle, where was Riddle, why was Lily here,
where is he and why is she here and why are the trees holding their breaths—

“Lily,” he said, cautiously, watching her breathe in and out, “Lily, are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” she said, pulling Sirius’ shirt up higher to see just how far the veins went (all the way,
apparently.) “And he will be too.” She pulled it up a little bit higher, gauze in one hand and the
other guiding—it brushed Remus’ hand accidentally. She was scorching. Her skin felt like hot
coals, as warm asthe fire in the living room at Boardwalk, and Remus recoiled on instinct, sending
Sirius into a spasm and almost losing him.

“Lily, you’re– you’re not okay,” Remus said, frantically. He could feel the oncomings of panic
start to seep into his bones. “This–that isn’t normal. Lily. Lily!”

“What, Remus!?” she screeched, utterly venomous, something that blew the trees back–birds went
scattering. Something blew past Remus. He let his grip on Sirius go lax, and she took him by the
back of the head—she didn’t seem to be conscious of what she was doing, but she was gentle—
pressing two, firm hands down onto his stomach, pushing. Like she was performing CPR. Or
perhaps, trying to siphon something. Remus tried to get closer and found that he couldn’t, though
his hand was still gripped, holding onto Sirius’.

He whined, barely conscious and Remus gripped onto his hand harder—but his eyes were on Lily.

She looked up at him, her face thunderous yet terrified. Her brows were knitted together in
agitation and her bottom lip was trembling, slightly, but it was her eyes that made Remus flinch, for
they were no longer green, but a deep, deep red. She was red like the blood on Sirius’ bottom lip.
Fire and ash and her hair, blowing back in the wind, the moon cowering behind the clouds, but her
eyes were still red, made luminescent by light that did not exist.

She was hyperventilating, and Remus did not know what to do.
“Lily,” he whispered, reaching a hand out but not making contact; “Lily. Just– just calm down.
You need to calm down.”

“No, you–” she moaned, shaking her head repetitively and screwing her face up. Her hair fell down
over her shoulder, shrouding her face as she pressed down further on Sirius, but he seemed too
delirious by then to notice. “I– no, no, no.”

She leaned her head forwards, hair falling over Sirius’ wound, shielding it completely. Remus
couldn’t breathe because she took it all away. Gone was her composure and not only her hands but
her whole body was shaking, so much so that Remus could feel the heat emanating off of her, not
kinetic energy, but something.

And before he could do anything–before he could even begin to try and help—she, simply,
snapped. Like a firecracker. Like a– like– fuck, like fire.

It started at the tip of her hair. The sparks. It swirled, somehow, around each individual strand; up,
jumping across to another, hopping along and along until the entire row was coated, and then they
crawled up. Up, up, up. Her hair disintegrating, almost—catching fire and burning like paper burns
against a candle, like wool burns down to the crevice, until it reached her roots and her hair was
fire.

Her hair was fire. Literal, hot fire. Remus’ face began to burn so hot that he had to let go of Sirius’
hand and scramble away.

She threw her head back, crying out, and it was somewhat of a shockwave—a pulsation of heat that
washed over Remus’ face, made his cheeks tingle or tremble as the flames erupted from her hands,
and it was almost exactly like Mary, except it was not reduced to her palms. Exactly like Mary,
except Mary was Mary, and Lily was this. She was tangible, but she was not. Her hand was there,
it was her hand, but it was also fire, and somehow they coexisted.

Flames licked up her arms and engulfed them, travelling down the line of her jaw and her eyes
opened. She was pure arson, in a person, the calamity in red, silk genteel flapping around her
poised arms. Fire caught, it jumped, it gathered at her shoulder blades and protruded outwards,
clinging onto nothing, like the protective sheen that Remus wanted to coat over the Earth. It was
fluid, controlled and steady, mayhemious yet reserved for the rapture in something that formed
almost a coat of armor—or—no, oh no. No, they were wings.

She gasped. Her eyes were screwed shut again—not that Remus would be able to see much through
the flames regardless—and the fire danced. It pirouetted over her skin, like she was a dance floor in
regal ballet shoes, ash exploding from her like flowers at a wedding. It was beautiful and it was
hysteria. Pure throaty ash filled the air and choked Remus from the inside out, and he covered his
mouth and dropped as far as he could to the floor, gagging and indisposed to her demigoodness,
Medusa’s hair burnt to a crisp but women had always been powerful in the ways you’d least expect
it.

Lily’ hands were pressed to Sirius’ wound, and they were on fire, but Sirius, somehow, wasn’t—he
was in pain, though. His back was arched and he was writhing; screaming over the roar of the
flames. Remus was pretty sure he was screaming too but his ears were ringing, and his best friend
was a phoenix, and his head was pounding so hard he was quite certain blood was pouring out of
his ears, gold-tinged by the flames.

She was art with a smile on her face. Letting go in the finest sort, apathetic, her hair flying out
behind her if it was even hair at all. Her face was almost like a sparkler, popping and fizzing, as
were her hands, and her chest was heaving. Remus was quite certain she was crying. Tears of
sulphur down her wasteland cheeks.

Sirius had stopped screaming.

His head fell dumbly to the side, his mouth slightly parted, inanimate, and Remus– he couldn’t. He
could not. The throat that he had ran dry squeezed as he tried to swallow and he coughed,
manically, focusing his gaze instead on the dying flames of Lily’s hands. He focused in on how the
transformation back was somehow just as fascinating as the transformation too—her skin
rematerialising itself. Stitching itself together like a rag doll. How her hair weaved around itself, as
if gripping the particles of the fire and pulling them together—deposition, gas to solid, via her
twined red hair.

Almost as soon as they had come, the flames were gone. Dissipated. Into the nothingness that they
had materialised from; there were no scorch marks. Outside of the smoke that lingered up to meet
its brother from the Manor, hammering through the atmosphere, there was nothing to suggest that
anything out of the ordinary had happened. Yet Remus’ brain was unravelling.

And they were back in the dark, with only the moon for company; he had been right, she was
crying. Fat, porcelain tears that curled at her jawline, cheeks blotchy, devastated and dreadful. They
squeezed out of the corners of her closed eyes. She took a deep breath, and another.

She opened her eyes and they were green again.

Her hands slid from Sirius’ body and fell limply beside her thighs. She let out a deflating breath,
like a balloon; took one look at Remus, and then her eyes rolled back and she fell to the side,
landing with a dull thud on the grass.

All Remus could taste were fumes, gasoline, having no conscious recollection of scrambling
forward and reaching out to Lily instinctively until he was there—he went to check her pulse, but
the surface of her skin was still white-hot. He could not tell whether he could feel the entire world
or whether he could feel nothing, an outsider watching the little mangled coup of devastation
shoved into the vague form of a scorched man move outside of his control as he tried on her wrist,
to no such luck, and, with a shaky breath of frustration, turned to—

Oh, oh. Sirius. Sirius.

There was no pulse, with him. No beat of his hollow heart, no warmth, no way to know whether he
was dead or alive. And logically the venom should have shut down his system, ripped him of
everything he had, he should be dead, he was dead, but in the moonlight the muted navy was
barely-there; Remus noticed, with a visceral jolt that the veins, the black, coursing their way up his
stomach and churning poison through his system—they were, for the most part, gone. The wound
was still black and a few sporadic lines protruded from it, almost like lightning bolts, but even then
they were faded at best—his skin was smooth. Remus took a breath. Two breaths.

No pulse. No heartbeat. No consciousness. Remus did the only thing he knew.

He felt around for a rock, and grabbed one from the pit of the tree a foot or two to the left. He
grasped Sirius’ limp, lifeless hand in his own, holding it up to the moonlight, and dug the point of
the rock as hard as he could into the other’s palm, then jerked it away. He broke skin.

Blood bubbled at the site of the wound—and then it dissipated. The wound repaired itself.

Remus let out some sort of whine and possibly the most relieved breath he had ever let out, ever; he
fell onto Sirius’ chest, banging his fist lightly against his sternum and gripping the fabric there,
 waiting for the stars in his vision to disappear. He pulled himself up, heaving, not even able to
check on Lily for he had to crawl a few feet to the left to throw up everything he had, throat still
bruised and beaten and scratchy enough that even when he was run dry he dry-heaved, waiting for
the hellfire to continue to rain down on him—but it didn’t. The ash had settled on the ground and
stayed there. The smoke danced through the air and away from the pathetic little figure,
surrounded by four people who looked like corpses and one person who was, grazing the palm of
his hand against a tree, heaving turned into choked back sobs.

It took him a minute or three to uncloud his vision enough to sit up without collapsing. It was only
then—when he found a tiny thread in his windpipe in which he could breathe through—that he
realised with a start that Tom Riddle had not appeared. He did not have the strength to ponder why.

Tom Riddle had not shown up. The Horcrux was destroyed. Lily was a Phoenix, and Sirius wasn’t
going to die.

He turned and crawled back over to Lily, rolling her over via her clothing, and placed a tentative
hand to her forearm—she was still hot, but cooling down. She had cooled enough for Remus to
edge her chin up and press two fingers to her neck, hissing at the heat but unmoving. There was a
long, terrifying moment where he didn’t get anything and thought she was dead.

Her pulse beat weakly, but it beat. It thrummed slightly against Remus’ burning fingers, once,
twice, three times, and that was enough.

Remus let out one last breath, all of the fight and all of the hope and all of the loss burnt out of him
entirely. His face knew only tears, flames, and dirt, and those were the three things that he, too,
felt, as he closed his eyes, fell to the side and let unconsciousness take him.

END OF BOOK ONE

Chapter End Notes

haha so yeah
 fifteen
Chapter Notes

CW’s:
this picks up as soon as remus wakes up and so he is obviously dealing with the hell of
the last chapter. the stuff followed isn’t SUPER terrible but it’s there and very obvious.
remus is in a very bad head space this chapter

– ptsd related dialogue/moments

– minor flashbacks
– something that resembles a panic attack
– self hate/blame alongside grief, and visceral anger
– a little bit of depersonalisation (which will be a reocurring thing with remus)

i've put a lot of thought and research into how to treat this and to try and do it
sensitively but if anything is off to you pls just drop a comment i'm more than happy
to rethink it

there's also a little bit of a conversation in a language that is not english which i have
put translations in the end notes for :)

See the end of the chapter for more notes

BOOK TWO: The Tyrant

Remus was dreaming.

There were a fair few, flicking past his subconscious like the flipping of pages. In one, he was
sitting on a cloud with Fabian Prewett, of all fucking people. The cloud was floating too close to
the sun, and it had begun to burn at one end—had the texture of wool, singing and curling into
burnt brown ash. Fabian was submerged into the flames, though he went peacefully, while Remus
tried to scramble backwards, but he backed into a tree. It was a birch tree. The bark was pale white,
but red blood trickled down, oozing from the centre and dripping onto the back of his neck. His
blade was protruding out the middle of the trunk, lathered in the crimson.

He stood up and pulled it out. Looked at it for a moment, and then turned around, and stabbed it
straight into Sirius’ stomach.

He disintegrated. Just like that. And Remus was alone.

And then he was falling, and he was falling, and Dorcas was there for some reason. And his
forehead was warm—but not like Lily’s—his jaw was tense—but not like Sirius’—and with an
unstable gasp he landed in his bed and flung open his eyes. He wasn’t alone.

It took him a solid ten seconds of delirium blinking and a cool, grounding hand on his forehead to
register that Dorcas was really there, and that she was not a dream.

“Hey,” she said, softly; the room was dark, but daylight shone from the cracks around the curtains.
She had been sitting back on an armchair beside his bed, but as he woke she shuffled closer,
placing her hand on his arm.

“Dorcas?” he mumbled. His throat felt like sandpaper.

“Morning,” she said, smiling, “you’ve been out a while.”

He brought his hands up to rub at his face, and the memories came rushing back down one,
crowded pipeline, fighting each other to make it to his tongue.

“How long?”

She checked her watch. “About eighteen hours, now.”

He blinked. His lips were dry, and his neck was stiff, and he seemed to be feeling so much that he
was unable to feel anything at all.

“Jesus Christ,” he moaned, covering his face with his hands again. “Fucking hell.”

“Yeah.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to calm his racing mind, and—

“Mary,” he croaked, her name crawling its way into his desert mouth, drawn out by the presence of
the two people who loved her the most, “Mary was there."

Dorcas nodded. “I know.”

“She– is she–”

“She’s okay,” she said, quickly, “she’s here. She was just here with me, actually, an hour ago—I
think she’s downstairs.”

Remus took a deep breath and felt it scrape the walls of his throat. He coughed a little.

Sirius, Lily, Sirius, Lily, Sirius, Lily–

“Pandora,” he said, pushing to sit up, “oh my god, Malfoy– Dorcas, he bit her–”

Dorcas reached out a hand to help him up, and another to placate him. “She’s fine too. She had
passed out from blood loss by the time we found her but was already healed up–she’s taking a
couple days to rest.” And then, as if she could sense his unrest, she said, “They’re both alive,
Remus.”

He stopped breathing.

“Both?”

“Yes. Unconscious, still, but alive.”

He took in a sharp breath unintentionally. The name curled over his lips like it was meant to be
there. “Sirius is alive?”

And in an exposition of unexpected emotion, Dorcas laughed, and her eyes shone. She nodded.

“We have no idea how,” she said, still grinning, puffing air out of her cheeks, “but yes, he’s still
kicking. That man refuses to die.”

Remus breathed out, shakily. He took a moment to configurate himself, enclosed to this room,
enclosed to these wards, the five strewn out like knocked down chess pieces okay, danger
eviscerated. Yet the part of him that controlled the way his fingers were shaking underneath the
duvet did not seem to want to calm down.

“Remus,” Dorcas started, like she was leading into a question, and he knew, they were in the dark
and he had the light in that hidden hand;

“Lily,” he said, desperate all of a sudden as the memories fell into place like they’d been dropped
fifty feet into his brain, the timeline like a broken railroad track from one thing to another, “Lily’s a
phoenix. Dorcas, she's a phoenix.”

Every single muscle in Dorcas’ face relaxed. “She’s a what?”

“A phoenix,” he pleaded, gripping onto her arm, feeling half hysterical with the weight of the
flames. “She– she turned into fire, Dorcas, she had wings, she–”

“Into fire?” she asked. “How did the forest not burn?”

“She had control,” said Remus, quietly. “Or– I don’t know. It wasn’t flammable. She did
something to Sirius. She was fire, Dorcas, she was fire–”

“I believe you,” she said, leaning forwards and nodding, “I believe you, Remus.”

He gaped for a moment. The room fell quiet, dim against curtained light.

“Have you ever hunted a phoenix before?” he asked, quietly.

“No,” she said. “You?”

“I never even–” Remus swallowed, rubbing at his throbbing head, “I mean, I don’t know anyone
who has.”

“I thought they were extinct.”

“Moody thought Basilisks were extinct,” he murmured, zoning out. He felt her nod from the side.

“And then we killed one,” she finished. He blinked and looked over at her again. She was still a
tad teary. There was a new neat gash on her cheek that had obviously been treated but not healed,
and she sighed.

“God, I’m happy you’re awake,” she said, shuffling closer and pulling him up into a tight hug. He
seemed to exhale tension with the closing of his eyes as he wrapped his arms around her and buried
his face into her neck, revelled in her comfort. “I thought–I don’t know. All of you lying there like
that. It was terrifying. And Mary–”

“She’s awake?” asked Remus, pulling back and putting his hands on the side of her neck. Dorcas
nodded. “Where is she? I want to see her.”

He made to get out of bed, and almost fell over.

“Woah,” said Dorcas, catching him as he toppled slightly into her chest. “Slow, Remus. Give your
legs a chance to wake up.”
He straightened up, with the help of her hands on his waist. He frowned.

“I had a dream about Fabian,” he murmured. His eyes focused back on hers. “Fabian Prewett.”

The corners of her lips quirked up.

“That… may not have been a dream, actually,” she said. “He arrived yesterday. Just after we left.”

Remus blanked.

“He’s here?”

“Yes. So’s Caradoc.”

“They– what?”

Dorcas laughed, and linked her arm with his, trying her hardest to keep him steady. They made for
the door.

“We didn’t know they were coming. Obviously they couldn’t get past the wards—Benjy and Gid
went to go meet them. Explained everything. They stayed out there for hours, James had to go and
invite them in so they could get past the warding. Obviously, now they can’t leave.”

“Fuck,” Remus breathed. “We’re doing this then? We’re getting the hunters in?”

She shrugged, kicking the door to his room closed behind them and turning him left. “We’re doing
what we can. Fabian has been rooming with a few younger hunters—Peter’s year, actually—who
he thinks he can get on board.”

“Peter,” said Remus, suddenly. “How is Peter?”

She looked at him, and drew her lips into a grim line. “As far as I know he’s back in Germany, and
he’s being treated privately. I tried chasing Moody up but he referred me to HI2 and when I tried
chasing Dumbledore up I got completely blanked, so…”

She sighed. Remus hummed, nodding, and then gestured for her to continue.

“Ah, yes, what was I saying…Gideon wants to contact Molly and her coterie,” she turned them to
the right, down the corridor that led to the staircase, “but Percy won’t let him. Oh–” she gasped,
apparently missing a point in her narrative. “God, Percy and Fab’s reunion was so sweet. It was,
like, 3am. They both cried. Gid cried. I cried. Perce was always closest to Fabian, remember? He
was devastated when he died.”

“I remember,” Remus murmured, licking his lips and recalling running into Fabian not even six
months afterwards. It had been how he had learned of Percy’s death. He spent the weekend trying
to comfort him in Kent.

“We’re getting some new vampires, too,” said Dorcas lively, and Remus felt like she was just
talking to get him to keep moving, but he let it happen. “The ones from the hotel? Sybil, I think her
name is—she called early this morning. There’s a whole group of them—fifteen, maybe?—who
want to come and help fight.”

“Who spoke to them?” asked Remus, remembering that Sirius was the one in charge of most
comms in and out of this place. Dorcas turned to him and beamed.

“Marlene,” she said, and they reached the staircase—she hopped down the first with a spring in her
step, pulling Remus with her. “She’s taken over all comms and vampire hostess duties for the time
being. Well, I mean, it’s only been today, but she was the one who spoke with them and made
arrangements, and she’s been the hospitable one towards Fab and Caradoc. She’s brilliant. Of
course, Mary has been helping—you know Mary, she’s the most organised person you’ll ever meet
—they’re amazing together. James and Marlene have kind of unofficially taken over Sirius’ role, I
guess. James is sorting out the stuff going on here, Marls sorting out the incoming, you know.”

“Taken it over?” Remus asked; they had made it to the bottom of the stairs, and he paused, turning
to face her fully front-on. “How… long do they think he’s going to be out of commission?”

Her face faltered, and she took a deep breath in. “Well… they don’t know, Remus. No one has ever
survived Basilisk venom before. And he’s one of the oldest Purebloods—we don’t know what kind
of tolerance he's built up, how it reacted to his body in different way to how a normal vampire
would react. And, now you’re saying that– that he survived because of something basically
undocumented, so we will have to…figure out what that is, how that is; take healing rates into
account…” She swerved him to the right and walked him towards the kitchen door. “I mean, a
phoenix… fuck me, a phoenix.”

She let go of him to push the door open, still muttering under her breath to herself. The room was
full to the brim. Remus recognised most of the people there, they were all extraneous order
members or witches from the covens that Pandora had pulled together—Pandora herself was sat at
one edge of the table, looking a little worse-for-wear but otherwise okay—and every single head
and pair of eyes turned to them. Only a few of them mattered.

It was silent. And then,

“Out,” said James, standing up so aggressively his chair grated across the floor. Marlene followed
him. “Everybody out.”

Only a few people moved. Some of them looked at each other warily.

“Out!” he boomed, frowning at them all and gesturing to the door. Dorcas and Remus stepped to
the side. “All of you, go on, piss off, scram.”

They all filed out in groups—Frank and Alice Longbottom gave Remus warm smiles, exiting hand
in hand, and Jul, shadowed by Poppy and three younger apprentice medi-witches, gave him a grin
and a nod. The baby quartet were the last to go—Isabela gave him a grin and, before he could
protest, a tight and incredibly brief hug, saying “I’m glad you’re okay, caçador,” before leaving at
Oliver’s side. Percy gave him a smile and a businesslike nod, but it was Astoria who lingered. She
was the very last of everyone to go, and she stood about two feet away from him—closer than she
had ever been, besides when they fought–and hesitated.

“Toria?” Marlene said gently, putting a hand on her shoulder. The young girl swallowed, looking at
her and then back to Remus warily. She gave him a sweet smile.

“I’m glad you’re okay, too,” she said lightly, before turning and stalking out of the room as fast as
she could. Remus’ heart was warm, but he didn’t have any chance to process it before:

“Oh, my God,” Marlene said, throwing her arms around him, “Fuck, I was so worried about you.”

Remus chuckled and let go of Dorcas’ arm to wrap his hands around Marlene. She was small—
smaller than him, but not tiny—and, though Remus knew damn well that she was a force to be
reckoned with, she always felt rather dainty and fragile in his arms, and he held her close as if she
was the one who had been injured, not him. He held her close and understood the protectiveness
that surrounded her by James and Sirius despite the fact she could hold her own perhaps just as
well as them. How she made you love her without even realising you did. Until you would kill for
her; until you would die for her. And until you knew she’d do the exact same for you. He held her
closer, inhaled her scent.

“I’m okay, Marls,” he said, and she pulled back, blonde hair and bright smiles; her eyes flickered to
Dorcas and back, but before she could say anything she was shoved aside by James, who pulled
Remus into a rougher, but still lovely, hug.

“Nice to see you up and about,” he said. “You looked like a corpse up there. And not even an
appealing one.”

Remus pulled back and laughed, genuinely. “Nice, James. Nice.”

James grinned, before turning to Marlene and saying something like “Go get them,” but Remus
didn’t catch who they were, or where Marlene was getting them from, because Mary Macdonald
was walking up to him now; tired and weary but loving as ever.

They met in the middle.

“Oh, my God,” Remus breathed into her hair—she pulled her arms around his waist, leaning her
head on his sternum, and he rested his chin on the top of it. She always smelled like vanilla and
coconut oil. Like the marshy earth and the smoke coating it all in one. “Hi.”

“Hi,” she said; or, whimpered. Remus pushed her back and looked down to see that she was crying.

“What the hell are you crying for?” he said, feeling a bit choked up himself. She shrugged, tears
dripping down her cheeks, and leaned into him again.

“I just missed you,” she said. “And I was so worried–” she sniffed, a little gripping him tighter.
“Worried that– that I–”

“No,” said Remus, firmly, firmer than anything he knew, “no, it wasn’t you. Listen to me. Mary?”
He cupped her face with his two hands. “You were fucking brilliant. Absolutely amazing, okay, as
always.”

She laughed, nodding. Remus knew why she was worried. The forbidden curses open a possibility
to suck out the energy out of everyone present when it doesn’t find enough in the witch who casted
it. But it wasn’t the truth. He was going to tell them what happened.

“Oh, come here,” Mary said, laughing; Remus didn’t realise who she was talking to until he looked
down and saw her looking just past his shoulder. He turned just as Dorcas (who had probably been
about to explode had she not been invited up at that very moment) came bounding up to them,
smiling wider than he had seen in a long time, and both of them detached one hand from the other
to welcome their third puzzle piece, who fell into Remus’ chest with a loud, happy sigh.

“God, I love you both so much,” she murmured softly, nuzzling her face into Mary’s hair. “So
much.”

“I missed you idiots,” Mary grinned. The both of them pulled back slightly, so they were in a sort
of huddle. Remus couldn’t stop smiling.

“I missed you too.”

“You were supposed to be in Texas,” said Mary, accusatorily joking and pushing both of their
shoulders. Remus laughed.

“You were supposed to be in Bulgaria.”

“I think that may be my fault,” drawled someone new from behind Remus’ back. All three of them
perked up and turned to the door. His lungs seized up.

Gosh, Regulus looked even more like Sirius than in the pictures. They weren’t twins, obviously,
but the resemblance was there—they had the same eye colour, the same nose, though Sirius’ was
longer. Regulus’ lips were more compact, his jaw slightly wider, but the bone structure was the
same. The way their eyebrows sat, the way their eyes set in the corners. The cut of his cheekbone
was lower than Sirius’, but it was still there. The curve of his lip a bit misshapen but following the
same dotted line on the blueprint. He blinked, and his eyes were ice, and they were moving. It was
strange to see him in animation, a person to the enigma.

They both pulled away from him; Dorcas looked slightly wary, but Mary smiled. She turned to
him.

“Remus,” she said, as Regulus took a step forward. Andromeda came in the room behind him,
followed by Ted. “This is Regulus Black. Regulus, Remus Lupin.”

And if the jawline and the lips and the nose weren’t a giveaway, Regulus’ difference to Sirius
came in the way he carried himself. It was smaller, somehow, even though he was not that far from
Sirius’ height and yet he was small. Reserved. He took up less space in the room and seemed to
intentionally make the rest of it seem more appealing than him. It made sense, he supposed, that
Sirius would’ve trained himself to be bigger than he is in environments that stepped on him and
threw him down like an ant underneath someone’s shoe. And Regulus would placate the waters by
blending in with the crashing waves. Letting the big ones topple over his head and holding his
breath for it to lay on.

He remembered what Bellatrix had said about him–she had called him a loyal servant, her worthy
baby cousin. Sirius’ worth had become too big for him. Five hundred years of being a sleuth—
having the bravery to be a sleuth in the first place—changed the way one presented himself, he
supposed. Worth came in quiet, in submission, and when Regulus stepped forward slightly,
holding out his hand, it was an offer, not an order, and yet Remus got the impression it could damn
well be an order lest his mood change like the storms that ravage the coast, blown in from a land
unlike this one.

Remus took his hand, trying to form his own opinion instead of comparing him with Sirius and
finding himself unable to do so with the vampire lying unconscious upstairs while his brother stood
here and was everything that he was not, and nothing that he was.

“It’s nice to meet you,” said Regulus, quietly, as they shook hands. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“And I you,” said Remus, finding himself unable to will a smile. Regulus' quirked up lips were
dents in pure alabaster. It was almost unsettling.

“I think we all have a lot of explaining to do,” Mary said. She could not have been more right.

***

The head of the table was left vacant.

It was Remus on the left side. Dorcas to his left, Marlene next to her. James to his right. He was
opposite Regulus.
Regulus Black, Andromeda Tonks to his right, Mary Macdonald to his left. Pandora next to Mary.
Ted next to Andromeda. The oldest vampire in the room was sitting unnecessarily close to her
cousin, as if she was one step away from ripping off the heads of anyone who dared look at him
badly.

No one mentioned, but they felt the absence at the head of the table. And no one mentioned, but
they felt the absence of the redhead who ran hot in the seat next to James.

Remus, in a blight of understanding, realised this was their core. The core of their entire operation.
These nine people (Ted, perhaps, by simple association) and their two extra hearts beating in the
rooms they were laid in upstairs. Priorities did not exist, this was their jigsaw, all pieces carved
naturally. It was mess and it was unstable, it was missing the one piece that held up the entire thing
and the one piece that, in a bursting revelation, made everything make sense, but they were side by
side. Remus was quite positive they would be side by side for the rest of this war and long after it
now. These nine people and the two palms they cradled.

In his absence, the room was quiet. Marlene, God bless her, took up the mantle, and she did it
bravely.

“Okay,” she said. All eyes flickered to her. She cleared her throat and held her head up. “I think we
should start here and work backwards, for now. Start with the more urgently pressing issues.”

The itinerary sort of naturally fell onto two pairs, Mary and Regulus, Lily and Sirius. It could’ve
been either, he supposed—Lord knows they were both pressing—but she turned to him, and she
knew the vampire that should be dead and the human who should not have been able to save him
were probably slightly more pressing, a tad extreme.

He looked at Dorcas. She gave him a minute shrug. There was no easy way to go about it, so he
simply said it.

“Lily is a phoenix,” he said, voice monotone; he realised in the moment how gruff he sounded. As
if he had let her fire enwrap his vocal cords to the point of damage. Perhaps it was the sleep, or the
smoke, or the pain—all three seemed viable. He cleared his throat.

Every single face went slack, but only two of them had visceral reactions; he supposed it would
only make sense that it would be the witches.

“A phoenix…” Pandora whispered, shaking her head slightly. “They’re supposed to be extinct.”

“So are basilisks,” Dorcas pointed out. Mary’s jaw had dropped slightly.

“A real phoenix?” she said. Remus was sure he could see a glint of excitement in her eyes. “As
in…fire–”

“Yes,” Remus said. It came out snappier than he wished. She closed her mouth.

“Remus,” James said gently from beside him. As if he knew to tread carefully upon his water.
“Can you—if it's not too much trouble—go through exactly what happened for us, please? At least,
everything that happened past Mary’s consciousness. So we know the whole story.”

He nodded, though he felt, all of a sudden, incredibly small with everyone's eyes on him. And in a
bitter wash of clarity he realised that he wished Sirius were here, too. His eyes on him were
familiar, at least. They were welcomed.

He rubbed his temples.

“Lucius and Sirius were fighting,” he said, slowly. He decided to keep his eyes closed. It seemed to
be easier to visualise. “And the diary was—it was too late, I realised that I had to destroy it. And I
didn’t– I didn’t have my blade.” He took a deep breath. “I lost it across the clearing, and Lucius
stepped on it. He took it. They were fighting, venom to venom—Sirius was moving so fast, it took
me a while to see that he was trying to trip him up. It took me until he fell to realise. And Lucius
was on the floor.”

Remus’ eyes shot open. He did not want to visualise anymore.

“Sirius took his head off with the blade,” said Dorcas. “Right?”

“With his hand,” Remus corrected, and with a collective sharp intake of breath he knew they were
visualising it for him. “And that was after. Malfoy stabbed him, and then—then he took his head
off. It was all so fast.”

He rubbed his hands over his face roughly and brought them, lifelessly, to the table. “He threw the
blade in his other hand at me and I stabbed it into the diary with no hesitation. It threw me across
the field and by the time I had crawled over to him he was already half dead.”

He wasn’t entirely sure why, but choking on air he looked up to meet Regulus’ eyes. He could not
work them out. They were estranged, no feeling; no emotion that he could see in them. The world
fell into black and white as Remus scanned his eyes over him, evaluating, and noticed the outlet
almost immediately. The working of his jaw. The way his lips were slightly upturned—not in a
smile, but more of a grimace, and even then it was more or less unnoticeable—due to the way he
was grinding his jaw, pursing the muscles of his face to work it. A trait that Sirius held, too. As if
the grinding of his jaw was the only thing keeping him from opening his mouth and breathing fire.
Letting it burn them all alive, provided Tom Riddle not burn them first—or, rather, Lily Evans, her
hair of silk around their charred throats.

Remus swallowed. He continued.

“He was… um,” he coughed slightly, breaking eye contact with Regulus, “he was dying. And Tom
Riddle was coming. I thought that I was going to die. I accepted it, but he never came.”

“He was incapacitated,” said Marlene, by way of explanation, “when you destroyed the Horcrux.
He was in too close proximity. It put him out of action long enough for Regulus to get to him,
and… that gave us time.”

Remus looked at him. He was staring resolutely at the table. So he turned to her, rewinded, feeling
the cogs of his brain stir and the cobwebs be disturbed; “So he can feel them? When they’re
destroyed?”

A flicker of uncertainty fell upon Marlene’s face, and she looked wistfully to Pandora, who took a
deep breath and stepped up to the podium.

“Traditionally, he shouldn’t,” she said, slowly. “Traditionally Horcruxes have been made by either
witches or humans with a power source obtained via a witch. There is no record in the book you
found, nor two of the records I have since found, that talks about the effects of a vampire making
one.” She took another breath and frowned, slightly, and it was uncertainty on her features, too;
“My hypothesis is that he feels them because he is the power source, and it’s trying to replenish
itself. Horcruxes are a witches invention, and thus, witches who create them draw from their own
power and use it to split their soul, but it splits their magic, too. It dries it out. And a witches magic
isn’t exactly made to be split apart but it’s not like it’s made not to be; right? But Riddle is a
vampire. His one party trick is his advanced healing, his constant replenishing dark magic source,
quite literally coursing through his veins—it makes sense that he would be more in tune with the
bits of his soul that are not inside of him, because his body is trying to repair it, every day. A witch
with a wound must make an effort to close it, but vampire bodies do it unconsciously; the closer he
is, the more his body is trying to close the wound. And thus the harder of an effect it has on him
when the wound is... broken open.”

“So,” said Dorcas, contemplatively, “if the Horcruxes act as… wounds to him, do you think if we
were to collect them all and destroy them all at once, it would be enough irreparable damage to
send him back into dormancy?”

Pandora’s mouth fell open slightly; she bit her bottom lip. “I– maybe?” she said, a high pitched
squeak. “I don’t think there is enough weight in the theory to make it worth it—and he would have
to be in close proximity, I highly doubt he would be able to feel the destruction of his Horcruxes
from hundreds of miles away—but,” she exhaled sharply. “If all of the variables added up then I’d
say it could be enough to at least weaken him so severely that it would be easy for someone strong
enough to destroy him. For good.”

Dorcas nodded, slowly. Remus could see she was strategizing. He frowned.

“But, I mean, it would be too reckless to hold them undestroyed while we search for the rest based
on a plan that may or may not work, right?” he said. He could feel his hunter brain booting up. “I
mean, we don’t even know how many there are–”

“Six,” interjected Regulus. The room went icy quiet, and he and Remus locked eyes once more.

He cleared his throat.

“There are six,” he said, placidly, and this seemed to be something that everyone knew except
Remus. “Seven pieces of his soul exist in different locations, including the sliver inside of his
immortal body.”

It was intensely silent, and Remus recognised that it was his silence to break.

“Okay,” he said, quietly, “right. Is this the part where you tell me where the fuck you’ve been for
eight years, then?”

Regulus blinked and opened his mouth—if Remus didn’t know better, he’d say that he picked up
on his (granted, misplaced) aggression via the glint of his eye, the grind of his jaw—but he was not
allowed to speak.

“No,” said Pandora, with force, “you haven’t finished telling us about what happened with Lily.”

“She’s a phoenix,” Remus said, agitated. “She burnt up. She–” and, ah, he saw where there was a
narrative gap. Saw where there were symptoms and manifestations and qualities of the phoenix
that Pandora and Mary were looking for, and saw that he needed to give it to the more
knowledgeable—the witch who knows everything and the witch who bends fire—to move forth.
He ran two hands roughly over his face and cleared his throat.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, gruffly, and Marlene clicked her tongue in sympathy.

“It’s okay, Remus,” she said, softly, peering around Dorcas to look at him. “You’ve been through a
very terrible experience. Take your time.”

And Remus did not tear up, but he felt the oncoming coming up his throat like bile, or regret. He
gave her some semblance of a wry smile that he could cook up, and did not miss the way Dorcas
shifted to press her shoulder to his. He coughed to clear out his windpipe and tapped his fingers a
few times agitatedly on the table.

“She said Poppy portkeyed her,” he started, and he looked at Pandora, who nodded her assent.
“She healed you first–”

“I was unconscious, too,” Pandora said, with a twinge of thankfulness. “The spell had broken. She
probably saved my life.”

He took a moment to process this. It was a moment of gratitude.

“She will be very happy to hear that,” Remus said, softly, and Pandora smiled at him. He was more
grateful for her than she might ever know.

He broke the spell and cleared his throat to finish his tale before it swallowed him whole.

“She was hyperventilating,” he said, finally, “and burning up—like, running red hot, and Lily has
always run hot, ever since I’ve known her, but I couldn’t even touch her. And I thought she was
just panicking because Sirius was dying and she cares for him, but I don’t– I mean, it just overtook
her.” He looked up, and both of the witches looked increasingly invested in the story. Mary’s
mouth was slightly open. “Fire replaced her hair. It was, like.. licking up her arms—and it was
strange, because her arms were there, but they weren’t. They were just encompassed in fire, and
she had both of her burning hands on the wound. But it didn’t burn him. It was so hot that I had to
get away from her, but it didn’t set him alight at all.” He cracked one of his fingers absently and
looked down to finish. “It dissipated, and the wound seemed to be better. And they were both alive.
That’s– that’s the last thing I remember—knowing that they were both alive. That's all I cared
about.”

He fell quiet, and the table held a tense sort of tangible energy. Nobody spoke. Pandora let out a
low breath that swirled through the air like a disease, and it was heavy, and warm; floating beside
the weight of their discovery, hot and dangerous as the fire that climbed its way up Lily’s arm and
took her over, the woman, the myth and the lines that blurred them in between. Remus dangling
dangerously on them. He fell quiet.

Mary spoke first.

“Her sister died,” she said, slowly, “didn’t she?”

Remus frowned, but nodded.

“And she was dragged into a war she seemed to have no part in,” she continued. “She was—and,
I’m sorry if I get this wrong, they only briefed me—attacked in the hospital, right? You and her
killed Bellatrix Lestrange’s husband.”

And, oh. Oh fuck.

“Her eyes were red,” murmured Remus, zoning out, barely louder than a whisper. He knew all of
the vampires could hear him, but Mary frowned.

“What?”

“In the hospital,” he said, focusing on a splintered piece of wood on the table in front of him.
“When we were fighting the vampire. We met gazes over her shoulder, and her eyes were blood
red.”
Mary’s face was impassive, at first, and then she nodded.

“And she’s been running hotter than usual, lately, hasn’t she?” she said, and Remus nodded back.

“I thought she just spent too much time in front of the fire,” Marlene said, as a throwaway
comment. Dorcas snickered.

“Sometimes this happens to us,” said Mary, explanatorily, “fire witches—obviously it’s a different
situation, but I guess the triggering of a phoenix must align…it’s when you have so much inside of
you and so much happens to you that you just can’t control everything anymore. It can build up for
months. In Bulgaria I participated in a lab study on witches with specialities and childhood trauma.
My control match was a fire witch from Jamaica who… y’know.” (Didn’t see her parents die and
burn their murderers to the ground was the fill-in here.) “Anyway, the dependent variable was
their resulting level of control, and there was a difference. You can only balance so much against
the essence of yourself; too much and it consumes you too.”

“Her dad died in a house fire,” Remus said, “when she was eight. They thought it was a scientific
explosion. Chemical fire—they couldn’t put it out for three days. Could that–”

Pandora gasped, and every eye turned to her.

“In Rochester?” she said, and Remus knew immediately.

“It was cursed fire,” he said. “Wasn’t it?”

“I helped put it out,” she said. “The Black family sent us to procure a sample. God knows what
they needed it for–” she cut off, here, shaking her head in disbelief, “fuck, I knew it wasn’t a
witch's attack. I knew it. It felt different. It’s rare, but—but, historically, phoenixes can manifest
Fiendfyre without having to use a spell. The whole point is that it's cursed with magic, but they can
create it.”

“So her dad was a Phoenix?” Dorcas asked.

“And he could bend Fiendfyre?!” Mary said, incredibly indignant.

“Evidently not very well,” James remarked, under his breath. He felt Dorcas stifle a laugh.

“And the stress of the war triggered the gene,” Remus said. He didn’t know much about phoenixes
—all the information the bureau had had on them had been outdated, mainly procured of myth or
legend, considering they were supposed to be extinct. But there was one thing he knew for certain.
“And phoenixes are natural born healers.”

Remus had said that it had not been her war to be dragged into, but perhaps it had been more her
war than anyone else's. That it was her true coming, her endgame—she was a nurse, for fucks sake,
she was—she is—a healer if you’ve ever seen one, coming deeper than just her wish to stem the
blood-flow on the earth, her inability to tolerate anyone being hurt if she could do anything about
it. And if she couldn’t, she’d learn. They sniff out the most deserving and they stay loyal to their
loved ones. Even being completely out of her depth she had tried, hadn’t she, she had not given up
because she had known she could do something if she put her very mind to it, she had wormed her
way in, a force to be reckoned with, even though she was no guild against a foraging army because
her presence meant something. It meant dedication and it meant love. Because she could not bear
to know that pain and suffering was occurring and that she was not able to do anything about it.
That was simply not the Lily Evans way.

And yet, did it come from her phoenixism? Or did it come from herself? Her heart, bleeding lungs,
burning bones, strong-willed strong-headed, fiery hands fiery hair, she was unstoppable.
Unstoppably able to ruin them all and not, using it for good, she would not be seized unless she had
given the green light. The phoenix was no vessel for her soul, her soul was a vessel for the
phoenix. Because she was good, day in and day out, it was that goodness that was attuned to the
pain and suffering of the world around her, and it was that goodness that gave her morale to fight
back.

The universe had simply given her an extra leg up to do that. No one seemed to be more worthy.

“So, Lily’s a Phoenix,” said Marlene, slowly. “What do we do with that? I mean… she’ll wake up
soon, right? She’s not in some kind of induced coma?”

“More than likely she’s just exhausted,” said Pandora. “I mean, I don’t know for certain, but I
would presume healing an unhealable wound would take a lot out of you, no?”

“What are we going to do, then?” Dorcas asked, and Mary leaned forward with purpose.

“I’ll train her,” she said. She almost seemed excited about it. “Teach her how to control it. Nobody
knows fire like I do. I can help her, and… I think she can help me.”

“I’ll help, too,” said James. It was the first thing, besides his snarky comment, that he had piped up
to say. And it was said with confidence. Mary raised an eyebrow.

“Are you sure?” she asked, cautiously, “she could hurt you. We both could.”

“I run a training club for vicious underage vampire kids,” James replied, blithely. “I know hurt.”

“What if she sets you on fire?”

He simply shrugged.

“Then I’ll burn.”

His words hung in the air as absolute truth. A collective disaster held together by continuity. Lily
was good. James was good for her.

The conversation came to a sort of natural standstill. It was a silence that might have been awkward
had any of them the energy to entertain such childlike feelings such as awkwardness at this point.
Remus was still tapping his finger on the table—he had no idea why, he didn’t seem to even be in
control of it anymore—and when he tore his eyes away from the only movement he could see and
looked up he met Regulus’ eyes immediately. Oh, Sirius’ achilles heel. A spectacle of lost and
found. It was some kind of tragic scripture that they kept seeming to miss each other.

Marlene cleared her throat; she was trying her very hardest.

“Okay, well,” she said with a shaky air of authority, “now we have the full account of what
happened at Malfoy Manor, which puts a lot of things into perspective, I’m sure.”

Remus looked at her, and she was looking at Mary. Regulus’ face was stoic. He was not looking at
any of them.

Remus took a moment to bathe in this, in full transparency that only he had the initiative to give.
His account had given them the missing explanation—why the fuck Sirius was alive, why Lily was
a burning shell of a human. He trusted Pandora with everything he had. He had come to love her,
really, as a sister or something of the like. She was the smartest person he knew, and they would be
dead five times over without her, and so he knew that if anyone was going to figure out what the
fuck was churning and coursing through Sirius Black’s battered eight hundred year old body, it was
going to be her, her nimble fingers and her fighter brain.

But this acknowledgement was brief. It was behind a lock and key. He was not thinking about it,
because all he could think about was the man sitting directly opposite him who looked so much
like his brother and yet nothing at all—the man who had matured the same age as his brother and
yet where Sirius looked 25 he barely looked twenty, baby faced and potentially even more
terrifying because of it. The man sitting in front of him who had somehow met with his best friend
while Remus was falling in love with his brother and now they were here, and where had he been
and what were they doing and what the fuck, and what the fuck, on a mantra, the only billboard,
the only thing—

He closed his eyes. Took a long, deep breath in, and shoved his hands between his thighs to stop
them from shaking.

“I think it’s our turn now,” Mary said quietly, and Remus opened his eyes again; she was looking
at Regulus, and he was looking at her. “You have a lot more to say than I, I think.”

He nodded. He turned, and his drawling voice projected through the room like a caricature of
music notes from a slightly off-tuned violin. Broken regality and dirty politics. His voice was thick
as if blocked; as if he was swimming in a dark tank, unsure of which way was up and unable to ask
for fear of water flooding his being, and Remus could not give him directions because he was in
the exact same position.

And yet he spoke. Perhaps that was something to be proud of, water-logged lungs against porcelain
pipes, choking up, choking down.

“I think I should start by saying that I first met Tom Riddle in 1908,” he said, quietly. He was
avoiding everyone’s eye, but no one was avoiding his. “He had been a vampire for over fifty years,
by then, but I had been in Italy for the latter two decades of the nineteenth century visiting some
distant family on my parents orders, and he was indoctrinated into our circle in the time I was
absent.”

“Who were you visiting?” asked Andromeda, sharply. Regulus turned to her with such immediacy
it was as if he had forgotten she was there.

“Amycus and Alecto,” he said. Andromeda’s nose screwed up in something that looked like both
disgust and confusion. “Before Amycus was killed in ‘59, of course.”

“But Narcissa went to visit Amycus and Alecto sometime in the 1890s,” she said with what seemed
like genuine confusion. “Alecto conceived earlier that century and she was looking for advice. She
said you weren’t there.”

Regulus blinked, and licked his plump lips slowly. “I don’t think that’s… erm–”

There was a sort of choking noise that seemed to draw everyone's rampant eyes away from
Regulus, and to the head of the table. Marlene had her hand over her mouth. Remus thought she
was choking, and then realised she was… laughing.

“Marlene,” James warned, and she dropped her hand.

“I’m sorry, do go on, Regulus,” she said with a sharp nod that made her hair fall over her face, and
Mary looked at her and frowned.
“Wait,” she said, holding up a hand. “I’m lost.”

“Me too,” said Dorcas, looking between them all, and Regulus displayed the most emotion Remus
had seen him show all day in the form of an incredibly flustered grimace and a sort of folding in of
himself that Remus was sure would be accompanied with a deep red blush, had he anything to
blush with.

“In the last decade of the nineteenth century myself and Sirius went on an expedition around Asia,”
Marlene said in a very purposefully neutral explanatory voice, “James wanted to spend a bit of time
alone, so we left him in Altamura.”

James cleared his throat, and Regulus straightened up out of his cocoon.

“I really don’t see how this is relevant,” he said, eyeing James, who straightened up to match him
and nodded his agreement so vigorously the stupid glasses he wore for aesthetic almost fell off his
nose.

“Were you together?” Dorcas seemed to blurt. Regulus’ mouth fell open and then closed again. He
seemed like the kind of person who would comment on her audacity to ask such a forward
question, but in the room of eight friends he was, in fact, the outlier and so he simply clicked his
tongue and replied:

“James and I met at the end of my trip, yes,” he said, slowly. “It was the first time I met him—he
recognised me as Sirius’ brother, almost killed me–” he shook his head, as if trying to shake off the
absurdity that this conversation had flowed into. “Why is this relevant?”

(Remus wasn’t sure why it was relevant, but the uncomfortable look on both of their faces was the
most entertainment he had encountered in days.)

“It’s not,” James said, nonchalantly. “We just got to know each other.”

“Yeah,” scoffed Marlene, under her breath, “in the biblical sense.”

Dorcas choked on her tea.

Remus jumped, and slammed his hand into the pit between her shoulder blades as she coughed. He
looked around and everyone that was not James or Regulus seemed to be finding high amusement–
Pandora was giggling into her mug–and he found himself smiling, too.

“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” Dorcas wheezed, slightly, her voice hoarse. “Went down the wrong way.”

“You okay?” Marlene said, loose smile on her face, and Dorcas faltered. Looked up at her, and
grinned.

“Yeah,” she said, clearing her throat a few times, “all better.”

“Can I please continue what I was saying?” Regulus asked, although it was phrased as less of a
question and more of an irritated—or embarrassed—demand. Dorcas nodded and flourished her
hand a little.

“Of course, I’m sorry.”

Regulus nodded and took a deep breath.

“So,” he said, looking away, “I met Riddle in 1908, and it didn’t take long for me to deduce that he
was a fucking psychopath.”

“You can say that again,” Marlene muttered.

“He is one of, if not the most brutal and sadistically sociopathic person I have ever met,” he
continued. “And I am the son of Orion and Walburga Black. I know insanity. I probably am it, a
little bit.”

Remus pursed his lips and thought about Bellatrix’s proclamations of Regulus Black’s ruthless
nature in the hospital hallway. He went on.

“The coven only gained true momentum when he started recruiting and etcetera in the late forties
early fifties, but I started hearing… strange things long before that,” he said, contemplatively. “It
was the very early forties, I’d place it—‘42, maybe—when I started to hear whispers about dark
magic and such. Different whispers than usual. I don’t think rumours were rampant, I just think I
have a…sleuth-like tendency when it comes to collecting information that could be useful for my
own self-preservation. I have been doing it my whole life.” His eyes flickered up to James, then
Remus. “So has Sirius.

“Riddle started going on a lot more expeditions in the late forties,” he explained, “they got more
and more frequent as time went on. And by this point, he was my friend—in the loosest sense of
the word. We had a certain level of trust in each other, but I don’t think he ever trusted me fully.”
He paused. “Well, if he did, he would’ve told me about the Horcruxes, so no, he never did trust
me, fully. He underestimated how observant I was, if anything.

“His visual changed, slightly. We all look like corpses in one way or another, but he started to look
sort of… hollow. Any sort of emotion, any sort of—I don’t know, humanity that was still clinging
to his human physicality just disappeared. And it was strange, because he was still him—full head
of hair, if the strands were not slightly dulled; full set of teeth, if not crooked. Sunken eyes, but
they were there. It was like he was decomposing, and it made no sense, because he only seemed to
get stronger. That was what I noticed, in the forties and fifties. His expeditions; his deteriorating
physicality; his increase in power. It all happened rather quickly. I think a lot of people noticed a
change but noted that it was none of their business and continued; but I could not let it go.

“The battle happens, and Sirius…” Regulus’ lip pinched in the corner, slightly, “well, you all know
what happened. Riddle goes down, and his loyals scatter. Absolutely flee. I have never seen Lucius
Malfoy more terrified than I did the moment Sirius ripped Riddle apart. And—and, afterwards, he
asked me to go with him.” His eyes moved to look at James, and then Marlene. “You know this.”

“He never understood why you didn’t,” James said. “It tore him apart.”

“I couldn’t,” Regulus said. “He didn’t understand—I don’t think any of you understood the
damage he inflicted on Riddle that night in ‘59. He should have died. Instantly. You were all so
enraptured with grief to look at the true clarity of the situation, but I saw– I saw that he was more
than vampire, in that moment. He was still alive, in about five fucking pieces, and I knew there was
something worse going on. So I couldn’t. I spun some tale about cowardice—to be honest, a part of
it was true, I suppose—and I went back to my parents and the remains of our battered society.
Pretended like everything was okay. Acted clueless—celebrated when they announced that Riddle
would make a full recovery, because of course it was divine intervention. It was our creators
blessing us with a second chance. I played the part that I knew, and I did it well, because I could
tell no one about my next step.

“But I got stuck. I was trying to do as much research as I could, but after the devastation done to
the already lacking purebloods left in ‘59 my parents kept me on such a tight leash it felt like I was
being choked by it. My mother did not let me out of her sight for more than a few hours at a time. I
spent almost four decades in America—this godforsaken place with little to no access to any of the
resources I needed.

“And then we moved back to England,” he said, spring in his voice. “In 1999. Me, my parents, and
our dwindling coven went back on a mission to recruit, because the witches were quite sure that
Riddle would wake up soon. We stayed in our estate in Islington for a long time, and the library
was a breath of fresh air, but I was still very tightly bound and therefore had to be very sneaky. And
it only lasted a few years, because we moved to Cornwall after hunters caught our trail. Went
deeper underground, and I was stuck again. Then Narcissa fell pregnant. Draco was born there, in
Cornwall; our base like a beacon with the amount of Purebloods coming to see him, like he was the
second coming or something,” he scrunched his nose with obvious distaste. “And then we caught
wind of Astoria Greengrass being born, and although she was not of our side the two close births
alongside news of Riddle’s advancing brain activity and hyperawareness led my parents to fall into
a sort of mania, sick with anticipation, and they sent me—not even a month after the Greengrass
child was born—to go and find Sirius.”

He took a deep breath and paused at a natural stopping point. Licked his lips. Remus hadn’t
realised how enraptured he had become until he blinked and noted how far forward he had leaned.

Regulus met his eyes and continued on.

“It took me four months to find him. It was a cold January, and I tracked him down in Berlin.
And… I don’t know if you know how I convinced Sirius to rejoin us,” he said casually. “I mean, if
any of you know him even a little bit you would know it was the last thing he’d do.”

“Not for you,” said James, quietly. Regulus looked at him. “If anyone was going to give him a
reason to go back to them, it would be you. And your parents knew that.”

Regulus’ mouth quivered slightly as he bit the inside of his lip, and his face turned from pensive to
sort of sad. “Yes. It would be me, and they did know that, but I don’t know if just me asking would
be enough. I will never know, I suppose, because that is not what I did.”

“You gave him an ultimatum,” Remus blurted out; remembering the brief conversation they had
had, sandwiched between his realisation about the diary the night before they attacked Malfoy
Manor. Regulus blinked. “You begged him for ten years.”

“I did,” he said, still with a look of slight surprise against his usual musing face. “They asked me to
force him to come back, but they never said anything about making him stay, so I offered him ten
years. Ten years of staying with us and then I would go with him. Wherever he wanted. And I…”
he cleared his throat, slightly. Focused on an unspecified place on the table in front of him. “I fully
intended on keeping that promise, but we didn’t get to ten years.”

Remus felt Dorcas looking at him, and he wished that she wouldn’t. He felt Mary looking at him,
and he looked back. This one he could handle. This one he had been with, thick and thin, fire and
boxes and burning pureblood flesh. Regulus looked slowly at her, and then him, and it felt like
some kind of fucked up triangle in which it was only the two murderers and the one murdered.

Except, he hadn’t been. He had disappeared.

“I was too late to help them,” he said, quietly, “there was nothing I could’ve done. I was out at the
time, but I heard it all. By the time I got there they were all dead, and you–” he raised a hand to
gesture to Remus, who widened his eyes, “you were lying on the grass outside, Sirius all over you,
and I could hear a witch around the other side trying to find you and I could smell Sirius trying to
find me. He was about a mile or two out. I could hear him calling my name like he was right next
to me. But I also knew it was my only chance.”

“Only chance?” Dorcas mumbled; a question that she had probably not meant to let slip from her
mouth, but Regulus nodded.

“My parents were dead,” he said, voice thick with some sort of emotion Remus couldn’t displace,
“and…I mourned them. Of course I did. I hated them and yet I loved them, I still mourn them to
this day no matter how much I don’t want to. But back then I was in shock. My brain was muddled
and all I could think about was my obsession for the past fifty years, and how they were dead and
there was no one keeping me on a leash anymore. That I could do whatever I wanted.” He looked
down, and for a moment a flash of something that looked like shame flickered over his face. “If I
had been of a more sound mind then I probably would have found Sirius and we could’ve done it
together, but– but in that moment I couldn’t think of anything except, escape. As if it was my only
chance. As if my parents would rise from the dead, out of the fire and tie me down once more.
These were my irrational beliefs, and so I ran. I disappeared. I had to.”

He took a moment, then. A moment to gather his bearings, it seemed; a moment to acknowledge
the split between then and now—between ignorance and knowledge—between child and orphan.
Between the time he had had his brother, and the time he had lost him again.

His eyes were sad. His regret, not curdling much but it coming into play here, tangible and red on
his tongue and bartering down on his youthful stature that had experienced more than anyone in
this room—nobody in the room was a stranger to shock, to loss and to hard decisions. Save the
world or save yourself. That was how Sirius had seen it, how he had always seen it, Marlene and
James and Remus before he, all or nothing at all times; it was not just a Sirius thing. His brother
carried his sorrows like baggage and it was ever the more tragic that Sirius was not sitting in that
empty seat, letting the cracks heal like cement in a pothole ran over him eight years, sixty two
years, five hundred years ago. Heal the family trauma he had experienced up like a cavity in a
tooth; not into what it was before, loved and happy and healthy (although, had Sirius ever been any
of these things? Experienced any of these things?) but stable. What he was owed to cover the old,
to spare the crumbling erosion. It felt incredibly unfair that Remus was the bridge between Sirius’
betrayal and Regulus’ regret. He did not know what he had done to become the middle ground, but
he wished he hadn’t.

Regulus took a breath.

“The past eight years have been rather straightforward,” he said, easily, “I did all of the travelling I
could muster. The entire world and back round again. Every coven I could find, every old manor in
the spindly network of pureblood history—villas and castles and houses. Libraries. Grimoires. I
stole them all, and I pored through them as if I was running out of time—I was. I knew I was. He
was awake, and I knew that. I knew they would come for me and I knew they would find me out if
I left a trail, and so I spent the past eight years on red alert 24/7, always leaving everything as
spotless as I could, with nothing but the hope that my scent would not be potent enough to stick for
as long as it took for them to check where I had been. Or, I suppose, the hope that they would not
deem me important enough to send Narcissa, or Bella, or any of my family who were old and
familiar enough to sniff me out.”

He paused, and turned to Mary, who smiled at him. He did not smile back.

“He showed up in Bulgaria eleven months ago,” she said, continuing off where he had ended like a
stream flowing into a river, “by that point he had figured out that they were Horcruxes, but needed
more information. The coven I was infiltrating… they were an undercover dark arts association.
There were many, many factions but for the most part they focused on power, and finding
amplifiers to channel power for dark means. Regulus… they almost turned him away, until they
realised that he was a pureblood. They made a deal—an exchange. They would give him
information if he would let them experiment with channelling his power, and he accepted.”

“They knew more than I expected them to,” Regulus cut in. “I did not say Horcrux by name, and it
seems like they did not know the name, but they were familiar with the concept. The concept of
splitting one's soul. For a coven focused so solely on amplifying dark power—as opposed to
ripping it apart—they were very well versed in the practice, actually. Except none of their
Horcruxes had lasted long. It’s an incredibly finicky process; self-destruction is so much more
common than they make it seem in the books. Most souls don’t survive—they simply shatter. Or,
evaporate. Implode inside of the person, as the piece of their soul in the object eats itself alive. It
leaves them catatonic. It’s terrifying, and they knew it, so they were very knowledgeable on the
processes and how to notice the signs of self-destruction before it was too late. Namely, how to
destroy them. That's what I went there to find out, and it took me almost two months of being
poked at like a science experiment for them to give me what I wanted.”

“Fiendfyre or Basilisk venom,” Mary said, looking around the table, “right?”

An array of heads nodded.

“There were quite a few witches with my specialty, but most did not have experience with bending
Fiendfyre like I did, and so after going through one or two who were entirely uncooperative they
sent him to me. We spent a few weeks walking on eggshells around each other. I mean, I found
him fascinating and he found me equally fascinating—I had never met a pureblood vampire, as you
know, and regardless of my being a witch I was and am still a hunter, too. He was a fucking legend
that I’d heard as boogeyman tales from Moody. Me and Dorcas would joke about people like him
at night, and there he was, in front of me. And he found me interesting because my fire was so well
controlled.”

“And then, three weeks in,” Regulus said, lips quirking, “I told her my name.”

Mary looked directly at Remus. “I mean, it was fucking obvious, right? Black. Looks like Sirius
Black. Things derailed rather quickly from there, and I made a decision that was, in hindsight,
insanely risky by revealing myself to be undercover to him. The conversation where I had to tell
him I literally killed his entire family was awkward as fuck, as I’m sure you can imagine, but by
that point we needed each other. I was his only chance of destroying the Horcruxes, and so we left.
Went on an ‘expedition’, said we’d return after a few weeks, and… never went back.”

An interesting stranger, her last letter had said, all the way back in Texas. An expedition that might
put her out of commission for a while. Oh, how Remus’ life was insane.

“So how did you end up here?” Marlene asked. “How did you end up with the ring?”

“We went hunting, for lack of a better term,” said Regulus. “Around Europe. Hit the places I
thought most likely for them to be hidden, as a starting point. I wanted to exhaust all of our
possibilities in the east before travelling west and becoming at a higher risk of being found, but
they were all dead ends. So we made it to England. Tom Riddle was born in the eighteenth century
in a small town somewhere between Tonbridge and Maidstone, and that’s where we struck gold.
The ring was behind intensive wards that Mary got us through, and once inside we had about five
minutes to get it and get out. It was in a box underneath the floorboards; we got it, and we ran.”

His eyes flickered up to Remus’, before he said what he said next. As if he knew what Remus
would say before he said it. Before it was even stimulated.
“We have been in New York for four months,” he said, quietly, and Remus’ jaw fell open slightly.

“Four months,” he repeated, slowly, looking to Mary and back to Regulus.

“Yes.”

“You’ve been here this whole time?”

“Yes,” said Mary, “but you have to understand, Remus, we could barely even leave our
safehouse.”

He gaped. “Then why were you here in the first place? Surely hiding a Horcrux from a coven who
operate mainly in the sewers of New York would be a tad more difficult to pull off in New York?”

“They caught our trail when Mary disarmed their wards,” Regulus said quickly, as an interjection.
“Like I said, five minutes. They came almost immediately. We barely got out of there alive—we
ended up in Yemen, stealing from the stores of a dock worker while we recuperated. And then we
had to move on.”

“Our thought process was that it would be more likely they would spread out in Europe trailing
us,” interjected Mary, “and so Regulus took a week to lay his scent throughout France, and across
to Switzerland while I prepared a portkey to Manhattan. And I promise you, it was the last thing
that I wanted to do.”

“Where you found the ring,” said Regulus, directly to Remus, “that office building. It has 32 floors,
but the fifteenth floor is vacant. It has a repellent charm on it that works against humans–in that the
button is there, to keep face, but… I don’t know how to explain how it works aside from saying
that it is simply uninteresting to them. Nothing out of the ordinary, they just don’t care about the
fifteenth floor. It was my mother’s when we lived here, and the safest place I could think of, under
the same secrecy charms that this place is under. That’s where we have been for the past four
months.”

Remus felt like an old computer overheating. He rubbed his hands over his face and tried to
compute, going back to that day, their footsteps above their heads and that lift button, pressed so
many times;

“Sirius couldn’t smell you outside,” he mumbled, “only inside. You were there, the whole time.”

“It was a last resort, when we stashed it,” Mary said. “We had been apparating directly out of the
building upstate into the mountains to both stretch our legs and attempt to destroy that thing–
attempt to hone my skills enough so that I might be able to bend fiendfyre without killing us both.
We apparated back one day and Malfoy was there. It was desperation. We– um, well…”

She trailed off and looked at Regulus. He pursed his lips bitterly, as if they were trying to conceal
secrets he did not want out in the daylight.

“I killed that man,” he said, unapologetically, and ah, there it was. “We had come up with multiple
plans of how to get the ring to you—how to get you to see the message in the Atlas—but none of
them had considered being found out, and so I killed him because I needed to lure one of you here.
It was preferable that it would be Sirius, of course, as I knew he would probably be the only one
able enough to sense me, but I knew it was a long shot, and so that’s why I let myself bleed. I
knew he’d sniff me out but in the chance that he had been indisposed I was hoping that my blood
type was still on the human’s system from the last time we had erased ourselves and re-registered
our identities.”
“And we led Lucius upstate,” finished Mary, “all the way through to Quebec. We lost him
somewhere near Sherbrooke. I presume he cut the borders down to his estate in Vermont.”

The conversation seemed to come to a natural standstill. The newfound knowledge—the puzzle
pieces fitting together—hung heavy in the air between them, settling like dust on the dark wood of
the long, regal kitchen table.

“Is that it?” Remus whispered. A venomous twinge slipped through his tongue. He had not
intended for it, and Mary blinked at him, confused.

“I–” she started, sensing aggression, “No, not all of it. We have an idea of where the next one is.
We think– um, well, Regulus thinks that it might be on the coast of Latvia.”

“And we have the diary,” Marlene pointed out, helpfully. Remus turned to her and frowned.

“I destroyed that.”

“Yeah,” she said, “but it was still salvageable. Well… a little bit of it. Obviously the middle is all
burnt and charred but we have the writing on the outskirts, and Regulus thinks–”

“Does he,” said Remus, contemplatively. The aggression was visceral. His wrist ached, slightly,
where Narcissa had broken it. “Regulus thinks, does he? He thinks he can find the Horcruxes? He
thinks he can– can pick clues out of the burnt paper like some sort of Cluedo detective?”

“Remus–” James started, but he cut him off.

“If he thought,” he said, spitting the last word like it was poison, “if he really fucking thought
about anything he would have realised that we needed him.” He turned, eyes blazing, and
everything was slightly tinged with red and Remus wasn’t sure if that was his anger or if it was his
blood seeping into the crevices of his bones to try and make him feel whole again. “If he had
fucking thought about any of us he– they,” he looked at Mary, who looked close to tears, “would
have known how much we needed them here. How much he–” he turned to Regulus, and took a
deep breath. Pointed vaguely upwards. “How much he needed you.”

“We had no other choice, Remus,” said Mary, pleading slightly. “It was too dangerous to get
everyone caught up in–”

“We were caught up in it!” he seethed, throat burning. “Sirius was born to be caught up in it, and
you–” he pointed at Regulus, whose face was not betraying any sign of emotion. It was bleak, and
solemn. “You knew that. He needed you here. Not in Tonbridge, not in an office building in
Manhattan, here. God, you knew that. And all we have now is a burnt down sanctuary, a broken
vampire and a broken phoenix—a phoenix that tried to fix the mess that you could have helped us
avoid, and—and a fucking campfire storytime?”

“We have two pieces of Tom Riddle’s soul,” Mary said, quietly. Tears had fallen silently but her
face was calm, turned in. “I think that’s a fairly good starting point.”

“Starting point,” Remus breathed, and then he laughed. Almost incredulously, he laughed.
“Starting point.” He looked at Regulus. “We started a long time ago, and you weren’t there.”

“Remus,” Dorcas hissed, placing a gentle hand on his wrist. He snatched it away so fast he didn’t
even realise he had until it was cradled to his chest. The look of shock on Dorcas’ face settled into
his brain alongside the realisation that he could not feel his fingertips. “Remus, I don’t think that’s
very fair.”
“None of this is fair,” he said, “what the hell is fair about any of this?”

“Nothing,” she whispered. She did not extend a hand again, and Remus’ own knuckles were
growing white with how hard he was clinging to his wrist. Her comfort came in her eyes, deep, soft
brown. Kind and knowing and not red and not green and not icy blue. “But they’re trying their best.
Everybody here is trying their best. And we’re all together now, so we can communicate better–”

“We needed to communicate before,” Remus whispered. “We needed this before. We needed… I
need…”

He looked down at his hands. They could be separate from his body. They might be. He wasn’t
entirely sure that they weren’t. He wasn’t entirely sure that this body was his body at all.

“I need some air,” he muttered with finality, and, with an ear-splitting scrape of the chair legs
across the floor he used the last of his strength to heave his not-body out of the chair and float on
his not-legs out of the room, out of the door, out of the world.

***

He made it to the lake, somehow.

It was approaching 7pm, and the Springtime sun was just about to complete its slow descent into
setting. The crisp air made him shudder, but the open space was comforting. The lake was wide,
vast and brilliant, accentuated with weeds and twigs and lilypads to one side and even a duck or
two that he could see bobbing in and out of the surface.

The water was clear, and free, and not confined. The sun and the moon shone upon the water with
no hindrance of overhanging trees, and it comforted Remus somewhat. His hands began to feel like
his again. He stretched them out from where he was sitting on the grass and felt the joints of his
fingers click. Each one reverberated through him like the cocking of a gun.

And he wasn’t sure what to think. He wasn’t sure how to think. He was quite certain that his
ability to think—to form coherent sentences or make rational, irrational, whatever assumptions and
declarations of what was good and evil, agreeable and dislikable had died with Sirius and upon his
coming back to life Remus’ sensibility had not been extended the kindness to be restored alongside
it. He was beginning to know the taste of ash like the back of his strange hand. He could scrape it
off his tongue and it would come materialising back. He didn’t know what that could mean, and
he, as established, did not have the sensibility to consider it.

After a few minutes he tried to go through the very basics of his company. So it was Dorcas, best
friend. Marlene, vampire. James, vampire. And when he got to Lily, he got a bit stuck, it was Lily,
best friend. Lily, phoenix. Lily, clearing. Lily, life and death and blood and bone and–

Lily. His thought process sort of halted, there—could not go any further. And Remus had once said
that solving a case was like maths—was logical, something with a profound start and ending and a
route—through a dark, cobwebbed maze, but a route nonetheless that he could walk through
without doubt.

All Remus Lupin was nowadays was doubt.

All he carried was weight. He wasn’t entirely sure whose weight it was, or where it had come
from, only that it was there, now, and had not been there before. Or perhaps it had. Perhaps it
always had been, and he just hadn’t noticed it—and oh, God, wouldn’t that be worse? Would it not
be worse to be out of tune with your own body as opposed to out of tune with anyone else’s?
Would it not be worse to not be able to feel the one thing that you could feel day in, day out, night
through and yearlong—your own pulse, beating in your ears. Your own heart. Your own weight,
separated from the rest. And Remus could not separate it. He could not figure out who he was. He
could not figure out who he was.

His hands were shaking. He took a deep breath, looked over the lake and began his listings again.

Dorcas, best friend. Marlene, vampire friend. James, vampire friend. Lily, best friend. Phoenix.
Best friend, Phoenix. The two words piled on top of each other manifested a hurdle of some sort,
and Remus took an Olympic style run up and vaulted over it, only making it wobble slightly with
the heel of his foot as it skimmed the white, rusting bar, and a small part of his brain told him to be
proud of that. He wasn’t sure what there was to be proud of, but this small part was working on
instinct, and if his instincts were not still working correctly then he may as well just melt into a
puddle and evaporate into the afterlife, so he decided to take the win. Best friend. Phoenix. Best
friend.

Andromeda, Sirius’ cousin. Pandora, witch. Friend. Trustee. Healer. He had lists of things he loved
about Pandora. He had overflowing boxes worth of shimmering silver trust for her, but his vision
clouded red as the shimmering silver poured over and slinked to the floor in a manifestation of the
Imperius curse, and he turned and Pandora was not standing next to him but slumped against a tree,
hand to her neck, blood on her throat, blood in his mouth.

His heart rate sped up. Pandora swirled around his brain like a squid secreting ink into the ocean.
He could see it on the shore of the lake as a fish created a ripple, and he blinked and the physical
black had gone away, but he closed his eyes and it was still there.

Regulus. Mary. Sirius.

He powered through the three of them because he felt like he could do no less. He let them dip
their toes into the lake because if they went in any further they would be pulled in, and he would
hyperventilate and melt into the stupid puddle anyway while they drowned in front of him and yet
it would still not be the worst thing that had happened to him that week.

And yet. And yet.

His Sirius. Oh, his Sirius. Sirius would not be able to stop himself at his toes. Sirius would do a
fucking cannonball into the lake, as he always had—Remus had never been able to stop him. And
Remus could not even begin to think of a metaphor that encompassed how deep Sirius was into his
bones. His bones, not his mind. Remus brought his fingers to his nose and there was his scent; he
placed a hand to his chest and there was his heart. Sirius’. It was all his, and it always had been.
Trying to avoid him now would be as futile as trying to avoid him all those months ago when he
appeared on his porch; as futile as trying to avoid him all those years ago, when he pinned Remus
to the wall of the back alley and blinked at him, took him into his jaws for the first time and had
never let him go since.

Above all, he wanted Sirius. He wanted the Sirius that had hugged him twenty-four hours ago.
Told him not to die. Made him promise something that he himself could not upkeep.

And Remus was… angry at him for that.

Perhaps he was angry at the world. Perhaps that was it. He was angry, perpetually. He was anger
incarnate. His emotions twisted and went through a filter and that filter transformed them all into
red hot anger and so he had burst, at the table; he had burst at Regulus and Mary while thinking of
what could have been. And maybe it was unfair. Remus’ hands stopped shaking as he watched a
duck fish for food underneath the surface of the murky, beautiful water and his sensibility was
coming back to him in chunks, slapping him in the face as it reattached itself to his person, and
maybe he was just… angry.

But it would not do to dwindle on what could have been instead of what had happened—that would
be suicide. Remus had seen people waste away committing the exact same action. The dreamworld
in his head was just that, a dreamworld; it was not somewhere to live to escape the pain that the
world offered in her shaking, dirty cupped palms, and yet it was shaking and it was dirty and
Sirius’ palms had cupped around his face while he said his final goodbyes, and Remus did not want
to feel anymore. But he felt everything.

His freefall would not end until he apologised to Mary and Regulus—he knew that much. He knew
that his irritability had been undeserving, no matter how much they disagreed on the importance of
their absence and no matter how much Remus selfishly wished the past could change so that they
would not have to go through the adrenaline injecting ribcage wrenching events that they had. No
matter how much the image of Sirius on the floor in the clearing hurt; no matter how much Sirius
beaten down and dirty at his bedroom door at 4am did. The war had taken a lot from them, and
there was nothing Mary and Regulus could do about Remus’ selfish what-if’s, he knew that, he
knew that.

And yet he mourned. He mourned for nothing. He was a sort of wipsy figure of bitterness
condensed into the shape of a man, he was angry, that he had sat and he had tried for so fucking
long and it was another’s incompetence that led him here with a gaping hole in the midst of his
chest that made his windpipe wheeze whenever he breathed in. He sat and he dug his fingers into
the grass, he let his lip tremble for the tears that would not come for an unknown reason, and he
tried not to blink because the darkness only brought him thoughts that he wanted to bury six feet
under.

He was alone for a long time. He focused on the ducks, tapped his fingers rhythmically together to
keep his mind busy and watched them, swimming in circles on the water, rippling up to his feet.

It was footsteps that brought him to his senses. They were quiet, but they were there—Remus’
senses were too refined to not notice them, and as his awareness reformed itself like Lily’s hair
rematerialised after being eaten up by fire he realised that it was way past dusk, and he had been
sat on shut down for an imperceptible time, alone.

A figure sat beside him, but not touching him. They sat maybe a foot to his side. It took Remus a
long moment to muster the energy to lift his head, and look to the side.

It was Astoria.

“Hi,” he mumbled, slightly bewildered. She smiled at him, and it was all heart.

“Hi,” she said, sweetly. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.
“Are you okay?”

Remus wasn’t quite sure how to answer that.

“Yeah,” he replied, eventually, not unnoticing the gruff set of his voice; the way his throat was dry.
“I’m okay, yeah. Just a bit, er, shaken up.”

She nodded. Turned her head to look out to the lake, and rocked slightly. Remus blinked.

“Astoria?”
“Yeah?”

“Are you okay?”

She turned to him and raised her eyebrows. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know,” he said, quietly, “I wasn’t sure if you needed something, or–”

“No,” she said. She brought her hands up to her black hair and smoothed it around her ears and
over her shoulders. “I just thought… you looked like you needed company. I can go, if–”

“No,” Remus said, and he meant it. “No, you’re fine. Stay.”

And she did. She sat, about an arms length to Remus’ side, and they both looked out on the lake
together. Watched the trees waver in the distance. The ducks were together, now, swimming in
circles around each other, and it was a wholly healing sight.

“How are you doing?” Remus found himself asking, at least five or maybe a bit more minutes
later. Astoria blinked and turned to him. She shifted so she was sitting cross-legged.

“I’m okay,” she said, simply. Remus looked at her—really looked at her—and noticed that she was
breathing sporadically. “Percy and Oliver told me everything that happened yesterday.”

“Yeah, I don’t…” Remus trailed off, clicking his wrist absently, “I don’t really want to talk about
it.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “We can talk about other things. Like…” she trailed off, and the corner of
Remus’ sad lips curled at her innocence.

“Like how you stopped yourself from eating me a few days ago?”

She flushed bright red.

“I wasn’t going to eat you,” she stammered, and Remus laughed breathily.

“I know, I’m only joking,” he said. Astoria smiled softly. “But you resisted. I’m really proud of
you, y’know? That’s really big.”

“It’s not that big,” she said dismissively. She began picking at the grass by her side, and Remus
smiled.

“It is,” he insisted. “I know it’s hard. And the better you are at controlling it the more time you can
spend around humans.”

It seemed rather self-explanatory, but Remus was quite sure he knew what notes to hit to make her
shine, and it worked.

“Yeah,” she said, brightening up slightly, “and I want to.”

“You want to?” he prompted. “What do you want to do?”

She looked away shyly, as if she was embarrassed; Remus repeated the question.

“Become a teacher,” she said, quietly. “To elementary children. I really like children.”

Remus’ heart was bursting.

“That’s brilliant,” he said, and he meant it. “You’d be a great teacher, Toria. Well, as long as you
don’t take James’ teaching as gospel.”

She laughed, looking down; her hair fell over her face and she tucked it behind her ears again.

“Yeah,” she said. “I won’t. It’s not even like it would be able to happen for years–decades, maybe–
but it’s… my aim.”

Remus nodded, smiling. “It’s a great aim. Honestly.”

They fell into a comfortable silence for a few minutes. Astoria stretched out her legs and leaned
back, as if she was basking in the sun, although it was not there any longer. At some point the
outdoor lights came on automatically and shone some light towards them so it wasn’t pitch black.
She turned to him.

“What’s your aim?” she asked, and Remus frowned.

“What?”

“Your aim. Like, for when this fight is over. What do you want to do?”

And wasn’t that there the million dollar question. Because five years ago he would’ve said that
hunting was all his future held for him. Five years ago he would’ve said confidently that he would
be killing vampires, killing werewolves, killing and killing, and now he was somewhat positive
that he was, quite frankly, sick of killing. Now, even despite all of the optimism that had burned
alongside the ash of the phoenix, the only thing he could say for certain was that he wanted
something else. Something different.

And he saw Sirius, in his future. He saw him and Sirius. He wasn’t entirely sure how it would
work—how their paths could intertwine. How their mortalities could dance around the others. He
was quite sure he didn’t want to become a vampire. He wasn’t… it just didn’t feel like the life that
he would like to choose for himself. And so, where did that leave them?

It was not something that Remus would like to think of at this present moment. There was an entire
avalanche of things that he had to think about before he even scratched the surface of after, but
Astoria required an answer.

“I think I would like to help people,” he said, before he even realised what he was saying. His
mouth seemed to have a mind of its own. “Help people understand the world a little bit better.”

“In what way?”

He shrugged, and picked at the grass. Volleyed through the thoughts in his head and landed on his
clear, shiny newfound enlightenment towards the inequalities of his previous prejudices, and
realised that he would quite like to help others see the same, actually.

“Help hunters, for a start,” he said. “Teach them that what we know is completely wrong. Teach
them the difference between… between the good and the bad. That a vampire doesn’t have to be
bad just because they are a vampire.”

Astoria smiled, and Remus found himself smiling back.

“And maybe we could help werewolves, too,” he said, on a stream of clear consciousness. “Help
make moons easier for them. I just think… I just think that the supernatural world and the human
world don’t understand each other as well as they could. That we could bridge the gap, or
something…” he trailed off. Astoria was still smiling at him.

“We could both be teachers,” she said, quietly but brightly, and Remus smiled.

“Yeah, we could,” he said. “We could.”

And he saw movement out of the corner of his eye, and turned instinctively; the flash of blonde
against the dim dusk lighting, and he thought for a second that it would be Marlene, or perhaps
Pandora. He blinked, zeroed in and realised they were curls–voluminous bleach-blonde curls,
harsh against brown skin.

It was Lavender.

“Who’s that?” Astoria said, following his gaze. Remus ran a hand through his hair.

“Her name is Lavender,” he said, bemusedly, “she’s a witch—she was at Malfoy Manor
yesterday.”

“She was?” Astoria said. “She looks… young.”

And, yeah, the more Remus squinted at her—even in the dark lighting and with how far away she
was, taking a turn around the lawn, linked arms with a girl Remus could not make out due to the
angle—she did look young. She looked Astoria’s age, actually.

He pushed himself up and Astoria mirrored him. He walked brazenly over to them to catch them
before they turned a corner and left or something, not even sure what he was intending to do
besides make sure she was okay, or compliment her witchery, or ask her for her age.

She noticed him when he was a few paces away and turned, dragging the young girl that Remus
could now make out to be South Asian and at least a head or two smaller than him with her. She
smiled nervously.

“Hi,” Remus said, as he reached her, “Lavender, right?”

“Yeah,” she said, and her voice was more high-pitched than Remus would have imagined. It
sounded slightly dreamy.

“You levitated that vampire.”

She nodded.

“I– er…” Remus cut off, scratching the back of his head. Three things. “I guess I just wanted to say
that you were amazing, and… well, thank you for that. You’re incredibly powerful.”

And she brightened up–she beamed, actually, showing off slightly crooked teeth, and it just made
her look younger. “Thank you! You were brilliant too. I hope you’re okay, I heard…”

She trailed off uneasily, and Remus coughed. Nodded sharply.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said. “Are you? Or– actually, do you mind me asking how old you are?”

She bit her lip, slightly, but nodded. “I’m 17.”

“You’re seventeen?” Remus repeated incredulously. His mouth fell open, slightly; he felt a sudden
presence behind him and turned sharply to see Astoria, obviously not breathing, staring at
Lavender with something that looked halfway to awe.
“We both are,” she continued, gesturing to herself and the girl beside her. “This is Parvati.”

He turned to her still in slight astonishment; on impulse, he extended a hand. “Remus,” he said, as
she took it and shook it with her small hands. She smiled.

“Nice to meet you,” she said in quiet, accented English, and Remus gave her a tight yet fond smile.
He stepped back, and was about to further inquire the logistics of her being in battle due to her age
when he noticed they were both looking very inquisitively at Astoria. He turned to her, and
gestured.

“Er, this is Astoria,” he said, and Lavender held out a hand.

There was a pause, in which all three of them sort of observed what was going to happen. Astoria’s
eyes widened, slightly; she looked down to Lavender’s hand nervously and then back up, and
Remus was considering butting in and saving her when her own hand raised from her side and she
gripped Lavender’s tightly. They shook. Lavender smiled.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Astoria whispered—barely even a whisper, really, but it was there, and she
grinned.

“Nice to meet you too,” she said. Astoria took a step back and looked at Remus. She smiled, and it
was confidence. It was pride. He found himself feeling prideful too.

“So,” he said, after a moment, “why were you out there if you’re only seventeen?”

Lavender sighed. “One of our witches died,” she said, sadly. “Experimenting with the ring a few
days ago. And Charity was injured in training so they needed a provisional last minute but she
would have taken the place and they couldn’t find a reserve quickly enough so I volunteered,
because I’m the oldest.”

“I’m sorry,” blurted Astoria before Remus even got to speak. He turned to her. “About the witch.”

Lavender blinked, as if she hadn’t heard correctly. She turned to Parvati for a moment and then
back and smiled.

“Thank you,” she said, and Astoria’s eyes filled with wonderment once more.

“You shouldn’t have been out there,” Remus said, sadly. Thinking slightly about himself, but not
too much, because if he fell into that rabbithole he would never escape. “You’re a child.”

She nodded, and when she spoke her words came out slightly defensive. “I know. I held my own,
though.”

He nodded. “Yeah, you did. You were brilliant, actually.”

Lavender opened her mouth to speak but she was interrupted by the sound of the door opening and
slamming shut. All three girls and Remus turned around to see James Potter bounding down the
stairs, skin lit up by the lights lining the balustrade. He grinned.

“Astoria,” he called, and she raised a comfortable eyebrow. “It’s your night to spar, remember? The
other three are waiting.”

“Oh–” she groaned, placing a hand on her head. “I forgot.”

“Yeah, I can tell,” he said with a gruff laugh, jogging over to the group of them. He shot Remus a
tight smile but quickly turned his attention to the two newcomers. “Oh, hello.”

He blinked. Realisation settled in, and:

“Oh, shit! Witch girl!”

Lavender grinned, and James grinned right back.

“You levitated that vamp!” he said, “the one I killed! You were sick!”

He held out a hand for her to shake and she did, shyly and obviously slightly flustered but still
enthused and seemingly happy.

“You were, too,” she said. She turned to Parvati, who was quiet and seemingly nervous. “This is
Parvati. Her parents just came in with her twin sister from India.”

“Oh,” James said, turning towards her. He pressed his palms together and nodded his head,
slightly. “ ”

Parvati blinked, somewhat taken off guard, and then she smiled. She unlinked her arms from
Lavender’s to recreate the gesture, and repeated the greeting too.

“ ?” James asked.

“Maharashtra,” she replied, and James lit up.

“Ah! Rajasthan ,” he said lightly, and she grinned, looking more comfortable
than she had the whole conversation. They spoke back and forth for a minute until the conversation
seemingly ended, and while Lavender nudged and said something to Parvati James turned to
Remus.

“You alright?” he said, quietly, and Remus nodded.

“I was just talking to the girls,” he said at the same timbre, “they’re both only 17.”

“You’re seventeen?!” James said, turning back to Lavender, who was jolted out of her
conversation, “you’re so fucking cool for seventeen!”

“James, that’s really not the issue here–”

“I know,” he said mockingly, and the comedic relief that his mere presence brought Remus was
really something. “I know.” He turned to Lavender and raised a finger like he was scolding her.
“No more battles.”

She giggled and nodded. “Okay.”

“However,” he continued, looking at Astoria, “you guys could always… train with us? I take the
kids out every now and then to blow off some steam and teach them how to fight. It might be
beneficial for you and them; witch vs vampire, yes?” He turned around the group, garnering
everyone’s sympathies. “No? Yes?”

“I mean, if you guys don’t have anything to do…?” Remus trailed off, and Parvati shrugged.

“Well, if we are not allowed to go into battle anymore…” she said mock-glumly, putting on a fake
pout, and James shot her a wide grin.
“I love them already,” he said, turning to Remus, and Lavender laughed. “We can work out a rota,
or something–”

“They can come train with us now,” Astoria butted in; everyone went quiet. She looked over every
single face nervously and then swallowed viscerally. “If… if they want to, of course.”

“I mean, I’m cool with that?” James said, looking at them and then back at Astoria. “As long as
you…”

He trailed off, not making his thoughts explicit, but Astoria groaned in an incredibly teenager-ey
fashion.

“I’m not going to eat them,” she hissed, and then seemed to notice the error in revealing the threat
to eat people in front of said people. She flushed and covered her mouth, but Lavender laughed it
off.

“If you tried, I’d ruin you,” she said, in an incredibly blase manner. Astoria dropped her hand and
stared blankly for a minute, before her mouth curled upwards into a smile.

“You’re on,” she said, and disappeared in a flurry. Lavender and Parvati both gasped and jolted,
slightly, looking to James for assistance. He rolled his eyes fondly.

“Around the corner there’s a white tree,” he said, leaning down and pointing as they turned to
follow his directions. “Go in there and then immediately right until you reach a clearing at the side
of the lake, they’ll be in there. Look for a circle of floor lamps, two lots of obnoxiously red hair and
this big burly Scottish lad—honestly, you can’t miss him.”

The girls took one look at each other, grinned, and then took off running. James jogged after them
slightly, and cupped his mouth to shout.

“No killing! No biting! Isabela I’m looking at you, don’t fucking chomp on the witches!”

He groaned and turned back to Remus, who was laughing.

“How's fatherhood treating you?” he teased, and James shot him a glare.

“Not well,” he said grimly. “If Isabela tears out Oliver’s throat one more time I’m going to have to
put them up for adoption.”

Remus cringed. “Ew.”

“Yeah. Do you know how many jumpers of mine have been ruined with blood? Not even human
blood. No, not even the good stuff; vampire blood. What am I supposed to do with that?! Why do
we even bleed anyway?”

“I don’t know,” Remus replied, trying not to laugh; James looked at him and immediately away as
he began to laugh, too.

They settled down after a few moments. An owl hooted, but for the most part, it was silent. James
looked at him, and Remus knew what was coming.

“I’m going to apologise,” he said, quietly, before James could say anything. “I know it was unfair.”

James shrugged. “I don’t think it was unfair. I get what you mean.”

“What?”
“Well, if Regulus and Mary had come to us and let us in on the secret full on instead of sending us
on what felt like essentially a wild goose chase then maybe a lot of things could have been avoided.
If they had come to us with the Horcrux info earlier you and Dorcas wouldn’t have gone to
Washington. If Reg had helped you lot with your Malfoy mission then Sirius probably wouldn’t
have… well, you know. You weren’t wrong, is what I mean.”

“But I shouldn’t wallow in what-if’s,” Remus finished for him, acutely aware that James was
probably either using some reverse-psychology to get him to work through his irrationality or
James was simply the easiest person in the universe to talk to. Either way, he nodded.

“But you’re not… wrong to be angry, Remus,” he said, softly. “I can’t imagine the hell you went
through in that clearing. Everybody understands your grievances.”

Remus looked away. He thought he might either cry or scream. He was unsure of where the line
was, if there ever was one.

“We don’t have to talk about this,” James said, lightly. “We don’t have to talk about anything if
you don’t want to. But it’s here. Me, Marley, and Dorcas—we’re here for you, you know? We have
to take care of each other.”

And Remus felt a lot of things there. He felt the instinctual rage at being perceived as weak, and
the similarly instinctual hatred of the insinuation that he might be something vulnerable to be taken
care of, but really, all of his grievances lay somewhere deep inside him. Covered over the top with
vines and residual anger and sadness and every single black pit that he could think of, and at the
top, he really just wanted to rest. He wanted to sit in stasis. He wanted to calm down, just—just for
a moment, he wanted nothing to happen. He wanted orchids to grow between his toes and sage to
tickle his cheeks.

So he nodded. And when James took the two small steps to envelope him into a hug, Remus let it
happen. He clung onto him and prayed that James’ tight grasp was enough to shift his bones back
into place, stop them from jangling around his body like a foreign object he needed to reject.

“Ah–” he said hastily, pulling back, his hands still on Remus’ shoulders. His eyes went hazy for a
moment, as he listened; he blinked and they cleared, but his face contorted into a frown. “Yeah,
Lavender definitely just broke Percy’s spine slamming him against a tree. I gotta go.”

Remus choked a laugh as James dropped his hands and gestured dismissively. “Go. Before they kill
each other for real.”

James grinned, and sped away, and Remus was alone again. He made his way inside.

***

Dorcas was on his bed when he got up to his bedroom.

“What are you doing?” he said, withered, shutting the door behind him. She smiled, and folded her
hands over her stomach.

“Come over here.”

Remus crossed his arms. “I’m not coming over there until you tell me what you’re doing.”

“Well, I’m not telling you what I’m doing until you come over here.”

“Dorcas.”
“Remus.”

She mimicked his intonation perfectly. He rolled his eyes with a groan and made his way to the
other side of his bed, climbing onto it and sitting beside her.

“So?”

Dorcas sat up. “We are having a sleepover.”

Remus blinked at her. Once, or twice.

“A what?”

“A sleepover,” she insisted. “Like we used to in London. You remember when we lived in
Hackney during our third year of training, and a poltergeist followed you home and took up
residence in your room so you ended up sleeping in mine for three weeks?”

“Okay, see, but ‘sleepover’ implies that I have a choice,” said Remus, “that was absolutely not by
choice. The thing kept drawing on my face at night with a sharpie.”

Dorcas laughed quietly at the memory.

“Okay, but we had some fun times, no?” she said, and Remus rolled his eyes. “Come on, we can
watch a movie or something. I’ll sneak downstairs and steal some food–god-knows-where it all
seems to come from–and we’ll… hang out.”

She finished on a rather pathetic tone. Remus raised an eyebrow.

“Why?” he prodded. “Why aren’t you with Mary? You haven’t seen her for a year.”

Dorcas shrugged. “I think you need me right now more than Mary does.”

And that was, for some reason, a punch to the gut. Remus rubbed his hands harshly over his face.

“Dorcas,” he groaned, and so the “Remus,” in the same intonation came, and he laughed
haphazardly, against his will. She laughed too. He looked up at her.

“Don’t protest,” she said as he opened his mouth, knowing him too well, “just– look. Listen. I just
want tonight. Tonight, this night here, without vampires, or witches, or purebloods, or phoenixes or
whatever the fuck else has appeared in our lives in the past few months. Just one night where we
forget about it all. When it’s just… just me and you again.”

Remus sighed. He rubbed his hands against his eyes again aimlessly and then dropped them, and
nodded. She grinned widely.

“Okay, come on,” she said, shuffling back so she was lying down and tapping the spot beside her.
Remus raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not going to cuddle you.”

“Yes the fuck you are.”

“Dorcas, we’re twenty-eight years old–”

“Twenty-eight year olds who are going to cuddle,” she said, firmly. “Lie down, Lupin.”
He huffed, but obliged. She was stubborn at the best of times, and he knew that there was no
arguing with her.

He laid down and rested his head on her chest; the uppermost part, where the edge of her
collarbone bled into her shoulder. She wrapped one firm arm around him and brought the other up
to smooth out his hair, fondly, and he inhaled the familiar scent of his best friend and found that it
was entirely comforting–that it silenced the madness in his head for a few moments.

It was a minute before she spoke.

“They’re not angry at you, you know,” she said, softly. “They get it. You have every right to be
mad.”

“Everyone keeps telling me that,” Remus murmured, “but it doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“What would?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I just wish things were… simple again. Black and white. I wish I hated
vampires and loved humans. I wish we killed bad people and saved good people. I wish—I don’t
know.”

Dorcas squeezed him tighter.

“You don’t have to know,” she said, gently. “There’s no handbook for what we do, or how we’re
supposed to feel, Remus. But you don’t have to be strong all the time just because you’re
surrounded by strong people. They’re not coping better than us, they’re just better at hiding it.”

Remus thought of Sirius, as he was wont to do. He thought of Sirius’ weariness despite the brave
face he put on. He thought of Sirius in the bath, Sirius at his door, Sirius underneath the crackling
flames of his home. Both homes. And he thought of James’ tears when Sirius told his story. Of
James’ true, unadulterated panic when Dorcas had almost killed his best friend. He thought of
Marlene breaking down as Sirius did, not having to keep her morale high for others but simply
letting her emotion take her.

He thought of the group of them in the kitchen earlier. The bags underneath Pandora’s eyes. The
pain in Regulus’. He thought about how fucking far these people had transcended mortal and
immortal, supernatural and human, plain and extraordinary. Human and Vampire were no longer
classifications that meant anything to Remus. They were all straining under the weight of this fight,
and it was not a competition to see who had suffered most, but a lifeline to lean onto when the
weight of what you had suffered had been extremely overbearing that day. Your weight, their
weight, a billion pulses lining up to form one thick, standing metronome.

Dorcas was his lifeline, his safety as he lay on her shoulder, but he knew in that moment that they
would all—all of them—do the same, and he would do it for them. Because they were all they had
in this insanity.

He would apologise to Mary and Regulus tomorrow, and they would forgive him, because it could
be anyone. He did not think he was entirely in the wrong but he understood exhaustion like he
understood no other. And all of their core were fumbling around at the best of times which was
why they were a core, for one person falling apart did not crumble the foundation. It
accommodated them. In the shared lifeline they were all dangling on, every day was trial-and-
error. So Remus was angry, and he would continue being angry, but he needed these people like he
needed his lungs and he could not make baseless claims to diminish how deeply he yearned for
them—for Mary, how when he closed his eyes he saw him with her, seventeen years old, loving
the shit out of her, familiarity over everything.

“I love you, you know,” Remus murmured, offhandedly. He felt Dorcas chuckle.

“I love you too, you daft bastard,” she whispered back. “And you have me, alright? You’ll have me
until we’re frail and old. Until I breathe my very last breath and then probably afterwards too. I’ll
manifest as an unrested ghost ‘cause I didn’t kick your ass enough when I was alive.”

Remus laughed, properly, now, and so did Dorcas, and it was the nicest thing that had happened to
him all day.

Once they had calmed down and stopped laughing he pushed himself up. Off her shoulder so he
could lean on his elbow and look at her, and she shifted to mirror him.

“Is Lily awake?” he asked, quietly. She shook her head.

“‘S not unusual, according to Pandora,” she said blithely. “Especially after the power she used. She
expects she’ll probably wake up tomorrow. And she’ll be fine, if a bit shaken up, but aren’t we
fucking all?”

Remus thinned his lips. He took a deep breath in.

“And… Sirius? Does she have any expectations for him?”

Dorcas’ face contorted into one of pity, and he shook his head.

“Never mind. It was stupid.”

“It wasn’t.”

“It was.”

“She expects,” said Dorcas pointedly, “to be able to fill out some expectations this week. Regulus
was just as curious.”

Remus inhaled sharply.

“It’s not…” he started, “it’s not… dormancy, is it? He’s not–”

“No,” said Dorcas. “That is the one thing she can say for certain.”

It wasn’t as relieving as he hoped it would be. They were quiet for a moment.

“Am I a bad person for not going to see them yet?” came from Remus’ chest; a vulnerable query.
Dorcas frowned.

“Why would you be?”

“I don’t know,” Remus mumbled. “Feels like they’re on their last legs in a hospital bed and I’m
just covering my ears and pretending it’s not happening.”

Dorcas scoffed. “You need to stop applying your experiences to mundane human experiences,
Remus. Sirius didn’t get hit by a car and fall into a coma or something. He was stabbed with the
lethal venom from a huge magical fucking snake, and then his body was charred from the inside
out with the fire from a fucking phoenix who also happens to be your best friend that you didn’t
know could turn into literal fire until that very moment. There is, quite literally, nothing that could
make you a bad person about having to… avoid everything for the time being.”

Remus smiled, but it probably came out as a little more than a grimace. “Thanks.”

“I’ll be your rationality for the time being,” she whispered, grasping his hand. “While yours is on
holiday. I’ll be the one to tell you that no, Remus, you’re not a bad person for dealing with the
repercussions of witnessing something horrible. No, Remus, you’re not a bad person for being
angry about the hand you’ve been dealt. No, Remus, you’re not a bad person for falling in love
with a vampire–”

“Oh, my God,” Remus groaned, bringing his hands to his face, and Dorcas laughed melodiously.

“So it is then? Love? You officiated that? I was shooting in the dark.”

“Shut up,” he said, sliding his hands away and looking up to the ceiling. She flopped down beside
him.

“You know, a year ago I would’ve freaked the fuck out about that,” she said conversationally, and
Remus scoffed a laugh.

“Three months ago you would’ve freaked the fuck out about that. You almost killed the man the
first time you met him.”

“Still one of my proudest moments,” she said sentimentally, and he laughed. “But, seriously. It’s…
I mean, I still think it’s stupid and reckless and quite literally one of the most terrible decisions you
have ever made, but… well, we live and breathe stupid reckless bad decisions. I feel like that
should be my middle name.”

“Dorcas ‘stupid reckless’ Meadowes.”

“Remus ‘bad decisions’ Lupin.”

She laughed, and he smiled and dug the heels of his palms into his eyes. Tried to see the stars.
Dorcas sighed.

“I was in love with Mary, you know.”

The stars disappeared immediately.

“What?” Remus wheezed, turning to face her. She avoided eye contact. “When?”

She shrugged. “When we were in our early twenties. It was on and off. I’d tell myself that I didn’t
need her anymore, and then I wouldn’t see her for a couple weeks on a case and fall in love with
her all over again. It was ridiculous. And I had that protectiveness around her, do you remember?
She got all mad one time because she thought I was insinuating that she couldn’t hold her own as
well as you could, when really it was because if she died I think a piece of me would have died
with her.”

Remus’ face was frozen in a frown, and his jaw was slightly open. Dorcas turned to him.

“I’m still protective over her now,” she said. “Couldn’t ever really shake that. I don’t think you
ever can, really, if you and the person you love don’t end on terrible life-splitting terms. They’ll
always be there… like, you’ll always need to see them, even if it’s just every now and then. They
bring something to your life that you don’t think you could ever replicate, platonic or not.”
 Remus closed his mouth. Pursed his lips, slightly.

“Is this where you make your soul-crushing metaphorical comparison to me and Sirius to prove
that we’re in love?”

She grinned. “No. I don’t have to. You just did it for me.”

He groaned. “Fuck you.”

“No thanks. I’m gay.”

Remus laughed completely despite himself, and they fell into a comfortable silence.

“Speaking of being gay,” he started, and Dorcas groaned.

“Oh, I already hate where this is going–”

“While you’re here, I believe there’s a certain blonde that you have yet to tell me about?”

Dorcas glared at him. “What, you thought you were the only one allowed to claim a vampire?”

“Claim a vampire? What is this, an auction?”

She laughed. “Stop it, stop making me laugh. That wasn’t funny.”

“You know what is funny? Marls.”

“I hate you.”

“You can hate me. You still said it.”

“As if you don’t call him sweetheart on a regular basis. Oh yeah, I heard you–”

“Fuck you–”

“Fuck you, Lupin!"

They ended up in a tussle that almost broke Dorcas’ phone. She crept downstairs to smuggle snacks
out of the seemingly replenishing kitchens and they fell asleep with a movie still playing, the
pleasant hum of safety a fleeting relief to Remus’ battered eardrums.

Chapter End Notes

when james meets parvati he greets her in hindi (“ ” = namaste =

hello.)
she returns the gesture and then he says “ ?” = "where are
you from" in hindi
she answers Maharashtra and so James automatically switches to Marathi (the official
language in that state & parvati's native language) (“Ah! Rajasthan
,” = "Ah! I am from Rajasthan" in Marathi)
the rest of the conversation they have would then be in Marathi. I don't speak either of
these languages so if any of the translations are wrong please lmk :)
((also happy 200k words and i noticed in between chapters that we hit 100k hits which
is INSANE!!!!!! yet again thank you to every single one of you i cant thank you
enough you bring me so much joy))
 sixteen
Chapter Notes

hi!!
couple cw's for this chapter:
- remus is not really in a good place:
ptsd symptoms, flashbacks and a bit of depersonalisation; for the most part his thought
process is just pretty negative and I mean.. my writing is already a LOT when he's
happy so yeah a lot.
– comatose character
– extraneous character deaths
– something that is not a terrorist attack but is likened to one (not directly on the ppl in
this chapter).
– also i think this chapter is a bit descriptive-heavy so if that's not your thing.. well i'd
presume you'd have given up on my writing LMAO but if not, sorry.

I think that's it!

I wanted to have this one out quickly for reasons that become obvious in the third
sentence bc I really didn't wanna make you guys wait super long but unfortunately uni
got in the way etc etc pls don't hate me thank you for your endless patience
love you all! J xx

Six weeks passed Remus by like the wind blowing through the willow branches that trail the
surface of the lake.

Harsh ripples. Harsh scars. Harsh reality.

It was six weeks in which Sirius Black did not wake up. Six weeks in which Remus floated through
the halls of Boardwalk like a weeping ghost. Six weeks in which conversations happened and
missions were expedited and Horcruxes were destroyed and tea was consumed and Remus, without
even realising it, began to heal.

The first four? Well, they went a little something like this:

I.

The first few days passed by like a blur. The kind that happens when one’s heart is riding on one
thing. A stream of disappointment, of good days and of bad, of Dorcas and of kind gestures; cups
of Raabdi made by James and four blankets donated by Marlene. It was a lot of being unable to
sort through emotions. Some sort of loss of touch, like a severed wire between the mainframe and
identification, when things swim around unattended for so long they start to feel like rot. He felt
anger that was quite unrecognisable, an actor on the screen; hands not being hands and feet not
being feet; he felt something of raw, fragile rebirth. All poetics dropped; flames dissipated. The
first few days were that of loss—Remus has always been a pessimist, don’t let anyone try to
convince you otherwise—he burns and he burns until he doesn’t anymore. It was something
selfish, perhaps he can pick that out of the mess of his emotions; a selfish desire to be someone
else. To be himself for what he has left and nobody to balance what he has lost. What has he lost?
Himself. Perhaps, over everything, he has lost himself.

Regardless, even despite how used to being alone he was, the first few days held something of an
inability to stop feeling Sirius everywhere he went. He was so deep inside of him that the door he
was laid behind—the door Remus could not bring himself to open—seemed to be around every
corner. He’d look directly into the moonlight through the window and see the papery texture of
Sirius’ blood-stained skin reflecting back at him. He’d sit out by the lake and think of the
uncertainty of his condition, uncertainty, he has never done well with uncertainty, you must know
—Remus wants to know everything. He does not know anything. Remus is the most powerful
creature on the planet. He feels like he is falling apart. Back, and forth, three snapshots; he and
Astoria, silent out by the lake from dusk until dark. Apologising to Mary and Regulus and then
being hostile towards them again, as they crowded around the goddamn book like nothing was
amiss, fifteenth floor to go back to. Dorcas, intrinsically the most important person in his life,
holding him close to her chest, “it’s alright, Remus,” except it isn’t, nothing is alright, nothing is
alright, nothing, nothing, nothing.

Something short of a week, in which he had slept and woke and mourned and avoided and barely
seen Pandora outside of her two days of rest, as she had shut herself in to figure out what the hell
was going on with Sirius–

(a losing game, as far as he knew, though she came to talk to him about it nightly; every evening of
predictions about when one might acquire predictions that passed left him zoning out more and
more. Almost wishing that Sirius was just fucking dead, instead of comatose and possibly in pain,
for at least they’d had their goddamn goodbye.)

–left him, 5pm, lying on his bed, book in hand when Dorcas came bursting through the door.

“Does your login still work?” she asked, before Remus even got a word out. His eyebrows raised of
their own volition.

“What?”

“Your bureau login,” she said. “The one that gets us past all of the firewalls. Have you tried it
recently?”

Remus shook his head. Truth be told, his laptop was across the room, and he had not even thought
about using his login for almost a week.

“Can I try it? What’s your password?”

“Yours isn’t working?”

“No,” she said. “It was an hour ago. I’ve called the helplines and they’re all putting me on hold.
It’s like all communications have been cut off completely.”

They looked at each other. They had been raised and coddled by these people, weaned into
understanding that lack of communication should send dread running down your body. Always
expect evil. Don’t always expect it to come to you.

Remus got up, and went towards the evil. Because Remus Lupin is an idiot.
Dorcas jogged slightly down the stairs in front of him and sauntered her way into the biggest study,
in which the Prewett twins and Caradoc Dearborn were sat adjacently on their laptops at the table.
Benjy Fenwick was left-clicking agitatedly on something Remus could not see, his body half-
sheltered by the massive iMac he was stationed at.

Remus hadn’t spoken to Fabian or Caradoc yet. He hadn’t spoken to any of them all week, really.
He had only felt up to Dorcas, and sometimes James or Marlene; Pandora each night and perhaps
running into each other in the dregs of night (she was often one to stay up working and run into the
night-stragglers while fishing for a midnight snack). Mary had been darting around him, walking
on eggshells lest he blow up once more; he knew why, and he hated why, and she knew why and
she accepted why but it didn’t abate the shame at all. Altogether, it was an amalgamation of
prospects regarding both the past and future that he was wholeheartedly avoiding, so he had cooped
himself in his room, and thus, he had not spoken to Fabian or Caradoc yet.

Fabian looked up at him. They shared an awkward moment in which the both of them seemed to
remember their last encounter. Remus cleared his throat awkwardly.

“I’m trying to get past the Wichita mainframe,” he said, softly, turning his laptop to which Remus
could see a governmental login. “Wanna try?”

Remus frowned, tugging his long-exhausted features together in a pinched look, and leant over. He
typed in his username and password fast, on instinct, and then back spaced and typed it slowly to
make sure he got everything. The moment of truth arrived when he pressed enter, and sure enough,
t’was of no result.

“How long has it been down?” he asked, turning to Dorcas, but Gideon answered.

“Maybe half an hour,” he said, typing something and not looking at him, “a little less? I thought it
was just me fucking up my password.”

“But it’s all of us,” Remus said, softly.

“But it’s all of us.”

“Is it just us? Is it because we…defected, or whatever they’re calling it? They shut off our
accesses?”

“Not sure,” Benjy said, swivelling on his desk chair. “We don’t exactly have anyone to compare it
to—I mean, they’re going to email Molly, but who knows how long it’ll take her to respond with
the amount of kids she’s popping out–”

“She’s only had seven,” said Fabian, indignantly.

“Only? That’s your definition of only?”

“Remus,” Dorcas said, grabbing at his arm; he flinched and pulled it back, relaxed, turned to her.
She was unperturbed. “We do have someone to compare it to.”

“Who?” Benjy asked, and Remus blinked in realisation.

“Percy,” he breathed. “He has Bill’s ID card. It worked at the bureau, so surely–”

“I mean, if they’ve not caught on and deleted it from the database–”

“They could have kept it on the records, though, as a tracking device–”

“Can you morons just go get the kid?” asked Benjy. Dorcas blinked and nodded, running out of the
door without a second glance.

It was raining outside, and so Percy came inside almost dripping wet. He was shadowed
immediately by Oliver.

“What is it?” he said, pouring in through the doorframe. Fabian turned on his chair and grinned at
him.

“Hey Perce,” he said. “Do you still have Bill’s keycard?”

Percy nodded.

“Can you go get it for us, kid?” he asked. “We need to use his login for something.”

“Something?” he asked, narrowing his eyes. Dorcas harrumphed.

“Just go get the bloody card,” she said, and Percy rolled his eyes at her and zoomed out of the
room. Oliver stepped in, fully.

There was a long, awkward moment of silence.

“So,” he said, rocking on his heels. His hair had been drenched into awkward spikes and there was
rainwater dripping down the end of his nose. “How about the weather, huh?”

Dorcas had to stifle a laugh, and Remus’ lip quirked. No one else reacted.

“Christ,” Oliver muttered. “Tough crowd.”

Dorcas, again, let out about a two second long laugh that she disguised as a cough, whilst an
emotionless Benjy pointed one finger, dumbly.

“Why is he here?” he asked, and at that exact moment Percy walked in, a slight blur of momentum
as he stopped running.

“He’s mine,” he said, firmly, pacing three steps to the table to hand the card over to his uncle. He
took a few steps back to stay out of harm's way, sliding back in beside him.

“Okay,” said Gid, squinting at the card. He typed something, and then squinted some more. “Bill,
dash, Weasley…” Remus and Dorcas walked around the table to stand behind him, too, and they
had an audience. Benjy’s phone chimed.

“Guys,” he murmured, his face slack as he unlocked his phone.

Gideon continued typing, murmuring every letter of the code on the back of the card that unlocked
the firewall. He stood up. Enter—no recognition. Nothing.

“Guys–”

“Guys,” James Potter gasped from where he was, suddenly at the door frame. He was clinging to
both sides of the arch for dear life—his eyes were wide. They locked on Percy. “You’re going to
want to come see this.”

He disappeared. All of the hunters took one, flustered look at each other and then poured out after
him.
Upon entering the living room Remus could see that the television above the smouldering fireplace
in the living room was on, and—among others—Marlene, Lily, Isabela and Astoria were standing
motionless in front of it. Lily’s hand was covering her mouth. Isabela had a tight, protective arm
around Astoria.

“–a presumed terrorist attack on the city of London,” the news woman was saying, in a royal blue
blazer white blouse combo, standing on a roof with an overhead view of which Remus could see
what was clearly the London bureau in rampant, electromagnetic flames. “Fatalities are unclear
but there appear to be dozens injured as the HI1 building, home to a miniature branch of MI5
counterintelligence and headquarters to the security service since 1967, goes up in a brutal
explosion of an extent the United Kingdom has not seen since the 1996 bombings on Manchester.”

Remus’ stomach dropped, instantly.

His ears began to ring as he watched the live feed; watched as the flames licked up the crumbling
building, heli-screens at higher vantage point that must be a few streets over from where the bureau
was situated on the outer of Vincent Square in Westminster–where Remus had spent so many years
of his life, where he had been born at seventeen years old.

He vaguely registered Dorcas’ hand covering her mouth and Lily turned—he had not spoken much
to Lily since she had woken up almost a day after he had. He wasn’t sure if it was her warmth or
the transcendent warmth of the bureau up in fucking flames that he could somehow feel from a
thousand miles away prickling at his face and making his hair stand up. Mouth wide open in
shock.

The twins and Percy pushed past him and he staggered. Isabela turned, gasped; she reached out to
Percy but he shrugged her off, simply watching the TV, wide-eyed, as close as he could. The
newswoman began to speak again as footage of firefighters and various first responders attempted
valiantly to put out the fire. There were civilians running down the street.

“...HI1 is famously headed by Alastor Moody,” the newswoman was saying, now, briefing the
Americans on what, exactly, their little underfunded hidden branch of governmental movements
that really wasn’t governmental at all actually do–or at least, what the rest of the world thinks they
do. “The branch has roots way back into the nineteenth century for the United Kingdom, and
famously partnered up with the USSUS, a minor branch of the United States Secret Service, which
became HI2 in 1976. There has been no comment from Albus Dumbledore in Washington D.C,
however reports state that precautionary evacuations of the city’s centre have begun as of ten
minutes ago.”

“Come on, Molly,” Gideon muttered, turning agitatedly and breathing shakily and breaking the
silence with a plea that Remus realised was directed to the phone in his hand, pressed up against his
ear. “Come on, Moll, come on now.”

Percy turned. His face was haunting.

“They’ll–”

Remus closed his eyes.

“They’ll be okay?” His voice was thick with tears. “They’re– are they—?”

The beat of silence that met him was almost nausea-provoking; it was unspoken, the Weasley’s
were primarily office workers. Bureau consolites. Arthur worked in on-site biological
experimentation. The twins were still in training. It’s a goddamn Monday.
Gideon’s phone went to voicemail, and Percy’s face dropped, lip quivering. He shook his head,
teary.

“No,” he moaned, quietly, “no–”

“Perce–”

“Call her again,” he demanded, pointing, crying, “call her again. Call her again.”

“Percy,” said Fabian, walking over and pulling him into a hug; he instantly began to wail, call her,
call her; “Percy. Percy. Percy.”

His cries, hollow and gutturally painful, charged with the grating sounds of ghosts in a townhouse
and the echo of love so strong a previous life could not rip it apart, they rang, like a funeral bell.
Gideon called her again. There was no answer.

Lily, from where she was stationed with her head on a grieving Dorcas’ shoulder, looked up;
looked at Remus. They had not spoken much. It was of his own doing. He knew it was unfair on
her—he felt the curdling guilt in his gut knowing that he was her only comfort, that she was
probably going through something alike to him, the trauma of being something and then
discovering that something was an entire built-up myth; discovering that a war you were dragged
into happened to be a war that was written for you, the fineprint on cavernous walls off the Earth’s
fragile crust, but he could not handle any more fire. It had burnt him out. He had been feeling the
heat prickling against his fingers from where he had had to check her pulse for a week. It had not
abated. Lily had burnt something transcendent into him and he could not seem to tame the
infection, third degree burning behind his eyelids every time he closed his tired eyes; each blink.

So perhaps he was a terrible friend, but the way it felt—it was as if he was going to go into cardiac
arrest. Every time he relived it he lost a bit more of himself, he was selfish, sick, and he was dying,
and here, Percy was crying, his home burning, Lily was not. He looked at her. She was not
burning. Here, she was a friend, a nurse. Sorrow breeds sorrow and eternal cold, ferns on the
Marlott Moors; the healer, she gives life. She takes it away.

Lily side-stepped in front of him, cupped her palms against his cold cheeks, once, twice, and then
pulled him into an unlawful hug. Over everything, she gives.

Her hair smelled like strawberries. It smelled like ash. A scorching fire, or a hot water bottle
against stomach cramps. Remus did not cry—he felt mighty numb watching the walls of HI1 burn
—but managed to grip three of his fingers on one hand into his palm on the other around the small
of her back to create some semblance of a locked embrace, some semblance of reciprocation—he
misses her. By God, he misses her.

He kissed the top of her head, and his lips tingled, as if she had transferred a little piece of her
magic unto him to repair the damage that was bleeding through him. It reminded him of something
the eccentric Pandora always says–magical problems, magical solutions.

(That night, upon her nightly briefing, she came into his room with mussed hair and soot on her
cheek.) (He wiped it off and he smiled.)

And so time went on despite the fact that it felt like it should have stopped; it took a while, but they
confirmed the casualties (thirty-three) and, more importantly, found Arthur Weasley’s body.

He was the only Weasley that they were able to identify amongst the rubble and the ruins. When
the sun set and the flames died and the embers lay like fine, fifty-year-old dust on the streets of
Westminster it was Arthur Weasley who lay to be the martyr of a forlorn family. And whilst
Gideon channelled anger and tried to track down his niece and nephew, and Fabian floated around
like a ghoul of a man, Remus didn’t see Percy for two, three weeks. He stopped coming to James’
sessions. He stopped coming to eat. Remus would sit by the lake and Oliver would pass him on his
way into the woods; he’d raise his eyebrows in what was a clear question of concern and the boy
would just give him a sad look and shake his head, minutely.

He felt helpless. He was not used to this.

Because it hadn’t just been the death and the mourning and the grieving that he could not abate.
Remus had long established that he could not put a protective sheen around the world as he wished
to do—as he had longed to do with Sirius’ dying frame in his crumbling hands—he knew, now,
that his agency was not enough. He knew that because he was quite sure, now, that instead of a
foreign dream it had been an unconscious strife. In other terms; he had tried, and he had failed. He
had attempted to protect all that he loved and instead of his shield extending, it just broke
—shattered, into a million pieces when the shockwave from the diary rippled through him, threw
him out of his body like an astral projection and kept a sliver of him there for the moments in
which his hands are not his hands and he does not know who he is—the shield had broke. And
instead of ending up with himself and everyone around him protected he ended up with less, as his
own protection was gone, and he could not abate that either. He could not do anything except
mourn an endless concept. It grew back like foreign skin over an infected abrasion; he woke up
everyday and it was stinging, like a scab on his eleven year old knees after falling off his bike, and
he was mourning a death that had not died, in Sirius; he was mourning a person that still existed, in
him.

“Do you think death is the end?” Astoria would ask, sitting beside him on the crisp grass.

She had known people who had died at Malfoy Manor, on both sides. Remus had been mourning
people since his father at four years old. She was what the highest deities had blessed her to be. He
was what his dagger had made him.

“I think the end can happen long before death,” Remus would reply.

“But what are you, then, after that?” she’d ask, and he did not have an answer.

Eventually she stopped asking.

II.

They destroyed the ring, two weeks in.

Remus didn’t see much of Regulus, as he had assigned himself to code-breaker duty (Jul had
started calling it the “decryption crew”, though Remus wasn’t sure that that was going to catch on)
to attempt to unravel the charred mystery that came with the diary’s remnants. Mary, Lily and
James—once Lily had gotten the entire rundown from the vagabond Horcrux-hunting pair
themselves and had been given time to come to terms with the fact that she was fire incarnate—had
begun on her ‘lessons’, her ‘training’, whatever the hell that entailed, and Marlene, the brave
woman that she was, took up the mantle of head as Sirius lay in his room behind wards that Remus
still could not bring himself to pass through.
He’d taken up jobs here and there; things he could do. Sometimes he’d go out to entertain the kids.
Jul was joining them increasingly, besotted with Isabela—anyone could see it—alongside the witch
girls, arm-in-arm with Astoria on a daily basis. Outside of that, he’d stationed himself on cross-
species relations, which was really just a fancy way to say that he was spending most of his time
trying to track down any remaining personnel from the twin hunter organisations. Unless there was
an underground comms service that Remus had not been able to tap into—he doubted it—or they
had gone entirely wireless—possible, but unlikely—the operation had entirely fallen. HI2 was a
ghost town.

He’d been spending more time with Jul, upon employing them to be his service-witch (said
jokingly) to perform whatever locative spells they might need. They, however, had proved to be a
spectacularly bad influence in a beaded skirt and a trenchcoat, and Remus found himself going for
fag breaks more often than actually working.

“So,” they said, during one of these aforementioned breaks, magically lit cigarette between their
teeth, “youse destroying the ring tomorrow?”

“Apparently,” Remus muttered, shivering, attempting to light his cigarette with his crappy lighter
out of pure spite toward Jul and their snappy fingers.

“Sounds boring,” they replied, tucking their hair behind their ears as it blew ridiculously in the
wind.

Remus turned to them and they looked at each other for a moment, and then began to laugh. It was
a sort of oddly melancholic wheeze kind of thing, collars upturned and noses red in the bitter cold.

He tried it once last time but, predictably, the flame of his lighter blew out almost as soon as he lit
it up, so he sighed and accepted defeat. Jul was already grinning, an absolute shit-eater, by the time
he turned, snapping their fingers once and lighting up the end of his fag like it was absolutely
nothing.

He puffed out and shot them a glare.

“Cunt,” he muttered.

“Yep,” they said, and that was that.

Seven of them were tasked with destroying the ring; the ‘inner core’, if you will. James, Marlene,
Remus, Dorcas, Mary, Regulus, Pandora. Everyone who felt due to watching it crumble. Snapped
like twigs in Autumn, God, Sirius deserved it the most; they carried him with them. All of them, in
some way or another.

But it had been futile—and this, here, is where the whole ‘helpless’ ideal comes into play—for
Pandora had portkeyed them up to rural Canada, in a clearing in the woods, and Remus had not
been able to handle it.

He had really, really thought it would be okay, actually—it was so goddamn fast, so fast—they had
arrived, ring in tow, it was here and now, but it was not—it was two weeks ago and Sirius was
lying on the floor and he looked at Mary and she was not the bright-eyed, honey-smiled firecracker
woman standing in front of him but gaunt and powerless; the clearing grass a reproach for the
death that lay waste upon it.

(His throat had constricted so deeply that he saw stars and he hadn’t even realised that Pandora had
apparated him away until he felt a gritty road underneath his palms instead of soft grass. He threw
up everything he had on the side of the road, and she said nothing. Just rubbed his back.)

She took him home and left again, and he crawled into bed with heavy limbs and woke when it
was dark to Dorcas’ hand in his hair. There was a bloody gash on her right cheek and soot all over
face. She was smiling.

“Did you do it?” he murmured, bleary. She nodded.

“Yeah,” she whispered, “we’re almost there, Remus. We’re almost there.”

He did not feel almost there. He felt so far from almost there that it was extraordinary.

And yet when the sun rose over the lake, two days later; when the ripples shone amber and mauve
and new beginnings, he shook off his limbs. Prodded his arm a bit to make sure that it was his and
not some strange growth of himself, and, upon a rousing by both Dorcas and something that
smelled really good, got up. Went around the long way to avoid Sirius’ room, but went downstairs
regardless, to a bustling breakfast kitchen.

“Morning, sunshine,” said Mary as he entered, slurping her tea obnoxiously.

The amount of food was, to put it colloquially, insane. Not that it was any sort of overkill
considering the amount of people that would come to consume it. It was set out like a buffet; plates
lining the long table, up and down, piles of fried eggs and french toast and normal toast and bacon
strips. The room washed an overwhelming feeling of early-20’s Hackney nostalgia over Remus;
the source becoming quite evident when he noticed that Mary had cooked. She was sitting (rather
proudly) in front of a huge bowl of saltfish and a plate of bakes. Remus eyed the tomato choka and
the roti by her side; his stomach growled. She peered over her glass and picked up the plate in front
of her, and Remus thought, for a second, he saw a ring of fire dissipate from the circular wooden
platter it had been standing on.

Mary offered it to him. It was the plate of bakes.

“Bake?” she said, innocently. Remus blinked and then took one and tore off a bite without even
dipping it in anything. He hadn’t realised how hungry he was.

“Is that not dry as fuck?” Dorcas groaned, walking behind Mary’s side of the table, in which there
was one empty chair beside her and then Andromeda, Ted, Marlene, Parvati and Astoria in that
order. The three elder vampires were having what looked like a ravishingly hilarious conversation
that had Marlene in so much laughter she couldn’t manage to bring her forkful of french toast to her
mouth, and Astoria and Parvati were throwing grapes into each other's mouths.

Dorcas put her plate down—boiled eggs and soldiers—and pulled the chair out with what
should’ve been a deafening scrape that Remus barely even heard over the happy conversations.

Mary reached out a brave hand and stole one of her soldiers almost immediately, and Dorcas’ jaw
dropped.

“You bitch!” she gasped, and Mary giggled, trying to shove the toast into her mouth. “You have a
whole fucking plate!”

“Yeah, but I didn’t get any toast,” Mary said, muffled with her mouth full. “Benjy took it all.”

She reached out a hand to her right and Remus turned to see Benjy Fenwick sitting opposite and
diagonal where his best friends were sitting, beside James and Caradoc Dearborn. He had 5 pieces
of buttered toast piled up on his plate.
“Hey,” he said, pointing at her, “I need my carbohydrates, Macdonald.”

“Other people need their carbohydrates, too,” James pointed out, head on his hands and plate in
front of him long clean. Benjy’s jaw dropped, but it was Fabian, weary and surviving, who turned
and responded.

“Why are you talking as if you’re one of those people?” he said, laughing. “Fucking vampire.”

“Fucking hunter,” James shot back. As if to prove his point James skirted underneath Benjy’s arm
and stole half a slice of buttered toast from him, shoving it into his mouth whole with a disgusting,
crumb-filled laugh, and Benjy had his small dagger out before Remus could even blink.

And he thought, for a second, that Benjy was genuinely angry—that he was going to genuinely hurt
him—and he probably did when he pressed his blade to James’ throat and nicked a line in his skin,
pressing the blade flat to burn him, but it all seemed entirely too… light-hearted for a vampire
amongst a group of hunters. James hissed, mouth still full of toast yet fangs on full display and
Benjy grimaced and pressed a palm directly into his face to shove him away, as if he were a dog.

“You’re disgusting, Potter,” he said matter-of-factly, taking his knife back and pointing at him with
it. James grinned at him, and then at Fabian, who was smiling, too.

“I know,” he said, and then—in a blurred limbed movement—darted to steal another slice of his
toast from the plate, and Benjy lunged forward with the knife again.

And suddenly the knife and the toast were in the air. They were both ripped straight out of the
boy’s hands, and before they even got the chance to look up and register what the hell had just
happened Pandora was walking through the open door directly behind them, two fingers of her
right hand pointed outwards as she levitated them.

Her left arm was in a sling. This was something that Remus missed, that Mary had told him the
morning after their expedition. The ring had been destroyed and, unsurprisingly, Pandora had been
the one to do it. After a tribulus trial she had rained down power as only she can, and, while the
ring burnt to smithereens so had her arm; charred to a crisp. Like Dumbledore’s.

It was temporary—it had already begun to heal, tapping into her magic to repair itself. The working
hypothesis was that it was the last sliver of the curse clinging on to the closest sustenance that it
could find. “Horcruxes are tricky like that,” Mary had told him; “they’re built to stay alive, and
they’ll cling onto whatever they can find to do so. Like a flea. They can’t just be squished; you have
to drown them.”

(Mary, who had grown up feeding a litter of stray cats in the back alley of her home in San
Fernando, was very well-versed in fleas, she’ll have you know. Remus still found the analogy
fucking hilarious.)

In the end, Pandora was okay, on the mend, mostly satisfied with herself and her calculations re:
the potion she had created to imbue enough venom into the blades, for it had been that accuracy
that had prevented it from harming her any further. They were unsure of long-term physical effects,
but as of present even with one arm out of commission she was fine enough to flick her two fingers
to the side and send both levitated items hurtling, hitting the wall with a clatter and a spray of
crumbs onto the floor.

“No violence at the table, boys,” she said, blithely, walking in with Alice Longbottom (who had
been the one bringing her periodic bowls of soup upstairs while she worked tirelessly) at her tail.
She also whacked Benjy round the head as she passed, but he simply jerked back up and looked
forlornly at the wall in an almost comedic mirror of James.

“My knife,” said Benjy, sadly.

“My toast,” echoed James. He pouted.

Remus, slightly staggered by all of this, took another bite out of his dry bake; Mary rolled her eyes
and flourished the bowl of saltfish under his nose. He grinned. There was a line of three seats free
between Benjy and Oliver Wood, who was ripping off pieces of bread and balling them up to throw
at Parvati and Astoria when they opened their mouths for the grape. He chose the middle one,
opposite Dorcas, and was glad of it when a butter knife barely skimmed his chair, thrown by an
angry Astoria at a dodging Oliver after getting a mouthful of bread.

“Astoria!” Marlene hissed from two seats down, craning her neck to reprimand her. “No knife
throwing when the humans are present!”

“Sorry,” she said, looking innocent. But Remus saw her stick her middle finger up at Oliver when
Marlene wasn’t looking.

And Remus piled his plate up heavily, that morning, with eggs, crumpets and croissants, bakes and
flatbread and a plate of pyaaz kachori that James made, telling him how they come from Rajasthan
with pride and how they come fried or baked but these ones are fried and warning him they’re a bit
spicy and watching with eager eyes as Remus tried one—they were incredible, he had three. This
became sort of a thing; Remus didn’t have to move much, even though the plates were spread far
and wide up the table, for people ended up passing food to him without him even asking—and it’s
not as if he could say no. He looked up from his makeshift fried-egg sandwich and saw Dorcas
grinning at him, and thought for a second that maybe this was all her doing—maybe it was all a
get-Remus-to-eat project that had succeeded, before realising that was absurd and this was
probably what they had been doing for the past two weeks, he just hadn’t been up to witness it.

He swallowed and quirked an eyebrow.

“What?”

“You know what that reminds me of?” she asked, inclining her head to the fried egg sandwich. He
shook his head. She nudged Mary. “Oi, this includes you, too.”

Mary turned, disoriented and pulled harshly out of a blasé conversation with James. “What does?”

She gestured back to Remus’ plate. “The fried egg,” she said. “Do you remember when we were
still training, and we went on that expedition with McGonagall in Portugal? Goblin rehabilitation
case?”

“And we snuck off to go watch that local restaurant try and make the world's biggest omelette,”
Mary finished like clockwork, and Dorcas laughed heartily; clicked her fingers and nodded.

“Yes! Yes! So many eggs cracked,” she said. Remus, looking between the two of them, grinned
helplessly.

“It was so stupid,” Mary laughed, “didn’t we get lost after that?”

“It ended late,” said Remus. “And then they had that celebration party after they actually broke the
record, and you–” he pointed to Mary, “–got drunk on that lethal Portuguese wine and started
speaking in broken GCSE Spanish to try and communicate.”
“And then you went home with that Italian guy,” Dorcas said, and Mary’s jaw fell wide open.

“Oh, God,” she said, dropping her head into her hands. “I completely forgot about him.”

“I didn’t,” Remus said, laughing, “we had to cover for you and say you got kidnapped by fucking
Goblins, remember? And then when you snuck back into the hotel we ripped your clothes to try
and make it look realistic–”

“And you ruined that one blouse that I loved completely aimlessly because we were idiots and
didn’t realise–”

“–Goblins aren’t even fucking violent,” Dorcas finished with a laugh. Remus grinned and shoved
the remainder of his sandwich into his mouth.

“Well,” said Mary, dipping her bake into the choka, “they aren’t violent unless you’re a gay little
Welsh boy who speaks too loudly and spooks them.”

“I didn’t know it was there, okay!” Remus whined, squeezing his eyes shut and throwing his head
back like a petulant child. His face hurt from laughing. He thought about the one scar up his back,
bumping over his spine from when he had accidentally provoked a Goblin and felt the wrath of her
sharp nails, and all he could do was laugh.

Dorcas took a sip from her mug and Mary leant her head on her shoulder, cackling slightly. Remus
felt alight in the best way possible.

“What are we talking about?” asked Andromeda, flicking her brown hair over her shoulder and
turning, smirk playing on her lips, “I want to be involved.”

“Remus getting attacked by a Goblin,” said Dorcas, blithely, and Andromeda quirked an eyebrow.

“Goblin’s aren’t violent,” she said. Remus groaned.

“This one was, okay?” he said in mock-anger, laughing despite himself. Benjy, who had apparently
been listening in, turned around to join the conversation too.

“Goblin isn’t that embarrassing,” he said. “They have the sharp claws, even if they don’t use them.
You know what is embarrassing, Dorcas?”

Her face fell.

“Don’t you dare, Fenwick.”

“Having a cat scratch that got infected and telling everyone that it was a vampire bite.”

Her jaw dropped.

“You promised you would never tell anyone about that!”

“You what?!” said Mary, spluttering through her laughter, as Andromeda burst into cackles.

“We were on an apparition case a few years ago and the owner of the house was like a crazy cat
lady, okay?” said Dorcas, exasperatedly. “And cats don’t like me—you know that! So it scratched
me, and it got all gross and infected and I ended up having to go on antibiotics and wear a wrap
around it and you were coming to visit a week after,” she gestured to Mary, “so I told you it was a
vampire bite and swore this fucker to secrecy, but I guess a pinky promise means nothing
nowadays…”
Her slowly-growing-shriller voice was drowned out slightly by the laughter, and by this point
James and Marlene and even the kids had tuned in, following along with the conversation. James
leaned forwards.

“If we’re talking about embarrassing injuries,” he said, eyes flickering to Marlene. “One time Marls
ripped my finger off. Like, clean off.”

Every head turned to Marlene, whose jaw was wide open.

“I did not! That was Sirius!”

Jame’ face faltered. “Was it? It was like 200 years ago, to be fair, I don’t remember–”

“It was absolutely Sirius,” said Marlene, rolling her eyes. “We were in Naples and I had gone on a
two week cruise—I remember this, ‘cause it was my first one after being turned. I felt like a kid
going on their first day of school, and I was so worried that like I would accidentally hurt someone
or that something would go wrong and it would become a nightmare, but nothing did–and then I
come home and these two idiots are covered in blood and the almighty Sirius fucking Black is
trying to fit James’ finger back on like he’s trying to fit a square through a triangular hole, and I
remember thinking, I should’ve been worried about the nightmare back home.”

“How did you get it back on?” Astoria asked, bewildered, craning her neck so her hair almost fell
into a bowl of soup in front of her, and James wriggled the accuséd finger.

“Had to find a witch,” he said. “But we couldn’t for five years.”

“So, James–” Marlene cut off here, laughing so hard she couldn’t speak, “James made Sirius carry
it in his pocket for five whole fucking years until we found a witch.”

“In his pocket?!” Benjy almost screeched, and then threw his head back and guffawed, falling
backwards slightly and crumpling onto James himself, who had a lopsided, sheepish grin on.

“Oh my God, you’re a fool,” said Dorcas, chuckling into her orange juice.

“It was his fault! I didn’t wanna carry the thing!”

“I wish you guys just grew limbs back like starfish,” said Mary, absently, leaning on her hand.
“That would be so much cooler.”

“I can make you do things with my mind and you want cooler?” Andromeda deadpanned, and
Mary laughed at her reproach. She plucked a grape from the remnants of her plate and threw it at
her playfully, and Andromeda swerved inhumanly fast to catch it in her mouth.

She bowed. Parvati turned to Astoria.

“Why can’t you do it like that?” she asked, and Astoria’s jaw dropped in mock-indignancy.

“I’m trying, okay! Here, just do it one more time–”

Oliver's next bread dough ball was vaporised in mid air by Mary, who sent a shot of fire so easily it
looked like Spider-Man shooting his webs. The dough disintegrated and sprinkled ash all over the
fried egg platter, and the rest of the table complained for the next half an hour.

(James and Marlene ate the ashy eggs, cheersing a piece of toast in the air.)

Remus grinned, as the sun came up, sipping his maté (handed down by Isabela who was feeding
everyone she could dig her claws into) and letting himself sit, simply, silent, as the world went by.
It was a lovely morning, the shawl shrugged off of him, surrounded by the people he loved most in
the world and then some; filled with an insane amount of food. The guide to the heart, as one may
say.

Regulus appeared after about half an hour, striding through the door like he owned the place.

“Witch,” he said, without any preamble. Remus focused in on his face, and didn’t even notice the
candles in his hands until he spoke again. “I need your help.”

“Yes, vampire?” said Mary, innocently.

Regulus looked rather dumbly down at his candles and then back again.

“Fire,” he said, simply, as if it was obvious. Andromeda rolled her eyes.

“You really wouldn’t believe that Sirius has the better way with words, would you?” she muttered
sarcastically to no one in particular. It made Remus smile. He could, actually. He could definitely
believe that.

Mary looked baffled, but also very used to this.

“You want me to light it here? What do you need it for?”

Regulus murmured something incomprehensible, and if Remus didn’t know better–he didn’t know
better—he would think that he was nervous, or embarrassed.

“What?”

“Séance,” he said, glumly. “Trying to contact someone who might know how to break the code.”

The table was quiet. Well, quieter—the kids were in avid conversation about something stupid
down the end of the table. Regulus and his white candles were none of their business.

“Would it not be more practical for me to light the candles upstairs instead of here?”

Regulus narrowed his eyes. Remus knew this one. The “you’re right but I am not going to admit
that you’re right” glare, hilariously laid upon his young face.

“Can you just light the fucking things, please?” he said, agitatedly, evidently wanting to leave. The
curse sounded so hilariously foreign in his accent.

Mary stood up, and Dorcas pushed her chair out as far as it would go with a scrape.

“Careful, everyone,” she joked, “Mary Macdonald’s on the loose.”

Mary scoffed and wiggled her fingers in Dorcas’ direction, letting sparks fly off of them; she
yelped and jumped out of the way.

“You’re gonna hold them?” asked Mary, back to Regulus, turning to see the candles still in his
hands. He looked down at them, then looked back up. Shrugged, so incredibly resignant, though
Remus was sure there was an amused twinge to the curve of his ivory gold lip.

“Do your worst, witch,” he said, and Mary grinned.

“Challenge accepted, bloodsucker,” she replied, and Remus leaned back, slightly, as she clasped
her palms together and pulled them apart, fire manifesting between them.

She dwindled, for a moment, as the fire grew. It crackled and spun in circles in the space just above
her palms as she pulled her hands apart, slowly, moving so one was on top of the other, like a
contained jar and a lid. Her natural pose once charged had them both palm-up at her side, the
natural fighting stance, and her release was so fast that Remus could’ve blinked and missed it.

She pulled her fourth and fifth finger back slightly to focus it on the first two and jerked her hand
outwards; the right and then the left; and with each movement the fire shot straight along of the
tips of her fingers and glided across the room—barely six feet, but a substantial length—and hit the
candles. It skimmed heat over Benjy and James’ heads and they ducked instinctively. Remus felt
the warmth pass him by.

And in a third movement she pulled her fingers in and released them in a half-circular motion, as if
she was skimming a stone across the lake, and fire shot out of her palms again except this time it
was aimed at Regulus; he jerked out of the way, not enough to miss it completely but enough to
only be skimmed by it on his back and the fire hit the doorframe and licked up the corner, settling
there quite comfortably.

James put out the fire clinging to the back of Regulus’ shirt with a tea towel. Mary gave a sheepish
smile and a bow, as the majority of the rest of the table began to clap.

“I liked this shirt,” Regulus muttered, twisting around to look at where it had singed through to his
back. Candles still lit in his hands. He shot Mary a dirty look, but there was no heat behind it.

“Yeah, and I quite like this house, too,” Dorcas drawled, pushing Mary by the shoulder as she tried
to sit down. Mary frowned at her as if she didn’t know what she was talking about.

She pointed at the corner of the room that was literally on fucking fire.

“Fix it!”

“Right, fine, I’m going,” Mary said, as if this was all a giant inconvenience to her. She grinned and
walked backwards to circle the table. “It’s not flammable, you know. We’d be fine.”

“My shirt isn’t fine,” Regulus grumbled. James stifled a laugh at this, but it was incredibly
obviously repressed, and Regulus narrowed his eyes at him and then softened them in entirely
equal measure.

“Wait!” came a small voice from the end of the room. Everyone turned as a flash of red hair
appeared from around the corner.

Lily, in a blue apron—she had been cooking, of course she had—came pattering down the room.
She paused halfway down the table, looked at the flames and bit her lip.

“I can do it,” she said. “Let me try.”

“Are you sure?” asked James. Lily raised an eyebrow.

“What, you don’t believe in me?”

“Of course I do,” James said, gaping indignantly. “But there are more people than just me in here
to burn, you know. And the other day you almost burnt down the entire willow tree while trying to
siphon Mary’s fire–”
“The tree shouldn’t have been standing there,” she said, dismissively, and James barked with
laughter.

“The tree has been standing there for 200 years. You have been a phoenix for two weeks.”

“No, I say we should let her,” Mary put forth, nodding, “I think she’s ready. She did it the other
day.”

“Yes, and that was brilliant, but also on a smaller scale,” James said. “If she takes too much she
could hurt herself this early on, you told us that.”

“It’s barely even two palms worth, it’s fine–” came Mary’s reply, almost simultaneously with
Lily’s “I’m not going to hurt myself!”

“Okay,” he said, high-pitched, raising his hands in acquiescence. “Okay, do it. Do it.”

Lily smiled, and James' eyes met hers. His voice lowered to something softer. More tender.

“You know I believe in you,” he said, quietly, and she nodded.

“I know,” she replied. And she smiled. It was small, but it was there. “I know.”

Lily took small steps, skirting past Mary in the narrow space and around the table to get to the
doorframe. She stood below it—standing five-foot-five against six-foot-eight—and yet she puffed
her chest out. Held her chin up. She looked eons taller than she was. Brilliance, soft skin and sweet
sunset hair.

She raised her hands, jaw clenched, concentration all over her face, and the whole room went
silent. It was as if all of the carbon dioxide had been sucked out of it. Nothing happened for a
moment.

And then, something began to move. Light up. Her sleeves fell down to her elbows and Remus
blinked, noticing lines of golden appearing through her skin like her veins were being pumped full
of blistering sunlight; they broke off in twos, threes against her upper arm and her wrist. Splitting
off like they had been hit with a duplication spell. By the time they had twirled and gotten to her
fingertips they had taken up so much space that her entire hands were glowing a soft, orange-
turning-red light, as if she was the sunset as it magnified the clouds pink and purple and violet
galore. The flames began to dissipate.

She closed her eyes, and Remus could see the light trickling up her neck; behind her ears. Her hair
seemed to be a darker red. The flames dissipating, shrinking into itself like a hermit. Lily was
absorbing it.

It was spectacular, actually. Remus had never seen anything like it. It was fire, power and magic,
and sure, she was struggling but with her chin held high and her hands slowly clenching, she had
full control. Fire, controlled. Like she had both of her hands on the wheel, and she was driving into
blissful oblivion. She’s behind the wheel and she doesn’t know how to drive, but she’s getting the
hang of it on the empty dirt road.

The flames disappeared; they might not have been there at all. Lily squeezed her eyes shut and her
mouth fell open to let out a puff of air that might have been ash, and her body began to cool down;
the luminescence tamed. Remus hadn’t realised how hot the room had gotten until he inhaled
warmth.

Lily opened her eyes and turned, and they were red.
The pieces broke off in the background like shards of a mirror covering a truly more gruesome
fate, and the white walls of the dining hall became dark, whistling trees, her hands bloody; the red
centrepiece. Like her eyes were the core of the earth; like they shifted something horrible in
Remus, some gut movement that pricked holes in his lungs, drew his heartbeat faster, but he kept
her gaze, blinking it away until memory and reality did not blend together but were clasped in his
two, taut fists, one hot against each palm, and today he was in control. Today he knew everything.
She was in power. So was he.

He blinked, and breathed in, deeply. She blinked, and her eyes were green again.

She smiled.

Remus, so deep in his thought and the feel of her heat on his cheeks, jumped viscerally when Mary
began to clap. James was grinning at her, and Lily was grinning back.

“Look at you!” Mary said encouragingly, skirting around the table to engulf her in a hug. “I knew
you actually listened to what I was teaching you!”

“I told you,” she said, dismissively, “the tree shouldn’t have been standing there.”

She was deflecting it, dismissing it like it was nothing, but Remus could see by the smile
attempting to attack her lips and the light in her eyes that she was filled with pride and got off on
the affirmation. It made him so very happy.

Regulus slinked back upstairs to carry through with his seance, Remus finished the food on his
plate and life plouged on like water rushing along a gutter.

He began to attend Lily’s lessons after that. Eased himself into it; watched from the window,
watched from a balcony (he could not bring himself to watch from the balcony, the balcony that
held such a sweet memory, but the thought was there.) It wasn’t as bad as he had presumed. She
was not exploding light and incandescence and glory, not yet at least.

They were starting small. It was summoning flames in the palm of her hand; up her wrist.
Restraining it when it begins to lick up her hair and regulating it, stopping it before it gets too far.
Exercising control.

And, perhaps most importantly, alongside all of these, Lily was learning the difference between
flammable and non-flammable. Lily was learning how to summon fire that burns and how to
summon fire that heals. This was something Mary was particularly well-versed in—the
technicalities of the flames, knowing when you need to summon beauty and when you need to
summon torture. Lily and Mary seemed to be predisposed to become fast friends during their
training sessions, and that they did; walking around the grounds, going into the city together,
looking out for each other.

And Lily cut her hair—well, Mary cut it for her—about three weeks after Malfoy Manor. It
previously hung thick and proud down to her ribcage, like a sparkler–long enough to fizzle down
and down when she gave in to the flames—but she cut it to hang in a bob, just above her shoulders,
thin bangs framing her forehead. It suited her immensely. Remus didn’t know this for certain—she
didn’t tell him herself—but he was quite sure it was for practicality. To save time. So she didn’t
have to use all of her efforts in her hair, magical like Medusa; so it didn’t get in the way.

He found out, anyway, ‘cause a couple of days after this Remus was sitting in the living room with
Marlene, and she came and asked if he wanted to come and see her session. He obliged.
“Sorry,” she said, nervously, as they walked side by side through the corridors. They passed
Miyuki Greengrass, back from a two week trip on business, who gave them both a polite smile.
Remus frowned after she had passed.

“For what?”

“Dragging you away, I mean,” she said. “You don’t have to come. I just thought it would be nice
for you, especially, to see how far I’ve come. I’ve got a lot better, you know.”

“I don’t doubt that for a second, Lil,” said Remus, pushing through the back doors, and she shot
him a warm smile and hopped a little down the steps. “I love your hair, by the way.”

“Thank you,” she said, running her dainty fingers through it. She jogged ahead a little bit. Remus
could see Mary and James waiting.

“Lupin!” James bellowed as he got close. They were standing just by the lake, barely a few feet
away from where Remus had fought the kids that one time, and Astoria had resisted the scent of
blood for the first time. He opened his arms wide and Remus knew not to question it this time–
knew, by now, that if James Potter wanted a hug, he was getting a hug.

James patted him on the back heartily. “I see the firefighters have dragged you down here, too.”

“Will you stop calling us that?” Mary groaned. James pulled back from Remus and grinned.

“Nope,” he said, happily. Lily rolled her eyes and pursed her lips in an obvious attempt to stop a
smile from escaping.

“Hey,” said Mary with a sweet smile, touching Remus gently on the arm. He hadn’t seen her for a
few days—she had been bustling around almost as much as Marlene was trying to run this damn
place, what with Lily and Regulus and Phoenixes and Horcruxes to keep an eye on—and so Remus
smiled and pulled her into a bear hug. They had always hugged like this—he basically ate her
small frame with his huge arms, always had—and they swayed a little along with the spring breeze.

She pulled back and smiled. It tugged up at a scar that ran over the corner of her mouth, and Remus
smiled too, knowing his own scars were tugging back and forth at his skin and remembering the
stories of every single one of them; the stories that Mary had been present for. She squeezed the
sides of his arms as a dismissive gesture and they fell apart. Mary stepped back and surveyed the
pair of them, as Remus took a side-step out of the line of fire—literally.

“Right,” she said. “We were gonna try the fusion, today, right?”

Lily grimaced. “Yes.”

“Do you think you can do it?”

She opened her mouth but no sound came out; she looked nervously at James, and then at Mary.
Both seemed unperturbed.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, eventually. “I mean, after what happened the last time–”

“My burns healed, Lily,” James said, gently, and Lily’s face screwed up.

“Barely,” she said. Remus cut in here.

“What’s the fusion?” he asked—all three heads turned to him, and he grinned, sheepishly. “Sorry.
Newcomer.”

Mary laughed. “It’s essentially—ah, how do I put this—Lily sort of, transferring her fire to another
person? Not like what happened with–” she cut off, and Remus felt a tug in his chest; more at the
walking on eggshells than anything else which was absurdly unfair so he shoved it away, “–it’s not
a healing gesture, more a trading of power. It works best with supernatural creatures ‘cause they
can feed off of each other’s energy sources—she engulfs them both in flames and they come out all
the more stronger, like they’ve been… I don’t know, plugged in.” She sighed, here, looking at Lily
and James and thinning her lips. “It’s very common in phoenix lore so we’ve been trying it but she
hasn’t really been able to do it and make it non-flammable at the same time, so James keeps…
well, burning.”

“I’m not complaining,” James said, putting his hand up. “For the record.”

“I am!” Lily groaned. “I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

“Isn’t that why you're using James, though?” Remus pointed out. “He heals.”

“Last time we tried it, he didn’t,” she said, somewhat sadly, “it was that bad he didn’t heal like
normal. Poppy had to make him a potion.”

“And if it doesn’t again, she can just make me another one,” James insisted, seeming utterly bored
with this entire debacle. “I’m 300 years old, guys, I can handle a tiny bit of fire.”

“Are you calling me small?” Lily deadpanned, hands on her 5’5 hips. Remus instantly got the idea
that she enjoyed frightening him by the way she was laughing at her own pun; and got the idea that
it wasn’t the first time by the way, after a grace period, the corners of James’ lips tugged upwards.

“And what if I am?” he teased, and Lily straightened up. Her face did not betray any emotion as
she turned to Mary and said, placidly;

“Alright, let’s do it. I want to burn his ass.”

“You–” James spluttered, and Lily’s face broke out into a smile, “you’re such a bitch.”

“A bitch who can burn you alive,” she replied. Total 360. She’s all talk.

“I’d love to see you try,” James jeered, holding out his right arm. Lily raised her own.

“Okay,” said Mary, blinking; she didn’t seem perturbed by this, and Remus didn’t blame her.
Lily’s antics and James’ teasing was something that he had grown quite accustomed to in the
respective times he had known them both. Their being together was a recipe for disaster.

“I’d step back if I were you,” Mary muttered, circling the pair of them to stand where Remus was,
facing the lake. “If she explodes it’s not going to be pretty.”

Remus felt a swoop of something that half resembled dread, half resembled excitement in the deep
of his stomach. He nodded and took a few steps back, angled himself so he could see them
perfectly.

“Okay, Lily,” Mary said, gently, “I need you to prepare yourself, yeah?”

She nodded, and closed her eyes.

“You’ve done this before. Find it in the pit of your chest. Latch onto it. Focus it in on your palms
and up your wrist; no further.”

Lily took a deep, deep breath, in through her nose and out through her mouth. She clenched her
fists and then stretched them out as far as she could, and Mary took a step back to stand beside
Remus.

“It usually takes a second,” she muttered, and Remus nodded, watching avidly. It did take a
second. It took a few, actually.

Sure enough, Lily’s fingers began to spark. The flames started there—not at her hair this time—and
sort of licked up her hands like a lit wooden splint would if you turned it upside down and let the
fire catch. It was alike to Mary’s, but not; where Mary’s fire was another entity, a foreign substance
in her palms, Lily’s seemed to be her own. It seemed to be everywhere and nowhere all at once.
Mary could call upon her powers, but Lily’s fire, Remus realised in a haze as the veins started to
sprout from her fingertips up to her wrist and the light covering of flames crackled around her
barely-there skin, was always there. An extension of herself that, upon seeing it, you couldn’t
fathom to have been anything but perpetual. 1054AD, a supernova appearing in the sky, a second
sun and a hundred thousand light years of strife to simply make her presence known.

She took another deep breath, chewing on her bottom lip, and the very tips of her hair began to
smoke. Remus could see incandescence start to twinge at the soft skin of her neck. Mary tutted.

“Too far, Lily!” she called, and Lily frowned. She seemed to groan a little bit and sag her
shoulders, of frustration, probably, but sure enough the veins travelling up her neck retreated like
they were being medically drained and her hair stopped smoking. Her frown was deeply etched
into her skin. She stood there, for about ten seconds, letting the fire engulf her forearms, and then
she opened her eyes. They were red.

“I think I’ve got it,” she called, wary, and James stepped forward. His eyes were serious and his
face was strong. He did not fear her in the slightest.

“The right fire?” asked Mary.

“I guess we’ll find out,” James muttered, reaching out his right hand; Lily reached out hers. They
could see nothing but each other as their palms greeted the other's wrist, and James gasped, but he
did not burn.

“Perfect, Lily!” Mary called encouragingly, as Lily’s flames engulfed James’ hand. He breathed
heavily, looking down at their joint skin, burning and burning, and then back up at her. He smiled.

“Told you I believed in you,” said James, softly, and Lily blinked, mouth open and highlighted a
sweet, sweet golden by the crackling of the flames. She smiled, and for a few seconds, they were
just in stasis. Power brewing at their fingertips.

And then James hissed and jumped back. He yanked his hand out of her grip but it was so short
notice that Lily’s grasp was too tight and she, in her surprise, stumbled forward. She let go as
James took a few vampiric paces back and the light disappeared completely.

They were plunged into unlit dusk, and it was suddenly uncharacteristically cold.

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry!” Lily said, taking a few steps forward to James; she was still steaming, but
he didn’t flinch.

“It’s fine,” James said, nodding avidly. He held his arm up in front of them and Remus watched as
the burn wounds—grossly red and peeling—reanimated themselves. His skin stitched itself back
together in five seconds, maybe seven, and he was basically as good as new.

“See?” he said, and Lily frowned.

“I don’t actually want to hurt you,” she groaned, pushing at his shoulder. “I was only joking.
Maybe we should try something else.”

“No!” said James, turning to Mary and Remus, who had both taken a few instinctive steps forward
to survey the damage. “You were so close! She was so close, wasn’t she, Mare?”

Mary winced. “I mean, yes, but if she can’t hold it–”

“She can,” James affirmed. “She can hold it. I don’t care. I’ll burn all you want.”

Lily tucked her hair behind her ears, but a stray bit fell forward. James reached out and
instinctively tucked it back, as if he wasn’t even thinking about what he was doing.

“One more time,” he said, nodding. “If you burn me again we can try something less dangerous.”

“One more time,” said Lily.

James smiled, and she blinked. Took a sharp breath in and then seemed to smile belatedly. Mary
clapped her hands together.

“Right, okay,” she said, turning to put a gentle arm on Remus’ shoulder and gesture for him to
move back a few paces. “You should still be able to tap into it easily, Lil.”

Lily nodded, taking a step back to her previous position, and James mirrored her. She squeezed her
eyes shut, clenched and stretched out her fist and sure enough the flames returned with ease—
almost effortlessly. Remus noticed the veins travel up her neck and then down again, before Mary
even had a chance to point them out. Her fire was more controlled. It was settling in her fists
comfortably.

She opened her eyes. “One more time, Potter.”

“You won’t hurt me,” James said, and it didn’t seem to be an affirmation for him rather than a
blanket statement. Nobody in the history of existence had ever spoken words that they had believed
more.

Lily took a deep breath, and then nodded sharply. She extended her arm, and he extended his.

They met in the middle, and Lily’s flames engulfed his hand as easily as fire engulfed a forest.

“Good,” Mary instructed, taking a step forward. “Good. Hold it, Lily. Hold it until it’s stable.”

Remus registered, by the strain on her golden-hazed face, that this was the hard part. She had to
stabilise herself before she could project. She squeezed her eyes shut, opened them, Locked eyes
with James, and he nodded.

It lasted longer than it did the last time. It passed the threshold, and Remus hadn’t been explicitly
told the signs but he was rather sure that he noticed the moment that it became safe for her to
proceed; in which the crackling flames lowered to a simmer, around their hands and their wrists.
When the flames in Lily’s left hand dissipated entirely leaving nothing but a warm glow, and was
transferred entirely into her right hand. When the flames were less like flames, individual and
crackling, and more like golden sunlight covering their hands in a cocoon of magic. A shell of
protection. Lily let out a deep breath.

“I think I got it,” she said, but it wasn’t a yell to Mary. It wasn’t something she wished to be
instructed of. They had passed that point—this was all down to her, now. All of it.

Remus wasn’t sure if he was seeing correctly through the haze and through the golden, but he was
quite sure that James squeezed her arm. Lily’s squeezed his back.

And then something extraordinary happened.

It was like a dam being broken. Water flooding in, uncontrollable and erratic except it wasn’t
water, it was fire, fire, licking up both of their arms like it had a mind of its own. It did have a mind
of its own, it was sunlight, swirling and curdling upon their skin and settling there quite
comfortably. The golden haze extended slightly, their hands gripped onto the other’s wrists, Lily’s
fingers indenting his skin and at the point in which her fingertips blessed him veins began swirling
up James’ arm too, thick golden and red against his brown skin. He gasped, closed his eyes, and let
it take him. They both let it take them.

The control was so evident, the way it shimmered. Nothing spat, nothing tried to be bigger than it
was, fit a mould that had cracks in it like crumbling brick. It was not Lily as a Phoenix, wings
made of fire and skin that is not skin and hands that are not hands but fire and yet are hands, also. It
was simply an encasement. Power, seeping through their veins, licking up their arms, down their
free arms, over their torsos and up their necks. Both of their faces glowed shiny, highlighted
golden, and it was nothing short of glorious.

Against the beautiful delicacy of the lake and the mauve painting of the encumbered dusk behind
them, it was one of the most beautiful things Remus had ever seen.

It lasted a good minute or two. Remus could not feel time. He was entranced. He turned to Mary at
one point, and she was just as entranced as him—her golden earrings reflected the dancing flames
just as spectacular as her eyes did, and her mouth was open, slightly. In a gape. The rarity of what
they were seeing hit him. Nobody, here, had ever seen this before. Lily’s Phoenix training was
touch and go, trial and error, dipping their toes into murky waters that could absolutely be filled
with biting sharks and yet here she was, defying all odds of existence and burning, burning bright
and glorious. Life and death incarnate, something inherent, something breaking free of lifelong
restrictions, something completely other to her and yet more of her than she could ever be.

It was obvious when the effect started to wear off. The flames began to slink lower, like a candle
on its last legs, and the veins of power seeping through them faded until they were faint. The
magnificence lessened to a throbbing ember, eventually dwindling down to just the place where
their skin was linked. The tender spots of ash beneath the pads of their fingers as they gripped onto
each other for dear life. The fire curdled and swam around their hands, circular and circular, until it
eventually dissipated. And it was quiet.

Lily opened her eyes first. They were green.

“Holy shit,” said Mary, taking two steps forward. Lily turned to her, and James opened his eyes,
too. He was slumping forward, slightly, still gripping onto Lily’s arm, as if he was dizzy. He
brought his other hand up to hold his head while Lily turned to Mary, who approached him, Remus
on her tail. It got pleasantly warmer the closer they got.

“Holy shit,” Mary gasped, and a smile grew on her face like lightning, reflected on Lily’s. Mary
reached out both hands to grip the sides of Lily’s head, her cheeks, and shake a little. “Evans, you
little genius, you did it! You did it!”
The both of them started to laugh, Lily’s face squished and grinning and absolutely delighted
between the cradling palms of Mary’s hands. She did not let go of James. He dropped his hand,
seemingly stable now, and a small smile appeared on his face, too. Mary cackled in absolute
triumph and dropped her hands, and Lily’s eyes met Remus’. She looked on the verge of happy,
happy tears.

“How do you feel?” Mary asked, looking between James and Lily with fervent curiosity. They
started to loosen their grip on each other but did not drop it completely. “How do you feel?”

“Like I could burn the fucking world to the ground,” Lily breathed, and she turned to look at
James. His eyes fell upon her and his face softened into something otherworldly.

“Like I could do anything,” he said, and it was to Mary, but it seemed like it was only to Lily.
Everything was only for Lily. “Like… like a shooting star.”

James and Lily let go of their hands, finally. There were splotchy finger marks on both of their
arms. Ash, or bruises, Remus couldn’t tell.

James grinned.

“Fuck,” he said, taking a giddy step back. Shaking out his arms and his head like he was a dog. He
banged a fist against his chest and splayed his hand against his neck. Lily grinned and stretched
herself. “Fuck. This is insane.”

“I know,” she said.

“I feel– I feel like we could destroy the fucking universe. I feel like… like I can uproot that tree,”
he said, pointing to a thin birch tree about twenty feet to their right—in an instant he was beside it.

He uprooted the tree.

“Jesus Christ,” Remus breathed.

James was back beside her in an instant, staggering in his power drunkenness, and took her head in
his hands.

“We could win a war,” he said, and she smiled, gripping his face back. “We could stop an
earthquake. We could kill Tom Riddle. Kill him personally. Go find all of his horcruxes and—and
fucking obliterate them, and still get home in time for dinner.”

“We could kill Tom Riddle,” Lily breathed, and her smile fell. “We could kill Tom Riddle.”

She turned to Mary, eyes bright, serious now. “Imagine if I did that with a Pureblood. Imagine if I
did that with Sirius. What kind of—I mean, the power surge would be insane, right?”

“I mean—logically, yeah,” said Mary, “the legend says that the stronger the power source the
more powerful the surge. And the longer it lasts. You guys will have to keep track of this - if it’s–”
she checked the time on her phone, “–18:16 now, make sure to check the time when the power
fades. It’ll give us something to work with–to base hypotheticals on. Oh, God, I have to tell
Pandora…” she trailed off, muttering to herself.

James, upon looking at her phone, immediately turned to pull his own out of his back pocket. He
threw it underhand across the garden and it skimmed the grass. And before Lily could even turn he
was in her back pocket, too, doing the exact same thing.
“What are you–” she started to ask, but James cut her off.

“Keys? Headphones? Credit card?” he asked, and she shook her head.

“No, they’re all inside, I– why–”

She didn’t get to finish, because upon the affirmation James grabbed her by the waist and hauled
her up like she weighed absolutely nothing. She screeched and banged on his back, wrapping her
legs around her waist and gripping onto the fabric of his shirt for dear life.

“Potter, what the fuck are you doing?!”

“Cooling off,” he grinned, and before she got to scream another expletive at him he was taking a
run up at the lake and jumping, at least twenty feet in the air with her in his arms, a tangle of mess
and limbs and Lily screaming as they plummeted into the deep of the cool lake with a splash that
left ripples hitting every single edge.

They resurfaced after a moment, Lily spluttering and coughing.

“You fucking asshole!” she screeched, hitting him with tiny, powerful fists, and he laughed
heartily. “Son of a bitch!”

He shook his hair out of his face and laughed, letting the water ripple at his neck, holding Lily
close to his chest as she screamed at him.

“You stupid fuck, oh my GOD–” she yelled, except her voice broke on the last word and she, too,
was laughing, and it seemed to be completely despite herself but she simply couldn’t stop. She
squeezed her eyes shut and wheezed, letting her dripping head fall against James’ neck in defeat,
and Mary thinned her lips in a smile as she watched them laugh.

“Well,” she said, turning to Remus, “I think that’s my work here done for the day.”

Remus grinned. “Yeah, I think it might just be.”

He looked out over the waters, where Lily was now lying on her back, fully clothed, hair swishing
around her in the water like a halo. James swam up behind her and pushed at the water, slightly, so
it rocked her as if she was lying on a wave, and she giggled.

“I think Dorcas is sharpening her knives,” Mary said, offhandedly. “Wanna go inside and annoy
her?”

Remus turned to her and raised an eyebrow. “Do you even have to ask?”

She grinned and linked his arm, and, God, Remus had missed this.

III.

The vampires from Hotel Transylvania—from London, those that had contacted them after Malfoy
Manor, wanting to help—arrived at the end of week 4, but many things happened before that.

For one, Remus’ wrist began to hurt.

“Narcissa broke it,” he muttered, to Poppy, sitting on the chair in her office as she examined it,
Dorcas by his side. She had been badgering him for three days about it before he went.

She gasped, unwillingly. Remus forgot that he had not told anybody about that.

Poppy, on the other hand, did not betray any emotion. He told her about how Pandora had fixed it,
and she nodded along, her eventual conclusivity cumulating around Pandora’s unstable magic, and
—alongside a once-over of the witch herself to check—had resulted in an easy fix, being a blue
potion that tasted, weirdly, like both Covonia and grass, and Remus’ arm in a splint for five days as
the bone reconfigured itself, for the truth was that the magic was wading, and his bone was was re-
shattering as a result.

Pandora was riddled with apologies. Remus shut them all down.

“You know, people in human hospitals have to have casts on for eight weeks to heal this,” he said,
walking down the hallway with her—Dorcas had been summoned away by a meeting regarding the
next expedition, Remus’ own briefing being that afternoon—he brandished his arm, which still
hurt but marginally less than it did before. The splint warmed his skin underneath it. “And I have to
wear this for five days and I’m good as new.”

“People in human hospitals don’t know up from down,” said Pandora, blithely, circling around to
his other side to link her arm in his. “The humans… they’re progressive in different ways to us.
Like, X-rays? MRi’s? Defibrillators? Absolutely brilliant.”

“What do you do to restart a heart?” he asked.

“Pray,” she replied, which made him laugh.

“Okay, but seriously,” he said, skirting to the side to let Benjy–who said hi to them both–pass,
“what can you do that they can’t? What are the limits?”

“Gosh, I don’t know,” she said, flustered by the question, “I mean, we have potions for basically
goddamn everything. What really matters is how effective they are. It’s very unpredictable.
Nobody’s ever been able to perfect something as mundane as a hangover cure that lasts longer than
six hours, but we have the world’s most effective coffee in the form of the Energize potion, which
tastes like Mountain Dew and can keep you awake for two days straight. What’s the formula?
Magic does what magic wants.”

“Where the fuck was that potion when I was hunting?” he muttered; she laughed, again.

“But,” she continued, “we can do scientific procedures that take a team of meticulous human
doctors and hundreds of dollars worth of equipment with ease. Like. Have you ever met Avni
Patil?”

Remus shook his head. “Relation to Parvati?”

“Her mother,” said Pandora, “she specialises in what we call couture, which is literally just the
French word for sewing; she’s essentially a plastic surgeon. She can weave herself into your cells,
and change your entire appearance down to the bone in maybe fifteen minutes. It hurts a little bit—
especially around the eyes—but for the most part it’s painless and brilliant for disguises; a million
times easier than Polyjuice which is, to be quite honest, going out of fashion, because it’s
impractical and tastes fucking disgusting.”

“That’s insane,” Remus said, “is it permanent?”

“It can be,” she said, simply. “For witches, usually, it’s a temporary fix, but vampires go to her for
permanent body modifications that they can’t do themselves. Stuff as simple as piercing someone’s
ears to nose jobs to bottom surgery. I think she’s in talks to do Lavender’s when she turns 18."

“What else?” asked Remus, entirely entranced. He knew the basics, but Mary had not grown up in
a witch’s society but a hunter’s, so a lot of this was entirely new to him.

“Well, they had chemo before us,” said Pandora, “but we got Hormone replacement therapy before
them. And we have HRT potions—both of them—and flu potions, instead of jabs. We have a more
effective epidural for childbirth, though you still have to put it in the spine—I’ve been trying to
figure that one out for six years.”

“So what are the drawbacks?”

Pandora pursed her lips, and shrugged. “Magic can’t do everything. It can’t cure everything. The
more magical solutions we have, the more problems arise. Humans—well, the smart ones—learn
from their past; there's influenza in the twenties, so they learn how to fight all flu strains in the
thirties, you know? But that’s the issue with magic. It’s not that there’s always going to be a bigger
problem. It’s that there’s always going to be a different problem. A new one.”

A pause, as they walked.

“Has anyone ever had the only person who survived basilisk venom and the only person who can
heal it in one house?” Remus muttered, sort of under his breath. It was a joke. It read like one,
anyway. They weren’t facing each other, but she squeezed his arm, shoulder to shoulder.

“No,” she said, softly, sympathetically, “no, they haven’t.”

Trial and error, it was in the stars. All they could do was try their best. This was, perhaps, the
biggest takeaway that Remus got from weeks of getting up against all the odds. James had said
something along those lines, during a nightly run-in in which Remus wanted a cup of tea and he
had an opaque bottle, arm in a sling.

“All we can do is be there for each other,” he’d said, a moment of solemn seriousness when Remus
had inquired about the burns on his arms, the potion Poppy was making upstairs. “Lean on each
other. Be constants for each other. It’s why I’m still wrangling those kids. It’s why Mary had the
idea to do our little breakfasts, feed each other our different foods. Camaraderie is touch and go at
the best of times when there are four different species under one roof, but without it we’d fall
apart. And he would win.” He took a breath; they were sitting against the wall, on the floor of the
hallway, Remus doesn’t even remember how they’d ended up there.

Remus stayed silent.

“It’s hard not to lose faith,” he’d continued, “but by doing what we’re doing, by staying close to
each other, loving each other… it means that when your hope dies you can displace it onto
something else. It means that if you can’t go on for yourself, you can go on for those around you.
That’s something that Tom Riddle doesn’t have.”

A pause.

“I’m going on for him,” said Remus, into the darkness.

“I know,” said James, nodding. Remus leaned his head onto his shoulder. Closed his eyes. “I know.

That had been perhaps a week prior to Remus’ own briefing on the mission, camaraderie and
comfort in Mary’s eyes as she sat, swinging his legs under the chair, and Regulus said with
something in his voice that might be care—which infuriated Remus to no end—that he could not
go, for he was injured.

He wasn’t that bothered, in all honesty. It was more bothering to him that Regulus was leading
them, despite the fact that to be quite honest it was his dues, he being the one to pinpoint the
location to a cave on the coast of Latvia, working tirelessly at the codex. Remus had seen him, out
of his window, running through the night; two, three, four A.M. He did not know where he went.
Regulus was an enigma in every sense of the word and they did not particularly get on; perhaps
Remus held harsh grudges or perhaps a deep part of him wished, for his own selfish gain, it had
been him instead of Sirius.

Regardless, they left. It was a five-day expedition. Remus took over most hands-on on-site duties,
Marlene assigning people to look at the diary in place of Regulus, assigning he to Dorcas and
Mary’s jobs (Lily got a break, however, for James was gone with them) which means that Remus
also took over their little fight club, which ended up with him getting relentlessly beat up and yet
still standing tall over the four vampires and two witches, laying on the floor as he nursed a bruised
lip and cradled an inflated hunter ego.

(Jul did not participate. They watched from the sidelines (aka the porch) with a piece of Victoria
Sponge cake and a carton of eggs that they threw at the kids when they got a bit too rowdy with
him. Remus appreciated it.)

And perhaps he had been out of commission for a few weeks, but it helped him to feel better,
taking on things that he could handle. He had battled perhaps his whole life with taking on more
than he could stomach. It was not something that related to Sirius—Remus’ struggles were not tied
to him at all, besides the carnal yearning that seemed to strike him every other hour and the feeling
of grief tied to his loss that was not lost—it was himself, his pain and how he was dealing with it,
that left him somewhat glad he had not gone to Latvia and somewhat happy that he could find
somewhere to be worth something. Worthfulness was a sentiment he had felt so little of that night
at Malfoy Manor that he had thought, in the immediate aftermath, he might never be anything but
futile anger and a body watching himself move from above and not being able to do anything ever
again.

For Remus had had things to do his entire life. He had been of use his entire life. He had forced
himself to be of use—forced himself to keep busy, kill and kill and kill and perhaps that was why
(he refused to entertain this thought because he was a stubborn bastard) it had toppled him over
eventually, because he had not ever known a period where he had actually given himself a moment
to sit back and think that maybe this was not the healthiest way to live. The adrenaline rush was so
constant it left him unable to care, but that adrenaline in that world was incompatible with this one.
It turned toxic inside of him. Something, something, something like that.

Had it been his fault? It was something he had entertained. What was ‘it’, in this scenario? Sirius?
Malfoy Manor? Or himself, the way his soul had twisted, his past and his priorities and the way
that Moody had recruited him personally at 17, kept a beady eye on him, had his best student
fighting in the halls of what now was a burnt down plaza, simmering with the heat of the
momentum of Remus’ knives or Remus’ touch on this war; his best student, favourite, although
Moody was (presumed) dead now—he had not been able to get in touch with anyone—and he
mourned for him too. The father that had not been there and the father that had. He felt,
increasingly, like he was back in the place he was in Hotel Transylvania. Was it wrong? Was it
wrong? A mimicked intonation. He had been a fool back then. Everything was wrong. Nothing
was wrong. He was powerful, he was weak, he knew everything, he knew nothing, it was his fault,
it was not, Dorcas told him, time and time again.
Regardless, it not being his fault did not denote the effect it had had on his body and it not being
his fault did not denote the lack of action that he had been able to participate in. It not being his
fault did not solve his agitation, did not solve his burning skin. What did was accommodating
himself to things that he could do. And what he could do, over everything, was fight for the agency
that he had lost that night.

Fight, in the literal sense. Remus never thought he’d say that he enjoyed beating up kids.

So this was, perhaps, how he spent the majority of the week in which they were gone; getting up to
do his duties, run comms on the species relations, smoke a fag with Jul, hack into a mainframe,
conduct a locator spell or three. Eat lunch with Lily, bring a coffee to Marlene (working
relentlessly, the powerhouse), take on Dorcas’ perimeter watch with Benjy. Avoid Fabian. Have
dinner in Marlene’s office. Go outside, joined by Lily and eventually, once she was done with
everything, by Marlene. It was usually quite quick. Marlene was a natural at running the Order; she
had spent two hundred years of her life telling two idiots what to do, doing it on a bigger scale was
easy peasy.

The night before the vampires arrived, the three of them ended up on the sofa, in front of the
golden lit fire.

Marlene had gone to make herself a hot chocolate upon finishing her tea (she had had a very
stressful day) and, upon returning, fell into her spot between Remus and Lily with a groan. She
sipped her drink and placed it on the coffee table to cool down, laying back and rubbing her
temples. Remus took a sip from his tea and leant forward to place his mug beside hers, swivelling
his body at the opportunity to look at them both.

“You’re doing great, you know,” he said, softly, directed to Marlene. Lily sipped her drink and
pulled the blanket she had found further over her legs.

“Hm?”

“You’re doing great,” he repeated, “with the Order. With this place. I’m pretty sure that it
would’ve fallen apart by now if it wasn’t for you.”

She dropped her hand and looked at him, a soft smile on her face. He flushed with the sentiment.

“I just didn’t know if anyone had told you, so I wanted to,” he finished lamely. Marlene smiled
wider.

“Thank you,” she said, genuinely, “it means a lot. I’m always scared I’m going to say the wrong
thing or do the wrong thing—I haven’t been doing this leadership thing as long as Sirius has.”

“You haven’t at all,” Lily piped up, “not once. Honestly. We’re in this… weird period of
uncertainty, right now, and you’re leading the people amazingly. Giving them enough hope to
continue. Sorting everything out perfectly, directing people, keeping up morale; you’re doing
brilliant, Marlene."

Marlene whined in gratitude and leaned to the side to rest her head on Lily’s shoulder. Lily laughed
and wrapped her free arm around her, squeezing gently.

“You are, too,” Marlene said, suddenly, pulling back and lacing her fingers with Lily’s, and then
reaching over and lacing her other hand's fingers with Remus’. “Both of you. Lily, you’ve
improved so much in the past few weeks, I can’t even explain how proud I am of you.”

Lily blushed, and immediately went to protest—Marlene was having none of it.
“No, I am,” she continued. “Take the compliment, bozo.”

She grinned, and turned to Remus. Her voice took on a softer timbre.

“You’re doing amazing, too,” Marlene said. Remus looked down and shook his head, opening his
mouth to protest and yet again, she was having none of it. “I mean it. You are.”

“I’m not really,” Remus said, because it was a night in which he was feeling rather useless, and
frustration was eating at him. A night in which, perhaps more formulaically, they held his hope.
Kept it safe.

Marlene smiled. She did not protest. Only offered herself to him, and it was exactly what he
needed.

“I know you don’t want to talk about it,” she said softly, “but I just want you to know that you can.
Right?” She turned to Lily, who nodded, and then back to Remus. “You can. If you want to. Or
need to.”

He knew. He knew, he knew. All we have is each other. All we can do is be there for each other.
He could avoid it all he wanted; he did unconsciously; but the nights in which it had been he and
Dorcas didn’t have to be just he and Dorcas. The nights in which he had spoken and he had
grumbled and he had cried; driven out of earshot past the lake and screamed to Dorcas, because it
was him and her, and it was always going to be him and her even if it was him and her and other
people too.

These sweet women. They were all in different places. It was someone tripping over and a hand,
held out, he had pulled Lily up and he had held Marlene in place when her walls cracked.

He expressed none of this. He smiled, and said, “I’ll keep that in mind,” and took another sip of his
tea, trying not to betray evidence of the tears that pricked at his eyes, slightly.

By an hour and a half later the fire had died down to a simmer. The glow only just lit up the girls
faces, only just highlighted Lily’s tired, closed eyes as she slept peacefully on Marlene’s lap.
Crackled enough to highlight the soft, round face of Marlene herself. Perpetually beautiful in all
light–perpetually kind in all situations.

Remus had leant back into the ridge between two sofa cushions, leant his head back and closed his
eyes. They had not spoken in about ten minutes.

“He loves you, you know.”

Remus’ eyes creaked open. He blinked a little to gather his bearings, licked his dry lips and rolled
his head around to look at her. She was looking at him back.

“What?”

“Sirius,” she said, and the word poured into his ears like wine and rolled off of Marlene’s tongue
like cherries, “he loves you. You’d be an idiot not to see it.”

He wasn’t an idiot. He knew it, he’d felt it, he’d heard it, he’d kissed it, he missed it, so
desperately, he couldn’t breathe.

“I know,” he said, monotonically.

“He’s going to be alright,” she said, and it sounded like a false promise. Remus pursed his lips and
took a deep breath in. “He survives. That’s what he does. It’s not gonna—I mean… this isn’t how
he goes out. You and I know him well enough to know that.”

Remus nodded. The fire crackled and Marlene sighed. Looked into it like it was going to tell her all
of its secrets.

“I love him too,” Remus said, quietly. He was focusing in on a corner of the coffee table, lit up
with amber flames but barely; it took him a long moment to flicker his eyes over to Marlene.

She was smiling at him.

“I know,” she said.

Marlene ended up carrying Lily up to her bedroom. Remus went to his. Hovered outside Sirius’
door, and decided against it. Slept dreamlessly.

***

Remus watched from the top window the next afternoon as the front lawn flooded with the undead.

“Alright,” yelled one Ted Tonks, enlisted by Marlene to help, standing in front of about twenty-
five, maybe thirty vampires; an unprecedented amount than the fifteen Dorcas had mentioned.
“Raise your hand if you were turned ten or more years ago.”

A good two thirds of the hands raised. Remus recognised Sybil, the receptionist Sirius had been in
contact with, right at the front of the group; she raised her hand diligently. Ted separated them off
into two groups. He ended up taking the younger vampires and Marlene took the older ones, purely
because Marlene was older than him. And the small group of humans stayed upstairs, not because
they felt unwelcome but…well. They had tact. House full of idiotic vampires equals a lot of idiotic
fangs to fend off.

It became very claustrophobic very quickly. Obviously, these people had not been present—not
even in the country—and though their home in Manhattan had been burned down by the aggressors
a lot, if not all of them, were intensely out of the loop and thus required multiple meetings, in and
out, accommodative regiments and assignments and placements across the city and inclusion on
the comms. A whole tricky web of operations that Remus was quite glad he wasn’t a part of, to be
honest.

And whilst he was fine with the bustling house for the most part, It got slightly too much at one
point as Remus walked down a corridor and passed approximately eight vampires in a twenty
second margin, and so he made his way outside. It was approaching midnight—they had arrived
about six or seven hours ago, upon dusk—and he wasn’t sure where he was going until he ended
up back at his spot by the lake. He wasn’t alone.

Astoria turned and smiled from where she was sitting on her jacket—covering the dewy grass. He
smiled back and crouched down.

“Hey,” he said, and she nodded.

“Hi.”

“You okay?” He shrugged off his own jacket—it was cold, but his clothes were thick enough—and
went to sit on it beside her. She nodded.

“Yeah,” she said, “just a lot of people.”

Remus nodded. He related an insane amount to that. “Yeah. Me too.”

They were silent for a while. It was comfortable.

“I like the new people,” Astoria said gently. “The ones I’ve spoken to, at least. They’re nice. One
of them says he knows my parents.”

“That’s good,” Remus nodded. “I’m glad they’re nice.”

Astoria looked out onto the water, and then down.

“He knew Daphne, too,” she said, softly, and Remus sighed.

He didn’t say anything. He felt he didn’t have anything to say.

“I miss her,” she said, “I miss her a lot.”

“I know,” Remus whispered. “I’m sorry. I promise that we’ll do everything we can to try and find
her.”

Astoria swallowed viscerally. She sighed, and then turned to look up at Remus, and her face was
contemplative.

“I believe you,” she said, with a kind smile. “I really do believe you. You’re good. You’re a good
hunter.”

Remus felt his mouth tug up into a smile. “You’re a good vampire,” he quipped, nudging her
shoulder, and she grinned, too.

Her smile fell into something less infectiously happy and more tamely sweet. She cleared her
throat, took a breath, and pulled down the neckline of her jumper. Reached her hand in to pull
something out.

It was a locket. Remus had never seen it before, but Astoria held it like it was utterly precious. It
was golden, with green flourishes and, despite the fact it was small, quite awkwardly chunky; the
type of locket that opened and held something inside. It had a crest that he didn’t recognise on it—
but, by context clues, it was most likely her family’s.

She took it off and dangled it in front of her. Remus watched as the regal silvery green flickered
against the feeble outdoor lighting.

And then she turned and offered it to him.

Remus held out his palm without really questioning it—the bewildered look, he was sure, was on
his face—but he simply went with her will. She dropped it, and closed his fingers over it with her
own cold hand.

“I want you to keep this,” she said, carefully. “Because I trust you. I trust you to find her the most.”

Remus gaped. Looked down at the thing, cold metal between his fingertips. The intention hit him
all at once.

“She has a matching one,” he breathed.

“We don’t take them off.”

Remus winced slightly, at this, possibilities running rampant through his head. “She might have
been forced to take it off, Toria, I dont kn–”

“It’s not really about that,” Astoria butted in, pulling at some grass underneath her fingertips. “It’s
more just about you having it. That, maybe, if it’s out there instead of stuck here, it’ll… find her.”

She seemed to register her own words, and then frowned.

“It’s stupid,” she murmured, and Remus shook his head. He put the necklace on, and pulled it
underneath his shirt.

“I’ll treasure it,” he said, softly, holding onto her arm, and Astoria smiled. “But, Toria, I…” he
paused, swallowing, trying to decide how to phrase this, “I can show her this, and I can talk to her,
and I will, but I can’t make her come with us if she doesn’t want to. You know that, right?”

She nodded. She looked years older than she was, at almost-seventeen.

“I know,” she said, softly, “I just want her to see it.”

“I’ll make sure she does.”

Astoria smiled again. She was a long way from the kid that had almost bitten Remus’ head off in
the lobby of Hotel Transylvania. Remus wasn’t sure when he had grown to adore her as she was
his own, but it had happened, now.

The vampires were gone by the time the two of them went inside. Astoria said goodnight. Remus
went to grab a glass of water and ran into Marlene who gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek as
she headed up to bed, and Remus climbed the stairs with a strange kind of tranquillity.

He ended up outside Sirius’ door.

It’s not like he hadn’t been here before. He had stood here, sat here, cried here over the past few
weeks. He had been in here, seen Sirius in maybe the first three days after Malfoy Manor; seen him
lying there, still as a ghost, and then left and not come back when he realised it was more than
exhaustion, more than sleep. He wanted his last memory to be what their last memory should have
been, so, since then, he couldn’t get anywhere closer than pressed up against the opposite wall,
face teary and chest knotted so deeply his organs were crushing each other. The glass of his eyes
reflecting the thin sheen of the electromagnetic wards Pandora had put over his door, and his
window.

He could see it. It was strange—entirely translucent, but somewhat shimmery. Distorted. As if the
door was a reflection in incredibly still water, but the particles had to get up and shake their legs
every few minutes. And, if you looked close enough—Remus did—there was a golden tinge to it.
He was well protected. Pandora was the only one who could get in; if you wanted to go in, you had
to be with her. He wasn’t entirely sure why he was standing there anyway.

He had felt a lot of things over the past few weeks, but the main constant, the thing that he had felt
in the burning suns and the pouring rain, was yearning. It was not, perhaps, that he needed Sirius to
function. It was just the thought of how very lovely it would be to have him. Have Sirius regulate
him. To have Sirius to sit beside him. To have Sirius rub his back when his lungs shrivelled up and
he couldn’t breathe; to have Sirius kiss his hands and his not-hands, to have someone make no
differentiation between the two, to have someone worship his broken-down body for what it was.
To have Sirius to kiss the words out of him when they got stuck somewhere in the pit of his
esophagus. To actually have him. He’d slipped from his fingers in the moment he’d needed him
most, he supposed, and Remus had been coming down from that for four weeks.

His fingertips grazed the translucent wards, shimmering like a barred prison over his door; and
nothing happened. He pushed his hand further, and it simply went through.

The warding brushed over him like a rush of steam, and he opened the door.

It was dark. There was no light—quite literally none, besides the faint glow of foreign artificial
blazes from far outside of Sirius’ open window and the residual light from down the hallway—and
Remus blinked, adjusting his eyes. He hovered at the entrance for a moment. Took a deep breath
and strode across the room, quiet steps, securing his grip around the switch for the small, orange-
tinted lamp on the bedside table.

He turned it on.

It was remarkable how peaceful Sirius looked, and how un-corpse like he lay. He was in different
clothes—someone must have changed him out of the blood-soaked shirt—there he was, hands by
his sides. On his back. His hair was parted nicely and sat unmoving by his face, and his
cheekbones were hollow in their natural state. His lids were layered. He looked peaceful, he looked
tired. He looked beautiful.

Remus stood there for at least a minute, maybe longer, trying to decide how he felt. The bubbling
mess rushed up his throat once more, feelings he couldn’t identify; a self he couldn’t understand.
Sirius didn’t look like he had that night. He looked like he had for the past eight years. He looked
like Sirius tied up in his living room, smirking, flirting with him as his skin burned. He looked like
Sirius opposite him in his bed, shadowed by the moonlight, eyes bright and lips wet. He looked
like Sirius up in the vampire’s face outside of the burning Hotel Transylvania when he had almost
hurt Remus. He looked like he would open his eyes and laugh and cry and smile and bite, kiss
goodbye, kiss goodnight.

There was a chair. Remus sat down.

“Hi, sweetheart,” he said. Barely a whisper. He swallowed and then laughed at himself.

He felt so fucking stupid.

“This is so fucking stupid,” he said, voicing his thoughts, clasping and unclasping his hands and
focusing his gaze on them intently, “I don’t know what I’m expecting to gain out of this. It’s not
like you’re going to know that I was here.”

He sighed. It took him a long ten seconds for him to gather the courage to flick his eyes upwards,
but when he did, he held his breath for as long as it took for him to will away pricks behind his
eyes at how Sirius lay.

“Your vampires are here,” he said, with an air of a pathetic refused offerance. “From London.
Almost all of them—of who’s left, I suppose. About thirty.” He exhaled, and some semblance of an
ironic–admiring–reflective smile made its way onto his face. “Isn’t that something,” he murmured.

Sirius did not reply.

“And I know you thought you were a crap leader,” Remus continued, slumping forwards slightly.
“You never said, but I knew. You never wanted this. You were never cut out to lead, but you took
it because—because who else was going to? Who else to listen to than the–what was it you said,
sixth eldest Pureblood living?”
A small laugh escaped from his mouth. It sounded like a tearing in the fabric of his throat. Matched
the tear escaping from his eye; he wiped it away, and shuffled closer.

And he could see Sirius. He could see all of him, and all of him was all he wanted. The pores, the
smooth, lovely, malleable nature of his skin. The way his lips connected like puzzle pieces. The
point of his nose; the curve, the bone, so marvellously conducted. Remus reached out and brushed
his hair back. It fell to his side with a feeble thud onto the pillow.

“I think you made more of an impact than you thought, love,” Remus whispered into the silence. “I
think you started something very, very special, and I… I need you here to finish it.”

His voice broke, and his face crumpled. He pulled his hand back and brought it up as a fist, pressed
against the bridge of his nose. Grappled with a few shaky breaths and the fatalistic prickling behind
his eyes, the reciprocation on his cheeks; he exhaled.

“Though, I will say that Marlene is doing a far better job than you,” he choked out with a bitter
laugh. Pursed his lips and inhaled sharply. “At least, with morale. Wrangling the monsters, She’s
good at sorting out people’s temperaments—she’d be a good hunter, I reckon.” A pause. “Not you,
though. You’re too hot-headed. You can barely handle me.”

Sirius’ hand lay idle and unused by his side, and Remus looked at it. And without even thinking
about it—it came so fucking natural to him—he reached out to lock his fingers through Sirius’
lifeless ones. His skin was cold, so fucking cold. He linked his pinky around Sirius’ and it was a
broken promise.

And he held it. Pulled it up; Sirius’ arm bent at the elbow. His fingers were floppy—it was almost
as if Remus was playing with a doll—so he laced his fingers around Sirius’ with one hand and
cupped the back of his hand with his other so that his fingers clasped over his, too, and for a
moment—just a moment—he could pretend.

He kissed his knuckles, softly. Pressed his lips there and closed his eyes, and then shifted and
rested his nose against the same spot.

“I need you,” he whispered, and the air was cold. It was a broken wish. A crumpled plea. “I don’t
know when your life became mine, but it did. Sirius, it did. You’re so alive. You’re so–everything
about you is so– so–”

He trailed off. Swallowed down the lump in his throat and it came bobbing back arm in arm with a
trembling lip, unable to be rematched. He raised his wet eyes and pressed his wet lips back to
Sirius’ hand, resting it against his cheek.

“You’re in me,” he whispered, sadly, half of his mouth pushed against the back of Sirius’ hand. “In
me so deep I don’t think I could even cut you out. So if you don’t—if, if you don’t wake up, Sirius,
what am I even—I mean, you’re going to destroy me,” he choked on a laugh. Choked on a sob.
“The pieces of you left in me are going to rot and shrivel up and take me with you, I think. Because
I don’t know how to live without you in my life. I don’t remember what it was like.”

He’s crying. Tears of sulfur and dusty roads to ruin, he’s crying; “And I don’t want to be here, if
you’re not,” he said, trembling, “I don’t want to do this, withou—hah,” he winced, a breath
breaking his words, “without you, I don’t– don’t want to do it—”

He broke, dropping his hand and Sirius’ in turn–though not unlinking them–and covering his face
with his other hand, crying tears that burned down rainforests, tears he’d stolen, the gasoline lining
his lips. It took a minute or two of letting himself cry before he was able to gripe at his face, let it
drop, breathe properly. He could rot away here, he might have wanted to a month ago, he did not
want to now. He craved an orbit, over everything–floating aimlessly, he was losing hope, and that
was the most dangerous thing of all.

“Everything came down to you,” Remus whispered. “Everything that led me here—this, this
upside down road of mania—I survived it because I was following you. Sweetheart. I was
following you. So don’t you dare think you were a crap leader. You led me here and it is
simultaneously the best and the worst thing that I have ever let anyone do to me.”

The moon came out from behind the clouds and bathed Sirius in glorious light. Remus smiled
softly.

“And I’d do it all again,” he muttered, “for even a fleeting chance to know you, I’d do everything
again, honey. But I can’t. We only have right now, and right now– right now I need you to wake
up. I need you—God, I need you to help me navigate this, Sirius. If for anything, for your brother.
If for anything, for the chance to kill Riddle.”

He sighed, heavily.

“If for anything, for me.” Words out of his cracked teeth. Spiralling up his throat like overgrown
roots.

Sirius said nothing. Sirius was not listening.

Remus sat there for a while. The tears fell aimlessly, but he didn’t feel like he was crying. He
didn’t feel anything much at all, actually, except an overwashing sense of peace radiating from
Sirius’ fragile being.

He kissed Sirius’ hand one more time. Placed where it was before, and nothing might have
changed.

And he turned as he got to the door.

“I love you,” he said, pathetically. A barren, hollow offering. “By the way. Still. Probably forever,
I don’t know.”

Sirius said nothing. Remus nodded sharply.

“Right,” he whispered, and twisted the doorknob.

The wards washed him with an overwhelming sense of warmth that twisted through his veins like
phoenix fire, and he went into his bedroom and slept for thirteen hours straight.
 seventeen

Five weeks and three days after Malfoy Manor, life started to pick up pace a little bit.

He was sitting with Andromeda, Mary and Dorcas at the kitchen table when it happened. James
was hovering a few paces away, leaning against the countertops drinking blood out of a metal cup
(Elk, according to Andromeda’s nose scrunch and enhanced Pureblood sense of smell.) (Remus
didn’t know how James got the blood, and didn’t think he wanted to know.) (Though he supposed
draining an elk of its blood was better than draining a human. An ethical conversation that Andy
and James would probably have. He made a note to provoke it one day for the entertainment.)

There was a pair of vampires and a witch sitting at the opposite end of the table that Remus didn’t
know. He didn’t pay much heed to them, and when Regulus came barging into the room, neither
did he.

He walked in with more purpose than Remus had seen him attain in all of the weeks they’d been
awkwardly cohabitating. Holding a strong pace and blazing eyes, as the door swung shut behind
him, he focused all of his energy on his cousin. Andromeda stiffened instantly.

“...What?”

Regulus’ face softened. He blinked, rapidly, as if trying to spit it out.

“Narcissa’s dead,” he said, eventually. Plainly and simply. Andromeda’s face went completely
blank.

She did not betray any emotion. Dorcas’ jaw fell open and Mary’s eyebrows raised so high they
almost flew off her head. Andromeda didn’t say anything. She stared at Regulus for a moment, eye
to eye, and then she nodded, once, sharply.

“Right,” she said. Remus couldn’t decipher her voice. It felt like she had closed up like a hermit
crab. He knew this one; ran in the family. “Okay.”

As for Remus himself, well; a blanket of dread washed over him thoroughly. Or perhaps it was
guilt. A sense of unbelonging, his life rewinded like a broken cassette tape on a cheap TV—
through Boardwalk, the clearing, the outside of Malfoy Manor, up the stairs and into the throne
room. Breaking a chair and stabbing it into Narcissa’s stomach. Her fierceness and determination
as she hauled Pandora past breaking point to give them this.

Make it look real. That’s what she had said. It had not looked real enough. Her plan had failed.

Remus frowned, trying to decide whether he felt guilty or not. James had approached, cup
abandoned and frown etched deeply into his skin, and Regulus was speaking again.

“She’s been dead for two weeks,” he said, slowly, “I just found out.”

“Who told you?” asked Dorcas.

“Just a vampire I know,” Regulus said. “Sketchy guy who slinks through the lower societies and
collects information. Pathetic, but reliable. Dung is his name. ”

“What a horrid name,” Mary muttered.

“What—I mean, why?” Andromeda asked, throat constricting and relaxing. Remus inhaled sharply.

“Because she helped us,” he interjected, and all of their gazes turned to him. “She gave us the
Horcrux. She told me—her plan was to make it look like she had been beaten. All this time, I
thought it had worked.”

“Are we sure?” asked Mary. “Why would he wait three weeks to kill her?”

“I was getting there,” said Regulus, “you’re right. Dung said that apparently she has something that
Riddle wants,” he corrected himself; “Had. I don’t know what it is. Just that, presumably, she
wouldn’t give it to him.”

They sat back, in silence for a moment. Remus thought back again. Pressed pause and then rewind
and then let it go, a play-by-play of all that he knew. It came to him in a gasp before he’d even
registered why he was gasping.

“The kid,” he said, eyes unfocused. He blinked and looked at Regulus, who was frowning.

“What?”

“Draco,” he said, firmly, looking at him. “I set him free. I set the kid free, didn’t I?”

“You told him to get away from the fight,” said James, laying out the facts from the side, metal
cup abandoned on the table.

“I told him to go North,” he said, “because there was less of a possibility of interception. And I told
him if I didn’t kill her I’d send his mother after him, which I did.”

“But you didn’t anticipate fucking her up that bad, did you?” asked Dorcas, speaking his mind.
“They would’ve got to her first. Thrown her in jail. No one would’ve come to get him.”

“For five weeks,” Mary breathed, tapping her fingers together, frowning in sympathy.

“Why would he not just go back?” asked Regulus. Remus raised an eyebrow.

“Would you?” he shot back. Regulus’ face dropped very quickly.

“Well, why didn’t you just kill him?” he asked, instead. Remus’ eyes narrowed in incredulity.

“He’s a kid.”

“He’s a weapon is what he is,” he said. Mary rolled her eyes and threw her fork at him; he caught
it, seamlessly.

“Behave,” she warned. He made a face of mockery, threw it back on the table. It was the first time
since they had met that Remus had truly believed he was someone's little brother.

“Has he been on the run this whole time?” Dorcas asked. “Your friend didn’t say—they haven’t
found him yet, have they?”

“No, he didn’t–”

“Then we have to get to him first,” said Andromeda, automatically.

The room went quiet. She looked up, glancing at everyone, who were waiting for her to elaborate.
“Draco Malfoy is their only playing card,” she said. “Is that not their entire aim? They want the
two pureblood kids to mate, so they can repopulate, take sovereignty over the vampiric race,
etcetera, etcetera.”

“She has a point. We’d have a one-up on them,” said Dorcas, nodding. Remus could visualise her
strategic thought process but he couldn’t seem to tap into it; all that he could feel was guilt.

“God, that kid has been all alone for over a month,” he said, distantly. “And it’s my fault.”

“It’s not,” Mary said softly, and Remus shook his head.

“No, it is. I should’ve thought about him. I should’ve known when Sirius killed Lucius that Riddle
wouldn’t extend sympathy. She had no one to defend her.”

“He lost his Horcrux, his right hand man and his only chance to repopulate the Purebloods all in
one night,” said Andromeda, reminiscently. “We really got him good."

“At what price?” Regulus muttered. It was bitter. It was laced with thick emotion, something
stimulating regret, perhaps. Remus was goddamn glad for it.

“Someone needs to tell Marlene and Pandora,” Mary pointed out.

“On it,” James nodded, disappearing out of the door. Remus pressed his palms against the table and
sat up straighter.

“Well, we need to go find him, then,” he said, feeling authoritative and woozy and quite like this
was the only thing that had called to him, called him to be useful, in weeks. He looked at Regulus.
“You know his scent?”

“Barely,” he said. “I haven’t seen the kid in seven years. And even then it was rare. I don’t even
remember what he looks like.”

“But you could find him,” he insisted, “logically. If anyone would be able to track him, it’d be
you.”

At that moment, Marlene walked in, James and Pandora hot on her heels.

“What’s happening?” she demanded.

“Narcissa’s dead,” said Andromeda, without a shred of care. Marlene gasped.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh… I’m sorry.”

Andromeda scoffed. “Please. I don’t care.”

Marlene’s mouth closed. “Oh,” she said, again, and then shrugged and went to sit down. “Okay.
I’m not sorry at all, then.”

Andromeda laughed and threw an arm around the back of her chair.

“What’s the issue, though?” she asked.

“The Malfoy kid is missing,” Mary informed her. “Has been since this guy,” a thumb towards
Remus, “let him go at Malfoy Manor.”

“That must be why we’ve heard barely anything,” Dorcas mused. “They’ve been more focused
on…on reparations.”

“Let him go?” Marlene asked, bewildered. “Go where?

“Away,” Remus said. “North. I told you, remember, I found him while looking for the diary, in that
bunker? He was scared, and he’s a kid, so I let him go. And it’s the only reason we got the
goddamn thing, because Narcissa cared more about her son.” He broke off, closing his mouth to
restrain the guilt that lingered behind his teeth like prisoners. “I told him that I’d send his mother
after him.”

“And now she’s dead,” Marlene finished.

“Now she’s dead.”

Marlene stopped. She pursed her lips for a second, deep in thought, and then looked briefly over all
of them.

“Well, we need to find the kid, then,” she said, and Andromeda clapped once.

“Brilliant,” she grinned. “When are we going?”

“We?” Marlene asked, a genuinely innocent query in her voice.

“We?” Regulus asked, incredulity in the arsey tone of his voice and impudence in his raised
eyebrows.

Andromeda looked at him, narrowing her eyes.

“I’m going,” he said, as if it were fact. She quirked her eyebrow to match his. They could be twins.
“Just me.”

“Who says?” she said, brow knitting together, and Remus frowned in turn. “The two of us will be
able to track him easier.”

“Yeah, and the two of us will be easier to get tracked,” Regulus shot back. “It has to be either me or
you—think about if it was the both of us? With the extent of our links to the coven? Six hundred
years disowned or not, Andy, Bellatrix would find you in an instant.”

“And she wouldn’t find you?” she countered, but it was flinchingly. “Severus wouldn’t find you?
Riddle?”

Regulus scoffed. “Severus is about as skilled as a common garden rat, and, bar the year that he was
recovering from dormancy, Riddle hasn’t spent any time around me since the nineteen-fifties. And
Bella is exactly what I mean. I’m enough of a beacon for her on my own.”

“Well, why you over me?”

“I know Draco,” he said, shrugging. “Easier to catch the scent. It should be me.”

Andromeda groaned. She slinked back into her chair, grumbling but acknowledging. Remus sat up
straighter.

“It should be me, too,” he said.

Regulus turned to him; his face was imperceptible. They were such strangers to each other still that
Remus could see his angst grappling with the courteous instinct to stay polite.
“You…?” he started, giving leeway for an explanation.

“It’s my fault that he’s out there in the first place, for one,” Remus reasoned, “and out of the two of
us, who do you think he would take kinder to? The one who showed him mercy, or the one who
would have him killed without a second thought as collateral damage?”

Regulus’ eyes hardened. He looked so like Sirius.

“Excuse me,” he said, “but I don’t think you have any right in exposéing yourself as some sort of
vampiric saviour because you didn’t kill one of Riddle’s men–”

“Child,” said Remus. “He is a child.”

“He’s a pawn, Lupin!” Regulus cried, exasperated. “Heir to a purist throne we are trying to
eradicate—do tell me how mercy makes any sense?”

“If he’s the heir, who’s his partner?” Remus asked. “Astoria, right? Divine intervention? Would
you kill her too?”

Regulus blinked. Remus took a deep breath in.

“You would do well to remember that your brother cherishes her,” he said, quieter. “And that, were
he here, he would see that Draco is exactly the same as her and that circumstances out of his
control are the only thing placing her on our side and him on theirs. They are children regardless.
I’m just saying that he would probably take kinder to me and that way you might not have to rip
his limbs off to get him to go quietly.”

Regulus took a deep, trying breath in, not dropping his glare. Remus felt like he was ablaze.

“First of all, you have a lot of audacity in telling me what my brother would or would not do,” he
said, quietly. Menacingly. “In insinuating that you understand him better when I have known him
for thirty times your lifetime, Lupin–”

“I never insinuated that,” Remus said, shaking his head, “I don’t understand him. I don’t know him.
I don’t understand why he does some of the things he does, but I don’t think you do, either. What
was it, five hundred years up until 2006? You give him a phone call, at all, in that time? Send a
letter?”

Regulus’ eyes widened. Multiple things happened at once.

Funnily enough, it was James who placed a hand on Regulus’ chest, and Andromeda who tugged
at Remus’ wrist. Andromeda who shook her head, giving him a gentle smile, and James who
placated with an awkward laugh and a gentle, “hey, I think this is quite enough,”.

And it was Regulus who challenged him.

“James,” he said, turning his ruffled feathers towards the dark haired boy and brushing himself off.
His hand fell. “I haven’t known Sirius for five hundred years, and the hunter hasn’t known him for
more than ten. We’re at an impasse, but you were there. You’re the natural bridge. What would he
do?”

James’ mouth fell open, slightly; his eyes flitted like bees from one gaze to another, obvious worry
in the crease between his eyebrows.

“I– er, what are you asking me, exactly?” he asked, slowly. “If Sirius would take mercy on Draco
Malfoy?”

“Essentially,” Regulus supplied. James licked his lips. Every single eye seemed to be on him.

“Sirius is not a monster,” he said, slowly, eventually, “no matter how much he tries to act like one.
He doesn’t understand his own strength and he doesn’t understand his own empathy. He’s logical,
and he’s caring. So, the logical side of him would absolutely want to keep the Malfoy kid as a
playing chip. And the caring side of him… I believe, would show him mercy, yes.”

He sighed, deeply, and, pulling his gaze away from the mass of faces, looked only to Regulus.

“Look, he got a second chance, Regulus,” he said, quieter. “He got out. He knows what that’s like.
I think he would see Astoria in the kid, yes, but more importantly than that… he would see you.”

Regulus’ face fell into something entirely undecipherable. James sighed. Trust him to be the one to
decipher it.

“I mean, you must see the parallels, here” he said, chuckling awkwardly.

“Potter,” Regulus warned. He raised two hands in surrender.

“Look, I’m just telling you what you told me to tell you,” said James. “If you show up alone you’ll
be no different in his eyes than the people coming to take him back. If he values kindness, you
have a better shot, and all odds say that bringing him here is our best idea right now since Riddle
fell off the map, so I’m sure you can understand me saying—on behalf of both myself and Sirius—
that Remus should go along.”

Regulus worked his jaw and his lip twitched in a telltale sign of biting the inside of it. He exhaled
slowly through his nose and turned to Remus.

“We’ve already wasted enough time, so we’ll leave the day after tomorrow,” he said. “Your job is
to research the murders anywhere in the northern vicinity of Vermont and in surrounding upper
areas, going off the timeframe given and the logistics of how far he would be able to travel. I can
write you out the equation later.”

“Murders?” Mary asked. Regulus looked at her with misplaced agitation, and then he shrugged.

“Kid’s gotta eat, right?” he said, casually. “We’ll get the locations via crime scenes, I’ll scope the
towns to try and pick him up while Lupin finds corporeal evidence. We can get things done quicker
if we do it both ways simultaneously.”

There was a beat of silence, and he turned to Pandora. Her eyes narrowed almost instantly.

“You’re going to ask me to set up transportation, aren’t you?” she asked. The corner of his lips
quirked up.

“No,” he said, placating. His expression softened into something childlike. “I was going to beg you
into giving us transportation. Bribe, maybe. Fall to the ground and kiss your feet?”

Pandora scoffed, shaking her head. An unwilling smile on her face.

“Purebloods will be the fucking death of me,” she muttered, and Dorcas nodded.

“Bloody cheers to that,” she said, concedingly. She raised her glass to the open space.

“Cheers,” Mary echoed with a smile, clinking her glass against Dorcas’.
“Cheers,” Marlene laughed, grabbing a lone, unlit candle on the table and clinking it across to the
two glasses.

James, laughing, disappeared in a flash and came back with his metal cup.

“Cheers,” he said, leaning over and clinking his cup against the amalgamation, except he put
entirely too much force into it and a bit spilled out of the lid and onto the back of Dorcas’ hand.

She complained for an hour, and he laughed the entire way through, until he offered to let her
break his fingers for compensation. (Obviously, she agreed.)

***

“Now remember,” said Pandora with a bustle, hovering around Regulus who was, in turn, hovering
around Remus as he loaded the car with the things that they needed. “The glaze will open every
night at midnight and close exactly half an hour afterwards, so don’t be late. Give yourself at least
half an hour's notice. It’ll close as soon as you go through, too, so don’t forget anything.”

“Yes, Dora,” Regulus said blankly, examining his nails with intense curiosity.

Remus placed two of his guns and a pouch containing twelve of his daggers; his cinquedea’s to his
scottish dirk’s to his push daggers, throwing knives in a different set-up. He pushed aside a set of
brass knuckles that he had stolen from Dorcas to fit them in and sectioned everything nicely.

His basilisk blade did not fit fully in the pouch. It had a thick sheath that Pandora had made to
protect the blade from hurting anyone when it was not in use, but regardless that was not the side
that stuck out; it was the hilt. Black and regal and gleaming. It glinted in the sun and Remus
shuddered, looking away before the memories became him. He turned to tune back into Pandora’s
voice, which had become a sort of ringing in the soundwaves around his ears—half-intentionally,
half not.

“–and if you need me to cast a glamour over the weapons,” she was saying, peering her small body
over into the boot, “I can. You two getting in trouble with the human police is the last thing we
want–”

“Dora, darling, do cease with the mum duties,” said Regulus fondly, turning to place his hands on
her shoulders. “I am a Pureblood. I can simply tell them to go away.”

“Yes, well,” she replied, somewhat haughtily, “can’t be too careful. Any minor adversity and I’m
scared you’re going to disappear on us for another eight years.”

Remus shut the boot and turned to look at them. Regulus’ face had fallen pensive.

“I’m not going to,” he said.

“I know,” she replied, quickly. “I know. Just a joke. You had to do what you had to do.”

Regulus thinned his lips and nodded. He made to step back and drop his arms from her shoulders,
but she moved with him and walked her way into his chest, wrapping her arms around his waist.
She was only up to his sternum, barely if that. He blinked and then hugged her back, over and
around her shoulders; hand on her hair. He leant into it as if he was not sure how to. Remus felt
only slightly like he was intruding.

She smiled, as they pulled apart, and then began to lecture him on the itinerary again; Remus’ eyes
twitched just to the side of her to see a familiar figure approaching out of the front entrance.
“Oh, I was worried you had gone!” called Mary, running into his arms. Remus squeezed her back
tightly. “I got caught up with Lily.”

“How is she?”

“Good. Only set one tree on fire today, so that’s something.”

Remus chuckled and pulled back. She eyed his fingerless gloves, to protect his hands from magical
weapons, and the car that she knew would be full. She had seen him leave like this a countless
number of times, but she still sighed.

“Be safe, okay?” she said, frowning. “That’s not just a message from me, but from Dorcas, too.”

“She still out?”

“Yeah. Her, Fab and Benjy this time. Lavender portkeyed them to Washington to try and track
down the remainder of HI2 again. It’s part of her training, the long-term portkey—if she got it right
is anyone’s guess, we’ll find out when they come back I suppose.”

“She will have,” Remus said, easily. “She’s brilliant, that one.”

Mary hummed.

“Still nothing, then?” Remus pressed. A futile question, really, for he had been running the comms,
and he knew damn well that there was, in fact, still nothing. Mary nodded.

“Still nothing,” she sighed. “I don’t understand how Dumbledore could have just disappeared. The
entire HQ is abandoned and barred up. Bars, Remus. When did he even add that protocol?”

Remus shrugged. A grim shiver ran through his spine. He vaguely registered Andromeda coming
out to give Regulus something or other, and Pandora opening the door of his car and fiddling with
something he should probably be worried about.

“I don’t know, but I don’t…I don’t trust it,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t trust him.”

Mary nodded, solemnly. She knew all about the truth-serum debacle. No one had really looked
into it, as it wasn’t as if Dumbledore had come guns ablazing into Boardwalk like they had
suspected he would in the immediate aftermath, but the feeling they had afterwards of HI2 grasping
for their tails produced a sense of immense unease in not only Remus but all of the hunters in the
house. The lack of news regarding their disappearance made it significantly worse. Like someone
was creeping behind you at all times. Remus did not feel safe, ever, though he supposed that
wasn’t particularly new.

Of course they had expedited, over the past couple of weeks. Remus organised most of them.
Always led by Dorcas but alternating groups, just for a day and a night they would go to
Washington, go to Alaska, they would go to Texas to try and track down what remained of the
hunting society in America. So far they had found nothing.

Britain was a different story, as most of them were dead. There were a few hunters who had been
out in the field and a few occult hunter-adjacents (mostly witches in affiliation) associated with
Moody that had been contacted, all to dead end leads, mind you; for the most part it was radio
silence on both ends. The simple uncertainty of a whole group—a whole organisation—
disappearing off the face of the planet whilst they were in the middle of a supernatural war that
none of them could understand was… it was a lot to contend with.
“It makes them feel like they’re doing something,” Mary said, softly. “For the boys, ‘cause they’re
not as close to the action. Better than just sitting around and doing nothing. They would all go
insane. I know I would.”

Remus nodded. He agreed; yes, he would. Even despite his lack of expedition over the past few
weeks as he both recovered and took on domestic duties; if he had not been so close to the fireline
he might have been going insane for a completely different reason. The intoxication of the truth,
the cold, hard truth and nothing but the truth was something that kept him sane—kept his head
straight, able to map out the next move with all of the cards laid out on the table instead of hidden
behind a player’s deck. It was slightly ironic, actually, that the cold hard truth was what had drove
him away from participating in the hunter expeditions in the first place.

(Okay, it wasn’t. It was like Mary said—he wanted to give the boys the chance to do something
useful lest they feel inadequate in the ranks of the Order, so he had stepped back and only worked
from the inside. But it was also that he had so much anger and he feared that, if they came across
the missing hunters, he might misplace it completely and shoot Dumbledore then and there in a
belated reaction to making him feel so violated.)

“Hey, actually,” said Remus, with a laugh. He jogged back over to the boot of the car and opened
it, retrieving the brass knuckles. Mary, following him, raised an eyebrow. “When Dorcas comes
back, give these to her. I nabbed them from her stock like… two years ago.”

“She’s going to punch you with them for that,” Mary remarked, taking them. “You’re setting up
your own downfall.”

“Please,” muttered Remus, “I can beat her without them.”

Mary laughed, exasperatedly. “Ah, how I’ve missed sitting back and watching you kill each other.”

He grinned, and she fell into his arms. Another hug. He felt like he would never get enough of
those, now—now that the perpetual risk of it being the last was so very high. He kissed the top of
her head, firm.

“Love you,” she whispered. “Don’t kill him. He can be insufferable at the best of times.”

“I heard that,” Regulus called, from where he was standing a few feet away, leaning against the
hood of the car.

Remus laughed. “Love you too. See you soon.”

She smiled, and turned on her heel to walk back to the house. Remus turned to Pandora and
Regulus.

“You know where you’re going, right?” she asked, for the tenth time. Regulus sighed, exasperated;
Remus just smiled. “I’m sorry! It’s my first time setting up so many in sequence, I just don’t want
to have done it wrong.”

“You’re brilliant, Dora,” Regulus drawled. “You won’t have. Can we leave?”

He got in the passenger seat of the car without waiting for an answer. Pandora harrumphed and
turned to Remus.

“Still as impatient as ever,” she muttered. She nudged him. “Go on, then. Don’t get lost or
splinched or bitten by a rabid seventeen year old. See you soon.”
Remus grinned, and hugged her too.

Regulus was silent when he got into the car. Regulus was silent a lot of the time, actually, but
usually in a room full of people his silence could be accommodated. Remus clambered into the
driver's seat and put his seatbelt on, and then turned to him. Arched an eyebrow at the vampire in
his passenger seat. Regulus narrowed his eyes back at him.

“Vampire,” he said, dumbly.

Remus pointed at the dash.

“Beep,” he said, pertaining to the fact that once he turned the car on it would, in fact, beep if the
seatbelt wasn’t in.

And Regulus—aristocratic, poncey pureblood Regulus—groaned and reached his hand around to
grab the seatbelt and pull it, seemingly, as stroppily as he could. Except due to the harsh jerk the
seatbelt stopped a few inches out, like it would if a body was jerked forward. Regulus did not look
pleased by this.

Remus stifled his laugh and switched the ignition on.

“There you go,” he said as Regulus pulled it out calmly and clicked it in. The entire situation was
absurd.

The plan had been refined over the past couple of days. Draco Malfoy had to be found. It had been
bumped up to the highest priority, because with him on the loose who knows what could happen.
Who knows how many lives could be taken by a rabid (scared) pureblood (child) vampire—and
who knows what lengths his coven would take to bringing him back? Because they would.
Andromeda had been right—he was, over all, their main playing card. He was their heir. He was a
tool for Riddle’s coven—they needed him to be a tool for Sirius’.

Though, tool didn’t sit well in Remus’ mouth. And he knew he was overly empathetic and that it
would probably be the ruin of him, but—as evidenced by the fact that he was sitting in his car with
Regulus Black, driving towards an advanced level of apparition-crossed-portkey that essentially
washed a glaze over the oxygen ridden earth as a ten foot, glossy portal wall that would take them
just outside of Montreal–his empathy had some sort of benefit. Perhaps he was stupid for insisting
to see good in what was not inherently good, but it had paid off before. He thought that his senses
had become quite refined, actually, with the presence of one Sirius fucking Black in his life. He
had got to get into the habit of wiping good and evil from his mainframe, like Pandora had told
him, repudiating the splitting of witches into “light” and “dark”. As if everyone does not have a
little bit of both in them. Besides, it wasn’t as if he was seeking Draco out to throw him into a
vampire reform program, rather than simply keep him safe with the ‘good’ to save him from the
alternative. Split models of right and wrong were long past easy to navigate. The point was the kid
could be something other than heir, here. He could be something different.

This was the itinerary. Pandora had set up the first glaze (truly such a marvellous thing—Remus
hadn’t even been aware that it was a thing, but apparently magic transport experimentation had
one-upped them all) about a mile or so out, which they would drive through, into a corresponding
opening in a wooded, lone area of outskirting Montreal. Remus had tracked murders in the past six
weeks up and down the Quebec region and all the way into Nova Scotia on one side and up to the
coast of where Lake Superior bled into Ontario on the other. They were going East first, to see if
they’d pick up wind. They had a day in one place and Pandora had set up corresponding glazes at
listed coordinates for every night when the clock passed onto a new morn. It seemed difficult, a bit
fast-paced, but Remus had had a few days to wrap his head around it. And, when stripped down to
the bare bones, their arrangement was rather simple.

Remus would investigate the murders. The crime scenes—most, at least in the beginning, would be
a few weeks old and unattainable now, but all were unsolved and Remus had posed as a detective
making house calls time enough to do it with his hands behind his back. He would, essentially, be
working a case. Like the cases he used to work as a rookie. A simple formula—knocking off the
checklist of supernatural presences until he could narrow the suspect down. Decide whether it was
even supernatural or not. Most of the cases he had picked were, most likely, supernatural in nature
—whether they were vampiric was anybody’s guess, and whether they were the one specific
vampire they needed was God’s.

It might seem futile that they would start with such old cases but it was a jumpstart that was
required for Regulus to come into his senses. For it had been a while—not too long, but long
enough that he could not recall Draco’s scent to mind. If they were to pick an older trail of him up
it would give him more time to become used to the way his scent develops and thus refine it even
further to pick him up where no one else on the planet, save his brother and cousins and whatever
other fucking family were lurking around the corner, could.

Vampires refined their skills just like humans did. Time and effort. Remus, unconsciously, sort of
equated Pureblood vampires to… well, the kind of humans that were just good at everything they
tried. Dorcas was one of them. She’d probably make a good vampire, but God forbid he would
never say that to her face.

Alongside the technicalities of the case itself—which was bound to separate them most of the day
and take up most of their time, sure—they also had to… well. Spend time with one another. And
it’s not as if Remus’ relationship with him (could he even call it that? Acquaintanceship?) had been
terrible, but it’s not as if it had been good either, and perhaps they had not seen eye to eye a few
days ago and perhaps both of them held grudges for it—because lord knows Regulus Black holds a
grudge as kindly and savagely as his older brother, and he, unlike Sirius, does not have the
reverence and the soft, pudgy spot in the deep of his chest that rang bells of harmony for Remus
and Remus alone. Five days to a week with Sirius would end up with him forgiving him and
probably pinning him hungrily to a tree by nightfall of the second—five days to a week with
Regulus was simply awkward. And—Remus realised this with a jolt as he considered and weighed
up the two—it was not even just awkward because they did not see eye to eye, but because they
both seemed to hold the acknowledging weight that Remus and his brother did. (That was a trifle
embarrassing, actually. He tried not to think about it. Moving on.)

They made it to Montreal.

The glaze was only a little bit strange—it truly felt like a portal, but like one of the caricatured
portals in one of the superhero science fiction movies that were popular nowadays. He drove
forward and it felt like he blinked and he was in a different place—perhaps it was the fact that the
scenery was rather similar that made it feel like nothing had happened, or perhaps it was simply
that smooth. He understood why it was such tricky magic.

He also almost drove into a tree.

Regulus’ seatbelt did the stop thing to him again, and he seemed a bit more smug about it this time,
though it was off and he was out before Remus even gathered his bearings.

“Okay,” he said, leaning on the open window, “I’m gonna go start stalking the perimeters.”

Remus blinked.
“It’s midnight,” he said. “We have all day.”

Regulus shrugged. “It’s a big town.”

“Okay–” Remus said, slowly. “I’m going to get a motel. Do you want a bed, or–?”

“Nope,” he said, sweetly; he flashed Remus a smirk, and disappeared.

It was a smirk that he had seen on the Black family trio many a time—it had different meanings on
all three of them. For Sirius, it meant cocky. For Andromeda, it meant power. He couldn’t figure
out what it meant on Regulus’ face. His entire existence was an enigma, as absent as he was as he
slinked into the night.

“Wanker,” Remus grumbled, suppressing the urge to flip off the air that he had left behind and
driving away.

He woke in a dingy motel room on the outskirts of Montreal at about 7am, to an insane amount of
light coming from a meagrely windowed room. Regulus was sitting in the sun with a newspaper.

“Morning,” he said, not taking his eyes off of the paper. Remus hadn’t even moved.

He blinked, stretched, rubbed his eyes. Shuffled to sit up. Felt incredibly awkward.

“You’re incredibly nonchalant this morning,” Remus remarked, under his breath; voice gravelly
with sleep and the weight of the morning.

He looked up, and—Remus had to stop comparing him to Sirius. Jesus Christ.

“I’ve been waiting for you to wake up for…” he checked his watch, “two hours and forty seven
minutes. I’ve been incredibly bored. Killed a guy out off the trails in the nearby valley, but he died
ridiculously quickly, so I’ve had nothing to do since–"

“Hold on–” Remus said, words tumbling from his mouth. He held up a hand. “Hold on, you killed
a man?”

Regulus nodded. “Yes."

Remus spluttered. He said quite a few incoherent things, and, after a moment, settled on; “Regulus,
you can’t kill people.”

He quirked an eyebrow. This seemed to be amusing to him. “I can’t?”

“No!” Remus gasped. “What the fuck?! We’re trying to keep attention away from ourselves!”

“No,” Regulus corrected, “technically, we’re trying to keep attention away from Malfoy so they
find him slower. So, technically, me killing a man takes the heat away from Malfoy killing a
man.”

“That’s–” Remus started, gaping, “absolutely not how that works.”

“Why not?” Regulus asked. “It also tips off the police.”

“Why would we tip off the police?”

“So they’re preoccupied with this new high-profile homicide case and less likely to notice an odd,
gangly man with no currently running authority investigating their old high-profile homicide cases;
no?”

Fuck. He had a point. Remus could not begin to express how much he hated—all the way down to
the fiery walls of his veins—that he had a point.

(Because he was killing innocent people? Or because it was Regulus and he had a point that Remus
hadn’t thought of? The lines were blurred on what exactly it was that fell over the threshold, and
the worst part was that Remus didn’t actually seem to care.)

(That, he decided, was a spiral for another day.)

(AKA, he groaned into his pillow and flopped back, leaving Regulus for forty-five minutes with no
word except one sentence in which he asked Remus who ‘The Kardashian with the big behind’
would be, to which Remus helpfully supplied ‘Kim’, and went straight back to ignoring him.)

And time went on, in this routine. They formed a sort of… routine, persay. Not exactly the easiest
dance, but a manageable one. It was Montreal to Quebec City, up along the St Lawrence River and
skirting the boundaries of Maine. On their third day, they actually drove into Maine—the murder
they had followed had been determined by Remus as non-vampiric before the sun even hit its apex,
and Regulus hadn’t caught onto anything, so they drove a five hour round trip down as far as
Medwey and back again, except there were quite a few stops as Regulus got bored and tired of
sticking his head out of the window like a golden retriever, or Remus got bored of awkward
conversation after they’d exhausted the material of genuine conversations they could have, so it
ended up being about eight hours, give or take—they got back after sundown.

They were halfway back upstate when Remus noticed blood on his collar. He tutted in disapproval.

“What?” Regulus asked, half-haughtily half… playfully? as he sat down. Remus shot him his best
condescending look.

“Do you need a bib?” he sneered. Regulus sneered right back at him and pulled his collar up so the
droplets of blood were not perceivable.

Remus laughed and continued to drive.

“No Malfoy,” said Regulus, bitterly as he appeared out of thin fucking air, two days later, just as
Remus was gathering his papers and preparing for them to check out and leave for their sixth one
way trip.

Had Remus not been lost in his thoughts, and scared bloody fucking shitless, he might have noticed
the open window that the bastard had slipped through. However, the only thing slipping in Remus’
mind was his consciousness and the files, directly out of his fingers.

“For fuck’s sake, I told you not to do that.”

“I did catch onto a scent though,” he continued, completely unperturbed, as if Remus had not
spoken, “a weird one. Not a vampire but something significant. I think I’ve caught it before, but I
don’t know where.”

“I told you,” Remus said, kneeling to pick up his stuff, “two days ago, when you appeared in front
of that old lady’s window while I was interviewing her about her dead fucking son to stop scaring
me shitless.”

“I think it’s human,” Regulus said, frowning. He sat courteously on the bed, hands folded over his
knees and looked up at Remus with big, innocent-looking eyes on his big, innocent-looking face.
Remus wanted to slap him, to be honest. He had a very, very slappable face.

“You’re insufferable,” Remus said, plainly. “And I prefer your brother.”

“Funny, you sound like my parents five hundred years ago.”

“Look, where are we going next?”

Regulus got up with reserved movements and shuffled over to the duffle bag in the corner. He
pulled out the itinerary with nimble fingers.

“Manchester, New Hampshire,” he said, and Remus nodded. There was not a murder in
Manchester, but it was close to home. Regulus was dedicating the day to going as far and wide as
he could to try and catch a scent.

That was what he had been doing. Remus had been setting up meetings, knocking on doors,
interviewing and faking detective work with his very real government ID that may or may not be
viable anymore, and Regulus was… running. To put it simply. He was going as far and wide as he
could, coming back disgruntled with a truly horrific two hairs out of place and a drop of blood in
the corner of his mouth and even more of a murderer than when he had left, and Remus couldn’t do
anything about it. Regulus had told him that he had only killed one more person after the original
man in Montreal—the rest he was just, to put it simply, snacking on—but Remus wasn’t sure he
trusted him. Though he had no right to complain and, quite honestly, besides the inherent
disapproval and slightly raised voice he didn’t really feel like complaining, and he wondered, in a
moment of existentialism, where that placed him nowadays.

Human life was so fragile. It was so docile. And surely that should simply give Remus even more
of a reason to protect it, so why was he, instead, finding even more of a reason to find it
disposable?

Not disposable. That wasn’t the correct word—or perhaps it was, but he wouldn’t admit it to
himself, because that word would make him feel like a traitor. He simply had priorities. And
where, before everything that had happened over the past couple of months—all of the pain and the
exhilaration and the fighting; the winning; the losing—a single human life that he could,
objectively, save, would’ve been top of his priority list, now it wasn’t. Because he could save a lot
more with what they were doing here. So he let Regulus feed, possibly kill; he didn’t say anything.
Wasn’t doing him any harm if he shoved the thought away. It sat happily at the back of his brain
alongside his loneliness, his longing for Sirius and every single thing in the past four days that had
reminded him of Malfoy Manor, which he was becoming extremely adept at avoiding, nowadays.

And Regulus’ grudge had, apparently, not festered quite as far as Remus had thought it might—or,
perhaps, he was much better at staying courteous than most of the vampires that Remus knew.

They packed everything up in moderate silence and only slight tension. Remus turned on the car
and drove all the way out to the designated coordinates, where, reliant enough of Pandora, the
glaze appeared at midnight on the dot.

It was a strange phenomenon to explain. It looked, in the light of the stars and the moon and a
distant streetlight somewhere west of the trail, somewhat like the Northern Lights. Aurora
Borealis; strange and magnificent and noncorporeal, some sort of spiritual mist, a mix between the
naturalistic, electromagnetic wards Remus had seen utilised by witches and some sort of scientific
substance found in the ground and in the air and in the rings of saturn; a glaze of glitter. Something
galactic, perhaps. Remus fucking loved magic.
They drove through it, and—while Remus had gotten used to it, now—it was slightly less of a
smooth sail and slightly more of a stomach churning jolt as they landed not in a wooded area but on
the edge of one, in an abandoned sort of rocky backroad, underneath a lone streetlight.

He stopped. He blinked, and he sighed, realising that he was very tired.

Regulus went to undo his seatbelt and Remus looked at him. He didn’t think it was a look any
different to his usual looks, but Regulus paused immediately.

“What?” he said.

“Where do you go?”

Regulus frowned. “When?”

“During the night,” supplied Remus. “I don’t mean now. Back at the house. You don’t sleep? Like
at all?”

“Why would I?”

Remus shrugged. “Sirius says immortality gets boring.”

“I’m not Sirius,” Regulus said. His face had hardened. The words felt easy, slipping out of his
mouth. As if he had affirmed it a thousand times before to others, or perhaps a mantra to himself.

“I know,” Remus said, slowly, after a moment. Shrugged. “But I don’t know you enough to stop
comparing, really.”

Regulus exhaled sharply out of his mouth and turned to look at him, then away, to the floor. His
guise was contemplative. Eye contact wasn’t a thing he did very well with, Remus had deduced.

“You don’t get to know me,” he said. “I’m here to help kill Tom Riddle. I’m not here to make
friends. Especially not with hunters who are entirely too big for their boots.”

“I’m not, actually,” Remus replied, humorously. “I am so small for my boots it feels like I’m
drowning in them.”

Regulus narrowed his eyes.

“I mean it,” said Remus; he shifted on his seat, turned his body to face him. “Genuine question; do
you actually know anything about me?”

“I know a lot about you,” Regulus replied. “Through Mary.”

“You know a lot about who I used to be, then,” he said, softly. “I’m not… really that person
anymore.”

“Then who are you?”

“I’m not sure,” Remus mused, feeling odd and sleep-deprived. “Sometimes I think I know. And
sometimes my hands aren’t my hands. They’re someone else’s. And they’re like—like, senseless.
As if I could stick my hand in fire and not feel anything.”

Regulus was quiet for a long while.

“That doesn’t sound pleasant,” he said, eventually, and Remus nodded.

“It’s not, really.”

“You seem very sure of yourself here,” Regulus supplied into the thick silence. “When you’re…
doing your job.”

Remus nodded once. Thinned his lips. “It’s the only thing that I can really remember from—from
the old me. Something that I can grasp onto. That’s the Remus that Mary told you about. It’s the
only thing that hasn’t changed, really. In every other circumstance recently I seem to be entirely
unaware of myself. My purpose. The world around me.”

Baring his soul under the silky dark was a choice, but Remus had nothing to lose. Regulus, on the
other hand, was quiet. The car was dimly lit from the overhead light and the outside was pitch
black, only the silhouette against a barely-there starry sky clouded with mist, and everything was
very still. There was a pit of anxiety in Remus’ stomach; he was unsure of why. He fiddled with
the stick of the car and focused on the way it moved to his touch.

“Sometimes I think I’m too aware of myself,” Regulus whispered into the broken silence.
“Sometimes my hands are too much of my own.”

Remus stopped, instantly, and inhaled. He nodded. Regulus was focused very deeply on a random
patch of the dashboard. Remus substituted his fiddling with tapping.

“Do you like… yourself?” Remus replied. The moment was fragile. “What you’re aware of?”

Regulus’ lips quirked upwards. He looked down, and smiled, as if he had just heard something
quite hilarious.

“No, not particularly,” he replied a moment later, smile faltering but only slightly. “I hate being
aware of myself because being aware of myself means that everything I do is of my own volition.
There’s no environmental, familial, excuse of a circumstance that forced me to kill that man in
Montreal, but I did it. And don’t misinterpret me, I truly don’t care that I did, but other people do,
and that makes me wonder which side I’m even on.”

“Your parents–”

“You want to compare me to Sirius?” he said, rather bitterly, “there’s the perfect chance. I feel like
he is the perfect balance of you and I.”

Remus watched and observed what he had never seen before; human quirks in his body language.
Regulus looped his thumbs into his jacket holes and tugged, slightly, and unconsciously. He
exhaled.

“You’re not enough of yourself. He’s just enough of himself. I’m too much of myself,” he said,
wistfully, “it reads like a bad joke.”

Remus hummed. “I wouldn’t say he’s just enough of himself. He struggles, too.” He smiled,
gently, at the thought. “He’s a catastrophe, actually. Burning out half the time.”

“But everything he does, he does for a reason,” said Regulus. “Even if neither of us understand it
sometimes. What are our grounds?”

Remus hummed, again. He did not have an answer for this.

“Ultimately, neither of us are good enough for him,” Regulus finished.

“No,” Remus said, shaking his head. “That’s not true.”

“He got away,” Regulus said, softly. “That’s the difference. He got away, I didn’t. Now I’m some
sort of overflowing tap. When I start I can’t stop because I don’t know how. I never needed to.
Christ, you know what it is?”

He looked up at him. Remus felt a pain in his chest, and simultaneously registered that this was the
longest string of consecutive words that Regulus had ever said in his presence. Felt the tight air of a
bathroom at the likes of 2am, no eye contact, being vulnerable under the eyes of the moon so that
when the sun comes up it can be brushed aside as a midsummer night’s dream.

“What is it?” he asked, gently.

“I didn’t think I’d live this long,” he said. It felt almost exhilarating, those words in that sequence,
like they had been tiny prisoners behind a bar of teeth long chattering for release. “Long enough to
be free. So I don’t know how to navigate it. It almost feels like something is wrong. Like in
another universe, I’m dead, and Sirius is awake, and that’s the right one, this one is not.”

Remus, hit hard by this, was quiet for a moment. He bit the inside of his lip, and smiled, bitterly.

“Well, I’ve definitely been there,” he said, gruffly, unsure of when this conversation became
something so deep and convoluted. “‘Fraid it doesn’t actually get any better. You either have to
learn to deal with it, or learn to cope with the overbearing new world, because it’s not going to go
back no matter how much you want it to.”

Regulus looked away. Back to the dash. His thoughts were so loud Remus could practically feel
them buzzing. He was less of a figure and more of a person, here, now, Remus could squeeze his
wrists, snap his bones and they’d break and he’d remember that. An odd thing, to be so vulnerable
and yet be so closed off. Remus was compelled to look away. Looking at him was oddly like
looking at the sun.

So, he called the shots, steered the wheel. Did so by straightening up after a minute, turning to
Remus and saying, poignantly, “I am sorry.”

Remus looked at him. Blinked in confusion. “What?”

“For being in New York for all those months and not helping more. I know Mary apologised, but I
never did. I could’ve prevented a lot of things that didn’t have to happen from happening.”

“You had your reasons,” said Remus, first, because overtaking his inertia was his empathy,
perpetually handing out the benefit of the doubt, even if it’d tear him apart, he needs it more than
Remus does right now. “And it’s not something we should dwell on. You can’t change it.”

“I wish I could,” he said.

“Why?”

Remus thought his lip quirking was a trick of the light, until he turned, and said, “It’ll make my
apology redundant.”

He stared, and then scoffed a laugh. Typical. “Why?”

“I want my brother,” he said, resolutely, “to tell me what the fuck to do. It is entirely selfish that I
wish I could change the past, because he’s my keynote to the future.”
Remus leaned back, and surveyed him, really. He was a myriad of fitted suits and fallen sorrows.
The imprint of your past in everything you do, it was all a farce. Perhaps he had learned more
about Regulus in these past ten minutes than he had for six weeks, because he had not been fitting
the role, but revelling in the exhilaration of showcasing your soul. Something he could not do
before. Ultimately, Regulus Black was learning how to exist in a non-leashed world, in which your
voice actually matters. He wasn’t, particularly, doing the best job. The tap was either off or
overflowing, but he’d reconciled with the broken pipes, and they were gushing right now.

He was so, so like Sirius, and yet so, so different, vulnerable in a midnight car behind strains of
magic that look like they came from the star of his namesake.

Remus hummed. “I know,” he said, nodding, because yes, he did, he had had that thought for
weeks, and weeks, and weeks, and– “but we’re not– it’s not healthy to model your entire life based
on one person's ideals. Even if that person is… everything to you.”

Regulus’ lip pulled inward, slightly; he was biting the inside of it. His eyes flickered with
acknowledgement of truth.

Remus was quite certain they were not only both thinking of Sirius, but of his parents. And he
wasn’t going to presume to know the extent—or even scratch the surface—of everything that they
had been, everything that they had put him—them—through, but there was a sense of
codependency that both of the Black brothers shared, conveyed here in the heart stains on their
sleeve and the light darkness underneath their waterline. They’re too much of themselves, loaded
under a trauma dump of toxicity, they round each other out, they keep missing each other. They
keep goddamn missing each other.

Remus had somehow been picked up along the way, and now he felt like he couldn’t live without
—and he drew a blank. He felt like he couldn’t live. And he was quite sure that it didn’t have to be
changing his ideals and modelling himself based on a fairytale to figure it out. He had reconciled,
by this point, with the fact that it would be one step at a time, like it had been over the past six
weeks. A relay of efforts he never felt rewarded for. But was he doing it for anybody but himself?

Sirius being awake would make everything different, sure—circumstantial differences—but it

would not abate the thrumming of pain in the deep of his gut. For him nor Regulus, for it was,
ultimately, unbelonging that lingered there, they were strangers in a world too big for their boots
and too small for their tidal curtain. To belong and to not belong. It is not something that just
happens to a person. You don’t just wake up and find, one day, that you belong; it’s a war every
day to try and get there.

Their levels of codependency seemed to vary, but amongst the tender space between them in the
darkness of his soft-smelling car lay an understanding that they were too much and too little and it
would be they and they alone who would figure out a way to deal with that. Neither had had to
before, perhaps most significantly because both had been groomed to expect to die long before
they’d ever have to face that displacement. And maybe that’s fucking tragedy.

“There is a kinship,” said Regulus, slowly, “in the house. It’s not something that I’ve ever
experienced before.”

Remus smiled. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

“It feels wrong,” he said. “To interact with people. Ultimately, that’s what I need Si–” he cut
himself off, here, taking a breath and smacking his lips. “My brother for. I don’t know how to do
it.”
“You act like he’s some saint of mental stability,” Remus joked, gently. “He’s absolutely not. He’s
ridden with issues, you know that?”

“Very much,” Regulus remarked, chuckling with nothing behind it. He looked up at him, behind
tired eyes.

After a moment; “Tell me what he’s like?”

Remus smiled.

“He has two personalities in battle and in life,” he started, biting his lip, letting it come to him in a
wave of golden gloss. It was so goddamn easy to talk about Sirius. It was, possibly, his favourite
thing to do. “He gets to a boiling point and then he crumbles. But he gets up. He always gets up.
He preaches leadership and puts on a brave face but he has a martyr complex in that he loves so
goddamn fiercely he would rather take on the world himself with a hundred percent chance of loss
than together with a chance of winning with mortality. It’s his mortal coil.”

Regulus nodded. He sat and he listened.

“He acts like he’s a monument but he’s not, he’s a wreck. The catastrophe on the battlefield, the
fire that settles over it; he doesn’t think he’s worth being loved. At all. He spent eight years trying
to convince me to see him and then freaked out when I did. He wants, desperately, from the
sidelines, because he singes everything he touches and yet he has somewhere along the way
convinced himself that he can save the world, but has never been able to bring himself to accept the
consequences.” He took a deep, deep breath, he could speak forever, no one would hear. “He's
genuine. So genuine. Hiding his vulnerability behind jokes and beauty, he doesn’t seem to know
that it’s the most beautiful part of him. ”

The words hung heavy in the air like tears curling at the bottom of someone’s chin. Cut through the
air like a jawline. The rips sewed themselves back together like the million abrasions that Remus
had created upon Sirius’ skin, sempiternal, as it always had and always would be.

“You do seem to know him a lot better than I,” Regulus said, eventually. His tone was unreadable.
“He’s become someone that… I think I’m glad to not recognise.”

“One thing never changed,” Remus offered. “His love for his brother.”

Regulus looked at him.

“You must know,” Remus breathed, cocking his head. “You have to know he’s only here because
of you.”

He nodded. It fell quiet again, but the conversation did not feel over.

“I feel like,” Remus whispered, squeezing his eyes shut and sprinting to every corner of his brain to
find words, rusted in old filing cabinets and behind locked doors, to encompass how he felt; “I’ve
spent this entire time trying to fit myself into an archetype, and so have you. What we should do.
How we should feel. Who we should listen to, and why. Being hammered into someone else’s idea
of perfection.”

“I’ve been hammered into perfection since the day I was born,” Regulus replied. “I don’t think I’ve
ever fit into it. I think it just bent me out of shape.”

“Perfection doesn’t exist,” Remus insisted. The ontology prickled at his throat and tugged at the
barrier of his skin. “We’re all just skin and bones trying to continue being just that instead of
falling apart. I just feel like—like—like things are simpler than that. Like we should listen to the
wind. Like, like—maybe, our own bodies are built for adaptation but we are so preconceived to
who we should be that we don’t let it do its job. That if we’re going to live on what-if’s and stolen
time we should do it together, as a wholeness, not as– as less and more.”

An owl hooted outside. As if it was agreeing with him. Remus wasn’t entirely sure what he was
saying anymore but felt like his brain had done an adequate job of disentangling something so
knotted it was pulsating black and rust and energy. A release, for now. A step up a staircase in
which the destination is who he is and the door opens to reveal a mirror. He must learn to contend
with that. He must learn to contend with seeing himself now and whoever he may have been
before. Regulus must learn to contend with seeing himself and not his brother.

This rotting old car in New Hampshire. The full moon. The three of them were so alike.

“I think,” Regulus said, gently, “in all encompassing honesty, that we could both use some
therapy.”

Remus blinked, and then he guffawed.

“He jokes!” he exclaimed. Regulus cracked a smile. The air warmed up like a phoenix feather had
dropped on the roof of the car and blessed it.

Once Remus had calmed down, he nodded.

“I think,” he started, cautiously, tapping on the steering wheel, “honestly, that we could do quite
marvellously with knowing each other outside of our links to Sirius Black.”

Regulus blinked. “You think we could do quite marvellously in being… friends?"

“Yes,” Remus said, to his blank, paraphrased statement. “Yeah, I do. I think we can learn
something from each other. Don’t you?”

Regulus leaned back, nodding. He looked out the window and seemed to contemplate something
for a moment.

“I want to help him,” he said, resolutely. Remus raised an eyebrow. “The kid. I want to help him.”

The metaphor truly couldn’t be any goddamn clearer.

“We’ll help him, then,” Remus replied.

A little bit of time passed. It felt like there was something in their stomachs that needed to settle.
The clouds parted and Remus watched the sky against the still trees. He continued fiddling with the
stick. Did not think about the world. Thought about right here, right now, touch against his
fingertips, Regulus in his car.

“Right,” he said, eventually, when the silence got throat-constricting. It was strange; Remus either
needed silence desperately or resented it. Right now he resented it. “Let’s talk about something
else. Something other than your bastard sleeping beauty of a brother.”

Regulus turned to him, and he laughed. He laughed quite loud, actually.

“If I had a drink I’d toast to that,” he said, humorously, and Remus smiled. He pulled his right hand
into a fist and raised it in the small space between them.
“To Sirius,” he said, raising his fist.

Regulus stared at him for a moment before slowly curling his own fingers in. He knocked his cold
hand against Remus’.

“Sirius,” he replied, smiling slightly, perhaps at the stupidity of it all. “And the stragglers he left
behind.”

It was an awkward sentiment. It was, quite literally, a fistbump. A fistbump in a downtrodden car
on a downtrodden road between two downtrodden people who should be enemies but are more like
mirrors.

Remus started the car. “I’m driving. You talk. About anything.”

They started going, and Regulus stretched, and said, “I killed a–”

“Not that.”

Had he not had to turn right, he might not have seen Regulus’ smile.

He’s someone’s little brother, alright.

Remus got a motel with one bed, and spent the day doing basically nothing besides tracking the
scenery and finding a library to bring his laptop to, just to go over the crimes and see if he could
spot something he might’ve missed the other ten times he had looked over them.

It was nice, regardless. Remus felt a sort of weight off of his back after last night’s conversation.
Odd as it was, it seemed like something he needed. Either that or perhaps he had used up all of his
faux-philosophical brain power and his internal monologue was quiet, his brain was happy and his
body was reciprocating and enjoying the crisp air that almost even felt warm.

He returned somewhere close to 6pm, and, upon sticking the key into the downtrodden door, was
in for a sight he never really thought he’d see.

Regulus Black was sleeping on his bed. On his side, facing the door. He was lying on his arm with
it bent at the elbow, and his legs were bent, too, in some loose semblance of a fetal position. Fully
clothed. His eyes were closed and his lips were parted and he looked—well, sleep removed all of
the weariness that clung to his pores during the day and he looked as innocent as ever.

Remus stood there for a moment. The door silently swung shut behind him, and there was a
moment of silence, and then Regulus’ eyes opened soundlessly.

He was as nonchalant and comedically chilled as ever. Remus raised his eyebrows whilst Regulus
hummed pleasantly, pulling himself up with core strength so fluidly it was almost robotic and
leaning back on his elbows.

“Morning?” Remus tried, moving to swing his bag onto the desk. His phone clinked in it and it
reminded him that he needed to reply to Dorcas’ and Lily’s texts from earlier today, but it could
wait. “How long have you been back?”

Regulus hummed. “Three hours or so. Thought I would try out that sleep thing that you were
talking about.”

Remus stopped. “Wait. Have you never actually done it before?”

“Yes,” Regulus said, focusing on his knees. “I have, but I don’t do it often at all. Had forgotten
what it was like. My legs moved.”

“Your legs moved?”

“I laid down and they were straight. Now they’re curved.”

Remus had to use all of the force in his face muscles to stop the laugh from escaping. “Yeah, that’s
generally what happens when you sleep.”

Regulus hummed again. He frowned a little bit.

“Strange,” he said, placing a hand on his knee and pulling it upwards. It fell back to the side.
Remus shrugged off his jacket and hung it up.

“Why are you back?” he asked, “I thought you were going to be gone all day?” He had been out
since about 5 that morning, according to the note he left Remus while sleeping.

Regulus blinked, and then his eyes lit up with recognition. He swung his bent legs over the bed and
immediately got up, moving with vamp speed to Remus’ side at the table and making him jump yet
again—however, before he could reprimand it, he was speaking at the speed of light.

“I got him,” he said, and Remus gasped.

“Malfoy?”

“Yes, but you’ll never guess who I picked up along the way,” he said, with the air of a middle aged
woman spreading gossip; the both of them sat down at the table and simply perpetuated the
stereotype. Regulus’ eyes glistened.

“None other than Severus Snape,” he said, and Remus’ mouth fell open.

“Snape?”

“Yep.”

“So he’s the one that has been sent out to find the Malfoy kid…” Remus said, and Regulus nodded.
“Where did you find him?”

“So I went up the coastline,” Regulus explained, “directly east from here and then up and all the
way into Maine. I clocked Severus somewhere around Portland—took a detour and ended up
losing him in the White Mountain forest, but I got him again—followed him back into Maine and I
finally caught Draco’s scent about a half hour out of Augusta.”

“Where had he come from?”

“North,” Regulus said, simply. “Somewhere we didn’t cross, obviously. But he did go North.
Tracked his old trail up to Skowhegan and then decided to drop it and go for the newer one.”

“And Snape’s follows him?”

“Yeah,” Regulus said. “As far as I went it did. Draco’s scent goes dead in Southwest Harbour.
There’s no land past there, going straight forward it’s all just sea until you hit Africa, so I think he
snuck himself onto a boat up the bay and ended up in Nova Scotia.”

“Nova Scotia,” Remus repeated. “And Snape?”

Regulus shrugged. “He disappeared too.”

“How much time do they have on us?”

“The Malfoy kid maybe… two weeks?” Regulus said, as a guesstimate. “Snape, not even five days,
I’d imagine. He was here recently.”

“You tell Pandora?”

“Not yet,” Regulus said, somewhat sheepishly. “I got back ready to tell you, and then–”

He looked over towards the bed, and Remus rolled his eyes.

“Sometimes you’re so fucking human, you know that, right?” he jeered, getting up to grab his
phone and call Pandora.

Regulus simply grinned.

***

“Ah-ha!” Regulus exclaimed, four hours later in the backseat of Remus’ car, holding up four
playing cards in his right hand with glee. “I have all four three’s. I win.”

Remus arched an eyebrow over his own set of cards. “I asked you if you had any threes and you
said that you didn’t?”

“No,” said Regulus. “I said Go Fish.”

“That’s–” Remus laughed, here, an unavoidable bark of a thing, “that’s not how the game works.
You can’t lie. And you don’t win until all of your cards are in a set, and—look, you have four more
right there.”

He pointed to Regulus’ other hand, in which he did, in fact, have four left.

“Ugh,” he groaned, dropping his hands back into his lap. “This game is stupid.”

“It’s not stupid. You just don’t follow the rules.”

“It is stupid.”

“You’re stupid.”

Regulus’ jaw fell open, incredulously.

“You’re stupid,” he retorted, putting his cards down stroppily, and Remus scoffed and put his own
down, too, going to shuffle them all back into a deck and slip them into the little box.

Something began to glow out of the corner of his eye, and Regulus’ head moved in tandem with his
to the front window of the car; out of which, a few feet in front of them, the glaze was beginning to
form.

It began as a streak in the air—sort of like someone had swiped a paintbrush with silver paint
upwards, and it had created a rift—except it crackled. Like a sparkler, it sizzled and sputtered
bright electricity, until it got at least eight feet tall, and then it expanded. Like a minimised browser
being thrown into full screen. It encompassed the entire window with silvery mist, and lit up both
of their skin with pale, milky light not far from the light of the moon but more tangible.
“Well,” he said, pulling the flap over the lip of the card deck and throwing it somewhere back onto
the seat, “that’s us.”

“That’s us,” Regulus said.

Remus slinked into the driver's seat patiently and turned on the ignition. He looked magic in the
face as he had for the past week–as had become his routine, for a week up and down the continent
and for months and years around the globe. He drove into it.

It was normal, at first. It took them into a little wooded area, with fern trees and leaves lining the
floor. The trees were not naked but their half-dressed attire in early Spring still felt like an absence.
It had a different smell here, too; Remus noticed it immediately. Pine and spice and something
burning slightly. It was darker, too. Cloudy. The only light was coming from the glaze.

“Where are we?” Remus asked, wanting to pinpoint the location. Regulus didn’t respond for a
moment.

“Just outside Halifax,” he murmured, rolling his windows down. It was so quiet that Remus almost
stopped breathing.

Regulus took a deep, quiet breath in. Out.

“Oh,” he murmured, and Remus went cold.

“What?” he hissed. Regulus gaped.

“Oh,” he repeated. “Oh, they’re here. They’re here.”

“Both of them?” Remus asked. Regulus was already opening his door.

“Everyone,” he hissed, and Remus frowned and got out of his, too. Regulus was already circling
the glaze, footsteps loose on soft leaves and hard twigs. Remus followed him like a dog.

“What do you mean everyone?” he pressed. “Are they both here?”

“Malfoy and Snape,” he said, “and others. Everyone that I’ve sniffed out. I don’t know who they
are. It’s all cultivated here.”

“Vampires?"

“No,” he replied, lightly, and when he turned to Remus, his face was solemn.

His eyes were dark.

“I don’t think we’re the only ones trailing the Malfoy kid, Remus,” Regulus said, and his voice
reverberated off of the trees. They seemed overbearing. The darkness was incredibly dark, the trees
were incredibly tall.

Remus shuddered with cloudy, sinister energy.

“Get in the car,” said Regulus, out of nowhere. Remus raised his eyebrows.

“What?”

“I can try and find the kid and get back here without disturbing the others,” he near-whispered, his
voice so low it vibrated slightly. “We don’t want anyone else on our tail.”
“I can defend mys–”

“Get in the car,” Regulus hissed. And so Remus got in the car.

He disappeared with a swirl of leaves in his wave, practically dissipating like mist or steam into the
thick darkness, and Remus sat there. Took shallow breaths and sat and waited. Twiddled his
thumbs on his lap and tapped the leather of the steering wheel.

The glaze faded slowly. He didn’t even realise until a moment before it closed. It flickered, a little
—not like a light, it was less harsh, more of a wavy flicker as if it was swimming like a dolphin
through a veil and back again—and then the light ceased. Collapsed in on itself, like a star. Like a
dying star.

Remus was plunged into utter darkness, and it took him a moment to decide whether or not to put
the roof lights of his car on. He felt like he was walking a tightrope, or perhaps holding the world’s
most precious glass. Every breath he took felt like it would shatter the atmosphere into a million
pieces.

He reached up and switched one of the two lights on. It was dim and orange like a dingy streetlight
in an equally-dingy, wet pavemented town.

He blinked, and his eyes adjusted.

There was a person.

Standing at the treeline.

Remus’ blood ran cold, and he felt his heartbeat start to speed up. Shit. Oh, shit. Trying not to
make any sudden, acknowledgeable movements he slipped his right hand off his lap and into the
compartment in between the front seats. He probably had no time to make it around the back to his
knives and daggers but his gun was situated nicely in here. He pulled it out slowly and gripped it
tight in his hands.

The person was standing there with a mighty gait, six feet or something ridiculous tall, and Remus
could only really see their outline. He could see their silhouette. Yet his mind started to think
logically. Hands, feet, clothes. Who, what, why? He scanned the figure and noticed that there was
no weapon in their left hand, which was stretched out, but he was quite sure—if his eyes and the
darkness were not deceiving him—that there was a gun in the other hand.

Vampires didn’t need guns. This was a human.

Remus took a deep breath. He had taken on a vampire with nothing but a gun filled with wooden
bullets; he could take on a human with less.

He opened the door and stepped into the biting air. A twig crunched underneath his foot and the
smell of smoke and petrol, for some reason, permeated his nose; the pine came belatedly. Wind
whistled ominously through the wistful trees and the figure took a step back, and then a step
forward.

He slammed the car door shut, and the light turned off. It was utter darkness.

“Who are you?” Remus called, cocking his gun and taking a few steps forward. The figure did not
respond nor move. “What do you want?”

There was a moment, in which it was only Remus, his stranger of darkness, and the wind blowing
through his ears. Utter stasis.

And then the figure started to run at him, and Remus bunched his hands into fists.

The first punch came and he blocked it, miraculously, considering he could still barely see
anything, but the momentum was easy to track. The person was smaller than him, but only by a
few inches, and he definitely had something in his hand—Remus didn’t know what it was for sure
until the guy blocked a punch with that hand as his other was being crushed between Remus’ fist
above his head, and he saw the gun glint, reflecting light that wasn’t there.

“Who are you?” Remus grunted, and the person did not answer.

He, instead, headbutted Remus straight in the forehead.

It threw him off, for a second—a split second—but a split second was long enough for a gun twirl
that was so quintessentially hunter-like that Remus almost gasped before the barrel of the gun was
being thwacked onto his temple. He staggered and the figure followed him—hounding him, almost
—but the adrenaline took care of the next punch, for him. His arm flew up of its own volition—he
could taste blood in his mouth, and feel the pain ripple through his forearm as he blocked it, but he
did; he pushed the man’s—for he was quite sure it was a man, now—grasp away from him and he
took a step back, which Remus mirrored, and he was in control, now.

The man went for an uppercut, and Remus raised his leg and kicked him in the stomach.

He went flying, staggering back four of five paces and letting out an insignificant groan, and
Remus stalked after him, tall and mighty and fucking furious—he punched the guy round the face
once more, feeling every single intricate detail of the bone structure of his face against his bruised,
map-making knuckles, and he fell. Fell on his backside, and Remus kicked him round the face,
kicked him down once more, his back, trying to get him just that little bit further–

The man’s right arm fell to his side, and, before he could pull himself up—he was a fighter, truly,
for he was going to—Remus stood on the low of his wrist. Pressed his dirty heel right into the gap
between his Ulna and his Radius, and pressed hard; hard enough that, after a minute of struggling,
the man’s grip went slack and he dropped his gun.

Remus took his weight off the man’s wrist for a split second, did a little hop forward to kick the
gun with the side of his foot so it went flying across the grass, hitting a tree and landing with a
metallic thud. Before the man could move he turned and placed his foot back on him, except this
time it was pressed against his neck. He didn’t seem to be attempting to move any more. He
seemed to have given up.

Remus cocked and aimed his gun.

“Who are you?” he growled, blinking and trying to make out his facial features. His eyes had
adjusted, but the guy had turned his head away. Remus could see blood on his face, and he didn’t
see but he heard blood in his mouth as he spat to the side, huffing angrily. He could also see red
hair.

“Fuck off,” the man spat, and he was British. His voice was high, and–it was something…
familiar.

“What are you doing here?” Remus asked, and when the stranger didn’t reply, he pushed his foot
into his neck further. He choked, slightly, groaned, whined and only then did he acquiesce.

“Okay,” the man wheezed, and Remus lightened the pressure. He coughed three or four times, took
a few ragged breaths, and then lay his head back. “Okay. Fine. We’re here for the Malfoy kid.”

“Why would he send you for the Malfoy kid?” Remus asked, and the man seemed to harrumph.

“I’m one of his best, thank you,” he said with a sense of pride that Remus had only really heard in
himself, but before he got to reply the man was speaking again, gritty and angry. “I should be
asking why they would send you, human. What, you work your way up their ranks or something?
Hoping to be turned?”

Remus’ mouth fell open, slightly, there was some sort of misunderstanding–something, something
that he couldn’t seem to detangle without more information. He did not lower his gun but he moved
the trigger finger off said trigger.

“You think I’m with the vampires?” he said, finding the only thread that seemed to make sense of
what he said; the man scoffed. Remus could barely see his expression but could almost feel the eye
roll.

“I saw you with the vampires,” he hissed. “The Black. His right hand fucking man.”

Remus gasped.

“Riddle didn’t send you,” said Remus, as a statement. The man ogled at him for a moment.

“Riddle? Send me? No–”

“Who–”

“–Riddle did not send me, shouldn’t you fucking know that, Bloodsucker-sympathiser?”

“Shut up,” Remus commanded, pushing down a little bit harder but not enough to cause pain, only
discomfort—he squeezed his eyes shut and opened them, trying to pull the pieces together. “You’re
a human.”

“Yes.”

“You’re a hunter.”

He hesitated with this one, and then Remus pressed down and he choked. “Yes—yes.”

“Moody sent you?” Remus gasped, pulling his foot away altogether; the man seemed to gasp not
only while his windpipe cleared but at the name, and Remus crouched down, trying to get a good
look at him. “Who the hell are–”

“How do you know Moody?” the man spat, swatting Remus’ hand away, shaking out what, yes,
was definitely ginger hair. It clicked.

“Holy shit, you’re a Weasley,” Remus breathed, almost hyperventilating with adrenaline. “Which
one? I can’t see–”

“Get the fuck away from me!” the guy yelped, trying to scramble back, and all of a sudden he
sounded very young. “How do you know me?”

“Look,” Remus said, desperately. “I know your family. I’m a hunter under Moody too. I’m not
working for Riddle.”

“You were with his right–”

“Regulus is on our side,” Remus said, the words tumbling out of his mouth—he became acutely
aware of his surroundings, of the colossal darkness and the vampiric presence that was lurking
behind the wispy treeline and there was what was undoubtedly a kid in front of him—it wasn’t Bill
or Charlie, he knew that for certain—and there were answers on the tip of his tongue that Remus
had been longing for for weeks.

“Vampires can’t be on our side,” the man—kid—jeered, angry and confused. Remus actually
laughed.

“You wouldn’t believe how many of the supernatural actually are on our side, kid,” he said,
gruffly. “Are you alone? You can’t be, right? Who’s left? Who’s alive? Are Bill and Charlie with
you? They’d know me. Are you one of the twins?”

The kid seemed to gape, his eyes reflecting light that wasn’t there and being one of the more
significant features Remus could focus on; they were soft. He was confused. Remus could tell.

He had just opened his mouth to speak when the sudden presence of a wavering, distant flashlight
made Remus jump. He turned to his right and he could hear footsteps, multiple, running on wood
and damning grass and leaves and twigs to hell.

“Fred!” someone screamed, shrill and echoing through the trees; the loudest sound Remus had
heard in a while, making his eardrums shudder, could come from none other than Molly Weasley.

She, alongside two other figures, came tumbling through the trees, and the enlightenment of the
flashlights was almost heaven but also felt like he was caught at a crime scene. Molly’s hair was
frizzy and wild, and she had blood on her face, dirt on her face and in her clothes; she looked like
she had been running barefoot through the forest looking for her son for two years.

She looked at Remus with blazing eyes, and he had no doubt that she’d do it for two more.

Remus didn’t get time to clock who the other figures were before Molly was bodyslamming him
and had him completely knocked down—completely knocked over, granted he was crouching but
she came at him so fast he didn’t even have time to prepare—and she ended up scrambling back
and pointing her own gun at him rabidly, flashlights shining into his face as the two other figures
appeared and crowded over him and Fred got up, too, going to stand beside his family.

It was not a Weasley who clocked him first, however.

“Remus?” whispered Minerva McGonagall, standing to Molly’s right with her grey, wavy hair
down her front cascading to her collarbones, dirty and tired and donning a black zip-up jacket and
cargo pants. Her mouth was open and Remus noted she had a split lip, though it seemed to be old
and healing.

Minerva McGonagall. The Scottish deputy head of the American bureau—only really on that side
of the Atlantic because of her lingering loyalty and affiliation to Dumbledore, Remus always
suspected she preferred to be home. She spent a lot of time back in London, closest she could get,
on visitations and comms missions and upholding her role as the main ambassador for
communications between HQs. Remus had seen a lot of her in his time—though the cold,
unconventional-caring Moody would always be his mentor, he had grown to see McGonagall as
almost a co-parent in that aspect, and he was quite sure—if the look on her face was anything to go
by—she might have grown to see him that way too.

“Remus?” Fred asked, as Molly lowered her gun, and Bill–the other of the two, scarification
layering his skin, hair greasy and donning a black eyepatch–gasped. The youngest of the lot was
unperturbed. “Remus Lupin? Isn’t he Undesirable Number One?”

“Unde–what number what?” Remus gaped, and Molly seemed to fall back into herself at Fred’s
words; she cocked her gun again. He looked back at her. “Molly–”

“What are you doing here?” she asked, harshly. “Here for the Malfoy kid? To give him back to
your master?”

“No, Molly, you’ve got it all wrong–” Remus spluttered, shaking his head. “I’m not working with
Riddle. I’m working against him, I—what do you mean undesirable?!”

“Your poster is up on every wall in the bureau,” Bill said, blankly. He pursed his lips. “Or, was.”

“In HI2, as well,” Minerva said. “Dumbledore put out a bounty to bring you back alive.”

Remus felt his guts fall out of his body.

“Why?” he asked, completely gobsmacked; none of them said anything for a while. Molly’s aim
was shaky.

“You killed Peter Pettigrew, mate,” murmured Bill. Remus’ eyes bulged so far out of his head he
was surprised he couldn’t see into another dimension.

“No,” he insisted, “no, no, I didn’t kill– hang on, Pete’s dead?!” he asked, mouth wide open.
Minerva looked away. Molly swallowed.

“Yeah,” said Bill, since nobody else seemed to be going to. “Died in a hospice in Germany. Never
recovered from his injuries.”

“You killed Benjy Fenwick, too,” said Molly, and Remus felt, incredibly bitterly, like he was about
to laugh. That was, until she continued; “And—and my brothers.”

Remus’ face went very solemn.

“Molly,” he said, very, very carefully. “I didn’t kill your brothers. I didn’t kill Benjy—hell, I was
having a conversation with Benjy on the phone earlier today! Look, I don’t know what utter
rubbish Dumbledore has told you–”

“He said you were a mole,” Bill supplied. Remus was actually quite thankful that he was laying
everything out for him. God knows he’d be lost without it.

“Yes, because he heard everything out of context,” said Remus. “He truth serum-ed me and didn’t
give me chance to explain anything. Just like you’re not.”

“He truth serum-ed you?” Minerva asked, frowning.

“Against my will,” Remus said. He took a deep breath in. “Look, if I’m—if I’m most wanted then
Dumbledore is setting me up. I didn’t kill anyone. Benjy and Gid and Fab are all perfectly well and
alive, and–” he cut off, swallowing, slightly. Unsure of whether or not he should say it. He looked
into Molly’s eyes, and then down the barrel of his gun, and decided perhaps he should wait before
the rabid vampire hunter found out her son was that that she had despised oh so prevalently.

“Just let me explain,” he insisted. “Please, guys. Minerva, Bill. You know me. Let me explain and
we’ll try and figure out where everything went wrong together."

Nobody moved. Nobody moved for a long, long minute.

And then Minerva took a step forward. Her feet crunched on the ground and she reached out a
slightly wrinkled hand and gently placed it on Molly’s upper arm. She lowered the gun with
Minerva’s guide, but didn’t take her eyes off of Remus.

“I trust him,” Minerva said, looking directly at him. “I trust him, Molly. We should listen to what
he has to say.”

And what Minerva McGonagall says, goes.

***

They did not speak to him instantly. They took him—Molly had a very tight grip around his arm,
and he was unsure if it was because she didn’t trust him or because he had battered her son (which
he apologised for, mind you)—about a ten minute walk East, over some grassy knolls and out of
the heavily wooded area onto a sort of open space, at the edge of a cliff that was not a cliff at all
but simply a ten foot long ridge. There was not a fire going, but there seemed to be the remnants of
one. Molly had to give an extremely intricate vocal signal before she entered past the line of the
wooded area. Remus heard at least 3 poised guns un-cock and drop when she did it.

They walked into the lantern-ed light, dragging him along with them like a prisoner, and four new
figures stood in a half-moon circle around the remnants of the fire. There were sparse lanterns but
they were present enough that Remus could see faces and acquaint names to two, though the third
seemed to be at immediate quite obvious when she broke away and ran to wrap her arms around
Bill and kiss him.

The two that Remus knew were Charlie Weasley, and Alastor ‘Mad-Eye’ fucking Moody.

“He’s okay, Alastor,” Minerva said, sharply, as the old man had straightened and his hand had
twitched for his gun. Remus felt so overwhelmed with something that might be nostalgia or maybe
joy upon seeing him that he couldn’t say much for a moment. Simply followed Minerva. “We’re
going to listen to what he has to say.”

Moody sat down, and Remus approached him awkwardly as the others preoccupied themselves
with getting Fred patched up again. He looked up, once, at Remus, and grunted.

“Thought you were dead,” he said. Remus sat down.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Same with you.”

“Hm.”

The “Glad you’re not” rang free somewhere in the distance. Remus understood him, after all those
years. It was reciprocated.

With the light upon them, they all truly did look rough. There was a gorgeous petite girl with pink
hair and burn scars layered over her arms and her chest, who Remus learned was called ‘Tonks’,
which he found quite amusing as it was Ted’s last name, too. She had a cut across her face and
knives strapped to her thighs, and her hair was shorter than shoulder length and hung like a hot pink
mushroom around her face.

Charlie greeted Remus the warmest out of all of them, though they were all cautious. Fleur was the
name of the strong-willed French girl who was dating Bill (although Tonks seemed to also be
dating Bill if the kiss on the cheek was anything to go by). Fleur’s skin was dark and flawless, her
hair long and tied back in a ponytail; she had a cap on that she slung her pony through the back of,
alongside arm warmers and brown, baggy pants that she looked amazing in even despite the mud
and what looked like blood stains on them.

Moody was the worst. The side of his face adjourning the mad eye was all scarred. It was old,
happening sometime in the months Remus hadn’t seen him, but still horrific. He had bandages over
his arms and hands that looked like they needed redoing. He was wearing a thick jacket, and,
despite his fake limb and the cane he was leaning on, stood taller than any of them.

None of them were sure exactly how to greet them so instead of warm reunions he went over the
bare basics, and felt that the group were rather swayable. There were no interruptions—no ifs or
buts, and no judgements further than an upturned nose or a look of disgust. They listened as he laid
out the case; how he got there, what they were doing. As he outlined Horcruxes in their briefest
form—he had no idea who might be listening. He missed out a lot, of course, to condense it into a
story that lasted a little less than 20 minutes—he focused mainly on the hunters aspect of the story,
telling them in detail about the heist of HI2 for the Basilisk venom (thus requiring the briefing of
Horcruxes) and how Benjy, the Prewett’s, and Dearborn had come to be in their affiliation. He
avoided Malfoy Manor altogether aside from mentioning that he was the one who released Draco
Malfoy, and that that was why he was here with Regulus Black—who was good (in the loosest
sense possible; ‘on their side’ probably made more sense)—to look for him.

They did not give any judgements or comments. Moody grunted a few times, scoffed a few more,
but aside from that they let him speak. And when he was done he asked what the fuck had
happened to them, and it was Charlie who told him. A story for a story. Remus sat and listened.

First of all, he said, the bureau’s explosion was not a gas leak nor a terrorist attack. It was an inside
job. There were bombs in the structure of the place made of pure Aconite, which, when crossed
with Methane, was highly corrosive; but things had been happening long before that. Apparently,
Dumbledore had begun to immediately label Remus a murderer and a traitor after the heist. He put
up his poster on every wall of both bureaus and had his top hunters scouring the world for him,
apparently—although Remus found this hard to believe, for he had not even been a semblance of
sniffed out.

The hunters that he had ‘killed’—just the ones who had gone with him—were memorialised and he
was labelled a three time murderer with Dorcas as his accomplice. To this he brought up the fact of
why Dumbledore never brought this to the authorities, had he actually murdered these people, and
none of them really seemed to have an answer.

The Malfoy kid expedition was given to them—given to them all, every hunter worth his salt,
along with the debriefing of Riddle and his vampires (Remus thought at first this would be the
information he had given him, but that posed the question of how the hell he knew about Regulus,
which he didn’t have an answer for)—not even two days after Malfoy Manor happened. This, as
expected, left Remus incredibly confused. Because how could he have known that Draco had gone
on the run? Who the hell could have told him? What did Dumbledore know?

Regardless, the organisations fell not even a week later, which Remus knew, when the London
bureau burned. The group of them had no further knowledge of what the hell had happened to the
Washington bureau either, as it was completely abandoned; unfortunately there had been no word
from anyone there, not even Dumbledore, since, although they were quite certain that the hunters
aside from him had not come into any harm aside from scattering. Remus was less certain.
Considering what Dumbledore seemed to know, whatever he seemed to be seeking from Riddle, he
knew that there had to be something more sinister in the works to cause all of these people to
disappear without a trace. Hordes of workers don’t just go missing. Unless something makes them
leave and something stops them being found.
So, HI1 fell, and HI2 fell with it. The nine of them had barely escaped with their lives. Due to it
being such a targeted attack they had been on the run ever since, and, since tracking the Malfoy kid
was the last mission they were given, they had smuggled themselves on a boat over to the next
continent in hopes it would lead them to answers.

Fortunately, it had led them to Remus. They seemed to answer for each other.

“So, have you seen him?” asked Remus. Bill shook his head.

“No,” he said. “We’ve been tracking him up and down Nova Scotia for about two weeks now. He
keeps slipping away from us.”

“There’s another vampire, too,” said Tonks, the pink-haired person who was eating something in a
silver travel bag. “Long hair, very snooty. Almost killed me two days ago.”

“Snape,” Remus supplied. “He works for Riddle. He’s the one who has been sent to retrieve the
kid.”

“I don’t like that there’s only one,” Moody grumbled. “‘f the kid’s so important where’s his army?”

“I don’t know,” Remus said, slowly. “There might be more, but hopefully we won’t be sticking
around long enough to hear it.”

“What?” Molly said, sharply, and Remus raised his eyebrows.

“You guys are coming with me, right?” he asked. “It’s a resistance group. You’ll be safe.”

“It’s vampires,” said Bill with incredible distaste.

“It’s vampires who hate the same people we do,” Remus said, calmly. Quite honestly, he was
rather sick of having to explain the same things over and over. “And Dorcas, Benjy and your
brothers,” he gestured to Molly, “are there.”

“Is there good food?” Tonks asked, eyes bright. “If I have to eat any more fish from the sea I might
kill myself.”

Remus nodded.

“‘ey, you like my fried fish!” Fleur complained, shoving her, and Tonks grimaced, but it was
playful and laced with adoration. Fleur gasped and turned to Bill. “You like my fried fish, right,
mon coeur?”

Bill’s eyes were unfathomably wide, and he laced Fleur’s hand in his own and kissed the back of
her dirty hand.

“Of course I do, babe,” he said, and she simmered down and laid her head on his shoulder. He
looked at Remus and shook his head minutely. Tonks laughed and reached over to lace her fingers
into her other hand.

“Is there a bath?” asked Fred, excitedly. (The kid was not technically a kid at all, being 20 years
old, but if Percy Weasley was a kid to him then his little brother was by default.)

Remus smiled, and nodded again.

“There is a bath,” he said, and then he frowned. “Hey, didn’t you have a twin?”
The group went quiet for a moment, and Remus expected the worst.

“Badly injured in the bombing,” Molly supplied. “George is safe with his great aunt and his little
siblings. Hopefully they’ll stay there until everything blows over and we get to go home.”

He did not have the heart to say it, but he could tell in the dejected tone of Molly’s voice that he
didn’t have to.

“So you guys are in, then?” Remus asked, hesitantly, feeling a hilarious sense of deja vu to his one
conversation with Dorcas. “You believe me?”

“I don’t know if I believe you,” Bill said, hesitantly. “I don’t—I mean, what you’re saying makes
sense, but I’m not sure why Dumbledore would–”

“I believe you, boy,” Moody spat. It was gruff and gritty, like he had dirt stuck in his throat. He
leaned over onto his cane, hunched from the log he was sitting on; Remus blinked in shock. “This
isn’t a simple case anymore. This is a war, and we’re all a part of it whether you like it or not. No
time t’ folly ‘round with loyalties when your lives are on the line. A resistance group is a resistance
group; as long as the vampires stay out of my eyeline I won’t shoot ‘em.”

Honestly, that was tonnes more than Remus could’ve ever hoped for. It was a pretty synonymous
agreement after that.

Five minutes went by. Majorly in silence, handing out snacks and murmuring conversations about
the next step. Remus was trying to work out how to take them all back with them when his car only
fit five people when he heard a noise. He sat up straight, instantly.

“Did you hear that?” Tonks asked, and Bill held up a harsh hand. They sat in silence. Eternal,
waiting, silence.

And there it was. It was unmistakable.

It was Regulus Black screaming Remus’ name.

“Shit,” he murmured, and he cocked his gun and was up before the soundwaves even stopped
reverberating.

***

Remus didn’t look back, but he could tell that every single one of the hunters were behind him.
Partly because one or maybe more of them had flashlights, and partly because he could hear their
footsteps, feel their breath and the swing of their knives as they ran behind him, stumbling on the
uprooted trees and trailing along the muddy terrain.

He followed the noise. There were no more screams, but he could hear the snarls and the vicious
bang of bodies being thrown against a tree that he could feel in his own spine, his breath
quickening with the familiar feeling of panic, unsafety.

He kept running. Kept stumbling towards the fight until he couldn’t feel his legs and he could see
Regulus’, dangling in the air, as the crazed figure of Bellatrix Lestrange threw him ten feet by the
neck at a tree, lit up from the underside by the flashlights like some kind of horror movie shot.

Bellatrix turned, her hair crazy and face erratic, and she smiled.

“Hunter,” was all she said before Remus shot her twice in the chest.
She can’t have been taken aback–what the hell else would she have expected?—but the shots left
enough time for the hunters behind Remus to run forward, Tonks with a huge curved knife, Fleur
with small, enchanted boomerang—like throwing knives that were skimming Bellatrix’s every
limb. Moody tried to aim and shoot from afar and the Weasley’s teamed up, giving Remus a
chance to slip around the fight and run to Regulus, skidding slightly on his knees at the vampire
who was slumped against the tree he had been thrown against.

His head lolled upwards when he saw Remus, and then he turned to the side and spit out deep red.

He smiled, a bit hysterically. There was, predictably, blood coating his teeth.

“She’s really strong,” he murmured, deliriously.

“Jesus Christ,” Remus muttered, gripping him by the cheek and slapping the side of his face a little
bit. “You hurt? Any non quick-time healing injuries?”

“No,” said Regulus, gruffly, moving to sit up in discomfort. “Just winded. She did that like three
times in a row.”

“The kid?”

“Somewhere over there,” Regulus said, gesturing to his right. “Found him and Snape. Didn’t get
much in words-wise before Bella appeared and started wreaking havoc. I’d only caught onto her
scent five minutes before; I’ve no clue where she came from.”

Remus looked over into the darkness and hissed through his teeth. “He’s probably long gone by
now.”

“I don’t think so,” said Regulus softly, pointing to a place just over Remus’ shoulder. He turned
with so much force he almost got whiplash.

Standing there, behind a tree, was, inevitably, Draco Malfoy.

He was wearing clothes that were not dirty but rugged, as if he had been running, and he was
staring with wide eyes at the Weasley’s, who had noticed him too and were taking a stand. Remus
blinked and Severus Snape appeared out of thin fucking air, and he couldn’t hear the conversation
—probably wouldn’t have been able to anyway even if Bellatrix hadn’t been screaming and the
girls hadn’t been yelling back, but it didn’t help. Snape raised his hands in a mock surrender and
then Charlie made a move forward, and he jumped into action. He was protecting the kid. He
turned and told Draco to run—Remus could see that much—and Bill shot him square in the
stomach.

“Don’t kill him!” Remus yelled, frantic, getting up from Regulus and pacing a step or two closer.
“Don’t– fuck. Fuck.”

“Call Pandora,” said Regulus. He was standing up now; there was blood trickling down his neck
and out of his ears, and smears of dirt on his collarbone and throat. He cricked his neck and then
cracked his fingers. “Tell her to open the glaze. We can hold them off for long enough.”

And with that he ran. Ran directly into the fire pit, and, sneaking up behind, ripped into Severus
Snape’s neck. Ripped a chunk of his skin right out with his teeth.

It was horrific. It was Black.

Remus pulled out his phone and Pandora had already called him fifteen times in the past four
hours; the phone didn’t even ring twice.

“Dora,” Remus gasped, running to hide behind a tree and situate himself away from the fighting.

“Remus,” she cried, static-y and slightly confused. “Remus, I’ve been calling–”

“Pandora, I need you to open the–”

“We need you to come back–”

“–glaze, I need you to open it now,” he hissed. Pandora was silent for a beat.

“Oh,” she said, breathlessly, “okay, I– okay. That works. That’s perfect. Let me–”

There was some rustling that was evidently a phone being put down or moved about as she
prepared, and Remus stood, trying to be patient with a battle waging behind him, except it didn’t
last long, because Snape came staggering backwards not three feet from Remus into the small
space in front of him, and then Regulus was there. He kicked his stomach with such animalistic
force that Snape went flying—he was thrown at least eight feet and landed on his backside,
skidding across the mud, groaning.

“Pandora, hurry it up,” Remus said, looking around—he knew they weren’t far from where the
glaze would be, now.

“I am, one second,” she said, flustered. He was evidently on speaker while she cast the spell. He
could hear other panicked voices in the background, but they all blended into one and he could not
hear what they were saying. “Same place?”

“Same place.”

Out of the corner of Remus’ eye, a bright, white light appeared. About a minute's walk away. A
twenty second sprint, if he ran fast enough.

“Okay. It’s done, but I can only hold it for ten minutes.”

“Ten–”

“You didn’t give me notice!” she cried, and Remus nodded even though she couldn’t see. Regulus
was beating the absolute shit out of Snape and he didn’t even want to know what was happening
behind him.

“Okay. Okay. Thank you, Dora.”

He cut the phone before she even got to reply, shoved it into his pocket and stalked forward.

Upon making it to the two of them, hand against a tree to their side, he found Snape on the floor
and Regulus Black epitomising his reputation. There was something deranged in his eye, debonair
in his stance; there was blood splattered across his face. He licked his top lip provocatively,
grinning, murderous. Fucking terrifying.

“Is that the best you can do?” Snape jeered. Already bruised and battered, it seemed as if he simply
couldn’t resist being an asshole. Regulus’ eyes were dangerous.

“Remus,” he called, cocking his head. “How much time do I have?”

“Ten minutes,” Remus called back. Regulus rolled up his sleeves.

“That means I have nine minutes and fifty seconds to make your life a living fucking hell,” he spat,
and grabbed Snape by the neck, picking him up and holding him high above his head like he was a
doll.

“No,” Snape choked. He raised his hand and scratched at Regulus’ hands, spluttering and choking
and gasping for breath. It was horrific. “No—no, I’m on– I’m o-on your side.”

Regulus scoffed. “No, you’re not,” he said, but he lowered Snape anyway. Pushed him, hard,
against a tree, and snarled directly in his face.

“I am,” he gasped. Remus almost laughed. A typical move of cowardice; provoke something to
come to you and then be unable to handle it. He went on. “I wasn’t sent here by the Dark Lord. He
sent Bella. I’m here for someone else. I’m a spy. I’m on your side.”

“You’re full of shit,” said Regulus, slamming his skull against the bark again. It left a dent in the
bark, dripping with thick blood.

“I’m no-ot,” Snape choked when he recuperated, gagging slightly. His breathing was staggered.
There was blood mixed with saliva pouring out of his mouth. “If I wasn’t, h- how would I know
about the artifacts? The—the locket. In Latvia. It’s not there, is it?”

Regulus, arm pressed against Snape’s throat, went rigid. Snape’s eyes glinted, a small smile against
his split lips. He seemed to know he had something in his jaws. It was gushing blood.

Regulus leaned in, very, very closely. His voice was very, very menacing.

“I don’t know what kind of fucking game you’re playing, Snape,” he murmured, right into his face,
top lip curled, “but I thought we established in 1959 that playing games with me is dangerous?”

“It’s not a game,” Snape gasped, hauling his head side to side. “I can prove it. I can prove it if you
take me with you.”

“He’s full of shit,” Remus called from where he was standing by and listening. It seemed pretty
obvious to him. “He just wants to save his own back.”

“No one knows about the locket, Lupin,” Regulus rattled, robotically, “you don’t even know about
the locket.”

“Riddle told him! Wait—” he paused, sort of rebooting, “yeah, what locket?”

“Riddle doesn’t know that it’s missing!” Regulus hissed back, ignoring his question that quite
pertinently required an answer, though they had so little time both seemed to become aware of it
simultaneously, used four hands to shove it aside—Snape began to laugh—three hands. One to
choke him to death.

“What locket?”

“Not now,” Regulus hissed, squeezing; Snape stopped laughing and started choking.

Regulus turned his head to the side.

“Just go get the kid,” he said to Remus, “I’ll get the people after I’m done with this bastard.”

Remus hesitated for a moment—a split second—and then he groaned, cocked his head and turned.

Bellatrix was still battling four at once. It was Fleur, Tonks, Molly and Charlie. Minerva and
Moody were nowhere to be found, while Bill and Fred were targeting the kid, who was still hissing
and snarling even as Fred held his hands behind his back with a piece of rope, sizzling around his
wrists, and Bill held a holy-water knife to his throat.

“Hey!” Remus yelled, sprinting across the grass, trying with all of his might not to attract
Bellatrix’s attention. “Don’t hurt him. Stop hurting him.”

“Stop–” Bill said, aghast. “What?!”

“Look,” Remus said, putting a hand on his arm. “Just do it. Keep him bound, kid, but drop the
knife.”

Bill squirmed for a minute, and then he did. Remus dropped to his knees.

Draco was snarling at him. His fangs were rather small. Remus, unperturbed, leaned to look at him.

“You remember me, don’t you?” he said, carefully. Draco continued to snarl and hiss and bite and
Remus simply waited patiently. Molly appeared, substituting her place in the fight with Bill, and
taking Fred’s position; he hovered. Remus could hear the fight. He could hear Regulus’ retribution
from behind him.

He focused on Draco.

“You remember?” he prompted, again, “I let you go, didn’t I? Wanted to keep you away from the
fighting. Did a pretty shitty job of that, didn’t you?”

Remus attempted a smile. Draco’s face calmed, but his lips still quivered with rage and his fangs
still hung heavy in his mouth.

He took a deep, deep breath.

“Your mother is dead,” he said, and Draco immediately began to snarl gutturally, more fiercely
than before, clacking his teeth together in something of anguish or rage, those synonymous
wretched feelings. Molly jolted from where she was holding him back. He expected that. Remus
pushed his shoulder back and gripped it. “I’m sorry,” he said, firmly, “I know nothing will help
right now. But I need you to know she didn’t die for any old reason. She died because of her love
for you. She died protecting you, Draco, withholding her ability to find you, refusing it. Trying to
stop them—her—” he pointed backwards at Bellatrix, “from coming here and finding you. You
don’t want her to take you back, and your mother knew that.”

Draco whimpered. His top lip curled upwards still and he was breathing incredibly heavily, ragged
breaths. Perhaps they were sobs. He snarled again, perhaps it was a scream.

Remus leaned further down to look him in his eyes.

“I can take you away. I can keep you safe,” he said. “Nothing I can do can bring your mother back,
but I can honour her legacy. I can honour what she would’ve wanted for you, but you have to give
me the chance to do so. Draco. Draco, look at me.”

Draco squeezed his eyes shut, and then he opened them. He closed his mouth. His face was pained.
His breaths were hisses. He, against all odds, looked at Remus.

They shared a look. The words seemed to sink in. The battle seemed to fade away. Remus nodded,
coaxing him.
“It’s me or her. I’m not forcing you into anything. You can go with Bellatrix if you want to,” he
said, “but the thing is, I don’t think you do.”

The boy was trembling. Full-body exposure, against the static, government-like flash of artificial
light against a moon that did not shine, he was trembling. His eyes flickered around, rabid, as if
searching for a reason not to. He came up blank.

He nodded. It was a sharp, minute thing, but he nodded.

“Let go of him,” Remus said, directing Molly to do. She raised her eyebrows.

“But–”

“Let go of him, Molly,” said Remus, sternly, and she did. Draco brought his hands to his front and
cradled his burnt wrists as they healed. He looked warily over to Bellatrix, who was still
encompassed in her battle with the hunters, and Remus dragged his attention away.

“Take him to the glaze,” he said to Molly, and she shook her head.

“No way in hell am I leaving my sons.”

At that moment, Bill appeared, hauling a limp, bloody Fleur around his shoulders. She was barely
conscious. Tonks was shadowing them with tears in her eyes.

“She’s hurt,” Bill said thickly, leaning down to scoop her legs up and carry her bridal style. Molly
seemed to notice that Charlie was battling Bellatrix alone at the exact same time Remus did. She
was wielding her huge curved blade and running to help him almost immediately, Fred right
behind her, whilst Bill was on the verge of tears.

“The glaze is open,” said Remus, pointing. “Take her there. We have medi-witches, good ones.”

Charlie cried out from behind them. They were losing.

“Bill, they need you,” whispered Tonks, and Bill whimpered. He shook his head avidly; his long
hair twisted from side to side. “Bill. Bill, my love, your family needs you.”

Tonks skirted around to his front and placed two hands on the side of his neck.

“I’ve got her,” Tonks said comfortingly, nodding, and Bill—with tears spilling over his eyes and
jumping onto his cheeks—poured Fleur’s little body out of her arms and into Tonks’, who was so
much stronger than she looked.

“I need you to take him, too,” Remus said, and Tonks nodded. “We won’t be a minute, we just
need to distract Bellatrix somehow. Does anyone know where Moody and Minerva went?”

Both Tonks and Bill shook their heads. Molly screamed, and Bill seemed to jump into action. He
legged it over to his family and left Tonks with Remus.

“Alright,” she said, standing tall with blood in her hair, splattered across her chest. She smiled at
Draco, and he did not smile back. “Come on, kid. Let’s get you somewhere safe, yeah?”

He looked panickedly at Remus. Took a moment. Remus stared at him, solemnly, and nodded,
inclining his head to indicate that he should follow her. That he could trust him.

Tonks set off; Draco followed after her.

Remus took a deep breath watching them approach the glaze—the glaze that was dimming, only
slightly, but enough that Remus could tell it wasn’t far from close—and wasted no time turning on
his heel to find Regulus and Snape. They were not where he had left them, but it wasn’t hard to
spot them a few paces away. Regulus had Snape, who was smaller than him, by the hair.

“Hey,” said Remus, running over to him. “We need to go. We need to go now.”

Regulus nodded, pulling Snape along with him. Remus raised an eyebrow.

“We’re taking him?”

“Can’t risk it,” Regulus said, gruffly, moving to peek around the treeline and watch the fighting.
“You want me to distract her? She’s about as fast as me, so I don’t know how much of a shot we
have at losing her.”

“At this point,” Remus said, cocking his gun, “anything works.”

He ran and shot three bullets into Bellatrix’s stomach, and Regulus threw Snape to the ground like
a rag doll and sprinted to attack.

“Get to the glaze!” Remus shouted over Bellatrix’s shoulder to the stunned Weasley’s as Bellatrix
advanced.

She ran with her enhanced speed up to him, snarling gutturally, but Regulus pounced on her and
ripped into her skin before she could form any sort of retaliation. She screeched and staggered back
one pace, and he climbed up her body like a fucking spider–legs around her neck, squeezing, he
pulled her hair so hard that it came out in chunks in his hands that Remus watched grow back right
out of her scalp.

Bellatrix gripped Regulus’ calf and yanked him with so much momentum off of her shoulders it
looked like she could use him as a lasso—he hit the ground so hard it made a visceral dent in the
grass. Remus called the same thing he already had to the Weasley’s, and Molly was tugging Bill
and Fred, ready to go, but Charlie hesitated.

“What about you?!” he yelled, throwing his hands out, and Remus exhaled and shrugged.

“I’ll see you there,” he said, watching the glaze begin to flicker out of the corner of his eye. Dread
pooled in his stomach and Charlie might have taken a step; might have taken two.

And then the dimly lit darkness of the forest was lit up by fire, fire, fire.

“OUT OF THE FUCKING WAY!” Mad-Eye Moody yelled—screamed, limping out of the
darkness of the treeline where they had come from, with a fucking gigantic blowtorch in his hands.
Minerva stood next to him with the biggest scythe that he had ever seen. They walked into the
scene with so much power the earth might have tilted on its axis.

Moody raised his blowtorch again and the fire caught onto the trees; it lit up the area with an
intense finality. Remus and the Weasley’s cowered instinctively, covering their faces. Charlie fell
backwards, and Molly helped him up.

“REGULUS!” Remus yelled, over the noise, turning to watch as the glaze flickered then turning
back to Regulus who was still incapacitated by Bellatrix, on his back, watching the fire flicker
directly above him. His eyes were wide as he held her by the jaw with both hands, trying to stop her
from biting into him.
He gasped and he might have succeeded in pushing Bella off of him a split second later, but they
did not have a split second. Minerva McGonagall raised her arm like the harbinger of justice and
plunged her gigantic scythe into Bellatrix Lestrange’s back.

The blade went directly through her body and out the other side. The point of it barely skimmed
Regulus’ chest. Barely. He held his breath. Remus watched his life flash before his eyes.

Bella gasped, and then let out a horrific howl, genuinely terrible; the moment she loosened her grip
and leaned upwards Regulus was out of her hold, shooting like a rocket. He trailed residual dirt
across the skyline as he got up and staggered backwards, as fast as he could.

Remus caught him by the back of his shoulders, and they watched. They could do nothing but
watch.

Minerva pulled her scythe out from Bellatrix’s body, where she was hunched over, and she
straightened up. She hissed, a terrible thing, looking into the empty darkness; and then she turned.

And Moody blasted her directly in the face with sweet, gorgeous, burning fire.

Her scream sent a chill down Remus’ spine and settled so fucking terribly in his bones. It was
terrible, and it was terrible that he enjoyed it so. He stood and he stared, hands gripping onto
Regulus for dear life, they staggered, slightly, both as in shock of the other, as Bellatrix burned. As
the smell of her burnt flesh permeated their nostrils, some sick semblance of catharsis to the ones
she had hurt, Remus’ soul doing backflips, and then she was gone. She was a flicker of fire lighting
up the deep abyss, running until she could be seen no longer.

Remus knew that there was a river and also the coast nearby. He might’ve been able to workshop
the trajectory of her speed against the distance from the river nearby and her durability if his brain
hadn’t been so scrambled, but as of that moment, her burning was enough of a sorry sight to see.

There was a moment in which they all stood. A beat; a split second. And then the wind blew and,
as if in slow motion, every one of them—all seven people, scythe and fire and gun and water in
hand—turned and ran like their lives fucking depended on it.

Remus could see the glaze, but it was seriously flickering, now. It was collapsing in on itself
slowly. And he had to make sure everyone got in there safely–he had to–and so he got there first,
and he waited.

“GO, GO, GO,” he yelled as the Weasley’s arrived, and nobody stopped for a second; it was Bill,
Charlie, Fred, Molly, running into the portal as it closed around their bodies. Disappearing in a
blip. Minerva ran and made a jump into it. Moody threw his blowtorch in first before hauling
himself.

Remus turned, and Regulus was only two paces away. They locked eyes in a blazing gleam as the
glaze closed in on itself, as it became as narrow as an arch, as narrow as a door. Regulus did not
hesitate for even a millisecond.

He threw himself forward, grabbing Remus’ wrist as he went, pulling him through the veil, and the
gateway collapsed behind them.

***

Remus fell onto the harsh familiar ground, landing on top of Regulus, and he felt the warmth cease
behind him as the glaze dissipated into glittering stardust.
“Oh my God!” cried Pandora, there and waiting, gripping onto the both of them. She helped heave
them up and instantly pulled them both into a hug, one arm around Regulus and one around Remus.
“You scared the shit out of me. Oh my God, never do that again.”

Remus felt Regulus chuckle and felt the touch of his hand around her waist where they had both
gone to hug her back. He took a moment, in stasis with Pandora, to assess their surroundings. Molly
was checking her children, making sure they were okay. Moody was still on the grass; he was
moaning, he had been burned at some point, and so was Minerva, who seemed to have twisted her
ankle in the fall.

The door flung open and Remus watched as Dorcas ran out of the front door. She, in noticing the
injured, immediately beelined for Minerva, wrapping her arm around her and calling for a nearby
witch to fetch Poppy.

She locked eyes with Remus over Pandora’s shoulder, and, in all the chaos, she smiled. She smiled
her most exasperated smile, and all Remus could do was smile back.

And there was another “Oh my God,”, not sweet but booming. Repetitive, like their nature and one
became two as Gideon and Fabian Prewett appeared at the doorframe, locking eyes on their sister.

Molly gasped, dropping her hold on Fred, and then began to laugh. It was thick and tearful.

“Oh my God,” Gideon cried, again, walking fast, progressing to running, across the lot in ecstasy.
“Oh my God, Molly. Molly!”

She ran and met them about 3/4ths of the way, and the force of the both of them and the absolute
elation that fuelled their aggressive meeting sent all three of them staggering back, and left all three
of them laughing and clinging onto each other. Molly with her two arms around her brothers, like
Pandora had for Remus and Regulus except she looked like she was trying to pull them into herself
so that they’d never be separated again. The rest of them swarmed around them like bees to a hive.

“Moll,” Fabian sniffed, pulling back, tearful and shaky and the happiest Remus had ever seen a
person in existence. “Moll, there’s someone you need to see.”

And, by sheer coincidence that wasn’t a coincidence at all, alongside James Potter and Oliver
Wood appeared one Percy Weasley in the doorframe. His mouth was open and his eyes were teary.
He was holding one hand in the other. He looked so incredibly small.

Molly froze.

She went rigid, like absolute ice. She did not even blink. Bill’s jaw dropped, and Charlie, crying,
sobbed harder upon seeing his brother. It felt like everyone was paused in anticipation.

“He’s a–” Molly breathed.

“–vampire,” Gideon finished, looking half ecstatic, half nervous. “But he’s not–I mean. He’s
Percy. He’s changed a bit, but he’s still our Percy.”

Molly stood there, still as a statue. Her mouth began to move, a repetitive mantra, out of shock,
“Percy,” over and over and over. She began to walk. Percy. Percy, Percy, Percy. Their reactions of
shock, they couldn’t have been faked.

Percy reached out, yearnfully, as Molly began to run—sprint, really, avidly and hysterically—Percy
stepped forward too and they met halfway, both sobbing, full-blown sobbing, clinging to her son,
he to his mother, his back and his neck and his hair, Percy was crying, too in her arms. Less of a
twenty-two year old vampire, on his own in the big blue world. He buried his face into his neck,
fitting into her arms like he belonged there, he was not a vampire but a seventeen year old kid, and
he needed, over everything, his mother. And here she was.

“But he was dead,” Bill was saying, blankly, silent tears falling down his face, “they bit him—Dad
did it—we didn’t know–”

“It’s okay,” said Fabian, putting a kind hand on the side of his nephew’s neck. “He thought you
were dead for a month and a half, so it makes up for it.”

“It absolutely does not,” Charlie wheezed, half a laugh and half a sob. “It doesn’t.”

Gideon laughed, heartily. He nudged his nephews.

“Go on,” he said. “Go see him. He’s still as insufferable as ever.”

The Weasley’s split off into a small group, talking and smiling and laughing with each other.
Multiple people along the crowd were wiping their eyes at the reunion, James and Oliver both
included, big and burly and arm-in-arm.

(Remus would learn, much later, that Percy, upon being bit and murdered, had been left to the
hands of his parents to put down. Molly could not do it. Arthur had closed his eyes, and missed.
Percy had spent five years thinking his parents had left them for dead; five years of a new life,
unlearning everything he had been told, knowing his parents hated who he was enough to kill
him… it would sting. Percy would sting forever. But they’d would try.)

Remus’ gaze was yanked away from the family very abruptly.

“Remus,” gasped Pandora, tugging at him. “I need to– there’s something–”

“What?” he asked. Suddenly recalling the missed calls and the desperation of her voice on the
phone, he frowned. “Are you okay?”

She gaped, and then laughed. “Me? I’m– I’m fine. I’m brilliant. It’s just–”

“Oh my God,” Regulus muttered. He looked to Pandora, his mouth slack and open. There was a
hint of absurdity in his voice. She beamed. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not!” she cackled.

“Oh, my God,” he breathed, one last time. Remus felt a seeping dread in his gut. Something told
him it was hope.

A voice called his name, down the railroad of the little pathway; it was Marlene. He turned and she
was running towards him, bangs flitting around in the breeze, hair reflecting the outdoor lighting
lining the pathway and the fairy lights over the porch. She reached him and gave him a tight, but
brief hug, smiling.

“So glad you’re okay,” she said through her teeth as she squeezed him, and then she pulled back. “I
need you to come with me. Come in. There’s something I–”

Remus didn’t hear anything more.

His eyes moved upwards, the world shifted on its axis; everybody went tumbling except Remus.
His feet, glued to the ground, his anatomy electrocuted, autonomy on play whilst everyone jolted
into pause, falling. Into darkness and abyss.

The sun went out and only the stars gave off any light, and so the railing lit up as he leaned against
it, haggard and weak on the brink of internal collapse and downright fucking beautiful, absolutely
divine.

Sirius was standing there. Mouth slightly open. The curve of his golden mouth flickered, a switch,
they locked eyes, the world disappeared. It all just sort of faded away.

“Oh,” Remus breathed, almost unbelievably, unable to take his eyes off of him.

He could not be listening to whatever Marlene was saying any less. For Sirius was moving. A
breeze blew his hair back, the light against the open door silhouetted him in white light but he was
not moving towards it. He was moving towards Remus. His hand clenched and loosened on the
railing. He pulled his jacket tighter around him with the other hand. His eyes did not move. He did
all of these things. Remus had marvelled at his fingernail beds, he’d marvel at the side step of his
calf, the one piece of hair in his face, one step and another, the way he was walking. Brushing past
Marlene, up that stupid fucking path. There were so many steps; who invented cobblestones? Sirius
hit the bottom, the stone, terrain that Remus was standing on, they were standing in the same place,
feeling the same thing; he wasn’t even wearing fucking shoes. His socks were going to get dirty.

His socks were going to get dirty, and Remus was running.

Sirius walked briskly, probably the most he could do, Remus didn’t care, he didn’t care about any
of it, he didn’t care about anything, Sirius was in front of him. He was making noise and his hair
was blowing over his shoulder in the wind and he was smiling, laughing, tears in his eyes. People
were watching from the side. Remus got off on it, their legacy. Absurdity, metaphysicality, please
watch, please see, how I love this man, this wreck. O monster of mine. Quintessentially the rib that
is missing in my chest and the murmur of my heart, carved out with the knife, imprinted with the
blood from his neck once upon a million years ago, Remus felt the pieces of his bone that Sirius
had whittled into him time and time again slot into place as he launched himself into Sirius’ chest,
throwing his arms around him so hard he staggered backwards.

He was here. He was present. He was holding Remus. Remus was crying.

His ears were ringing so much so that didn’t even realise he was crying, until the harps soothed
and he could hear it, too. His lips pressed to Sirius’ neck, sweet as the circles he was rubbing
against his back, where his hands had clasped together around him, Remus was on his tiptoes and it
still wasn’t enough. Everything about him was soft and ruinous. Remus wants, perennially, to
swallow him whole. Something in muscle memory, something something, his nose at the side of
his neck, lips to the line of his collarbone, traced the ridge. He gripped onto the skin on his back,
desperately found his back blades, his spine. Trailed upwards into his hair. It was almost as if he
was trying to put each piece of Sirius back together. Something about a burnt down sanctuary.
Something else about a saviour complex, to fix those that could not be fixed, but loved, damn it all.
If he’s a monster he has been made that way, and Remus shall love him all the more because of it.

It was sacred. Sacrilegious. All of the juxtapositions to how Sirius held him, Remus’ chest a mess
of violence, Sirius wrapped his arms around his waist and squeezed, pulled away, but not really. He
slid his hands up his chest and settled them at the side of his neck, grasped at the skin, knocked
their foreheads together and they breathed each other’s air, desperately.

Sirius laughed. He kissed Remus’ cheek, once, twice, a million times, he kissed it, kissed the tears
away with wet, tender lips of adoration, moved down to his lips, tilted his chin.

It took him a moment to kiss him properly. He hovered there, breathed him in, tried to swallow him
and it all came back in memories and misery and Remus tried to inhale but it was useless, all he
could drink was him. Sirius’ tongue in his bloody mouth. A carmine perfume, he’d down it and let
it singe him inside if it meant that Sirius would kiss him like this forever. Kiss him like he’d be a
drowned man without it for the rest of their violent lives. This passion, this understanding, with his
arms wrapped around his neck, they were blindly each other’s. Bleeding out on the floor, virtuous
in the sun, he was bleeding all over Remus. His hands were covered in him.

Bodies were temples created for heavenly things. Remus was quite sure his was carved to hold
Sirius like this.

“Hi,” Sirius whispered, pulling back, trailing lips over lips, smile tugging on his fragile features.
“Been a while, I’ve heard.”

“Shut up,” Remus gasped, choking on his tears and on his broken bones and his broken soul and on
Sirius’ life, honey down his throat. “Oh, my God, shut up. I love you. Are you okay?”

“I’m okay.”

“You’re fine?”

“I’m fine.”

“When did you wake up?” he asked, sniffing, “do you hurt?”

“Remus–”

“Are you yourself? There are–are sicknesses that come with these things–”

“Re-e-mus,” Sirius laughed, brushing his fingers through his hair and pulling it out of his face.
“I’m fine. Okay? We can talk about that later. Let me love you right now.”

“I–”

Remus stopped, blinked, and leant back to see him properly. They both paused. Sirius raised an
eyebrow.

“You want me to say it again?” asked Sirius, no falter about him. “Show me yours I’ll show you
mine? Mind, I don’t think mine could ever live up to the dramatics of yours, but I can try.”

Remus said nothing. Sirius, still laughing, so bright the apples of his cheeks pushed at his eyes,
looked at him like nothing else.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said, gripping Remus’ cheeks, he was laughing too. “I meant it
then and I mean it now. You’re my goddamn soul, pretty boy.”

Upon the outpour of tears still clinging to his blissful, clumpy eyelashes Remus made a noise that
was more of a blubber than anything, and then began laughing at himself, provoking Sirius to
laugh with him. He sniffed, too.

“Say something,” breathed Sirius, running his fingers through his hair. Remus opened his mouth
again. Still no words. He just kept laughing. He couldn’t stop. He’s so in love.

“You’re a fool,” he whimpered, eventually, high-pitched and ridiculous. Sirius’ answering laugh
was harmonious.

“Yours,” he murmured, nuzzling his face into Remus’ cheek, “yours, yours, yours.”

They had a few more moments of this, laughing into each other, before Sirius pulled back to look
at him, wholly. Cupped his face. Looked over his shoulder. His face faltered.

Remus turned, wiping his face, and, upon seeing Regulus walking idly down the path, stepped
aside.

“Hi,” he whispered, from where he’d stopped a few paces away. He was still dishevelled, blood
splattered across his face, his fingertips drenched in pain and loss, and yet his eyes were soft and
indecipherable. He looked like nothing less than somebody’s little brother.

Sirius stared, unflinching.

Regulus thinned his lips and shrugged, gently, awkwardly. “Been a while,” he breathed, clearing
his throat, trying to act nonchalant and failing quite magnificently.

Sirius said nothing. A long, long moment passed, in which Regulus’ eyes flickered to the ground in
his awkwardness, hands hanging to his side like he was useless. Sirius continued to say nothing.

His arms, instead, gravitated upwards. They reached out. Splayed, dirty fingertips and electrical
impulses. Like a half to a whole.

Regulus looked up, exhaled all of the tension that had built up, and, in three wide steps, walked
straight into Sirius’ arms.

He probably smeared blood all over Sirius’ clothes, he did not seem to care. No one had ever held
anyone that tightly, protected a monster so aggressively. Eight hundred years of catharsis might
have an expectation tied to it, but it was so simple and so unwritten it almost felt too tender to be
watched. For the new moon hid them away from the world. And they could be anything.

They stood still, but tears seeped silently out of the inner corners of Regulus’ eye, like the fallen
angel.

Andromeda appeared out of nowhere, Remus only noticing her when she laughed and slammed
into Sirius’ back, making him laugh and turn, accommodate her too. She wrapped two arms around
the boys and they stayed there, blood and water at the same ratio.

When Andromeda fell away, Sirius, face blazing, gripped onto his brother’s cheeks. Smacked one
side once, or twice, physically shook his head, firm and tough—so much said without words, how
easy it is fallen into—Regulus nodded. Closed his eyes, breathed in and out. Stepped away.

And this was when Sirius noticed him.

“Regulus,” he said, frowning, “what the fuck is he doing here?”

Remus turned and saw that Snape—who had been hiding somewhat in the shadows—had locked
eyes with Sirius. He looked nervous but also brave. His chest was puffed, as if he was used to
standing his ground, or, perhaps, used to being all bark no bite, ready to weaponise his pride, lord
knows he has tons.

Regulus turned, once, and then turned back, a sleepish gloss over his face.
“Sirius–”

“You utter shithead,” Sirius spat, nudging Regulus to the side and walking towards him. Snape
took one wary step back. Just the one. “How dare you show your face here?”

“Sirius,” groaned Regulus, almost exasperated, speeding to stand in front of him and push him
back. Sirius, who was still, evidently, unstable on his feet, staggered back a bit. Remus moved to
get closer to them and watched Regulus’ warning eye.

“What is he doing here?” Sirius hissed, eyes blazing at his brother. His fangs were out. Dramatic
bastard.

“I think he knows something,” Regulus replied, low and tense. “He knew something that nobody
should know, and so I thought I’d bring him here and… Well. Beat it out of him.”

“You brought him here based on the fact you think he knows something–?”

“I know he knows something.”

“He just wants to save his own back.”

“And what does that matter?” said Regulus, exhaustedly. Snape simply stood there. “We figure out
what he knows and if he really knows nothing then I’ll kill him myself. Lord knows I’ve wanted to
for a long time. We’re in a goddamn war, nobody fucking cares whether Severus Snape lives or
dies.”

Snape frowned at this, seemingly offended.

It was then that James and Marlene moved forwards. James went for Snape, speeding to him in a
second and pulling both of his arms behind his back by his wrists. Snape’s face twisted into
something monstrous and he, of course, fought back.

“Unhand me right this second, Potter,” he hissed, pulling one arm out of his grasp and grappling
with the other. “You worthless piece of scum.”

Remus watched Regulus’ eyes roll deep and exaggeratedly into the back of his head, but before he
could even turn to disengage the small scuffle that had broken out, Sirius had jerked out of his
grasp and was standing behind Snape.

He, in one harsh movement, snapped his neck.

Snape crumpled to the floor like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

“Well,” Regulus said, exhaling slowly, as James stood behind him, utterly gobsmacked. “That’s
one way to get him to shut up, I suppose.”

Pandora appeared daintily with Jul behind her and, with a long flourish of her hand, conjured what
seemed like tight holy water chains, around his hands and ankles. James and Sirius stepped back as
they conjured a stretcher and the two of them levitated him inside of the house.

Remus, having a moment, now, to actually look around and reassemble the world, noted that most
of the people around them had gone back to their business. The hunters had been led inside. He did
not know where Draco was, but presumed that had been handled in the gap of time between their
respective returns. Sirius turned around.
“Right,” he said, to the crowd that now consisted of two Blacks, James, Marlene and Remus. He
put his hands on his hips and swayed only slightly. James, standing beside him, looked at him and
grinned such a huge goofy smile.

“I think you’re due a catch-up,” he said, and Sirius raised his eyebrows. He laughed, heartily, and
wrapped his arm around him.

“I believe I am,” he said, beginning to walk up the path. “Who’s gonna fill me in on six weeks
worth of vampire wank, then?”

He slowed, slightly, and looked at Remus for the first time since he had seen Regulus. His face
visibly softened. His eyes moved with him as if they would trail him until he was too far ahead to
physically see him anymore, but he stopped, and let his arm fall from James. He smiled, skipping a
step to fall in beside Andromeda and Marlene.

He did not drop eyes from Remus even until he fell into step with him. They walked a few, measly
paces, stupid soft smile curling Sirius’ lips, and then he brought his arm up to wrap around Remus’
shoulder, pulling him in. Walking towards the house, Regulus fell into step onto Sirius’ other side,
hands awkwardly in his pockets.

“And then,” started Sirius once more, looking up to the stars and then to his brother. He grinned
and wrapped his arm around him, too, pulling them both deep into his all-encompassing hold. “I
need a fucking drink.”

Remus turned his head and, in his position slightly more forward, locked eyes with Regulus. Sirius,
content, walked the three of them up the stairs, while Regulus rolled his eyes and made Remus
laugh, following it up with a pinched, fond smile. He rested his head on Sirius’ shoulder. The door
banged shut behind them.
 eighteen
Chapter Notes

hey! no warnings for this chapter I believe! just vibes! well besides some torture but
that's just like an average day here isn't it
oh and a bit of spice at the end. prob the most explicit so far but even then it's /me/ so i
rupi-kaur'ed it. enjoy <3 J X

ALSO! I keep forgetting to say this but do check the series that this fic is attached to! I
posted a 10k oneshot prequel type thing hehe and intend to write more in the future so
keep an eye out X

The few days after Remus and Regulus returned, wayward hunters and vampires and hearts in tow,
consisted of a majority of adjustments. It felt almost like a shift into a new war. A shift into a new
world. A new, fucking crazy, madhouse of a world.

For one, Sirius probably drank about six people’s worth of blood and then passed out for another
ten hours.

Draco almost killed an approximate three people within the first twenty-four hours of his stay.

And there was a waywardly quiet vampire gagged and chained to Dorcas’ old bed, opposite the
bookshelf, atlas excluded; though Remus had seen Regulus enter spotless and leave with blood
spotted on his knuckles, so he was starting to think any silence was against Snape’s will.

No proper interrogation of him took place for a few days while everyone sort of got to their feet. It
was no skin off any of their teeth–Pandora warded the room to hell and back so much so that her
wards were actually tangible, shimmery and slightly gold, and he was completely isolated. To be
worn down, Remus supposed. They had much bigger fish to fry than a simple inclination that a
vampire might have a little bit of information or know something from slinking around in the
sewers that he belonged, and it wasn’t like Severus Snape was a house favourite. Nobody—
excluding Draco perhaps, who of course wasn’t allowed—was particularly keen to talk or interact
with him, and so he withered in that room, guarded at all times due to the integrity of HQ, of
course, (though it wasn’t as if Severus Snape was any sort of slinky Pureblood able to escape
anywhere like Sirius–he was nothing more than a turned vampire, not even older than James was,
barely Marlene).

Remus had so much else on his hands to relegate that he quite honestly forgot he was there.

There was a newfound tension in the house amongst the hunters and the vampires. Remus hadn’t
realised how easily people like Benjy and the Prewett’s had been getting along with the vampires
until new, clean slate hunters appeared and the air turned hostile once more. It was even more
overbearing due to the fact that Minerva and Moody, inevitably, wanted to be included in the
higher ranks (Molly and her sons were very content to just slink around their own corner of the
house and take a breather, which Remus, by the looks of them, felt like they deserved.) Whilst
Sirius sort of clambered out of the groggy hole he had been curled up in for the past six weeks
Marlene kept on with her Orderly leader duties and it was both surprising and not at all to Remus
when, even despite her beautiful demeanour and bubbly, friendly personality, the two elderly
hunters still did not trust a single hair on her head or a movement of her body. (This was very much
emphasised in their very first meeting in which–Remus had heard this from Dorcas, who had been
there to mediate–Marlene had moved a little too fast and Moody had flung a fork directly into her
hand, the prongs coming out of the other side). (Dorcas relayed this to Remus very angrily and
apparently dealt with Moody with a satisfying amount of fury only toned down a little by the fact
he was her mentor).

(Remus could feel the possessiveness oozing out of her but did not want to say anything lest she
curl up into her hermit crab shell like Remus had for eight years before succumbing to the wind
that is Sirius Black).

(It takes time. He’d fucking know.)

There were a lot of split operations going on, a lot of missions being embarked on (Benjy
Fenwick’s grind, in particular, did not stop–when they weren’t investigating the wayward hunters
he had dragged the Prewett’s out almost every night and come home victorious with vampire blood
on his hands, and that had not abated.) There were meetings to be had with the entirety of the
Order–’entirety’ seeming like a very drastic disposition–most of the vampires who had shown up
from London were either situated as spies around the city or taken on investigative retreats up and
down the East Coast in place of the Inner Circle (or, Operation… ah. He can’t bring himself to say
it. You’ll find out James’ newest nickname down the line.) who had far too much to contend with
at HQ.

And so the huge conference room had been chosen to be used; sitting in one room with vampires
witches and hunters in their own little cliquey corners was so stupidly hysterical to Remus that, the
first time, he had to stop himself from laughing.

So Remus made a list, as he always did, and his list of problems went as thus. Sirius. Draco.
Hunters. Snape. Contending relations between his old life and his new as they tried to bite at each
other’s throats. And Tom Riddle and the inevitable backlash that he was going to unleash on the
city as retribution to the fact that, one might say, they were winning–––touch wood.

We’ll start as everything starts, beginning of time and end of days. We’ll start with the delirious
thought when Remus wakes up and the thought in the delicate moment of slipping from
consciousness when he falls asleep.

We’ll start with Sirius Black.

***

So, Remus delegated himself to Sirius, because of course he did.

As a heads up: Poppy–after widespread research from her little medi-witch connection (consisting
of Jul, to Remus’ surprise, who was apparently her apprentice and was wildly excited about it)–
designated a day or two in that Sirius was suffering from an expected bout of time-sickness-like
deliriority, stemming from his loss of conscious thought and the elevation of his vampiric
gravitational pull to the cracks in the natural core of the earth.

I.E, (in English), he was finding it hard to stay conscious and regain his strength due to his body
having been so used to losing it. He was finding it hard to come to grips with his body being his
own due to not being present in it for so long. It would abate after five days, a week max, but it was
strange to witness Sirius seem so…sick. Watching him sleep in those early few days Remus had
the significant thought of how horrific waking up from actual dormancy must be–a few years,
never mind fifty fucking years.
(However, it soothed his soul a little to think about how much Tom Riddle must’ve suffered in the
year or two succeeding his wake. He better fucking have.)

Regardless, catching Sirius up was a feat. He had not, in fact, been caught up on six weeks of
information and six weeks of whiskey that night that they returned from Nova Scotia, but, as
previously stated, six weeks of blood that he quite literally couldn’t get enough of and then a hearty
sleep that, after Poppy had assured him was normal, Remus mirrored. The night after the day
before Remus slept for a lovely 8 hours in the room next to Sirius’s and stumbled into his room
upon waking, sleep still crumbling in his eyes.

It was this morning, the tender morning hours after a battle in which Remus still felt like he was
walking on air, or coals, that he opened his door into the hallway at the same exact time that
Dorcas’ door opened and Marlene McKinnon stepped out.

His vision was still blurry. He thought she was a hallucination.

She stiffened visibly and yet shut Dorcas’ door behind her with no less than a click, wrapping a
dressing gown around her waist hastily and looking at him with wide, pleading eyes.

Once it hit him that she was, in fact, real, Remus’ jaw dropped open.

He pointed at the room. She gave him a withered look. He pointed at her. She squeezed her eyes
shut and brought one, sole finger up to her mouth, pleading for secrecy in her gaze when she
opened them.

It was desperate but he could see the amusement in the curve of her mouth. Whatever Remus had
just walked in on was, obviously, delicate and fragile to the touch, but he could feel the stride of
pride emanating off of her.

After a moment, Marlene rolled her eyes and took a step forward to close Remus’ jaw for him. He
thanked her internally, but externally, no words came out. They just stared at each other.

Deers in headlights. Oh, Remus was gonna have fun with this one.

“I’m…gonna…” she whispered, gesturing to the hallway behind where he was standing. He side-
stepped. Remus brought his hand up to rub at his temples and when he opened his eyes she was
still there.

“Don’t tell?” she mouthed, as if they were college students, and Remus bit his lip in a laugh.

He side-stepped around her to get to Sirius’ door and Marlene circled to get to her own route. He
pointed at her.

“We are talking later,” he whispered, pointing at her, and she lit up in a smile.

“Love you,” she whispered back, brushing her hair behind her back in one majestic sweep. She
held up her palm, all five fingers. “Meeting at 5. Don’t forget.”

He flipped her off by way of acknowledgement, and she grinned and turned around to bound
silently down the hallway. He clicked and opened Sirius’ door gently.

A pair of familiar grey eyes laid upon him immediately, and an entanglement of honey-like warmth
seeped into his chest.

“What the hell did I just witness out there?” Sirius jeered, by way of “hello”, or “good morning”;
Remus hissed and closed the door as fast and yet as quietly as he could. When it clicked shut he
whirled on his heel and let the stupid smile overtake his face.

Sirius was sitting cross-legged on his bed, in different clothes to the ones he had been wearing for
six weeks–he looked increasingly normal in grey sweatpants and a loose shirt. His hair was tied
back, strands falling around his face. It hadn’t been last night. He must’ve just done it.

“Good morning to you, too,” said Remus, his heart hammering against the wall of his chest. He felt
like he was oozing in want. He hadn’t gotten used to the fact he could have what he wanted. He
looked at Sirius and just wanted to scream I missed you I missed you I missed you I love you on a
mantra over and over.

“Time‘s it?” Sirius asked, gruffly, and Remus moved over to sit gingerly on the end of his bed.

“Nine, I think.”

Sirius frowned.

“I didn’t want to sleep any more,” he said, rather somberly.

“Poppy expects you will for a bit,” Remus replied. “Something about easing you back into the land
of the living. And the non-living.”

“Of which I am both,” Sirius muttered.

“Mhm,” he said, nodding, “which is why she’s running those tests today. Don’t forget.”

Sirius nodded. He was scheduled in at twelve. Repercussions were inevitable–as previously stated,
the delirium lingers.

Sirius straightened up and looked into Remus’ eyes, and his entire face softened for a minute. He
bit his lip in a smile. “Seriously, though, what happened out there? Was that Marlene?”

Remus gaped, and then he scoffed, marvelling at his current-ness even after being comatose for six
weeks.

“I thought you would’ve been ambushing me to relay everything you missed the past six weeks the
second I walked in the door.”

Sirius shrugged. “I definitely heard “Meeting at 5.” I can wait eight hours, you know.”

Remus rolled his eyes on instinct, but his heart was joyous. There was an elation at the back of his
throat at the familiarity seeing, hearing and speaking and bickering with Sirius and how easy it
came back to them, always came back to them.

“Also,” he continued, “I had a lot of time to deliberate–you know, when I was a vegetable for six
weeks,” (Remus rolled his eyes), “and I feel like the only way that I’ll stay sane while trying to
recuperate is by giving myself a moment or two to…think about literally anything else. Just for a
minute.” He looked up at Remus, smirked. “Wasn’t it you who told me to give myself a few
human moments?”

Remus scoffed. “I wasn’t telling you to give yourself a few human moments. I was telling you to
take a bath.”

“And take a bath I did,” said Sirius, cheesing in recognition. Remus wanted to slap him and
absolutely revelled in the feeling.

His cheeks burned. He smiled. It was all quite pathetically youthful.

“If you really want to know,” Remus said, rubbing his eyes. He leant in forward, as if divulging a
huge secret. “I opened the door and caught Marlene sneaking out of Dorcas’ room.”

Sirius’ mouth fell open.

“You’re kidding,” he hissed, and it was at this moment that Remus remembered that he had,
indeed, promised not to tell anyone; but did Sirius Black really count as a person when he was
basically an extension to the left of Remus and to the right of Marlene herself?

Nah. He didn’t think so.

“Nope,” he said. Pathetically youthful and pathetically human. Sirius laughed and it was the most
marvellous thing that Remus had ever had the fortune to hear.

“And that’s not–like, that’s a new thing, right?” Sirius asked, and Remus nodded.

“Very new. I don’t know how long it’s been going on. Dorcas hasn’t even told me. Me.”

“Wow,” Sirius breathed, leaning backwards. He took a deep breath and seemed to simmer in the
feeling of being sentient for a moment. Every tug of his skin and movement of his joints and every
blink of life behind his eyes seemed to catch up to Remus all in one–alongside the moments where
there had been no life. He started to become only slightly overwhelmed with it all.

“I missed you,” he said; blurted, really. With no prior knowledge he was going to say it.

Sirius sat up. His face was sweet, and gentle.

“I heard–” he started, and then stopped. He shuffled forwards and took Remus’ hands in his own
instead, and it seemed to say a million words that he couldn’t speak.

“Do you remember,” Remus began, sort of running on energy from where their skin met, “when
the Hotel burned down, and I held you together? And–and when we had that fight, after
Dumbledore, and you came and patched me up, even after everything we said?”

Sirius nodded. Remus took a deep breath. He had not intended for the emotions to come up so
quickly but he was not at the wheel of his life; life was driving with him and Sirius at his tail, and
their predictability cut off like a broken railroad track.

“That night– at Mal– er, the Manor, I… well. I didn’t deal with it well. And it all–I don’t know. I
felt so helpless. All of the time. And I couldn’t… I mean, I felt like my entire body or my entire life
had been reset, and you were here but you weren’t here. We couldn’t do that. It felt like we’d
gotten into a pattern of–of holding each other together to do this, to win this, and suddenly I had no
foundations. And I held resentment at you for that. You know that? Because it was unfair that I
was dealing with this alone. Isn’t that ridiculous?”

Sirius shook his head, but did not speak.

“I guess I thought having you would make it easier,” Remus continued, “but now you’re here, and
it still hurts, and I realised that we have been going about everything wrong.”

“In what way?” Sirius murmured.

“We can’t just let each other in,” he said. “We’re more than the sum of our parts. We’re the sum of
all of us. I had a conversation with Regulus that really made me think about it. He’s too much of
himself, you know? He feels–he feels like an overflowing tap. And I feel like–gosh, I feel like
nothing sometimes. And that’s something that we contend with in this circle that we have. To be
touched and reminded that we exist. As a unit. It’s not just me and you, it’s me and you and them
and us.”

Sirius’ face was indecipherable, but he was listening. He was looking. Not too deep, not too
shallow. Just seeing Remus as he was. As the less and the more. It was a look he was beginning to
be familiar with.

“I’ve had,” Remus whispered, “a hellish six weeks. I still am. My six weeks isn’t over and I don’t
think it ever will be. But if anything has come from it, it's that–not having you to tell me that I’m
not any less for feeling things just means that someone else in this godforsaken house will.”

“A wall with a hole in it isn’t a resistance,” Sirius supplied. Low and thoughtful. “One battering
ram and it’s toppling over.”

“If we just let ourselves be known to each other everything will just disintegrate,” Remus
whispered. “If we rely on each other too much we’ll end up losing our grip. We’ll ruin everything.
And I don’t want to ruin this. I can’t. Not if it’s you. And I know you’re pessimistic, and I know
sometimes it feels like we’re not good for each other, but I don’t think we’re predetermined to burn.
I think we have some power over what we ruin. And who we love.” He bit his lip. Looking deep at
him and only him. “So I’d do anything for you, for this. Because the way you make me feel–you
make me––this is–”

He exhaled, shudderingly, gripping onto the fabric of his shirt. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was
trying to say, but Sirius seemed to get it. Words evaded him like peace of mind and fire at will did,
but Sirius always got it.

It was all in and it was all or nothing. The conversation he had with James before Malfoy Manor
played arbitrarily in his mind for the first time in a long time. He had said that maybe–maybe now
was the best time.

Who knows how long we’ve got?

Nobody knows. The Sirius the day before Malfoy Manor didn’t know that his consciousness was
running out. The Marlene the day before that fateful 1959 battle didn’t know that her love was
running out. Oozing out of her ribs, his skull, the victims to become Tom Riddle’s for the taking.

They would not become Tom Riddle’s for the taking. They would not.

And Remus had had an enlightening six weeks. He would not have survived shad it not been for
the plurality of them all. He felt like he had filled up so much with fire and emotion and baggage,
up to the top of his skull, swimming in it that Lily’s fire or something had toppled him over and he
had been learning to walk again. He had realised, more primarily, over the past six weeks that the
only one that could recover was he and he alone. Something about self-power, self-love, self-
something. Takes a village. Takes a mountain. Sirius, even had he been awake, could not clamber
into his brain and kick it out of overdrive, for it was Remus’ brain and only when he is present in
his body does he know the switches and drives and even then they’re alien to him, in a different
language nowadays that he’s learning, slowly.

It was something that he had been enlightened to during that conversation with Regulus. Seeing
someone so abstractly lonely and seeing someone so abstractly him. And yes, they needed Sirius,
but they were not the sum of Sirius’ parts. They were not bones of a skeleton that jangled aimlessly
unless together. It was increasingly absurd to see someone as physically strong as Regulus be
someone just as mentally helpless, and all it had done was fuel the fire in his heart that was saying
love and love and love, fuck the consequences. There will be none. We can do what we like. We can
fix what we want. We will deal with them together.

Together and together and together. They come back and come back and come back.

Because they want it badly enough. They want this badly enough, and that’s everything, isn’t it?

“Do you remember what happened the last time I almost died?” asked Sirius, murmuring, really,
looking at Remus like he was a prize that no being in the universe was worthy of claiming.

“Yes.”

“Can I do that again?”

And Remus scoffed.

“Shut up,” he said, gripping Sirius by the front of his shirt and pulling him in.

Existentialism burned bright in Remus’ chest and he decided to let it simmer. Take it day by day
and love and live as he could bring himself to. Release it like a harness falling to the floor; a wave
crashing against the shore. Because he was driven and brainless except out on the field and so he
was anger and helplessness and an airy soul outside of his mortal body, watching, this touch
reminding him he does exist and that–that is a wonderful thing. To exist as something larger than
yourself. Regulus, expectations and a battering ram to a wall, Sirius, a million walls and incessant
complicated tender feelings all revolving around not feeling. Marlene was grief incarnate and so
she stood taller. Dorcas was blistering loyalty and so she stood stronger. Lily was flesh and fire and
so she burned brighter. James, Mary, Pandora, every single person bouncing off of each other, a
bad day for a good day. An equal sort of exchange when Remus cannot get out of bed and Dorcas
slays twice the amount in his name.

Sirius was a million bad days and a billion good ones. And it was okay. All of it was okay.

“You’re okay,” Sirius murmured against his lips, kissing him fiercely yet offering him tenderness.
He had figured out how to balance Remus in the palm of his hand long ago. Perhaps the both of
them were mercurial. “And you are brilliant. And you are wondrous. And you are good.”

And Remus was crying, but it was sweet. It was tender, it was fierce.

“You changed my life, you know,” said Sirius. “Not many people manage to do that.”

“You changed mine,” Remus replied. “You made me worse.”

“You made me better.”

Remus nuzzled his face against his cheek and then wrapped his arms around his neck and simply
hugged him. Held him close.

“What are we now, then?” Remus asked. Sirius pushed his head forward so that his hair tickled the
back of his neck and he could feel Sirius’ cherry lips smiling against his skin.

“We’re okay,” Sirius whispered. He kissed it. “We’re okay.”

And Remus would like to think that they would be.

Nothing in this life was okay, but they were teetering the edge of it, and that, for now, was okay.

Tomorrow will come.

***

Existential, emotional trauma conversations out of the way, catching Sirius up was a trip and a half.

There were some things, obviously, that would be said in meetings and caught up in the general
public but the sensitive information was relayed to him easily in a little huddle in the living room,
consisting of Remus, Dorcas and Pandora.

“So, let me get this straight,” said Sirius, slowly. “Lily is a Phoenix.”

“Yes.”

“She saved my life because of it.”

“We’re working on the specifics, but the running theory is yes,” said Pandora.

“You destroyed the ring,” he continued, checking off things on their fingers.

“Yep,” Dorcas said. “It was rough.”

“Regulus figured out that Riddle had a secret like seventy years ago and has been trying to figure
out what it was ever since.”

“Only got it in the past eight years though,” Remus said. “And he met Mary in Bulgaria and now
they’re here together.”

“He’ll catch you up on his story in his own time,” Pandora interjected. “I’ve been telling him to
corner you at some point tonight. I think he’s afraid you’ll react the same way Remus did.”

Dorcas frowned.

“Remus had full right to be pissed,” she said, firmly, and Pandora nodded in agreement.

“Pissed about what?” Sirius asked.

“The fact that they were in New York for the whole time that we were,” Dorcas told him. “Hiding
out with the ring. Sending us to do their dirty work.”

“Oh,” Sirius said, his mouth held precariously around the vowel. “Well. I’d be pissed too. I almost
died.”

Remus hummed and cracked his fingers absently.

“So, Cissa’s dead, then?” Sirius put forth to change the subject. Pandora nodded. “Ah. Well. I’m
not going to lie and say I care any for that.”

Dorcas laughed.

“And we have her arsehole son now,” he continued, “for leverage?”

“Essentially,” said Dorcas.

“And because he’s an orphan ‘cause of us and didn’t want to be on the side he was on anyway,”
Remus helpfully pointed out.

“That too,” said Dorcas.

“Does he want to be on any side?” Sirius said, frowning. “He bit a whole chunk out of James’
shoulder. He bled all over my shirt.”

“You were there?” Pandora frowned.

“No. He was wearing my shirt.”

“Oh, dear God,” Dorcas muttered.

Remus laughed, unable to avoid it, but composed himself as quickly as possible.

“He’s scared,” he said, to top it all off. “He’s a kid, and he needs his mother.”

Sirius looked down. Pursed his lips.

“Well,” he said, “again, I’m not going to pretend that I have any empathy for that. I haven’t needed
my mother since approximately 1348.”

Dorcas quirked an eyebrow. “Why that year?”

“That year, my friend,” Sirius said, proudly, “was the year that I slaughtered my first peasant town.
All by myself.”

“Oh, dear God,” Dorcas repeated, letting her head fall into her hands. Sirius grinned.

Remus frowned. “Didn’t the bubonic plague happen in the 1340s?” he said, and Sirius sighed.

“Yeah,” he said, slightly defeated. He looked Remus dead in the eyes. “They did not taste good.”

This time Remus really did burst out laughing. He couldn’t stop it.

“Brilliant excuse, though,” Sirius said, grinning at him. “Nobody cared about such trivial things
such as murder when the Black Death was killing hundreds of millions of people.”

“I cannot believe you just described murder as ‘trivial’,” Dorcas groaned.

Sirius tutted. “Says the girl who beheaded three vampires at once and laughed while doing it.”

Remus’ jaw dropped.

“You did? When?”

“I don’t think this is really relevant right now–” Dorcas started, but of course, Sirius had launched
into the story of how they fought together in the building they had attacked before the fight at
Malfoy Manor localised to the Manor itself, and it was a treat.

He cornered Dorcas outside of the living room, when Sirius went upstairs to meet with Poppy and
Pandora tagged along for quote unquote ‘emotional support’–aka she found his predicament
fascinating and thirsted for the knowledge. Sunlight shone in streaks through the window and fell
upon her deadpan expression.
“Hello,” said Remus.

“Hi,” said Dorcas, narrowing her eyes. “What do you want?”

Remus shrugged. “To talk to my best friend? To see how she’s doing? To check in after almost
dying in battle yesterday?”

She paused. Thinned her lips, and surveyed him. Up and down.

“Nope,” she said, eventually, pushing past him, “I’m not buying it.”

“Do-orcas,” Remus laughed, spinning to go after her. “Come here, right now. Look me in the
eyes. Right in my eyeballs.”

She sighed. Turned. Looked him in the eyeballs.

“Is there anything you want to tell me, O best friend of mine?” he asked, raising his eyebrows
suggestively.

She blinked. He shook his head, again, suggestively. He knew and he knew damn well she knew
he knew and she knew damn well he was getting it out of her.

She cleared her throat. Remus prepared himself.

“James and Lily are fucking,” she said, and Remus yelled in triumph.

“Ah-HA, I knew––wait. What?”

She was already halfway to the door. Remus, however, had long legs.

“You–” he hissed, leaping in front of her. She stopped, huffing agitatedly but with a twinge of
amusement. “What the hell did you just tell me? James and Lily are–”

“James and Lily are what?” murmured James Potter, low and suddenly just fucking in Remus’ ear–
honestly, he cannot be held accountable for his reflexes.

For he, within the space of one yelp, turned and backhanded James across the face.

“You,” he growled, as James whipped his head up and laughed. He had known he would get that
reaction. Testing Remus’ reflexes had, as of late, become one of his favourite pass-times. “You,”
he repeated, “bastard,” making a gesture as if to wring his neck, “oh my God, stop doing that!”

James was laughing. He had to restrain himself from laughing too.

“Seriously,” said James, “what, exactly, are dear old Lily and I doing?”

“You tell me,” said Remus. He reached out and grabbed onto Dorcas’ arm as she tried to sneak
away.

“Ow, ow ow ow–”

“Nope. Not going anywhere. Come on, we’re going outside.”

“Why are we going outside?” James asked, pandering behind them. Remus, in an insubordinately
good mood, almost smiled inadvertently at the sun.
“We’re going to go find out why this place is suddenly Love Island,” he said, dragging Dorcas
down the stairs and scanning the field. It was such nice weather today, the entire outskirts of the
lake were chalk-full, but he spotted Lily quite quickly mingling with some of the witches. He
called her name, and she perked up, coming instantly.

“Hi,” she said, red-faced in the sun, scanning over everyone’s faces. “What are we doing?”

“Hi, love,” said James, swooping through Remus and Dorcas to lean down and press a chaste kiss
to her lips. Lily jolted, evidently surprised by this. Blinked a few times as he spun around her and
wrapped his arms around her waist.

Remus and Dorcas stared.

“I didn’t think you guys were serious,” said Dorcas. Lily gaped, turning her head to look up at
James and relaxing ever so slightly, but not exactly as much as you’d think she would. Remus
laughed.

“Wow,” he said. “Okay. My hunter intuition is telling me there’s some poltergeist around here
masquerading as Cupid. That is the only explanation I have for this.”

“Remus,” Lily chuckled, shaking her head fondly. She put her hands over James’. “It’s… new. We
weren’t,” she turned her head around to look at James again, this time a bit more blazingly, “going
to tell anyone.”

Their joined hands began to smoke a little bit. James scrunched his face up in pain, but kept his
smile, albeit a bit pained.

“They already knew, dear,” he said, laughing. She huffed and pulled back her flames.

Remus balked, looking at their hands, the way that James was holding her. His eyes swept, briefly,
upwards, to just over their shoulders, in which he saw two very familiar figures on the left side of
the lake, skimming stones. Mary was putting a ridiculous amount of fire into her stones and
making them skip at least 6 times. Regulus, tossing his stone in between his hands, was staring
directly at them.

He made eye contact with Remus and looked away immediately.

Oh, he thought, briefly. Well. That’s awkward.

And… interesting.

They stood there in conversation, briefly; the topic skeeved away from relationships, which Remus
was sure was a relief to Dorcas, and onto the meeting at 5, onto Snape, onto other such worldly
things that were going on. Dorcas and James mentioned a cave and a locket which made Remus
antsy to fucking know what that was all about–he hated being out of the loop–but Dorcas assured
him they’d talk about it at the meeting. At one point, during this talk, Remus’ eyes flickered back
over to Mary and Regulus again. They were talking, agitatedly–knowing Mary, she’d’ve put a
silencing spell over them–and looking over to the four of them every few seconds. After a minute
or so of what looked like sibling-like back and forth bickering Regulus threw his arms up in what
seemed to be defeat and Mary turned, stalking towards them. Remus was the only one who saw her
until she was right there.

“James,” she said, gently, prodding him. He turned, and thus so did Lily. Mary’s face softened as
she looked at her, but it only lasted a blip, and she was back to business. “Sorry to interrupt, but
you need to go sort out Draco. He’s wreaking havoc again. I think he broke Percy’s neck.”
“He what?” James asked, suddenly standing tall and letting go of Lily. Mary watched their contact
break closely. “God, thanks Mare. Jesus Christ, this kid–”

“Wait,” said Remus, “maybe I should–”

“No,” said Mary, immediately. “N–I mean, erm, you shouldn’t be around him when he’s like this.
Wait for him to calm down.” She looked to James. “You’d better go.”

James, protector of supernatural youth and all-round general good person and optimist even in the
fact of seventeen years of pureblood pure evil, nodded, and left. They watched him go.

“Well,” said Mary, smiling. “That’s all I had to do. Nice to see you losers. Lily,” she turned to her,
smiling, “are you still up to hang out with us in the library later?”

Lily hesitated, but washed it off rather easily and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, totally.”

“Okay,” she said. “See you in the meeting then.”

She turned and walked, rather with a spring in her step, back to Regulus. The three of them watched
her go. Lily turned back last.

“By us in the library,” Dorcas said, “does she mean she and Regulus? And… you?”

Lily frowned, affronted. “What does that mean?”

It was at this moment that Remus knew that, both, he and Dorcas were on the same wavelength,
and also that Regulus was listening in, via the way he looked almost instinctively at them and then
away. Seven hundred and ninety-six years and the guy is as discreet as an elephant in a ballroom.

“Nothing,” said Dorcas, as Remus tuned back in. “Just wondering.”

Lily sighed. “Yeah, it does. It–” she sighed again, “look, I just keep running into him everywhere.
We keep meeting in the library. Me and Regulus. The other day we had the same book. And every
time I’m reading something he looks over, as if he wants to talk about it, but won’t start a
conversation.” She huffed. “And I’m not gonna start one. I’m way too prideful.”

“Well, at least you acknowledge it,” Remus muttered, grinning. She kicked him.

“Anyway,” she said, “the thing–and this is why I’m clinging for dear life onto my pride–is that
he’s so cold to me anywhere else. Like, bitchy cold. I really don’t think he likes me–at least, he
acts like it–but Mary keeps inviting me to hang out with them. I don’t know why.”

There was a beat of silence.

“Well,” said Dorcas, “James and Re–”

Remus stomped on her foot.

“–gu~OW,” she hissed, frowning at him.

“Mary,” said Remus, nonchalantly, finishing her sentence, “aren’t very close. James and Mary
aren't very close. So. Maybe she’s trying to get gossip out of you about your relationship. You said
it’s new, right? Mary thirsts for gossip. She loves it.”

There was another beat of silence. The both of them, irritably, were still stuck on the foot thing.
“What?” Remus asked, affronted, “lost my balance, sorry.”

Lily blinked, and then shook it off. “Right,” she said, “yeah, I mean, maybe. She seems to be, like,
Regulus’ only friend, so I guess it makes sense that he’d be wherever she goes. And she has been
watching me and James get to know each other for weeks.”

“Yeah,” nodded Remus, “about that…?”

Lily looked up at him, and narrowed her eyes.

“What?” she groaned, “I’ve already told you–”

“I’m sorry! When you find out your friend is in a relationship, you typically want to know more!”
Remus said, raising his hands in surrender. He nudged Dorcas again, more discreetly. She exhaled
sharply. Lily didn’t notice.

“There’s nothing to tell,” she said, laughing, “it’s… new. Yeah. It’s, like… nice.”

Remus blinked. Even Lily seemed to recognise the lack of enthusiasm in her own voice.

“It’s, like, nice?” repeated Dorcas, and Lily groaned again.

“Ugh! Whatever! Leave me be,” she said, laughing exasperatedly, “we’re figuring it out, okay?
It’s…” she paused. Looked at Remus, and sighed. “It’s kind of now or never, isn’t it?”

Another beat of silence. This one was very, very heavy.

“Mhm,” Remus said, humour dropped. “I suppose it is.”

They chatted for a minute or two more before Lily declared herself halfway to boiling, saying she’d
meet them inside later. It took not even a second after the door slammed shut before Dorcas was on
him.

“Okay,” she said, in a voice that Remus recognised as the precursor to a lecture, “first of all, “Mary
thirsts for gossip?” You’re the goddamn gossip, Remus Lupin, you bastard, what the hell was
that?”

Remus laughed. “Listen, I came up with it on the spot, okay.”

“But why?”

“Tell me you didn’t register how fishy that entire thing was.”

Dorcas frowned. “With Mary pulling James away?” she asked, and then sat on it for a moment.
“Yeah. Yeah, it was.”

“And tell me that show of affection between James and Lily wasn’t, like, really bloody awkward.”

She pursed her lips. “I guess.”

“And tell me you didn’t pick up on the fact that Regulus dislikes Lily,” he raised his voice,
slightly, to make a point towards the vampire he knew was listening, “because he is very obviously
jealous over James and a goddamn house cat could realise so.”

He turned, to look at him as condescendingly as possible; Regulus, who had been scowling at his
back, turned away almost immediately. Remus actually laughed. This guy is impossible.
“Wow,” Dorcas said, seeming genuinely taken aback. “He has human emotions?”

A laugh escaped Remus at this, exacerbated knowing Regulus heard it.

“But why is Mary trying to set them up to be friends, then?” Dorcas asked. Remus, frowning,
shrugged.

“You think she’s wing-womaning?”

“Wing-womaning who?” Dorcas asked. “Regulus? Why would she set him up with Lily, then?”

They looked at each other.

Really, really looked at each other.

“We’re gonna get it out of her,” said Remus.

“Oh, we’re absolutely gonna get it out of her,” said Dorcas, and then craned her head to look at the
pair. “Oi, robot Black! We’re gonna get it out of her, by the way!”

Regulus, from where his back was facing them, froze. And then he turned.

He flipped them off.

“Oh, my God,” Remus choked, after their laughter at this prospect died down, “Jesus Christ.
This…this is a lot to contend with on a Tuesday morning.”

“Honestly,” muttered Dorcas. “When did you become the one with the least complicated
relationship?”

A moment of silence. And then Remus’ head turned like an owl back around to her.

“Speaking of relationships–”

“Nope,” she said, turning to walk away. He chased after her.

“You can’t run away from me!”

“Watch me.”

“I’m a hunter. I’ll figure it out, you know. It’s my job.”

“God, you’re horribly annoying when you’re in a good mood.”

“But you looove it,” sing-songed Remus, tunnelling his way under her arm as she strode away from
him.

She scoffed, but grinned, softening down upon the physical touch (her love language) and sighing
in defeat. He expected it was a bout of relief for her after the past few weeks, to find joy in
trivialities again. Truth was, Sirius waking up and forming a sort of friendship with Regulus and
rescuing hunters and having leads and bringing Draco back simply had Remus, dare he say,
hopeful. Remus hadn’t felt hope in a long, long time. He was a lightweight to it.

“Yeah. Whatever.” She pulled him closer as they began to walk around the side of the house to the
front. “Hm. Maybe if I squeeze you to death you’ll stop prying into my relationships.”
“Don’t you––”

She squeezed him.

“Do-o-orcas,” he laughed, pushing away but not really, because he probably could get out of the
grip but he very much enjoyed tussling with her and being with her and her general existence. She
pulled back, laughing, and they stopped halfway around the side of the house. She leant back
against a wall.

“Okay,” he said. “Seriously. What’s the verdict?”

He waited. She sighed.

“Listen,” she said, prodding him on the shoulder, “you, good sir, are my best friend. Right? The
bestest one. Of all the friends. I trust you more than anyone I know. Your life has been in my hands
more than anyone you know. And I love you.” She took a deep breath in. “So, trust me now when I
tell you that once I feel ready to talk about myself and Marlene, you’re the very first person that
I’m going to come to. Okay?”

Remus absorbed this for a moment, and then grinned. This was it with them. Twas relentless
teasing and touching and chaos until the boundaries were set and then they were not penetrated.
Boundaries were probably the reason they worked so well. Setting enough of them had eventually
made it easy to garner when the right time was to knock them down. Parallel lines, or something,
he and her.

“Okay,” Remus said, and he dropped it. Like that.

Dorcas smiled.

“Hey,” she said, “we have a bit of time to pass before the meeting, and they're still running tests on
Sirius, so, provided his neck is healed, now… you wanna go throw knives at Percy again?”

Remus grinned.

“There is nothing I would enjoy more,” he said.

And they did.

***

The thing about being eight hundred years old is that you don’t tend to come across creatures
you’ve never encountered. And when you do… well. Apparently, you accost them at every other
moment.

“Wait, do it again,” said Sirius that afternoon at 4:50, leaning on his hand at the conference room
table, sitting next to Lily.

The meeting could have started earlier, honestly, but James was wrangling his children outside.
There was a trail of blood on the floor of the hallway that had apparently been Isabela’s when
Draco had bitten her finger off. Remus didn’t ask.

Isabela was one of the three people prior acknowledged to be almost killed by the kid–yeah, he was
not settling well. It was understandable. Within the first two days Draco ran for the hills three
times and yet he did not go any further than the warding of Boardwalk, and Remus knew why. It
wasn’t because he couldn’t. He could slip past the barely decipherable (you could tell the kid had
grown up around witches) wards easily if he wanted, but he didn’t want to. This was the issue. And
Remus felt so much sympathy for him but he couldn’t seem to articulate it. For the kid did not want
good or bad, he only wanted his mother and he could not have her. He felt a similar way about
Sirius. He felt a similar way about his life. He felt a similar way about his own mother.

Regardless, the first Order meeting coincided with the first runner he did which coincided with
James being the only one absent at 4:55 which coincided with Sirius prodding Lily, getting her to
light a flame into her palm for the fifth time.

“Are you ever going to get bored of this?” she asked, smirking. Her fire was a lot more seamless
now. She could control how far it burned up her arm and how much of her flesh it replaced. She
could also shoot twirling bolts of magenta magic into the air and they watched as it curled, twirled
and danced down onto the table, ash on top of Sirius’ hair. Remus brushed it off.

“I can’t believe you’re a phoenix,” he said, and, yep, he had said that at least six times by now.
“I’ve never even met one, you know. Eight hundred bloody fucking years I’ve been alive. Not one,
Lily.”

“I’m one of a kind,” Lily said, pushing the gold in her veins up to her wrists and balling her hands
into fiery fists. She stretched them out and it dissipated in one, like material coming back together.
Sirius was in awe.

“Can I–” he said, reaching out his own hand. “Like, do you burn?”

“I can control it,” she said, and then winced. “Sort of. I’m getting better. It takes a lot of tolerance
to not burn.”

Sirius let his hand hover while she took a deep breath and let her hand light up. There was a
difference in Lily lighting up herself and Lily lighting an extraneous flame in her palm. Every now
and then it would bleed into her bones and her skin would simmer in the flames but as of that
moment she was holding it, gently, perfectly.

Sirius reached his hand out, but before he could make contact the door opened and Marlene stalked
in.

Lily’s fire dissipated. They didn’t make contact.

Something warm in the air went cold again.

Marlene had a stack of papers in her hands. Dorcas immediately got up to take some of the load
from her and they deposited it on the side together.

The meeting was a pretty large one, if you were to go off the people who had dialled in through the
magical radio that Pandora had set up at the back of the room. Present at the scene, though, it was
not like the room was packed. The Longbottom’s were sitting together besides Andromeda,
Regulus and Mary. Pandora had situated herself with a few of the witches–Remus extended a small
smile to Charity, who waved. No Jul to be found, though Remus was quite sure he had seen them
bustle out after Poppy who was, in fact, fixing Isabela’s fingers. Speaking of, the only one out of
the baby quartet-turned-gaggle-of-hooligans was Oliver Wood, sitting idly with Benjy and the rest
of the hunters who had grown a soft spot for him. Bill and Charlie Weasley were present alongside
Moody, Minerva and their mum. Astoria’s parents were present. Outside of these people, there
were vampires and witches Remus did not recognise; probably a total of thirty-five present, plus
however many more stationed in the city dialling in.
“Right,” said Marlene, slightly haphazardly but on the go as always. “Potter is having some trouble
so he will not be joining us immediately. Hello, all.” She brushed her hair out of her face and
smiled. “A lot has changed since the last meeting.”

Remus thought that was an understatement, honestly.

“So, the first thing I want to get over and done with is the debriefs,” she said, picking up a folder.
She flicked through it a few times and then flicked back to the beginning. “As we all know, the
woodlands in Terence Bay, Nova Scotia went up in flames last night. Human firefighters got onto
the scene quickly so not too much of the wilderness was ruined but, apart from the damage done to
nature there were no casualties. Which means Bellatrix is still out there.”

She paused to shuffle through her papers and the air felt as tangible as them. Remus had known,
really, that she would not die. She was too powerful to let a little fire burn her.

“An industrial-like fog has appeared overnight over Brooklyn,” she said, clearly. “It’s sort of like
volcanic ash, except for the fact that there are no active volcanoes around here–the humans have
put it down to over-industrialisation, backed up with stats that look legitimate enough but it
definitely seems magical nonetheless, so I think we should look into it. It appeared at approx 7am,
so a couple of hours after the fire. That’s enough time for Riddle to know we got the kid and to
retaliate. It’s only precautionary, but Longbottom’s, I want you two on that,” she said, peering
through her notes, “and Dearborn and Prewett, too. I want eyes in the air and eyes on the ground.
We need both perspectives more than ever right now.”

“Which Prewett?” Gideon asked, piping up from Marlene’s left. She blinked at them, seemingly
debating, and then shrugged.

“Choose amongst yourselves,” she said, turning back to her notes. Gideon and Fabian turned to
each other and immediately began to play rock-paper-scissors.

“Speaking of retaliation,” Marlene continued, turning behind her and pulling forward the wheelie-
whiteboard that was their only remaining souvenir from Hotel Transylvania. She flipped it around
and there was a map of the East Coast with a multitude of red pins pressed into it, at least half of
them in New York, two up Long Island. Remus counted fifteen. Maybe more.

Marlene turned around, and her face was solemn.

“If the fog in Brooklyn isn’t them, this definitely is. These are all murders–flagged as vampiric by
Percy and Charlie, thank you boys–that have happened in the last twenty four hours. All gruesome
in their own different ways. At least three have been identified as vampire covens, though we
suspect he’s moved on from targeting them, having wiped out the majority of covens up the
Eastern Seabord by now. I ask again, to those scattered in the city listening through the radio,
please be careful. Stay low. This is what they do.”

Remus felt the air suck out of the room through a billion harsh pairs of teeth.

“So, whatever their next move, whatever this is building up to, we have to be ready,” Marlene said,
turning and looking headstrong. “This is not a fight. This is a warning. This is childsplay–we’ve
seen what they can do, with the Hotel, and with HI1. This is them telling us that they’re
everywhere, and so we have to let them know that we are, too. The city is crawling with vamps and
they can be as violent as they want, but we still have the upper hand. And the sooner we can kill
this bastard the better. So, I’ve assigned you groups,” she began handing out papers, hand-outs
she’d obviously printed, down the line of hunters. They passed them down to the vampires, too.
“Almost everyone stationed at base has been paired up. A and B for keeping an eye on the police
lines and on suggestive media of any sort. C and D on city-wide patrol shifts. You’ll switch bi-
weekly. If they murder, we have to be first on the scene.” She cleared her throat as the shuffle of
papers faded. “As always, the witches have generously created Portkeys with thorough
identification regiments so we don’t have to compromise our position here. We’re in the process of
building stations down the front lawn, should be done in a day or two, but if you need one
beforehand there will always be a witch set up in the Office of Arcanic Affairs; which, if you’re
unfamiliar, is two lefts down the East Wing and then the second door on your right. Can’t miss it,
there’s a sign. We’re still working on making this place accessible to the masses; should have maps
and so on done soon. The stairs have been enchanted to adjust to what you personally need based
on your mobility. All of the doors on the ground floor are enchanted to be automatic, now. Second
and third will be soon, maps will be in the lobby as soon as they’re done; in the meantime, if you’re
unfamiliar, ask anyone for directions to various offices. We’re all here for the same thing and I
want nobelittling. What I really want is to make this a place for us to easily work as a team, and for
you all to be on your toes, day in and day out. I have a suspicion that things are going to just get
worse from here. We’ll need each other for that.”

Remus caught eyes with Mary. Her soft, familiar gaze. She gave him a look that transpired into
some form of swear word, and he simply shrugged in return. Marlene cleared her throat and they
both looked back up.

“Right,” she said, placing her papers down. “Now onto the here stuff. As you all know our dear
Remus and Regulus went on a mission and ended up coming back doubly successful, and bringing
with them not only who they went to retrieve but a cohort of new hunters. Following on from what
I said about belittling, I would like to remind you all–”she cut off and glared pointedly at a couple
of people in the back, “–to be courteous. I know some of you are still wary about working with
each other, but we have no other choice in the matter. Or, if you’re going to fight, at least do it out
of the house. If your blood stains the carpet you’re the one who is going to be cleaning it up.”

“That’s my girl,” Sirius remarked under his breath, smirking. It was barely audible but, of course,
Marlene caught it. She narrowed her eyes at him jokingly but pressed on, ghost of a smile littering
her lips.

“Next up is the Malfoy child,” said Marlene. A few ears perked up at this. “Not a lot of you will
know this as the mission was held at a confidential level, but we do have the Malfoy child here.
I’m not going to tell you anything further except if you come across him you are not to interact
unless I give you express permission. No hurling abuse at him because of his family, and no
picking fights with him because you want to know what it’s like to fight a Pureblood who can’t rip
you apart. Touch him and I assure you one of the three lovely Black’s sitting at this table right now
will fuck you up before you can even blink.”

Regulus thinned his lips. Andromeda mock bowed in her seat, and Sirius stifled a laugh.

“The child is to be treated like any other vampire you don’t know––that is, he is to be ignored. We
intend to make him feel comfortable here because, outside of being a ‘piece of leverage’, he is a
person. If James were here he would be more expressly vicious about this but he’s not; however if
you have any questions, Potter is the man to go to.” Her eyes flickered up to Remus, and she
pinched one corner of her mouth before finishing; “Or Lupin.”

Sirius shifted, slightly, so the sides of their shoulders brushed together. The express feeling of
touch lit up the veins in Remus’ solar system.

“Last thing is,” Marlene said, finitely, “the third corridor along the east wing is out of bounds to
everyone who does not wish to die a most gruesome death. There are wardings up, but just in case
any of you bypass them, this is your first and only warning. Do not ask questions, I will not answer
them.”

This was where Snape was being kept. Remus understood the vagueness of her statement. If
everyone knew that such a high-ranking dark vampire was slinking around (well, not really–bound
up and emanating anger) in their vicinity there would be some sort of panic that none of them were
ready to deal with.

“Does anyone have anything to add?” Marlene asked, looking around the room. A few people
looked around, but nobody said anything. She smacked her lips. “Perfect. As always, I’ll be here
all evening if you need me,” she said, gathering up her papers. She squinted as she read the title of
one of them. “Operation… Soul-Eater, stay behind. The rest of you are dismissed.”

People started to get up. Sirius simply turned to look at Remus, frown etched into his face.

“Operation Soul-Eater?” he mouthed, incredulously. All Remus could offer him was a withered
glance and a haphazard mouthing of “James,” back, which seemed to make it all make sense.

Once everyone had left Marlene turned to the group. Consisting of the three hunters, the three
Black’s, Pandora and Lily, she looked over them and sighed in something that sounded like relief.

“Right,” she said. “First of all, we’re absolutely not naming this group after an anime.”

“Agreed,” muttered most of them. ‘Inner Circle’ seemed to be the consensus, though it sounded
ridiculously pretentious. A part of Remus was quite sure that James would, eventually, get his way.
(It was a rather good name, considering their mission.)

“Secondly. We need to figure out what the hell we’re doing with Snape.”

“I still think we should kill him,” Sirius muttered. Remus elbowed him gently. “Ow. What?”

“Trust me, I want to,” Regulus said.

“I think we all want to,” Andromeda drawled, alongside a vicious eye roll.

“But he knew about the locket,” said Regulus, and Sirius frowned.

“...Locket?”

“Yeah,” Remus said, shaking his head in confusion. “What’s all of this locket palaver? I don’t
know about this either.” He looked around. “Does everyone know?”

“No,” said Lily, smally. Andromeda shook her head. It seemed to be only those present at the
expedition that Remus couldn’t go on due to his broken wrist. Dorcas, James, Regulus, Mary and
Pandora had gone to Latvia. But he hadn’t thought they’d found anything of sustenance.

Apparently, he was wrong.

“The expedition we went on; you remember, Remus?” said Dorcas from across the table. And then
she looked at Sirius, smacked her lips. “Latvia. Horcrux expo, two weeks ago. We debriefed the
masses but, well, sort of sugar-coated it. Regulus told everyone he’d just found a broad vicinity in
the diary's codex, but he hadn’t–he’d pinpointed the exact location. We kept it quiet because we
weren’t sure that we would be right, didn’t wanna get hopes up.”

“But you were?” Remus said, mouth falling open. “There was a Horcrux there?”
“Keyword, was,” said Mary.

Remus felt the blood run cold in his veins.

“Someone else is hunting Horcruxes,” he murmured, and Regulus took a deep breath.

“We’re not sure, yet,” he said, quietly. “But it wasn’t an unprecedented thievery. They left an exact
replica of the locket, and a very vague note.”

“Aw, but vague notes are your thing,” Sirius cooed mockingly. Regulus shot him the dirtiest glare
he could muster. It was almost hilariously comedic.

“Look, they addressed Riddle directly,” said Regulus, “as Tom. The whole thing read as if they
were old friends.”

“Can we read it?” asked Sirius.

“Pandora is running curse detection rituals on it, but after that, yes.”

“Okay,” said Marlene. “So, Snape knows where the real locket is. Snape knows who else is
hunting Horcruxes. We have time, and we have leads. We squeeze it out of him. I say that a few of
us go in each time, try to get as much as we can out of him. Regulus, he knows you best, so you
take the lead. Pick your poison, or whatever.”

He nodded.

“On the other hand, what the hell are we going to do with Draco?” she said. “Like, actually.
What’s our endgame with him?”

“Alice-in-Wonderland shrink him to the point where nobody can see him?” Sirius quipped. Lily
rolled her eyes.

“Sirius.”

“What? Have you seen the kid? Spitting image of his father, and I hated that bastard.”

“I feel the same way about you,” muttered Andromeda, and Regulus actually had to stifle a laugh.
Sirius’ mouth fell open.

“Says the carbon copy of Bellatrix?”

“He’s got a point,” Regulus said.

“And besides, we all know that I get my stunning good looks from my horrifically ugly-on-the-
inside cow of a mother.”

“We don’t, actually,” said Lily.

“I’ve never heard anyone say that,” piped up Dorcas.

“I’ve never met your mother,” offered Marlene.

“And, thanks to two lovely twenty year old hunters with nothing but firey palms and sexually-
charged anger issues, you never will,” Sirius said, faux-sweetly, and Mary laughed out loud.

“Remember when I said I missed you?” Remus joked. “I lied.”

“Get fucked, Lupin,” Sirius jeered, underneath the overbearing tones of Marlene telling everyone
to shut the fuck up. His smile felt like the only thing that mattered.

“I think we should try and introduce him to the other kids his age,” Lily offered. “Astoria in
particular. That girl has the loveliest soul.”

“To what, push him onto our side?” said Dorcas. Lily nodded.

“He didn’t want to be there,” Remus interjected; feeling like he was making this argument every
two seconds and not feeling any less like it was true. “I gave him the option to go with Bellatrix,
but he chose to come here. I gave him the option to stay at the Manor and he chose to leave and not
go back. I think the least we could do after quite literally killing his parents is offer him a stable
place in which he won’t be forced to partake in any sort of categorised high-society Pureblood
bullshit. Somewhere where he can just be seventeen, and not have to act twenty-seven.”

Sirius was staring resolutely at a random point of the table. His jaw was working in the way it did
when he was thinking. Clenched and pulled, his perfect skin a painting to reveal the artist's soul.
Something that James had said before rang clear in Remus’ mind, and he realised that, truly, James
knew Sirius probably better than he knew himself.

For it was that Sirius doesn't understand his own strength, and he doesn’t understand his own
empathy. He doesn’t understand his strength but he has it. And he doesn’t understand his empathy
but he feels it. He feels it all. He feels what he and his little brother could not have and here, here it
was, what they could not have, his guts laid out on the table as his jaw worked into oblivion, and
he did not crave the love of a mother but craved the Sirius who did. Draco Malfoy in the flesh
seven hundred years before he was. That Sirius. But in reality, that Sirius is his past and his present
and his future, as he lives and breathes. He can talk about killing the boy all he wants but what he
trulywants is to kill the part of himself that sees himself in him. Or, perhaps more particularly, the
part that sees his brother in him. Yearns to change the past for them. Sirius has always been only
one step away from martyring himself for that of whom he loves. It’s the most beautiful part of
him, how viciously he cares, such a juxtaposition, such a strange man.

He sighed. He nodded.

“He’s right,” Sirius said. Remus and Regulus shared a brief glance. Who knows what it could’ve
meant. “I think we just– try to habilitate him. Don’t let him leave, because then they have their
playing card back. Show him that… that there’s more. Out there. There’s more to the world than
being a Pureblood.”

And then Sirius and Regulus shared a brief glance. And everyone knew what that meant.

The tension in the air was cut thick by a knife as the door burst open, and James Potter fell in. His
glasses were askew and there was blood down his shirt, which was ripped viciously.

“Do you just live in my clothes?” was the first thing that Sirius said.

“What did I miss?” James asked, ignoring Sirius.

“Everything,” Marlene said with an eyeroll. And then she pursed her lips in a devious smile. “What
the hell did that scrawny little kid do to you?”

James’ eyes darkened.

“He is the Antichrist,” he deadpanned. Andromeda burst out laughing. “He is Satan.”
“He’s a Malfoy,” she drawled, “tomato, tomato.”

“Do we not have Malfoy blood in us somewhere down the line?” Sirius piped up, raising his
eyebrows, and Andromeda looked at him like he was an idiot.

“Have I ever claimed to not be the devil?” she said, smirk pulling up one corner of her lip.

Sirius made a fair enough face.

“Right,” said Marlene, clapping, “fools, neanderthals, listen to me. Do we have anything else to go
over?”

The table was silent for a moment.

“Anything at all?” she prompted.

“I–” started Regulus. And then he stopped. “Erm, I was thinking of something. Doing something,
to be exact.”

“Doing what?”

He looked around. Looked at Mary, Dorcas, Pandora. James.

“Well… we didn’t exactly get to explore that cave, did we?” he said.

The air seemed to suck itself out of the room.

“No,” said Mary, first. Stoic and stern. “Absolutely not.”

“But–”

“You’re not going back there?” she hissed. “Are you kidding, Reg? After what that potion did to
you?”

“I’m missing something,” said Lily, gently.

“Me too,” said Sirius, though the implication of something happening to Regulus had him looking
at him like he was on fire and he was a telepathic extinguisher.

“I was fine,” said Regulus, blithely.

“Because we got back in time!” cried Mary. She turned to Dorcas. “Come on. Come on. This is a
terrible idea.”

“I mean,” started Dorcas, “I was thinking about it too…”

“What?!”

“Not going back!” she said, hastily. “Just–you saw the runes on the cliffside walls, right? I don’t
know. What if it’s something…?”

“Exactly,” said Regulus.

“No,” said James.

The entire room seemed to fall immediately quiet. Remus held his breath.
“Potter,” started Regulus, quietly.

“No.”

“James,” said Sirius sternly, eyes locked on his brother, now, “what am I missing, here?”

“Seriously,” said Remus, “throw one out to the crowd, will you?”

James sucked in a deep, tense breath through his teeth. Fixed his askew glasses. All of a sudden,
instead of looking dishevelled and funny, he looked rather scary, covered in blood. A thousand
faces of his own underneath the face that cared for everyone else. Remus couldn’t read selfishness
from love on James, it all bled into one, but everything came from his heart. The beating heart of
them all, that was him. Beating deeper for some than others.

“In the cave,” he said, slowly, “the locket was on a podium, in a bowl, full to the brim with a
potion, surrounded by an enchanted body of water. The potion was hallucinatory. Induces insanity.
And the enchantments were old, old magic, pure necromantic energy, wasn’t it, Dora?”

Pandora nodded.

James continued. “You had to drink the potion to get to the locket, see, and Regulus, having the
best durability of all of us…” he cut off, thinning his lips. This next part was directly to Regulus.
“You almost died. I’m not letting you do that again.”

“I wouldn’t have to drink the potion–”

“It’s not about the potion, okay?!” said James. His voice broke. “You almost died in that cave with
us. You saw what was in the water. That wasn’t just necromancy, Regulus, that was maleficium.”

Maleficium, noun, an act of witchcraft performed with the intention of causing harm and/or death
to its perpetrator.Remus used to have it on a goddamn flash card.

And so, maleficent necromancy meant…

“The only reason we even got out is because Mary managed to scorch the rune that barred
apparition, remember?! That cave is built to kill you and keep you there,” said James. “The runes
aren’t worth it. More than likely, they’re just more barricades, Plan B’s, traps for if you somehow
manage to escape the conjured souls. You’re not going back.”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do, Potter,” said Regulus, lip curling back in bitterness. He was
so, so very stubborn.

James laughed.

“When have I ever?” he murmured. “I’m just telling you it’s a lost cause. So, for once in your life,
please let it go. Not knowing everything. Let it go. Because if you go back there, you’re dying,
Reg. And I’m not going to let you drown alone in a cave.”

Regulus did not reply, and the room was very tense. Remus locked eyes with Dorcas and then
immediately away. Mary was not looking at anybody.

Sirius was looking at his brother.

“I–” James started, opening and closing his mouth. “I have to go make sure Isabela’s okay.”

“James,” Marlene breathed, going straight after him as he stalked out the door.
Remus’ gaze followed them, and so did Lily’s. The door shut and she turned back to the table,
brows tightly knit together. But, ultimately, she said nothing.

“You almost died?” Sirius asked, looking at Regulus. He huffed.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, “forget about it, I’m not going, ignore what I said. We have what we
went for. We have leads. It’s fine.”

“Regulus–”

“Just leave it, Sirius,” he said, standing up and stalking out the other side of the room, through the
kitchen exit.

“Oh, fuck if I’m fucking leaving it–?!” Sirius said, standing up. Remus grabbed him by the wrist
and pulled him close, halting his movement, and he turned, irritated. “Remus, let go.”

“Give him a minute,” Remus said, gently. Everyone else at the table was getting up, awkwardly,
brushing themselves off. Remus made eye contact with Mary and she nodded gently, and then
moved to go after him. “Just give him a minute.”

Lily slipped out silently.

Sirius ended up giving it two hours, which was a feat for him. They went back up to Poppy to pick
up some tablets she had procured to ease symptoms, and then went down to the living room
intending for peace and quiet only to be bombarded by a ridiculously agitated Astoria, biding her
time waiting for the sun to go down, alongside Lavender and Parvati who seemed to be agitated
due to her agitation. Bel came in and wiggled her fixed finger in everybody’s face, and then the sun
went down and things got quiet. Sirius took a deep breath in and let it go.

“Hey,” Sirius whispered, rolling his head over to Remus. “I think I’m going to go talk to my
brother, now.”

Remus nodded, feeling he had been given a fair enough amount of time. He had been very tight-
lipped about the whole matter–not enough for Sirius to notice, but enough–as he didn’t feel it was
his place to talk about anything that James and Regulus had going on. Or James and Lily. Sirius’
best friend, Sirius’ brother, that was entirely Sirius’ ballpark. He’d sort of brushed it off as a ‘oh
they became friends erm they were on the decryption crew together erm I think James is protective
because he’s your brother and you weren’t here erm also I’ve been very removed so I didn’t notice
shit’ and Sirius seemed to be appeased, so. Go him.

“Alright, yeah,” he said. “Go do that.”

“Are you going to try and talk to the Malfoy kid?”

“Yeah,” replied Remus, “probably.”

“Do you want–” Sirius cut off. “I don’t know. Moral support?”

Remus raised an entertained eyebrow.

“Moral support?”

“The kid’s a dickhead.”

“I’ve managed to convince him to do things my way twice, now,” Remus said blithely, “I think I
can handle him.”

“You’re sure?” he pressed. He was jiggling his knee. Sirius Black was sitting on a sofa and he was
jiggling his knee. “Cause– I think I might sleep after. I already feel a bit light-headed.”

“Yeah, you should be tired about now,” Remus said. He pouted and cupped Sirius’ cheek as if he
were a baby, or a sickly little human and not a monster. He kissed him on the forehead and Sirius’
eyes fluttered shut. “Awe.”

“Maybe I should sleep now, then,” said Sirius, absently. “I think I should sleep now.”

“No…” Remus said, leaning back and narrowing his eyes. “You should go talk to your brother.”

Sirius hesitated, and then nodded. It hit Remus all at once.

“Are you scared of him?”

“No!” Sirius bellowed, “God no. That’s insulting. Never say that to me again.” He sighed. “I just
don’t–” paused, turned around to see if Regulus was in the room. Turned back. Remus squinted at
him. “Look. First of all, he’s pissed off, and he’s always been a goddamn nightmare when he’s
grumpy. When we were kids his tantrums would wipe out villages. And, second, I haven’t seen
him in so long and I feel like we have so much to talk about that I wouldn’t even know where to
start.”

“Well, you could start chronologically? Once upon a time, in twelve-twenty-three–”

“Shut up,” Sirius laughed, “it’s stupid, I’m aware.”

“Yes, it is,” said Remus. He turned to him, properly, palms over his knees on the sofa. “Because
you have been alive for however fucking long and there has not been a year of that tortured life that
you haven’t cared for him. And it’s fine, Sirius. You love him, and that’s fine, and you don’t know
how to build relationships because your life has been so full of fucked ones and that’s fine, and you
feel anxiety about essentially starting anew with someone you loved enough to call your achilles
heel and that’s fine, too. You’re stressing yourself into everything being a big deal.”

“Everything is a big deal,” Sirius grumbled, “I went to sleep and woke up six weeks later.”

“Just give it a minute, sweetheart,” Remus said, putting his hands on either side of Sirius’ arms and
rubbing. “It’ll take a minute to get your grip on life again, but you’ll get it. And in the meantime…
I’ve got your back.”

Sirius sighed and leaned forward. He placed his forehead gently against Remus’ and took his hands
in his own.

“Twenty-seven,” he murmured. Remus pulled back an inch.

“What?”

“You’re twenty-seven,” he said, in a soft tone he only ever really extended to Remus, “and you
somehow know me better than people who are two hundred and seventy and multiplied thrice.”

Remus pursed his lips. “I’m twenty-eight, now, actually.”

Sirius frowned. “You’re what?”

“You– er, slept through my birthday.”

“I what?” Sirius gaped.

“It wasn’t a big deal,” Remus said, quickly. “Nothing notable at all. It was literally two days after
Malfoy Manor, so I was slightly catatonic and majorly depressed. Not a brilliant birthday by all
accounts.”

Sirius bit the inside of his lip, frowning.

“Still,” he said, leaning in to cup Remus’ neck and kiss him gently.

When he pulled back, he brushed their noses against one another, and then cocked his head
slightly, looking somewhere vaguely over Remus’ shoulder.

“Regulus is behind the door,” he said, in a soft tone that seemed like it was going to be for another
sweet sentence that shifted at the last minute.

Remus blinked.

“What?”

Sirius pulled back, hands around Remus’ neck, and turned to look at the door. Remus craned his
neck like a giraffe.

It took a moment.

And then the door handle pushed down, it opened with a gentle creak and sure enough, Regulus
Black slinked forward.

“I heard the conversation,” he said, quietly, as if ashamed. “Couldn’t–” he sort of gestured to his
ears, “–help it. Erm. You wanted to talk?”

Sirius nodded.

“Yeah,” he said, dropping his arms from Remus slowly, as if savouring him. He stood up. Turned
to his brother. “Come walk by the lake with me?”

Regulus nodded, and moved seamlessly out of the door frame. Leaving it open for Sirius to come,
too.

Remus leaned back against the sofa and locked eyes with Sirius as he walked out the room, smiling
softly, until he turned around the corner and was no longer in sight.

***

Draco Malfoy was in a tree.

“Hi Remus!” Astoria greeted him enthusiastically as he teetered on the edge of the lake to make it
to the clearing that they used to gallivant around in. It used to be just outside of the house, to
accommodate the ever-growing club of youths James had had to ask Pandora to extend the wards a
few feet so that it could encompass the daffodil-clad field behind a row of trees. The lake lapped
against a few rocks just behind the treeline, and at the right angle you could see Boardwalk
through the gaps in the bark.

Astoria hugged him. It was chaste and brief and Remus was not expecting it at all, but it warmed
his heart.
“Hiya, Toria,” he said, chuckling as she pulled away and walked daintily backwards about three
paces, almost bumping into Lavender (who was levitating a broken branch) in the process.

The branch fell onto Parvati’s toes.

“Ow!” she exclaimed, hiking her leg up in shock. She stumbled back, hopping on one toe in pain,
and the three of them sort of fell into… chaos.

“I’m sorry!” Astoria gasped, running with no hesitation to stabilise her with a hand on her
shoulders. “I’m sorry. Does it hurt?”

“It’s okay,” Parvati said, softly. She placed her foot down and wiggled it a bit. Once it was
established that she was okay, Lavender rounded on Astoria.

“You’re dead, Greengrass,” she said, obviously teasingly, and Astoria grinned and tucked her hair
behind her ears.

“I’ll race you to the Oak and back and we’ll see who's dead.”

“You’re on,” grinned Lavender, before pushing past her and immediately breaking out into a
sprint.

Astoria ran after her, normally at first, but then she vamp-sped past Lavender who yelped, and
thrust her hand out; one aggressive flourish had Astoria flying into the air backwards, flailing,
eventually falling and skidding across the grass.

She yanked her head up and puffed some hair out of her face. “We agreed no magic!”

“We agreed no vampspeed!” came the echoey voice from across the field, and in a second Astoria
was up and off.

Parvati turned to Remus. There was a fond, perhaps exasperated smile on her face.

“Do they do that often?” he asked, laughing. She nodded.

“All the time,” she said. “They’re very competitive. I can’t keep up.”

“I’m sure you could.”

“Oh, I absolutely could, but why would I run when I could do things that are not running?”

Remus laughed. “You have a point there.” He cleared his throat and looked around. Oliver and
Isabela were sitting against a tree in the shade (the sun had just passed under the horizon but,
evidently, it was still a tad irritable.) “Listen, have you seen Draco?”

“The Malfoy kid?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

Parvati said nothing; she simply turned and raised a hand, pointing to a white oak tree across the
lawn. Remus squinted. It was a wide tree. Standing alone in a vicinity of a few metres, its jagged
branches scaring the other trees off, apparently; and sure enough, at what was very nearly the top,
he caught a glimpse of white-blond hair.

He sighed. And then there came a strange sort of prickle, and the back of his neck.
Something tugged at him, like a tow rope. The feeling came on like lightning and gave him that
small, electrocuted window to react. So with no hesitation whatsoever in a mind he wasn’t sure
was his own, he pulled his knife out of his pouch. Turned and flung it.

Directly into the hands of James Potter.

James was standing beside a tree. He’d caught the knife by the handle then dropped it instinctively
as it burned, and now he was staring at it on the ground, mouth open in a perfect O.

He disappeared, a blur around the trees and Remus followed, pulling out the second dagger and
twirling it around his fingers, feeling for the momentum. He took a breath in and, instead of
releasing his knife like his gut feeling told him to, followed something else. Some other force in
him. His intuition was his best friend, but sometimes the devil flitted through the air and told him
something else. Sometimes it would be wrong, sometimes right. And sometimes he’d turn, instead,
and plunge his dagger into James Potter’s radius as he tried to sneak up on him.

“Fuck,” he groaned, staggering back. Remus’ whole body seemed to relax, he blinked. Laughed in
exasperation and pulled the dagger out of James’ arm. “What the fuck. How did you do that?”

“I’m a really good hunter,” Remus replied, grinning devilishly as he knelt down and wiped the
blood on the blade off on the grass.

“But that was–” started James, and then he shook it off. “Never mind. Wow. Commendable. I
mean, I know I’ve seen you in action, but that…”

“You gonna stop sneaking up on me now?” asked Remus. James scoffed.

“No. Who do you take me for?”

“Mm. Right.”

James laughed and shoved him, as he stood, and Remus shoved him back. Eventually he turned and
looked, again, at the figure at the top of the tree.

“How long has he been up there?”

James looked at Parvati and they both shrugged. “A while. Since this morning. No one’s spoken to
him since I went up there earlier and he almost bit my head off. Probably what he wants.”

“Astoria left a few apples at the foot of the tree,” Parvati said. “And her water bottle, with blood in
it. In case he got hungry.”

Remus sighed. “Of course she did,” he said. Parvati smiled with the brilliance of the sun.

“I’m going to try and talk to him,” Remus continued, taking a step, and James caught his arm.

“Are you sure?” he asked, concerned. “He’ll go for you.”

Remus shrugged. “I can handle him. He’s like, five-foot-seven.”

“He’s growing,” James said, dangerously, but Remus was already walking away.

At the foot of the tree he stopped and noticed Astoria’s offerings. He cupped one of the apples
(after rubbing it on his shirt) in his hand, and shoved the plastic water bottle in his back pocket,
praying it didn’t fall out.
He began to climb.

Now, Remus Lupin was probably a little more than an averagely athletic person. His hunter
training had consisted of exercise every second of every day, essentially; refining his agility and
his reflexes and his strength. So climbing the tree was not a hard feat, even with one hand cupped
around an apple. He reached the top of the tree quite easily, actually, maybe about three feet, three
o'clock from where Draco was sitting cross-legged on a branch; diagonal to them both was a thick
split in the wood, splitting off into two branches, and in the middle of them both was a sort of
stable table where Remus leaned over and deposited the water bottle. He kept the apple in his
hands.

Draco didn’t look at him.

“Hi, kid,” said Remus, getting himself comfortable on an outstretched branch, legs resting on one
just underneath. “Nice to see you again. Alive.”

“Piss off,” Draco muttered. Remus laughed. At least he was speaking.

“I will,” Remus said, pandering. “I won’t take up too much of your time. Just wanted to talk to
you.”

He left it there, waiting for a reply, and Draco ignored him. And ignored him. And when it was
clear Remus wasn’t going to say anything else until Draco acknowledged him the kid turned his
head, his eyes dark, pupils dilated. It was a death glare to rival many.

“I don’t want to talk to you, hunter,” he said through his teeth. His fangs pointed in his anger.
Remus shrugged.

“Well, you’re gonna have to,” he said, lightly. “Eventually. When you stop mauling everyone who
tries to interact with you.”

“I’ll maul you next,” he said, looking away, and Remus smiled.

“Nah, you won’t,” he said, throwing the apple between his hands. “You would’ve mauled me
already. But you can’t kill me when I saved your life – twice. That’s bad Pureblood etiquette.”

“I can kill whomever I like,” said Draco, primly, his hair swaying slightly in the breeze.
“Especially barbarous hunters.”

“Says the barbarous vampire,” Remus quipped. Draco exhaled heavily in annoyance.

There was a long, long pause. Remus adjusted his seat on the branch and sighed.

“Look, I haven’t seen my mother in almost six years,” said Remus, quietly. Draco stiffened. “I had
to give her up for her own safety due to my lifestyle and it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I
did it because I loved her more than I loved anything else. And it’ll hurt, probably forever. But at
the end of the day the reasoning behind chosen loss says more about a person than anything else
ever will.”

Draco did not reply. Remus sighed.

“Your mother loved you, Draco–”

“Don’t talk about her.”

“–she chose you over her entire eight-hundred-year existence, and there is an authentic goodness
and bravery in that. And even despite how much she hated the majority of us I think she would be
happy to know that you got the retribution she hoped you would get, even if you’re not too happy
with it as of yet–”

“I said don’t TALK ABOUT HER,” Draco yelled, seething, and he launched across the space,
grabbing onto one of the two winding branches and knocking the water bottle off in the process.

It seemed to ground something in him; he perhaps had forgotten that it was there. The both of them
froze, looked down and watched the bottle hit an amalgamation of branches like the keys of a
xylophone before hitting the ground. The lid flew off and rich, dewy blood poured into the soft,
green grass. It pooled just next to the apples, like they had been melted.

Remus looked up. Draco was still trembling, but his face had cleared and he was looking at the
blood.

“That was Astoria’s bottle,” Remus said, and Draco turned and immediately moved back to where
he was sitting before Remus’ eyes followed him. “She put that out in case you got hungry. Because
she’s kind, and she cares that you don’t starve even despite how cruel I know you’ve been to her.”

Draco said nothing, but Remus could feel him seething with grief and angst.

“Listen, you have complete right to be angry, kid,” he said. “I know. I feel it too. But you can’t
transpire all of your grief and all of your anger onto people who don’t deserve it. You’ve been dealt
a shitty hand and nobody quite understands, I know. But they will try. If you let them in. There are
people here who will show you kindness even if you don’t show kindness back and I think that that
is all your mother wanted for you. Someone to be kind.”

Draco didn’t reply for about a minute, perhaps two. Remus shifted, about to climb down and call
that a day, when he turned. Only just. So that he could see Remus out of his peripheral vision.

“What happened to your mother?” he asked, low and reserved. Remus sighed.

“Werewolves,” he said, lightly. “When I was 21… well, I guess I must have pissed some of them
off. So they took her and held her hostage for four days. Used her to get to me. It traumatised her,
of course, as it would. Moving house and cutting ties physically was the easiest way to keep her
safe. I was.. gosh, I was too far into all of this hunting business to back out then. Or at least, that’s
how we saw it. That’s how it was written to me by my mentors. I’m still not sure if I should’ve
listened, but I can’t change that now.”

“So, you saved her?”

Remus nodded, smiling without realising he was. “I killed them all to get her back. Every single
one. With a bit of help from my friend, Dorcas, that is.” He paused, looking out over the dusk sky.
“My mum lives in Wales, now. I check in over email when I can. It’s hard, but it’s necessary when
creatures are so vengeful.”

Draco thinned his lips. He looked away, again.

“I could be vengeful too,” he said. “You’re the reason. It’s your fault that she’s dead.”

Remus took a breath in and held it. Draco was picking at the bark of the branch he was sitting on.
He had evidently been doing it for a while. His nails were raw and bloody.

“But I don’t think she’d want that,” he whispered. It was a brief gush of the wind. A wisp of
sentience through the hollow oak.

Remus released his breath.

“No,” he said, softly. “No, I don’t think she would.”

Draco stayed with his back turned, and Remus shifted. He reached out and placed the apple
gingerly on the flat surface of the little cubby between branches.

“There’s an apple for you, there,” Remus said, “I know you haven’t eaten for a while. And if you
ask Astoria I’m sure she’ll refill her water bottle for you. All you have to do is ask, Draco.”

The kid did not acknowledge his words. Remus nodded.

“I’ll see you later, then,” he said, beginning to clamber down. “If you need anything you can ask
me, alright?”

He paused, for a moment. Draco, still, said nothing. But he didn’t hurt him, didn’t tell him to piss
off. Just sat, and stared at the burning sky.

Well. It was a start.

***

Sirius did fall asleep that evening; he slept for about six hours before waking up, strangely
feverish. He had escorted himself to Poppy at 1am and she had released him at 3 upon loading him
with a potion consisting of Echinacea balm to ease the sickness symptoms and Powdered root of
Asphodel, which, when used in the majority of cases, caused a slumber so peaceful it was almost
like living death. There was something ironic in the fact that Sirius was already living death
incarnate, but that’s neither here nor there.

So, Remus woke up the next morning at 10am and Sirius was asleep in his bed.

He didn’t think much of it.

He was sitting up, laptop on his lap when Sirius woke up at 12 and immediately began to complain
about a blistering headache, which is what led them back to Poppy’s (makeshift) office by 12:30,
and what led Sirius to be a grumbling ball of anger sitting in a chair while Remus pulled his hair
back and Poppy rubbed a purple, dewy paste roughly into his temples by 12:45. It seemed to be
seeping into his skin.

Her office was impressive, to be honest. It was a spacious room with a wall of books and the
opposite wall lined with potion storage, glass jars on the top containing purpley-pink concoctions,
clear liquid test-tubes that seemed to flash like a camera every now and then, and, in one sealed
glass jar, something of such strange disfigurement that Remus couldn’t exactly figure out what it
was, only knowing that it was beating and he wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.

There was a reclining chair, much like one of the ones that dentists and orthodontists use. Sirius
was currently sitting vertically sideways on it, and he was grumbling to hell and back.

“Fucking headache,” he groaned, head jerking a little as Poppy massaged his temples. “What the
hell even is this? Why does it hurt so badly?”

Remus tightened his grip on his hair instinctively. Sirius yelped.

“Sorry–” Remus gasped, laughing. (Sirius did not find it funny). “I just realised that you’ve never
had a headache before. Like, ever.”

“I mean, my head aches pretty fucking badly when people try to rip it off?”

“Not the same thing,” said Remus, running his fingers through his hair and catching the strands
that threatened to fall forwards. He could see Poppy fight a smile. “Welcome to the world of
ailments, Pureblood boy.”

He couldn’t see Sirius’ face, but he knew he was scowling.

“Never been more thankful to be a vampire than right now,” he said. “It’s like– throbbing. Why
does it do that? How do I tell my head that I am very aware of my ailment, and that it doesn’t need
to keep throwing it in my face, thank you very much.”

“It should be easing up,” Poppy said, bustling, coating her fingers with the purple dew once more.
“Breathe in. Out.”

Sirius did, and his exhale sounded relieved.

“Okay, it’s a bit better,” he muttered, and Poppy smiled, triumphant.

Jul, who had been sitting in the corner on the computer, got up. They pushed their hair back with
their fingers and moved over to one of the cabinets, to rummage through; when they didn’t find
what they were looking for, they straightened up and turned to Poppy.

“Poppy,” they said, bewildered, “where’s the Arachnid venom?”

“Somewhere just north-east of Mr. Black’s brain right now, I’d propose.”

Sirius jolted. “Arachnid venom?! You’re putting those bastards in my head?”

“What is this?” Jul asked, skipping over and holding up the small tub of the Vaseline-like purple
paste to the light.

“Feverdew,” Poppy replied, dropping her hands from Sirius’ head and grabbing a paper towel to
wipe them down. “Healing paste consisting of Feverfew, the plant, and Arachnid venom, which is
where the ‘dew’ comes from.”

“I thought Arachnid’s were poisonous?” Remus said, a strange irrational panic in his gut. Poppy
smiled.

“Not every component of the venom,” she informed them. “We’ve found ways to separate the
DNA strands of most major Arachnid species. The venom that just went into Mr. Black’s head here
is a non-poisonous strand, which, when broken down, works as a numbing paste. It’s wildly helpful
in healing potions.”

Jul grinned. “Wicked,” they breathed, before turning and sliding back into their computer chair.

“Can you do that with different kinds of venom?” asked Remus, properly intrigued, now. “Or
magical poisons? I never would’ve thought there’d be a beneficiality to Arachnid venom. It’s a
class three poison on the magical toxicant taxonomy, isn’t it?”

Poppy tutted, impressed. “Someone has been doing their homework.”

“I have a hunter’s degree under Alastor Moody,” drawled Remus, “I know the toxtax like the back
of my hand. You know, one time he gave me two lemonades, one normal and one spiked with
Doxy venom and I had to identify the right one and just fucking drink it. Doxy venom is
colourless, by the way.”

“Did you get it right?” Jul asked. Remus scoffed.

“‘Course I did, but that’s not my point.”

“Show off,” they muttered. Remus grinned and whacked them round the back of the head lightly,
like a child.

“We can break down the genetics of anything, it just depends on the use for it,” Poppy said.
“Arachnid venoms, as I said, can be wildly helpful. Doxy venom is used in magical crop fertilising
products.”

“What about…” Sirius said, trailing off. He opened his mouth and tapped, gently, at his canine.

“The darker a creature gets, the more useless the venom,” Poppy said, which made Sirius frown
and Remus laugh. “Useless in terms of practicality, of course. When it comes to magical sources,
well, that’s a bit different. The higher you go up the dark creature scale, the more powerful of a
magical conductor the venom tends to be.”

Like how Riddle sustained his Horcruxes by drawing on his own magical vampiric power, Remus
thought. A replenishing source of dark magic. It all comes down to the venom.

“Wicked,” he breathed, out loud, because magic will forever excite him.

The conversation dying out, Poppy went to bustle around her studio, and Sirius got up and rubbed
his dry temples.

“Better?” asked Remus.

“Better,” Sirius nodded. He turned and smiled at the medi-witch, who nodded in return. “Thank
you Poppy.”

“Of course,” she said, smiling. “See you in probably two hours.”

Sirius scowled jokingly at her and they left.

“You know,” said Sirius, gently, taking his arm as they walked down the corridor, “you’re really,
really hot when you do your whole hunter knowledge thing.”

“Shut up, Sirius.”

“Doxy venom is colourless? And you got it anyway?”

“Shut up, Sirius."

“Christ, I’m swooning. Tell me more about the magical toxicant taxonomy, really get me going.”

By the time they’d gotten to the kitchen, Remus was halfway through class four, and Sirius looked
like he was going to eat him for breakfast.

“Go get a coffee, you wanker,” Remus laughed, shoving him away; Sirius, though protesting, went
for the coffee machine while Remus made himself some toast.
The kitchen was remarkably empty, save for about four people including Benjy Fenwick and
Fabian Prewett, sitting idly with a map and two cups of tea between them. Remus smiled at Fabian.
They hadn’t really spoken properly since he had come to Boardwalk. Remus had been avoiding
everyone and everything for a while, of course, but given their… history he had been avoiding
Fabian twice as hard.

Benjy struck up a conversation with a witch who’d come in levitating a strawberry milkshake with
a curly straw that spelled the word “agony”. Remus was, in fact, marvelling at this straw when
Fabian slid himself casually across the three seats between them.

“Hi,” he said. Remus smiled.

“Hey,” he replied, swivelling his body to face him. “How are you? How’s Molly and the kids?”

“Doing okay,” he said, nodding. “Adjusting, still. Bit wobbly, getting used to… well. All of this.
The vampires, specifically.”

“Been there,” Remus remarked, and Fabian nodded.

“Right, yeah. Perce is finding that hard. I guess it’s gonna take time for them to work everything
out, but I don’t doubt it’ll happen. Molly’s kind-hearted, just stuck in her ways, I s’pose. I guess we
all are, coming out of the Academy. You spoken to Moody yet?”

Remus groaned. “God, no, I’ve been meaning to. Been so fucking busy. Have you?”

Fabian made a face. “I’m not talking to him, man. I’m staying six feet away at all times like I have
done my entire career. You were always his favourite, though. I think he’d like a chat.”

Remus, not knowing exactly what to say to this, nodded. He took a sip from his mug, and then the
next words sort of came tumbling out.

“Fab, do you ever think sometimes that we got… fucked over? By the Bureau. I don’t wanna say
Moody, ‘cause I respect the hell out of him, obviously, but it feels like–”

“We got lied to,” Fabian finished. Remus nodded. He smiled and raised his eyebrows, and it
tugged on a long, deep scar across his forehead that Remus had been present for. “Feels like we’ve
been fighting the wrong fight.”

“Which is ridiculous,” Remus said, “when this coven didn’t even get traction until a few years ago,
but I just think–I dunno. Maybe we could’ve been learning from witches instead of hunting them.
Maybe we could’ve been talking to vampires, rehabilitating werewolves, making compromises.
You know?”

Fabian nodded. “Yep. I know. Feels so weird to unravel your life like that.”

Remus agreed with a positive sound and took another sip of his mug. His hands were running
slightly cold–come to think of it, it was really bloody cold and foggy today, which was odd as it
had been warm only yesterday–he wrapped his hands around his drink for warmth.

“Hey,” said Fabian, hushed, a minute later. “We haven’t had time to talk since I got here, really.”

“Yeah. Just too much going on, I guess.”

“I wanted to tell you–– well, I wanted to talk about us. Like, us.”
The first thing that Remus noticed was the thrumming of his own blood running through his veins
as he wished, with all of his might, that he was not having this conversation.

The second thing he noticed was, out of the corner of his eye, Sirius perk up. Ever so slightly.

Oh, God.

“Us…” Remus trailed off, and Fabian nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “I wanted to tell you that I–well. I’ve met someone.”

“Oh!” Remus gasped. “Oh, well that’s great! Who are they?”

“She’s called Daisy,” said Fabian, small smile tugging at his lips. “She’s a hunter, too. You
might’ve met her, actually. Year below us. She threw that one Halloween party, you remember–
she was the one with the abundance of houseplants?”

Remus’ forehead etched with frown wrinkles as he thought back; it took him a moment to place
who it was, another moment to get over the hurdle of how the flat that had thrown that party had
been all boys.

“Oh!” he said, realisation befalling him. “Yeah, of course, that party! She was the one who created
that makeshift whack-a-mole game with different monsters as the moles, right?”

“Yeah!” Fabian’s eyes lit up. “And Moody’s face was on a dartboard. It was brilliant.”

Halloween was always a feat with the trainee hunters, simply because it was their entire brand.
People dressed up to hell and back–come to think of it, Remus was pretty sure that the Prewetts
had dressed up as the princes of the seventh circle of hell that they had killed a few months back.
Every year someone would throw a party and people would go all out, creating all sorts of fun
games. It usually ended up in knife fights. At least, that particular party did. Dorcas had gone as a
siren that year, Remus as a sailor and Mary as a mermaid.

And, come to think of it–as the pieces of his memory fell peacefully into place–Remus had
definitely shagged Daisy that night.

He decided, tactically, not to mention this. To anyone. Ever.

“She’s in Ireland right now on a case, but she’s going to fly out at some point soon,” Fabian said,
and Remus smiled.

“I’m happy for you,” he said, genuinely.

“Thanks,” Fabian said. He took a sip from his mug and then leaned in again, his voice more
hushed. “I just, like–didn’t want to give a wrong impression at all. Especially not if at some point
we ended up having a few drinks.”

Remus wished, fleetingly, that he was anywhere else. Anywhere. Else.

“No, of course,” said Remus.

Please, God. Please, God, don’t say it.

“So, we can’t have sex again,” Fabian finished.

Sirius choked on his coffee.

He immediately fell into a fit of coughing, breaking the tender quietness of the room and its
hushed, secretive conversations with a raucous reaction to what he had just heard. He spluttered,
putting his coffee on the side. Edgar Bones, standing to the side of him, sort of awkwardly
thumped him on the back, and everyone else in the room simply stared.

He thumped a fist into his chest three times and swallowed viscerally.

“Sorry,” he said, to the room at large. His eyes landed briefly on Remus and Fabian and then, as
his lip quirked upwards, looked away so incredibly fast it was criminal. “Went down the wrong
way.”

Remus simply shook his head in disbelief and turned back to Fabian, the back of his neck prickling
with embarrassment. He spent the next five minutes grappling for an excuse to leave and Sirius
was by his side in the hall the second that he closed the door behind him.

“You slept with–” he started, and Remus clamped a hand over his mouth and dragged him by the
collar to the opposite side of the entrance hall, opening the door to the empty living room and
throwing him in.

“Please don’t,” Remus said as soon as he removed his hand from his mouth, but of course, he was
Sirius Black, so he did.

“You slept with him?!” he exclaimed, incredulous, and Remus fell onto the sofa, hand over his face
in exasperation.

“There’s nothing wrong with him!” cried Remus, on the defense. Sirius cackled with laughter.

“Oh my God,” he chuckled wetly, “wrong impression–”

Remus screwed his face up and threw a pillow at him; he dodged it with ease. Threw another one,
he dodged it again.

“I’m not even jealous,” Sirius said. “I’m just bewildered.”

Remus lurched forwards to grab his forearms and pull him down; he staggered, laughing, and
ended up straddling him. Remus quirked an eyebrow.

“You’re not jealous, hm?” he asked.

Some old feeling flared up in his chest at these words, something of months ago, when they still
hated each other, when all he wanted to do was make Sirius’ life hell.

Sirius shrugged.

“Not at all? Hm. Remarkable. You wanna know when the last time we slept together was?”

Sirius narrowed his eyes. His face had fallen. “When?” he asked, cautiously.

Remus, lips parted, curled up and sort of devilish, did nothing but daintily turn his head to give
Sirius direct access to his neck. The side holding the scar, his shirt riding down to his collarbone,
where Sirius had kissed him that night.

The way that Sirius’ face dropped in the moment of realisation might just be etched into Remus’
memory forever.

“Oh,” he said, dangerously, “now I’m jealous.”

“Ha,” Remus managed to breathe, as Sirius leaned forward and kissed his neck, kissed down it, his
spot and only his, “he touched me there, too, but he wasn’t you. He didn’t touch like you. No one
touches like you.”

“Stop,” Sirius groaned, vibrato against his collarbones, his hands in Remus’ hair. “It’s 1pm and
we’re in the living room. What the fuck are you doing to me.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Remus, grinning like an idiot. Sirius leant in and their noses slotted
together, forehead to forehead. “Maybe I like seeing the big bad vampire squirm.” He raked his
fingers through Sirius’ hair. “Mine for the taking,” he whispered, something melodramatic,
something drunk.

“You are a dark sorcerer,” said Sirius, plainly. “You are pure evil, Remus Lupin.”

“Mmmm,” Remus laughed, feeling lighter than he had in weeks, and kissed him.

Perhaps he should be glad that Marlene was the one to, inevitably, walk in on them.

“Sirius, your brother is– oh.”

She stopped, door wide open. Sirius, pulling away, simply flicked his hair out from his face and
stared her down. Remus felt his cheeks blushing crimson red.

“Well,” she grinned, “this looks cosy.”

“What is it, Marlene?”

“You have bedrooms, you know. This is a public area. Public indecency, and all that.”

“I am clothed, you moron,” said Sirius, sliding to the side so he was less straddling Remus and
more sitting next to him–or over him. “What is it?”

She cleared her throat. “Regulus wants to interrogate Snape now. Said we’ve left him to stew long
enough. He wants to go in with you two.”

Sirius looked at him. Remus quirked an eyebrow, and Sirius shrugged, pushing himself up.

“Well,” he said, extending a hand to help Remus up. “Let’s go rot our brains, I suppose.”

“I’ll have you later,” muttered Remus, rolling his eyes and taking his hand.

Marlene faux-gagged.

***

It had been three minutes, and Regulus had already slit his throat with his fingernails twice.

“You can’t just do that every time he speaks,” Remus hissed as the vampire slid back in beside
him, and he huffed, as if restraining himself from mauling someone was a huge inconvenience to
his day.

“He can’t help it,” said Sirius from his other side, arms crossed. “He has our mother’s temper.”

“I’m going to kill you both one day,” Regulus replied, casual as ever.

“Can I watch?” Snape piped up, and all three of them narrowed their eyes in a hilariously horrific
matching death glare and spat three versions of “No,” at him with so much venom he might as well
melt right then and there.

“You can talk,” Sirius spat, straightening himself up to his tallest height of 6’1 and digging his
fingernails into his upper arms so agitatedly that he was beginning to draw blood. “You can talk or
you can die.”

“You don’t scare me, Black,” Snape replied mockingly, and before Sirius could even get a (most
likely vulgar) word of retortion in, Regulus had pulled a chair across the room with a deafening
scrape of wood against wood, sat on it backwards and pulled something out of his pocket so swiftly
it twirled animatedly on the flat palm of his hand.

He jeered closer to Snape, and he was good; he was really good at covering it up, but Remus had
grown accustomed to picking up on weaknesses and there was a flash of recognition and a flash of
fear behind his cold black eyes.

“Does this?” Regulus whispered, in that terrifyingly calm voice, and Remus tilted his head ever so
slightly to see what it was.

He had the ring in the palm of his hand. The remnants of the ring; blackened and charred. A ruin of
what it once was. An empty city against what it once housed. Power and power and power.

Snape took a deep breath.

“I don’t know what that is,” he said, icily, and Regulus nodded.

“But you can guess,” he prompted. Remus bit his lip and turned to Sirius, to garner his reaction; he
was intrigued. They stood back and let Regulus do the work.

He twirled the ring between his fingers. Let it slide down his middle finger and situate itself there.

“You know, this ring used to be cursed,” he said, idly. Snape scowled from where he was sat
chained to the bedframe but did not jolt or move. Remus felt the same. He was frozen in place. He
could taste strategy, he just couldn’t figure it out. “An awful curse. And my friend Pandora–you
remember her, right? Blonde, small, reckless? She lifted the curse. She destroyed it. You know
what it did to her?”

Regulus waited a moment, and when Snape didn’t reply, he pressed the index finger of his right
hand gently over the ring, on his middle finger on his left. Dragged the tip of it ever so gently over
his soft skin, lining the bone of his knuckle, up and over his wrist and up his arm. His mouth was
slightly ajar.

“Rot,” he said, pulling his top lip bag to almost spit the noun. “All up her arm. Black and
crumbling. Barely even an arm anymore. More like a carcass.”

Snape’s eyes lingered on Regulus’ arm, and then moved upwards. His face was indecipherable. His
jaw was tense.

“Of course, it was temporary,” Regulus said, amending himself as if it was the most casual
conversation in the world. “She had destroyed the curse, it was just the last little bit hanging on.
Manifesting in the only way it knew how. Through the rotting of life and sentience. Sucking out all
of the happiness in the world. From the inside out.”

He pulled the ring off his finger, and threw it at Snape. It hit him on the chest and he jolted; the
chains yanked against his wrists and the base of his throat, pushing up against the sticky blood
coated there, matched with the dirt underneath Regulus’ fingernails. His flesh sizzled with the
sudden movement. Regulus raised an eyebrow.

“Ring a bell?” he asked, lightly, and Snape swallowed. He looked carefully at the ring–lying on the
bed, idle and unthreatening.

“It’s not one of them anymore,” he said, slowly, and Regulus clapped his hands together so
abruptly that it made Remus jump.

“Ah, good, we’re giving up the pretenses,” he said, getting up. “I knew you were a smart boy. Or,
at least, a snivelling cow to your higher ups.”

“Regulus, can we move this along?” Sirius asked, agitatedly, and Regulus narrowed his eyes at his
brother. “Being in his presence for too long makes my skin crawl.”

“Let me do my job,” he said, and then his eyes moved to Remus. “You have a dagger on you?”

Remus blinked. “Yeah,” he said, patting his sides and tunnelling underneath his shirt to unsheath
the one on the side of his hip.

He threw it handle-first across the room and Regulus caught it. His skin began to blister
instantaneously but he paid no heed; he simply turned and plunged it, in one swift movement, into
Severus Snape’s gut.

He groaned and leaned forward, tugging absently at his arms and howling harder when they burnt
at his wrists. Regulus held it there for a couple of seconds; he wasn’t even looking at Snape, he
was turned towards Remus and Sirius, staring absently at the wall; and then he pulled it out.
Turned towards him and twirled it between his fingers.

“You ready to talk about that locket?” he asked, and Snape didn’t reply. Only took deep, wheezed
breaths and scowled deeply, refusing to meet Regulus’ eye even when he gripped his face in one
hand and yanked it up.

“Alright,” he said, and plunged it back into his stomach. This time he left it there; he turned
towards Remus and Sirius, the latter of whom looked rather proud and the former of whom rather
exasperated.

“You know, there will come a time in your life when you won’t be able to stab answers out of
people,” Remus remarked, stepping forward.

Regulus frowned. “There will?”

“Let him stab whomever he wants to stab, Remus,” Sirius chimed in, amused. “It’s a free country.”

He brushed past him to get to his stabby brother and his stabbed assailant, and Remus simply
rolled his eyes and wondered how the hell he got himself into this situation.

“So, you recognise the ring for what it is,” said Sirius, recapping the basics and pulling the dagger
out of Snape’s stomach. The vampire was breathing heavily, through his teeth, angered and
abrasive. “And you knew of the locket for what it was.” He paused, throwing the bloody dagger
idly between the two of his hands. “You’ve seen it. You took it.”

“I didn’t take it,” Snape hissed, his voice croaky and disoriented and somewhat desperate as Sirius
approached. “But I know who did.”
“Yeah, yeah, so do we, now,” Regulus said, viciously mockingly. Both Remus and Sirius turned to
him, frowning.

“We do?” Remus asked. Snape wheezed a laugh and Sirius stabbed him again.

“Good stab,” Regulus called over his groans, nodding. “Very firm.”

“Shut up, Reg.”

“Seriously,” said Remus. “We do?”

He looked at Sirius, who shrugged his own ignorance. Regulus raised his eyebrows.

“You don’t?”

“You do?”

“I think we’ve established that,” Sirius said, impatiently, at him; Remus made a mimicking face
and Regulus looked between them, chuckling.

“Sometimes you two really do quarrel like an old married couple, you know,” he remarked. Sirius
rolled his eyes.

“Stop being a smartarse,” he said. “What the hell do you know?”

Regulus’ face cleared.

“You seriously didn’t put it together?” he asked; he brought his right hand up and began tracing his
arm, faster, this time; middle finger over his knuckles up his wrists. “Horcruxes rot you from the
inside out. Riddle’s soul is too much to bear. It’s why you can’t really create living Horcruxes–or
at least ones that last more than ten years, tops–because even mild interaction with the curse eats
you from the inside out. Rot. Who do we know that is literally rotting?”

“Lucius Malfoy,” Sirius suggested. “In his grave.”

“Marlene,” Remus put forth, “having to lead this shitshow.”

“Andromeda, for having to deal with us two.”

“Me for having to deal with you two.”

“Me in bed for the past six weeks.”

“Me knowing you for eight ye–”

“Dumbledore,” said Regulus, quickly, closing his eyes as if exasperated. The air went cold.
“Dumbledore.” He opened his eyes and they laid onto Remus. “Your hunter leader.”

“He’s not my leader,” Remus muttered.

“But he’s right,” Sirius breathed. “Oh. Oh, he’s right. You said his hand was– decaying.”

“It was,” Remus said, brain going fifty miles an hour and heart going fifty million. “From his
fingers. Up his arm. And he was desperate to find Riddle.”

Regulus clapped, once, and then flourished dramatically towards Snape.

Sirius blinked.

“How did you even–” Remus started. His brain had fallen into overdrive as it did regularly and he
couldn’t seem to figure out the words. “I mean, what even– the connection here, how did you–"

“I bluffed,” Regulus said, shrugging. “We had to eliminate our other common enemies to figure out
who this bastard came from. I just happened to start with the rot and it worked.”

“I didn’t even think about the rot,” Sirius breathed.

“And that is why I figured out that Tom Riddle was creating Horcruxes and you didn’t,” Regulus
retorted back.

There was a moment of silence as his words sunk into the atmosphere. And then Sirius laughed. In
utter disbelief.

“You’re way too smart for your own good, you know that, right?” he remarked, and Regulus
grinned over his shoulder as he leant to pull the knife out of Snape’s limp form.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” he murmured, and yanked.

Snape hissed, fangs aglow as Regulus threw the dagger towards the end of the bed and pushed his
head up, three fingers underneath his chin.

“Are we right?” he asked, and Snape hissed at him. Regulus rolled his eyes, and slapped him.

“What the hell have you got left to lose?” Remus groaned, leaning against the post at the end of the
bed. “Just answer the damn question. Are you working for Dumbledore?”

“What’s in it for me?” Snape muttered. Regulus rolled his eyes again.

“Tell us and I won’t kill you,” Sirius bargained, and Snape narrowed his eyes.

“He will,” he said, tilting his head towards Regulus.

“Yes, well, there’s not much I can do about that,” Sirius replied, bustlingly.

Regulus’ eyes were going to roll into the back of his head.

“We won’t kill you,” Remus put forth, pushing himself off the post and standing at the foot of the
bed, looking at Snape dead on. Two sets of indignant whines came from both of his sides and he
shot them both glares. “If you can tell us what you know of Dumbledore, help us figure out where
the locket is and destroy it–really help us, no more of this double, triple agent bullshit–then we
won’t kill you.”

He looked at both Regulus and Sirius. They both had their arms crossed. They were an eerie echo
of the other.

“Right?” he pressed, except it was less of a question and more of a demand.

“Yes,” said Regulus, sounding like he had a gun to his head, and Sirius echoed him.

Snape eyed them providently. There was blood trickling out of the corner of his mouth and he
licked his lips.

“I want you to do an unbreakable vow,” he croaked, and Regulus groaned viscerally.

“Can’t you just take our word?” Remus said, and realised how ridiculous it sounded the moment he
said it.

“No.”

“Well, I’m not putting my life on the line for Snivellus,” Sirius retorted, arms crossed again.

“I’ll do it,” Remus offered, exhausted, and Regulus shook his head.

“No, I will,” he insisted.

Sirius narrowed his eyes.

He was silent for a moment, looking between them both. He pinched the corner of his lips and took
a deep breath.

“No,” he said, benignly, dropping his arms. “No. I’m doing it.”

“Sirius.”

“I’m doing it, Remus,” he said, firmly, and Regulus–you guessed it–rolled his eyes.

“No one is doing it until we have enough information to confirm that he’s actually worth
something,” he hissed, spreading his arms out wide. Remus tilted his head in acknowledgment; this
was a good point.

All three of them turned to Snape, who narrowed his eyes. He shifted ever so slightly, so that the
metal chains sizzled a little bit onto fresh, unblemished skin, and cleared his throat.

“I will talk,” he said, “as much as I see fit. I’m sure we can come to a compromise, no?”

A beat.

“I hate you,” said Regulus.

“Almost feeding you to the wolves in ‘59 was the best moment of my life,” Snape sneered, and
Remus actually had to hold Sirius back.

Regulus turned. His face was calm. It was calculative. He raised a halting hand, and Sirius fell still,
though he wasn’t happy about it. Remus pulled him back and hooked a hand around his waist as
Regulus retook his seat.

“Start talking,” he instructed, and Snape took a deep, deep breath.

***

“I’m going to kick his teeth in,” Sirius announced, on the sofa in front of the fire three hours later.

An exasperated “Sirius,” came tearing from between Marlene’s teeth. His tirade had been going
for forty five minutes and, Remus expected, would probably continue for about that length.

Snape hadn’t told them anything.

Remus did not like the vampire in the slightest; he was bitter, irritatingly sarcastic, and had a gaze
that could make your skin prickle and turn itself inside out, but if he was going to say anything
about the vampire currently housed (and probably bleeding) in the tragic little bedroom turned
prison in the East Wing, it would be that he was a conniving little bastard.

In a positive way. Unfortunately.

He was smart. Remus supposed it made sense. With all of his bicentennial years and being some
sort of a double agent (the only thing that they could make sense of) it was logical that he had
picked up a few tricks to keep enemies off his back. His words were twisted and laced with
mockery that injected fire through your veins, and his tongue was sharp and creative and did darts
around the room like hopscotch, caking their vision in muddy footprints so that when the grass
bloomed you could only really see the tops of the blades poking through like the tip of an iceberg
on a colossal body of bloody fucking nothing.

He was a piece of shit, but he was good.

This, to put it simply, pissed Sirius off, and so the past hour or so had gone something like:

“I’m going to break his nose.”

“No you’re not.”

“I’m going to shave his head and shove the hair down his throat.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m going to rip his arm off and sail a boat out to the middle of the pacific and drop it in the water
so he’ll never find it.”

“I can make a portkey,” Jul had piped up to this one–simply passing through, arm in arm with
Isabela.

“No,” both Marlene and Remus (sitting either side of him, nursing a glass of white and red wine,
respectively) had yelled, and the pair of troublemakers had hopped gleefully away, leaving nothing
but the three of them to study the crackling flames on the log and imagine Severus Snape’s head
burning upon them.

Sirius was simply the only one who voiced it. He never had been able to keep his thoughts to
himself. Nor his hands.

So, what did they know? Remus listed them off in his head like he was going grocery shopping.

They knew that the Malfoy line was being pinched out like a flame, survived by one son who just
so happened to be a terrible little creature that Remus felt copious amounts of sympathy for. They
knew that there had been six parts of Tom Riddle’s soul walking the earth like nightcrawlers
somewhere and that two of them had been destroyed, one by Remus’ own hand. They knew that
Severus Snape was tied up almost directly above them and that, via Dumbledore, who is involved
somehow, he had known about the locket (three’s the magic number) when, apparently, precisely
nobody had known about the locket because Regulus Black keeps secrets like Sirius Black keeps
revenge, curled in the palm of their hands, sacred whispers that bypass everyone else until it is
entirely necessary for assimilation. Come blowing out and blowing up like a storm that you
inevitably know you’re going to chase.

Remus didn’t blame him, he supposed. If he had had a life like Regulus, God fucking knows he
would keep his secrets too. But Remus got the feeling sometimes that his secrets are all that
Regulus thinks he has. That everything else seemed to be fleeting to him. That eight hundred years
have gone by and not one day had he believed that he was secure; that the world would not melt
around his fingertips one day and leave him alone in the darkness of his own mind palace. Remus
got the feeling sometimes that Regulus was waiting for Mary and for James and for Sirius to just
leave again. That he almost craved it because it was all he knew.

Remus thought that was quite unlikely, but what the hell did he know?

Not much, as well established, and yet he knew and absorbed everything he found. And he had
gotten somewhat close to Regulus in some strange, fucked up way. Some kind of
acknowledgement that they were two beings who could not be further apart and yet could not be
more similar. In the way the earth cradled them and in the way their essence seemed to slip through
her spindly branched arms–it was a sentiment that everyone seemed to embody, but no one but
Regulus had sat with Remus in that car in New Hampshire, and so his enigmaticness had started to
rub onto Remus like dry, chafing paint and only endeared him more to the strange secret keeper
who Remus had witnessed many a time climb out of his bedroom window in opposition to sleeping
and run, run as fast as he could. Lord knows where he thought he was going. Circles seemed to be
all he was destined for and yet he ran anyway, and there was something admirable in that.
Something headstrong that the Black trio shared. Regulus spent most of his time either with Mary
or Andromeda or, as a new addition, not just Sirius but Remus too. Remus had no idea where he
was right now and was quite sure he’d feel strangely unsettled if he did.

His designated Black brother scowled once more into the fire and Remus placed a hand on his
knee. Squeezed, gently, and he deflated like a balloon.

“We’ll try again tomorrow,” he said, as soft as he could muster, soft like the gentle chimes of the
piano that he heard once in a blue moon–Regulus. Sirius. Either. Both.

And in a strange feeling of the world being turned on his head, Remus was assuring Sirius that he
didn’t have to save the world in one night when that was what Remus set out to do every morning
upon waking. Hypocrisy ran through them like mist to an open wound. It was remarkable how
much of him was in the other. And vice versa.

“He’s not going anywhere,” he continued, thumbing the side of Sirius’ kneecap where his palm
was splayed upon it. “We don’t need to figure everything out in one night.”

“Things have been going slow recently,” Sirius murmured. Marlene leaned her head on her arm,
sighing. “Nothing is happening.”

“You just woke up three days ago.”

“Nothing has been happening,” he pressed, dismissively. “Don’t you think? On their end, at least,
from what I’ve been caught up on. Bella hunting the kid and the fire in Nova Scotia; what before?
Scant missions and murders and– you guys cooped up in here, strategizing…”

“We needed the strategy, to be fair,” offered Marlene. “Lily, Mary and Regulus. Remus trying to
find the hunters. The rest of us trying to track down the locket through the clues in the diary. We
needed time and we got it, and now we’re getting somewhere.”

“But they weren’t obligated to give it to us,” Sirius said. “Killing people up and down the East
Coast is all well and good but… where the hell is Riddle?”

Where the hell is Riddle?

Million dollar question.

Remus didn’t know. And he didn’t want to think about it because silence meant something big, and
they had something big; they had something big in the form of secrets tucked into Regulus Black’s
subconscious and something big in the form of Draco Malfoy’s disenchantment and grief, making
the whole estate creak and groan and the river water slosh up against the bank like it’s trying to get
somewhere, warn someone. They had an upper hand but Remus couldn’t help but feel like there
was rot climbing through the veins. Taking over the skin like Dumbledore’s crumbling hand until–
until––

“I just get the feeling something bad is going to happen,” said Sirius, eventually.

And something bad was not in the cards for Sirius. He wanted to speed things along and trip over
his own feet collecting stray vampires in a freefall and just hoping he was enough to cushion them
when they’d land.

Remus got it. In the deep of the night and the hollow of the fire, he understood the hunger. He felt
it.

Remarkable, truly.

“Don’t you jinx it,” Marlene said, softly. There was none of the usual heart to her words. It was
like she had burnt out of energy for the day, and the melancholic atmosphere felt like it was
nothing but adrenaline put on pause, enough to put anyone to sleep except perhaps Sirius Black
who had had enough sleep for a lifetime.

Marlene succumbed.

“I’m going to head up to bed,” she murmured, which Remus was quite sure was code for “I’m
going to head up to Dorcas’ room,” but he’d dare not pry with the three of them in such a palpably
fragile position, so he simply smiled and nodded. She squeezed Sirius’ hand before she went and
he squeezed it back.

Remus had expected to turn to him, as the door shut and it was just the two of them and the flames,
and for his misery to bleed into Remus’ palm and for him to take it; take him; as he had and always
would god damn his own lack of reprieve.

But Sirius would never stop being unpredictable. He would never fucking stop.

“How are you doing?” he murmured as soon as the door had shut. Not a second after. Remus
blinked and inhaled sharply.

“How am I doing?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m…fine,” he said, brusquely. “Doing okay. I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“You don’t need to ask me anything.”

“I want you to talk to me.”

“I’ll talk,” Sirius said, simply, and the adrenaline sparked in the air. “If you want me to. I’d give
you anything if you want it. You’ve waited long enough.”

Remus blinked in shock, and his mouth fell open, corners upturned slowly and frozen there as he
tried to formulate a reply. Sirius smiled. It was gentle.
“Where’s this coming from?” Remus finally decided on, and he shrugged.

“A part of it is guilt, probably,” he said, and oh, they were really being transparent, “for leaving
you alone for six weeks. Love, maybe. Whatever the hell that is. You, I think.”

“You didn’t leave me alone for six weeks,” Remus said, frowning, jumping back to before Sirius
had said what he had just said, as fucking nonchalantly as anything else. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“You still needed me,” came the whisper. A wisp of the wind.

“Maybe,” Remus replied, contemplatively, “but I managed. I’m managing. We had this
conversation, stupid; I’m still here, aren’t I? I’m still kicking. We all are. And I think– I don’t
know,” Sirius brought a hand up to thumb at his cheek. It was strangely cold, against the skin that
had been warmed up by the fire. And the skin that had not. “Things are hopeful, recently. I feel
strangely optimistic today.”

“Optimism is good,” Sirius enforced. Sirius cupped his cheek and Remus leaned into the touch like
he belonged there. His hands were cold. The fire crackled on.

“It’s stupid and probably misplaced but I just feel– I feel–” he took a deep breath. Steadied himself.
Sirius waited. “I feel like I can come out of this stronger.”

“This…?”

“War,” he supplied. “Situation. Fight. You.”

“Me.”

Remus’ lips quirked. “You’re the most difficult thing to contend with by far.”

“Riddle would be offended,” Sirius replied, but he was fighting a smile too.

They lapsed into silence after stupid sentiments. Sirius’ hand had migrated slightly, down to his
neck. Thumbing circles onto his collarbone.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, and Remus took a deep breath. Bathed in the warmth of
his eyes. Of the walls come down.

And he shuffled forward. Raised his calloused hands up, slowly, to cup both sides of Sirius’
longing face. Both the face and the hands that he had been seeing through fog for weeks. The
hands that had been someone else's, somewhere else, far, far away were his. And where they often
weren’t real and would continue to slip in and out of his grasp, they were here, now, and he was
real, now; the realest thing Remus could ever fathom. The most beautiful and the most dangerous,
but not to him. Never to him and always to him. Everything and nothing.

Remus shook his head. They were living on borrowed time. For right now, he was alright. What an
odd concept. To have a good day. He wanted thousands.

They could and they would talk another time, but for right now, Remus pressed play on the world,
let the warmth rush into his stomach, and kissed him.

Sirius opened his mouth and let Remus pour his soul in there and it was warm, and pure. Gentle.
Tactile and fresh, a barren land of Sirius’ hands, twisting, gripping his shoulders and then the sides
of his neck and tilting his head so their noses slotted together nicely. Kissing him like it was a
breath of fresh air. It was desperate, but it was not. How remarkable that they could be both at the
same time.

What was desperate were Sirius’ lips, his thighs, shuffling over the sofa and the way that they
eventually slotted together; it was the easiest thing on the planet for Sirius to clamber onto him,
graceful where he should’ve been gawky. He rocked slightly from where he was sitting on Remus’
lap, thighs around his, hand around his heart, flames around the world in which it was nothing but
them and this–Remus moaned and tightened his arms around Sirius’ neck, almost secluding him
from the rest of the world via his curved elbows. He swam up for air and pushed back in again
almost immediately, not wanting to miss a second, and Sirius’ wandering hands ended up flush on
the soft skin of his stomach and Remus hissed and jolted, but he didn’t move them.

He chuckled against Sirius’ lips.

“Your hands are cold,” he said, trailing his own hands down over his chest and hooking them
around his waist to pull him in closer. Sirius smiled.

“You’ll warm them up,” he murmured, and Remus pushed in so aggressively that he almost fell
backwards save for Remus’ hands on his hips. He rocked forward, breathy in Remus’ mouth and
he could feel him hard and flush against himself, and it was near-maddening. Sirius’ hands
continued to move–Remus became desensitised to the cold, he welcomed it –nd he rubbed a thumb
over Remus’ nipple and circled, and perhaps it was the tenderness or perhaps it was simply the
sheer overstimulation of being touched and touching and loving where no love is to be found that
made him gasp and squeeze his eyes shut, inexorably turned on; perhaps Sirius was a dark sorcerer.
Or perhaps it had been him for eight years and that kind of shit builds up. It was something
special.

“Upstairs,” Remus breathed; nearly choked, as Sirius ran his harsh soft palms back down Remus’
front and rubbed slowly and maddeningly on the bulge in his jeans. Sirius smiled and Remus
kissed him once more, and then jerked slightly when Sirius palmed it again and simply had
enough.

He dug his hands underneath Sirius’ backside and stood in a display of strength he didn’t even
realise he had, really; Sirius gasped and then laughed; wrapping his arms around his waist and
laughing into the crook of his neck for two or three stumbled paces before he let himself down,
staggering backwards with Remus’ shirt bundled up desperately in his hands and Remus’ tongue
desperately in his mouth.

Sirius banged his head against his headboard as Remus essentially threw him on there and they
were both laughing as he crawled between his legs, grinning into a kiss. Remus’ knee in between
Sirius’ legs and his thighs clenched around them as Remus kissed him; trailing his mouth along his
jaw and the underside, his neck; pulling his head back for access via the hair, revelling in Sirius’
soft sighs and the way he was squirming underneath his body, canvassed over them like a cloud
painted grey over blue skies. Sirius made quick work of his shirt buttons–Remus didn’t even notice
his nimble fingers dancing down his torso until he was pushing it back, over his shoulders, trailing
hands over the broad set of them and down his back. Remus pushed himself up and made even
quicker work of his own shirt, up and off; his skin almost glistened in the low light and he let out a
low whine as Remus took his time dusting wet kisses over his skin, taking one of his nipples in his
mouth and stopping him squirming with a firm hand to his hip; it was his favourite place to be.

It hit him like a wildfire. In this place, Sirius on his mouth and his hands and all over him, letting
his guard down and letting himself go. Perhaps there was something psychological in that, or
perhaps Remus simply wanted to know every inch of him. Map it like a transatlantic voyage; like a
hill he would never tire of climbing. A hill his legs had gone numb from long ago, his legs, his
legs, next to Sirius’. His hands, next to Sirius’. The tactile generosity they offered each other, the
explorer and the explored; but Remus was no open book. It was remarkable. Remarkable how,
when Sirius got the one up on him and unbuttoned his jeans, took him in his devious hands; when
Remus’ forehead fell hot onto Sirius’ and he nuzzled his face into his neck, kissed and sucked and
nipped, bit at the tender skin, one hand moving gently around his cock and one gripping onto his
hair like it was his lifeline; how much of a correspondence they had. How much it all was, and
how little it cost. And that was love. Remus was quite sure of it. He was quite, quite fucking sure,
hips trembling and affirmations in his ear, whispered gently; that was love.

He pulled away, and in some superhuman god-like display of skill had his own jeans and also
Sirius’ off in a matter of maybe ten seconds.

He shuffled down, kisses on his lower abdomen and on the inside of his thigh and then taking him
in his mouth; Sirius didn’t even get a chance to speak, mouth open and some sort of guttural sound
of shock or anguish churning from the cogs in his chest. His head hit the headboard once more but
he didn’t seem to care. Remus took him in his mouth and took himself in his hand but that wasn’t
the priority; it was Sirius. It was all Sirius and his hands scrunching up the sheets, his heaving
chest and the absolutely obscene noises he was making, unencumbered and relentless and
beautiful.

It didn’t take long before Sirius was tapping avidly on his shoulder; Remus pulled back. He
reached out his hands and tugged, gently, at Remus’ hair. He clambered up, breathing heavily, and
held himself up on his forearms over him.

Sirius’ hair was splayed out over the pillow like some sort of renaissance sculpture, and he
wrapped his arms around Remus’ neck and pulled him into a long, deep kiss. It felt rejuvenating.

He pulled back, forehead to forehead, and did not waste a second of his precious, wanting breath.

“I want you to fuck me,” he whispered, piercing grey eyes behind his heavy, beautiful lids; Remus
kissed both of them. He smiled.

“Okay,” Remus breathed, leaning forward to kiss him once more. He shifted for comfortability and
put pressure on Sirius’ cock up against his hip. He moaned into his mouth and it was everything
and more.

“Okay,” Sirius repeated, swallowing viscerally and then peeling one arm away from where it
belonged, holding Remus to his chest, lazily to the bedside table to his left; Remus followed his
direction to the top drawer and found what he was looking for.

And there was nothing else. It was just them. In a box in the sky. Remus could smash the window
open and there’d be nothing, just an endless nothing; his peripheral could see Sirius and only Sirius
and only ever Sirius and it would only ever be Sirius, lying there with his knees bent as Remus
worked his fingers and kissed his stomach, his collarbones, offered him the world and every
particle of the universe in exchange for the galaxies that Sirius was giving him as he scratched at
his neck, gripped it, rolled his skin between his hands as if he couldn’t get enough, as if it would
never be enough; perhaps it wouldn’t. They were all or nothing people living on a torturous middle
ground. Some sort of sacred whisper, some force had brought them together to explode, crackle
like fireworks in each other’s proximity and shield the rest of civilisation from their outbursts and
their spark was theirs and theirs alone to contend with. Dampen with every open-mouthed kiss to
papery, soft soft skin. Pinch out and set alight. He just– he just– they just–

Remus didn’t seem to have words. His pupils were sparkling with some sort of magic and his
fingers were trembling with need and pleasure and compliancy, and in no world was Sirius the
more composed of the two, but where his words were absent Sirius’ were not. A puzzle piece,
slotted in.

“I love you,” Sirius breathed, shakily, digging his fingernails into the back of Remus’ neck. He
swallowed viscerally and Remus could feel his thighs and his muscles clenching and unclenching,
sentient of their own being, working while Sirius could only and had only ever seen him. Could
only and had only ever loved him.

Remus dropped his head to kiss the underside of his jaw, his cheek. Forehead against forehead.
They tended to do that often; Remus hadn’t really understood why until that very moment. It was
mortal touch. Simple electricity. They were extensions of the other to the point where a breath was
a breath shared, hands were palm to palm above Sirius’ head and chests were moving in time with
the grandfather clock of passion banging doldrums into Remus’ chest, heartbeat, pulse; it was
almost as if Sirius had one too.

“I love you,” Sirius repeated, and Remus nodded. He had no words.

“I love you,” came the third whisper and Remus kissed the gentle words out of his trying mouth,
and when he came up for air Sirius’ vocal chords were entirely too taken with his name on his
tongue and the sound of canaries and sweet sweet harmonies at the back of his throat but he didn’t
have to say it, because that was love too.

The scratches down Remus’ back. The marks on his neck. The arch of his back and the curl of his
toes and the sound of music, waves reverberating around the room and ending up back at their
centrepiece, where they were one being, and none of it– none of it mattered. So if Sirius’ cold
hands spouted icicles like diamonds on his back, and if fog, thick and menacing, knocked on their
windows, neither of them noticed. How could they?

(Refuge in his arms and in his hair and in his soul.)

(It was love.)

 nineteen
Chapter Notes

this ones reeeeally plotty strap yourself in folks

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Waking up is sort of like familiar puzzle pieces slotting together all at once. Except a few of them
are in the wrong places so they have to be pushed around, trial and error-ed. The misfitting of
jigsaw attachments leaves one, upon waking up, a bit bewildered and having to put phantom pieces
into place to make sense of their surroundings, so when Remus awoke the next morning, it was
animal, first and then sentient.

AKA, when Remus woke up his instincts kicked in before his consciousness, and the only things
that he could think were: ouch, body, cold. In that order.

Grappling a little bit with his hand he registered that he was pressed up to a back – Sirius’ back, of
course, who else could it be – and it was this amount of area touching him that threw the “cold”
instinct full force in blinding lights into his brain. He shuddered. He opened his eyes.

Yep, there was the body.

“Mmhng,” was something along the lines of what he whined, squeezing his eyes shut in an attempt
to un-blur them and then opening them again. Sirius was awake. He had been asleep, and now he
was awake. How marvellous of a concept it is, the idea of being so attuned to someone you can
mark the exact moment they return to the land of consciousness. Remus felt a wash of luck bathe
over him like a twinkling starlight, and then he shifted, and he felt ouch, body, cold.

Sirius flipped himself over, gently.

“Hi,” he whispered, facing Remus now.

They paralleled each other, lying on their sides. Remus rubbed at his eyes, blinking awkwardly into
focus. Sirius was bathed in gentle indirect light from the cracks of the curtains. He was pretty and
beautiful and all of those things, of course; but Remus’ body hurt.

“Ow,” was the first thing he said; he had intended to say hello back, but instinct got the better of
him. Sirius frowned.

“What hurts?”

Remus took a deep breath and tried to tune himself like an out of tune piano. The stinging
centralised around his back and he swivelled, pushing the duvet down so it clung just onto his hip
bone and twisting his head as far around as it would go to try and see what it was that prickled. He
could see flashes of red.

He turned back, body relaxing in an instant. Sirius’ mouth was parted, gently.

“You scratched me,” he said, and Sirius’ eyebrows raised.

“I–” he started, and then Remus pulled his wrist up and noticed that there was a bruise there, too.
Dark splotchy discolouring right across his wrist, a thumb and a magnanimous grip.

He held it between them. Sirius looked absolutely baffled.

“Well,” said Remus, hearing his voice all gruff scratchy in the bitter morning, “nice to know you
had a good time.”

He turned, laughing at himself or perhaps just the absurdity and then fell onto his back. Promptly
forgetting the ouch, and then remembering; his body jerked instantly, a knee-jerk, like he had
touched something hot and he hissed, arching his back and rolling forward again straight into
Sirius’ chest. He grappled for him as his back felt air and the pain from contact dissipated, and
found himself laughing, again. Sirius held the back of his neck and Remus felt him crane his own
to look at his back over his shoulder.

“Are you okay?” Sirius asked, as Remus shuddered from the feeling of him trailing a finger over
his skin. He pulled back a bit to look at him.

“I’m fine,” he said, genuinely. Sirius looked concerned. “Why the hell are you worried? You’ve
hurt me worse than this before.”

“Intentionally,” said Sirius, wrapping his thumb and forefinger around his wrist, gentle; sometimes
he can be so gentle. Juxtapositional mess. Remus smiled.

“I take it as a compliment,” he said. He felt sunny. The room was oddly dark, but he felt sunny,
even despite the cold and the ache. He cupped Sirius’ face. “You’re cold.”

Sirius raised his eyebrows. “I am?”

“Yeah,” said Remus, shuffling himself closer to kiss him.

Sirius’ hand splayed over the small of his back, Remus’ leg hitched over his hip as he captured his
lips. And the ringing stopped. It always seemed to. It was less of an escape and more of a
hyperfocus, in which Remus got to breathe, for a second, kiss him and feel him and only him. He
didn’t seem to get a lot of those, nowadays, so he treasured each one.

He pulled away, barely, after a moment. Sirius traced circles into his hip and smiled, full lips
quirking up like a puppet master was controlling them and Remus felt an overwhelming wave of
love, that’s what it is, call it what it is, love, wash over him; he buried his head into Sirius’ neck.
Opened his mouth and very purposefully breathed warm air onto him; Sirius squirmed.

“Stop it,” he giggled – he fucking giggled – and Remus laughed, opening his mouth wider and
breathing again behind his ear. He tunnelled his hands underneath the duvet onto Sirius’ bare torso
and walked two fingers up there as fast as he could, like a critter. Sirius yelped and pushed him off,
and Remus flipped over onto the other side of the bed on his back. There was a moment of gentle
pain via contact on his back before Sirius was grabbing him by the waist and hauling him over,
and Remus braced his hands on the pillow either side of Sirius’ face, lying directly on top of him.

Sirius blew a piece of hair out of his face and grinned, and then trailed his hands up to the back of
Remus’ neck and pulled his head back down.

“Sorry,” he murmured against his lips, hands travelling gently down the back of his neck and to the
top of his back. Remus jerked slightly as Sirius accidentally traced over one of the grazes and he
pulled his hand back immediately. “Didn’t mean to scratch you.”
Remus kissed him gently and shook his head. “It’s fine,” he whispered, holding himself up on one
elbow and using the other hand to sift through Sirius’ hair. “I’ve dealt with worse. Trust me.”

Sirius smiled, and then his eyes trailed downwards. Remus was lying with favour to one side, so
his torso was swivelled in a position that revealed most of his skin. Astoria’s necklace was
dangling from where it was hanging around his neck. Sirius reached out and held the locket of it
between his forefinger and thumb.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“It’s Astoria’s,” Remus replied, looking down at the gold chain. “It’s matching with her sister. She
gave it to me to use as proof, should I ever run into her.”

Sirius smiled, gently.

“That’s nice,” he said, and then, “she trusts you.”

“She means a lot to me,” said Remus, smiling, cupping the locket with his palm gently.

Sirius, eyes flickering, bit his lip and trailed his hands down to Remus’ chest, dragging his
fingertips over a paper white scar.

“What was this one?” he murmured. Remus laughed.

“Man of many questions this morning?”

“Oh, just answer.”

He shifted so he was lying propped up by Sirius’ side, their legs still intertwined, and looked at it
himself.

“Mmm. Glass,” he said, trailing his own finger over it. “Demon blew a window open. Not very
exciting.”

Sirius hummed. He drew his hands up to the side of Remus’ neck and then down, his collarbone,
his shoulder. There was a rough bit of scar tissue on his shoulder that he would probably recognise
for the world.

“Vampire,” he said, and Remus nodded. He circled his finger around the scar. It was bigger than
usual – Remus knew he’d be curious, so he said;

“Fangs were still in my skin when I blew his head off,” and Sirius raised both of his eyebrows. “So
it’s a bit more grim than usual.”

His hand moved down his arm. The side of his upper arm, there was another. Normal.

“Vampire,” said Remus; Sirius nodded.

He twisted his arm a little so he could see himself, and brought his other hand up to point. It was
“Vampire,” at one just in the fold of where his arm bent, “Vampire who stole my knife,” over his
elbow, where there was a thin scar trailing directly up and through.

Sirius spent the next five minutes trailing Remus’ body like an art piece. He bit his lip, hand on his
arm, and asked;

“What’s this one?”

“Vampire, as always.”

Hand down the curve of his back, above his hip, sheet low and clinging.

“What’s this one?”

“Spooked a goblin.”

Hand around his waist, the side of his ribcage.

“What’s this one?”

“Ha. Dog bite.”

Remus ended up on his right side, holding his arm out; he lightly traced a set of bumpy, lengthy
scars up his forearm with his left hand. They were newer. Still sort of red. Sirius, who had propped
himself up on his elbow, was watching with animated interest.

“This,” Remus started, “was the coven that you killed. In Texas.”

The bandages that Sirius had seen. The catalyst to their ticking time bomb. Intermittent intensity
leaked through tired eyes in the dimly-lit bedroom, sapphire silk sheets, a world behind angry
glances and knives to throats, who did this to you?

“And this,” said Remus, finally, travelling back down and ending up at the bottom of his palm.
Where there were two slight rough patches, unnoticeable unless you pointed them out, “was you.”

Even just looking at the scar on his hand made Remus lose his breath a little at the memory. Sirius’
lips thinned and he took Remus’ outstretched hand with his free one. Held him gently by the wrist
and kissed his forearm, down to his hand, in which he positioned himself so reminiscently of where
he had been that night, weeks that felt like years ago, that Remus’ heart skipped a beat. It was
halfway with desire and halfway with panic. He hadn’t been able to think about that night for
weeks, the last moment they shared before Sirius was gone. He’d shoved it out of his head when he
was gone; but he was here now.

Remus took a deep breath and tuned himself into nothing but the sentient press of Sirius’ lips to his
hand, the fact he was in no danger, Sirius was okay, he was okay. The fact he’d let him do it again.
He’d let him do anything.

One last destination to go upon a road as treacherous as this.

Sirius leaned forward. Remus was expecting to be pressed into the bedspread but instead Sirius
grabbed him by the hips and pulled him up with ridiculous strength – Remus might’ve yelled, you
may not hold that against him – depositing him with some shuffling upright on his lap. There were
a lot of sensations with the cold air and the cold hands and the friction of skin on skin but it all
went away within an instant as Sirius pressed his lips to the tender scar on Remus’ neck, the
sensitive spot, whether it had been sensitive before or after it was his, Remus didn’t know, but he
gasped and dug his hands into Sirius’ hair. He’d leave a mark. On his neck and his waist. Remus
swallowed and tugged, slightly, in his hair, and Sirius breathed warm against his skin, comforting,
present, and words tumbled out of his mouth indelibly as Sirius caught his skin between his safe
front teeth.

“You can have it,” he whispered, and Sirius pulled back. His hands were cupped just on the curve
of his ass and he looked up at Remus, gentle.
“I don’t want to hurt you more,” Sirius said, flicking a bit of hair out of his face and pressing his
lips lightly to Remus’ jawline.

“I don’t mean now,” Remus breathed. “I mean forever. I’m yours. You can bite me whenever you
so please. Call it… blanket consent.”

Remus felt Sirius’ lips tug up into a stupid smile against his skin. It was a marvellous sensation.

“I don’t think that’s how consent works, my love,” he murmured, trailing down to the tender
underbelly of his neck. It rocked as Remus laughed.

“You get the principle. Oh– shut up and let me be sentimental.”

Sirius chuckled and continued to kiss him, and Remus breathed, content, and grappled with
memories from last night. Tussled with them in the day’s expose. He pulled back, and Remus
looked down to look at him, under a thumb, beneath him and preening like he’d burn the throne
and just stay there forever.

“I love you,” said Sirius.

“I know,” said Remus, but he couldn’t stop himself from smiling.

“There it is,” Sirius breathed, kissing the corner of his mouth. Remus scrunched the hair up at the
back of his head and shook himself away from the contact.

“There what is?”

“The smile.”

“What smile?”

“The smile,” Sirius said, his grin widening. “When I tell you I love you. It’s a very specific smile.
If you were a map, that’s where X marks the spot. That smile. It’s treasure.”

“You–” Remus almost choked, sort of flustered, sort of haughty. “I don’t have a smile.”

“You do. I love you.”

He tried to push it away. He really did.

“See, there, God, you melt like an ice cream, Lupin.”

“Stop,” Remus laughed, kissing him once more, cupping his jaw with two hands. “You said it and
then was gone for two months. Let me have this.”

“I am letting you have it. It’s beneficial. You like to hear these things, and I reap the reward. I love
you, by the way.”

Remus frowned. “No, but you don’t have to do it just for me. If it’s difficult for you. we don’t have
to be the people who speak it every second, I’m fine with that–”

“No, it’s not just for you,” said Sirius, shaking his head. “That’s– Christ, no, sorry, that’s not what
I mean at all. I say it an eighth of how I feel it. I say it because it’s prewritten in my mouth. It’s not
difficult, it’s never been difficult.”

Remus narrowed his eyes, threading his hands through Sirius’ hair.
“You once said that balancing me was the most difficult thing you’ve ever had to do in eight
hundred years,” he said, pointedly. Sirius laughed.

“Balancing you, you buffoon,” he murmured, eyes flickering over Remus’ face like something
exquisite. “That still is. Balancing you and everything else I have to do. Do you know how difficult
it is to stop myself from sweeping you up and taking you away every day? Europe? Spain, or
something, far, far away from Tom Riddle,” he sighed and leaned forward, into Remus’ chest.
“That’s what’s difficult. But loving you? It’s rather simple, actually.”

Remus, letting himself smile over Sirius’ shoulder, felt it falter and pressed a firm kiss to his head
instead.

“One day,” he whispered. “We’ll leave. We just have to get everything out of the way first.”

“What’s everything? Why can’t we just stay here forever?”

“Well. First of all, because I need a shower,” Remus murmured. Sirius chuckled against him.

“That your itinerary for the day?”

“I need to go to Poppy for these scratches,” continued Remus. “And then I need– to talk to Moody,
and then Draco. And we need to try and get more out of Snape before Riddle makes his next move.
We need to be ahead of the game, and Snape knows where the locket is, he has to, so if we go back
in today we can–”

“One thing at a time,” Sirius murmured, squeezing his hips. “Shower first.”

Remus nodded. “Shower first.”

He took a breath and then leaned forward and gave Sirius a hard, but chaste kiss, before clambering
awkwardly off him and onto the floor, stretching and wincing at the feeble stinging pain on his
back. To prevent damage, as he had been doing, he unclasped Astoria’s necklace, placed it gently
on the side table. Swivelled his torso to crack his back and then moved to the bathroom door.
Opened it and turned back.

Sirius was watching him from the bed. Remus quirked an eyebrow.

“Are you coming?” he asked, and Sirius grinned.

***

The day passed uneventfully. Draco did not speak to him, but, come sunset when he retreated from
wherever he hid all day, Remus climbed the tree anyway.

There were two empty plastic bottles littered at the base of the tree, which Remus found relief in.
He brought up another apple, some crisps, some chocolate, and two leftover croissants from
breakfast in a bag and placed it tentatively on the little natural ledge in the trunk.

“I don’t know what Purebloods eat,” he said, laughing breathily, as the wind tugged at the leaves
around them. “But I hope Doritos and Peanut M&M’s are sufficient. Unfortunately, we don’t have
servants to wash the Dorito dust off of your fingers one by one, so you’re going to have to use your
mouth. Abhorrent, I know.” He paused, and turned to look at him, squinting. “...You’re not allergic
to peanuts, are you?”

Draco did not respond, but Remus sat and chatted to—at—him anyway. Filled him in on some of
the workings of the place – perhaps not the finer print, just in case he did eventually run off back to
his society – but enough to make him feel included. Enough to try and build trust. And he wasn’t
allergic to peanuts, if the wrapper at the base of the tree when he went to check in that evening was
anything to go off. (They really should get him a bin, or something.)

Afterwards, Remus went to talk to Moody.

He’d found out, via Benjy over lunch, that he was still up in a room that they had designated to be a
private Hospital ward for him, tended to by Poppy and refusing to speak to any vampires unless it
was direly needed. His leg had been scorched, burnt horribly. The fire was magically replenishing
and thus required a magical solution, but Benjy let slip that Poppy had let slip that it was the worst
she’d seen in a long time, and so when Remus entered the room, he had prepared himself.

Still. He looked bad.

“Sayin’ they’re gonna take the other one,” muttered Moody, gruffly; the first thing upon
registering Remus’ presence. His face was pale, sweat sheening against his hairline. The bags
under his good eye was purple and looked like a bruise. At the other side, his mad-eye had been
taken off him and replaced by a simple eyepatch. Remus took a shallow breath in.

“Hi, Professor,” he said, reverting back to ten years ago in a moment. “How are you?”

“How do I look, fool?” he shot back, all of the fire and none of the strength to fill it out. His scowl
at Remus was still so quintessentially Moody that he had to suppress a smile. “Sayin’ they’re gonna
take the other one,” he repeated, gesturing to his leg.

“It’s that bad?”

“Getting there,” he said. His voice, throaty and coarse, had a twinge of resignation to it. He closed
his eye, and then opened it again. Looked directly at Remus. His glare was just as terrifying with
only the one. “Well? Don’t just sit there, boy; what do you want?”

“I–” Remus started, having to suppress a smile yet again, for he’d missed this, in a strange, familiar
way, “I need information.”

“I’m made of information. Go on.”

“Erm,” Remus started. He had prepared for this; written a list and everything; but it seemed as
though everything had slipped out of his mind the moment he’d walked through the door. “Well. I
wanted to ask you about Dumbledore.”

“Dumbledore,” repeated Moody.

“Did you see him much, before the bureau fell?”

Moody took a moment, and then shrugged. “Not really. He kept to himself, the last few months.
‘Course, the distance does that to people. He was busy with his organisations this side of the
Atlantic. Didn’t hear one peep for weeks until he put you on the radar, beginning of March. Started
campaigning far and wide over both bureaus to have you found and killed on-sight. Undesirable
Number One, he called you. Four time murderer of the Prewett twins, Fenwick and Pettigrew.
‘Course, now I know that ain’t true.”

Remus, upon being reminded of this, cast his mind back. He bit the inside of his lip and squinted,
rubbing his hands over his face, thinking about this.
“Did the hunters pull through with it?” Remus asked, confused. “Because I didn’t hear a sound
until four days ago, when I found you guys. Radio silence.”

“Well,” said Moody, “I’m sure some of ‘em did, but it was only about ten, eleven days later that he
amber alerted the entire organisation to pull out a nationwide search for the Malfoy kid. Suppose
that hunting a vampire seemed more desirable to hunting a human that most of them knew and
respected. And I know there was a lotta scepticism about you. ‘Specially on our side. Minerva
never believed it for a second.”

Remus swallowed, thickly, feeling some sort of nostalgic gratitude tied to this information.

“And when they debriefed you on that mission,” said Remus, trying to make sense of it all,
“Dumbledore had information on Regulus Black. Right? Fred knew who he was, so he must have.”

“Yes.”

“And, putting aside the fact that there’s no way he could’ve even known about Regulus, it was the
wrong information,” said Remus. “He’s been on our side for– years. And never mind the Malfoy
kid. I ‘killed’,” he put this in very aggressive quotation marks, “Prewett and Fenwick at HI2 at the
end of February. Draco went missing March 8th, that’s eight days. So what you’re telling me is,
effectively, that Dumbledore knew and put out a search for the kid three days after the Battle in
which he went missing, despite not having any sort of overt presence within said battle.”

Moody said nothing in response to this.

“So the bastard is loyal to him,” Remus breathed, more to himself. “He is a double agent.”

“Who?”

“Severus Snape,” said Remus. “Ring a bell?”

Moody shook his head.

“Exactly. God, of course he’d exclude him.”

Remus got up, to pace. Moody’s eye followed him. “So, if we know Dumbledore took the locket,”
he muttered, more to himself than anything, “Snape is close enough to the action that he’d know
about the Horcruxes; he knew about the ring; he’d know what it was. He knows Regulus. But what
does Dumbledore want it for?”

His thoughts were disjointed. He couldn’t figure it out. Was he destroying them, too? Was that
where the rot came from, like Pandora? Or was it something else? Something more… sinister.
Coarse skin around his arms and chaos in his eyes, desperation.

There was the difference. They’re looking for Tom Riddle. Dumbledore needs him. But why?

He turned back to Moody.

“Do you have any idea who bombed the bureau?” he asked. Moody sighed.

“Been asked about a hundred times,” he grunted, “still don’t know. No idea how the bombs got in
there. Security sweeps every day, you know that, Lupin. Didn’t find anything on the Sunday night.
Flames went up on the Monday morning.”

“So it was an inside job,” said Remus, in one breath, as less of a question and more of a statement.
“Look, sir, I’m gonna need you to try and write down everyone you know that came and went in
the two weeks prior to the explosion, alright–”

Whilst he turned, looking round the room for a pen, Moody cleared his throat.

“Boy,” he said, sharply. Remus turned to him. He jerked his head towards the bag sitting on his
bedside table.

Remus walked over to it, rummaged his hand in amongst all of the loose items, and came out with a
crumpled piece of paper. He unfolded it delicately, as if it would disintegrate should he be vicious
with it, and there in bleeding, horrifically messy handwriting – many scribblings out, arrows and
question marks and names – was exactly what he had just asked for. Every single visitor, from
memory at least, repairmen and government officials and hunters checking in and hunters checking
out. Moody had been working it all along.

“Okay,” he breathed, nodding. He folded it back up and put it gently in his pocket. “Okay.
Brilliant. Thank you, sir. I’ll get back to you on this. As soon as we figure out what the hell’s going
on, I’ll come back to you.”

When he looked up, Moody was watching him. Sickly in his bed, Remus might’ve been able to
mistake his look for something of fondness. Anywhere else it may have been a blank stare. Though
even that was something.

Remus blinked. “What?”

“Ah,” said Moody, clearing his throat. “You remind me of someone I used to know, sometimes.”

Remus didn’t really know what to say to that, so he didn’t.

***

It started with a crack. And then there was a scream.

Remus was sitting on the porch with Jul. He had clocked Draco in one of the disused studies
upstairs, evidently where he had been hiding until the sun would set, and had spent an hour or so
trying to talk to him. Of course, this resulted in simply talking at him, sitting cross legged next to
each other on the floor. He’d gathered his routine, now. He would hide himself away in one of the
dispopulated rooms until it was nightfall and the vampires would crawl (namely Astoria, who had
made it her mission to befriend him), and then he would climb up his tree to avoid her, and yet
survive on the sustenance of the water bottles that she provided for him.

Remus hadn’t told her to stop. There’d be no point, because she wouldn’t. She cares too much.
About any and every being. Regardless, Draco did not give back that sentiment, but Remus
recognised that he would be a piece of work to gain the trust of and simply considered the fact that
the kid hadn’t swiped at him today’s victory.

He had ended up retreating to a seat under the wraparound porch. Jul had come out wordlessly, lit
up a fag with a snap of their fingers and then passed him one, lit up his too. It was one of those days
where you’re waiting, waiting for something, tasks piled up until you’re drowning in them but not
fulfilling any, and it was this melancholic bubble that burst around them when Remus heard a
crack. And then a scream.

He locked eyes with Jul, and they got up, instantly.

Upon running around the side of the house Remus was met with a small crowd. He knew there
were at least thirty, maybe more people roaming the grounds at any given moment; and a few of
the vampires had been stationed at varying places in NYC with access back to this place granted
via apparition points for correspondence, so realistically, it could be way more. But this was about
ten, twelve people – most had rushed from the surrounding areas, hearing the commotion. Remus
could see Parvati and Lavender, worried, arm in arm across the lawn. They had come in from the
clearing to the right.

The door opened and it was Marlene, Sirius on her tail, and then Regulus, who hung back on the
porch. Remus pushed past a witch or two, and his mouth fell open.

The first thing he saw was the blood coating Alice Longbottom’s short hair. It was drying, bright
red and sticky down the side of her temple and over her forehead. She had an arm around her limp
husband and she was crying salty tears as his head lolled about, and then he moved his gaze and
Caradoc Dearborn had a gash across his left cheek and an ankle twisted the entire wrong way, and
the figure of Gideon Prewett fell to the ground as his knees gave out underneath him. Alice let
Frank down, and Remus ran.

Marlene and Sirius got there first.

“What happened?!” asked Marlene, putting both of her palms on Frank Longbottom’s face and
pulling it upwards. He was limp, Remus had expected him to be unconscious, but to his surprise his
eyes were open. They were open but glossed over, sort of shadowed grey, matching the hallowed
out nature of his face, tan skin rough with injuries and what looked like fatigue and detrimental
sickness. He opened his mouth and closed it, like a fish. He blinked and it was slow. “Frankie.
Hey.”

“I don’t know,” Alice breathed. Her hands were shaking; by this point Caradoc had lowered
Gideon and Remus, trying to attune himself to both conversations, had kneeled down and was
gripping Gid’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, forcibly shaking his head. And just like
Frank, he was present, but unseeing, unnoticing.

Alice was hyperventilating, slightly. “I don’t know, I don’t–”

“Al,” said Sirius, firmly, as Marlene let Frank down gently and began ushering the claustrophobic
crowd inside. Regulus drifted forwards and lurked on the outskirts, watching, reviewing.

Alice took a breath, swallowed, trying to calm herself, as Sirius lowered himself to her eye level.

“We were attacked,” she said, slowly, as Caradoc collapsed to his knees, taking a deep breath.
Remus put a hand on the shoulder in a way that he hoped was comforting and looked up to listen.
“I don’t know what they were. It– it’s foggy, the city, and we were down a backroad and then it
suddenly got dark, like pitch black, and something was– it felt like knives. White hot holy water
knives, noncorporeal, held in the darkness around us, and there were humans about– most of them
collapsed. One hit his head. There was—was blood, and sirens and then there were vampires, about
six of them, out of nowhere–”

“Riddle’s?” Sirius asked.

Caradoc looked up and nodded. The gash on his cheek was still bleeding, and he was holding his
arm at an awkward angle that it definitely shouldn’t be sitting at.

“Who else's?” he muttered in a Swedish accent, breathing heavily, his hair bright blond and
splattered with blood. “The darkness, it was a placeholder, until they could come and kick us out of
the city. I don’t know how they found us, but they did. And it’s clear they don’t care about
collateral. Lost at least four humans in their path, one sucked dry from the darkness–”

“By darkness,” said Regulus, looking warily at Frank, “what do you mean? Describe it to me.”

Sirius inhaled sharply. He turned to look at his brother, slowly, but Regulus was staring very
stoically at Caradoc.

“Thick fog,” he said, in his gritty deep voice, “so much that you can choke on it, except it burns,
the worst pain you have ever felt when you inhale.”

“It makes you want to die,” Alice murmured. Her face was tear stained but resolutely, terrifyingly
calm, now, and every breath looked painful. “All you can think about is death. There is not a single
thing on this earth that seems even remotely worth living for anymore. It sucks you dry.”

There was a moment, a heavy moment, in which the weight of the world strained holding these
words, and then Regulus, finally, turned to Sirius.

“What?” asked Marlene, breaths coming quick, panic as she held tightly onto a delirious Frank.
“What is it?”

“Sicarius noctis,” Regulus said, calmly. Sirius’ eyes closed. He took a deep breath. “That’s what
we used to call them.”

“Fuck,” Sirius groaned, dropping his head in his hands and rubbing at his eyes. “Oh, he’s really
done it now.”

“Done what?” snapped Marlene.

“Where’s Mary?” asked Regulus.

“Gideon?” called a panicked voice from the door. Remus looked up to see Fabian, shadowed by
Benjy, shadowed by Molly. Pandora was at the door frame, holding it, as Fabian came sprinting
out.

“Oh, God,” Remus breathed, shuffling out of the way.

“Gideon,” Fabian breathed, just as he got there, skinning his knees on the dry mud beneath them.
Alice was crying again. Fabian cupped the sides of his face, tapped his cheek a few times. “Gid?
Wh– can you hear me? Gideon? What’s wrong with him?” He looked up, up to Remus. “Remus,
what’s wrong with him?”

“I don’t kn–”

“Mary,” Regulus said, again, panicked, “Mary– no, Lily, Lily, get them–”

“That won’t do anything if there’s this many–” said Sirius.

“Do you want to do nothing?!”

“What the fuck is wrong with him?” Fabian shouted, as Benjy appeared, helping Caradoc up and
moving him a few paces over to look at his arm. Alice was crying into Frank who was pressed
against Marlene’s chest, holding them both up, and Sirius looked at Fabian, then at Remus.

“Luctus solis,” he said, as clearly as he could muster, “is what we called it. Mourning of the sun.”

“That–” Fabian began, panic streaking his face bright red, “what–”
“What the hell are these things?” Remus breathed, looking at Sirius, and then Regulus. The latter
took a deep breath.

“In the fourteenth century a dark witch attempted to build on the Cruciatus curse,” said Regulus, by
way of explanation. He dug his hands into his hair, mussed it up, scrunched his face in agitation.
Dropped them. “Make it something material, she used– Theoretical– God, theoretical magical
projection techniques, enhancement potions, blood rituals, necromancy, divinative smears. We
were living in Greece. This happened somewhere in Albania. The story goes that she hid herself
away in a hut and gave herself over to the darkness until it took her life source and made itself
corporeal out of the shadows on the wall. Her creations are not what she intended but she
succeeded. The Sicari are the torture curse liquified. They are darkness and darkness alone and
they suck out every bit of ‘light’ inside of you, happiness and soul, and if they torture you long
enough… it drives you mad.”

He took a deep breath.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Their days are dark now.”

“No,” Alice moaned, gripping onto Frank’s shirt. “No.”

“Oh, God,” Sirius breathed, turning back to them, looking genuinely upset. Fabian, white as a
sheet, gripped onto his brother's cheeks and then let out a low sob. Remus thinned his lips, feeling
tears threaten his eyes.

He looked over to the front of the house. There were not many people present, now, just a few
familiar solemn faces. The few figured gathering were swiftly pushed aside by none other than
Pandora, who hopped down the stairs, the sun gleaming on her tan skin. Lily and Mary were
directly behind her.

“They’re repelled by fire?” asked Remus, looking at Sirius. He nodded.

“They’re repelled by Fiendfyre,” he said, gravely. Remus blinked.

“But we don’t have any of that.”

Sirius looked at him. And then, the benefactor herself, he looked at Lily.

Mary reached Regulus and he turned, inviting himself into what Remus presumed was explanatory
context for the two girls, while Pandora floated around trying to heal what she could, heal the
superficial. Remus stepped back as Marlene took gentle care of keeping the shell of Frank upright
as Alice clung onto him. Regulus turned and the girls took a step or two forward, filled in. Lily’s
face crumpled with empathy.

“Al,” she whispered, kneeling down. She reached out to tuck Alice’s bloody hair around her ear.
“Al, I’m so sorry.”

Alice sniffed and nodded. Clinging onto Frank. It was silent for a moment. Regulus turned.

“No, Lily, don’t–”

And then Frank’s face darkened with vampiric lust and he jerked forward, straight out of Marlene
and Alice’s grasps, and lunged for Lily like a rabid dog.

About five things happened and five people moved all at once and it was all and then nothing, as
Lily screamed; a jolt of fire came bursting from her, throwing Frank back a few feet and catching
onto the lapels of his clothes. Regulus’ reflexes seemed to outshine them all and he moved, pulling
her back with two firm hands on her wrists; she fell into his chest, stumbling them backwards out
of shock, mouth wide open.

“Are you okay?” he asked, as she looked up at him, dazed.

About four people asked the same thing, including Sirius, who had been standing directly next to
her and had been burnt a little bit too. Remus’ gaze flickered from Lily, panic searing in his chest
still and to Frank, who was back to being a clean slate after whatever intrinsic outburst had
oversought him. It was almost terrifying.

“Yeah,” she answered, nodding, pulling away from Regulus and letting a suddenly frantic Mary pat
her down a bit to make sure he didn’t get her, “no, I’m fine, just shook up.”

“Why did he do that?” Remus asked, breaths heavy.

“He’s been stripped of everything that made him, him,” Regulus explained, looking solemn, an
ecstatically old look on his physically young, baby-faced features. “Now, all he is is a vampire. All
he is is… instinct."

Lily let out a shaky breath and Marlene, who had made sure that Frank was stable again and then
retreated, wrapped a protective arm around her.

“He’s dangerous,” she said, gasping slightly. “That’s the aim. They’re not trying to kill us, they’re
trying to get us to fucking kill each other.”

“That and corner us,” Sirius muttered, looking into space. “If they take over the entire city, we
can’t leave. Riddle’s vampires will kill our humans and witches, and the dementors will run our
vampires mad. He’s telling us to surrender or rot. He’s giving us a choice.”

There was a moment of tense, tense silence, and then,

“Okay, we’re gonna have an emergency meeting,” Marlene said. “Get everyone inside the house,
no exceptions. I know the wards are up and they haven’t reached us yet but we’re taking all
precautions. You two,” at Regulus and Sirius, “go talk to our little guest upstairs. Lily, Mary, Dora,
round everyone up and in the house and then start on comms to people stationed in the city. I'm
going to help Alice take the two of them inside since they won’t hurt me. Remus,” her gaze
flickered to him, and she took a breath in, “talk to the kid. He might know something.”

He nodded. Everyone snapped into action, except Sirius, who lingered for a moment. When
Marlene knelt down to comfort a still-weeping Fabian and now Molly, murmured words shared in
their little bubble; Remus hopped into Sirius’.

He was frowning, and flexing his hands in front of him.

“You alright?” asked Remus, looking down at Sirius’ hands and then back. It took him a moment
to blink back into existence.

He inhaled sharply, and nodded.

“I’m alright,” he said, firmly, with a soft smile. Remus wasn’t sure how much he believed him.

***

“I got you this,” was the first thing Remus said, half an hour later, creaking the door to the study
open. He was holding out a bottle of blood. It was simply a plastic water bottle that he had filled up
with the first blood bag he could find in the fridge.

Draco was sitting on an armchair beside the window that looked out on the lake, scowling at him.
His knees were pulled up to his chest and his jaw was tight. Remus shut the door quickly behind
him, moving to place the bottle on the table beside him, and settled himself back into the seat
opposite him that he had been sitting on not an hour ago. Draco eyed it.

“Why are you back?” he asked.

“Don’t act like you didn’t hear every word of what just happened,” Remus said, huffing. Draco
looked away.

They had taken Gideon and Frank and locked them in a spare room upstairs until they could figure
out what to do with them. Mary had begun tapping into the magical radios, employing a clueless
Lily to help, Pandora had taken the witches to reassess the wards. And Sirius and Regulus were
talking to Snape. God knows if that was going well. Remus felt like any minute Severus Snape’s
flailing body would soar past the window beside them.

Draco pursed his lips and looked back out into the lake.

“You ever heard of them?” asked Remus. “Sic– what were they called? Sicaruse? No, that's a city.”

“That’s Syracuse,” said Draco, coolly. Remus looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

“No,” he said, shaking his head, “no, I’m pretty sure it’s Sicaruse. You’re wrong.”

“It’s Syracuse,” he said, loosening his stoicness for about a moment and focusing on a small thread
on his clothing, tugging at it with agitated fingers. “You’re wrong.”

“I’m not wrong. I’m older than you.”

He turned to look at him, aghast with indignation.

“I’m stronger than you,” he replied, mockingly. The mimicking scrunch of his nose looked so
much like his father’s Remus was almost taken aback.

Remus shrugged.

“Prove it.”

Draco stared blankly at him. “Prove it?”

“Prove it!” Remus laughed. “The only two times we have ever been in battle together I saved you,
remember that, shithead?”

“I could rip you apart,” said Draco through his teeth, eyes narrowing.

“Oh, I wholeheartedly believe that,” Remus replied, nodding once. Draco’s brows furrowed a little
bit. He sniffed.

Remus gave it a moment.

“It’s still Sicaruse, though,” he muttered, and Draco turned to him and dropped his knees from his
chest instantly, slamming them on the floor. The room shuddered.
“It’s Syracuse!” he near-yelled, eyes wide and irritated; Remus couldn’t help it. He burst out
laughing.

He covered his mouth to try and stifle his laughter, afraid the kid would truly pull through on his
insistence, but nothing came of it. Draco simply sat beside him, calming, shuffling up to sit with
proper posture on the chair. He managed to calm his laughter and turned to him, and the boy was
looking stoically down at his lap.

Ah, Remus was softening him. A few days ago he would’ve gotten eaten for that. He was
softening him alright.

Remus inhaled deeply through his nose and out through his mouth, feeling warm at this prospect
but without want to press it. His smile dissipated and the conversation ran dry but not cold. It was
silent for a minute or two. Remus had learned to give him time. He had all of it, now.

“The Demented,” said Draco, after a moment of quiet. It was so small that, had anything
extraneous been too loud, Remus might have missed it.

“Sorry?”

“You’re here for information, right?” he drawled, still refusing to meet his eye. The loose twine
had unravelled even more. There were thread of fabric entangled in his fingers.

Remus shrugged. “I’m here for the same reason I was here earlier. And the same reason I was here
yesterday.”

Draco stopped picking, and Remus could see him frowning.

“Information wouldn’t hurt, though, if you’ve got any,” he continued, leaning back. He thought
perhaps he might have sensed an immediately repressed little smile, but thought best not to dwell
on it.

Another moment, or two.

“The Demented,” he said, more purposeful, “that’s what we called them.”

“The Sicar––?”

“No,” he interjected, to Remus’ relief, because he did not want to try and remember that name
again, “their victims.”

Remus blinked and let this settle.

“So you’re familiar with them, then?” he asked, slowly. Draco shook his head.

“Not intimately, no,” he said, mouth curling around the vowel, posh dialect vibrating around him.
“They’re more of a… bedtime story. Something to scare children with.”

“Oh. Like the Bogeyman.”

Draco turned and looked at him, deadpan. “I don’t know what that is.”

“Right,” Remus whispered, nodding. “Doesn’t matter. Irrelevant. What were– what were the
stories?”

Draco took a long breath in, through his teeth. “Stories of men who had the light inside them
stubbed out. So they’re nothing but… darkness and evil. That’s all that’s left of them, when the
Dementors are done with them.”

Remus pursed his lips. “Dementors?”

“Vague translations,” said Draco. “My––” he cut himself off, as if the word could not formulate.
“She called them that.”

Remus nodded, feeling like this was a very, very fragile thing. Not trusting himself to say anything
to break it. Draco took a moment, back to picking at the thread on the hem of his top with raw,
marble fingertips.

“He killed their previous master,” Draco whispered. Remus leaned forward.

“Riddle?”

“Yes,” he said, hushed, as if he was in imminent danger. “There were cohorts of them in the
Middle East. He went and began to seize them when I was… well, young. And one day my mother
just stopped telling me the stories. She wasn’t allowed anymore. It was too… close.”

Remus took a deep breath in, and nodded. His brain began to whirr at the possible outcomes. At the
levels of violent death he was setting himself up for.

Draco pulled too hard at the thread, and a whole chunk of it came out, stilling his hands instantly.
He looked down, at the fine string layering over his two palms. Remus sighed.

“Come here–” he said, reaching over. Draco flinched, and he paused.

Leaning over, they were closer. Remus stayed entirely still, as Draco looked him once over,
hesitantly. Their trust was in his hands.

“Can I get the thread for you, Draco?” Remus asked, gently. “Or would you like to do it yourself?”

Draco said nothing.

“You’re gonna ruin that top,” he said, raising his eyebrows, “and I don’t think Astoria has many
clothes that’ll fit you.”

He hesitated, still, and Remus waited. He waited, completely still. There if he wanted, gone if he
didn’t. And then Draco exhaled, looked down at the string in his hands, and nodded. shuffling
forward a bit.

Remus reached out and snapped the thread, pulling the twine out of his hands and balling it up.

“I’ll put this in the bin on the way downstairs,” he said, looking at him and smiling. Draco nodded.
He leant back, silently.

Remus shoved it in his pocket, and then turned back.

“And thank you for telling me this,” he said, genuinely. Draco didn’t make eye contact, but he
thinned his lips and nodded again. It was genuine.

Remus picked up the bottle, and placed it a little bit closer on the table to the kid. As a sort of peace
offering, he supposed. He didn’t expect anything to come of it, and was gearing up to leave when
Draco extended a nimble finger and wrapped his hand around it, pulling it towards him.
He twisted the cap off and smelled it, once, and then brought it to his lips. He took a long, long
gulp, and then grimaced, as if it was rancid.

Remus raised an eyebrow. “What, wrong blood type?”

“Next time, perhaps leave the peace offerings to the girl,” said Draco, primly, putting the bottle
down and screwing the lid back on. “She evidently has better tastes than you do.”

“Screw you,” Remus laughed, shaking his head in disbelief.

He laughed, out of somewhat shock, and pushed himself up to his feet. He dusted his hands off,
and looked down. Draco was back at looking out of the window, but his face was a little more
pinched than usual.

Remus turned and began to walk away. The kid didn’t tend to do goodbyes.

He was almost at the door frame when there was a whoosh to his left, and Draco appeared directly
in front of him, about five inches shorter and eyes wide, concerned.

“You’re going to fight them,” he said, plainly.

Remus blinked, mouth still open in the shock of the kid just appearing in front of him.

“I am so sick of vampires,” he said, on instinct, and Draco huffed in annoyance. “Don’t do that–”

“You’re going to fight them,” he repeated. “You’re going to challenge the Dementors. Aren’t you?”

Remus stared at him, for a long, long moment, and then closed his mouth. Resigned himself to his
fate.

“Yes,” he said, nodding once. “Probably. It’s what I’m here for.”

“You’ll never survive,” hissed Draco. Almost concerned. He shook his head. “There’s no potential
opposition. You either run from the Dementors or you become just as dark as one.”

“I kill things for a living,” said Remus, blithely, “I’m very intimately acquainted with my own
darkness, thank you very much.”

He turned to leave, but Draco grabbed him by the arm.

“It’s not the same,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s nowhere near the same.”

Remus looked at him, and his face softened. There was a moment in which Draco seemed to realise
the absurdity of what he was doing. He dropped Remus’ arm like it was a hot coal and unfocused
his eyes.

“I know it isn’t,” Remus said, quieter. “But lucky for you, for every inch of darkness they have, we
have replenishing light.”

Draco took a step back. It took him a moment to register this comment, but when he did, his face
relaxed.

“Tom Riddle doesn’t have a Phoenix,” he murmured.

“No,” said Remus. Taking a deep breath and puffing out his chest. “No, he does not.”
***

Lily was not exactly happy with this development.

“I’ve been a phoenix for two months!” was being hurtled through the dining room by her, agitated
and overbearing, about two hours later.

The emergency meeting had come and gone. It was really just Marlene debriefing as many people
as she could, telling them to stay the hell out of the city until they knew what they were dealing
with; she was currently on a run around the vicinity, to the vampires not staying on the grounds
that they could not contact. Bar Regulus, who was still upstairs with Snape, the majority of the
inner circle were sitting around the table.

And Lily had begun complaining.

She turned to Remus, who had been sitting awkwardly at the table watching her pace for the past
ten minutes. He gave her a sheepish grimace.

“Five hundred year old shadows,” she seethed. “Shadows. I can barely even touch fucking James
without burning him and now I have to…to protect the entire city from shadows?!”

“You’re not giving yourself enough credit, Lils,” said Dorcas, from where she was sipping on
something vaguely alcoholic. Remus quite craved one of those, actually. “You’re better than you
think.”

She whined, helplessly. “But they’re shadows!”

“Dementors,” said Mary. Remus had mentioned this terminology after his chat with Draco; it had
been what the Bulgarian witches had also called them, during Mary’s brief stint undercover. It
seemed to be much easier than saying… whatever the hell the Latin word was. Sirius had said it
five minutes ago and Remus had already forgotten.

Lily slumped on her chair. Remus felt that, quite honestly, she had the right to be a little bit bitter.
Mary summoned a flame in her hand and held it out. Upon seeing this, Lily, reluctantly,
outstretched her own palm, and the flame floated across the two seats between them. Lily
flourished her fingers gently and the fire sort of absorbed into her skin, sending a flood of gentle
light down her fingers. It disappeared under her sleeve and she exhaled a little bit of smoke.

Sirius leant forward and rested his chin in his hands.

“That’s still so fucking cool,” he murmured, almost as if he didn’t realise he was speaking aloud.
He had a tendency to do that, though Remus knew that everyone was thinking it.

“You,” Dorcas said, snapping her fingers in Sirius’ general direction. “Did Snape say anything?”

Sirius sighed. He had already gone over this when Andromeda asked.

And Pandora (currently holed away in the corner writing something frantically on a scroll). And
James (currently in the kitchen. Lily had asked for a sandwich.)

“No,” he said, again. The light was dim outside. It was bordering on sundown. “Nothing. Not a
single word.”

“Not even a hint?”

“No,” he said, again, firmly. “He’s not going to give us anything. I don’t know why he’s still
alive.”

“The locket,” Remus murmured. Of course, it was a rhetorical question. Everybody knew why he
was still alive, because his link to the locket that had been lost in the cave was the only step
forward that they had, unless Riddle decided to show himself and his diamond fucking soul-cave.
He cleared his throat. “Is that done being tested on, by the way? I still don’t even know what it
looks like.”

The question was directed to Pandora; it took her a moment to actually register what he’d said. She
had a pen in her mouth that she spat out.

“Not yet, sorry,” she said, turning back to her page. “But it’s not really special. Kinda small, round,
green gem accent, latch to open.”

Remus hummed. He began to sift through things in his head.

“What do we know, then,” he muttered, more to himself than anything. List it, Remus. Start from
the beginning. “Regulus decoded the location of one of Riddle’s Horcruxes through the diary. But
it was a replacement. The locket was a fake.”

“Entirely fake, yes,” confirmed Dorcas.

“Someone took it,” he continued, “because someone is hunting them down, as well, and we’re
presuming due to a truckload of incriminating evidence that that someone is, in fact, Dumbledore,
because his hand was rotting the same way that Pandora’s was, and Snape knew that. Now, does
that mean Dumbledore’s destroyed his, too?”

Pandora hummed. “Not necessarily. Mine was just the repercussions from the burst of magic that
exuded when I destroyed it. That kind of cursed magic keeps to itself unless provoked. Though it
harms easily, it’s not created with intent to destroy, it’s created, over everything, to be resistant,
which is why it lashed back at me when I threatened it. But you said it was only his hand?” Remus
nodded. “That level of magic would destroy way more, if he’d destroyed it.” She paused, spinning
her pen around her finger. It was incredibly silent. “I mean,” she said, exasperatedly, “I’d have to
do so much testing to prove this, but it’s plausible that prolonged exposure could have the exact
same effects. But by prolonged, like, ten plus years.”

“That’s what Regulus said,” said Remus. “Well, he said you can’t really create living Horcruxes
that last more than, like, ten years. It eventually eats you from the inside. Would that be the same
for exposure?”

“Well, do the times match up?”

“We don’t have a timeframe on when the real locket was replaced by the fake one,” Sirius pointed
out. Remus looked at him, and he shrugged. “Could be.”

“Okay,” said Remus, “well, if he hasn’t destroyed it – and I don't know why he wouldn’t, if the
exposure was killing him, but I digress – is the connection to our locket strong enough to do a
location spell? Surely a fake replica has to come directly from somewhere real.”

“Tried that,” Pandora said. “Doesn’t work. Nature of the artefact blocks the spell.”

“Of course,” Remus muttered, tapping his fingers against the table. It was quiet for a moment. He
couldn’t tell if the quiet was glum rumination on the day’s developments or if anyone else’s brain
was whirring like his was. It felt like a dead end. Remus was quiet for a long moment.
And then he had an idea.

“Have you done a location spell on Dumbledore?”

“First thing Regulus made me do,” said Mary, almost immediately, spinning a ring on the table.
“Doesn’t work.”

“He have any location blockers up?”

“None that I could sense,” said Mary, “but don’t perk up. He’s surrounded by the most competent
of them all. He might have had a witch try some new technique that I don’t know the coding to to
unpick.”

“Okay but,” said Remus, perking up anyway, “if the locket is inherently a location blocker, and it’s
in his possession it’d block the magic in the same way. Right?”

“Right.”

“But then why…”

He trailed off, into silence. It felt like a held breath.

“Why what?” asked Lily, breaking the silence. Remus breathed sharply through his teeth.

“What I can’t figure out is why Dumbledore would send Snape to fetch Draco in the first place,” he
said, running two hands through his hair. Splaying them flat against the table. “Why would he care
about the kid?”

He locked eyes with Dorcas. Her chin contorted as she bit the inside of her lip, and rested her head
into her hands with a heavy exhale.

“I don’t know,” she breathed.

“Why would he want Draco,” Remus repeated slowly. “For leverage?”

“Could be,” said Mary. “To lure Riddle to him. You said he was looking for him, right?”

“But after going to the trouble to steal a part of his soul, why would he lure him right back to it?”

Mary shrugged.

“Personal vendetta?” Lily piped up. “Against Riddle. Like us.”

“Maybe,” Remus said. “That’s plausible. Or maybe–”

“–information,” Dorcas interjected; it had been what he was going to say. “About the Horcrux. If
it’s killing him. Maybe he got himself deep into something he didn’t understand, and now he’s
trying to undo his own mess.”

“But, again, why Draco?” Remus said, feeling horribly like something just didn’t make sense.
“Specifically. If he’s trying to get back at Riddle, or harbouring a personal vendetta then yeah,
sure. But if he wants information, if this is the strongest theory we have vis-a-vis the locket slowly
killing him, what the hell is the kid going to know?”

“If he’s being groomed as heir…” Sirius put forth. Remus pursed his lips.
“But he’s not, that's the thing,” he said. “It’s very obvious that he’s not and Snape would know
that.” He took a breath. “Besides, if anyone is being groomed to be Riddle’s heir, it’s…”

He trailed off. There was a name. Flashing in blinding lights.

Oh. Oh, he had not even considered her.

Remus gasped.

“What?” asked Sirius, perking up.

“Wait,” Remus said, rubbing his fingers over his eyes, “wait, wait, wait. Stop. Stop talking.”

Utter silence. He let his head drop into his hands and bit into his lip so hard he might taste blood,
and you could hear a pin drop.

Going through everything motion by motion in his mind, the last puzzle piece was doing backflips.
Skimming over the full jigsaw like thin rocks over a tranquil lake. It was about to fit into place
when there was a telltale gentle shuffling from upstairs, and then the landing, then the hallway.
Remus’ eyes flickered to the door.

It opened, and Regulus Black walked in. He scanned the room once and when his gaze fell on
Remus it did not move.

“Severus wants to talk to Remus,” he said, devoid of any feeling. “Alone.”

***

The room was dark when he walked in. The curtains were drawn even though nautical twilight was
upon them and the light was turned off. Remus clicked the door shut and then locked it, tautly,
flicking the lightswitch on all while still facing the door. He didn’t want to turn.

He did.

Snape wasn’t looking good. It wasn’t as bad as he’d imagined, being stuck up here with Regulus
Black of all people, but he looked ragged and tired. His hair was mussed. His clothes were ripped,
if only slightly; his wrists were so burnt and charred against the shackles he was locked up in that
Remus wasn’t sure they would ever heal.

But his eyes. His eyes were attentive. They were dark, near-black in colour, so much so that Remus
could walk across the room and not be able to see if his pupils were following him outside of his
irises. One of his eyes was slightly bloodshot, but their appearance didn’t demean from the twinkle
in them. One might call it sentiency. Remus would probably call it excitement.

He cleared his throat, but did not speak. There was a long moment of silence.

“The spell soundproofing this room broke this morning,” said Snape, voice low and gritty and
sounding direly in need of a drink. He was probably hungry. That would be where the bags under
his eyes came from. “Did you know that?”

Remus blinked. He shook his head.

“From the inside out, at least,” he continued. “Outside in you still seem to be unable to hear my
screams. But I can hear all of yours.”

He swallowed down the swirling dread in his throat and cleared it again.
“Well, that won’t matter, because you’re not going to make it out of this room,” he said, coyly.
“Whatever you hear won’t matter because you’ll be entirely too dead to relay it to anyone.”

Snape smiled. It was without teeth and it was something that could’ve been warm on a face that
wasn’t so horrible, and exhausted. Or perhaps threatening.

“I don’t like you,” he said, still smiling. Shaking his head. Yep, threatening. It was such a stark
contrast to his demeanour that Remus held his breath, wary. “There’s something innate about you
that repels me.”

“I can assure you the feeling is mutual,” Remus muttered back.

“And yet,” he said, smile dying. He pulled on his shackles and there wasn’t even the telltale sign of
burning flesh. It was already charred and blistered, unhealing. “In an astonishing turn of events,
you’re the one to figure it out.”

Remus couldn’t help the sharp intake of breath at this. He took another step forward, curling his
hand around the post of the end of the bed. Snape did not falter.

The words were tumbling out before Remus even gave them permission to.

“You weren’t there that night for Draco,” he breathed, harshly, “you were there for Bellatrix.”

Snape leaned back into the one cushion at his service and smiled once more.

“Half-true,” he said, shrugging. “I was there for Draco, but out of my own volition. Myself and his
mother… we were close. Myself and him, perhaps not so much, but I am privy to upholding a
dying mother’s last wish, however abhorrent it may be.”

“But that wasn’t your mission,” said Remus, filling in the gaps. “Finding Draco wasn’t your
mission, it was tracking down Bellatrix. Dumbledore was having you track down Bellatrix.”

“He was,” Snape murmured, with one small nod. “She had been off-grid since your little fight at
Malfoy Manor. Conspiracizing with her lord.”

“Your lord.”

Snape shrugged. “Maybe.”

Remus chose to brush past that, not focusing in this moment on the logistics of his loyalty, focusing
more on the problem at hand.

“So Dumbledore wanted Bellatrix,” he said, building assumptions and praying they will be broken
down, “for information on how to stop the Horcrux from killing him.”

Snape made a face, as if Remus was almost there but not quite.

“I’m not playing games with you here, Snape,” said Remus, feeling quite perturbed by this.

“Oh, but games are the only joy I get nowadays,” Snape replied, irritatingly suave.

“What happened to the unbreakable vow you oh so desperately wanted to do before you gave us
information?” Remus muttered, hoping this wouldn’t bite him in the ass.

Snape hummed gently.

“I was turned by the cold lips of Tom Riddle himself and have served him as a right-hand since the
day I woke up into my immortality,” he said, deadpan, through cracked lips and dead eyes with so
much life watching Remus from behind a strand or two of messy hair. “You may refute it, Lupin,
but you won’t kill me. There will always be more that I can give you.”

Remus thinned his lips. He felt a flare of white hot anger–irritation, really–flare up in his gut (at the
words, or at the truth of them?) but suppressed it under the need to know more.

He succumbed to the game. The goddamn game.

“Dumbledore is dying,” he said, knowing this one was quite certain.

“Correct.”

“He was, at some point at least, in possession of the locket,” Remus continued, pulling the chair
from where it had been strewn across the room the last time whoever it was used it and sitting
backwards on it at Snape’s bedside. “And the effects of the locket’s magic are now rotting him
from the inside out.”

A shot in the dark.

“Correct.”

Remus inhaled, sharply. His heart beating and beating and beating.

“Is he in possession of the locket, still?”

Snape grinned.

“Come on,” he jeered. “50/50 chance, hunter.”

“He’s not,” said Remus, almost automatically. Not even giving himself time to ruminate over it
with the certainty he had from god-knows-where in his gut. “He’s not in possession of the Horcrux
anymore.”

Snape’s face was blank, for a moment, and then the corner of his lips upturned menacingly.

“Correct,” he said, pronouncing both syllables as phonetically as he could. It sent a shiver running
down Remus’ spine. There was something horrific, something knowing in his smile. More to this.
More to Snape. He shook his head, tenderly. “No… more… Horcrux.”

Remus stared at him. For at least ten seconds, they locked eyes. He tried to clamber through
Snape’s orifices into his brain and extract the thought behind each word, backtracking one at a
time, Horcrux, more, no––why? Emphasis. Four words rather than one. Why? Statement. To
denote something important. Clues and counterclues, moves and countermoves, it hit Remus like
the ash down his throat at Malfoy Manor and the fog, constricting, he’s dying, that’s why–

“That’s why he’s rotting, isn’t it?” asked Remus. “You’re making this into a point. It’s important
that he doesn’t have the locket anymore. So that’s what’s killing him? Not having it?”

“It is important,” confirmed Snape.

“And he wasn’t– he can’t have been looking for Bellatrix for information,” Remus continued,
putting this together after Snape’s not quite face from earlier, going back and forth. As soon as he
said the words it seemed almost obvious. He scoffed. “Because why would he seek out another
informant when he already has–”

“Me.”

“–you.”

Remus leaned back. Took a moment to look him carefully once over.

“You’re clever,” Snape murmured. “Go on, hunter. It’s written out for you. Why did he want her?”

Remus took a deep breath in. His stomach hurt and his head was bursting. He rubbed at his temples
with his fingers and tried to think, think why, how, when. What she could have that Snape does
not. Conspiracizing. My Lord, Your Lord. Whose Lord? His Lord.

“He wanted Tom Riddle,” said Remus, through numb lips. “The last time I saw him. He– grabbed
me when I mentioned him. He wanted to know where Riddle was. That was his endgame.”

Snape hummed.

“And he was already dying, back then,” Remus said, thinking about the way his sleeve rode up and
the way the rot of his hands felt around his own skin. “Which means he had already lost the
Horcrux. And so he drugged me… to find out if I knew where Riddle was… because…”

He cut off and Snape waited. He simply sat there, and he waited.

Remus’ eyes unfocused, and then they refocused. The puzzle piece set into place like the poison
against Snape’s shackled wrist.

“She’s hiding one of them,” he said, shell-shocked, and a smile broke its way onto the vampire’s
face.

“Correct.”

“He wants another one,” Remus whispered, eyes moving rapidly, unable to think straight, “he lost
the locket, and that’s killing him, so he needs another one to fix it. A soul for a soul.”

Snape nodded, seemingly pleased.

“God,” Remus breathed, running his hands over his face. “God, fuck, fuck, he’s not trying to kill
Tom Riddle, he’s trying to take his soul. He wants the power, doesn’t he? He’s channelling it, he’s
playing with power. He wants to best him.”

“And I’d say he could,” Snape said, shrugging slightly. “If he gets his hands on that power source.
He is, after our own diary extraordinaire Annika Dearborn, the second greatest witch of his age.”

And here was when Remus stopped. Because there were two things gleaming lights at him in that
sentence.

The first being the things that set into place that Annika, Caradoc’s grandmother, the witch who
had raised a coup against Swedish authorities had created the diaries, the History books rained
down her name. But the second was much more incandescent and detrimental. Remus felt a chill
running all the way down his spine. It sunk into the floor. Icicles on the soles of his feet.

“Dumbledore is a witch,” he breathed, entirely numb.

Of course he is. Of course he is. A replenishing magic source. Two! At once! He’s using Riddle to
amplify his own power. He’s trying to be better. He’s trying to be better.

Snape shifted, his face imperceptible, and Remus took a breath. It felt like the first of his life.

“I need to know more,” he said, almost desperate. “How long were you a spy for him? Who are
you actually loyal to? What’s his endgame– where is the locket?”

Snape closed his eyes, and lay back. Remus felt himself scoff.

“No,” he said, getting up. “Not now. We’re not doing this.”

The chair made a deafening scrape against the wooden floor as he reached over, aggressive and
irritated and pulsating with information to grip onto Snape’s forearm. He jerked him forward as if
to drag him up, but he pulled himself up, and in a second he was hissing in Remus’ face, fangs out
and eyes bloodshot and menacing once more.

Remus did not flinch. He was used to this. He was about to pull his arm away when Snape leaned
over, hissed once more and sunk his teeth into Remus’ forearm.

“Ow–” he hissed; it lasted barely a second before Snape was pulling up, blood trickling down his
jaw, and Remus backhanded him so hard he fell down aggressively onto the bed and stayed there.

He surprised himself with his own strength, to be honest. He didn’t think he’d even hit that hard.

“You’re a fucking cunt,” Remus muttered, sucking on his thumb and pressing it to the two newly
leaking fang wounds. They were not deep, but they stung. Snape was definitely not unconscious
but he stayed down and Remus could understand when a conversation was over.

He got up, kicked the chair to the side and took a moment to look at him.

“This isn’t over,” he said, knowing he was hearing, and then he practically ran to the door.

***

He opened the door to an empty hallway.

He turned, pulling the doorknob towards him and locking the door via the outside lock, and when
he turned back to the empty hallway, it was no longer empty and there was a draft that coursed
over his feet like a wave.

“I smelled your blood,” Sirius murmured, walking forward. He took Remus’ forearm carefully in
his hands before he even got a chance to say that it’s fine.

His face immediately darkened.

“I’ll kill him,” he said, looking up at the closed door, and Remus groaned. He wrapped an arm
around Sirius’ shoulders and turned him, steering him with staggered steps at his resistance down
the hallway and towards the stairs.

“No you won’t,” he muttered. “None of us will. We need the bastard.”

“What did he tell you?” Sirius asked, on the stairs, finally relinquishing irritation enough for
Remus to be able to let go of him without worrying that he would zoom back the way they came
and rip Snape’s heart out before he could even breathe in protest. “Are you okay? Answer that one
first.”
“I’m fine,” Remus said, almost laughing a bit at the absurdity and the adrenaline. “I’m fine, it’s not
deep, barely a scratch. You’ve done worse.”

Remus hopped off the bottom step and Sirius followed him. The door to the kitchen was closed and
Remus opened it so aggressively that it banged against the wall.

Every single pair of eyes turned to look up at him.

“Sorry,” he said, registering how absurd he looked with a bleeding forearm and a crazy eye. Each
vampire’s eyes flickered to the blood and then back.

Dorcas was still where she had been sitting, and so was Mary. They had evidently been in
conversation. Lily made herself present a second later by pushing herself out of some sort of
huddle, that Remus registered consisted of herself, James and Regulus. She looked sort of harried
and incredibly glad of the distraction. Regulus looked more awkward than Remus had ever seen
him – which was a lot.

“Remus,” Lily breathed, walking over. “What–”

“It’s fine,” he said, shaking his head. He looked at Dorcas and she immediately got up and went to
the kitchen to fetch the first aid kit. “It’s not important. Not deep. Doesn’t hurt. Lock the door,
sound-proof it. His room’s not sound-proofed, by the way. He can hear everything.”

Pandora got up and left his line of vision as Dorcas re-entered it, and as soon as the spell was up, he
began to speak.

It took about five minutes to relay everything that he had learned in his little meeting with Snape.
Most of them sat and stared, stoic. Pandora let out little ooh’s and ahh’s at relatively good moments
for ooh’s and ahh’s, which Remus found he appreciated.

Mary was the first to speak, after a long exhale when he was done.

“Witch,” she muttered. “Of course he is. He always had too much strength, when you think about
it.”

Her eyes flickered from Dorcas, to Remus, the only two people acquainted with Dumbledore. He
nodded.

“And he’s bloody donkey years old and does not have the wrinkles to correlate,” said Dorcas.
There was a short silence, and then she bit her lip and said, “Not that that… matters… of course…
the most important thing is–”

“The Horcrux,” Sirius finished. She gestured a hand in agreement.

“Where do we go from here?” Lily asked. It felt strangely like a family meeting. Remus was
already planning how he was going to have to re-tell it all to Marlene, still missing upon her other
duties.

Sirius turned to Remus. He felt his gaze and rolled his head around from where it was resting on
his hands.

He raised an eyebrow.

“What?” Remus asked, narrowing his eyes. Sirius’ mouth morphed into a smile, and Remus
realised.
“Back to the drawing board it is,” Sirius said, wiggling his eyebrows. Dorcas scoffed upon
realising his meaning. “And by drawing board, I mean whiteboard.”

***

By the end of the night, the last surviving relic of Hotel Transylvania looked something vaguely
like this:

What We Know:

RING (X_X)
DIARY (X_X)
LOCKET (whereabouts unknown)
#4 (BELLATRIX)
5?
6?
RIDDLE

better than nothing!!!!

SNAPE - encyclopedia

valet for riddle in the 19th century

Turned personally - part of the inner circle
“did not show any sign of dishonesty” - regulus
(however reggie may have been a bit too obsessed with another man’s soul to note red flags -
sirius) (fuck you - regulus)
LOYALTY???
Dumbledore / Riddle / Us???? - remus

???? - everyone

“he very outwardly said “I’m on your side”.”

(regulus: yes, that’s true, he did in fact say that)

“he also asked to come with us and said he could prove it.”

(regulus: yes, that’s true, he also did, in fact, say that.)

(sirius: okay, when the fuck is he gonna prove it–)

(remus, who knows vampires better than he knows how to breathe: it’s self preservation. we
aren’t going to kill him (“speak for yourself”) because we will always be able to use him. we need
him. he didn’t have to tell me anything tonight but he did. it’s literally just a random shot in the
dark, but maybe he thinks dumbledore is just as big a lunatic as we do. and maybe we can use that.
arguably it’s more beneficial to have him on our side, so if he’s not… well, we can convince him.)

(sirius, who is a vampire: [no comment]).

(for the record, lily agrees with remus. dorcas thinks he trusts too easily. regulus is in one of those
broody moods where he’s staring into space and witnessing a million supernovas in his mind and
so they just leave him to it while continuing onto:)

BELLATRIX:

last seen - nova scotia. MIA 8wks prev. how long has she been in possession of an artifact? if
snape knows she has it, does he know what it is?

MISSIONS: (assigned by Sirius!)

ANDROMEDA on trail Bellatrix duty - best sense of smell and connection to sis. taking ted.
(having to be torn away from her new hunter friend with the same last name. a tragic
separation on all accounts.)
REGULUS on snape duty #1. try to get as much out of him as you can. (Please do not kill
him. Pandora does not have a spell strong enough to fully get blood out of oak and bleach
stains very much irritate her.)
REMUS on snape duty #2. (because apparently he tells you things.)

DUMBLEDORE:

whereabouts lost after collapse of HI1+2.

doesn’t have the locket
wants it back
not dying because of the Horcrux. dying because he’s lost it
what the genuine fuck has he done
POWER PLAY
^^will try to drill information out of snape. In the meantime:

DORCAS on moody duty. hopefully if he knows anything he’ll give it to his ^(second)
favourite student

(fuck you remus) (☺)

PANDORA on (fake) locket duty. if there is anything - anything - that can tie it to
dumbledore or at least lead us in the right direction we need it.
MARY on the continuation of horcrux research that she&R began in bulgaria. trip 2
manhattan office building tbc under the impression that the threat is neutralised:

DEMENTORS

what the fuck, man (collective response)

NATURAL ENEMY - THE PHOENIX (lily: *does a curtsy*)
extra reinforcements must be made. everyone must be made aware.
 DORA increased the wards - there should be no way they can penetrate.
the humans are going to notice
(sirius: there’s not much we can do about that except hope they chalk it down to city
pollution or global warming.)
(dorcas: people are getting hurt by this, sirius. three already from the attack on
prewett and longbottom. they don’t deserve to be collateral damage.)
(sirius: did you know when they burnt down the black’s in cornwall they killed a
whole coven of innocent witches? collateral damage is inevitable. you of all people
should know that. unless you still see us as less than worthy to live, of course.)

(may it be noted for the record that remus and mary are feeling incredibly awkward at this current
moment in time.)

lily: anyway––

“–how am I supposed to go against these things?” she asked, breaking the tension. Dorcas,
accepting defeat (it’s not as if she was wrong, more the fact they were both right) looked away and
locked her jaw. Marlene was pacing. Regulus had almost bumped into James on the way into the
room after a brief interlude (they had not spoken since the cave incident) and had spent the past
fifteen minutes curtly avoiding everyone’s glances.

He looked up for the first time and his eyes landed on Lily.

“Burn,” he said, as if it were simple.

“Well, obviously,” she said, twirling a board marker between her fingers. “But… well, is it a case
of repelling them with light when they come for me or is it a case of burning perpetually to keep
them away?”

“Well I’d say burn perpetually if we were in bum fuck Greece,” Sirius piped up, “but,
unfortunately, we are in New York. Even in the event that they lock the city down you’re always
being watched.”

“Do you think they’ll evacuate?” asked Marlene, chewing on her lip. “If enough people get hurt.”

Sirius thought about this for a moment.

“Nah,” he said, shaking his head. “Even besides how difficult it’d be to evacuate the most
populated city in the U.S., he won’t let it go that far. Riddle wants to keep the city bustling and
juicy.”

“God, that’s disgusting,” murmured Mary. Where Remus and Dorcas had sort of gotten used to the
toying around of humans by the undead, Mary was more often sent on witchy missions that
vampire-y heists and so still had somewhat of a sense of disgust at the idea of raising someone like
a pig for slaughter.
Lily was looking significantly wary, and shaking her head.

“I don’t know if I’m qualified for this,” she said. It was small. Remus gave her a comforting face.

“Lils, this is what you were born for,” he said, at the same time Mary stepped up for a vote of
confidence.

“He’s right,” she said, “but even despite that, you’ve adapted so well it’s insane. The skills you’ve
mastered are more than enough to take these things on.”

(Everybody was hoping, at least.)

“But how do we know that?” Lily asked. “I wasn’t training on fighting deadly monsters before, I
was fighting James!”

He thinned his lips. “I’m not gonna take offence to that.”

“Sorry, James, but shouldn’t I at least try on someone a bit stronger–sorry, James–or…
heightened?”

“I’m heightened,” James whispered. He turned to Remus, nudged him. “You think I’m heightened,
right?”

“No comment,” Remus replied without taking his eyes off of Lily. She laughed exasperatedly–
James was not a good whisperer.

“Sorry, James,” she said, again, and then–

“Me,” said Regulus, looking at about five different faces on a looping sequence.

Everyone turned to look at him.

“You?” asked Lily.

He licked his lips, gesturing to the board.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m the oldest–”

“Third oldest,” said Sirius and Andromeda simultaneously, and then high-fived.

“Third oldest,” said Regulus, through his teeth. “And all I have to do is torture Snape. Andy will be
gone and Sirius will be…”

He trailed off. Sirius, lounging on an armchair, brought his hands to the back of his head and
grinned.

“Keeping this place running,” he said.

Marlene whacked him, hard, round the back of the head.

“Ow–”

“Doing whatever the hell he does,” Regulus finished. “I’m as powerful as you’re gonna get. I
suppose.”

Lily looked to James. Who immediately looked away. So she looked, instead, to Mary, who
nodded.

“I think it’s a great idea,” Mary said, enthusiastically, clapping her hands together. “He’s powerful
and he’s durable. I’ve set him on fire loads of times.”

“I guess, then yeah,” she said. “Sure. Thank you.”

She smiled at him, and he nodded.

“No problem,” he replied, ever so quietly, and went to sit down. Remus didn’t miss the way his
eyes flickered over to James and he also didn’t miss Lily not missing it either.

“Okay,” said Sirius, after a beat of silence. He pulled himself up and twirled his own board marker
in his hand, making his way over to the whiteboard.

And so they continued:

LILY to train to fight against them. phoenix vs dementor = blue skies. <3
JAMES, MARY, REGULUS to help. (james: dream team) ((aside): sarcasm detected).
MARLENE to keep focusing on what comes in and what goes out, who goes where and who
fights who. (marls: so… keeping the place running?) (sirius, being annoying: …nooo?)

What We Know (about the Shadow Monsters of Doom)

built off the cruciatus curse (worst pain imaginable upon inhalation/subjugation - do not go
near)
estimated 600 years old. stolen from greece, under the control of Tom Riddle
released over NYC and only NYC so far
SICKNESS - mourning of the sun – the demented – lack of self. clinical insanity. loss of
soul. incurable.
what the hell is his aim?
To corner us. To trap us. To get us to kill each other. To assert his dominance over the
city. To stop us from expediting to find the things that can kill him.
(it’s a pathetic way to put a cork in our plans. we’ll just pressurise the whole bottle till
they explode.)
To use as a last resort.
(we’re getting close. we’re getting close and we’re still standing.)
To get us to surrender.
(we will not surrender.)

We will not surrender.

***

Dorcas was, as per usual, the first one to make any sort of a discovery. Granted, it took a week and
a half, but it had been a week and a half of Remus taking over Snape shifts from Regulus to sit
beside a bloody vampire and not be spoken to for four hours until he got up and left, so. Any step is
a step.

Speaking of Regulus (and taking this story back another five minutes) it was just after Remus had
gotten bored of talking to himself and was hopping down the stairs when a blurry black figure
followed by a blaze of light rushed its way down the hallway to his left and slammed against the
wall beside the front door. Remus halted halfway down the stairs in shock.

Regulus was on fire. As in, his sleeve was on fire.

He huffed, and shook his arm a few times to try to get the flames licking up his jacket sleeve to
dissipate. When the shock of his appearance and the worry that he was about to burn alive in front
of Remus’ eyes faded, it was rather comedic.

“Vase,” said Remus.

Regulus paused and looked up at him.

“What?” he said.

“Vase,” Remus repeated, pointing at the vase of purple Azaleas on the table beside him.

Regulus sighed – Remus was quite sure the flames were singing his hair, now, but he was
unperturbed – and took two steps over. He picked up the vase and dumped the water all over him,
arching his body away so it dripped on the floor and not his shoes.

What of the flowers that didn’t burn fell to the floor. Regulus trodded clumsily on a few of them.
He placed the vase awkwardly back on the table, and looked back up at Remus, who was
desperately trying not to laugh.

“Thank you,” said Regulus. Remus almost broke and his lips quirked up.

“No problem,” said Remus, and then Regulus opened his mouth but before he got any words out
there was a small clicking sound coming from somewhere that Remus couldn’t see.

“Regulus Black, are those my flowers? What the hell are you doing?”

Regulus’ eyes widened. He looked up at Remus, saluted once, and then dashed out the front door,
just in time to avoid the vase being levitated and hurled at him, smashing instantly into a million
pieces against the closed door.

The clicks of her heels stopped and Pandora stood at the bottom of the stairs.

“You fucking bastard!” she yelled, groaning and, with a swirl of her hand, repairing the vase and
placing it back on the table. She turned and Remus was still on the stairs.

“Oh, Remus!” she gasped. He waved awkwardly. “I’m glad it’s you, actually. Dorcas wants you.
Dining room.”

Remus made his way, and this is where her discovery begins.

(…just bear with her.)

“So I was talking to Moody,” she said, leaning over the table secretively even though there were at
least five vampires in this room and every single one of them could hear her.

Remus nodded.

“Yes?”
“We were looking at the list,” she asked, and he nodded once again. They had been working
through it, trying to figure out who might’ve been the source of the explosion; were they listed at
all. It was a start. However, outside of the list, Moody was rather reclusive about the whole thing,
so even looking at the list was promising. “Well,” she continued, “we got onto talking about how
Hestia Jones had visited HQ, just the weekend before.”

Remus frowned. She said his name as if it would be someone immediately recognisable to him, but
he definitely had to take a minute to recollect who the hell that was.

“...Hestia Jones?” he said, and she nodded. Hestia Jones. She was a hunter, a year or so older than
them. Stationed in Pennsylvania, last Remus could remember. Seemingly irrelevant. “Why was she
there?”

She leaned in closer. “She was there on Peter’s behalf.”

He frowned deeper.

“But Peter’s–”

“–dead, I know. But he was recruited through Moody before he was sent to my facility, so he had
some stuff in London that she was collecting to take back to Germany to his mum. They were
together, you know. It was casual.”

Remus did not know that. He did, however, remember her crying buckets on the Skype call they
had after he was attacked, so there was that, he supposed.

“Why’s this relevant?”

“Listen, I'm getting there. We got to Hestia and that’s a name I haven’t heard in ages, so naturally I
inquired. She used to be friends with Molly, remember? So I talked to her and she said that Hestia
was acting really fucking strange. I mean she passed all of the testing, so it’s not like she was
possessed, but it was a kind of ‘not herself’ strange, according to Molly. And then–and this is the
real kicker–she wanted to go to the trophy room, to get the Demon-fighter Award that Pete had
been given in his third year for excommunicating that string of demonic possessions without any
human casualties, and they told her that the trophy room was being redecorated and that all of the
trophies were being cleaned and were in storage, and she threw a fit. Like, a tantrum. Apparently
she was hysterical, and she had to stay in a spare room in the accommodation on-site because she
refused to leave until the trophy room was done, and then… well. A week later…”

Remus blinked. “So, she died?”

Dorcas nodded.

“Doesn’t that sound strange?”

He sighed. “I don’t know. I mean, it’s definitely weird, yeah. But if she was to have blown it up,
why would she leave herself inside?”

“Maybe she wasn’t supposed to be there,” Dorcas suggested. “But maybe she knew it was going to
happen. Wanted to get Pete’s stuff out of there.”

“But still, why would she not just leave?”

Dorcas sighed. She put her head in her hands and then pushed them up, into her hair. She had been
wearing it in her natural afro after taking her braids out a few days ago. Mary was supposed to be
re-doing it for her but it seems neither of them had really had any time. She sighed.

“It’s definitely weird; I’d say, talk to Molly, or maybe… gosh, I don’t know. Nobody that might’ve
known anything is alive anymore. Talk to Molly, but honestly? I feel like she might’ve just been
grieving.”

Dorcas nodded slowly. “I mean, you might be right,” she said. “I could be seeing too much into it.
But. Any behaviour is weird behaviour right now. And any weird behaviour is a threat, right?”

Remus smiled, nodded once. “Right,” he said, “the eternal hunter’s optimism.”

The joke made her laugh. He knew he was in the same boat.

“How am I supposed to be optimistic when it’s two in the afternoon and it looks like dusk?” she
groaned, throwing a thumb back to point at the window behind her.

The clouding had hit them about a week ago. It was dusty and overcast, perpetually looking like
the cusp of day and night, as if the sky could not decide which it wanted to be. It wasn’t the actual
dementors but the residual presence of them. The real beings tended to stick to the city centre, but
they weren’t taking risks regardless.

(Frank’s body had been burned on a pyre the other day, after a humane execution. There was no
other two ways around it. They didn’t want that to be anybody else.)

Despite all of this, they were safe, at least, within the wards, even if it was making them go stir-
crazy. Dorcas asked if he wanted to scale the perimeter again – they had been doing this, the three
of them when Mary was free, just to get out of the house and go as far as they could.

With Regulus on Lily night he had free roam of Snape, and he knew that he probably should get in
there again, but he nodded regardless. They walked for two hours. It wasn’t even the whole thing.
When he got back in he ran into Sirius for the first time since the morning, and he, just out of a
check-in with Andromeda and Ted who were in fucking Iceland right now on Bellatrix’s tail, felt
agitated and cold under Remus’ touch.

Remus hadn’t been sleeping very well and he had been a bit bitchy that morning. Sirius was a bit
bitchy upon meeting him that afternoon. They were a perfect match.

Remus went in the shower (Sirius’s shower). He got out, dressed in a black shirt and Sirius’ grey
joggers, and opened the en-suite door to his room. Sirius himself was lying on the bed, one hand
splayed over his eyes.

He ruffled his hair with the towel once and then tossed it aside. Sirius inhaled, and in a second
moved his hand and pushed himself up, turning so he was sitting sideways on the bed.

He looked Remus up and down and smiled.

“Hi,” he said, sort of benign. Remus frowned and walked over to him.

“Hey,” he said, as Sirius pushed himself back far enough for Remus to be able to straddle him on
the bed. He looked up at him, locking his hands around his lower back to keep him in place, and it
was gentle.

Remus bit his lip and took a moment before speaking.

“You okay?” he asked.

In any other circumstance Sirius might have said yes. But this was not any other circumstance. This
was their faces a few centimetres apart, hands on the low of his back and hands in the deep of his
hair, interconnected. This was in a lowly lit room in which the curtains were drawn and the lamp
was on and nothing outside could even be happening if they pretended hard enough.

Sirius sighed.

“Sometimes,” he said, slowly. Remus waited. “My head is very loud.”

“Loud?”

He sighed again, and then leaned forward. He buried his face into Remus’ chest, and Remus sifted
through his hair, holding him, precious.

“There’s a lot of me,” he murmured. “Sometimes I don’t really know where to put it all.”

Remus nodded and rested his chin on the top of his head. “I know, honey.”

“I think there’s more of me,” he said. “After the basilisk. I don’t know how much more. I don’t
know what it… is.”

Remus bit his lip, and ran his fingers through Sirius’ hair. “More in a good sense? Or a bad?”

Sirius didn’t respond for a moment.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know if I like it. I don’t know anything. It feels–” he cut off here,
as if something had squeezed at his vocal chords. His shoulders rose and got tense, and he huffed,
something horrible in the vulnerability as Remus trailed his nimble fingers over his scalp, up, down
the lining of his neck leading into his spine, trying to unwork him, tame the fire.

“Take your time,” he whispered. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

“It feels strange,” Sirius continued. It was in a rather aggressive breath, to get it all out, perhaps.
Remus trailed his skin, up and down. “To be something else when you’ve spent so goddamn long
being exactly how you are.”

Remus hummed, nodded gently. Sirius’ head was pressed against his heart. Remus wondered if he
could hear it beating.

Upon trying to lighten anything he could find, Sirius pulled his head away from his chest and
looked up to him, and he was darkness. His face was blank and stoic; perhaps it would be
terrifying, did Remus not know him so well; this was the exchange, for him. Show everything in
actions or tell everything in words. He could not do them both at once. His vulnerability was fickle
and fried, anything he had to offer Remus would be welcomed like a show and tell, except no
telling, just showing, in this little box in the sky where it is just them, he holds a blank, impassive
Sirius in his hand and knows nobody else has ever felt so many emotions on this entire plane of
existence. Those eyes, the way the lids fall, and those cheeks, and that bottom lip. Nothing and yet,
absolutely everything. They were silent for a long moment.

“I’ll love every bit of you I get,” said Remus. “No matter how much it is. Or how you obtained it.”

“How can you even say that?” Sirius whispered, his lips barely moving. He shook his head.
“Knowing everything you know about me, how can you even say that?” A pause, and then,
“Remus, I’ve done horrible things.”
Remus scoffed. “Oh, don’t go having the moral crisis on me now,” he murmured. “There’s only
room for one of us to do that and mine’s still not quite over yet.”

“Remus–”

“I know that you’ve done horrible things,” said Remus, rather firmly. “I have seen you do horrible
things. And I’m still here.” He let these words sink in. “So, whatever horribleness you think is
happening to you, now? I’m still going to be here when it’s over. Because you’ll still be worth it.
Alright?”

Sirius stared at him. As if he was something extraneous, something crazy, something wonderful,
and then he leaned in again. Remus kissed his forehead with everything he had and dug his nose
into his hair, breathing in time, one perpetual heartbeat. Sirius sighed.

“Your heartbeat is my metronome.”

“Best keep it beating, then.”

Sixty, seventy, eighty per minute, a clicking in the back of one's head, a reattaching of the lines of
gravity. Every single time. Remus’ feet were planted on the floor. He was not going anywhere, fire
and force.

Remus ran his hands through his hair once more and murmured, “Do you want to talk about it?”
Sirius shook his head.

It was quiet for a moment, and then;

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He leaned back. There was a moment in which they froze, and then Sirius was lowering his hands
to hold him under his backside and pulled him over, rolling them both properly onto the bed, lying
next to each other like schoolchildren. Remus laughed as he went.

He laced his fingers through Sirius’ hand. He really, really looked at it.

The truth was, Remus hadn’t been sleeping much. Or, if he was, it was interrupted and unfulfilling.
He wasn’t having dreams. At least he couldn’t remember them. But he could remember how he
felt. It’s the feeling that haunts him, not the flames, not the faces. It’s the feeling that seizes him at
various points of the day, sometimes not even once and sometimes multiple times. It feels like a
game of Operation, an everlasting presence rattling within his chest that he brushes with the back
of his knuckles, sometimes. It buzzes horrendously like metal against a cavity wall and he’s not
safe. He’s never safe. Hypervigilant. Every pore of his face under a microscope, every tendon, he
tries to watch them all. One day it’ll drown him. He wakes up every day and hopes it is not today.

So Remus was more easily spooked, Remus was more easily on guard. Sirius, this creature, here,
he was something exquisite and something ravenous and something blonde and blue and
something of Remus’ nightmares, maybe. If he could ever remember. It’s the nausea. Grappling
with one end of a stick and the other in such close proximity they might wrap around him in an
attempt to merge with each other and choke. The good in the bad and the bad in the good. He
squeezed his hand tighter.

“She broke my wrist,” Remus found himself saying. Blurting, really. “Narcissa. In Malfoy Manor.”
He coughed. “She crushed it between her hand. One hand.”

“She–” Sirius gaped, for a moment, “how–”

“Pandora healed it,” he said, flexing the fingers of the hand in question. “Punch-drunk from the
diary magic.”

He nodded. Evidently, Pandora had told him that. Remus simply hadn’t thought to mention the
wrist. It was insignificant to him. It had been broken, and now it had been fixed. Poppy had fixed
it, properly, before Sirius had woken up. He hadn’t thought to tell him because there had been no
reason to.

“You can do horrible things,” he said, quietly. “And I love you all the more for them. And I love
you all the more for doing them. And I love you all the more for the fact that you could do them to
me, but you don’t,” he took a breath, “there’s just something. Something, sometimes. Both
wonderful and terrifying, you are, you know that?”

Sirius nodded. “I know.”

“And we’re patient with each other, yeah?” said Remus, gently, cupping his face. “Our worst parts
and our best.”

Sirius said nothing. He just turned his face to kiss the inner of Remus’ palm, moving down to his
wrist.

“You know I’d do anything to protect you from getting hurt, right?”

“I know that, sweetheart,” Remus breathed, half irritable, half purely loved, frustrated at his own
countenance, the memories that scar him and the bruises that burn. “But I can’t––listen. I like you.
I like you this way. I like you as you, all of you, your worst and best, but there are people who…
you echo in nature that I don’t particularly like as much. And there are going to be moments where
I can handle it perfectly and moments where it’s not so perfect. We can figure it out together.
Yeah?”

Sirius nodded. A cold draught fell like a wisp upon them.

“Sorry,” Remus whispered.

“Don’t you dare apologise,” Sirius whispered back, instantly, pushing himself up to lean on his
forearm. “Don’t you dare. Can I hold you right now?”

“You can hold me right now.”

Sirius leaned forward and snaked his arms around Remus’ waist. He manoeuvred them so that he
was higher up on the bed and Remus was lying on top of him. He dug his face into Sirius’ cold
neck and felt more comfortable than he had in weeks.

Remus took a moment to sit with the nausea in his gut and then pushed himself up again.

“I just don’t want you to think I’m weak–”

“Remus.”

“Or that I can’t handle this, I can, I want you to still hurt me and bite me and be all the fire that you
are, I don’t want you to walk on eggshells–”

“Hey,” Sirius whispered, cupping his face with both hands and squishing his cheeks a little. The
goofiness of it made him smile. He let them go lax and then they were in his hair. “You’re not
weak. It doesn’t make you any less to feel things. Someone special to me once told me that.”
Remus bit his lip to try and avoid a smile.

“He sounds like an idiot.”

“I think he’s brilliant,” said Sirius. “I think he’s incredible. I’m a bit terribly in love with him, if
we’re being completely transparent.”

“He’s a bit terribly in love with you too,” Remus breathed, smiling down at him. “Even the parts
he’s not been introduced to yet.”

“I promise when I’m introduced to them, he will be the first to know.”

“Idiot,” Remus murmured, leaning down to kiss him.

Sirius laughed against his lips.

“Pretty boy,” he whispered, gripping his jawline between thumb and four fingers and rolling them
over.

***

“What is,” James said, pursing his lips and curling his fingers in Lily’s hair, “the craziest thing you
guys have ever killed?”

Sitting in front of a dwindling fire, Remus rested his feet up on the footstool in front of him. He
was sitting next to Dorcas, who was nursing a cup of hot chocolate, James and Lily cuddled up to
the sofa on the right side of him and Mary sitting in the armchair on the left. Post-phoenix training,
Mary and Regulus had come to perch for a moment and he had been sitting on the arm of the chair.
And then James and Lily had arrived, taken the last seat, and so Mary had grabbed him by the arm
and sat him between her legs instead.

Now, she was plaiting his hair. Tiny little plaits that she’d undo and then redo again, and again.

Remus looked at Dorcas.

“The Basilisk, probably?” he said, and she hummed her assent. “It was insane. I’m still not entirely
sure how we got out of there alive.”

“Absolutely dumb luck,” said Dorcas.

“Nah,” said James, looking at her and then eyeing Remus, “I think you guys are more skilled than
you think.”

“Tell that to the massive fucking snake,” muttered Dorcas. Remus sniggered beside her, then
turned to Mary.

“What ‘bout you, Mare?”

“Hm,” she said, running her fingers through Regulus’ hair and detangling it. He was looking very
resolutely into his lap. He wasn’t one for eye contact, or… well, talking. Though perhaps that was
circumstantial considering who was sitting on the sofa in front of him. “Honestly, knowing what I
know now, I’d say the Black coven, in Cornwall.”

Regulus scoffed at this.

“Sometimes I forget that was you, you know,” he laughed, lowly. Mary tugged at his hair and he
hissed, looking up to frown at her.

“You should be scared of me,” she said, primly.

“I am,” he groaned, swatting at her hands, “scared of you giving me bald patches, get off–”

They squabbled for a moment and then Mary held her hands up in surrender, and he, begrudgingly,
sat back to let her plait his hair again. Lily eyed them from the other sofa.

“Do you think you two might ever…” she said, trailing off with a curve to her lip, pointing
between the pair of them. They both froze, craning their necks to look at the other. The same sort
of disgust mirrored in their faces.

“Oh, God no,” said Regulus, getting there first, pursing his lips. Mary’s jaw dropped.

“Sound a bit more enthusiastic, why don’t you?!”

“You were going to say the same––!” he cut off, turning back round and crossing his arms. “No.
Christ, no. Couldn’t stand her.”

“Blah, blah.”

“What about you, robo-Black?” prompted Dorcas, kicking her foot in his vague direction. “Craziest
thing you’ve ever killed?”

He took a moment to think about this.

“Well, I’ve killed a dementor,” he said, cracking his knuckles. “In Greece. Outside of that,
maybe–” he paused to think, and then looked at James and swiftly away, “hm. I think the ancient
eldritch spirit of the progenitor of my bloodline in 1892 might take the cake.”

“Oh my God,” muttered James.

“What?” asked Lily, turning to him.

“That sounds… pleasant,” said Dorcas.

“It was not,” Mary said, as if she had been there; “almost killed James, didn’t it, Reg?”

Regulus whipped around to look at her; from the other sofa’s perspective, his face couldn’t be seen,
but Remus from his angle could see the absolute death glare he was giving her.

He turned to James.

“No, it did not,” he was protesting. Lily looked extremely confused.

“You guys knew each other before?” she asked, and then slumped back. “Hm. I guess it makes
sense. Sirius’s brother and all. Damn.”

“No,” said James, looking at her, flustered; “I mean–yes, I mean––I–” he turned back to Regulus.
“I’m sorry, I’m still stuck on me ‘almost dying’. On what planet, exactly?”

Regulus stared at him, blank-faced.

“You did.”
“Did not. You did.”

Regulus’ mouth fell open. “Surely you’re not insinuating that I, that of pure blood and ultimate
hell-drawn strength, almost died? Blasphemy. Never.”

“Literally three weeks ago–”

“Shhhh,” he said, closing his eyes and shaking his head. When he opened them, James was
smiling, and so he was, too. Remus and Dorcas looked at each other.

“So you did know each other?” asked Lily.

“Mhm,” said James, nodding. He softened a bit when he looked at her, and she smiled, almost
unavoidably. “I’ll tell you later.”

His hand returned to her hair. Mary’s returned to Regulus’.

Ten minutes later, the door opened and Sirius walked in. As he plodded across the room and
around Remus looked at him, and so he was only drawn back to James and Lily when James
yelped, and he smelled smoke.

Lily’s hands had sparked. It was only a little bit; he turned and she was shaking it out, the tips of
her fingers on fire. They blew out but left wisps of smoke and embers across the red rug that Mary,
with a wave of her hand, siphoned up. Sirius sat down next to Remus and raised his eyebrows at
the scene.

“Trouble in paradise?” he asked. James rolled his eyes, but Lily was simply looking at her hands,
confused.

She didn’t say anything. As the conversation went on she simply tucked her hands underneath her
arms and sat, silent and dark, against James’ side.

When Sirius laced his hand in with Remus’, he shuddered.

“God, you’re freezing,” he muttered, and then Dorcas repeated the sentiment a little louder, saying
“God, it’s freezing,” instead. Sirius mimicked Remus’ shudder for optimal effect, and then turned
to Lily.

“Lilibeth,” he said, jokingly pleading, nodding his head towards the barely simmering fireplace,
“would you do us a favour and give us a bit of fire?”

Lily stared at him, blank, for a moment, and then sighed. Took out her hands and cracked her
knuckles.

“Er–” Regulus said, interrupting and bringing everyone’s attention to him. His eyes were on Lily.
“Let Mary do it.”

He turned to her; she quirked an eyebrow, and he shrugged back. “We’re closest to the fire.” His
eyes moved back to Lily.

Mary completed the task with no complaints, balling some fire in between her two palms and
launching it in one stroke across to catch on the wooden logs left in the fireplace. Everyone, upon
the warmth, settled back and relaxed, but Lily caught Regulus’ eye, and mouthed, gently, “Thank
you.”
Life went on.

The next afternoon, Dorcas and Remus, standing at Mary’s door like chaos twins. Mary snapped
her spellbook shut and eyed them.

“I’m not telling you anything,” she said, and they took one, mischievous look at each other and
ambushed her.

An hour later, she was lying on her bed, Remus to one side and Dorcas to the other; almost falling
off but not quite, having made a habit of squeezing three people onto a double bed in the eight-odd
years they’d lived together. She had still not told them anything, but;

“Lily’s tired,” said Mary, gently, twirling her rings around her fingers. There was something soft in
her voice, of admiration, or protectiveness. “This isn’t what her life was supposed to be.
Everything’s changed so… so suddenly, you know? She had plans. Friends, family that she’s had
to cut all ties off. We signed up for this, you know, we have the ropes, we know what to expect.
Lily never did. The world has made her drop everything to be our Phoenix, and so that’s what she’s
doing, but she doesn’t know how to do anything except… burn. And it makes her feel like she
doesn’t know who she is anymore.” Mary shrugged. Remus felt the movement against his head. “I
feel like we can understand that. If only a bit. I’m not sure who I am outside of my abilities,
either.”

Dorcas, who had been twirling her small blade between her fingers, stopped almost immediately.
Put it down, slowly. It was like a held breath between the three of them.

“You’re closer to her than I’d garnered,” said Remus, gently. Mary looked down at him and
smiled.

“Mmm,” she said, sort of dreamily. “I suppose I am.”

“What about Regulus?” asked Dorcas, sitting up on her elbow. “This is the part of that weird three-
way dynamic that I’m not understanding. Does he hate her or not?”

“Regulus is inclined to dislike her because they’re so ridiculously similar,” Mary continued,
smiling slightly. “In that aspect and in all else. But he likes her, really. I can tell. He’s not happy
about it, but he does.”

“Hm. Similar. I can see that. I suppose he also doesn’t want to like her, though, because he wants to
kiss her boyfriend on the mouth,” Dorcas finished, suggestively. Mary squeezed her eyes shut and
burst out laughing, exasperated. “No?”

“I told you, I’m not telling you anything!”

“You just told me everything I need to know, babe.”

They ended up falling asleep there, the three of them, napping for three hours until Mary shook
them awake by clambering out, because she’d volunteered to make dinner. Remus and Dorcas
promptly fell back asleep, squirming under the covers of Mary’s bed like children. He woke up to
her shoving a pinky finger up his nose.

Mary made Chicken Pelau for dinner. Apparently she had been astral projecting a form of herself
to prep the food while simultaneously being outside helping the firefighters (fuck Sirius, man, the
name has stuck) train. Though his nap had been worth it, Remus thought it was a shame that he
missed it. He had always found it entertaining when she would walk back into herself.
“Bloody shame that I missed that,” said Dorcas, a few minutes into their meal, mouth full, “it’s
always funny when you walk back into yourself.”

“Oh, shut up,” Mary laughed. Dorcas elbowed her and Mary elbowed her back. They didn’t stop
until Remus picked at his rice and threw a pinch at them. This was often how it was with the three
of them; the instigator, instigated and rice-thrower changed on the daily.

Now, a few things of note happened during dinner.

For one, Draco came.

Remus was seated on the side with his back to the door, beside Sirius and opposite Dorcas and
Mary, so he didn’t notice anything until Dorcas’ jaw dropped.

He turned and Draco was at the doorway, just behind Astoria who was gesturing him in.

“Come on,” she said, quietly, turning to look at the end of the table. There weren’t exactly enough
chairs so Percy and Oliver were sitting where they usually sat, then Lavender and Parvati, saving
two seats, while Isabela and Jul were perched on top of a side table they’d dragged across the
room.

Draco hesitated at the door, looking warily around. Remus didn’t blame him – there were at least
fifteen, twenty people. Moody was still upstairs and the Weasley boys tended to eat with him to
keep him company, but Minerva was sat at one end of the table with Benjy by her side and Fabian
in his first bereaved appearance (Gideon was still upstairs; he refused to let him go). It went all the
way from hunters to ditzy vampires – Sibyl, the secretary with mounds of curls who had been
staying outside of the grounds, was there to chat with James and share a bottle of deer’s blood
between them. And then to witches, Pandora and Charity and a woman called Persephone and a
man called Marcus (Remus was getting better with names), all of these people. All that had wanted
Draco dead (in his view, at least). His eyes landed on Remus’.

Remus smiled. It was genuine happiness. Draco inhaled sharply and then gave him a nod,
following Astoria as she directed him to Remus’ right, where Parvati had saved him a seat beside
her.

“I knew she’d befriend him,” he murmured, to Sirius, who rolled his eyes fondly and leaned over
him to retrieve a jug of blood (God, Remus might never get used to that) to pass to his brother.
Regulus, who’d just come from the garden with Lily, poured himself a glass, drank it all in one and
then promptly poured himself another.

“Fuck me,” Dorcas said. “Are you thirsty?”

“Lily takes a lot out of you, okay?” he muttered. “You bloody try it.”

She raised two hands in surrender. Lily winked. Regulus rolled his eyes.

It was not long of idle conversation before their peace was interrupted by a constant reminder that
lives were at stake, in the form of a vampire that Remus didn’t know coming in and whispering
something in Marlene’s ear. Mary was talking about some baking technique that he was only half-
listening to as they left the room, and then Marlene came back in and took Isabela out.

“What’s that?” Remus whispered to Sirius, as they left the room. He held up a hand to halt him,
and he fell silent.

There was a moment where he stared into space, presumably listening, and then he closed his eyes.
He sighed, just as James muttered “Fuck’s sake,” into his meal and took his glasses off to pinch the
bridge of his nose.

“What?”

“Six of ours,” said Sirius, hurt lacing through his voice. “Dead. They were in New Jersey so we
thought they’d be safe.”

“The dementors are in New Jersey?” Dorcas asked.

Sirius held up a hand again, listening. Remus, if he listened carefully, could hear soft sobs from the
hallway outside.

“No,” he said, “they just got too close to the danger zone.”

“What’s that, now?” asked Mary. “Three attacks?”

“This’ll be the fourth,” said James.

“Any humans?”

“Three, I think,” said Sirius, squinting very purposefully and trying to listen. “Marlene will brief us
tomorrow morning, but…”

“Nine attacked,” Mary breathed. She was chewing on her bottom lip. “They’re getting sloppy. The
past three attacks might have been minimal but a massacre like that won’t go unnoticed by the
government.”

“You think they’ll shut down the city now?” asked Lily, leaning forward on her head, her bob
swaying around her neck.

“What would they even shut it down for?” asked Remus. “What’s the guise? Crime?”

“More like an epidemic,” Dorcas said. “Check Twitter. It’s trending. Multiple witnesses seeing a
group of people in thick fog scream like no pain you’ve ever witnessed and then drop like flies?
That’s not crime. That’s a dystopian nightmare.” She scrolled, a bit, on her phone, then passed it to
Remus. Mary craned her neck to look over, as did Regulus, and James walked round the table to
look from behind him. “A lot of them think the fog is poisonous.”

“Pretty accurate guess, to be honest,” muttered Regulus, before downing another glass of blood,
rather bitterly, thumbing his bottom lip when he was done and licking off the red residue.

The cries got louder. Remus inhaled sharply.

“Who’d we lose?” Dorcas said, soft, frown lines on her gentle face.

“Hannah and Eduardo,” said Sirius. “Amongst others, but that’s who…”

“Oh, poor Bel,” Remus said, just as Jul pushed themself off the countertop and walked out into the
hallway without a word or so much as a glance.

Remus locked eyes with Draco. He thought about their conversation, prior. Draco looked down
and then away.

Isabela’s crying did not dissipate for about five minutes.

The mood after that was melancholic at best. It was as if all of the energy had mellowed so much
so that it struck lightning into the hearts of them all, all of their grieving souls, mild or massive,
when big things happened. So, when Sirius broke a glass, Remus actually yelled.

“I–” he said, sitting there, jaw wide open. His palm was bleeding; there was still a shard lodged
into it, which Marlene pulled out, pinched expression on her face. All he’d done was pick it up and
it had shattered between his fingers.

Marlene pulled him aside and spent five minutes picking the little shards out of his hand, while he
stared off into deep-indented brow-ed space, and Dorcas backed out the wine. He re-joined once he
was fully healed, masquerading, and they fell into a sort of leisurely chat. Mary snapped her fingers
and lit a few candles as it started to get truly dark outside – it had been foggy and meek all day,
mind, the sun and showers of April absolutely disintegrated to make way for naught but menacing
overcast and residue from the shadow servants scouring the city. A few people took this as their
cue to leave, praising Mary for her display of magic. Minerva gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“Mm!” said the woman in question, twenty minutes later, turning and reaching over a few people
to get Regulus’ attention. “I forgot to tell you. I found some more on Merope Gaunt.”

“Meryl who?” asked Sirius, placing his glass down.

“Merope Gaunt,” said Mary, “she’s the woman who owned the house that we found the ring in, in
England. We couldn’t find much on her besides family trees filled with dead people that end with
her. Was a stray lead we looked into when we were in hiding that fizzled after a while, but I was
reading a book today and it mentioned her.” She turned to Regulus. “Did you know she was a
witch? And a curse-breaker?”

Regulus blinked. “No, I didn’t.”

“What’s a curse-breaker?” asked Lily.

“Someone who breaks curses, I presume,” said Dorcas, and Mary whacked her without even
looking, but also nodded.

“...Essentially, yes. It’s nothing important, just a passing mention. I was reading a book on
historically cursed artefacts and she was mentioned in relation to this one trophy. She was able to
break a three-hundred year old curse on it. Calls her ‘prolific’ for her age.” She shrugged. “Doesn’t
say much else except the cup was stolen only a year after she’d done it and went missing for
twenty years until they found it in a funeral home.”

“Does it say if she got any proceedings?” Pandora asked from across the table. Mary shook her
head.

“No. Doesn’t say.”

She shrugged. “Hm. There are just traditional laws for curse-breakers. My father used to work in
law for them, see, and he’d always tell me that…because they grow in potency over time, if you
break a curse over two hundred years old you’re supposed to be given the equivalent of what it’s
worth in whatever currency you’re in. I think it might be outdated, though, he hasn’t practised in
years. I wouldn’t know what they do now considering most curse-breakers nowadays work in
alignment to the hunter association.”

A few eyes turned to him, and Remus shook his head. “I have no idea. I did a practical degree, not
a business one.”
Mary shrugged. “Oh, well. Maybe you can ask Moody if you get the chance.”

Dorcas nodded, and Remus sipped his wine until it was empty. And then he refilled it.

It took him four days to put it together. Four full days.

It also happened at 2:34 in the morning.

“Oh, fuck,” he said, loudly. To the darkness of the ceiling while lying in bed.

Sirius flipped over almost immediately. He was alert, as always, but groggy.

“What?”

“Holy fucking shit.”

“What?”

Remus grappled with the duvet, trying to whip it off him, and tumbled out of bed. He stumbled a
little bit on his feet all of a sudden, and rubbed at his eyes with all of the might he had until his
vision was colourful static.

When it came to he could see the outline of Sirius in the dark, now sitting up in front of him.

“What the fuck is it?” he asked, once more, and Remus groaned, turning and pacing.

“The cup,” he said, overflowing, “Merope Gaunt’s cup, and Hestia Jones, and the trophy room!”

He couldn’t see, but he could picture the look of confusion on Sirius’ face.

“I literally don’t understand about half of the words you just said.”

“Fuck,” Remus groaned, walking to the door. He pulled it open and squinted as the light bled
through and burnt his corneas. “I need to talk to Snape.”

“Remus.”

He stopped, hand around the door frame, and stepped back into the room. “What?”

“You’re not wearing any pants.”

Remus looked down. Blinked once, and then nodded.

“Right,” he said.

It took a minute or two for him to pull on clothes, and Sirius did alongside him, and then they
padded their way down the hall and across to the room Snape was in. Remus unlocked the door
and slowly pushed it open.

He was sitting up. Almost happy to see them.

Due to the fact that it was looking like Snape was going to be a long-term visitor (prisoner), they
had given him a fresh change of clothes and a shower, along with half a cup of blood a day. His
was half drunk. Evidently he was savouring it.

“Well,” he said. “Took you long enough.”

“Oh, I’m going to smack him,” Sirius muttered. Remus held up a hand to stop him, and walked
forward.

Snape looked at him expectantly.

“Merope Gaunt’s cup,” said Remus, cutting to the chase. Snape tutted.

“Not technically her cup,” he said. “Old jeweller named Helga, but that’s unimportant–”

“It’s the Horcrux,” Remus said, cutting him off, impatient, “right? The one Bellatrix has.”

“And why does she have it?”

Remus blinked. He gaped on it for a moment, his 3am haze of a mind racing, various tidbits of
information – cause and effect, cause and effect – until he landed on the most important one, and it
shone clear, glossy.

“To re-hide it,” he breathed, “after they stole it back from HI1. Curse-breakers are aligned with the
hunters association, so it was in the trophy room. Hidden in plain sight.” He turned, looking at
Sirius. In the dim light his face seemed to dance with shock, understanding, flickers of flames
against his skin.

Snape said nothing, but Remus could tell. He could tell he was right.

“So, who the hell is Merope Gaunt?” he demanded, turning back to him.

“His mother.”

Remus froze. Instantly.

“His what?”

Snape sat, unperturbed. He nodded. “The ring was hers, too. She was his mother.”

Remus gaped. He could do no else. The thought of Riddle having a mother didn’t even occur to
him. He sort of thought he had just spawned in some dark ditch and crawled his way out. He didn’t
seem humane enough to have such nurturing things as a mother; though, Remus was very aware
that a mother sometimes is not a mother but a monster.

“Okay,” said Sirius. “Okay. What the fuck.”

“Christ, so–” Remus muttered, “so, so the explosion was a ruse to take it back, re-hide it. Why did
they need to?”

“Dumbledore, I’d presume,” said Sirius. His eyes flickered to Snape, who betrayed no emotion. He
tutted, and looked back at Remus. “What of the hunter girl?

“She must’ve been compromised,” he murmured, “she must have planted the bombs. Or given
whoever did an in, and an out.” He turned back to Snape. “Who is Hestia Jones?”

Snape pursed his lips. “That I truly don’t know.”

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Your choice,” he shrugged, “but I am telling the truth. Merope Gaunt was his mother. She broke
the curse on that cup and they gave the family no compensation for it. So he killed them and took it
back.”

“Fucking hell,” Sirius breathed.

“Let me guess,” said Remus, dryly, “his first kills.”

“Bingo.”

“Sentiment,” he muttered. “It’s a killer.”

“It’s a Horcrux-maker, that’s what it is,” said Sirius. He rubbed his eyes and turned to Snape again.
“Why are you suddenly telling us the truth?”

“I told you I would prove I’m on your side.”

“If you’re going to prove that you’re on our side, explain your little arrangement,” spat Remus,
slightly harshly. “Who the hell are you loyal to? Why are you even here?”

Snape stared him down. Standing up at his given height and up on a level far higher than he might
ever reach, Remus had the power to wring him dry but Snape had the power to hide the bleeding
washcloth; it angered Remus to no end, how much power he truly did have in what he chose to give
and withhold. He simmered, watching for any cues. Enough time spent here staring at the brick
wall had given him a way to memorise the cracks in the surface. Snape took a deep, deep breath.

“I was loyal to the Dark Lord,” he said, quietly. The precursor to a story, not exactly for the ages
but he had the guild to make it feel like one. “Since I was turned until the day that Dumbledore
found me. He was dormant, had been almost four decades, and I was looking for my mother.”

Eileen Prince. The mother. Oh, Remus had forgotten about the fucking mother.

“Go on,” he said, warily. Sirius seemed to not be breathing in anticipation.

“He was powerful,” Snape said. “I could tell. I could sense it, for it was the same kind of power he
had. I had been looking for my mother, since he fell, as I was not allowed to when he was risen.
She was disapproving, so he banished her. Wanted her dead. But Dumbledore said he could help
me find her, if I were to spy for him.”

Sirius snorted. “You’re loyal.”

“I’m practical,” he shot back, irritably. “As much as I hate to give your sort a compliment, you
ripped into him to hell and back, Black. Nobody even knew if he was ever going to wake up. And
the arrangement was secret. No one was on my tail, as trusted as I was I was still turned, not born;
nobody cared what I did when your Pureblood brothers and sister were prancing around as faux-
nobility. I was in a position where, if Riddle should rise I would be able to prove unwavering
loyalty to him whilst also having an escape route.” A pause. “My loyalty has always been tied to
my survivability,” he said, with grit, at Sirius. “Don’t act like yours isn't, Black. I knew your
parents.”

Sirius fell inextricably quiet. So Snape gave it a moment, and then continued.

“He did,” he continued. “Help me. We spent years following leads and tracking her down. And
they were legitimate. I found places that my mother had been, that her scent was lingering; years
old but still there, proof that she had been living in the years I had not seen her. It quietened down
after five years. We didn’t find as much. And Dumbledore began to change. Grow stronger. He
showed me the Horcrux. I knew of Riddle’s plan, but I didn’t know the specificities, you see.
Dumbledore explained everything. His past, how Riddle got his own power, his brutality. He told
me of his plan. Of how he would end Riddle\s tyranny. He told me that, were he to do this, he
might be able to best him; he might be able to best everyone.”

“He made his own?” Remus asked, but Snape shook his head.

“No,” he murmured, “his soul was too valuable for him. He did not make his own. You said you
thought he was channelling the locket?”

Remus nodded.

“He wasn’t. He was… sucking it dry, if you will.”

Remus’ jaw dropped. It took him a moment to process this.

“He turned himself into one,” he whispered. “One of Riddle’s. He– stole his power?”

Remus turned to Sirius, standing, leaning back slightly. As if looking at everything from behind the
curve of his nose, everything below it, trying to get the bigger picture and failing to fall far enough
to do so, for the silence broke with a:

“That’s impossible,” said Sirius, immediately, shaking his head. Remus sighed.

Snape swallowed. “I wish it were.”

“It is,” Sirius spat, pacing agitatedly once around the room, his hands up at splayed against his
forehead, “how does one– no, he would’ve had to barter something in return, it would upset the
imbalance––he would’ve had to perform rituals to keep his own soul intact whilst draining the
power of Riddle’s and one of them would have overpowered the other, a witch’s soul and a
vampire’s soul are incompatible–”

“They are not,” said Snape, overbearing. Sirius fell silent. “One would think you of all people,
Black, would understand that everything in this life is a power play. Species has never mattered.
Your kind want to eradicate mine because your kind perceive yourselves to be stronger. And yet,
was not your mother killed by a witch?” His lips curled upwards. Sirius was breathing heavily,
angrily, confused and unravelled. The palm of Snape’s hands were red and commanding. He
continued. “At the base of every supernatural being is a natural, replenishing source of power. And
theirs are the same. They have always been the same. Dumbledore has known of Riddle since the
1920s, when they were truly equals, they were rivals, and they were the same. One could not ever
kill the other. They’d go round, and round, and round,” he was leaning forward, now, almost
hissing his words through his chapped lips, his teeth, the bone, “but the Horcruxes have magnified
his strength.” Snape, here, laughed. Bitterly. “Everything is about power, Black. Everything.
You’re so blinded by your own you do not see it.”

“How did he do it?” asked Remus.

“Transferring a spell like that…” said Sirius, squeezing his eyes shut in thought, “he– God, this is a
question for Pandora, but he’d–he’d have to give the vessel sustenance, I think. A spell this large––
it’d be sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice, to sustain the locket enough so he could unravel the
spell, rewrite its coding so it would not be attached to the original vessel but now attached to
himself. And he’d have to tie it to his own soul. In theory, if we are looking at their souls as
compatible power sources, surely it’d work as a natural amplifier for Dumbledore’s, because it is
an extension to his whole.”

“But something must have gone wrong,” said Remus, “because he’s dying.”
“Could be what Pandora said, about long-term effects? He is still a mortal, living being.”

“But what if it’s not?” asked Remus. “We know he doesn’t have the locket anymore, he doesn’t
have the vessel. These things aren’t natural. What if, without the final puzzle piece, everything
falls apart?”

Snape, sitting between them, very poignantly cleared his throat.

“Still present,” he said. Remus whirled around.

“What does this all mean for the locket, then?”

Snape smiled. Remus noted that he got some gratification out of his betrayal. His controllers'
secrets were pouring out like a waterfall; where he had been once Remus knew in this moment he
was not loyal to either Dumbledore nor Riddle. But he was not loyal to them either. My loyalty has
always been tied to my survivability, he’d said, bound up, a game of Russian roulette every time he
opened his mouth; he was spurred on out of selfish revenge. He wanted those that had wronged
him to suffer. Purebloods, witches. He trusted nobody but himself, because, in the end, relaying
these secrets chipped nothing off his shoulder but a clean conscience and one side of the war’s
undying gratitude to you. Loyalty, survivability. They needed him. Riddle does not.

As much as Remus hated him, he was fucking smart.

“It is near-useless,” said Snape, simply. “For what it was originally intended for, at least, but
instead of housing the one soul it now houses hundreds of sacrifices, burning on the remnants of
Riddle’s power.”

“So we still have to destroy it,” Remus murmured.

“However, the buzz is soft. It is practically unnoticed by they who have it.”

Sirius took a step forward, brow creasing.

“Who has it, now?” he asked, and Snape smiled.

“Not Dumbledore,” he said. “Because I stole it from him. He still doesn’t know. He trusted me.”
He cut off, here, sucked in his cheeks and released. “He shouldn’t have.”

“Where is it?”

“I took it and I pretended that I was still loyal to him and every day I fought against snapping his
neck. Every day for ten years,” Snape took a shuddering breath in, “I have had to restrain myself
from pushing him off the top of a tower and watching him fall for what he did.”

“Where is it, Severus–?”

“Sirius,” said Remus, holding out a hand. Snape looked at him.

He swallowed, thickly, and Remus knew. He knew.

“Your mother is one of the souls in that locket, isn’t she?” he asked.

“She was dead before we even started searching,” Snape replied, bitterly. “One of the very first. He
had been tracking her and her coven—that he would eventually slaughter like pigs—for years, and
so he knew all of the places she had been to keep me occupied while he used me for information on
Riddle. When the trails went cold we suspected it a dead end.” He breathed in, and it was
shuddering. “I stayed loyal to him for years after that, blind.”

Remus turned to pace a little, both hands covering his face. It seemed to just get worse and worse.

“So, who has the locket, now?” Sirius asked, cautiously. Entirely unsympathetic to his endeavour,
on the mark, he took a step forward. “What did you do with it?”

“Ah, I gave it away,” Snape said, “to a hooded man in a nightlife bar. Asked me if it was viable for
duplication.” He chuckled, a little bit, presumably at the irony of Dumbledore having already
duplicated it in the cave. “I told him, hell yes it is.”

Remus stopped.

He raised his head.

“Duplication?” he asked, turning, pacing forward. “Why would he want to duplicate it?”

“For no nefarious reasons, Lupin,” said Snape, squinting. “I’m still not sure if he ever did. All I
know is I saw the locket—the real locket—about five years ago. Around the neck of an extraneous
vampire in Riddle’s guard that nobody truly pays any attention to. Hidden in plain sight, one might
say. Albus has never been opposed to taking a page out of Riddle’s book.”

Oh. Oh, oh, oh, Remus’ chest was burning.

“What did the girl look like?” he asked, losing breath. He took a step forward. “Describe her to
me.”

Snape frowned. “I–”

“Describe her, Snape.”

“Tall, Asian,” he said, somewhat harried. “Shoulder length bleach-blonde hair last I saw her.
Turned around twenty-five–”

“No, she wasn’t,” Remus breathed, shaking his head. “No, no, she wasn’t turned at twenty-five,
she stuck that way.”

Sirius turned to him. “What do you mean?”

Remus gaped. The inexplicable inability to form words seized him, he could do no less than pull up
a shaky hand and reach into his shirt.

He gripped onto Astoria’s necklace and pulled it out from underneath his clothing, dangling it in
front of his chest.

The green gem danced in the moonlight.

“Is this the locket?” he breathed.

Snape’s jaw dropped. On another occasion Remus might have found pleasure in surprising him.
Right now he only felt it mirrored onto himself.

Sirius turned and looked at him, eyes equally as wide.

“That’s the Horcrux?” he asked.

 “No,” said Remus. “This is the duplicate.”

He let it fall against his chest.

“The real locket is with Daphne Greengrass.”

Chapter End Notes

okay so. I'm aware this plotline is super fucking convoluted I actually confused
MYSELF writing it sooo if you have any questions do ask pahahaha

as a rundown:
dumbledore is insane. like i fully turned him into a villain with no redeeming qualities
or nuance and I'm absolutely not sorry.
there are three lockets. think of it as regulus and dumbledore have essentially swapped
places from what they were in canon (D took the OG horcrux from the cave and
replaced it with the duplicate, regulus retrieved it). and then snape decided to do some
fuckery revenge stuff and ambrose greengrass has zero braincells so now there are
three and they have both duplicates but not the real thing. which is rather inconvenient
actually
aaand dumbledore has essentially drained the power from the locket himself and like...
split the horcrux? turned himself into a pseudo horcrux like mr potter was in canon. it's
kinda giving snow and coin in the hunger games trilogy in that dumbledore's reasoning
is to 'end riddle's tyranny' but in retrospect he's just as bad/tyrannical and wants the
power for himself. & he would have always been killed by it eventually but because he
used the locket as a vessel to balance it out with the sacrifices he theoretically couldve
lasted much longer, however now its been ten-ish years since snape stole it from him
(mortal horcruxes can only survive around 10, and only if youre supernatural) he's
beginning to die and is getting desperate. what a fool lmao
 twenty
Chapter Notes

hiii all <3

CW’s: (only two)
- character has a panic attack (and another mildly panics at the same time)
- there is EXPLICIT SMUT in this chapter. CW blood, CW violence, rough sex,
knife kink dynamic, etc

.. we all know about sirius’s knife kink ok yes it gets violent/bloody so if you're not
okay with that kind of stuff or just explicit smut in general (this is the worse it'll get
re:being explicit) i've underlined the last *** before it happens, but there is content
after there that isn't smut so maybe just. tread lightly - i feel like it'll be fairly obvious
(also please do remember sirius is a vampire & he heals; this is not an example of how
to practice having a knife kink, WE are HUMANS okay... don't do this LMAOOO)

“You had no idea?” Sirius was asking, standing over a table at 4:03am, with Remus to his left and
Ambrose, Miyuki and Astoria Greengrass sitting in a descending row at the table, like
schoolchildren. “There was no energy, no feeling–”

“No,” choked Ambrose. The past half an hour—most of it he had spent weeping after the discovery
that his daughter was A) alive and B) working for Riddle—had gathered only a few solid facts.
Firstly, that he had, in fact, been the one to take the locket from Snape in the bar, however many
years ago. The duplicate locket—Astoria’s—lay idly on the table, in the middle of them all. While
the real thing was with Daphne. Miles and hearts away.

Ambrose seemed innocent enough. He had given the original to his eldest and duplicated it for his
youngest, so they’d match. Said the gemstone reminded him of the Greengrass family crest.
Remus, personally, was quite sure he had only taken it because it was… well, green.

And Sirius was getting frustrated.

“And she never showed any sign of knowing what it was?” he asked, glass of whisky in his
flourishing hand. “There was no sign of her corruption before she disappeared? No way she was…
I don’t know, fraternising with them already?”

Between the lines, it read "no way you were’. Miyuki’s face—drained of colour upon this
discovery—hardened at this, but she said nothing, except: “No.”

Her lips were still lined with carmine red and her eyes were lined with charcoal. Remus wondered
if she ever slept, and then thought, probably not. Like Regulus. Maybe she runs too. Maybe she
actually knows where she’s going.

“She never did anything worrying,” said Miyuki, “she seemed like her usual self until the day she
disappeared.”

Sirius leaned on one hand on the desk, eyes narrowing. “She seemed like her usual self, or you
just… didn’t notice?” he asked, taking a sip from his drink.
“Until the very day she disappeared,” Miyuki said, abrasively, “she was the same. Nothing
changed.”

A moment's silence.

Sirius sipped.

“I don’t know what you think you’re insinuating, Sirius–”

“Oh, can’t be anything less than you being glorious fucking parents,” Sirius hissed, sarcastically,
slamming his glass onto the desk. “She can’t have just up and left for a purpose that heavisome
without any prior thought. I can tell you now, you notice that shit. That disillusionment. When you
care, you notice, Miyuki.”

Her jaw was dropped.

“Fuck you, Sirius,” she hissed.

Astoria’s lip was wavering. Without looking, her hand reached out to clasp onto hers; Miyuki was,
above all things, a mother.

“Sirius,” said Remus. “They don’t know anything.”

He turned back to the three of them. Astoria’s face was in her father’s chest, he was hugging her
close. Against Miyuki’s stoicism as she stood her ground there were tears in her eyes, too. But she
was angry. She had quite the right, actually.

Sirius had turned away. Remus sighed, and tugged on his sleeve.

“That was out of line,” he muttered, leaning in. “There’s no reason to fucking berate them, Sirius.
They’ve lost a kid.”

Sirius breathed in, deeply, and looked at him. He nodded.

When he turned, he avoided eye contact.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, shamefully. “I don’t mean to insinuate anything. It’s been a– stressful
night by all accounts.”

Miyuki said nothing. She simply got up to leave, extending a hand for her daughter to join her.
Astoria sniffled and wiped her nose on her sleeve, and then looked down to the locket. Back up to
Remus.

“Hey, Toria– I was thinking that I should keep this safe,” he said, gently, taking a step forward.
“Keep our original plan in place? Nothing has changed because of this. If anything, I’m more likely
to find her, and I’m still going to do everything I can to bring her home when I do.”

Astoria smiled, and nodded. Picking up the locket, she took Remus’ hand in her free one and
unfolded his fingers. She placed it in his palm and folded it back up again.

“But…” she started after a moment, suddenly wary. “What if she doesn’t think it’s me? What if she
thinks you’ve killed me and stolen the locket, or something?”

Remus contemplated this.

“Tell me something only she would know,” he said, quietly, looking back up into her eyes. He was
leaning over, so she was basically at eye level.

Her eyes glazed over as she thought about this.

“When I was a child,” she said, eventually, still sort of sniffly, “Daphne always used to read me the
story of Kaguya-hime. It’s a Japanese tale about a girl who’s found as a baby in Bamboo. She's so
beautiful that everybody wants to marry her, even the Emperor, who she falls in love with—at
least, I always thought she did—but she can’t marry, because she’s actually this– this princess from
the Moon. And Daphne always used to say that–” she swallowed, lips downturning, and then
laughed, as if embarrassed, “–that I was pretty enough to be the princess from the Moon.”

Remus let out a wet laugh. She let herself grin in reciprocation.

“You are pretty enough to be the princess from the Moon,” he said, and she shook her head.

“I didn’t want to be,” she said. “‘Cause if I was Kaguya-hime, that means I’d have to leave her at
some point. So Daphne said that she’d take the mantle, and that she’d go to the Moon instead of
me, and find her way back home.”

She thinned her lips. Looked up at Remus with sad eyes.

“Tell her I’m waiting by the bamboo,” she said, shrugging. “She’ll know what that means.”

A small, stifled sob came from Miyuki. She turned away.

“Bamboo. Kaguya-hime,” whispered Remus, nodding. “Got it.”

Astoria laughed and it was wet.

“Your pronunciation is terrible,” she said, and before Remus could even get a chance to answer she
had walked two paces around the corner of the table and wrapped her arms around him in a hug.

The top of her head barely reached his chin. He squeezed her and closed his eyes, digging his nose
into her hair and holding her as tight as he possibly could.

She left, eventually, in tow with her parents. The door swung shut, and they were alone.

Remus wiped his eyes and turned to look at Sirius, still sitting facing away from him against the
desk. His glass—nearly empty but not quite—was placed beside him. Remus slid into the other
side.

“It was unfair to take that out on them,” he whispered, after a moment. Sirius swallowed viscerally
but did not reply. “Miyuki has never been anything but cooperative. She’s a mother and one of her
children is missing. You didn’t have to have a go at her like that.”

“I know,” Sirius said, thickly. And then, quieter; “I know.”

Remus sighed. He would give the world and then some to be in Sirius’ head, but he wasn’t. He was
just the hook caught onto the forcefield around his body. So he did what, in this orbit, he could do
best. He shuffled a bit closer. He moved until their pinkies brushed against each other, and then he
crept his around Sirius’, linked. They were quiet for a long moment.

“Your head loud?” he asked.

A beat, and then Sirius shook his head.

“My senses,” he said, frowning, tightening his grip around Remus’ hand.

He crept his other fingers over and Remus turned his, allowing Sirius to slide their fingers together.

“Like in a hyperarousal type way?”

“Slightly,” he replied. “It just feels like I’ve been… turned up. There’s more to contend with and
I’m not sure where to start.”

“Do you think it’s…” Remus started, turning to face him. Sirius turned his own head. Remus was
standing straight and Sirius was slouching, and he looked so small. Swallowing, he tried to
continue the sentence. “I know we talked about there being…more. After the Basilisk. Are you
thinking that’s a metaphorical more or a physical more?”

He bit his lip. “Bit of both, I think,” he muttered, after a moment, low against the limelight.

“You’re stronger,” said Remus. Laying out the one thing they seemed to know for certain.

His eyes flickered down to the ghosts of bruises that had been left on his wrists and his mind
flickered back to a glass smashed out of complete nowhere at dinner.

“That’s the thing. I’ve never had to regulate myself before,” Sirius said, frowning harder. “I’ve
always known myself. You know? I’ve never broken a fucking glass accidentally. I’ve never left
bruises on a…”

“You can say partner,” said Remus, smiling. “Sexual partner. It’s okay. You’ve had eight hundred
years more experience than me and I’m aware you didn’t spend it celibate.”

This was stupid, and got him to laugh, which was what Remus had been aiming for. He squeezed
his hand and nodded.

“Partner,” he continued, still smiling, “unless purposeful. I know how to be delicate with humans.
Or– when. But now, I…”

Remus nodded. He looked at Sirius, deeply, for a moment, and then tugged at his hand. Sirius
shuffled towards him and leaned his head on Remus’ shoulder, exhaling slowly, the both of them
staring at the wall.

It was almost a hilarious juxtaposition. For he was so little, here, now. So vulnerable. And perhaps
Remus should be scared at the prospect of his partner having the ability to crush him, hurt him, kill
him—but, he quite thought that Sirius had always had those abilities. Had that not been what
Remus had liked best? Their relationship had alwaysbeen laced with that threat, that beautiful
danger. Intentional or not; this was nothing new. His strength, broken glass and broken skin, none
of that was new, none of that was special. What was special was the moments in which he was
gentle. The in-betweens. Figuring out the balance.

“You should go to Poppy about that at some point,” he said, breaking the silence. “It’s another
thing we should probably think about. What about you’s different. Just so we know.”

“I don’t think I can handle another thing,” murmured Sirius. “There are too many things.”

“And it’s 4am,” whispered Remus. Sirius raised his head to look at him. “We don’t have to think
about any of them until tomorrow, yeah?”

Sirius took a moment to contemplate this and then nodded.

“Kiss me?” he asked, giving him a weak smile against the dim unnatural light. “Just kiss me.”

Remus leaned in and pressed his lips to Sirius’. Gentle, gentle. And the reminiscent red flame
against his throat was missed, yes, but oh how Remus loved him this way.

The knowledge that a creature so goddamn deadly and ruinous could care so deeply, fall apart so
easily, be so docile, malleable and drunken under his and only his enticing thumb was something
so alluring to Remus. It was just so inane, the idea that he should care about the way that Sirius
could hurt him when, here, under the 4am moon, he had complete, utter control. Here, Sirius had
peeled back every layer. Had given him the golden honey underneath. It was slick and cold on his
deficient lips, and this monster who cared enough to consume himself whole, he would extinguish
the sun for Remus if it crossed him. He’d give him nothing fucking less. This—whatever this was
—changed nothing, if not making Remus more enticed around the darkness that was only tamed
for him. O monster of mine, he’d say, again and again. Why do you bleed so freely? There is blood
everywhere, on the floor, oozing out of your very pores. You bleed and you bleed.

The bloodstains had been on his hands for years, though, long after they were washed away. And
maybe Remus wasn’t sure who had the power. Maybe that’s what made it fun. Sirius Black,
volatile and brave, spindly fingers and temptress teeth. Remus wanted to tear him apart, limb for
limb. Whispering you’re mine, you’re mine, you’re mine into each wound until they bled to his
metronome.

Sirius would let him.

So. Under these gloomy lights, it all comes down to: Why should Remus be worried about Sirius
hurting him? He had done that before. And why should he be worried about Sirius killing him? He
had attempted to do that before too, and, spoiler alert; he wasn’t very good at it.

There was no reason for him to care about this thing. It changed nothing. Remus got the idea that
after the conversation they’d had the other day, Sirius thought he would run away, but Remus
would not. Because they’re patient with each other. Worst parts, best parts, blurred lines, etcetera.

At a natural standstill he pulled away, peppered one or two soft kisses to his wanting lips, and then
pushed himself off the desk, grabbing Sirius’ hand.

“Come on,” he said. “I haven’t had a wink of sleep. Nothing has to be sorted right now, yeah? Let’s
go to bed.”

Sirius went with him, begrudgingly, and Remus threw an arm around him to keep him close to his
chest as they got the door.

“I’ll even give you a piggyback upstairs if you want.”

“That’s insulting. Let’s do it.”

If anyone were to open their doors on the trek across hallways to get back to the bedroom, they
would’ve seen their lethal pureblood leader riding loose-limbed on the back of a hunter that was
not one twenty-eighth of his age and not one millionth of his strength, inside or out, but they
would’ve seen the lazy smile upon their lips and perhaps been distracted by the entire conundrum.

If anyone were to listen in on the hallway of the east wing they might’ve heard quiet snoring, or
they might’ve heard light kisses, contented innocent sighs and perhaps two drifting souls indulging
in the moment of 4am peace before hellfire in the morning.

If anyone were to feel—really feel—open their hearts and separate their ribs it would’ve been
sweet honey and two hands holding onto each other, the centre of the Earth, perhaps. Not letting go
even in a black hole. Not giving up til they emerged through to the other fucking side, and
daybreak washed relief over them once more.

***

“So,” said Marlene, the next hell-inducing morning, everybody caught up to speed. “What do we
do with this information?”

The impending question.

Met with, predictably, utter silence.

“Right,” she said, clapping her hands together. “That’s fantastic. Thanks, team.”

Pandora sighed.

“I don’t know what we’re meant to do right now,” she said. There were a bunch of murmured
agreements. “I mean, we have teams working on different areas, right? We have a lot of leads.
Ongoing attempts to track Dumbledore down. Ongoing attempts to track the locket, obviously.
And now, Daphne, too. Miyuki and Astoria are up there now, finding things we can use for
locators.”

“She’ll be cloaked,” said Sirius. Dora shrugged.

“Worth a shot, isn’t it?”

“What about the Dementors?” asked Sirius.

“We’re working on it,” murmured Lily.

“But in the meantime?”

“Well, it’s not like anyone can go into the city at the moment,” said Mary. “He’s winning.”

“He’s not winning,” said Regulus, quietly.

“Well he’s got a fucking leg up.”

“I say,” said Marlene, “while we can’t increase the density of operations within the city, we
hammer down on the outsides. Make a statement of ourselves. Show him that his attempt to corner
us isn’t working.”

“I say we do the opposite,” Dorcas said.

The room went silent.

“Oh,” said Marlene, her mouth curling around the vowel. She leaned forward, resting her chin in
her hands. “You do, do you?”

“Yeah,” said Dorcas, leaning forward herself. “I say we disappear. He’s not winning; yes, he has
got a leg up, but we have too. In terms of assets—what with the information we have, the
Horcruxes destroyed, even the kid—we’re equal. But in terms of power, he has that over us. So I
say we show that we have the power. By doing exactly what he wants. By disappearing.”

Marlene opened her mouth, and then closed it.

“Erm… I’m not following…” she said, shaking her head, airily. Dorcas sighed.

“It’s been three weeks since these two,” a gesture towards Remus and Regulus, “went off to find
the kid, had that encounter with Bellatrix, blah, blah. And Malfoy Manor was, what, six and a half
weeks before that, right? What have we been doing?”

An uncomfortable silence. It was obviously meant to be rhetorical, but the silence went on for a
beat too long, provoking Lily to say:

“I mean… I singed Regulus’ eyebrows off yesterday?” she said, glancing up and down the table.

Regulus closed his eyes and thinned his lips.

“Thank you, Lily,” he murmured, nodding. “Thank you, truly, for telling everyone that.”

Mary, sitting beside Regulus, stifled a laugh. There was a thump under the table and she gasped in
pain, but Remus was sure that it was not related.

“You lot are fools,” said Dorcas, shaking her head; and then she doubled down. “No. We’ve been
wondering where he was, right? They all went completely off-grid, and we suffered. They gained
power over us by disappearing. We spent our days lamenting and being anxious what their next
move would be, whilst they spent theirs with a leg up following us and the operations we tried to
fill out in the meantime. So I say we do the same to them. Recall everyone still in the city, halt all
off-ground operations, and wait.” She paused, and then smiled. “Halt them all… except for
Andromeda.”

Andromeda and Ted had left to tail Bellatrix on her Horcrux-hiding mission not too long ago. They
were somewhere in Europe, and Bella was running like she’d never run before. An oncoming
threat.

The more Remus thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea. Because—

“—doubling down would be playing his game yet again,” muttered Remus. “He’s provoking us.
Reverse-psychology. He doesn’t really want us to disappear, because he knows that we have his
life in our hands.”

“Have had, plural,” said Dorcas, snapping her fingers, “twice, in fact. Come on. You destroyed the
diary close enough for him to fucking feel it.”

“You think it’ll scare him,” Sirius said.

“I know it’ll scare him,” she said, not missing a beat. “Hell, I think he’s already scared. We are a
genuine threat. Threats are scary. The fact that we know his secret, that we’ve been efficient
enough to destroy two out of six of them—that’s scary.” She paused. “But scary things aren’t as
scary in the light, are they, Black? The real monsters…they lurk in the darkness.”

Sirius’ smile grew, slowly, from a smug smile to an impressed grin.

“I think she’s right,” said Regulus, nodding once. “If he thinks we’re cooking up something
threatening, he’ll want to lure us out to assess it. Especially if the only activity he can find is
Andromeda tailing Bella.”

“It’s like impending doom,” muttered James, humorously. Regulus’ lip twitched.

“So, we disappear to make him come to us,” said Mary.

Marlene exhaled. Very slowly.

“I guess,” she said, eyes flickering over to Dorcas, “we disappear to make him come to us, then.”

Dorcas nodded. Sirius was still looking at her, leaning on his hand, hair falling wispily to one side.
He was smiling.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re fucking insane, Meadowes?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Marlene, last night.”

James choked on his tea.

“Alright,” said Marlene, clapping her hands together, standing up so fast her chair creaked
horribly. Regulus frowned and whacked James on the back a few times as he spluttered. “Okay,
that’s—erm, meeting over, strategy decided, right? Yeah. Mary, keep trying to contact the dark
covens you’ve said might have leads on Dumbledore’s army in Europe. Regulus, keep— burning,
your new eyebrows look great by the way, I’ll get the recall in order,” she took two steps back, and
then frowned, huffing and shuffling her clipboard against her chest. She waved, vaguely. “Go on.
Dismissed. Shoo.”

Leaving without a word and triggering the shuffling of people around them getting up, Remus
turned to Dorcas, eyebrows still raised.

“I think you might just be the first person in existence to fluster Marlene McKinnon,” he muttered,
and she laughed.

“Glad to be of service,” she said. And then; “You know, I think I get it now. The thing.”

“The thing?” asked Remus.

“Well. It’s more than Sirius just giving good head, isn’t it?”

Regulus, standing across the room, winced. They both turned to him.

“Yes?”

“That’s— ” he gestured, clunky and aimlessly. “Brother,” he groaned, after a moment, face
scrunched.

Dorcas challenged him with a truly tantalising eyebrow, as he stared for a moment, and then
deflated. Shaking his head in defeat and something like incredulity as he walked away.

“Prude!” Dorcas yelled after him.

He flipped her off as he walked out.

“Please do that more often,” said Sirius as the door closed, piping up from the corner of the room
James had pulled him aside to after the meeting. James was laughing.

Dorcas rolled her eyes and pulled Remus away by the arm.

“Anyway,” she continued, walking through the door out into the hall. “What I mean is. Perhaps I
judged you a bit too harshly on the whole… eight year ongoing vampire-enjoying thing.”

“And is this your apology?”

“Pfft. No. I still don’t like them.”

An utter lie, but Remus didn’t mention it.

“But?”

“But,” she said, grinning. “...They’re awfully fun to vex, aren’t they?”

Remus, walking beside her, stopped in his tracks. She kept going, turning to walk backwards,
cackling.

“You–” he started, grinning. “I swear to God. If you drive Marlene McKinnon crazy and she can’t
run this place anymore, you’re going to be the one replacing her!”

“We both know that I should be the leader anyway!” she called from down the corridor. “That’s
what vexes her so badly!”

With a reverberating harmony of laughter, she disappeared out of sight around the corner. Remus
stood, shaking his head fondly, and felt a familiar presence appear behind him. He didn’t even
have to turn around.

“Marlene is toast,” said Remus, plainly.

“Oh, yeah,” Sirius agreed, immediately. “She’s absolutely done for.”

Remus smiled, and he turned. Reached up to tuck a piece of Sirius’ hair behind his ear, and cocked
his head.

“Anyway,” he said. “You wanna go talk about our sex life within vague earshot of your brother to
make him uncomfortable?”

Sirius grinned, instantly.

“Oh my God. Please.”

***

Now, disappearing was easier than normal when you’re already living in the most warded up few
square metres that exist on this side of the globe.

However. When all operations are put on hold for the greater good (aka attempting to scare a big
bad vampire overlord) and you are not, in fact, part of any greater operation, because Minerva
fucking McGonagall is living in your house and has in fact taken over her rightful leadership of he
hunters and is commandeering the search for Dumbledore and/or the rest of the HI2 hunters…
well. You happen to get a bit bored.

Marlene and Dorcas, going head to head in trying to run this place better than the other, were
absent more often than not. James, Regulus, Mary and Lily—whatever the hell was going on there
—burning and sizzling and dancing and living, they were hard to find and even harder to approach
when you did find them. Pandora… was, well, you didn’t find her, she found you. Andromeda was
halfway across the globe. Sirius was sort of flitting everywhere he had to be, like the mortar
squeezed between the bricks; he was needed more often than not, especially now everybody had
been recalled.

And Remus was bored.

Nobody had ever told Remus how fucking boring a war can get.

It’s not like he had never been on long cases. He had. The longest case Remus had ever been on
lasted about three and a half months. It was, actually, the lead he was tracking in Edinburgh the
second time that he had ever met Sirius, when the vampire had cornered him in a back alley and
informed him of his name. Granted, it wasn’t three and a half months spent in Edinburgh; the
coven of vampires that he was there tracking had him trailing across Scotland, down into Wales
and then bloody across the sea to Ireland. He tracked them down in Galway with (eventually, when
he had stopped being so stubborn) Mary’s help. That was a long case.

But this wasn’t like a case. Sure, typical cases would include having to sit around once the trail
went cold or the research ran dry and wait for a magic solution, but typical cases were not like this.
Typical cases were not decades of antagonism. Typical cases were not waiting for the move to
counter your move to counter theirs. Even after their litany of discoveries, it was a back and forth,
darting around each other, in peripherals; it was slow. It was a painfully slow dance and Remus,
believe it or not, was bored.

Being best friends with Dorcas Meadowes, however, always afforded him some kind of
entertainment.

Remus was sitting idly in his bedroom (Sirius’ bedroom) on his bed (Sirius’ bed) on his laptop (this
was not Sirius’, but he definitely used it, often, when he was too lazy to find his own) when it all
happened.

He had thought, at first, that the yelling he was hearing was adjacent to the backyard, coming from
the kids play-fighting or being raucous as they usually were, but after a moment of listening he
realised that it was way too loud to be coming from that far away. In fact, it sounded like it was in
the next room to him.

He got up, opened his door tentatively. In just enough time to witness Marlene’s door, to the
opposite of him down the hall, fly open, and one Dorcas Meadowes stumble out.

“—pretentious,” Marlene was saying, the anger in her voice audible now that he could make up the
words, “fucking know-it-all I’ve ever known—”

A piece of black clothing came shooting out of the open door. It hit Dorcas directly in the face.

“With no regard for anybody’s feelings except your own—” she came stalking out the door as
Dorcas stepped away, down the hall. Marlene was wearing no pants and a long, button-up shirt that
fell down to her thighs. Remus was quite sure it was James’.

“Yeah, what else?”

“You’re infuriating,” she leaned down in the doorframe to pick something up, and lobbed a pair of
jeans at Dorcas that she caught skilfully. Marlene, when she got up, was red-flushed and flustered.
“Fucking– ignorant as all hell when all I’ve ever been is nice to you–”

“I never wanted you to be nice to me.”

“You throw shit in my face–”

“Maybe if you didn’t do shit, I wouldn’t have to throw it.”

“You stupid,” Marlene’s voice was high-pitched, now. She threw a bra at Dorcas, which she
caught, “fucking,” throwing a pair of joggers, which she dodged, “hunter!” two shoes that she had
to duck to miss, arms full with clothes already.

Marlene groaned bodily, turning to stalk back into her room and coming back a few moments later
with her arms full of clothes; all of which she lobbed at Dorcas so aggressively that she had to
cower as the clothing shower hit her.

“Fuck off, Dorcas!”

“Gladly.”

“Go fuck yourself, see if I care.”

“Gladly.”

The door slammed shut.

Dorcas staggered back another few paces, pieces of clothing, underwear and shorts and tops falling
as she went. She turned to Remus, who was standing at his doorframe, gaping; when she locked
eyes with him her face twisted, immediately, into a hazy grin.

“She’s brilliant, isn’t she?” she said, eyes heavy-lidded.

Remus’ eyebrows almost flew off his head.

“She’s–” he started, blinking. “What?”

“Brilliant,” Dorcas said again. As if she wasn’t holding her own clothes like she was in a cliche
breakup song. She turned to look at Marlene’s door, and sighed. “Wow.”

“Did you…vex her a bit too much?” Remus asked, tentatively. She turned to him.

“Hm? Oh,” she said, frowning down at the clothes she had in her arms. She had a little look
through them, socks falling out of her arms, before pulling out a hot-pink tight-fitting crop top, and
a black bra. She immediately grinned and dropped everything else, holding them both up. “Nope.
Not this time.”

Remus looked between the two items, baffled.

“I’m… not following.”

“These are Marlene’s.”

A moment.

“Still not following.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Watch,” she said, holding up a finger, before jumping over the clothes strewn all down the
corridor and knocking gently on Marlene’s door.

It jerked open.

“Hi,” said Dorcas, as if nothing had happened. She held up the clothes. “You gave me these by…
mistake.”
A moment.

And then Marlene’s hand appeared—from his angle, Remus could not see her body—and
wrenched both items out of her hands. She briefly appeared to lean around the corner and punt
them down the corridor, and then she disappeared, only showing her skin once more via her hand
grabbing Dorcas by the collar of her shirt and yanking her back into the bedroom.

The door slammed shut.

Remus blinked, as everything fell into silence at the closed door. After a moment he became quite
positive he was not gonna get a resolution to this; but when he was about to go back inside, James
Potter appeared at the opposite end of the hall, on the way to his own room.

He paused. They made eye contact.

“You know what,” said James, eyeing the panties strewn on the floor, “I’m not gonna ask.”

“I think it’s best that you don’t.”

***

An hour and a half later, his door opened, and in came Dorcas, clad in a silk dressing gown, hair
sticking up at every angle.

“Ta-daaa~~” she said, leaning against the doorframe and doing jazz hands.

“Come here,” Remus demanded, pushing his laptop aside, “right now. And tell me everything.”

(She did.)

(“Everything” is a very, very wide encompassing term.)

(Remus learned that the hard way.)

***

When the novelty of Marlene and Dorcas’ odd sort of rivalry (that’s what she called it) but also
friends with benefits situation (also what she called it) but also kind of falling-in-love situation (this
was what Remus called it; Dorcas was in the pushed-against-the-books-in-a-library, we’re-just-
friends-let’s-kiss-on-the-balcony era of denial, so Remus decided to cut her some slack) ended,
however, this place didn’t get less boring. S(irius almost slipping on a hot pink bra that had been
hiding behind a plant pot and not picked up had only entertained him for like… two hours.)

So now, yet again, he was—

“I’m bored,” he groaned, a few days past the locket revelation, on the sofa in front of the fire.

—and making it everybody else’s problem.

He was splayed out onto the sofa. There were a few people on the other side of the room but no
one seemed to be paying attention to him, except for the one recipient of his complaints, one James
Potter.

(This was a target. Here was potential.)

James chuckled and nudged at Remus’ leg, asking for him to make room. He swung them off the
side of the sofa and sat up, rubbing his hands aggressively into his eyes and then dropping them.
Turning to him, James looked very amused.

“I’m bored,” he repeated, irritably.

“I gathered,” James said. He leant back into the sofa and crossed his legs. Very debonair. Remus
rolled his eyes.

The house was less packed now that they’d sorted out the order of what the hell was going on and
everybody had fallen into their adjusted routines (Marlene had almost printed out actual daily
timetables, before realising that that was slightly too neurotic) and so things were flowing easily.
This didn’t change the fact that Remus, however, didn’t have to really hold anything on his back
anymore.

And where that might’ve been a relief, for some—God knows Remus would’ve loved to use this
on some of his hunting cases—at this moment it was more of a hindrance to him, because it left
him with barely anything productive to do except for getting in people’s way. Perhaps it was a bit
unhealthy. He relied his whole life on ignoring all of the bad by plunging himself into cases—God,
sometimes he’d wreck his own health for them—it was just an intrinsic pull. Something magnetic
towards the supernatural. You’d think it’d be solved surrounded by a truckload of them, but no, he
itched to kill something, he itched to hurt something.

And yet that itch could not be scratched anytime immediately, for, in the wake of the pandemic-
like fog and confusion that the dementors were swarming over the city (one more attack, multiple
casualties) he couldn’t even go out into the city and do anything until Lily’s fiendfyre summoning
was stable enough to go out with them. Which it was not just yet.

He was quite sure he was feeling a little stir crazy.

“Yes, you are,” said James.

And he said that out loud.

“Fuck me,” he moaned, leaning back. “I’m tired. I wish Riddle would fucking come out of hiding
already.”

“We’ve been provoking him for less than a week. How impatient are you?”

Remus squinted at him. “Sometimes, over the past few years when it took Sirius a little bit longer
than usual to run into me I’d ignore my responsibilities to try and investigate vampire-like murders
to see if I could find him myself.”

James thinned his lips.

“That impatient,” he said, nodding. “Got it.” He paused, and then, “At the end of the day, he’s used
his playing card. Our stalemate sucks, but it’ll have a good outcome, and that’s what’s important.”

Remus sighed. He understood this. Didn’t make it any less annoying. Could Riddle, Dumbledore,
Daphne or anyone not send up a flare or something to give them a vague idea of where they were?
He was quite sure it would make life a lot easier for all parties, to be quite honest.

“Andromeda’s still not found anything?”

“Nope,” said James, “but she’s back in the country, at least. Somewhere in North Carolina. I’m
starting to think Bella might be sending her on a wild goose chase, to be quite honest. She’s been
tracking her from Iceland to Aberdeen to bloody fucking Brighton.”

“Or she’s trying to get rid of her before she stashes the cup,” Remus murmured. And then: “Or
she’s already done it and she’s just having fun with her.”

“All viable options, my friend,” James said. “I guess we’ll see.”

I guess we’ll see. The mantra of the past few weeks of Remus’ life.

He groaned again, this time slightly petulant and childish.

“I’m fucking bored,” he whined, throwing an arm over his face like a dramatic eighteenth century
twink. James laughed heartily at this.

“Where’s your other half?”

Remus squinted over his arm. “Not sure whether you mean Dorcas or Sirius.”

“I mean Dorcas, and quite frankly I’m insulted by the fact that you consider Sirius to be your other
half when clearlyhe is mine.”

Remus laughed. “Oh, she’s out on the grounds somewhere. Being a busybody. I think she’s with
Fenwick. She’s always wanted to learn how he uses that bloody fucking massive knife of his
efficiently; I guess there’s no better time than now, when nothing’s really happening.”

James rolled his eyes fondly. “Sirius still upstairs?”

He nodded. Today, Sirius had booked a consultation with Poppy to try and further their knowledge
into what the hell is (scientifically) going on with him. Last Remus checked Pandora was up there
too; his ailment, whatever that may be, is a challenge, and Lord knows that she loves those.

Come to think of it, where was everyone? Pandora and Sirius were upstairs. Last time he did a turn
of the house, Draco had been lounging on the sofas down with Astoria beside him, throwing
popcorn at each other, whilst Percy and Oliver had stowed themselves away in a study (he did not
listen) and Isabela hung out with the girls and Jul under the shadowed safety of the patio. Mary had
been in the library all day. She had holed herself up there upon finding an old book in Hebrew that
required a translatory spell. Dorcas was out with Benjy.

Upon thinking of where Regulus might be, Remus faltered, and then craned his neck. The time
read 6pm.

“What day is it today?” he asked, frowning.

“Saturday.”

He sat up. “Shouldn’t you be out with Lily?”

James sighed. Remus’ eyebrow raised higher.

“What?”

“I should,” he said, rolling his sleeve up. His forearm was bandaged up. “But she burned me
accidentally and so she banished me from today’s training session. Like, fully banished me. There
were threats.”

Remus frowned and picked at the bandage. He peeked through it to reveal the brown skin
underneath, except it was more red and raw, singed and blistering up his forearm.

“Fuck, James, did you go to Poppy for a salve?"

He shook his head. “She’s a bit busy, if you don’t recall. It’ll heal by tomorrow. It’s just taking a
bit longer than usual.”

Remus squinted at him, worried, but accepted this. James knew his body better than anyone. And
he was no stranger to complaints, so he must truly be fine.

Or he was putting on a brave face for Lily.

Could be either or, to be honest.

“Are they still out there, now?” he asked. “Did Mary show her face? She was in the library, last I
checked.”

James nodded. “Yes, to both. I think–"

He cut off abruptly. His eyes widened. Remus barely had time to register his change in
countenance before his face relaxed into something so suddenly tame it was, to be frank, terrifying.

“Yeah, I thought that mid-air tackle was cool too. Kinda felt like a superhero. I really got that guy
good, didn’t I?”

Remus gaped.

“James, what–”

“No thanks to Lav, of course, with the witchy skills, but I feel like there was a real short window
after I pounced and I really think I got it smack bang. You remember the heads on the floor of
Malfoy Manor? The way we’d kick them into the canvas and rip it?” He laughed. It was the fakest
thing Remus had ever seen. “Good times.”

Remus opened his mouth but didn’t manage to get a word in before the door creaked open, and
Regulus Black walked in.

James straightened up. Turned around, and they locked eyes. For a moment, it was all quiet.

“You, er–” said Regulus, awkwardly, holding something in his hand. He flourished it—Remus saw
it was a phone. “You forgot this. Outside.”

James blinked. He licked his lips.

“Oh,” he said, blinking profusely. “Erm. Thank you.”

He reached out as Regulus reached forward, except they both thrust a little too hard and their
knuckles brushed. James jumped and jerked his hand upwards, pinching his fingers to retrieve the
phone and then pulled it close to his chest, as if it would run away.

Regulus hesitated, for a moment. He looked briefly at Remus and gave him a nod but looked away
before Remus could even nod back, back to James.

“Thanks,” said James, again. Regulus nodded.

He opened his mouth, as if to say something, and then closed it almost as fast as it had opened. He
nodded once more and then left, with haste.

James turned back incredibly slowly. As if he knew what was coming.

“What,” Remus started, “the fu–”

James clamped a hand over his mouth.

“Shh-shh-shh,” he hissed, near-silently. He stayed there for about ten seconds, eyes unfocused as
he was listening, and then apparently he heard something that contented him and dropped his
hand.

Remus felt quite insane, actually. But it didn’t take a genius to put 2 and 2 together.

“Were you trying to impress him?” he asked, trying with all of his might to suppress a laugh and
James’ eyes widened—he thinned his lips in obvious embarrassment.

“Shut up.”

“By telling him how many people you had murdered?”

“Listen,” James hissed, but it was more of a futile, autonomous reply. He had no excuse for his
actions. It was exactly what it looked like.

Remus, in a very belated and very raucous gesture, threw his head back and cackled.

“Shut up!”

“Whatever–ha, whew, whatever floats your boat, I guess,” he said, through giggles. “Can’t say you
kicking heads like footballs did anything for me but if it does it for him then who am I to judge?”

The end of his sentence progressively raised in pitch until only dogs could hear him and he
collapsed, again, into laughter, squealing as James hit him with a pillow, and then hit him again.
Not even he could resist an exasperated smile, however.

“Oh, my God,” Remus wheezed, after confiscating the pillow and then confiscating another from
James’ embarrassed, flushed hands. He avoided Remus’ eye. “Fuck me. That was painful to
witness.”

“Shut up.”

“Have you even made an attempt to talk to the guy, James? Properly?”

“I’ve talked to him.”

“About?”

James pursed his lips. “Well, yesterday we had a very concise thirty second conversation about
how Lily’s training was coming along.”

“Oh, how riveting.”

“Shut up,” James groaned, yet again, hissing the last word; apparently suddenly aware of people all
around.

He shuffled in closer. Remus leaned forward. They looked like a pair of gossiping Geraldines.
“What am I even supposed to say?” James hissed, taking his glasses off and rubbing his eyes with
his hands.

“Hello?” Remus suggested. “How have you been in the past hundred years that we haven’t known
each other biblically? Would you like to come to a bible reading with me tonight to reminisce?”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“I’m sorry,” Remus laughed. “I don’t know, James. Ask him how he is. Care about his wellbeing.
Talk about something other than Lily. I know they’re friends and everything but—well, I still
doubt he wants to hear about all of that.”

James stopped. “What do you mean?”

Remus laughed, but James did not reciprocate.

“Wait, you’re serious?” he asked, his smile dropping. James frowned even deeper.

“Yes?”

“Oh–” he leaned back, thinning his lips, trying to figure out how to put this. He cleared his throat.
“Well… he’s, you know. Your ex. And Lily is your current… flame.”

“Don’t say flame,” said James, grimacing, “terrible joke.”

“Escapade,” Remus put forth instead. “Rendezvous. Lover.”

James was still squinting at him, in pure confusion. Remus deflated.

“He’s jealous, James,” he said, softly, almost laughing at the absurdity of this conversation. “He’s
jealous.”

“No, he’s not,” James said, immediately, scrunching his nose and shaking his head. “Regulus
Black doesn’t get jealous. Nope.”

“...Are you sure?” asked Remus, raising his eyebrows in genuine confusion.

“Yes,” said James, laughing slightly, “no, he’s not, he never—Well.” He froze, focusing on a point
just over Remus’ shoulder, squinting in deep thought. “Well, there was that one time…hm… and
then there was… ah…and then one time in Rome, when the girl… and he… Oh.”

James’ face fell, almost in dread.

“Oh,” he said. “Yes. Yes, as it turns out, he does get jealous.”

“I know,” Remus said, very poignantly.

James groaned, head falling into his hands.

“What is he–” he said, exasperated, “even jealous for, I––look. We were together for less than a
decade at the turn of the last century. A hundred and twenty years ago. Ten years! Over a lifetime
ago! That’s nothing!"

“Yeah,” Remus said, sarcastically, always finding amusement in the warped vampiric perception of
time, “absolutely nothing.”
James ignored him. “And I’m with Lily, now,” he said, very resolutely, “and I—I see him every
day, we’re together for sometimes hours on end every other day, hanging out and training her—
why doesn’t he ever say anything then?”

Remus grimaced. “Think you’ve just answered your own question, mate. He’s not exactly going to
throw a tantrum until you choose him, is he? He’s a bit of a tragedy, yes, but he’s not that tragic.”

James sighed. Remus shuffled a pace closer.

“…How is that going, by the way?” he asked, quietly. “You and Lily?”

(He had an aim. He was going to reach it.)

“It’s good,” said James, nodding to himself. “It’s really good. We—well… with everything going
on, it’s not exactly the most exuberant thing in the world. We’re, you know. Enjoying it when we
can. It’s kind of hard to start a serious relationship when there’s so much of this warship mess
going on around you.”

Remus pursed his lips, frowning.

“I mean,” he said, “I do believe you were the one that told me that… maybe with all of this warship
mess it’s the best time?”

James faltered.

“...Hm?”

“Outside Malfoy Manor,” Remus said, lip curling upwards. “About me and Sirius, remember? I
said it’s not exactly a good time to get ourselves into something serious, and you said, maybe it’s
the best time. Who knows how long we’ve got?”

James stared at him for a moment. Pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose, and cleared his
throat.

“Well,” he said, gruffly. “It’s…harder in practice, isn’t it?”

Remus shrugged. He didn’t say anything more than that.

(He might be onto something, though.)

“What am I supposed to do, then?” asked James, breaking the brief silence and frowning. “About
Regulus?”

“You don’t have to do anything, James,” said Remus, almost laughing. “If you’re happy where you
are, if one decade one hundred and twenty years ago was really all it was, then so be it. Let him
simmer in his jealousy—he’s not going to do anything about it. He may be a bit bitter, but he
knows his boundaries. Why does how he feels have to affect you?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. Pointed and simple.

“James…” whispered Remus, “I think you do.”

James glanced at him, and then groaned, falling back into the sofa cushions with an air of drama
and covering his eyes with his arm. “Shut up.”

“If anything, you at least want his approval in some weird sycophant-like way. I still cannot
believe you started talking about murdering people. Dear God.”

“Remus,” James laughed, dropping his hands and closing his eyes.

“I can’t believe you’re my friend.”

He lolled his head around and over to him, grinning. “I’m so glad I am.”

Remus smiled, rolling his eyes at his affection, never sure where to put it when it doesn’t come
from, like, Dorcas. He cleared his throat and swivelled to face him properly.

“In all seriousness,” he said, “does Lily know?”

“About what part?”

“A decade, one hundred and twenty years ago…”

“Yes,” said James, sitting up slightly and nodding. Remus nodded back. It was only fair. Even if
they were casual. “Yeah. I told her the night she asked.”

“Does she care?”

He shrugged. “She’s fine with it. Her and Reg get along really well. And I guess it was so long ago
that it didn’t really matter.” A pause. “At least, it wouldn’t if he didn’t care.”

“But he does.”

“But he does.”

“So,” said Remus, “Where does all of this place you? Recognising him by his footsteps but
constantly running away from them?”

James sighed.

“Something like that,” he murmured.

The words hung heavy, the darkness of the fog enclosing in.

“And Sirius doesn’t know,” said Remus. “Does he?”

“No,” James groaned, dropping his head into his hands. “Remus. I’m in a hole.”

He smacked his lips, nodding. “A pretty big one, I won’t lie to you.”

“Colossal.”

“But you have to tell him.”

“I know.”

A beat.

“He’s not gonna be happy.”

“I know.”

“He may kill you for not telling him beforehand.”

“I know.”

“...But you do have to tell him.”

“I know.”

They sat in silence for a moment.

“Isn’t it ridiculous that we’re even talking about this?” said James, looking up at him from where
his head was cradled in his hands. “With everything on the line. All of the dangerous things going
on. The city has been besieged by murderous shadows, and I’m having ex trouble.”

This made Remus laugh, look to the ground. He nodded. It was sort of strange, in retrospect. But at
the end of the day the fight they were fighting had already stripped enough away as it was. What
would they be against mindless soldiers, if they did not love? Every kind of love. The type that has
you caught between two webs. It’s active moving, it’s passion, it’s decisional, it’s a break. The
world doesn’t have to be all terrible things. You can give yourself a break. Balance is a practised
art, Remus knows that damn well by now, even if he’s still not particularly good at it.

“No,” Remus said, rather tamely, the vowel curling around his lips. “I think we’d go crazy without
this kind of human stuff to balance us out, actually. I know that I would.”

James hummed. “What even is ‘human’ at this point, anyway?”

“The difference between surviving and living.”

James looked up at him, pensively. It was an odd shift in mood. Remus leaned back onto the sofa
and leant his head against the pillow, feeling the fleetingness of his own existence more
tremulously than ever and, oddly, loving every second of knowing that he had passed the second
before. It spiked an odd exhilaration in him that he hadn’t felt since he and Sirius had been trying to
kill each other. All that stupid time ago.

“I don’t think you need to do anything if you don’t think you need to do anything,” Remus said,
earnestly, quietly. James leant his head against the cushion, mirroring his stance. “But I do think
you need to re-evaluate exactly how you feel and what you’re willing to risk.”

He paused, biting the bottom of his lip.

“James, me and Sirius… we had a rough run. But in the end, he came to me and said that he
wanted to try. And so—with everything going on, regardless of this hurricane of a life—we tried.
And that’s all there is to it.”

James said nothing, listening intently. The wind whistled outside like a hawk.

“You can balance love and war,” Remus said, shrugging. “If you want it badly enough. Me and
Sirius do, that’s why, even though my attempts to track him down were futile, he always came
back. And Dorcas and Marlene do; that’s why, even in their fights, Marlene always gives her an
excuse to come back. And I think you do. Want it badly enough, that is. I suppose what I’m saying
is that what you need to re-evaluate isn’t if you want, but… what you want. Who it all comes back
to.” He smiled. “It should be easy. That’s the beauty of it all. Balancing is difficult, but loving?
That’s the easiest thing there is.”

It was quiet for a moment. James seemed to take in these words, breathing deeply in and out of his
nose. His lips curled upwards and he made something adjacent to a scoff sound, but sounding more
impressed than scathing.
“When the hell did you become a relationship counsellor?” he joked.

“Well, I had time to get a license, you see, due to the fact that all I’ve had to do is ruminate over a
big hot steaming pile of fucking nothing—”

James laughed. The sofa cushion rocked and Remus grinned, sitting up and brushing his hair out of
his face, taking a breath.

“Right,” he said, pushing himself up. He looked down to a bewildered James, and extended a hand.
“Come on. Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?” James asked, warily taking his hand and stand up.

“Outside,” he said, and before James could open his mouth to protest he continued, “she banished
you from helping, but she never said we couldn’t watch, right? You can drool over whoever it is
you’re going to drool over. And I miss Mary. So we’re going to watch.”

James licked his lips nervously, and took a moment to scan his surroundings. He looked upwards,
as if he wished for some higher power to put him out of his fucking misery, but when that didn’t
happen he looked back at Remus and nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “Fine. Let’s go.”

Remus grinned, and pulled him up.

***

The first thing they were greeted with upon opening the back doors that had grown so familiar was
the sound of shattering grass, and a profound string of unholy curses that could come from none
other than Lily Evans herself.

The three of them were sort of crowded by the lake, against the overcast sky. It was late afternoon,
6pm in May, a time that would in other circumstances perhaps be a gentle summer glow or fragrant
blue skies but was hindered by the overcast clouds, cancelling out all warm tones with something
cool and menacing. It was not dark, not as dark as it might be in the throes of the very deep of the
city, as far away as they were it was less of a direct fog and more of a residue but still, it was cool
and dreary, Lily’s red hair standing out like a needle in a haystack against the white of the sky.

Remus and James made it across the field in time to see Mary quickly heal Lily’s hand for her,
sewing up the cut on her palm that had started to bubble blood. Lily let out a breath of release and
threw her head back, her hair hanging down away from her face. It had grown a little bit over the
past two months and had just gotten to a point where it was beginning to wave again.

Remus stepped on a twig and she turned to him. There was sweat beading her forehead and a line
between her brow. Her eyes flickered from him to James, slotting in beside him, and softened into a
gentle smile at the pair.

“What’s going on here?” asked Remus. Mary was crouching on the floor and Regulus was turned
looking out into the lake. Lily sighed.

“I had this idea,” she said, ruffling her hair like one would feathers, “that… if I were to be able to
control Fiendfyre enough to displace it and keep it stable I could maybe put it into… lanterns.”

“Lanterns?”
There was a clink of glass and metal. Remus looked down just in time to see the last pieces of a
hanging lantern slot back into itself as if nothing had ever been wrong as Mary fixed it. She stood
up and brushed herself off, brass lantern in her hand.

“So people could take them and be protected,” Lily said, more enthusiastically. “From the
dementors. So we could go on as usual.”

She frowned, slightly, as if embarrassed. And almost simultaneously Regulus turned from the lake
brandishing a nasty slash of blood across his cheek from a since-healed cut, and a layer of dusty
soot up his forearms.

Lily thinned her lips.

“It’s a… work in progress,” she said sheepishly.

“Are we going to try again, then?” asked Regulus, pushing his rolled-up shirt sleeves a tad higher.

“I think we should leave it for the day,” replied Mary, softly. “You’re almost getting it. Just sleep
on it and we’ll try again tomorrow.”

“But I really think I can get it,” Lily said; pleading, almost, as if Mary was a reprimanding mother;
“Just one more time.”

“Lil.”

“Just one,” she repeated. Her demeanour shifted from that of a pleading child to that of the adult
she actually was—which was quite scary, to be entirely honest.

She stood as tall as she could (still a fair few inches below Mary) and stared her down until Mary
rolled her eyes and said, belligerently, “Fine.”

James and Remus followed Mary’s lead and took an appropriate ten steps backwards to avoid the
wrath of any angry unheated glass.

She stood in front in preparation to shield any blast while Regulus held the lantern, the door open.

Remus hadn’t been out here for a while—at least, he hadn’t seen Lily in full concentration mode,
as opposed to being a blasé flamethrower that could go anywhere. He could tell immediately that
their technique was different. There was a routine between the four of them that hadn’t been there
before.

“Soles,” Regulus murmured, entirely soft. Lily closed her eyes.

Remus turned to James; he didn’t even have to say anything.

“When she’s actively trying to control herself we sort of have to coax her into it,” he murmured, as
Lily took a deep breath in. “Especially something as finicky as this. Soles as in, feet soles. Reminds
her to ground herself.”

Lily’s fingers twitched.

“Not the hands, Lily,” Regulus said, almost immediately. It had a reprimanding sort of tone. A
blush of effort grew on Lily’s cheeks, but her fingers stilled.

“It’s not supposed to come from her hands,” James whispered, as his explanation. “The fire she can
summon in her hands travels faster and hits harder than the fire that comes from her body. And
isn’t fully Fiendfyre, either. We need the good stuff, that comes from her chest.”

“Her chest?”

“She says she feels it in her diaphragm,” he muttered, not taking his eyes off of her. “Or
somewhere around her lungs. She has to open it, and that’s where she gets her stability from. Her
magic. There’s a tiny window, and she has to try to control it before it controls her.”

Remus closed his mouth, unintentionally opened upon James’ words and turned back to Lily. She
had a frown on her face now, and Remus could see the veins in her arms glowing a shimmery
golden, luminescent under the shade of the tree.

It was silent, for a solid ten seconds. Regulus stood completely unmoving, unblinking, eyes
focused on Lily with his nimble fingers held steadily onto the lantern. Remus held his breath with
anticipation, and then let it go; like a vacuum, it sucked the pressure and then blew it back in in one
as Lily’s eyes snapped open and she clenched her fist, pulled her right arm back and then let it go,
hands outstretched, and threw a fireball out of her palms.

James was right, it was slower than usual. Not slow by any means but slower than the fire that
Remus had seen Lily cast, there and not in a half-blink of an eye; it was no longer a blinking game.

The fire landed in the lantern, and the force did not smash the glass.

What did smash the glass, however, was Regulus, as a little bit of the flame licked its way up the
seams unnaturally and burned his hand.

What happened next was the product of routine; it all occurred in probably about a second. James,
for one, was next to Remus and then he was gone, by Regulus’ side—who was hissing in pain—
and then was almost promptly shoved away by Mary. The glass smashed as it hit the floor and the
fire leaked out, almost as if it was liquidised lava through the cracks; melting the glass down like a
wax candle.

Regulus turned, arm outstretched in front of him and screwed his face up, gasping in pain. And in
the split second that Remus got to look at it before Mary wrapped her two hands tight over his skin
and siphoned it away he noticed that it was lingering not on fabric but his skin, as if he had been
doused in gasoline. As if his skin was a natural conductor. It took him a moment to register the
murderous nature of the cursed fire—of course, that’s why she was summoning it from deep inside
of her, why control was so imperative, it was unable to be stomped out—and in that moment Mary
dropped her hands and Regulus’ arm was left blistered and red raw. It was a nasty burn.

James and Lily both crowded around him, seeming equal amounts concerned. Nobody seemed to
be able to get a word in without talking over the other. Regulus, gritting his teeth together, was
telling them that it was fine.

“It’s not, it’s not, it’s not,” Lily moaned, pushing past James to take his hand and then cringing
away at how it was still smoking. “Oh, God, I’m sorry–”

“I’ll heal, Lily,” said Regulus, “it’s what I’m here for–”

“No,” said Lily, angry and on the verge of tears. “I just keep hurting you—I should’ve gone in
when Mary said, I can’t do this shit…”

“Lil,” Mary said, warily, putting a hand on her forearms. Her veins were still burning golden;
Mary’s hot hands seemed to be the only pair built to withstand them. “James is going to take him to
Poppy, okay? But I need you to calm down.”
“James is–” the man in question did a double take, “what?”

“Mary, I don’t need–” Regulus started, eyeing the tears that were falling onto Lily’s cheeks and
evaporating as fast as they came.

“But she’s–” James cried, making a wild gesture with his hand towards her in the same sort of wary
way.

Mary glared at both of them.

“Is there anything I can do?” asked Remus, tiptoeing up to the tense crew in which Lily had her
hands over her face and James and Regulus were promptly being shunned by Mary; both of them
equally reluctant to go, James the most vocal but Regulus pale and sadly expressive.

“No,” Lily said, nasal and muffled through her hands. Her voice was thick with unshed emotion. “I
don’t want to hurt you too. I don’t know how to do this, Remus.”

Her shoulders shook, as she began to cry. But it was something else, too. Something reminiscent of
a night in a field, in a clearing, in a lifetime.

Remus looked up to the sky, the greyscale darkness, to Mary. The boys were gone, shunned—they
were lingering at the door, but Regulus’ burn really did need medical attention, perhaps more so
than James’—it was just the three of them. But for some reason it felt like just he and Lily. His
consciousness prickled away. He breathed, breathed, breathed.

“Lily,” he whispered, taking a step forward. Reaching out a hand but nowhere near touching. She
had hunched over slightly, into herself like her ribs were collapsing inwards. Her hands were
sparking. “Lily.”

He registered, dimly, against the tightness of his own chest, that she was having a panic attack.

“Lily. Hey,” all of the good things, flickering through his brain. “Lily. Listen to me. Do you
remember the hospital?” he asked, continuing to speak, his voice hushed and as controlled as he
could keep it. “When we were ambushed by the Lestranges?”

It took her a moment, and a prompt, and then she slid her shaking hands down her face to look at
him. Her eyes were still blood red, and Remus looked deep into them, anxiety pooling at the pit of
his gut but speaking, still, to perhaps ground them both, soles to the mulch, diaphragm core. His
breath shook but he masked it. Lily, pitifully, nodded.

“You had those stake shooters around your wrist,” he said, lips quirking up against his will while
remembering, “you stole them from my car. Why did you have them?”

“To fight,” she whispered.

“For who?”

“For you.”

“For me,” said Remus, nodding. “You fight for me and I fight for you. Who did you hurt with
those stake shooters?”

She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. They remained red.

“The vampire,” she said.

“And whose life did you save?”

There was a long, long pause. Her shoulders were still going and her hands were curled up to fists
against her face, locks of hair clinging to the tears and golden tinge still crackling at her knuckles.

“Yours,” she said, quietly.

It was then that Remus heard the murmurs from behind him. Lily’s eyes averted, and he craned his
neck to see Sirius, standing maybe ten feet away with Mary’s hand at his chest. He was frowning
in concern, looking at the pair of them.

Remus sighed and tried to give him a look to convey that it was okay, but his face did not abate.
Sirius said something to Mary; Remus turned back. Lily was trembling. His face was prickling
with heat.

“Do you remember feeling like this on that day?” Remus hissed, barely a whisper; a long shot, it
was, but seeing Sirius had reminded him. “In the hospital. You felt this, didn’t you?”

Lily let out an upheaval of a sob and nodded.

“And the clearing. You felt this there, too.”

Another nod.

“You could’ve hurt me then,” he said, smiling, “both times; with the stakes. With your fire. But
you didn’t. You know what you did do?” She sobbed a little bit more, breaths sort of wheezy now.
Remus registered that something smelled of smoke; he ignored it. Turned his body but not his gaze
and pointed a finger in Sirius’ direction. Lily followed.

“You saved his life,” Remus said. “That was all you. Lily, you’re incredible.”

Her empathy, smoking like the end of a stick of incense. It tickled Remus’ sides and whistled
through the leaves of the trees as smoke from the tips of her hair. Ready to go at a leapfrog’s
notice, she loved people and her love destroyed her. It was the burden of a lifetime and it was who
she has been since the day she was born; the fire that fuels the ship to refuge. That of whom she
hurt burned her soul more than fire might ever.

A moment of silence passed and then a sob, a clenching of her fists that were now almost pure fire
expelled a few embers that caught onto the grass around her, one dangerously near Remus’ feet;
they spread, burning the blades into disintegration as easily as the clouds part to reveal the burning
sun.

He instinctively took a few steps back and felt a hand on his shoulder, but when he turned,
expecting Sirius, it was Mary. He reached up and grabbed her hand. Sirius slotted into his other
side.

Lily was dripping embers, now, catching patches of fire around her in the grass; the three of them
gazed. She was trying desperately to keep it together. Remus, for one, was working the logistics of
how far she would burn if she let go, like she had in the clearing. He could see hell if she did and
hell if she didn’t. He could see hell regardless behind his eyelids.

“She needs to calm down,” whispered Mary, voicing her own thoughts as the smoke tugged at their
senses and floated over the lake and into the dim sky to meet with its counterpart.

Remus was quiet, but Sirius hummed. He turned to him, and he was shaking his head.
“No,” said Sirius, gently, eyes on Lily. “No, she doesn’t. She needs to let go.”

“Sirius–”

“Sirius—!”

Mary grabbed onto Remus’ shoulder and pulled him back as he projected himself forward after
Sirius, who, in a leap, pelted forward and hopped through the growing patches of fire, lowering his
head against the smoke. It was bigger than it was in the clearing; she was bigger than she was in
the clearing; patches of white clouded Remus’ vision.

“You–” he spluttered, choking and frantically pushing Mary’s hand off him, feeling like he was
about to throw up, like he was there and he was not; watching himself lose everyone again; “get—
he’s gonna—Mary, she’s burning–”

He thrashed against her grip but she pulled him back, staggering. Breathe, he couldn’t breathe.

“She’s burning—”

“Wait,” she choked, looking over his shoulder. He was still straining against her, but she grabbed
onto his wrists, got him to look in her eyes. “Wait! It’s okay!” she said, nodding. He gaped
magnanimously and Mary gripped onto his neck, nails gripping into the skin behind his ears.
Looking over his shoulder and back to him in a rhythm, once, twice, three times; “Remus, I think
it’s…I think it’s okay.”

Remus found himself sort of stuck there, soles to the ground, for a moment looking into her ever
present eyes, and feeling her supple hands hold him here; she’s real, and so is he, existing, still, a
breath, breath, breath; it took him longer than it might have normally to register the heat on his
back. Mary’s skin, her pores, he tried to label each angle of where her skin tugged against her skull
like counting grains of sand or blades of grass to calm himself, and so he saw when her face lit up
with gentle gold, a reflection; her hands slackened and she looked upwards behind him, jaw wide
open.

Remus turned.

Half of the leaves on the tree above had been singed and the other half were being blown upwards
by the sheer force of her. The Phoenix. Wings about fifteen feet to her sides and spluttering with
sheer force against her body; Lily was entirely fire. To the very core. Remus had never seen her
like this, her eyes glowing, some sort of core or some sort of spark, regulating all throughout her
being.

She looked like lava, the curve of her jaw pearl red and the ends of her hair crackling like sparklers
as it blew, and she had one foot in front of the other on the singed, blackened ground and one hand
outstretched, and Sirius was at the end of it.

Sirius was entirely himself. He had his back mostly to Remus and Mary but his hair was blowing
back with the force too, and Lily’s hand was in his. And there was no pain. There was no catching
fire. A branch fell to the left of them as Lily burned through the bark—it began to crumble into ash
before it even touched the ground—and yet Sirius was untouched, holding onto her as if he was her
benefactor and she was all of his power lit up like a lightbulb, or vice versa. A patron, or a puzzle
piece.

Remus and Mary took a few staggering steps back to avoid the fluttering embers and Remus had to
shelter his eyes with his arm from the sheer luminescence of her. It was stunning, like a cosy
cottage room with a log fire, everything bathed in tones of orange and red, a golden sky and a
golden lake. It glittered like the stars bathed thereunder. Almost as if her wings would droop, trail
the surface of the water, let one become the other and let the other become one. Wax drippings
over a carmine watercolour bed, mulchy and blackened underneath the supple soles of her feet, toes
in the burning grass. She was vitriolic.

It lasted about three minutes. She seemed to be bewildered at the hand she was holding. She
blinked at it, red-eyed and viscerally confused, as if she was less Lily and more Phoenix,
animalistic and unrecognisable. Except there must have been something, for she clung on.
Throwing her head back and letting the fire lick up from her chest up to her shoulders, hair defying
the laws of gravity around her head, she clung on, it was red, red, red.

A gradual calm. It was quicker than the last time, but it was gradual; her wings drooped. Her eyes
closed, and her hair fluttered, replenishing strands as thin as silk from the bottom up and the colour
of her came back in her chest first, simmering along her torso and down and up until her face was
flushed rosacea.

It trickled down her arms like a leaky tap, slow and transformative, leaving her outstretched arm
for last. Glowing golden into Sirius’ until she stopped sparking and opened her eyes. She did not let
go of his hand.

The grass, singed at least three square metres around her. Her eyes, green and light when she
opened them. She looked calm. She looked remade. And the sky was blue.

“What,” said Mary, low and thick with abject shock as she and Remus made it to the pair of them,
hands drooping but still held. Lily turned to them, but Sirius was zoned out, face indecipherable,
breath heavy. “The fuck. Just happened.”

Lily opened her mouth to respond, and then closed it again. Tightened her drooping grip on Sirius,
which perked him up; she moved her hand up, up his arm, and up further until she was at his chest,
throwing her arms around him in the tightest hug she could possibly manage.

“I don’t know,” she said, voice shaky. She dug her hands into his hair. “I don’t know, but it was
incredible.”

She pulled back, gave a dazed Sirius a kiss on the cheek, turned to Remus. Laughed and pulled him
in so hard he almost stumbled over his feet. Her hands burned into his back through the fabric of
his clothes.

Once it was Mary’s turn—earning a firm kiss on the forehead and a hug that swung her around—
Remus turned to Sirius. If he was in shock about what he had just seen, Sirius was paralytic with it.
His movements were slow and sloppy with it.

“Are you okay?” Remus breathed, turning to him. Sirius blinked back into focus, and looked at
him.

“I’ve… never been better,” said Sirius, except it was devoid of all happy emotions one would think
to certify it with. It was laced with confusion. His eyebrows twitched and so did his fingers. His
arms were dangling awkwardly at his front; Remus took one of his hands.

He pulled it up, limp, curling his fingers around Sirius’ own. It was—Oh. Oh, Remus held it,
pressed his finger pads over it, brushing his knuckles, holding it in two hands. Some sort of squawk
of laughter came from someone. It took him a minute to realise it was him.
“What?”

“You’re warm,” said Remus, unable to stop smiling. He laced his fingers with Sirius’; brought his
hand up and pressed the back of it to his cheek. “You’re warm, Sirius.”

Fire, broth and blood had not been able to warm him since he had been stabbed with that blade all
of those goddamn weeks ago. Remus repeated the sentiment—latching onto this one thing in pure
shock, whilst also, in the pit of anxiety in his gut, wishing to just touch Sirius and keep him close—
and Sirius nodded. Remus pulled him in. He fell like a wave. There were beads of sweat on Remus’
brow, he could not get enough.

A cry from Lily drew them out and Remus pulled back just in time to peer over Sirius’ shoulder
and watch her fix the lantern—fix it, entirely herself, replenishing the melted and broken glass with
edges tinged orange and yellow as they built themselves up, steaming from the inside. She held it
up, and she curved her fingers into a crane, palm facing upwards. She summoned fire into it.

As seamlessly as the clouds spotted blue against the grey Dementor fog up above, Lily lit the
lantern, and closed it.

Lily turned to them all, holding it up, and she laughed. Her face lit up, apple of her cheeks pulled
aside as she simmered, palms still glowing and veins trailing from her hands down her forearms
before they faded.

The back door opened. A bandaged James and a bandaged Regulus appeared in the threshold.
James’ mouth was wide open, looking at the singed grass, the blackened branches and the
shrivelled leaves, the trunk of the tree still prickling with dissipating flames that were doing more
healing than hurting.

“What the hell happened to them?” murmured Sirius, looking at them, Remus at his side.

Lily turned, handing the lantern off to Mary, and Remus clocked the exact moment she saw them,
her stable hands still curled around the precious flame.

Her face lit up, again, and she ran.

Every step she took singed the grass a little bit. The two of them hopped down the steps just in time
for Lily to reach them, jumping into the middle, one arm around James and one around Regulus,
pulling them both in on each side as they both faltered in shock and then clung onto her back, and
in turn, each other.

“Lily happened,” Remus replied, gently, as Mary ran to join the huddle, flinging herself in, the
three of them parting like the Red Sea for her. Lily wrapped an arm around her neck and Regulus
one around her waist.

He squeezed Sirius’ hand. Leant his head on his shoulder, and he watched.

***

The hallway was quiet, outside of a thump, thump, thump. And Remus’ arse was numb.

Sirius and Lily had been in Poppy’s office for the better part of an hour and a half, which meant
that Remus, James, Mary and Regulus had been sitting on the floor outside for about an hour and
twenty nine minutes.

Remus was sitting on a small cushion nicked from the armchair down the north end of the hall,
leaning on a lone red-rich mahogany side cabinet to the right of the door. James was sitting in the
middle of the hallway, to Remus’ left. He had been sprawled out in various positions but was, as of
right now, cross-legged and close-eyed with his two hands aligned in front of his face, tapping a
silent rhythmical beat that Remus had been watching for the past five minutes.

Mary was opposite him, leaning against the wall, legs outstretched, and Regulus’ head was placed
comfortably on her lap. His long legs, outstretched down the length of the hallway, were crossed at
the ankle, and he was currently throwing what appeared to be a tin of lip balm he had no doubt
fished out of Mary’s pocket up in the air and catching it, over and over, thump, thump, thump.

He had been doing this for twenty five minutes. He hadn’t dropped it once yet.

“You can’t hear a single thing?” blurted Remus, to Regulus, into the silence of about ten minutes
from when his and Mary’s solitary conversation had died out. Regulus averted his eyes to look at
him.

“No,” he said, again. “I told you, she’s soundproofed the room. I’m getting nothing.”

“Me too,” muttered James. Remus sighed.

“It won’t be long now,” said Mary, gently. She had been repeatedly plaiting and unplaiting
Regulus’ mop of hair since he had tentatively lain there upon her initiation. He would never admit
it, but he loved it, Remus could tell.

“Hey, give me some of that, my lips are dry,” Mary said, now, poking his forehead. Regulus slid
the lip balm into his hand and tapped his fingers against the knuckles of his other hand the entire
time that she was using it. His jitter was not alone. James’ fingers had not let up their rhythm; two,
five, two, four, two, three – five, two, five, three, five, four – repeat.

She pushed the lid back on, eventually, and instead of giving it back to him threw it up in the air.
Regulus caught it seamlessly. They continued. A plait, and an unplait. Regulus’ hair was going
wavy.

Ten minutes later, the door clicked open.

“Have you been sitting here this entire time?” Pandora asked, eyebrows raised as she looked over
the occupants of the hallway with disdain.

“Yes,” came all four responses.

“Fools,” she said, shaking her head and leaving, skirting around James. The four of them
clambered up from where they had been sitting—James had to shake his legs out a bit, and Mary
had just re-completed a plait in Regulus’ hair, leaving him frantically pulling it out with his
fingers.

Sirius was at the threshold of the door. It was silent for a long moment.

“Verdict?” James said, warily, breaking the silence as always.

“Come in,” said Sirius, nodding inwards and retreating.

Lily was sitting, perched on the little chair that Sirius had sat on when he had come up here for
treatment for a headache. Sirius had evidently been sitting beside her based on the wrinkling of the
sheet, and Poppy, the kind-faced woman, was sitting behind her desk. There was an array of open
vials and half-drunk potions littered across her desk. Alongside this Remus spotted a stethoscope
and the equipment for an EEG scan stationed at the corner and on a shelf beside her desk that she
must have conjured, for it had definitely not been there last time.

Mary and Remus took two seats. There was a third, but both of the boys stood; Sirius leaned
against the bed that Lily was sitting on. She looked content enough, her smile just a little sad.

“Thank you all for waiting,” said Poppy—it was not formal, but grateful, a little harried as if she
had been running about. Her little nurse’s hat that she usually wore was flung on the side table of
the bed, and her hair was plaited down her back. She seemed to notice the stricken looks on all
four of their faces—even despite the surface-level fact of how amazing it was that Sirius had
helped Lily out, it really shouldn’t have been possible. Her outburst and his embracement of it was
odd by all accounts and Remus had somehow catastrophized it into some sort of death sentence for
the both of them; he had hoped it hadn’t shown on his face but it must have, for Poppy began
speaking immediately with:

“Now, first things first, neither of these two are in any immediate or foreseeable danger,” she said,
gently, standing up and walking around to lean against the end of her desk too. "What has happened
is an entirely unique situation that we’re still learning about but from what I can gather, they are
safe.”

“It’s to do with the basilisk venom isn’t it?” asked Remus. Perhaps an obvious inferration. He
couldn’t exactly think straight. Poppy nodded.

“What happened?” Mary continued.

She took a breath.

“When Mr. Black here was stabbed with that dagger, he should have died,” she started. Remus
nodded. He knew this. “The nature of his being—age, and species—staved off complete death for
a lot longer than any other vampire would survive. It was enough time, as we know, for Ms. Evans
to find him and to… unleash her powers, and save his life. Phoenixes, in all historical accounts,
have healing elements to their power,” she continued, gesturing as she began to explain, “they’re
incredibly rare, of course, so we don’t fully know the extent of them, or if it is possible for Phoenix
fire to fully heal basilisk wounds in the right circumstances, but—to put quite simply—in this
circumstance, she did not.”

Silence.

“He’s not healed?” Regulus asked, pure confusion on his face. Sirius, sitting right there, thinned his
lips.

“I believe you’re rather intimately acquainted with the concept of dormancy, Mr. Black?” Poppy
asked.

Remus felt his blood run cold.

“Power matches power,” said Sirius from the bed, interjecting. Remus’ eyes flickered over there;
he did not look grave but encouraging, or hopeful. His voice was deep and gravelly in contrast to
Poppy’s. “Power exceeding power is murder. Power inferior to power is being murdered. Power
matching power…puts it on pause.”

Snape’s voice in his head. Dumbledore, and Riddle, equals, it’s all about power, that’s what they
were.

“So—what?” James asked, gaping a little bit to try to find the words. “So the poison is not gone or
healed, it’s just… there? On pause? Ready to– to fucking wake up in a moments notice and eat
him alive, like some sort of insane—some sort of–”

He tripped up on his words. Remus’ ears rang.

“Replenishing power source,” he finished, looking at Lily; the Phoenix who fusioned herself to
supernatural creatures and became mightier the more powerful they were. Give and take. A power
match. You do not hurt me, I do not hurt you. We aid each other. We understand each other.

Sirius Black, dark hair, dark past, with Lily Evans, red hair, beating heart. They were like God-
given antonyms.

“Exactly,” Poppy said, nodding. “You’re quick.”

“So it’s like the fusion,” Mary said, “but Lily draws on– the venom that is dormant inside of
Sirius? So it’s that much more effective?”

“What does that mean for him?” James asked. “Is it finite; will she drain it all eventually? Is his
life source tied to it?”

“We don’t know,” Poppy said, quieter in her shame or perhaps her sadness for not being able to
provide answers. “We have no idea. All we know is that they power each other up. Like batteries.
Neither can hurt the other, because they are equals. And they’re connected to each other.”

“I came outside earlier because I felt her pain,” Sirius muttered. “When she was upset.”

“It’s happened to me too,” said Lily. “And what happened earlier—it was like a temporary fix. I
have too much power to keep it all in, and he is… the only place it can all go.”

“Okay,” said James, cautiously. His voice shook a little bit. “But nobody has answered me my
earlier question. Dormancy leads to waking up. Will it– I mean, what, is this a terminal diagnosis?
Could it just… wake up?”

Poppy smiled.

“As far as I know, no,” she said, and Remus closed his eyes, exhaled. The whole room seemed to.
“It’s not acting aggressively towards him; it’s rather benign. I’ll have to work with Mr. Black a lot
more to say things for certain, but I believe that Ms. Evans’s magic has, essentially, calcified it.
There’s nothing as of present to suggest he is in any danger outside of enhanced strength due to an
overload of power, as it is working as a power source– of course, we don’t know if it may be liable
to be forcibly reawakened, but of course that outcome is the least desirable… we’ve never
experienced anything like this, as you all know, nothing can be said for certain.”

Uncertainty laid the seeds of anxiety, still. James paced the length of the room. Regulus stayed
very stoically still, and Mary reached over and laced her hand into Remus’. Gave it a bit of a
squeeze.

He opened his eyes.

Sirius was looking at him. They locked eyes, and he smiled. Nodded, as if to say that he was okay.

He looked up to his brother and did the same thing.

“We’re okay,” said Lily, bags under her eyes but still smiling, nodding, perpetually burning. She
looked so little, tucking her hair behind her ears. “Poppy thinks that I linked the Phoenix to the
venom that very first night, and now I’m sort of… over-charged. Which is why I’ve been so
unstable. We’re going to be monitored and we’re going to… see how that changes. But in the
meantime, me and Sirius can help each other. Can’t you see?”

Sirius nodded. “My hands are still warm,” he said, gently, to the room at large but only to Remus,
he knew, he knew; “and my head is quiet.”

“You make it sound like Lily is your weekly drug fix,” Mary said. Lily giggled; Sirius smiled.
Even Remus found himself chuckling a little bit, though it might have been the relay of all three.

“Couldn’t blame him,” Remus quipped. James and Regulus were very, very quiet.

“Do you have any more questions?” Poppy asked.

“If it’s why she’s been unstable, is this why he’s been different recently, too?” asked Remus, wrists
tingling. He wasn’t sure why he was asking; he knew the answer. But he wanted full transparency.
“Powerful, and… irritable.”

“Rude,” Sirius muttered.

Poppy smiled. “Yes, it is. The venom has strengthened him. All of his senses and his brute force
are heightened. His hearing is significantly much better than anything else; my hypothesis is that it
has enhanced what is natural in the progenitor of the venom itself, because of gene identification,
but I’ll have to run way more tests to confirm that. Starting with venom potency. I don’t believe
he’s venomous in that sense but it very well could have accentuated what was already there.”

“So he’s like some…” James started, “super vampire? Basilisk vampire? Vampilisk?”

“Wait, that’s good,” Mary said, turning to him. James smirked.

“Thank you,” he said, slyly high-fiving her. Sirius rolled his eyes.

“No,” said Sirius, “I’m not anything else except strong enough to kick your ass. So don’t try,
Potter.”

“Roger that,” James said, smile tugging at his lips.

“But he’ll be okay,” said Regulus, suddenly.

All faces turned to him. His expression was forever indecipherable to Remus, but Sirius looked at
him and his face settled into something so gentle it was as if his features melted.

“I’ll be fine, Reggie,” he whispered, nodding.

Regulus’ jaw clenched. It was a move so like Sirius it was unashamedly Black.

“I’m almost sure of it,” Poppy affirmed. Regulus nodded.

A beat of silence.

“And,” he continued, prolonging the syllable for longer than necessary. His eyes flickered to Lily.
“She’ll be okay?”

“Yes,” answered not Poppy, but James. As if he would single-handedly take down anything that
tried to hurt her. (He probably would.)
“Yes,” echoed Poppy. “That, I’m sure of.”

James settled into Regulus’ side, leaning against the desk. He looked between Lily, smiling up at
him, and Sirius, gazing at the two of them, and then sighed of something akin to relief and rested
his head on Regulus’ shoulder. It was a bit of an odd position as he was a little bit taller than
Regulus, but he did. The back of their hands brushed together. And Lily gave it a moment, and then
smiled up at them.

Sirius arched an eyebrow, and Remus felt some unknown force that felt something akin to not
wanting to see James get his ass beat today, at least, motivate him to stand up. The sudden
movement brought Sirius’ eyes back to him, and once they were on him, they were not moving.
Remus knew that much.

“Right,” he said. His voice was sort of shaky and he was sort of still processing but the only thing
he wanted right now was Sirius. “Thank you so much, Poppy. For everything.”

“Any time,” she said, settling into the chair behind her desk again. She looked at Sirius, smirking.
“This one is becoming a regular by the looks of it.”

Sirius rolled his eyes but apparently had no ability to be mean to the lovely woman. Remus smiled,
and Mary stood up beside him.

“Well, if there’s nothing else to be said here,” said Remus, extending a hand to Sirius, “I shall be
stealing this one if nobody minds. I think it’s about time for bed and I want to have a human hot
water bottle for as long as I can, thank you.”

Sirius took his hand and stood up, grinning.

“Oh, Remus,” said Lily, standing up herself and pouting. “If only you had chosen me. I’m hot all
the time. And I’m not bad naked, either.”

“This is feeling awfully Twilight right now,” Sirius muttered, as Remus laughed and went to hug
her.

“I don’t doubt it,” he laughed, and then reflecting on a conversation they’d had once upon a blue
moon; “I believe you owe me a nipple-stabbing, actually.”

Lily laughed, nodding her recollection. James began to cough erratically, but Remus was sure it
was unrelated.

“Nipple-stabbing?” Mary joked, as they began to file out, “well. God damn. We haven’t had a kink
talk in a while, Remus; glad to know you’re still into that stuff.”

Sirius began to cough erratically, too, here. It was absolutely related.

“Still?” he choked, clinging onto Remus as he walked, like a dog. He turned and smiled.

“Come on. We’re going to bed.”

“Lord have mercy on me,” Sirius moaned, hunching over behind him and staggering a little bit.

Remus cackled, pulled him up by the collar of his neck and kissed him soundly, walking the rest of
the way with his head resting happily on his shoulder and catching a glimpse of Lily walking away
in the other direction. Arm linked with James on one side, she grabbed Mary and pulled her in with
the other.
James, turning back to Regulus, who was trailing lonesome behind the three of them, reached out.
Gripped him by the sleeve, on his other side.

Tugged him along with them.

***

They went to bed. Regardless of suggestivity it had actually been a rather exhausting day, and
Sirius was still warm and Remus has missed it immense amounts. So, he derobed and clambered on
there to cling to him like an amoeba and they didn’t talk, lights off, curtains left open but with no
repercussions because the sky was so fucking gloomy.

Remus woke up at about 2am—perhaps he hadn’t slept, he’s never really sure nowadays—and
Sirius wasn’t there. The other side of the bed was cold.

He got up. Pulled a stray t-shirt that he was quite sure was Sirius’ and his jogging bottoms on, slid
his feet into his slippers and opened the door, slowly to avoid the creak, slipping through like a
ghost and padding down the dimly-lit corridor towards the grand staircase, and the balcony.

He peeked through to the stone walls that had shared such a special moment with him and Sirius,
but he wasn’t there. He shut the door gently and continued, holding onto the banister and tip-toeing
down the stairs, where at least the bottom hall light was on so he could see a bit better that the
living room door was ajar.

He opened the door and sure enough, there he was.

Sirius was sitting on a little futon in front of the fire. There was an array of seating in this room, but
he was there, centric, twirling a wine glass that twinkled against the natural light. Slumped a little
bit.

There was no way that he didn’t hear Remus come in, or approach, so he closed the door with a
gentle click and simply padded over towards him. Skirted his way in between the gaps of the sofa
arms and side-stepped into Sirius’ side, sitting down next to him, staring at the fire just as he was.

A moment of silence. And then, Sirius shifted and leaned over, resting his head on Remus’
shoulder. He reached out for his hand and they slipped together like ballet shoes.

“Can’t sleep?” Remus murmured, against the crackling of the fire. Sirius had evidently just put a
new log onto it.

He nodded against Remus’ shoulder.

“Wanna talk about it?” he asked, this time. Sirius was quiet for a long moment, and then raised his
head and turned towards him.

He was beautiful. Against the light, half of his face glowing incandescently gold and half
shadowed, he looked like something of a renaissance painting. Fifty sunsets in one and the
embodiment of the events of this day and probably his entire life; something hot and something
cold, something beautiful and something shallow; something murderous and something fucking
powerful, brimming inside him, his veins and his organs.

And he smiled.

“You’re beautiful,” said Sirius, leading Remus to scoff at the fact that he had been thinking the
exact same thing. He leant in to kiss him.
Sirius absently trailed after him an inch or so when he pulled away. Remus opened his eyes and
Sirius’ were still closed, exhaling one whole-body shudder that travelled it’s way out of his nerve
system and down his spine and then he opened his eyes. Licked his lips.

“I’m,” he started, looking for the words. “Charged.”

“Like a phone?”

“Like the electricity that charges the phone,” he said, pulling the wine glass up to his lips and
finishing it in two large gulps, and then holding it up and shaking it a little as he swallowed.
“Trying to regulate with this, but I always seem to forget that my tolerance is somewhere outside of
the fucking atmosphere. I’ve drunk a whole bottle.”

Remus quirked an eyebrow. “What is your tolerance?”

“Two bottles gets me somewhere,” he said, and then corrected, “or, usually does. Did. Who bloody
fucking knows what it is now, with this thing inside of me.”

“We don’t have to talk about that right now,” Remus said, quietly, perpetually the one to tell him to
turn it off before it fills him to the brim and he explodes. Sirius only ever seemed to listen to him.

Tonight was no anomaly to this rule. Sirius nodded and leaned over to place the glass idly on the
floor, taking a deep breath and looking back into the fire.

“Do you think,” Sirius started, shivering despite the humid heat in the room, “I’m someone else,
now?”

Remus turned to him. He frowned.

“I think we have control over who we become,” he said, after contemplating this for a moment.
“You’re only someone else if you want to be someone else. If you do, you adapt yourself to the
change; if you don’t, you adapt the change to you.”

Sirius sighed, looking into the flames. “What if I don’t want either?” he whispered. “I’m so
painfully used to who I was. Perpetually used to who I was that it feels like—knowing what I know
now—that there’s some foreign object in me that I need to… claw out.”

“It’s okay to not be okay with it,” said Remus.

“But that feels like losing,” replied Sirius.

“And you don’t have to always win, sweetheart,” Remus said, shuffling closer, reaching up to cup
his face. Warm around his fingertips, fleshy and so real, so his, so normal even if he couldn’t see it.
“Look, it’s a part of you. You’re a million things, you don’t have to be defined by this one tiny
part. No one would ever define you as that.”

Sirius bit his top lip. “What would they define me as?”

“Hmm. Sirius Black. Connoisseur of the Order of the Phoenix. The Pureblood that ripped Tom
Riddle apart. The man that would go up against an army alone for those he loved. The boy who
defied everything in search for something better. You, who carries more than he can hold so those
who are less strong don’t have to. This just makes you stronger.” He shrugged. “When you think
about it, it fits right in.”

Sirius licked his lips, and smiled. He breathed in deeply and ran both of his hands harshly up and
through his hair, dropping them to rest on his knees, both of his forefingers twitching agitatedly.

“So, you’re charged,” Remus said, subtly averting back to the conversation prior to garner just
where he was, exactly. “What does that mean?”

“It’s like when she does that thing to James and he gets an insane burst of energy for like half an
hour,” he said. “Except it’s been hours and I still feel like I’m vibrating.”

“Anything I can do?” Remus asked, cocking his head.

Sirius, looking into the fire, breathed in. Exhaled, did it again, exhaled.

He turned, as if to say something, and then he stopped with his lips parted.

“Hi,” he said, grinning. It was so absurd that Remus laughed out loud.

“Hi,” he repeated. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“I was going to answer and then your face distracted me,” Sirius said, “and now I can’t remember
what I was going to say. You have a gift, you know.”

“So, all you want me to do is sit here and look pretty?” Remus asked, quirking an eyebrow.

“You could kiss me,” said Sirius, softly, eyes flickering down to his lips.

Remus obliged without question.

He kissed him softly, slowly, tilting his head and letting Sirius push in a little further and slide his
fingers across and onto his knees, for the contact. Remus pulled away, after a moment, but didn’t
go far. Sirius’ breaths were warm against his face.

“Just kiss you?” he asked.

Sirius looked up at him and bit his bottom lip.

“No,” he said. “No, I don’t think so.”

Remus tilted his head and leaned back in, digging his hands around the back of Sirius’ neck and
into the hair there as he, in turn, trailed his hands up his chest and over his shoulders. They went
back and forth a little bit, the kiss deepening in intensity but still holding some sort of restraint that
was so unlike them Remus wasn’t surprised in the slightest when Sirius drew back, irritated, for he
was probably on the road to doing the same thing, for a different but similar reason.

“Don’t treat me like I’m gentle,” he said, frustrated, shuffling forward and holding his head in
place, his forehead against Remus’, breaths intermingling. Remus leaned forward and kissed the
line of his jaw and he bent his head to his will, angry but obedient. “Be angry. Be us.”

“Mmmm,” Remus murmured against his neck, nipping at the exact spot that Sirius kissed on him,
time and time again, a taste of his own medicine.

“I’m not gentle,” breathed Sirius, once more, throwing his head back. “I could kill you.”

“You are killing me,” Remus groaned, trailing his hands underneath Sirius’ shirt, the silk skin of
his stomach.

“You could kill me,” he moaned, squirming, “we’re not gentle.”

Remus saw what this was. Change, change, he wanted to go back to where it all began, he wanted
to be in touch with who he thought he should be, he wanted to be self-destructive. Running away
from one part to fully embrace the other. Change is bad. Change is good. Change is change. He’s
been the same thing for eight hundred years, he might just explode.

And Remus wanted to be his detonator. But not like this.

“You want me angry?” he asked, kissing up to the tender skin behind his ear and then pulling back.

Sirius nodded.

Remus leant in, lips brushing against lips. “Piss me off then,” he murmured, “and see what
happens.”

Sirius’ breath hitched. His hand twitched from where it was resting against Remus’ sternum,
fingertips almost squeezing his throat, the other around the back of his neck dug in with crescent
moon fingernails that twinged with pain but subsided as he leant back. His face was still heavenly
under the light but there was something that wasn’t there before. It was purpose.

He stood up in one quick motion and pulled Remus up by the scruff of his collar. There was a split
second in which he eyed him and then they were flying, across to the wall, where Sirius stopped
just before he slammed against it and pushed him, hands on him before he could even stand a
chance.

Remus registered the dim sound of glass smashing across the room—the wine glass, empty and
sparkling, from the momentum of which they moved—and then he registered nothing but the skin
of his own body, made to be touched, that to this, he to him. It was something tragic and ferocious
and needy. They were a hundred miles a minute.

And they were people who’d changed, and people with change. And change didn’t mean that some
things couldn’t stay the same. Like the way Sirius felt against him, not a part of him he didn’t feel
intimately with the power of a thousand UV rays against the sandpaper pores of his skin; the way
he wanted to ruin Sirius’ life and love him beyond it. The way Sirius was ruining his. Actively,
currently, with his hands on his lower back. They can be that and they can be this.

“This,” Sirius breathed, and there he was, just above his collarbone. There he was, hands on his
hips, and there he was, lips over his scar, he had claimed it as his since the moment he had set eyes
on it, it had been his to ruin. “This is us.”

“Everything is us,” said Remus, chuckling a little bit and grabbing Sirius by the cheeks to pull his
head up, so they were facing each other. Their noses were so close they were grazing against each
other. “It’s all us. You can be gentle and you can be vicious and it doesn’t matter, it will never
matter. Because above all of those things you are mine, yes? You were before, now, everything can
change and you’d still be mine, yes?”

Sirius nodded.

“But you’re mine in a different way to how you were before,” he murmured, nipping at Sirius’
skin. “Back then I wanted to fuck you and I wanted to ruin your life. Now I want to do both of
those things and love you thereafter. It’s not a bad thing.”

He leaned in, tunnelling his hands underneath Sirius’ shirt and feeling the warmth of arms around
his neck.

“See, I want you to piss me the fuck off and I want to do terrible, horrible things to you but I don’t
want them to be terrible and horrible for you, do you understand, sweetheart?”

“I understand,” Sirius whispered. Remus’ lips brushed against his ear.

“I want to press my knife against your throat and watch as it gets you off but I want you to tell me
what’s too much and what’s not, okay?”

“I’m almost very sure that you won’t cross any boundaries,” Sirius said, gruffly, as Remus nipped
at his earlobe and began to suck on the tight skin over his jawline.

“It’s the principle of me asking, babe,” Remus murmured, pressing his knee against Sirius’ crotch
and sliding his hands down to hold onto his hips. “We’re not going to be gentle because neither of
us can fucking bear pity, but you need to know that it’s not all or nothing.”

He dug his fingers underneath his waistband and dragged his fingernails across his soft skin,
gentle, gentle, gentle.

“We can be this,” he murmured. Sirius bit his lip.

And he slipped his right hand upwards and splayed it against Sirius’ neck, cupping his jaw between
his thumb and forefinger. Yanking his head up. He squeezed, ever so slightly.

“And we can be this,” he said. “And we’re going to do it here, and now. Not five months and two
thousand miles away. I’m not going to treat you like shit so you can prove to yourself that you can
still handle it.”

Remus’ hands were roaming. One curling over the ridge of his shoulder, spidery fingers pushing
against the pit of his throat, the other walking over his waistband, hip to hip but reserved enough
that Sirius was gripping his hair in anticipation.

He nodded, eyes still closed, and breathed, “Why are you going to, then?”

Remus leaned back. Smiled a little. Took a deep breath in and revelled in Sirius’ eyes, the carnivore
behind them, the adjacentisms in his skull leaving him looking fresh and fuzzled and fucking
beautiful, a naval wreckage. Remus wants to eat him alive.

“Because you’re the most powerful creature on the planet,” he whispered, “and you like it when I
tear you apart, don’t you, babe?”

There was a moment, in which there was nothing but the soft scratch of Sirius’ fingernails against
his scalp and his tongue playing in the corner of his mouth, and then he smiled. The tips of his
fangs, out and dangerous, trailed across his bottom lip. It’s a dance Remus could side-step with his
eyes closed and his hands tied, but that wouldn’t be him, he kissed skin, sweet skin, it would not be
him because he has the least power and therefore is the most powerful. Against a wicked eye and
skin that would bleed black if you broke it he could hold a pair of fragile femurs and attest to
fantasies they might be dead before fulfilling, and hm, how about that, Sirius Black, a mass of
escapist trapeze artist bones squeezing through holes too small to hold him and Remus could make
him shut up, make him less, squeeze him into shape and teach him that it’s temporary but it’s there
and love him all the way through it; how about that, hm?

Sirius kissed him with his hands around Remus’ neck, holding him up against the wall, slightly
higher than himself as Remus gripped his hips and kissed him with every last breath he had. The
kiss intensified and Remus moved, rolling his hips against Sirius’ waist, desperate for any sort of
friction and Sirius scratched the sides of his face absently, pulling away with an obscene noise and
trailing wet and dirty, fervent kisses across and down to his jaw, down to his neck. Remus tilted his
head up for more access, squeezing his eyes shut in open-mouth euphoria, his bottom lip wet as
Sirius sucked on skin he had cartographed upside down. He trailed upwards, pressed in and Remus
could feel the point of his fangs; he ended up at a sensitive point just behind Remus’ ear and he
gasped, tugging at the back of Sirius’ hair to pull his face back up to his and their teeth clashed
together. Sirius trailed his hands up and underneath his shirt, desperately, flat-palmed against his
skin, squeezing and trailing pointer fingers over his nipples and three outsider fingers kneading his
skin, and Remus pushed them off the wall, his hands around Sirius’ neck; they spun a little as they
tumbled across the room, not able to see anything else, not able to feel anything else. The fire was
distant. Sirius’ skin was warm.

Remus ended up falling backwards onto the sofa and Sirius followed, clambering over him in a sad,
sad moment in which their lips were not collided and straddling him instantly. Remus gasped, neck
backwards and thighs twitching with desire as Sirius loomed over him. He smiled deviously before
bringing one hand up to brush his hair out of his face and leaning over to kiss him again. He stuck
a desperate tongue into Remus’ mouth that slid happily against his own as he moaned, Remus’
hands around his neck and Sirius’ trailing down, tugging at the bottom hem of Remus’ shirt; he
pulled upwards, splaying a hand over his lower abdomen and Remus gasped, reaching a hand down
to help him. He pulled his shirt over his head and instantly moved to make quick progression on
Sirius’ too; he pulled it off and threw it somewhere incomprehensible and before Remus could
even process the beauty that was on top of him he was leaning back in and dragging his hands up
and down his body, his lips down the same route they went except lower. Letting him stand tall in
fervour before knocking him down, kisses onto his sternum, his chest, his abdomen, wet and needy
and so tender they pulled desperate whines and strings of curses from Remus’ sweet lips as Sirius
unbuttoned his jeans with so much fervour it could be what he did for a living and pulled them
down to his thighs, palming Remus’ cock through his underwear, stroking up the bulging outline
and making Remus squirm and moan and probably melt into an iridescent puddle that Sirius Black
could drink up time and time and time again.

“Wait,” Remus gasped as Sirius nuzzled his face into the dark hair that trailed down from his
bellybutton to his crotch; he looked up immediately, mouth open and chest heaving. Remus could
barely get his breaths out. He could barely form words. He just gripped at Sirius’ hair and pulled
him upwards.

Sirius crawled up his body, gripping Remus’ waist and kissing at his collarbone.

“What?” he whispered, trailing his lips upward to meet him.

“Bedroom,” Remus choked, bucking his hips against where Sirius’ crotch now lay within grasp,
and he squeezed his eyes shut and groaned into Remus’ mouth, his head collapsing into the crook
of Remus’ neck. Remus pulled his knees up and Sirius pushed down between them, desperately;
his hand reached upwards to interlock with Remus’ own, lying resolutely above his head.

Sirius nodded frantically into his neck.

“Yeah,” he breathed, strained, circling his crotch into Remus’ hip. “Yeah. Yeah. Okay.”

He pulled himself back, painfully, standing up and extending a hand. Remus took it, nabbing his
shirt with his other. He wasn’t two seconds on his feet before he was being swept off his feet and
swung into Sirius’ arms, bridal style.

“Oh my God– put me down,” Remus gasped, as Sirius began walking before he’d even gathered
his bearings. He grinned at him.

“Nope,” he said, as Remus squirmed. He nudged the door open and Remus’ laughter echoed
through the open hall, accepting this fate and leaning in to kiss the deep of his neck and up behind
his ear as Sirius clambered up the stairs.

Sirius nudged them through the door to their bedroom, letting him down and slamming it shut
behind them with a foot so hard that the wall actually rattled. Remus laughed as he pushed him,
back of his knees hitting the bed and they fell, clambering onto the bed until the back of Remus’
head hit the headboard and Sirius kissed him with so much energy that his brian short circuited,
electrocuted itself, died, maybe, who the fuck knows.

Sirius moved to straddle him again and Remus gasped, and gripped him by the shoulders.

“Oh, no you don’t,” he breathed, gripping him and flipping him over fluidly so that Remus was on
top, bedside table just beside him and knee just about far enough to not fall off the bed.

Sirius’ eyes glinted with something unbelievable.

He leaned back in and kissed him, wholly and unrestrained, tunnelling his hand behind Sirius’ head
to grip into the silk of his hair and pull so that his head arched and his pretty little throat bobbed
delightfully in front of Remus’ face. He began to kiss down it, shuddering at Sirius’ delicate moans
and the obscene noise he made when Remus pulled his hair; the gasps he continued to make when
he held it there firm.

“You asshole,” he murmured against his skin, kissing down and down his quivering chest,
humming over his sternum. “You fucking prick. You cunt. You–” he breathed a hot groan against
the skin just below his ribcage, pressing his mouth and tongue against it, hands moving flat palmed
up and down; he couldn’t get enough of him.

Sirius was moaning, head thrown back. He raised one hand to grip at the headboard behind him
and breathed heavily as Remus moved further down, to the tender skin underneath his bellybutton,
trailing the hair and pulling at his waistband.

“You’ve pissed me off, now,” Remus said, unbuttoning his trousers and pulling them down; Sirius
lifted his hips so that Remus could pull them right off.

He lowered his head, mouth wide open and gasping, to see Remus hovering over his cock, the thin
layer of fabric not abating the tenderness of his hot breaths and he made a noise as if to reply
except it came out absolutely incoherent. It sent lightning flowing down Remus’ spine. Euphoria
and dirt and energy.

Remus moved down. Spread his legs with brutal force and began to suck on his inner thigh,
rejoicing in the way he squirmed in both bliss and frustration as his hard cock lay untouched. He
dug his nails into his skin to hold his legs in place, trying to break skin, trying to do anything.
Sirius bucked and Remus pushed him down again.

“Stay,” he hissed. Sirius’ legs shook but he stayed. “Good,” Remus murmured, lip curling. He
trailed his tongue up and over the straining fabric.

“You’re unbelievable,” Sirius breathed, looking down at him. “Oh, my God. Remus.”

Remus laughed from where he was situated happily in between his thighs and looked up at his
head, thrown back, his lovely, lovely skin on full display. He clambered upwards and kissed his
stomach. And then something caught his eye.

He pushed himself up to kiss Sirius’ neck, smile growing.

“Do you remember the club, baby?” he murmured, low and gritty into his ear. Sirius’ hand gripped
onto his head and he laughed, dryly.

“How could I forget?” he wheezed, and Remus tugged at his skin with his teeth. He reached a hand
down and dug underneath Sirius’ boxers, gripping a hand around his cock. His back arched slightly
as Remus thumbed the shaft and he groaned; Remus went on.

“You said,” he whispered, breathing heavily against the pit of his throat, licking a stripe up his
neck, “the whole violence thing was kind of your area, didn’t you?”

Sirius only whined in response. Remus moved that one inch upwards so that their noses were just
touching, so that he could see every inch of Sirius’ perfect face, his dewy lips.

“Still your area, pretty boy?” he purred, and Sirius’ eyes physically darkened. He moaned dirtily
for one and then out of annoyance as Remus slipped his hand out and away from his dick.

He darted over him for half a second, so quick Sirius didn’t even get the chance to turn and look
before Remus had grabbed at the dagger residing on the bedside table and had placed it, flat,
against his throat.

Sirius choked, slightly, in shock. He closed his eyes as he skin burned, and smiled; chest heaving
with euphoric laughter as Remus shifted to straddle him completely, and grappled to grip both of
his wrists with his free hand and imprison them above his head.

“Is this okay?” he murmured, leaning forward to kiss him with the knife pressed against his throat.

“Fuck you,” he wheezed, “fuck you, yes, God, it’s so okay, it’s so okay.”

Remus tutted; he pushed the dagger in further, sizzling flesh and silvery threats, and Sirius’ jaw
dropped wide open, breathing erratic.

“You want fucking anger?” he glowered, grinding on him gently. Pushing the flat of the dagger
into Sirius’ throat and revelling in the strangled noises that came from the back of his throat. “All I
am is anger.”

Sirius laughed. His fangs glistened in the sultry lighting.

“All you are is mine,” he choked, tilting his head up and looking at him through his heavy lids as if
he was something incredible. Everything incredible. “All mine.”

“No one else’s,” Remus murmured, kissing him again. Horribly messy. He flipped the flat of the
blade over and then over again, drinking Sirius like he was the finest wine—he was—and, in one
smooth movement, he jerked his hand to the side and slashed Sirius’ throat open.

He arched his back and let out a sickening noise as the blood began to trickle out of the wound and
down the sides of his neck. Remus lurched down to catch it with his tongue, licking the healing
wound, tasting blood and seeing blood and feeling it as he pushed the flat of the bloody dagger into
Sirius’ cheek and painted him with his own essence.

The wound healed and Remus pulled back. He had let his grip on Sirius’ hands go slack and he let
go of them completely to sit, pushing his ass back against Sirius’ cock, and admiring him. Sirius
opened his dark, delicious eyes and rose a hand to thumb at his cheek. Swiped it across his bottom
lip, and when he pulled back there were remnants of his blood—he pulled it back and put his
thumb in his own mouth, his lips dangerous and incredible around it, eyes not leaving Remus.
Remus, gently, pressed the point of the dagger into the tender skin between Sirius’ nipples. Raised
his eyebrows, got a nod in return, and so he pushed in, slightly, until he drew blood, and then pulled
it upwards. Like he was gliding a paintbrush up a canvas, it went just as smooth; trailing a shallow
cut all the way up to between his collarbones, watching it heal as he went. It left a trail of loose
blood.

He leaned forward and licked it. All the way up to the bottom of his throat, which he then kissed.
Moved upwards, kissed his lips; Sirius looked at him with such soft, lustful, euphoric eyes that he
felt weak in the knees.

“Make me yours,” he breathed, slightly shaky, wrapping his hand around Remus’ own, holding the
dagger. “All yours. Only yours.”

Remus kissed him deeply once more and then pulled back. Kissed all the way down his chest to
the tender skin of his abdomen.

He trailed his dagger tenderly across the skin, watching it burn and heal, burn and heal.

And then he pressed the point of the blade into Sirius’ skin and carved his initials into his stomach.

The abrasions healed before the next was ready, and Sirius moaned dirtily through the whole entire
thing. Remus had to press him down, be good, stay still, sweetheart, and when he sat back, mouth
open and blistering, and watched as the last slice healed and there lay a messy, dirty, unholy
rendition of RJL lining Sirius’ porcelain skin in pearl red blood. The mark had healed but it had
seeped in. Into his cells, into his bones, into his bloodstream and into his heart that no longer beat
but was bonded, bonded to his, belonged to his, belonged to him. Carnage. Remus wanted to bite
him and break him and this and this and this.

He smeared it with his thumb and then licked through the markings, so the letters were
indecipherable. But they had burned into him in a way that was unprecedented.

He left Sirius smeared and bloody and dirty and perfect as he climbed back up to his head, pressing
the knife against his throat once more, and Sirius whined. Reached his hands up desperately to cup
around Remus’ face.

“Fuck me,” he whispered, bleeding with yearning, and Remus bit his lip.

He let the dagger slide off of his skin, and Sirius took a breath. Brushed some of the hair away
from the side of his face and trailed his own finger down his pretty throat.

He lined up his lips with Sirius’, but did not kiss him.

What he did, instead, was whisper, “Beg,” against his trembling lips.

“Fuck you,” Sirius spat, and Remus wrapped a hand lightly around his throat to shut him up.

“Beg,” he hissed, smiling. Sirius whimpered.

“You have too many fucking clothes on,” he growled, and Remus blinked; he registered that he
was still wearing jeans, but he hadn’t even thought about it in the haze of making Sirius feel good,
making him feel loved and making him feel pain.

“I’ll take it off if you beg,” Remus bargained, lips quirking up. He thumbed Sirius’ adam's apple,
feeling it bob up and down his throat as he swallowed, thick and desirous.
“Or, if you don’t want…” he said, shrugging and pushing himself back so that his ass put enough
pressure on Sirius’ straining cock to throw him into complete disarray.

“Please,” he choked; a guttural sound. From the deep of his soul. “Please, Remus, please, please–”

“Not good enough,” Remus said, pushing further and circling his hips.

“Putain de merde,” Sirius gasped, “va te faire foutre, tu me tues avec ta putain de bouche– oh my
fucking God, you asshole, please, I need you, I need–”

“Okay,” Remus laughed, dry and hollow. “Good job. Good boy.”

He leaned forward and kissed Sirius deeply, one hand holding him up above him while the other
moved down to fumble with his jeans—the clasp was already open and so he just pushed them off.
Sirius’ hands eventually joined him and pushed everything off, letting his cock bob out, flushed
and slick with want and Remus pulled at Sirius’ own boxers and slid them off with no preamble.
He threw them behind him and pushed himself backwards. Sirius spread his legs without issue and
his hand was back up again, gripping the headboard like it was the only thing anchoring him to this
earth. Remus took a moment to admire him, all come undone, whimpering and begging—his own
cock twitched and he leaned forward.

He shoved his two fingers into Sirius’ mouth and he sucked diligently. He closed his eyes and
lapped his tongue around them, coating them with his saliva; and then he pressed his fangs into
one of the finger, and Remus laughed.

He pulled them out and kissed him deeply.

“Not there,” he murmured against his lips, and then he reached over him to find the lube that he
had shoved into the bottom drawer of the bedside table, and he coated his finger slick with it.

He kissed the tip of Sirius’ cock and the deep inside of his thighs before he pressed a finger into
him. Sirius groaned and Remus pushed upwards, working diligently while moving to kiss Sirius’
neck; in the process Sirius hitched his knees up higher and threw his head back as Remus took his
time.

“You’re unbelievable,” Sirius whispered, again, squirming. Remus kissed him again to shut up,
and he cupped his face, gripped at his hair. “You’re marvellous. God. You’re wonderful.”

“You talk too much,” muttered Remus.

Sirius laughed, dry, eyes fluttering shut. “Oh, I’ve heard that one before. Repeat complaint,
actually.”

Remus scoffed. “I am quite literally three fingers deep and you’re talking about your old partners?”

Sirius grinned.

“Maybe I’m trying to provoke you.”

“You want me to call you a whore?”

“I want you,” he said, gripping onto the sides of Remus’ face, nails digging into his skin, “to shut
me up.”

Remus tutted.
“So impatient,” he muttered. “Give me a minute.”

“Whore wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, though,” he breathed, reassuming his tirade,
“don’t you have to sign an oath to tell the truth as a hunter? Wouldn’t even violate it.” Remus
moved against him and he gasped, head back, neck bobbing suspended in the air. “Mmmm. Not
that you don’t on the daily, anyway, you dirty little liar–”

“Oh, my fucking God,” Remus groaned, pulling out of him, grabbing his calves and yanking them
out straight so ended up directly underneath Remus, who moved to tower over him and push his
legs back up. “Shut up.”

“Make—”

His words were cut off instantly, as Remus slid himself in.

Sirius' jaw dropped. Remus pressed his wrists with one hand above the bedspread on top of him,
holding onto the headboard with the other. He smiled.

“Sorry, what was that?” he murmured. Sirius opened his eyes from where he’d been suspended,
hair fanning the pillow and mouth wide open, and glowered at him.

“Fuck you,” he breathed. He opened his mouth to speak again but Remus moved, and it was lost.

“Sorry?”

“I hate you. Oh– I hate you so much.”

“No, you don’t,” Remus said, laughing, and he moved.

Falling into a rhythm, he was unbelievable, he felt unbelievable. Remus kissed every inch of Sirius
he could find, like an obsession; he tasted like diamonds or salt or something so consequential, like
a drug rubbed against Remus’ gums. He caught his teeth against his bottom lip when they aligned,
it was horribly messy. They could be anywhere. He could tear Sirius apart bit by bit, rip him limb
for limb. He could taste him. What an ironic turning of tables. Sirius Black, his mouth was open
and bleeding love and red, his fangs popped and glimmering against the tension thick in the air—
cutting through it like a knife, flames through the air.

“Wait,” Sirius gasped, shaky and desperate. “Wait.”

Remus stopped, pulling back to try and look at him through his hazy eyes. “Are you okay?”

Sirius nodded immediately, squeezing his eyes shut then open again. He nodded avidly and hauled
one hand out of Remus’ hold to cup his face and pull it into him.

“I want,” he started, tremulous against Remus’ lips. “I want–”

“What makes you think I’ll give you what you want?” Remus murmured. Sirius whimpered,
gasping into his mouth, but his lips curved upwards.

“I think you’ll give me anything I want,” he whispered, cupping his other cheek, with purpose this
time.

Remus’ only coherent thought was yes, yes, yes.

A moment, and then seemed to simply say fuck it and, with a kicking of his legs he flipped them
over clumsily. He squirmed to get comfortable as Remus’ head sunk into the pillows. Sirius tucked
his hair behind his ears. Haloed in the light, he was iridescent.

“Okay?” he asked, trailing his hands over Remus’ chest.

He responded in the only way that seemed fit amongst this situation.

Sirius ended up, eventually, leaning forward. His lips pressed to Remus’ neck, he could feel his
harsh breath; menacingly beautiful, cold teeth, he hissed, slightly, carnally, shutting his eyes and
gasping. Remus tugged his head up. Brushed the hair out of his face.

Sirius opened his eyes, and he nodded. He turned his head to the side, slightly.

“Take it,” he whispered. “Please.”

“Are you sure?” Sirius breathed. Remus nodded. Pulled his face in and kissed him, deeply; trailed
his tongue over the sharp point of his fangs, nodded again.

“I’ll give you anything you want,” he said, drunk. Sirius blinked.

He hovered over his scar. And then he bit.

A high-pitched wail of a whine pulled itself from the hollow of Remus’ throat as Sirius sunk his
fangs into him and sucked, drinking from him; it hurt, a little, but the amount of senses he was
experiencing was too much, enough to short-circuit; perhaps he was desensitised to being bitten,
perhaps Sirius’ lips were laced with a drug, rubbed with one thumb over his teeth, flesh rolling
between it. And it felt good. It all, really, cultivated in a huge hot mess in his chest and all he could
do was wrap his arms around Sirius’ neck and let his throat rumble for him, letting a string of
breathy curses and hate declarations and love confessions tumble out of his mouth like they had
been lying there dormant since the first day he had met the blasted vampire—since the day he had
lain sights upon him and knew that he would be his, whether that was to kill or to kiss or to be
killed or to be kissed.

He felt Sirius’ tongue against his skin and he upped the pace. Harmonious, the way they fit, they
found their rhythm, truly, after a moment and Sirius detached his mouth from Remus’ burning
euphoric neck, licked the area with a flat, trembling tongue and then gasped, letting his head fall
against Remus’ sternum.

“There,” he whimpered, pressing a kiss to his chest, another up to his collarbone. He sucked the
tender skin on his collarbone until it felt like there was nothing left and Remus wrapped one hand
around him and dug the other into his hair, tugging. “Oh, fuck, Remus, oh fuck, there, right there–”

He groaned, clashing his teeth against Remus’ chest and biting his shoulder—fangless, just biting
—scratching and trembling, so was he, spacing out unevenly and working his hand faster. He saw
stars and heard nothing but the rush of his own blood, pouring through his veins, pouring out of his
veins, pouring out of Sirius’ mouth and he came with his hands desperately clinging to Sirius’ hair
and his mouth desperately clinging to Sirius’ name.

Sirius came, flush between them, not even ten seconds later. Open mouth pressed to Remus’
pressed and face dug into his neck as he gripped the sheets and rode it out, the sounds rhapsodic,
elemental, gold. He shuddered and collapsed fully on top of Remus. There was still dried blood on
his cheek, but Remus had not the energy to wipe it away.

He wrapped his arms around his back, instead; still breathing heavily, Remus manoeuvred himself
to pull out and shift to the side, pushing him gently and Sirius fell to his side with a soft sound,
face-first.
They lay there, for a moment. Simply lying next to each other.

Remus turned his head and pushed himself to the side with a groan, digging his hand under Sirius
and pulling him, bodily, to lie on his chest. His arm moved to wrap around Remus, over his
shoulder, and they lay.

Remus kneaded his thumb into Sirius’ back and kissed him on the head, again and again and again.
They stayed there for a while.

“The fucking dagger,” Sirius murmured, after a minute or two, into his skin. “The fucking dagger.
You fuck– you fucking–”

“Mmhm,” Remus said, wrapping his arms around his waist and pulling him more comfortably onto
him, one leg hitched, the other straight.

“Still my thing,” Sirius breathed deliriously, nodding his head frantically but with a sort of
grogginess twinged into it. “Still my thing. Definitely my thing.”

“Good to know,” Remus replied, shifting and turning to his side so they were facing each other. He
pushed forward and kissed him deeply, and Sirius closed his eyes and kissed him back.

“You’re unbelievable,” he whined, trailing his hands up his chest. His eyes fluttered shut again. “I
don’t have a coherent thought.”

“That’s fine,” Remus said, his eyes closing fluently. “I like you like this. It’s the only time I get
you to shut up.”

He felt Sirius smile from where his mouth was pressed against the bottom of his jaw.

“I don’t even have anything snarky to say to that,” he muttered, and Remus laughed, pulled him
closer.

“Exactly,” he whispered, opening his eyes and brushing a piece of hair from Sirius’ face. Then he
wet his thumb and drew it over the remnant dried blood on his face, washing it off. Sirius’ eyes lit
up with recognition.

“Are you okay?” he asked. Remus, who was starting to come into feeling the pain as opposed to it
being a gentle stinging, frowned and looked down. Sirius pushed himself up and looked at the
other side, where he had bitten. Remus could see red out of the corner of his eye. “Oh–”

“Bad?”

“No,” he said. “Missed the tricky veins. I’m good at aiming.”

Remus, looking down at the state of his stomach, would have to disagree. He didn’t get this out,
however, before Sirius pressed his tongue to the skin around the wound and the wound itself,
lapping up the blood. Cleaning it.

Remus sighed, relaxing instantly.

“You’ll need a salve for this,” Sirius murmured. Remus raised his hand—with some effort—to
wave somewhere vaguely to the left of him.

“Have some of the aloe vera one. Somewhere.”

There was a silence, and when he opened his eyes, Sirius was leaning against the cushion, smiling
at him.

“What?”

“I thought you used it all,” he said.

Remus opened his mouth, then closed it. Shrugged. “Got more?”

“Was that,” he continued, a murmur, “just in case this were to happen? Did you get another one
because you knew we’d need it?”

Remus closed his eyes again, but his lips curled up. Sirius barked with laughter.

“You’re unbelievable.”

“‘M prepared,” said Remus. “We need it, don’t we? Was bound to happen, I said…” waving his
hand again, “you had permission.”

Sirius kissed the corner of his mouth. He opened his eyes once more.

“No,” he started, smiling wistfully, “you said you’d give me anything I wanted.”

Remus scoffed.

“You can’t hold that against me.”

“You said it!”

“I also called you a whore,” said Remus, raising an eyebrow. “And a prick. A cunt.”

Sirius shook his head, as if confused. “Yes. All true statements. What’s your point?”

Remus laughed, shoving him ever so gently. He reverbed back into his neck, wrapping an arm
around his waist tightly, holding him close.

“You didn’t actually call me a whore,” muttered Sirius. “By the way. You only threatened it.”

“Well, we have the rest of the house to do that for me,” he replied.

Sirius frowned.

“That is,” he continued, “...presuming you didn’t get Dora to redo the silencing spell that expired
yesterday. Cause I didn’t.”

Sirius’ jaw dropped wide open.

“No,” he said, in disbelief. “And you knew?”

“No; I think it occurred to me briefly somewhere between you want me to call you a whore and
you flipping us over,” he said. “And by then you could say I was thinking about different things.”

Sirius was silent for a moment. But when Remus looked down at him he was laughing, silently.

“What?” asked Remus, grinning. Sirius pressed a hand to his mouth. “What?”

“He–” Sirius started, and then had to get a few more giggles out before shakily composing himself
enough to speak again, “Reg-Regulus… is going… to kill us—”
Remus thinned his lips, and then Sirius locked eyes with him. And he lost it.

They laughed until their ribs hurt, and then Remus got up, got a towel and the salve and cleaned
them both up (there was naught to do about the blood on their sheets though, but they’d seen worse,
he supposed.)

He lay back down as Sirius leaned on his chest, pressing two soft fingers onto his neck and rubbing
the cream in; leg hitched over Remus’, Remus’ hand on his arse. He bit his lip and focused on it as
if he was doing an art project. It was horribly endearing.

“I am utterly devoted to you,” said Remus, out of the blue.

He’d turned off the lights and locked the door upon getting up, and so it was just him, Sirius, and
the moon once more. In the dim, softening light, Sirius’ pause was gentle.

He flickered his gaze from his neck up to his eyes, rubbing the residue off of his fingers against the
rim of the tub, and he smiled.

Screwing the lid back on and turning to deposit it on the bedside table, his hair fell across his face
like a curtain. Remus reached out a hand to tuck it behind his ears as he turned back. Stars in his
eyes. He leaned foward.

“I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you,” said Sirius, softly, moonlight drowning out all but
the brightest stars and he shone. Warmth where his hand caressed Remus’ cheek. 4am truths.
You’re drunk, mon amour, say it again, say it again.

“I’m never going to love anyone the way I love you,” he continued. He kissed him, slowly. And he
mumbled, again and again, “never, never, never.”

Somewhere along the line, they fell asleep.

 twenty one
Chapter Notes

um so this chapter is 29k. idk how that happened and I am. genuinely so sorry about it
it might be easier to read as an epub? it’s just that the next two are twin battle
chapters (!!!!) that I can’t really change so.. yeah

lots happens though! fun stuff!!!

It happened at 4 in the morning.

There was a sharp, echoing knock at the door at half past five.

Remus could promise you that he had a coherent thought, but he would have no proof of it,
because the string of noises that came out of his mouth was something along the lines of
“Whargbleurgh.”

Sirius groaned.

In a second Remus felt an absence on the other side of his bed, the side of his thigh cold from
where the duvet flapped around him as Sirius whipped it open. Pressing his face further into the
pillow, he heard a throat clear from outside.

The door swung open.

“Re— Oh my God, what the FUCK–!”

The door swung shut.

Remus, eyes bleary and mouth horribly dry and tasting like something died inside of it, pushed
himself up to look over his shoulder. Sirius was standing there, hand outstretched somewhat
dumbly. Buck-arse naked in front of the closed door.

“You’re naked, by the way, Black!” called Dorcas from the other side.

“Mm,” Sirius murmured, looking down and back around to Remus. "As it turns out, yes I am.”

“Good God,” Remus muttered, sinking his head back into the pillow.

His solace would not be found for long, for—as they would find out when Sirius put a robe on and
Dorcas found the courage to rip her hand away from where it was pushed against both of her eyes
—she actually knocked for Remus. Yawning, clothed and half-listening to the earful she was
giving him about something something phallic and something something traumatising, he pushed
the front door open, walking out with her by his side into the musky outside world. The sun had
risen, but barely, and when it did it was rather ineffective anyway, so it could very well still be
midnight.

Marlene, in the most casual clothing Remus had ever seen her in—a hoodie and sweats that looked
precariously like Dorcas’—was standing, cross-armed and stoic-face, chatting to Benjy Fenwick,
who had blood on his face (come on, someone had to). Tonks was sitting cross-legged on the
grass, rubbing her hands over her face, with Fleur rubbing her back.

And there was a corpse vaguely in between the two of them, lying on the pathway.

Remus stopped, abruptly.

“Is that–” he murmured, as Dorcas kept going, hopping down the stairs and making her way over
to Benjy and Marlene, who had now noticed them and turned.

“Got him,” Dorcas said, throwing a thumb over her shoulder. Benjy gave Remus a grim nod.

“Alright, Lupin?”

“Is that Stew Podmore?” he asked, mouth half-open, staring at the corpse—looking more and more
mutilated as time went on and his eyes adjusted. There was blood on the stone pathway beside him.
He walked slowly over to them, only tearing his eyes away when he was face-to-face with
Fenwick.

Stew Podmore was an American senior hunter that Remus really had not had many encounters
with. He was Moody’s friend. That was as far as Remus knew him.

“Unfortunately,” said Benjy.

“You found a hunter?” Remus asked, brows furrowing. “Where?” He registered, vaguely, that this
was the first hunter directly from HI2 that they’d come across since HI1 went up in flames. The
first of Dumbledore’s lot. The first lead to Dumbledore.

“Ben,” said Dorcas. “Tell him everything you just told me.”

Benjy took a breath in.

“We were doing our usual,” he said; he didn’t need to elaborate more on this, for the hunters
operation had been rather stagnant for months, now, and they were searching outside of the city
enough/far removed enough that trying to track down their lot didn’t interfere with their plan to
squeeze Riddle out by disappearing. It had been the operation Remus had been in charge of, until
Minerva had appeared and he’d stepped down almost obsequiously. Finding a lead, one of the
missing persons, anything. “A safehouse run down in North Carolina. We’ve done them all before,
obviously, so knew what to look for; so when we get to number #13 in Pittsboro we can see that
it’s different. Found him,” he nodded, grimly, over to Stew’s body, “in the basement—alive.
Barely. He was poisoned, we think. Couldn’t get a coherent word outta him. But from context
clues we could tell he had been living there for about a week, maybe two.”

Remus blinked. “So how’d he die?”

“Splinched when we tried to apparate him back,” Benjy said, sighing, “you’ll see when you go over
and look at him. It’s minor but he was weak already, I s’pose. It sucks ‘cause we might’ve been
able to get more information out of him, but at the same time– well.” He thinned his lips. “No one
deserves to suffer like that. It was… really, really horrible.”

Following his gaze, Remus looked over to Tonks, who was now crying into her hands, Fleur still
rubbing at her back.

“But he wrote something,” said Dorcas, prompting.

Remus raised an eyebrow. Benjy nodded, and beckoned him over to look; the three of them moved,
while Marlene diverted to go sit herself next to Tonks, leaning over and whispering something that
Remus couldn’t hear for certain but was undoubtedly comforting.

Stew had been splinched in his stomach. He was lying in a pool of his own blood. The blood
vessels in his eyes had burst, and his face was gaunt; there were gargantuan valves in his neck, like
swollen lymph nodes, except they were black and bruised. He looked like skin and bones. Over the
slight upset—not enough to warrant mourning, as he said; their office hours had rarely aligned—
Remus thought it was rather a mercy that he had died.

His two fingers on his left hand were seeped in red, and he had written, in his own blood—

“What the fuck does that say?” asked Remus, cocking his head to the side. Benjy mirrored his
actions, and then Dorcas. Like a trio of dominos.

“Well,” said Benjy, thinning his lips. “I think it looks like an F.”

“And that,” Dorcas pointed to a curvature just before where his hand was lying, eternally gone still,
“looks like the beginnings of an E to me.”

“Fe,” said Remus.

“Yes.”

“We’ve finally found a hunter, and the only lead we have is... Fe.”

“Yes.”

“Fantastic,” said Remus. The sarcasm could not be clearer.

Thirty-seven minutes later, he’s sitting at the kitchen table, opposite Dorcas and Marlene. They’re
the only people that seem to be awake—vampires are night owls, believe it or not, and now the sun
has risen—as Benjy had run upstairs for a shower, Tonks and Fleur following him, murmuring
something about Moody, something about Bill. After concluding that the only people that could
help them would be Pandora, who could identify almost any ailment to see what the poor guy had
died from, or Regulus, who Remus was convinced knew Every Word Ever and might be able to
throw out a few suggestions like a living thesaurus to get them going. Both of them, however, were
MIA for the time being (Pandora was on personal business that only Marlene knew—Remus didn’t
ask, not his business—and Regulus was wherever the fuck Regulus was at 6am. Running,
somewhere).

No one had spoken for nineteen minutes before Marlene sighed, placing her coffee down onto the
hardwood with a thud.

“Are we going to talk about it?” she sighed, looking at Remus. Dorcas turned to her and gasped.

“Did you see Sirius’ penis too?” she asked.

Marlene blinked, processing this.

“I mean,” she started, slowly, “yeah, a lot. Like, most days, actually, but I’m not sure that’s what
you mean.”

“What do you want to talk about, Marley darling?” Remus asked, resting his chin in his two hands.
Truth be told, it’s entirely too early and he’s entirely too whiplashed from doing the whipping at
3am to getting up and having a corpse be on his doorstep at 6 to be bothered to feel any kind of
shame.

Marlene faltered.

“I don’t know,” she said, “I just– the jokes are clawing at my teeth, Remus. They’re clawing.”

“You heard, then?”

If she had had enough blood to drink that morning, she probably would have blushed.

“Only because James told me.”

Remus nodded, thinning his lips. “James heard, then.”

A moment.

“...Only because Regulus told him,” she murmured.

“There it is,” Remus said, nodding. Dorcas looked between the two of them.

“What’s going on?”

Marlene turned to her and cooed. “Aw. The little human. Out of the loop.”

“You know what I can do with this,” said Dorcas, brandishing a bread knife from across the table
that she’d slipped into her hands in such record time it could’ve been vampiric.

“Relax,” said Marlene. “No violence, babe. I’m not the one that gets off on that.”

It took her a moment.

And the second it seemed to catch up to her, the door swung open.

“Oh my God,” Dorcas choked, laughing, the exact moment that the door to the dining room opened
and one James Potter, bright grin plastered onto his face, sauntered in.

“Ah,” he said, bright eyes landing on Remus. “The whore master!”

He seemed to almost dance in, twirling once in glee, leaning forward to kiss Marlene on the head.
Remus did nothing but stare.

Sirius walked in after James. He did not look amused.

“Ah,” Marlene said, leaning her head back over her chair so her hair swung down the length of her
spine. “The whore.”

Sirius walked, unperturbed, through the room and past Dorcas’ chair. Without so much as looking
at her or breaking a sweat, as he walked past Marlene, he slapped her clean round the face.

She lurched forward, flipping her neck and therefore hair back over. A red formation of a handprint
appeared on her cheek, and then almost immediately faded away.

She made a fair enough face.

“I deserved that,” she said, nodding once.

“Good slap,” said James, sipping an opaque cup that he will have just received from the fridge. He
nodded at Sirius. “Good form. Very dominant. I see you’re taking some tips from Remus.”

Remus, without so much as looking at him or breaking a sweat, snatched the bread knife out of
Dorcas’ hands and lobbed it at him.

James dodged but, as it was thrown sideways the serrated knife slashed him across the neck before
embedding into the wood of the door behind him. It pinged a little. James wiped the blood from his
already healed gash with one finger, looked at it, and pulled the exact same face.

“I suppose I, also, deserved that,” he said, but when he looked back at Remus, he grinned, again.

Safe to say breakfast was an intermediate affair.

Where Dorcas knew, somewhere in her heart of hearts, probably, that she would get her
information from Remus himself when they were alone, the other two—with apparent first hand
knowledge—did not very much care to rein it back. Sirius sat himself beside Remus, downing a
black coffee and then another and resting his head on his shoulder—vampires did not get tired the
same way that humans did, but Remus suspected Sirius’ fatigue was somewhat spiritual—and they
all laughed, finding the stupid fucking humour in the situation.

See, James and Marlene, as singular entities, have minds and strengths and strong-willed senses of
their own. Remus, however, has come to realise that all of that seems to go down the drain the
moment that they come into contact with the other.

(It took them ten minutes to notice the newly scabbed over bite on Remus’ neck. They laughed so
fitfully that Marlene actually melted to the floor, and ended up under the table, where Sirius
proceeded to kick the shit out of her.

James leaned forward, blowing his hair out of his face, and said, over Marlene’s squealing;
“They’re so immature, aren’t they? I’m so glad that we, as a collective, are above this. Aren’t we?”

Remus stared at him. And then he leaned forward to push him, while Dorcas simultaneously
leaned over to push him, and then he was on the floor too and Dorcas was kicking him as well and
Remus was wondering how the hell he ended up here.)

Regulus entered the room at about 7:30.

By this point, more people had appeared, coming through for food or to say hi or to talk to them
about the corpse (James and Sirius had been briefed, of course, and the front yard had been closed
off). But, considering the riot that always seemed to be present whenever the group of them were
together, most scarpered, noting the territory had been claimed.

Much like Regulus. For he opened the door, locked eyes with Remus, Sirius, and then turned to
walk straight back out.

“Ah-ah!” called Dorcas, and he stopped. Turned, again, one hand curling around the doorframe.

“You don’t need me,” he said. It was a statement but it read more like a plea.

“Unfortunately, we need you, babe,” said Marlene. She pointed to the table. “Sit.”

Regulus, with a forlorn expression on his face, trudged back in and took the empty spot beside
James. He stared resolutely at the table.
“So,” said Remus.

“Don’t talk to me,” said Regulus.

Sirius stifled a humongous bout of laughter into Remus’ shoulder.

It took him a minute to compose himself, but when he turned back, his voice was still thick with
unshed laughter, the corners of his lip twitching.

“Reggie…”

“You shut up.”

“Reggie–”

“My head,” he started, looking up at his brother, “is a constant hum. It’s like tinnitus. No one else
can hear it. It’s like fifty different radio channels playing at once. If you try you can focus on one.
But sometimes one of the channels plays that god-awful song and because it’s so god-awful it’s the
only thing you hear. It’s the only thing you hear even if you try to focus on another one, and it
plays, and it plays and it continues to play and you know what you realise, Sirius? You realise that
God doesn’t exist and the universe hates you, and all you have is your tinnitus and your brother
being fucked raw upstairs—”

He gasped viscerally and clasped a hand over his mouth.

There was a long, long beat of silence. Marlene cracked it with a gentle squeak, a strangled noise at
the back of her throat.

And then they all, all, burst out laughing.

“Oh–” Dorcas was crying, pushing her chair out and grasping her side. “Oh, I'm going to get a
stitch. I’m going to get a stitch.”

“Reggie–”

“Don’t,” he groaned, leaning his head in his arms on the table.

Remus, laughing into his hand, while Marlene slapped at his forearm in a feeble attempt to halt the
laughter, registered at the same time that, one, he has never heard Regulus say so many words so
passionately all at once, and two, that there was a leaf in his hair.

Before he could even process this thought, James was leaning over and plucking the leaf out. His
hair fell around it like silk, and Regulus rolled his head around to look up at him, his goofy grin,
and the leaf suspended in mid-air.

James let it fall, and Regulus closed his eyes. His face crumpled into laughter as the leaf hit the
table.

He rolled his head back around into his arms, and James cackled, leaned over and placed two hands
on his back and shook him a little, limp with hilarity. Leant his head onto his back.

It took them ten minutes to recover and move past it—enough that they could brief Regulus of
what happened outside—and, in that time:

“Regulus,” said Sirius. “Genuine, genuine question. Did Mother— well, or, erm, a governess of
some kind, or perhaps Cissa, did they ever give you… the… you know, the–”
“If you say ‘the talk’ I am going to rip your ears off the side of your head and shove them down
your throat.”

“Okay,” Sirius said, nodding once. “Got it.”

And:

“Yeah,” Regulus scoffed, straightening his shirt, “I am aware we have the same hearing ability,
Sirius, which is exactly why I’m just going to– to,” gesturing avidly, “to have wild sex everywhere
and let you know how it feels.”

Sirius raised an amused eyebrow. “With whom, might I ask?”

Utter silence.

“Anyway,” said Dorcas, clapping her hands together.

And, maybe twenty seconds later:

“Good God, yes, Dorcas, I know what a kink is,” cried Regulus, “please, please, put the bread
knife away for the love of fucking Salazar oh my God please put it away–”

Which is about enough of that.

The entire morning, really, felt like a fever dream, and it was only at about half seven, perhaps
forty-five past that they really got to get into the nitty-gritty, explaining the situation of the dead
hunter outside that Remus to be quite honest still hasn’t processed—it’s not even eight A.M. and he
was post-coital at three and up at five, give him a minute—Dorcas took the lead. Really, all they
wanted was for Regulus to take a look and see if he could pick anything up. Preferably soon,
before he starts to smell.

“What happened to him?” Regulus asked, leaning over to look at a photo Dorcas had taken on her
phone.

“Well, we won’t know for certain until the witches help us out,” she said. “Dora’s gone off and
Mary sleeps like the dead until noon, so she’ll be no help. I have a few thoughts.”

“You do?” asked Remus. He was leaning on Sirius’ shoulder, this time. Marlene was picking at a
bowl of grapes she’d procured, eyes flickering around the group of them.

Dorcas sighed.

“Well,” she said. “I think it sounds a lot like the potion that Regulus took. In the cave.”

Remus practically felt Regulus go stiff. Cold emanating off of him like an open door to a freezer.

“Benjy said that he was hallucinatory,” she explained. The table went quiet to listen. “Speaking
absolute garb. Shaking, feverish, panicked. And that he seemed out of control of his own mind.
Like, taken possession of by something. As if he wanted to speak– or, he was speaking, but it
wasn’t translated from his head to his mouth. Something went wrong, fundamentally, you know?”

A moment.

“Excuse me,” muttered Regulus, scraping his chair across the floor as he got up and left the room
without a second glance.
They all watched him go in silence.

Dorcas turned back to the table.

“Oh, God,” she murmured, covering her face with her hands. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t even thinking.”

“It’s fine,” said James, getting up. “Don’t worry.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, again, turning to watch him go.

And then there were three.

“Well,” said Marlene. “Erm. This was a fab interlude, guys. Entertaining, informative. I think it’s
about time that we all go back to bed, personally.”

“Should I–?” Sirius said, wistfully. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the door since Regulus had left
through it.

“James has got it,” Marlene said, gently. Sirius frowned. Looked to Remus. He nodded.

“What was I thinking,” Dorcas muttered, running a hand over her face. “He wouldn’t want to hear
that.”

“It’s fine.”

“I’d hate to hear that,” she sighed.

“We’re all a bit wound up, I think,” said Marlene. “C’mon. Beddy byes.”

Dorcas turned to her, resting her cheek on her hands. “Did you just say ‘beddy byes’?”

“Mhm,” Marlene nodded, smiling. “Beddy byes.”

“That was so human. You sounded like a primary school playground mum.”

“Would you like me to be more vampiric?” she asked.

“Absolutely not–”

She was already clearing her throat.

“Take me to my satin coffin,” she began, regally, “wherein I may slumber in time to replenish
energy so I may embark on my sojourn through Transylvania as the velvet night doth fall.”

Dorcas was already walking away.

“You’re embarrassing."

“My satin coffin!” called Marlene, stumbling out of her chair after her and laughing, muffled
through a mouthful of grapes. “Come, strumpet, there’s room for two!”

The door closed, and the two of them were alone in the room. Sirius turned to him, slowly.

“Did Marlene just call Dorcas a strumpet?”

“In all honesty, I don’t know if anything I’ve witnessed in the past two hours has actually
happened,” Remus said. And then: “Please take me back to bed.”
Sirius picked him up, bridal style. Remus didn’t even complain this time. They were asleep in ten
minutes.

***

Mary was braiding Dorcas’ hair.

She was in an armchair with Dorcas at her heel, perched on a footstool, hair in a bonnet; on an
evening in which the outside was cold and dark but the blinds were shut, in here they were in
dressing gowns and sweatpants. Lounging in front of a vicious log fire behind a measly metal grate,
Dorcas’ hair was in three sections at the top of her head to get it out of the way whilst Mary pulled
it into box braids, starting from the back of her head and progressing upwards. She had gotten
about halfway through. Her nimble fingers were empty for precision: there was no sign of the
chunky rings she had on during the days and the iron-knuckle gloves she tended to wear at night.

They were chatting about something when Remus came in—he didn’t pay attention, and they
didn’t acknowledge him as he flopped onto the sofa to their adjacent and covered his hand with his
forearm. The ice of it tickled and he shivered—he had just came from outside, in which it was far
too cold of an evening to be sucked into play-fighting with Astoria and Isabela and, eventually,
Draco, who cheated like hell with his super speed until Remus had had enough and pushed him
down the bog to join Astoria (had been dared to jump in by Isabela) and Oliver (who was more
often in the water than he was out); yet he had been. Sucked into it, that is. He shuddered and sat
himself up, reaching his hands out as close to the fire as he could.

Neither of them greeted him. Mary leaned over to grab at the extensions, intertwining it with the
slicked hair from Dorcas’ head seamlessly, as the woman in question leaned—a little more
awkwardly, so as not to irritate her stylist—and retrieved a little plastic box that clattered within
itself as it moved.

She flicked it open, and held it out to him.

“Pick a colour,” she said.

It was a box of beads, for her hair. She had had the box itself since they were about eighteen.
While it had originally consisted of a multitude of colours, over the years requirements for
minimalistic living and also simple disuse of some of the colours (she donated the purples and the
greens to the girl who lived opposite them in Hackney) had let natural selection take its course and
now there were only five to choose from, all of them wood-like and natural except the tainted gold
that shimmered, now, against the firelight.

She needn’t have asked, but she always had, and so that’s what she did. It had become tradition.
Since they were eighteen, she had asked Remus every time she would sit at Mary’s heel and have
her hair braided, to pick a colour, and he would pick mahogany brown. She would ask Mary—who
would pick beige—and then she’d pick the mellow gold for herself. Over summers when they
were still in training she used to have them done down to her waist, her hips, sometimes weaved in
with a crimson red if she was feeling particularly happy, gilded with beads at the end of each braid
that jangled when she walked.

Now, Dorcas asked what colour he picked, and Remus chose the mahogany brown. She asked what
colour Mary picked, and she picked the beige. And at the end, with her hair fully done, collarbone
length as that was what she preferred nowadays, Mary would slide the beads onto a few of the
lengths of her hair and secure them; not too much so that it was impractical, but enough that it
would be her, her hair, her identity and all of the things that she carried with her.
However, as of right now, her hair was sectioned three ways via a clip, Mary was combing the last
section on the row. And Remus was cold.

“I’m cold,” he said.

Dorcas chucked the blanket on the arm of the chair at him. He snuggled up into it comically and
took a breath, letting the day pass over him.

Two days passed; it had been uneventful as always, recently, besides his escapade with the kids.
Most of the hunters were gone, running their own missions up and down the state—communication
was stilted, but it was happening, which made Remus happy as usually they’d just go off on their
own. Stew’s reappearance had sparked morale. But Remus had an odd feeling about it. After all of
these months of silence—two, for they were well into May now, and HI2 had been bombed in
March—did something not seem… purposeful about this? Pointed?

Perhaps he was a pessimist; it was what he did best. But it felt like Dumbledore would not be found
until he wanted to be found. The corpse had been moved, and Regulus and Dora both had been
examining what he had written (Fe, may Remus remind you, the most unhelpful clue to literally
ever exist ever) and they had come up with… well. Nothing.

It was a work in progress.

At this point, Remus couldn’t tell which of their enemies were more menacing. Dumbledore, or
Riddle. On the one hand, Riddle had made himself known, loud and proud, vicious and
overcoming onto a generation of sorrow, guilded by his hand yesterday and sixty years ago. But
perhaps it was the sheer disappearance that made Dumbledore so terrifying. Remus felt himself
quite stupid to still be caught up in their last meeting, that small pocket of time that still affected
him so. He would never word this to Sirius because he was always the first to accept feeling things
for the sake of feeling, but, Christ, there had been something so unbecoming in his eyes and in the
sandpaper touch of his fingers around Remus’ betrayed wrist, poisoned with truth serum—
sometimes Remus feels like his control is all he has. And all Albus seems to want is control. Remus
fears the abyss of the night, feeling that he will appear in the shadows and disappear into them
without so much of a scream, but topple everything over with him. Because at least Riddle will
make a spectacle out of his murders. At least Remus will see him coming.

Riddle is the kind of monster that Remus understands. Feels unlikely connected to, not out of
sympathy or empathy, but understanding, of how he works. A problem and a solution. The monster
makes themselves known, Remus Lupin kills them. It’s his goddamn job.

And at least that is something they have in common, to be fair, for both of them wiping themselves
off the map just means that they will, eventually, lead Remus back to them. Lure them. It only
takes one, Remus knows—one sign from one enemy, he shows up and they’re all there, like
demons from the past. All it will take is for one of them to send a smoke signal, and the other will
come running. Common enemies, common friends. Andromeda, somewhere in Europe, singing the
tips of Bellatrix’s hair in their momentum as they catch up to her. We’re coming. Race you to the
bank, let's see who gets there first. Neither Riddle nor Albus will pass up an opportunity to
showcase their power and win, and with that, their pride, they lose.

Monster makes itself known, Remus kills it.

That’s his goddamn job.

Tonks summoned him upstairs to the person who gave him the goddamn job, weaned him on it,
after he woke up in the afternoon after Stew’s death.
When he pushed the door open, gently, she was sitting, faded lilac hair tucked behind her ears,
hands clasped together and pressed to her chin. She turned to look at him. She looked tired.

As far as hunters go, Remus didn’t really know Tonks. Her division was the one that began
training the year he left, so they just missed crossing paths, just missed meeting each other at
school. The majority of the jeers he had heard about her had been in relation to Moody. Your
replacement, they’d say. Moody favours students once in a blue moon, better get back in his good
books, Remus, she’s gonna become his favourite. A part of him was sort of miffed, but for the most
part he didn’t care. He rather wished people would stop banging on about Tonks in relation to the
men around her and start talking about her actual personality, but that was neither here nor there.

She had stood up, smiling wistfully, as Remus shut the door. Moody was asleep. He was looking
worse. They still hadn’t taken the leg.

“Any updates?” he’d asked.

“The infection’s spread to one of his kidneys,” she said, “but they’re almost certain they can fix it.”

“Good,” he nodded. He was still unsure as to why she had asked him to be here. But she stepped to
the side, away from the chair. Cleared her throat.

“He’s gonna wake up soon,” she said. “They put him on three hour sedatives at 12. And I think…”
she trailed off, gently, looking at Moody. Shrugged. “You should be the one to tell him. ‘Bout
Stew. They were friends for thirty years.”

Remus didn’t even question it.

“Okay,” he said, nodding once.

He sat down in the seat that she had just been perched in, and she nodded, walked to the door, and
faltered. When Remus realised the door hadn’t clicked shut he turned back around, and there she
was. Her face pinched as if she felt horribly guilty about something.

She sighed.

“He loves you,” she said, very poignantly. “I don’t know if he’ll say it before it’s too late. But he
does.”

Remus didn’t really know what to say to that. So he didn’t, and she left. The room was quiet.

Turning back to Moody, Remus reached out to clasp his hand. Held it for about a minute, and then,
feeling awfully imposter-like, let it go.

He kept his hand on the side of the bed, though. Just a moment away.

Going back to business, as Mary’s hand rustled in the hair bag and the fire started to thaw Remus
out:

Perhaps most notably, perhaps the only successful thing going for them on their list of shit that had
to be done, was Lily’s fiendfyre summoning. Now, she was not stable by any account. But the
connection to Sirius, how they’d lit up—it had helped her immensely. She was creating lanterns.
Wielding the fire that repelled them and the only thing that could kill them; she was a powerhouse.
It was magnificent.

It was the true fate of a phoenix, to wield cursed fire. In the lore, at least. It was why phoenixes
were immortal (at least, they should be, however Lily’s immortality was at the very bottom of the
piling heap of things they had to worry about); when fiendfyre became one’s body and soul, when
one finally became at peace with it enough to let themself go, they would be reborn, and be better
than they were before. Lily, however, had set a whole tree on fire today–her only mishap, she’d
have you know–so it was safe to assume she wasn’t there yet.

In light of her success, tomorrow, they would go out into the city for the first time since the
Dementors had been let loose. Marlene had bartered that showing their faces every now and then
would not do too much damage to their looming (perhaps they were just as menacing as their
enemies); it was a fine enough excuse for what they really needed to go for, which was to test the
waters, see how far the fire burned.

In the meantime, there had been a gargantuan amount of murders in a small section of Queens that
seemed like an obvious call for attention. And perhaps it was. But it was two birds with one stone.

So they were going into the city.

One hurdle after another, and they had (hopefully) jumped the Dementors, so they would go on
until something else appeared to get them to one of the many parts of Riddle; to get them that little
bit closer, close enough to slit his throat and watch his soul pour out in lightning strikes so that the
sky could be blue once more, instead of gloomy grey.

(It would be sooner than Remus anticipated, he just didn’t know that yet. But now you do. You
probably did anyway. Things don’t stay quiet around here for long.)

“You going tomorrow, too?” asked Mary to him, absently, pulling another strand of hair out of the
bag.

“Yep.”

She tutted. “Bloody betrayers.”

Dorcas laughed, and Remus snuggled into his blanket.

“You know you’re booked in for locket trials tomorrow,” he laughed, and she scowled, but it was
fond. “Welcome to the consequences of your own actions.”

(“Locket trials” being the colloquial term that they had begun to call the secretive testing going on
on the locket—lockets, plural, now, after Astoria’s fake was revealed (Remus had only
relinquished it under the promise it would not be harmed). The nicknames were stupid, but this,
along with “decryption crew” and “Operation: Soul Eater”, had bloody stuck.)

“They can do without me,” she said, petulantly, “I could help.”

“Aren’t you going upstate with Bill and Charlie on Thursday?”

“Bill and Charlie aren’t Dorcas and Remus.”

It was here that Dorcas sighed, reaching backwards to rest her hand gently on Mary’s knee. It was a
bit of an awkward position, and it skewed her braiding, so she halted, but it was sweet.

“We’ll go soon,” she said, smiling, “the three of us, somewhere down the coast, hunting. Like old
times.”

“I’m holding you to that promise,” Mary said, laughing and resuming braiding. Dorcas grinned at
Remus and crossed her fingers, knowing if her plan fell through they truly would never hear the
end of it.

There was a silence, in which Remus closed his eyes, feeling quite like he could fall asleep on this
sofa, and they were acquainted with the crackling of the fire and the jostling of the beads as Dorcas
kicked the box around with her foot.

“I just miss,” said Mary, pausing to collect her words; “when things were easier. When we’d sit on
the breakfast bar in Hackney listening to illegal police broadcasts like fucking Spider-Man to try to
catch things that sounded supernatural.” She paused. “Running around with knives sheathed and
having to have me on standby to confund people who spotted you idiots with one. Going out at
1am to kill a wraith to be back for our practicals at 6.”

“You fell asleep in the cloakroom,” said Remus, humorously, eyes still closed; sleepily
recollecting. “And I almost stabbed Dorcas with a Wharncliffe blade.”

“You did stab me with a Wharncliffe blade,” she said, laughing, “and Amy had to heal me before
Moody could see and beat your ass—gosh, do you remember Amy, that transfer witch?”

“Amy saved my life once,” Mary said. “I have thought about her every day since.”

“Gay,” muttered Remus.

“Our flat was a lot of things,” said Dorcas, jokingly making herself sound wiser than her years,
“but if it was one thing, consistently, it was gay.”

“Amen.”

“Mhm. Women.”

“Remus, that’s not—”

“Shh. Let him speak. He has important things to say.”

Remus burst out laughing, here, squeezing his eyes further shut and feeling sleep tickle at his
consciousness. He heard the telltale rustling as Mary pulled some more hair out of the bag, the
sound of her placing her comb down on the side—a gentle thwack—and Dorcas giggling, that
sweet sound.

“We’re still us, though,” said Remus, quietly.

A tender, comfortable silence.

“We’ll always be us,” replied Mary.

“Until the very end,” said Dorcas.

(The very end. Such a huge prospect for such a small room. With the fire cracking and his eyes
drooping and two nimble fingers, sliding mahogany brown beads onto box braids like they were
still seventeen and London was still the biggest place in the world.)

But that was a far cry from here. A far, far cry from home.

He opened an eye, a fraction, to see Mary smiling down at Dorcas’ hair, and Dorcas smiling down
at him. He grinned stupidly and closed his eyes, not even given a moment of respite before Dorcas
was saying, “Oi,” and something was being thrown onto his face.
He spluttered and opened his eyes heavily to find a small pillow from the other side of the sofa on
his chest. He looked at her.

“You’re gonna fall asleep, and your neck will hurt if you only sleep on the one pillow,” she said,
matter-of-factly. It was textbook. It, oddly, made him want to cry.

“I am going to fall asleep,” he muttered, pulling his head up to place the pillow gently behind him
and pulling the blanket up to his chin, curled up on his side, “and if I wake to beads up my nose,
I’m g’na kill you both.”

“No, you won’t,” said Dorcas, sweetly.

“No promises,” said Mary, even sweeter.

He laughed. The throughs of sleep took him, warm and accompanied with the jostling of beads in a
box and the rustling of a small paper bag.

***

At 11pm in New York in mid-May, it should be dark. It should not have been dark, however, for
the past twenty consecutive days.

Dark might be a bit of an overstatement. The night was dark, the day was gloomy. It was alike to
when it thunders—the rare lightning storms that used to rage over London, in the watery humid
summers, tugging darkness like the draw of a blind over a window, plunging the white overcast
sky into something more of a nautical twilight. That had, by now, twenty days past, been every day
in the city and surrounding areas.

It wasn’t as bad up at the end of the island. It was gloomy, sure, but more like it would be in
December rather than anything excessive that this plain of land has not seen before.

Here, in Queens, it was 11pm and it was dark like it should be. Difference is, it had been about this
dark at 8pm, 7pm, and 6pm, too.

Remus could, without too much beguile, admit that he had been insufficient in his attentiveness to
the life of the city. It would be something that he could not have fathomed this time last year. But,
in contrast to the part of his soul that wanted to protect the world, wrap it in bubble-wrap, save
every child from a black-eyed demon under their bed and every bloodbag from the ravagement of
fangs in their skin, he could not. Remus’ relationship with his job and his conscience had, as it is
very well known, been weighing on him for a while. It was simply that everything else was
weighing harder. And where there would always be that part of him—that irrational voice, telling
him he could fix this, he could do something, he could help the people who were getting cursed
and killed and the asthmatics who were choking on the fog, the humans who had not been able to
leave their houses for days and the humans who did, putting themselves into a line of fire that they
didn’t even know existed—he couldn’t.

He couldn’t do everything. Remus could tell himself that, tell himself that he could not do
everything and understand that there were things most pressing at home and things more pressing
in his line of orbit that had sort of side-stepped out of the way of the general vicinity; hunting down
the streets and Craigslist and police siren calls for help abandoned; he could tell himself this and
still have that voice beating himself up in the back of his mind. He could tell himself that every
step he took, every phoenix fire-imbued breath he took would be, ultimately, for the greater good,
and there would be a voice in his head that wouldn’t believe it, and he was okay with that. It was
comforting. The presence of that voice meant that his conscience was still working the way it used
to. The presence of that voice meant that there was still a part of the old him, rattling around
somewhere between the metal bars holding up his brainwaves, and he was okay with that.

Perhaps if he voiced this to Moody he would call him corrupt, but he didn’t think any of them—
any of his hunters—had any right to say anything to each other any more. None of them had done
anything. They were all as bad as each other.

For the stupid oaths that he had taken as a hunter, to put humankind first and humankind above all,
had not anticipated quite a few things.

One, namely, Sirius Black, which is all he has to say about that.

Two, imperatively, the threat of an underground snake of factional vampires working for a Dark
Lord, impoverished and aggressive and determined to take every single foundation underneath your
feet away until you found your soles burning, barefoot on the crust of the Earth before you even
registered the end of your previous thought.

And three, a presence of a fog so thick and sickly when it attacks that rumours were floating around
that the city would close down, that the CDC had told everybody to stay inside until further notice
and word had been passed from ear to ear that they were truly considering the word ‘epidemic’,
even though pathogens were not involved, even though this was nothing they had seen before.

Fear-mongering and ‘second coming’ fanatics had left social media near-hysterical. Upon the
impression that the natural world was turning on them; if only they knew how unnatural it was.

Anyway, it was forty-three. That was how many recorded deaths—confirmed to be linked to the
Dementors—there had been so far, over three weeks. Marlene had been tracking them on a big
pinboard in the entrance hall of Boardwalk. Humans did not often survive the Cruciatus. Forty-
three had not.

There were videos floating around of people writhing on concrete floors like they were being
exorcised, and it was always at least three at once. For the dementors did not attack often—but
when they did, you knew about it. And there was always some sort of a murder nearby, because
they followed their dark masters like dogs to a chain. These shadows were smarter than one would
think. They knew who they obeyed and who they didn’t. And so, in fourteen total attacks, there
had been forty-three murders, most of them in the past week alone.

He had only really realised the magnitude—caught up in the dramas of Lily and Sirius, and
wrangling information out of Snape, and helping out with locket trials and decryption and sticking
by Draco’s side and Astoria’s and falling asleep beside computers upon computers of police wires
Dorcas had hacked into for Andromeda, somewhere in Oslo looking for Bellatrix, when it was his
turn to help find leads—three days ago, when he walked into the living room to find Benjy and the
Weasley boys – Bill and Charlie – sitting, watching the news, after another attack. It was the first
one caught on video, though grainy. He had sat and listened to the news woman give the run-down
and follow it up with the recommended, lacklustre advice from the government with a pit of guilt
at the bottom of his gut, until Benjy had turned it off.

“‘S bad, that,” Bill had muttered. Remus had felt a presence at his side and had turned to see Lily.
This had been just before the fiasco with her and Sirius.

“Really bad,” he had muttered back. She had looked at him, he had looked at her. It was panic and
warmth and suffering as she gripped his hand. He squeezed it.

Two days later, once they had been given the green light for this endeavour, it had been Draco who
had not wanted him to go.

They had been in the tree. Where Remus was definitely less spritely than perhaps the target
audience for tree-climbing was, the kid liked it up there. He came down every now and then—he
had struck up a friendship with Astoria, as Remus had known he would—but for the most part past
sundown you could find him in his tree, sometimes with a blood bag he’d sip on nonchalantly,
sometimes with a book that had seemingly materialised out of nowhere. Last night, before it had
gotten very cold—before he had been dragged into shenanigans with the children, and before
Draco and Astoria had ended up in the bog—they had sat beside each other, in the tree, looking
over the water. If you looked at it at the right angle you could almost see the gold of Pandora’s
wards over the estate shimmering down onto the glittery surface. Almost as if it was magical
enough to walk on it, but they were not Jesus, and he was not coming anytime soon regardless of
what the people on the street said in wake of the rapturous fog, the soul-eaters.

“I don’t want you to go,” Draco had said, quietly. He had a tendency to betray emotion through
nothing but his dialogue; his vibrato would be blank, tenure or emotion to his voice wiped off in a
way that could only be the production of a Pureblood upbringing. The blanker it was, the more you
knew he cared.

Here, he was monotonous.

“We have the lanterns,” Remus replied, “and Lily.” A pause, and then: “We can’t win this fight if
we don’t take risks to progress it.”

Draco had been quiet for a while. He was picking at a leaf on the edge of his branch.

“I probably won’t come into contact with them,” said Remus, again, filling the silence, “it’ll be a
quick expedition, a quick scope out of the area. With the phoenix and two purebloods.” Your
uncles, he almost said. “I’ll be okay.”

Draco said nothing to this. He ripped his leaf small enough that he could not rip into it any more,
and then looked up to the glassy, overcast sky. The last time they had seen blue had been the day of
Lily’s outburst. Even the vampires who were burnt by it missed the sky.

“Do you think they’ll ever go away?” he asked, quietly. Remus hummed.

“Who controls them?”

Draco didn’t answer, or move, for a moment. He averted his eyes and turned his head when he
realised it wasn’t rhetorical and that Remus actually wanted him to answer.

“No, it’s not a trick question. I’m asking you. Who do they obey?”

“You know who,” Draco said. Remus sighed.

“Just answer the question.”

“The Dark Lord.”

Remus had never heard him call Riddle by his name.

“Right,” said Remus, “and what would happen if the Dark Lord died?”

“They’d either become obedient to he who murdered him, or they’d scatter,” he replied,
complacent.
“And what do I have to find to murder Tom Riddle?”

A pause. “Horcruxes.”

“And what do I have to do to go find Horcruxes?”

It was about here that he figured it out.

“Yes, okay, I understand,” said Draco, irritably. Remus smiled, and raised his eyebrows, wanting
the kid to voice it. He groaned. “Leave. You have to leave.”

Draco looked up into the sky again. Furrowed his brow. It was fear.

“We have to face our biggest fears to be able to conquer them,” said Remus, gently. “I’m gonna
look Tom Riddle in the face and I’m going to kill him, and when I do, they’re all going to go
away.”

Draco relinquished his gaze on the sky to turn. To look Remus in the eye—Remus, right beside
him—and to take in his words, absorb them, the nature and the nurture they embody.

He nodded, sharply, once.

“Stay safe,” he said, monotonous, ripping another leaf off of the end of the branch where his sister
had just been brutally destroyed; Remus smiled.

“I will,” he said, and that had been that.

The night had come. 11pm, and Pomonok was a ghost-town.

The centricities of Manhattan probably had more loungers, more people walking, proud and
uncaring, but their group in this little residential corner of Queens, so far, had seen two people
walking a dog down and and around a corner and one man wearing a gas mask running down the
street with a sports bag clutched in his two hands.

It was him, Dorcas, Regulus, Sirius and Lily.

“Dream team,” Sirius had said. But it didn’t feel much of a dream now.

Sirius and Dorcas were holding lanterns of their own, lit by Lily’s flame, and Lily had curdled a
soft flame in her own hands and, after fusioning with Sirius earlier, could hold it safely for up to ten
minutes. They had to keep at least a foot away from her unless it spat and burned them to a crisp,
but she was getting there.

It’s not like it was dark in a lighting sense. The streetlamps were still on, there was still light
coming from windows—they were down a road in which it was mainly, if not entirely, populated
by apartment buildings. The road was dusty and lined with cars, most of the buildings having small
yards, trees lining the streets. At the end of the road was a metal fence a little bit taller than Remus
sectioning off a parking lot. The most recent of the murders around here had been discovered in a
dumpster just adjacent to this street, skirting down a little pathway around one of the buildings
which took you to an alley. They were currently walking away from it, on the road to stay away
from the trees and also to get a clearer view. Cars were lacklustre.

The air tasted horrible. Remus couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was. It’s not like the air in
New York was by any means fresh, but here, now, it felt sort of tangy. Like a scent in the lining of
your nose so strong you can taste it when you inhale.
The pros of coming out at night was, A), it would undoubtedly be when the vampires themselves
would be prowling, and B), the Dementors were more easily seen against the artificial sheen of the
streetlamps. When you think about it, the fog they emote is camouflage. They would not be seen
against the grey of the light until it was too late. At least here, there’s a shade difference.

The cons of coming out at night was, A), it was cold. And, B), it was cold.

“It’s a bit chilly, isn’t it,” remarked Lily, absently, hands burning.

“I will literally kill you,” replied Dorcas.

“Well then.”

“There’s definitely been a few,” Regulus said, ignoring the entire conversation–well, he probably
didn’t hear it. Too lost in his own senses, trying to pick up trails. Sirius showed no sign of
recognition, either, when he turned to look at his brother. Their concentration face was remarkably
similar. “I’m picking up at least seven scents. Two old, five recent.”

“Six,” Sirius corrected, walking backwards as they went. “Only one old. Passer-by, I think. Five
are recent. Two feel regular.”

To this, Regulus upturned his nose. “I’m quite sure it’s seven.”

“I’m quite sure that it’s six,” replied Sirius, trailing his finger across the bonnet of a car. Remus
slapped his hand away.

“Don’t do that,” he muttered, “if you set off a car alarm they’ll all scamper, old or bloody new.”

Sirius rolled his eyes as if Remus had just ruined his fun but acquiesced. They kept walking,
generally in silence, Lily and Sirius lined up in front and the other three behind as Regulus slowed
to walk in step with Remus.

“It’s seven,” he muttered to him.

“Sii~ix,” sing-songed Sirius, skipping ahead a bit and turning onto the road to their right. “Up
here.”

They all followed him, around a corner to a smaller street. There were houses down here, dying
bushes at the front of their windows, stairs to get up to the front door with a driveway that sloped
downhill into a garage. There were bins out, scattered around. Most yards were kempt but some
were not. One of the chimneys was smoking. It was a nice place–a working class neighbourhood
and thus not the most well-maintained, and a little bit eerie, in the night, and the quiet. But they did
not come across any danger until they found the danger they had sought out.

It was on a street, outside of the housing area, adjacent to a large wall and an office-looking
building, adjacent to an alleyway that Sirius stopped, and looked up to the sky.

“What?” asked Dorcas, who had walked forward two paces before realising. She turned, now.

“Can you hear that?” he murmured.

Regulus walked up to him, squinting at his face and then looking up to follow wherever his gaze
was headed. Into the deep, black abyss of the sky.

“Hear what?” he asked. Lily walked up and settled into his side, and Sirius looked at her. The
breeze tickled the back of Remus’ neck and weaved its way through their hair, and Lily nodded.

“They know we’re here,” she said.

“The dementors?” Dorcas exclaimed, dropping her knife-hand and blinking profusely. “You can
hear them?”

“Sense,” she said, “when I really concentrate. I can feel their anger. Because they want to get to
us–” and she snapped her fingers, a flame lit up, “–but they can’t.”

“That is so–”

Remus, now standing beside Regulus and in front of Sirius, was able to pinpoint the moment all
three of them caught it.

“Shh,” Sirius said, except it was silent with a hand gesture to shut them both up. Remus felt the
back of his neck prick up, and Regulus’ entire body had tensed, his spine straightened up,
something like a cat about to pounce.

There was a moment when they all stood in tantalising silence.

“We’re being watched,” mouthed Sirius, to no one in particular. Lily’s hands began to flame
possibly against her own will, and the air, already thick, seemed to thicken even more around them.

Sirius placed his lantern on the floor, and took a step on the concrete. Made a gentle hand gesture
to beckon Dorcas aside, and then stepped forward again, two wide strides, towards the little dark
alley to the corner of the plain.

“Alright,” he said, in a normal-decibel, guiding tone, “why don’t you come out and say hi, now?”

Nothing happened. For a moment, nothing happened, and Remus tightened his grip around the hilt
of his blade.

And then something sort of extraordinary happened, in that Remus’ ears felt a bit too big for his
body, or perhaps the vampire girl’s legs were just not long enough for hers, to truly sneak up on
him. For when the signal was obviously given and all three vampires came out of hiding at once,
the girl came up right behind him, and he whirled around and ripped out his dagger just in time to
press it against her throat and slit, immediately, before she even got chance to lean in.

He wasn’t sure what was happening with the others, for he pulled his knife away and kicked this
girl in the stomach, and she went staggering backwards and away from their group onto a stretch of
grass on the path. She looked up and she hissed at him—he had to resist mocking her.

When she got up, despite her clunky feet and imbalance, she got up with grace. It was a typical
vampire fight. She was obviously turned quite recently—if Remus had to estimate, he’d say a year
to eighteen months ago—and so her fighting style was very much like his own, hits that he could
block and teeth he could avoid, for vampire fights often only had the upper hand because they were
enhanced, and training specifically to tackle those enhancements had left him with the ability to
dodge as she lunged for his neck and get her by the back of her neck, thumb pressing into the
underside of her jaw to choke her and the free range to stab her in the back. He could skim her
heart with a stake, he knew exactly where to go; the exact point to stab into her back in which it
would not kill her but hurt her horribly, incapacitate her for long enough that he could get her down
on her knees, get another hit in, weaken her enough so that the next time she got up she’d be heavy
on her feet like an eagle carrying a burden back to her nest, and he could get her down once more.
He probably (definitely) could’ve killed her when he’d gotten her around the back. He just hadn’t
wanted to. He was having fun.

It was probably this enjoyment that had somehow domino-effected the next outcome, for, about
eight feet across the way someone kicked over the lantern—he didn’t know who it was—and the
glass smashed, fire catching onto the tarmac like gasoline had been spread over it. And Lily had
been on it, swearing loudly and siphoning it up except this had left her back open, and one of the
vampires had gotten loose and swept up to get her from behind. One touch and she had exploded,
however, she had scorched Regulus—attempting to get the vampire threatening her, too—in the
process, and while this entire debacle had happened in five seconds it had distracted Remus, and
the girl had gotten the upper hand, kicking his knife somewhere adjacent to them on the grass,
towards one of the sloped garages that was not illuminated by a streetlight but instead descended
into nothing. Kicking his stake into the road, it rolled into the fire.

She pushed him into the grass, and punched him round the face. Her fangs were wild, her face
wilder—she was rabid, so obviously rabid—and she grabbed his arms with her nails, sinking them
in so that when he moved to wring her by the neck they sunk in more, which stung, but he powered
through to choke her and roll them over, handling her like a writhing animal beneath him having to
be held to a desk to be sedated. He punched her, to get her to shut up—hopefully to knock out some
of those goddamn teeth, she’d nicked him on the arm—and then, remembering she’d kicked away
his dagger and he didn’t have the movement to reach for another, punched her again, and again,
and again, and again, til she was bloody and bruised and his knuckle was too.

He’d been trying to sedate her by force, almost—at least enough so that he could move one of his
hands to his pouch and fish out one of the smaller knives he carried—but she was so furiously
thrashing against him that he couldn’t find a moment to.

So, he punched her til she was black, blue, bloody and almost unrecognisable and then dug three
fingers into the bottom of her mouth while holding her by the head to try to dislocate her jaw.

And he’d almost gotten there—he’d done it before, he could feel the strain—when something
strange happened.

His knife came back to him. Out of the darkness of the driveway slope, to his left, it came grating
across the path and tumbling onto the grass beside him.

He squinted, looking over into the shadow and trying to see something (while keeping his grip
tight, this time) but could see nothing, and, after a moment, as she continued to flail underneath
him, huffed and pulled his now-bloody fingers out of her mouth to grab his knife, smack her head
onto the ground by the forehead and shove his knife up the underside of her chin into her brain.

She went utterly still.

He slumped, pushing himself off her and sitting beside her corpse to catch his breath, for a
moment, before looking behind him at the darkness in which help had come from. He didn’t have a
torch on him. Dorcas had one, and the remaining lantern. He was sitting debating two things to
himself—whether he would go investigate now or leave it for the whole group, and what the hell
he was going to do with this girl’s corpse—when he heard what was unmistakably Regulus shout
his name, for he was the only person who still called him “Lupin!”

He pushed himself up to his feet—took a moment to look at the corpse, look around him, hope that
nobody would arrive, look above him, hope that no Dementors would arrive—and then started
jogging around to where their fight had evidently relocated, if the sprawled corpse of a young man
and the embered glowing of fire coming from the alleyway was anything to go off.
He made it there, and Dorcas had this man pinned to the wooden wall. Two knives in the palms of
his hands, blade splintering the wood, and one directly through his throat. Some sick semblance of
a biblical crucifixion. Trust Dorcas to crucify a man.

He was wheezing, tufts of black hair falling over his eyes, which were looking around, terrified.
Remus wasn’t sure whether he was more terrified of Regulus or of Lily, who was currently holding
up the fort with an almost shield of thin fire that she was holding above her head. Remus could see
the shadows dancing off of it. He knew the Dementors had heard the action, they were getting
closer.

“Everyone alright?” he asked, and they all nodded. Sirius was leaning against the wall. His hand
was coated in blood, and there was a bloody human heart by his feet and undoubtedly a hole in the
chest of the corpse Remus had stepped over on the way there.

Dorcas spun a knife between her fingers—how she even still had one left, Remus would never
know—and gestured towards the vampire.

“Would you like to do the honours?” she asked, with such an earnest expression that Remus could
help laughing gently. He stepped forward, pulled the dagger out of the man’s throat, and stepped
back to line up with the rest of his party.

The vampire groaned. Every exhale was audible, strained and almost guttural with the way he was
choking as his skin replenished itself, and when he could move his head he flicked his hair up out
of his face and looked not at the fire, the dagger or the wielder, but at Regulus Black.

“You,” he spat.

“Me,” said Regulus, gleefully.

“...Who’s this?” Sirius asked, narrowing his eyes and looking between them both.

“I don’t have a clue,” said Regulus, leaning back against the wall, something debonair about him.

“I know you,” said the vampire.

“Yes, everybody does,” he replied, dismissive. “The words ‘blood-traitor’ ring any bells?”

The vampire growled. “A few.”

He smiled. “Thought they might.”

Sirius, evidently having enough of the casual backchat, took a step forward and wrapped his
bloody hand around the hilt of the dagger that was embedded in the vampire’s hand. He jerked it
and the vampire screamed; Regulus put a hand over his mouth.

“Don’t bother,” he said, “nobody will hear you. We killed all of your friends.”

“The Dark Lord will kill you,” he said, wheezing with pain. It was here that Remus noticed the
blood stained on his shirt. No doubt Dorcas. “He will burn you–”

“I’ve definitely heard all of this before,” Remus said.

“Oh, they’re all parrots off Bellatrix’s back,” muttered Regulus.

At the mention of her name the vampire’s eyes widened. He barked with laughter.
“See? Pathetic. Bel-la-trix. Does that scare you, half-blood?”

Lily frowned and elbowed him.

“Where is Riddle?” asked Sirius, pushing against the knife again. He screamed. Regulus rolled his
eyes.

“You’ll never find out,” he said, through his teeth, blood dripping out of his mouth.

“You don’t know, do you?”

This caught him off guard. He spluttered for a moment, until Sirius followed up;

“Bet you’ve never even met the man.”

“I will soon,” he said, and Sirius stopped. For a short, short moment.

“No, you won’t,” he said. There was a mocking tone threaded between his words. Remus
recognised a strategy, he just couldn’t pick up on what it was. “You want to know why? You, my
friend, got taken down by a hunter. Not the phoenix who can shoot fire out of her hands, not the
pair of Purebloods–” he turned and pointed at Dorcas, who waved with her knife in her hand “–her.
A human. Tom Riddle doesn’t waste his time around weaklings who get their arses beat by
humans. I mean–” Sirius laughed, breathily, “mate, do you realise how embarrassing that is? I’d
rather die by dementor.”

“I’d rather have had my head ripped off by Malfoy in 1959,” said Regulus, except this was more an
aside than anything actually helpful to contribute to the interrogation, “and that’s saying
something. That was truly degrading.”

“You helped,” the vampire hissed, baring his teeth. “If it had just been me and her,” and he looked
at Dorcas, up and down, with an increasingly disgusting quirk to his lips that made Remus want to
punch him square in the face, “I could’ve had her.”

“You wanna test that theory?” Dorcas asked. The vampire rolled his eyes, and she stepped forward.
“No, I’m being one hundred percent serious. You and me, now.”

Even Sirius looked bewildered for a moment. The vampire stammered– “Yes–” spluttered on his
words, “I mean, no, fuck you, blood-traitors, go to h–”

Sirius pushed on the knife again.

“Fuck, his screams are grating,” muttered Lily, cringing.

“I see,” said Sirius, eyes glinting with excitement, getting right into the vampire’s face so they
were barely a hand's length apart, “you’re delusional, then.”

“I’m–” the vampire started, and then seemed to process what he said. “What?”

“You’re delusional,” he repeated, “you won’t even go up against a tiny little human and you think
Tom Riddle– what, hand picked you of his hundreds of subjects to meet? You?”

“He did,” growled the vampire, “by cordial invitation–”

“Cordial invitation to where?” Sirius laughed, right in his face, curling his top lip, fangs out and
intimidatingly so. “Buckingham Palace?
“The fête–” choked the vampire, with energy despite Sirius’ force on both his throat and his hand.

Everyone froze.

Sirius let up immediately. His face dropped into something calm, and inquisitive.

“So, they’re doing the fête’s again?” he asked, and then turned to Regulus, who had perked up in
shock.

“Oh, my God,” said Dorcas, absently. “That’s what Stew was writing.”

“Oh, my God,” murmured Regulus. “They’re holding another fête?”

The vampire blinked.

“Erm. No?”

“When is it?” Sirius asked, almost immediately pushing on the knife, for the third time, the
vampire’s screams reverberating off the air. “When is it?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, shut up,” muttered Regulus, striding forward. He pulled back his hand and
threw a punch right on the baseline of the screaming vampire’s jawline. Remus heard the way his
teeth slammed together, and almost felt the way his head hit the wall behind him, leaving a splatter
of blood when it fell, limp.

Evidently, that had not been what Regulus had planned.

“Did you kill him?” Lily asked, astonished. She let up the fire shield–it was about time for her to
take a little break–and strode forward to pick up the remaining lantern, hold it above her head, and
then examine the body.

“No?” said Regulus. He did not sound very confident.

A moment passed, in which their voices got sort of muted. Sirius was complaining at his brother,
Regulus was defending his honour—he had not killed him, but only broke his neck, which was the
most difficult break for the body to repair and thus would leave him out of sorts and unconscious
for about five, ten minutes. They all spoke, agitated—Dorcas oversaw the confusion—and Remus
felt the hairs on the back of his neck prick up. As if someone was watching him.

He took three breaths. Turned his head to the side, and breathed in, entirely tuning himself out of
the voices overlapping in front of him. Fading away, slowly. Focusing on the behind, the darkness,
the abyss in which they had come out of, street lamp flickering every two minutes but otherwise
dead and limp and barren.

A rustle of something being stepped on flew through the air, reaching his ears, and it was like a
marionette string had pulled him with the way he turned, pulled his dagger out of his pouch and
threw it, within a second or perhaps a half.

There was silence, and then footsteps, and Lily lowered her lantern to reveal a hand holding his
dagger, and then a girl attached to the hand, hair in dreads, eyebrows raised.

“Seriously?” she said, “I just gave you this back.”

Another split-second and Sirius had her up against the wall, so high that her feet didn’t touch the
ground and she dangled. Fangs out and glinting, eyes dark and predatory. She spluttered.
“Siri–Sirius,” she choked, thrashing her legs and banging on his shoulder. “You–know me.”

It took a minute for his face to clear. He closed his mouth, and jolted her down, so her feet hit the
floor, though he didn’t let up with the weight on her chest.

“Ana?”

Ana was looking at Remus.

“I knew it was you,” she said, breathless; Sirius turned to look at him too. “I recognised you from
that night. You helped. They would’ve been homeless without you. Sebastian wanted to let you die
so that we could kill her and then eat you, but I persuaded him not to.”

“I’m sorry,” said Dorcas, “who the hell is this?”

“One of the vampires that stayed at the Hotel,” Sirius said, turning to look at her, again; “You
should be in London.”

“I’m a homebody,” she purred. “And now I can continue to be, since you’ve killed our competition.
Thanks for that.”

It was in that moment that Remus remembered her; the girl outside of the hotel, holding a laptop
and clothes to her chest with tears in her eyes. He had not thought about her since that very specific
moment. But she had evidently listened in on his encounter with Sirius, on his encouragement to
the broken body.

It was at this moment that he registered more movement, and pulled out his gun for the first time
that night, pointing it into the darkness. A dark-skinned figure in a bulky brown jacket came
parading out of the darkness, hands raised.

“We’re not here for any trouble,” he said, probably louder than he should. Remus presumed this
was Sebastian. “We were going to leave, but we overheard what you were saying. We have a peace
offering.”

He began to reach slowly into the inner pocket of his jacket, and Dorcas shook her head.

“Mm–mm. Nope,” she said, striding over and cocking her gun. She pressed the barrel of it to the
side of the man’s head, through his hair, and cocked it, ready. Sebastian froze. “There you go.
Proceed,” she said, sweetly, and he took a shaky breath in and resumed moving his hand, except
this time much, much slower.

He pulled out a piece of paper.

“Put it on the ground,” said Dorcas, “I’ll go with you.”

They crouched, ever so slowly and he placed it on the ground. She took a deep breath in and then
pulled her gun away from his head, standing up as he did and taking a pace backwards.

“Three steps back,” she said.

“I promise he’s okay–” began Ana, but––

“Shut the fuck up,” said Sirius, moving his forearm to put pressure against her throat again. She
choked a little. It was entirely justified. They didn’t know these people, what side they were on.

Dorcas picked up the paper and walked back over to the group. She opened it and read it, side by
side to Regulus and Remus, as Lily curdled some fire in her palms and set up the shield again. It
was, all of a sudden, much easier to breathe.

“Read it,” said Sirius, relinquishing his painful grip on Ana but still holding her against the wall,
turned around to look at them. Dorcas cleared her throat.

“To our dearest Luna Lorelei,” she began, “You are cordially invited to the celebration of immortal
prowess and vampiric supremacy at the Dark Lord’s Winter Fête, on Friday the Fourth of June
Two Thousand and Twenty-One, at eight P.M at Whittaker House in Sleepy Hollow, Westchester
County, New York. Black tie appropriate. Masquerade themed. Bring your own–” her nose
scrunched, and she sighed, “bring your own drink. God, that’s gross.”

“He’s throwing a party,” said Lily, echoing what everyone was thinking. “A party.”

“A girl passed through here a week or two ago,” said Ana, still in Sirius’ grasp, “Sebastian stole
her jacket. This was in the pocket.”

“A party,” Lily repeated. “Masquerade themed?!”

“It’s an old tradition,” said Regulus, gravely. “Pureblood soirees. They’re just human buffets
dressed up to look fancier than we are. But I don’t know why they’re inviting… commoners…”

“Commoners?” Lily said, seeming more baffled at this than the party.

“I mean–” he started, sighing, “there’s no good word. Young vampires. Half-bloods.”

(She frowned, again, at this. Remus got the impression that they had had conversations about it.)

Regulus began to pace.

“Like, why would they invite this idiot,” he back-handed smacked the vampire against the wall in
the face, “and let him parade around in a fancy suit and pretend he’s one of them. He’s not. Riddle
is literally killing covens because he wants to eradicate all of these–” he smacked him again, “–
lowlives, so why the hell…”

He turned.

He made direct eye contact with Sirius.

“It’s a trap,” said Sirius, plainly, and Regulus deflated.

“Of course it’s a fucking trap,” he muttered.

A moment of silence.

“We’re going to go,” said Sirius, again, plainly.

“Of course we’re going to fucking go,” groaned Regulus, withered, letting his head drop into his
hands.

When it became evident that Regulus would not arise any time soon, Sirius looked at Dorcas.

“Pocket that,” he said, gesturing to the invite with his eyes, “we’ll talk about this when we get
back. Now, you,” turning back to Ana, and then looking at her counterpart, who Remus was now
aiming the gun at as Dorcas had been indisposed. “Why aren’t you in London?”
“I was born and raised in New York City,” she said, “do you think I’m going to leave my city
simply because some fucking British man fifty years my junior with a God complex wants me
out?”

Sirius seemed to debate this for a moment. He pursed his lips, and nodded his head towards
Sebastian. “Who’s that?”

“My boyfriend,” she answered plainly.

“Why’s he here?”

“Because he was born and raised here too.”

“And you guys…” Sirius said, eyeing the man, whom Remus had backed against the wall too, a
foot or two away from Sirius and Ana, “you’re just…”

“Hiding out,” said Sebastian. He lolled his head around against the wall to look at Sirius. “He
killed my entire coven. Twenty of us. Gone in a night. I was the only survivor.”

Sirius sized him up, and then, quietly; “I know how that feels.”

“I will literally kill you,” said Regulus, the other survivor, through his hands.

“Anyway,” Sirius said, quickly. And then he didn’t have much more to say.

“Listen,” said Ana, carefully, “this war—that’s what it is now—has caused mistrust. But all me
and Seb are doing is staking out our ground. I’m not going to leave New York until New York
leaves me, and I’d go up against you for it, too, Sirius Black. I’d go up against fucking God.”

“God doesn’t exist,” said Sirius, “we are proof of that.”

“Then I’ll create him myself,” she said. “And I still won’t leave this city.”

“There are a lot of us,” interjected Sebastian, “more than you’d think. An underground network of
vampires, a few in most neighbourhoods, who have managed to keep their heads down. Keep
what’s theirs, fight the Dark Lord’s minions who come and invade their territory. We’re on your
side. We’re fighting your fight, Sirius.”

“You don’t get to first name me,” he said, automatically.

“Mr. Black,” he amended with a sharp, scared nod. And then, quieter; “We’re fighting your fight,
even if you don’t see us.”

“Your army is bigger than your little estate,” Ana whispered, bringing his attention back to her.
“Every vampire we kill, we’re doing it in your name.”

“And his,” said Sebastian, looking over to Regulus, who had dropped his hands and was gazing at
them.

A moment passed, and then Ana’s lips curled into a gentle smile, and she looked over to Remus.

“And his,” she said, nodding at him. He nodded back.

Sirius let her go.

He took a step back, and Ana took a deep breath. Remus took this as his cue to drop his gun, and
Sebastian side-stepped to her, lacing her fingers in between his. But she stayed looking at Sirius.

“Am I allowed to first name you?” she asked, humorously, and he narrowed his eyes playfully
before nodding. She smiled, and then it dropped and she looked about ready to cry.

“Thank you, Sirius,” she whispered, slowly into the abyss of the night. Her free hand reached up to
touch him, gripped by the neck. Something intimate and eternally grateful. “Thank you for the
refuge in the Hotel. Thank you for remembering my name. When you win this fight, the world will
remember yours.”

Sirius stood, lips parted gently, shell-shocked, and then she nodded. He nodded back. She gave a
gracious, overlapping smile to everyone in the party, then began to walk, the both of them
disappearing into the darkness. Hand in unlovable hand.

***

They returned home with news, to news. Andromeda called. She had had a run-in with Bellatrix.

Where she had, last to Remus’ knowledge, left off in Oslo, they had come to a head just outside of
Gdynia, Poland. She had called with blood on her forehead and a lacklustre amount of Horcrux
information, however she had something that sort of made everyone collectively exhale in
understanding;

“She said something,” Andromeda had told them. She had been in the passenger side of a car, Ted
driving. The wind was temperamental but they could still hear her. “When I was trying to get it out
of her, she said, and I quote, that I could ‘find out for myself at the fête.’”

Of course, Sirius and Regulus looked at each other instantly. Lily’s jaw fell open.

“Of course, when I tried to get more out of her, she shut up for once in her life, but– fête? Like the
Winterfests? They’re doing the fête’s again?”

“Apparently they are,” muttered Sirius, and then he pulled his phone out. “And they want us to
fucking know about it. Look, we’ve heard about the fête too, Andy; I’m going to text you a picture
of something we found today. Get safe and check in later, alright?” He paused. “Say hi to Ted.”

Andromeda turned the camera to Ted, who thinned his lips in a smile and pulled a hand off the
wheel to wave with his fingers.

“Hi. Okay. Bye,” he said, slowly reaching forward to press the end call button. As soon as he did
he slumped back in his chair.

It was silent for a moment.

“So,” said Regulus. “It’s a trap.”

“Of course it’s a fucking trap,” said Sirius.

“And we’re going to go.”

“Of course we’re going to fucking go,” he groaned, into his hands, rubbing them harshly over his
skin. “They’re projecting it in headlights in the hope that we catch wind of it. Not even just them.
Dumbledore too.”

“How does he know about it?” asked Lily.

“Well, evidently they’re not being very discreet,” muttered Remus.

“Whatever next step either of them want to take,” Sirius said, gesturing with his hands; “It’ll be
there.”

“There’ll be a crowd,” said Dorcas. “Huge amount of humans.”

“Huge amount of low-level loyalist vampires,” muttered Remus. She turned to him.

“You think it’s a trap?”

“For us, yeah,” he said, “for them, I don’t know. Is it a case of he wants reinforcements, witnesses,
an army? Or he just wants a bloodbath?”

“Would he do that?” asked Mary. “Kill them all as collateral? I feel like that would spark some
rebellion that he wouldn’t like.”

“No,” said Sirius, looking to his brother and back. “He wouldn’t. Look, his loyalists are his
loyalists because they have nothing left. He either created them and gave them a purpose when
they were at their lowest, or killed their covens and their friends and families and then marketed
himself as some sort of saviour for vampirism and brainwashed them into thinking he was their
salvation. His entire appeal is the safety blanket that he’s somehow twisted himself into appearing
as. Whilst their turmoil all comes down to him. But they don’t know that, they worship him as the
only figure who sees their lives as something worth living, so were he to set them up to die in a
bloodbath on his hands any survivors would be left with a spark that he doesn’t want to ignite.” He
sighed, getting to his conclusion. “He wants a bloodbath, but he wants us to start it. So in the end
he’s still seen as their messiah.”

“So we don’t start it,” said Dorcas, turning to look at everyone in the room. “He’s trying to back us
into a corner where we only have one option but we’re not gonna do that. Right?”

Regulus scrunched his face into something that looked almost like defeat.

“What other choice do we have?” he asked, quietly. He crossed and uncrossed his legs, perversely
agitated. “We’ve seen what he can do when provoked,” he gestured vaguely to the darkened
window, the fog coating the sky, “we’ve seen how he can disappear. And we know now that the
FE was your hunter corpse writing fête in his blood as he died, meaning that he knew about it too,
meaning that Dumbledore knew about it, meaning everything is going to accumulate there. When
might the next opportunity be after this one?”

“So you’re proposing we simply walk into a suicide mission?” asked Dorcas.

“Only a suicide mission if you die,” muttered Sirius humorously.

“No,” Regulus interjected, returning to her comment, “I’m proposing that we show them that we’re
doing this on our terms. You forget how much neither of them know. Riddle wants an army, he’ll
get an army, but he doesn’t know that we have a phoenix. Riddle knows we’re hunting Horcruxes
but he doesn’t know that we know where the next one is. And if Dumbledore is there that’s the
other half of it in one fell swoop. He holds the magic, and the vessel is around the neck of–”

“Daphne,” Remus said, gasping.

“Who’ll be there. Everything cultivates here.”

“You think she got an invite?”

“She’s a pureblood,” Sirius said, “of course she got an invite.”

Remus paused and thought about the logistics of this for a second.

“Why would Snape define her as a “lowlife female guard member” then?” he asked, slowly,
thinking it through, “he said that nobody pays attention to her. Considering the lack of pureblood’s
would she not have some higher stature?”

“She’s a Greengrass,” Regulus said, nose upturned in distaste.

Remus blinked.

“Why do you say that as if it’s a terrible thing to be?” he asked, attempting to not get angry due to
his protectiveness for Astoria.

“Because he spent however many years around the Yaxley’s,” Sirius said. “We don’t do those
prejudices here, brother. Take that up with Lysandra, you know how she loves to lament about her
traitorous progeny.”

Regulus raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t even know you knew Lysandra.”

“I was very purposefully not invited to her wedding in the late fourteenth,” he said, bitterly, leaning
forward on his hands. “Don’t you remember? Mother was heavily involved because she was
marrying… wasn’t she marrying that distant nephew that’s named after you? Arcturus.”

Regulus leaned back, frowning in remembrance. “Oh, yeah, she did.”

“He’s the one…”

“He was the one whose eyes fell out,” he finished, filling the gap.

“Oh my God,” Sirius gasped, laughing, “he did! He was burning on the pyre and his eyes fell out,
and Cissa did not stop talking about it for weeks…”

He faltered. It fell silent for a moment and he cleared his throat, shaking it off.

“Anyway,” he said to the room at large, “that’s irrelevant. Reggie, if you would like to explain
your horrid little prejudiced comment there, the floor’s all yours.”

“I hate you,” said Regulus.

“I’m in a relationship with Remus,” replied Sirius, “those words mean nothing to me.”

Regulus sighed. He pinched the bridge of his nose and then sat up and spoke.

“The Yaxley’s originate from Japan,” he started, “you know that it’s the family Miyuki comes
from. She’s Lysandra Yaxley’s great granddaughter, and I think her father was my third cousin
and… also her third cousin, so she’s got a strong bit of Black in her–”

“How normally you talk about inbreeding will never not be weird to me,” Dorcas said,
offhandedly. Regulus ignored her.

“The Greengrasses, on the other hand, had a long, strong line in Russia that eventually turned bleak
for they kept falling in love with normal vampires and not mating with other Purebloods. Our
society finds their family… distasteful. Miyuki was her parents’ only child, they could not have
more, and so even though her choices were better than Lysandra’s daughters—one of whom
married Frank Longbottom’s brother, which wasn’t favourable but at least he was pureblood, and
the other married some ginger knight of the royal court who she turned herself in a very
Andromeda-esque move—they still look down on her immensely for her choice in partnership. So
I’d say Daphne would probably be treated with a certain level of respect but not for her status, for
her family. Only because she’s pureblood and still young and childless and thus can procreate to
save us. None of them will care what’s around her neck. All that they care about is her womb.”

“That poor girl,” murmured Lily. “God. That’s not a life.”

“Yeah, well. Being a pureblood in their society isn’t living a life,” said Sirius, gruffly. “It’s being a
means to an end.”

It was horribly quiet, bathing in these words and these experiences, and Dorcas cleared her throat.

“So,” she said, eyes flickering upwards, “Riddle will be there. Your cousins will be there—
however goddamn many you have. Dumbledore might be there. And we can presume most, if not
all, remaining Purebloods will be there.”

“Yes,” said Regulus.

“He’ll have an army on standby in black tie optional,” she continued, “and we will have to have
ours on standby to portkey in, leaving us with a huge margin for error against people who are
insanely enhanced and will be able to smell our next move.”

“Yes.”

“If Dumbledore shows up, that means that there will, presumably, now that we know they’re alive,
be another group of hunters who have been trained to go against those that our army is primarily
made up of,” she said, “and, unfortunately, they’re very good at it.”

“Yes.”

“And alongside killing Dumbledore which is a feat in its-fucking-self, we have to destroy the
vessel he cursed, which is around a girl’s neck,” she said. “A girl we have to bring back with us.”

“Yes.”

She took a deep, long breath in, cracked her knuckles, and let it out. Looked up at all of them, all
eyes on her.

“Okay,” she said. “When do we begin?”

***

With a clear end goal, with something to aim for, they began rather swiftly, actually.

The whiteboard was in fact brought out, labelled first and foremost with a tally of how many days
they had (twenty-three) and who, as a first step, would be attending, which went something like:

“So it’ll be the three of us,” Sirius said, gesturing to himself, his brother and Andromeda on
FaceTime on Marlene’s lap, somewhere south of France on her expedition home. “Obviously. I’ve
spoken to Miyuki and she’s very adamant on going, but Ambrose will not be, so that gives leave
for four humans to go as our plus ones.” He twirled the board marker in between his hands, and
looked directly at Dorcas. “I presume there’s no question that–” he pointed lazily between herself
and Remus, “–the chaos twins will be coming.”
“Not at all,” said Remus, while Dorcas said, “No question.”

Sirius thinned his lips. “Alright.” He turned and wrote it on the board, then turned. Looked over to
the other people, Lily on the armchair, Pandora perched on the side. “Who else?”

“I’ll go,” said Pandora.

“Would they let a witch in?” asked Remus, “can’t they sniff your magic out?”

“It’s not uncommon for witches to hang around vampires in… reciprocal arrangements,” said
Regulus. “It’d make the person bringing her look a bit weak, but it happens.” He paused, and then,
“They taste nice, too.”

Mary shot him the middle finger from where she was on the windowsill. He immediately shot her
one back.

“I think it would be more practical to have me on the scene,” said Lily, quietly, after this had died
down and everything had been written down. “So if anything goes sideways I can help.”

Sirius contemplated this for a minute. And then he nodded.

“Lily Evans,” he said, slowly, writing her name on the board. “Our party piece.”

She smiled at this, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

It felt a bit more like a grimace.

“Right,” said Sirius, turning, all of their names written in a mindmap-style on the left corner of the
whiteboard. “Now. Strategies.”

And the meetings drew forth and went on as so. Stratagem and concise plans came with lots of
trial-and-error, interludes, irritability. It was a hard situation to reconcile with since, as Andromeda
wasn’t home yet, none of them bar two had ever been to one of the fête’s before, and Sirius hadn’t
been to one in years, so Regulus sort of took up the mantle for proper pureblood ball etiquette in a
strange sort of arrangement in which he stood as a lecturer and they sat, the four of them in four
chairs, as students.

“How does the human arrangement work?” asked Dorcas.

It is rather grim, was the first sort of open disclaimer. Pureblood balls would often find hordes of
humans used as buffet meals. It was proper to bring one of your own should you wish to feed
excessively, but the stock in the basement for brief peruses may not ever run dry and they’re
displayed for the taking, until one dies, in the instance of which the vampire responsible must
dispose of the body and retrieve a new one. This all made Remus feel a little sick, actually.

All in all, the four of them would act like the human plus-ones for excessive feeding, meaning
appearances may have to be kept up. Meaning they might have to be bitten.

This was swallowed silently but difficultly, and eventually lead to the next question;

“Will we all be going as ourselves?” asked Lily. The short answer was, No.

The long answer was that there would be magic detection wards around the entrance of the venue,
so illusory magic was out of the question. Pandora suggested that they make use of Avni Patil, who
was trained in magical alterations and surgical procedures and could make temporary changes to
their physical appearances to render them less susceptible to being immediately recognisable.

Regardless, at the end of the day, it was a masquerade ball. They would be masked, and so their
main problem with recognition would be–

“Scents,” said Dorcas. This was where Mary came in.

“In Bulgaria,” she said, pulling out a small bag that extended out on itself and opened like a rather
large vanity case, “they had these little things.” She unrolled a part of the bag and revealed a long
supply of small tubs of clear liquid, sort of like the packaging morphine is put in, but with a
screwable lid and no labelling whatsoever. Mary took one between her thumb and forefinger and
looked up.

“They’re scent-blockers,” she said. “Used usually and primarily to reduce the amount of magic a
witch omits for secrecy. The whole point is to try and give you a leg up when being a potential
hunter’s prey—supernatural hunter—so it works on humans too. We tried it on Regulus, when we
were there. Works fine. Desiccates vampire’s scents, and puts the rest of their senses on
hyperdrive.” She shook the bottle a little, and smacked her lips. “Kinda tastes like vodka.”

“I’m in,” said Dorcas, immediately. “Anything to not have to drink Sirius’ blood again.”

Mary’s jaw dropped. “You did what?”

“Oh, God, don’t get her started,” groaned Remus, and Mary handed out a few of the little tubs for
inspection to the unknowing parties whilst Dorcas lamented.

Once this ended, and all of the tubs had been returned to their homes (Pandora found immense
interest in them and could not believe she had not come up with it) they sat back down, shadowed
by Mary and then James, who had come to watch (Sirius and Marlene were talking to Andromeda
in his office on the other side of the house).

“What about proper etiquette?” asked Pandora, tapping her fingers absently against her knees.
“How does one act at a Pureblood ball? How will we be separated?”

The short answer, again, was to follow their leads. All four had at least some experience with these
balls and how they worked, so it would make sense to follow their hand, do what they said. But
regardless he ran them down with a list of things to expect, purebloods and different levels,
banquets for the privileged and buffets for the poor. More than likely there will be a higher level to
the house—he doubted Riddle would have chosen one without one—where he could separate
himself from the lowers whilst keeping an eye on them, watching from afar. Sometimes it would
be lined with guards and sometimes it would be lined with wards that only let you in if you are pure
of blood. Depends on the day, he said, but regardless that didn’t matter to them until they found
and destroyed the Horcrux, which would alert them to their presence pretty goddamn soon
anyway.

And of course, this depends on whenever Dumbledore shows up. If he does. Perhaps they could
get the locket destroyed and not him; perhaps him killed and not the locket; perhaps both. Wishful
thinking. This was something they could not figure out until the day, so they planned for both
outcomes.

Pandora insisted that they learn some of the dances. Logically they probably wouldn’t have to
dance—it tended, nowadays, to be for that of higher prestige, the Pureblood ballroom dances, not
inclusive of human plus-ones, but she insisted anyway. She said it was “to keep face”, but Remus
was rather sure that it was simply to watch Regulus make a fool of himself for she refused to even
be his partner, letting Lily take the fall for it instead.

“So, you’re gonna put your hand on my shoulder,” he said, quietly, guiding her hand where it was
supposed to be. He placed his gently on her upper back and clasped her alternating hand in his free
one, outstretched, and positioned them so that his right foot was back and his left was forward, hers
mirrored, taking up the space he had left. He looked her in the eyes. “And you’re gonna follow my
lead.”

The waltz was a bit of a shitshow, to be honest, it was more an amusing counterpart at the end of
the day, for Lily could not get the steps right and kept standing on Regulus’ toes.

This made her laugh, which made her fumble more, and then he’d step on her toes, and her palms
would alight in the shock and singe him very gently which made her laugh more, and the rest of the
room in turn, including Regulus who would say “No, Lils, left foot—your left—I’m afraid to
inform you that that’s still right, Lily–” which had them all in stitches. Even James who was
watching it and very obviously not knowing how to feel about the whole thing.

“Okay, this isn’t working,” said Lily, eventually, laughing to herself and stepping out of Regulus’
hold. “I just won’t dance.”

“Aw, I was having fun watching you fumble,” pouted Dorcas, smacking her arse as she walked
past to take her seat (much to her indignation). Regulus was left standing at the front, smoothing
over his lapels. Awkward and alone.

“Well, does anyone else want to try?” asked Lily, saddling up to Mary and wrapping her arms
around her. “Mare-bear?”

“I have two left feet,” said Mary, playfully shooting a droplet of fire onto Lily’s forearm; it singed
her, and she gasped and jumped back, “and I hate it when you call me that.”

“It’s cute,” Lily shot back, flicking a ball of fire over to her. Mary caught it in her hand, and
extinguished it, not taking her eyes off of her.

“What if I called you– Lils-hills?” Mary said. “Lils-bills. Lils-frills.”

“Kill Bill,” said Dorcas.

“Brazil,” said Remus.

“Lil-kill,” said James. Lily turned and grinned at him.

“Ooh, I kinda like that one,” she said, laughing. “Sounds like a rapper name.”

James lit up. And then Lily cocked her head, and looked at him.

“Wait– James. You’re, like. Old.”

“Wow, thanks.”

“Don’t you know the dance?”

It went quiet. James did not answer for a long moment. Remus and Dorcas exchanged a glance.

“Yeah,” he said, eventually. “Sirius taught me ballroom dancing for a banquet in the early
nineteenth. And then he subsequently dragged me to every ball he could find because he enjoyed
the free food.”
Lily laughed and nodded. “Checks out,” she said, and seemed to say no more. Mary turned to look
at him.

“Why don’t you show us how it’s supposed to work, then?” she prompted.

Remus and Dorcas exchanged a Glance™.

But Remus had to commend James’ control. His expression did not flicker. His entire tell was in the
length it took him between responses, the hole he was trying to stare into Mary’s soul with soft-
lidded eyes.

He took a deep breath, and looked at Regulus.

“You fine with that?”

Regulus, looking rather like a meerkat, or a deer in headlights, shook his head. “Yes, fine, why–
why wouldn’t I be?”

“No,” said James, walking forward. He met Regulus in the middle, cracking his knuckles. “I mean,
are you fine with me showing you up?”

The smallest, softest smile flickered onto Regulus’ stern lips, and he held out a waiting hand.

James took him by the shoulder blade, in the way Regulus had taken Lily, and clasped his hand
around Regulus’ other, kept it outstretched. The four of them had scooted their chairs to the very
back of the room so they had optimal space, and Mary had gone onto YouTube and picked some
classical music to create ambience, which she pressed play on, though it was halfway through a
song already due to the previous escapade, so they sort of fell right into it.

Remus was unsure of what waltz it was, exactly—were there different ones?—but this one was
fluid, they moved fluidly, side-stepping in a box-formation and spinning. They kept their eyes on
each other, though Regulus was leaning back slightly—his body was a little less tense than James’
was, probably due to more practice, he looked like somewhat of a ballerina, so refreshingly dainty
you wouldn’t believe the things he does in the darkness. But James was forceful, he took the lead
in the way he was gripping Regulus’ hand as if he might never let it go. He spun him, purposefully,
and as they returned back to each other it was marginally closer than before and Remus, who had
been clapping in time alongside Dorcas, Pandora and Mary who were all whooping, slowed down;
leaned on his hands to watch, really watch.

They had done this before. It was evident. James spun him again as they made it to the corner of
the room and manoeuvred themselves back. He gripped onto his hand and Regulus spun the other
way, letting go of their outstretched hands and dropping his hand from James’ shoulder to twirl off
to his right side; he reached out a hand, flourishing it like Michaelangelo, like a true ballerina, eyes
focusing on the wall only to turn the way he had come and grab James’ left hand with his right,
spin around it again. He placed himself back into formation, looking up at James and their feet
moved once more, back and forth, to the right, in a side-step and around and around and if they
needed breath the way that humans did Remus might say that they’d be breathless; he might say he
was just watching them, as the noise sort of died down from the girls and they were really left with
two people, who might have been in a back room of a warded safehouse or they might have been
on a dance floor in 1895, black tie pivotal, ripped off and paraded across the room like a streamer
in his had as Regulus spun, free as a bird.

Remus had never seen him so loose before. It was like he could up and fly.
It was only another minute before the song finished—it had only been four minutes, max, anyway
—but it did with one more spin and one last step in which Regulus may have messed up or the way
he stumbled closer to James may have been on purpose, inhaling sharply, like breathing his air
would hold this moment as it was forever and the figures of those watching them would not seep
back into their watercolour expose but bleed away in a swirl of red.

Remus looked at Lily.

She was watching from the side. Mary, Dorcas and Pandora were all saying something, James was
laughing gruffly and Regulus was quiet, and Lily watched, a sort of slack realisation on her face
that she might’ve had before, might not have. It morphed into a gentle smile.

Regulus did not make eye contact with anyone and then called it a night. And apparently no one
wanted to say it, so nobody did.

The planning continued.

It intertwined with comms from the vampires outside of the grounds, which meant Marlene and
sometimes Sirius were out of commission, dealing with the dumping ground of New York—there
were three more Dementor attacks in the span of two weeks. Only seven attacked on the whole—
they seemed to be numbing numbers, for whatever reason, but the city went into lockdown and
stayed that way. Two of them, for the first time, survived, though they were catatonic; Pandora was
out of commission with the witches for two days to visit the injured and see if they could stop the
mourning, halt it or give them the essence of their souls back. And then one of the humans choked
a witch named Vera almost to death and they deemed it a lost cause.

By the time Pandora came back, exhausted and upset, the group of them had switched up the entire
plan (Andromeda made it back on day 5), which is a marker of how much changed while trying to
deal with this new obstacle that was truly mysterious to them, a ball, a fête, so out of place it was
in, so much that they didn’t know what to expect and had to plan accordingly.

The plan was to lay low for as long as they could. Mary, in that goddamn big bag of those, had
something that while first seemed miniscule actually ended up becoming a huge part of their
itinerary, which was a pair of pearl drop earrings cultivated out of the physicality of the Muffliato
charm, which manifested a cream colour and those had been bartered into a practical shape by the
Bulgarian blacksmiths. They applied the charm to the person wearing it, so that in a crowd of
vampires their voice would be very highly muted and almost irretrievable to the ear trying to find
it.

It took her three days of working with Pandora to try and recreate the concoction but she got it, and
thus provided the rest of the team with equally-cream/pearly things; Remus a brooch, Sirius a
necklace, Lily a hairpin, Regulus a signet ring, Andromeda a bracelet, Pandora a hair ribbon, while
Dorcas got the original earrings. And then she felt left out so she created one for herself, a ring to
match Regulus’, lined with pearl and lazulite, and then two more for James and Marlene.

And they felt like a real goddamn team.

With these in place it would be easier to conspire without running the risk of someone tuning in
that they did not want to tune in. The plan became that they would inter-mingle for as long as it
took to scope out the first floor, and then split up. It was rather hard to formulate something that
wasn’t conditional without the floorplans, which they simply could not obtain, but the pairings
(Sirius and Remus, Regulus and Lily, Dorcas and Andromeda, Miyuki and Pandora) would split
off and hedge their bets on condition, the pureblood half overhearing something that they would
like to overhear, and the hunters, the humans, the phoenix and the witch and their tenfold senses
talked through being able to spot even the smallest of traps, what it would be based on track record;
how vampires acted and how to get through them without compromising your position; what the
locket looked like and what Daphne looked like—the penultimate lesson led heartfeltly by her
mother who wanted nothing but her daughter back and would stand in anybody’s way on the road
to get there.

With it being unsure of how long it might take before they were found out, a lot of pressure was
weighing on their minds to get in and get out and avoid a bloodbath by all accounts. The rest of the
Order were briefed, soldiers given orders by Marlene and, both surprisingly and unsurprisingly,
Oliver Wood, ready on the front lines the moment the resistance might need them. They had a code
for when they needed help—hand palm up, ring finger down—a code for if one of them spotted
the Horcrux—fingers interlocked, pressed to the chest—and a code for oncoming trouble, being
found out, or general unsettlement which was the word “Fishsticks”, a word that Sirius had
suggested as a joke and a word that had stuck, to the general distaste of their entire party.

“Why can’t you behave like a normal person?” asked Dorcas.

“You wouldn’t have me any other way, Meadowes,” he had replied, schmoozing wholeheartedly,
and had prodded her until Marlene had taken her shoe off and straight flung it at him across the
room, which was usually the best way to get Sirius to shut up.

Once the basics had been evaluated and the whiteboard had been filled up Remus, in his antsy
anticipation for the ball, had taken the day to go into the city with Marlene, meeting with a pair of
extraneous vampires who were a part of the resistance but did not live on the grounds and foraging
into Lower Manhattan on a quest for a coven of Riddle’s minions that had been using the loyal
Dementors as retaliation when these two had got too close, and had thus been wreaking havoc up
and down the streets and had, most recently, destroyed a coffee shop and drained the little old lady
who run it dry after she had stayed back to sort her finances, and her four year old nephew, whom
she had been babysitting at the time.

The Police were not even publicising the deaths, in fear that it would cause more widespread panic
to the citizens, and so it had been up to them to cause any type of avengement (not that the two
vampires cared all that much about that, but it was the principle to Remus) and thus the showdown
in the loft of a dollar store that they had tracked them down to hiding in had killed three of the four
of the vampires, one of the two of Remus and Marlene’s allies, and set a minor fire to the place
when the last vampire used the faulty oven against them, leaving Remus with burns on his thighs
from where it had caught and cuts on his arms from shattered glass that he had become
dispositioned to during the fight.

All in all, it was a day’s work—something he had done before, something he was bound to do
again—and at least unlike before, when he would go and tend to his wounds himself, he now had
home and he now had Sirius who had ran a not-too-deep warm bath and had the both of them in it,
naked.

Sirius held him from behind and Remus leaned back into his chest, head lolled back on his
shoulder and knees up as Sirius dug two fingers into the green salve they got from Poppy and
applied it to his wounds, slowly.

Remus hissed with pain.

“Sorry,” said Sirius, as Remus let his head loll to the side so that his lips were pressed to Sirius’
damp neck. Sirius pressed a kiss to the side of his head and then another as he treated him, letting
him squeeze his arm when the pain spiked; “Sorry, I’m sorry, just a little bit more, sweetheart.”
The open wounds on his arms were bound to cause scars. Sirius applied the salve generously and
outside of the white-hot pain it felt like to have his fingers coarse over them, it definitely abated
within a few minutes of application. It tamed enough that Remus could stop gritting his teeth and
let out a shaky breath as Sirius moved to his arms, tracing a thumb over the open skin—the flaps,
gurgling with blood on the inside, blood-flow stemmed but not dissipated—this was probably the
most painful. The gashes were deep and horrible, and would probably require a witch to close them
entirely, but the salve would heal him enough to lessen the severity immensely.

“I’m done,” Sirius murmured, leaning over gently so as not to shift Remus and placing the tub on a
counter at the side. His hands moved straight back to him, one around and up in his hair and the
other underneath the water, holding him by the hip. “Try and not let your thighs fall underwater,
okay?”

“Thank you,” Remus murmured, shifting so he was more comfortably into his neck. Sirius turned
and kissed him firmly on the forehead, and then kissed him again.

“I don’t know how one would ever choose to do this for the rest of their lives at seventeen,” he
muttered, running his fingers through Remus’ hair and getting stuck once in a while. “You have
blood in your hair, for God’s sake.”

“Mm, what are you going to do about that?”

“I’m going to get you in the shower when you can stand,” Sirius muttered, turning his lips to his
forehead again but not pressing, just resting them there against the beads of sweat and hair clinging
to it. “And then we’re going to get you to the medi-witches to patch up those gashes, but, for now,
shut up and let the stuff do its job.”

Remus hummed again, inhaling deeply into Sirius’ skin and shuddering at the tingly feeling up and
down his arms and over his legs. He was unsure of whether his exhaustion was due to the injuries
or just plain exhaustion, but knew that at least he would be entirely fine tomorrow, and that he was
entirely fine right now, in Sirius’ arms, feeling not safe but warm and perhaps that was okay too.

“I loved people,” he muttered.

“What?” asked Sirius, after a moment, as if he wasn’t sure if Remus had spoken or just whimpered.

“I loved people,” he said, “that’s why I got into this at seventeen. Doubtlessly. Because I loved
people, and I had too much sorrow, and I wanted to use it for something more. I wanted to become
something more than sadness. I wanted to show that I was not an extension of it, but that it was an
extension of me.”

Sirius was quiet.

“Not many leave this earth a better place than how they found it,” he said, hushed, hand kneading
through Remus’ hair. “You are extraordinary, Remus Lupin, do you know that?”

“Mm,” Remus hummed, eyes closed, “I’ve been told.”

He shifted. The water lapped against their skin, droplets damp, cold hair on the back of his neck.
Sirius held him closer.

“You wanna know why you’re so important?” said Sirius, tracing his fingernails against Remus’
scalp. It made him shudder. “Why you’re so fucking important to this fight? You give people hope.
You are, hope. I don’t have that, Remus; I don’t love people. I am fighting this fight to stop my
people being killed, damn the collateral. You are fighting this fight to stop people being killed, no
specification, and that’s what makes you so magical. You love so deeply it could consume you. It
does.” He paused, and then; “It is the honour of my lifetime to be on the receiving end of that.”

“And you don’t give yourself enough credit,” Remus said, shifting and pushing his head up, still
leaning back onto his chest and having to lean his head back to look up at him. “You love just like
I do. You love more. You protect your own, that’s not a drawback. I protect mine too, yours has
just become mine. Yours is mine, now. And mine is yours. Dorcas? Lily?”

Sirius smiled gently. “I suppose.”

“You give them hope just by existing, you know,” he said. “They took everything away from you
and you continued to fight. There’s valiance in that. You care for those who don’t have anyone else
to care for them, Christ, Sirius, how in God’s name could you not be on the receiving end of my
love when it was built for you and you alone?”

Sirius thinned his lips. He leaned forward, and knocked his head against Remus’. They both closed
their eyes. Sirius grasped his hand, lazy on his chest.

“Your optimism is unfaltering,” muttered Sirius, and Remus could hear a smile, “it’s my favourite
thing about you. How you see the world. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced colour like that. It’s
all grey to me.”

“You showed it to me, you fool,” he whispered back, “my world was black-and-white before you.
Don’t you see how we needed each other?”

Sirius took a deep breath in. “Like a lung. You’ve ruined me.”

“Oh, shut up,” said Remus, mouth open to pour his soul into Sirius’ willing mouth, down his throat
with his tongue; he reached his hand up to splay it over his jawline and kissed him, slowly,
meditatively. The water splashing gently against the reins of the tub and two souls, for better or for
worse—except these classifications mean nothing when you can bend the world like they can,
good and bad and the goddamn fucking universe and everything in it to their guise.

They stayed in the bath until it got lukewarm. Remus, once the salve had done its job to the best of
its ability, stretched his legs, lying there with Sirius’ arms around his neck, and they spoke
scarcely, and in a low timbre to reflect the darkness outside, the quiet of the house, the tenderity of
the moment and the haughty steam.

“Did you teach James to ballroom dance?” Remus asked him, after a moment of silence, playing
with the fingers on one of his hands.

“Hm?”

“Did you teach James to ballroom dance?” he repeated, kissing the knuckles of Sirius’ limp hand.
He laughed; Remus felt it where his back was pressed to his chest.

“Yes?” he said. “A long time ago. Why?”

“We were just talking about it last week,” he said, resting his cheek against Sirius’ arm. “Regulus
was demonstrating some dances that they might do at the fête. Waltz, and such.”

Sirius was quiet for a moment.

“Regulus was, was he?”

“Mhm,” he said. He splashed the water at the end of the tub with his toes, pressed against the
porcelain curve. “He was doing it with, er, Lily, but she wasn’t very good. So James stepped up.”
He paused. “He was very good.”

“Was he, now?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm.”

Remus gave it a moment, and then turned. Sirius was sitting up at the edge of the tub, one arm
around the rim lazily. He raised an eyebrow when Remus looked at him.

“What are you hmm’ing at?” he shot. Sirius laughed.

“I’m not hmm’ing at anything,” he said, and then, “Regulus danced with James?”

“Yes.”

Sirius pursed his lips. He nodded, and then went, predictably, “Hmm.”

Remus laughed, loudly.

“Stop it!” he exclaimed, as a grin forged its way onto Sirius’ face, “what the hell is that? What do
you know?”

“I don’t know anything,” said Sirius, “what am I supposed to know?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know?” asked Remus, narrowing his eyes. Sirius laughed.

“What I’m supposed to know, apparently. Do you know something?”

His laugh fell quiet, and he raised an eyebrow, looking inquisitively at him and away.

“Do you know something?” Remus asked.

“I might know something.”

“What do you know?”

“What do you know?”

“Oh my God, we have to stop,” Remus laughed, turning fully, now, to kneel in the part between
Sirius’ open, relaxed legs. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“What were we talking about?”

“James and Regulus dancing.”

“Ah,” said Sirius, “yes. James and Regulus dancing.”

A moment passed. A long, tense moment.

“Was it… romantic?”

“You do know something!” gasped Remus, smacking him on the arm; he yelped.

“Don’t hit me–?!”

“Sirius, this is life or death,” Remus hissed, “what exactly do you know?”

“God, I don’t know anything,” said Sirius, “I just suspect. I’m not fucking stupid, no matter how
much James would have you believe.”

“Thank God,” Remus groaned, leaning on his arm on the edge of the tub. It was a very awkward
position. “James was driving me crazy.”

“James was what?”

“Lamenting over how hard his life was and how terrible of a position he was in because you don’t
know.”

“I don’t know what? That he fancies my brother?”

“Something like that,” said Remus, “ask him. I think he thinks you’ll hate him if you find out.”

Sirius pursed his lips, and then, “I thought he loved Lily.”

“I think a part of him does,” said Remus, contemplating this. “He wants them both. He’s told me
this. He just… doesn’t know what to do about it, so he’s. Not. But I don’t think it’s the same kind
of… want. I don’t know. I suppose there’s more to Regulus.”

Sirius frowned. “More? Why would there be more?”

Remus paused, and then his jaw dropped. He had been trying his hardest to not expose their
previous escapade that Sirius did not know about in the 1890s, not wanting to get into the middle
of that—and yet he had done himself in anyway.

“Fuck.”

“What more, Lupin?

“Oh, James, I’m going to kill you,” he muttered through his teeth.

“What am I missing?”

Remus grimaced. “You can’t freak out.”

“Freak out about what?”

“And you can’t tell anyone I told you. When James tells you you have to act surprised. I’m not
kidding, Black. You can’t tell.”

“Remus!”

“And you can’t be mad at me either. I tried my hardest to get him to tell you.
“Re–”

“Sirius, promise me.”

“Okay,” said Sirius, shuffling to sit up further, properly intrigued, “fine, I promise, I’ll pretend.
Won’t get mad at anyone. What is it?”

Remus took a deep breath in, and then; “Do you remember in the late nineteenth century, when you
and Marlene went on an expedition around Asia and left James in Italy for some alone time?”

Sirius took a moment to think about this, narrowing his eyes. He nodded. Remus smacked his lips.

“Yeah. He wasn’t… exactly alone.”

It took another moment to settle in. And then Sirius’ jaw fell to the floor.

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re kidding,” he said, zoning out and staring at an indeterminate place against the wall. “They
were together?”

“Mhm.”

“Like, a couple?”

“For ten years.”

“In the 1890s.”

“Yes.”

“One hundred and twenty years ago,” he said.

“Yes,” said Remus.

A moment of silence. His face flickered through about fifty different emotions—anger, disbelief,
confusion—before, oddly, relaxing entirely. He looked tranquil. He turned to Remus.

“Hey,” he said, gently. “I love you.”

Remus blinked, processing this.

“I… love you too?”

“If I kill him,” he continued, still in that same gentle, dreamy tone, “please try to stop Marlene
from killing me. Thanks.”

“If you–”

Sirius was already out of the bath, towel wrapped around his waist. “Stay there, Lupin, you’re
injured!”

“Wait—Sirius–!”

Remus, obviously, did not stay there.

When he pushed open the door to the hallway, towel wrapped around his waist, Sirius was already
at James’ door. Banging on it. He’d pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a loose grey shirt, but was
otherwise barefoot, and his hair was still wet.

“Potter!” he shouted, booming down the hallway. “Open the door!”

“For God's sake, Sirius,” Remus muttered, half indignant and half amused. Sirius turned to him,
huffed, and within two seconds he was there behind him, arm around his waist.

“I told you to stay in there, you fool, you’re still injured,” he said, craning his neck to look at
James’ still-closed door with horrifically narrowed eyes.

“Do you know me at all?” Remus asked.

Marlene’s door opened.

“What the hell is all the ruckus?” she asked, peering out in a hoodie and jeans, Dorcas at her tail.
The latter, upon seeing Remus, sighed.

“Oh, God, not more bits I have to see,” she muttered.

“Are you alright, babe?” Marlene asked, striding over to Remus and placing a hand on his other
shoulder.

Sirius smacked his lips.

“Perfect,” he said, “now take care of him for a second–”

“I’m fine,” Remus hissed.

“–while I go and murder our best friend.”

“While you–” Marlene blinked, “wait, what?”

Sirius took perhaps two steps down the corridor, and then James’ door opened.

He stopped.

James peeked his head around the corner. He looked at Sirius, and then he looked at Remus. His
face fell.

“Mate, I told you to tell him,” Remus whispered.

“You–” Sirius started, and then—

Directly underneath James’ head, appeared Regulus’. Eyebrows raised.

Sirius’ face was incomprehensible.

“And—him–” he hissed.

And then, directly underneath Regulus’ head appeared Lily’s.

“I–” started Sirius. Confused.

And, finally, Mary. She was so close to the floor she had to have been kneeling down, and was
eating something, a sly smile on her face.
There was a moment of silence.

“What the hell is this?” asked Sirius.

“Oh, piss off,” muttered James, shooing away the rest of the floating heads; Regulus disappeared
into the room in a flash. Mary after him. Lily took a bit more shooing, but she was always one for
drama.

James stepped out into the hallway, door still open.

“What did he tell you?” he asked, slowly. “So I can set the record straight.”

“That you and Regulus were together for ten years at the tail end of the nineteenth,” said Sirius,
“while me and Marlene were in Asia. And then you lied to me about it for a hundred and twenty
years.”

There was a long, long silence.

“Well,” said James. “Record’s pretty straight, then.”

“Oh my God,” Sirius groaned, his head in his hands. He turned around to Marlene. “Did you know
about this?”

Marlene grimaced.

“Oh my God, Marlene!”

“Only since the nineties,” she said, quickly.

“The nineties—” Sirius hissed. “Marlene, that was thirty years ago!”

Marlene scoffed. “No it wasn’t, it was…” She stopped. Her face fell into something similar to an
existential crisis. “Oh, shit. Wow, I’m old.”

“Listen,” said James. Sirius turned back to him, and he must have looked dangerous, for James’
face twitched with fear.

“What the hell are you doing in there?” he asked, gesturing to their room. “What the hell is this?
You and him? What about Lily? The four of you?” He frowned. “Are you all together?”

“No!” said James, face scrunching up.

Sirius waited. Tapped his foot. James sighed.

“We were watching Mean Girls,” he mumbled. “Regulus hasn’t seen it.”

It was painful for Remus to not laugh. Painful. He covered his mouth while Dorcas shoved her face
into his shoulder.

James turned to the open door, and held out his hand, making a grabby gesture. “Mare,” he
whispered. A rustling packet of something came flying through the air and James caught it
seamlessly, and held it out to Sirius.

“Chocolate raisin?”

“I’m going to murder you,” Sirius said.

“Okay,” said James, and Sirius lunged, and James ran; they went sprinting at vamp-speed down
the hallway and out of sight, gone before the chocolate raisins even hit the ground.

Except they didn’t. For Regulus Black appeared out of the open door, kneeling down, and caught
the packet.

He turned to the remaining party. Nodded.

“Good talk,” he said, and then immediately retreated back into the room and shut the door behind
him.

The door slammed. It was precariously quiet.

“Should we go after them?” asked Dorcas. “I think, maybe, we should go after them.”

“I think, maybe, we should,” muttered Marlene.

Five minutes later, with Remus dressed in the baggiest clothes he could find over the scabs that still
stung like a bitch, they followed Marlene’s lead and ended up outside. It was night, and they were
standing opposite each other. The three of them watched from the porch.

“You lied to me,” said Sirius, and, underneath the anger, his voice trembled with hurt. “For over a
century. I talked to you about him so often, Jamie. And you lied to my face.”

“I’m sorry,” said James. He could say no more.

“You told me, explicitly, that ‘59 was the first time you’d ever met him,” he said. “You sat there
and listened to me lament over him like he was a fucking corpse, time and time again knowing full
well—I mean, you’d been with him. For a decade! You knew him better than I did!”

A brief haze fell over Sirius’ eyes.

“Oh…” he murmured. “I see. The past few weeks make a bit more sense now.”

“Sirius–”

“No,” he said. “I’m pissed off at you. I’m fucking mad at you. I don’t care about you dating him. I
care about you lying about it. James, you could have told me.”

He nodded. “I know. I know that, now.”

“And, after everything, I didn’t even hear it from you! I heard it from fucking Remus!”

“I know,” said James.

“I mean, how many years did you sit there and listen to me not even knowing whether Regulus was
dead or fucking alive and thinking about– about sharing stracciatella with him in a cafe in Rome?
How can you think that’s fair?”

“It’s not,” he said.

The door behind them clicked open. All five turned around.

It was Regulus.

“Don’t–” Sirius said, holding up a hand and looking away. “I’m not mad at you, Reggie, so don’t
make me mad at you.”

“I know,” Regulus said, gently, hopping down the stairs and going straight for Sirius. “I
understand. Okay? He should have told you. I should have told you a few weeks ago when I
realised you didn’t know.”

“Well, you have a bit less of a margin for error,” Sirius muttered, looking to the floor. “You didn’t
spend a hundred and twenty years listening to me talk about you.”

Oddly, at this, Regulus smiled, as if endeared.

“Yes,” he said. “I didn’t. And he should have told you.” Here, he turned and glared daggers at
James, and then quickly turned back. “But I’m here now. Sirius. I’m here now.”

Sirius looked at him. Regulus was smaller, he was younger, he looked younger. He was an internal
contradiction. He was the calm. He soothed Sirius in a way that Remus had never seen before, he
got to the root of the problem, he was the roots; in the sand, the rocks that the waves crashed over
and submerged but never moved. Only to take another breath when the high tide subdued.

Regulus jerked his head out towards the lake. “Walk with me,” he said.

Sirius was hesitant to go. But, eventually, he walked with him.

(There was a metaphor in there, somewhere).

***

Three hours later, sufficiently healed up and reading a book as an attempt not to fall asleep, Remus
was sitting up underneath the covers of Sirius’ bed when the door swung open, and the man
himself stood in the frame.

Remus got one look at his face.

And then he reached over to the other side of the quilt and pulled it open.

“Come on,” he said, “get in.”

Sirius did.

He lay there, on his side, up against Remus for about five minutes without speaking. Remus didn’t
prompt anything. He knew that today would have been emotionally exhausting for him. Sometimes
Sirius needs to simmer in his feelings, let them steam and curdle around in there until they’re less
restrictive and more docile. It’s why Remus let him go walk with Regulus without a word. Regulus
is quiet. And Sirius has been so loud for so long, he needs that sometimes.

“Regulus is in love with him,” he murmured, five minutes later.

Remus blinked his book out of focus. Put it down. Turned to him.

“He is?” asked Remus.

“He didn’t say it,” he said. “And I don’t really know how love works with him. How he shows it.
It’s all unspoken, always has been. But I think he does.”

Remus nodded. He said nothing more.

“Can’t blame him,” he muttered, tugging at a string on the corner of the pillow. “I’ve considered
falling in love with James too. Many, many times.”

Remus smiled.

Sirius, without warning, sat up abruptly.

“I’m right,” he said, looking at Remus with strands of hair over his eyes, framing the word as a
statement but it being such an obvious plea for reassurance, “about being pissed off. Being angry
with him. I’m right about that.”

Remus closed his book.

“I would be pissed off,” he said. “Massively. Your feelings are valid. You’re allowed to feel
affronted by that. No one’s gonna blame you, ‘specially James. I spoke to him, he’s very aware of
how he’s fucked up.”

Sirius’ brows were in a permanent frown. He took a deep breath in, and nodded, as if reassuring
himself once more against the ache in his sternum; he turned his head, but didn’t look at him.

“What did he say?”

“He said he was sorry,” Remus started. “He said he fucked up. He said he dug himself into a hole
and didn’t know how to get out of it.”

“Sounds like him,” Sirius muttered. “Imagine, digging yourself into a hole and staying there for a
century because you don’t want to cause a minor problem.” Remus looked at him. He took a deep
breath in, a deep breath out. “He needs to learn that the real world hurts. He goes about his life
intent on happiness. That’s not how the world works. People get hurt, people die, people hurt other
people, people they love and hate. Him putting this off for so long just made it so much worse in
the long run—not even just for him, for me, I– this hurts, Remus–” he wasn’t making eye contact,
he couldn’t, but Remus ran a thumb over his hand and nodded. He sighed. “I hope it’s a fucking
wake up call. James puts too much weight on comfortability. Always has. He’s naive.”

Remus nodded, running his thumb over Sirius’ hand repetitively, just being there to listen.

“And it was gonna run him into problems eventually,” he said. “I just wish it wasn’t with me.”

“To be clear,” said Remus, gently, “you’re pissed about the fact he lied. Right? Not him being…
with Regulus.”

“Oh, I couldn’t care less about that,” said Sirius. “I might’ve if he’d’ve told me when it happened,
because I was a different person. We all were before ‘59.” He paused. “I’m angry because it feels
like he’s betrayed my vulnerability. Or something. I don’t know. I bared my soul over Regulus. Is
that stupid?”

“No,” said Remus, shaking his head. “It’s not stupid.”

Sirius sighed, and flopped back down onto the bed. Remus, putting his book on the bedside table,
lay down beside him.

“I’ve never been angry at James before,” he said, frowning. “What do you do when you’re mad at
Dorcas?”

“Usually when I’m mad at Dorcas, I’m in the wrong,” Remus said, grinning. This made Sirius
laugh. “But sometimes she does piss me off. And I just. I dunno. Spend a bit of time away, ‘cause
at the end of the day nothing she could do would ever make me leave her. I just focus on other
stuff until I’ve forgotten.” He poked Sirius’ shoulder. “Focus on the mission. And re-evaluate your
feelings after that. I think it’ll do you a bit of good, because if you try to deal with it all right now I
fear you might explode and lash out at someone unwarrantedly, and nobody wants that, honey,
least of all you.”

Sirius huffed. “Yeah. Whatever.”

A long moment of silence. Sirius stared up at the ceiling.

“Do you think he loves him back?” he asked, quietly; almost a wisp of the wind. Remus turned to
him. Licked his lips.

“I think he loves them both,” he said, with genuinity in his voice. And then: “But I think Lily’s
comfortable.”

Sirius turned to him. They exchanged a glance.

They said no more.

***

The night before the fête, they got drunk.

It started with Remus, who had fallen asleep on the sofa waiting for Dorcas and Mary to get back
from a quick trip they’d made regarding a reported attack outside of the city which turned out to
not have been the dementors but a policeman, who had shot someone and had summoned the
vamps to descend. Dorcas had got the vampire in the head while he was sucking the life out of the
uniformed officer, and then they had been caught on the scene by a group of witnesses and Mary
had had to do some intense fucking around with their psyche’s behind her back while Dorcas talked
her ass off as a distraction about Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl (a defining moment in her life
and hatred for Justin Timberlake).

Remus hadn’t found out about any of this, of course, until they had gotten home and burst through
the living room door in hysterics, shadowed by Marlene and Sirius, effectively waking him up and
sending a jolt of panic through him (Dorcas was covered in blood—not the most innocent look)
before they sat down and relayed the whole tale to him, and also gave him a gold ring that they had
stolen from the vampire’s corpse that didn’t fit either of their fingers. (There was nothing special
about it—Mary had done a Magic Detection spell. They had simply looted it because they thought
it was pretty. Dorcas had also taken the gun from the dead police officer, which she felt was just
desserts.)

That had been about 7pm, and Remus had not moved from the spot since. The marker of a truly
comfortable conversation, as one says, is the numb arse after sitting in one spot for so long turning
your head like an owl as conversation goes.

The night before Malfoy Manor had not been like this. It had been more reserved. There had been
no Mary (no Regulus either, when he joined, coaxed by a timid James, following Lily) (The four of
them (not Sirius, who didn’t look at James) had shared a look when they entered, but said nothing).
He recalled, gently, as he sat with his knees basically in Sirius’ lap, that he had been with him that
night—they had had the revelation about the diary, the night before their last battle. And now they
were here.
It had been a while since something so big had been happening, and you could tell, as glasses of
wine were poured and Lily lit up the fireplace, that nerves were sort of simmering under the surface
but it was like the wood under the thick layer of carpet; a comfortability on your toes to make you
forget it was even there until it ripped open on you like a blister, would rip open tomorrow. But
tomorrow was not tonight. Remus felt sort of warm and fuzzy in the collective truth that they
would not talk about it, that they had talked enough and planned enough, tried on dresses and suits
and ballroom danced in the small hall to their heart’s content and it was enough to, tonight, let
oneself go, like the river that flows into the trickle of conversation that could be neither awkward
nor silent, for someone here always had something to say, and nobody—for the first time in a long
time—mistrusted anyone enough here to not want to be their entire, true, authentic self as the fire
crackled intimately.

They talked, mainly, about the past. It felt like the group was split into a horde of consciousnesses
—everyone had some sort of a tie to each other, Pandora to Regulus, Regulus to Mary, Mary to
Remus, Remus to Dorcas. Dorcas to Marlene, Marlene to Sirius, Sirius to James, James back to
Regulus. Stories would be known by few to be told to many and it was massively entertaining to
have not just your own but two voices, in Remus’ case (as most of his history was with his two
Hackney girls) talking about this case and that case and this vampire and that vampire.

Marlene, wine glass in her hand, was telling the most ridiculous stories of regency and
highwaymen and being trapped in a horse-drawn carriage with Sirius and his one other sire
dragged all the way up the French countryside to Calais, for Sirius had received word of a banquet
being held in the royal court (to which his father was a part of the privy council for the first time in
a hundred-and-fifty years) and he wanted to embarrass his parents.

Sirius’ side of the story mentions perhaps a few spilled drinks, some insubordinate words.
Regulus’ side of the story includes blood being poured over his mother’s head and yellow ochre oil
painting moustaches and devils horns over the portraits in the lounge while he mind-controlled a
guard to stand watch and James and Marlene set the horses in the stable loose to distract them
whilst they were taking turns around the grounds. One of them chomped on the ends of
Walburga’s dress.

And Regulus cackled whilst telling this story. Cackled.

He had not been able to touch the amusement he had found in events like these for five hundred
years, and thus this story bled into each and every other time Sirius had tormented his family and
behind Regulus’ stoicism had been a laugh, something Sirius hadn’t seemed to have realised
(especially the six-month period in 1887 when he would sneak into their estate and hide a live
chicken somewhere in the house every single day).

“God, I’m never forgetting when you ripped his finger off,” said Marlene, pointing at Sirius and
then James when appropriate.

“He what?” said Regulus, looking at James.

“Oh God,” groaned Sirius, emptying his wine glass in one gulp; “didn’t I get enough flack for this
when I had to carry it in my pocket for five years?”

“You what?!” shrieked Regulus, head snapping around faster than one could blink to look at his
brother.

“This might take a while,” Remus muttered resignedly, leaning over to fill Sirius’ glass while
James hopped around the group to perch on the arm of the armchair Regulus was sitting in and tell
him the story. Sirius, still mad at James, pointedly avoided his gaze. But Remus saw him listening
in, saw his lips quirk up at points.

“So,” said Sirius, half an hour later, gripping onto Remus’ socked ankle from where it was resting
in his lap.

The current position had Remus against the edge of the sofa, feet pulled up and, as aforementioned,
in Sirius’ lap; Sirius in the middle, between the couch cushions, and Dorcas beside him. Remus had
been seated with Lily and they had had an invigorating (informed on Lily’s side, absolutely not on
Remus’) conversation about the American Healthcare system, and then she had darted around the
coffee table to Marlene who had beckoned her over for something or the other, and Sirius and
Dorcas had, in the time that Remus had not been keeping an eye on them, gotten into a (light-
hearted) argument about intelligence and had been, for twenty minutes, playing a very intense
word association game to settle the scores.

Remus wasn’t exactly sure of what the aim was, here, for a word association game did not really
correlate in any sense to intelligence, and it also (well, the game that they were playing) didn’t
have a clear winner, for whenever one of them repeated a word or stumbled they just fought for
their life to try again and the other acquiesced. If you asked Remus, he would say they enjoyed
each other’s company, but they would never admit to that, so he had simply been enjoying their
competitiveness whilst sporadically leaning his head back to tune into the conversation occurring
behind him, in which James had started talking about home.

He had, upon Regulus asking about media and such (Remus was quite sure this was an aimed
question on his part, for everyone knew how much James enjoyed media studies—it being one of
three degrees he had) had been giving him the entire rundown of Bollywood cinema for about ten
minutes and was now telling him, in very intense detail, the plot of his favourite movie. Regulus
was enraptured, so much so that Pandora (who had slinked in and sat down on the edge of the
armchair silently) had been transfiguring four different biro pen lids into small, pink flowers with
little stems and trying to see how many she could get into Regulus’ hair before he realised and
brushed them out. So far she had gotten up to three.

Remus blinked and tuned back in as Regulus brushed the flowers out of his hair irritably. Sirius
was tapping two fingers absently on his foot, and Mary was sitting on the floor in front of them.
She had brought down her crocheting set that she remembered existed once every three months and
was now crocheting a red scarf, except she was very tipsy, so it didn’t seem to be going very well.

“So,” he replied. He sipped on his wine and grinned. He couldn’t help it.

“Since I have you three here—oi,” he said, snapping in front of Mary’s face. Her tongue was
poking out as she focused very intensely on her crocheting; Sirius made her jump. “Since I have
you three here, here’s something I’ve always wanted to ask. How the hell are hunters recruited? Is
there like… qualifications you have to have, or something?”

“No, you get the qualifications,” Remus said, gesturing with his hands. “What we have is
essentially a bachelors in Hunting.”

“Woah,” said Sirius. “But how do you get there in the first place?"

“For most of us,” said Dorcas, blithely, finishing her drink and putting it down on the side table,
“it’s the simple case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Mhm,” nodded Mary.

Sirius lolled his head to the side to look at her. “That what happened to you?”
Dorcas nodded. She shifted so her back was in the crease of the sofa and she could face everyone,
and said, “Yeah. Mine was a shapeshifter. Senior Hunter had been on the case for three months and
I accidentally got roped in.”

“How?”

“Oh, I love this story,” said Mary, leaning on her hands. “Go on, go on.”

“I was working in a Subway just off the train station in Bristol,” Dorcas started. “I was the last one
in, it was about half an hour to closing. This guy comes in, asks for a sandwich. I start to make it. I
turn from baking the bread, look up to ask him what salad he wants—and there’s nobody there.”

Sirius gasped. “What did he turn into?”

“I hear this scratching, and I like—go on my tiptoes and look over the glass thing, and there’s this
dog there. This German Shepherd, and obviously I’m baffled, but y’know, when you don’t know
monsters exist “this guy has turned into a dog” isn’t gonna be the first thing you think, right? He
pads around the desk and just sits, behind the sandwich station, looking at me. This fucking dog.
And so I go around, have a look and yell for the guy, all the while this dog is just looking at me,
and then when I can’t find it I go back to him. I lean down, and I pet the dog. And then when I
kneel properly this thing just attacks me.”

“Oh shit.”

“Bit my forearm,” she rolled up her sleeve and contorted her arm, pointing at a scar that was very
faded but noticeable upon being pointed out. “I’m matching with Remus.”

He gave her a high five over Sirius, who frowned.

“What happened next?” he asked.

Dorcas looked at him, took a deep breath, leaned forward. Sirius leaned forward too.

“He turned into me,” said Dorcas, and he full-body gasped.

“Oh, shit.”

“He holds me down, and it’s me, looking at me, and I’m bleeding and I hit my head really badly on
the floor so I’m concussed and fucking terrified and just confused and no one’s there and even if
people were passing by outside, you couldn’t see me because I’m behind the sandwich station, and
he goes like–” she put on a deep, grovelly voice, “–‘yours will be a nice face to steal’, and I
manage to reach my hand up while he’s trying to choke me and grab onto the bread knife that I’d
just used to cut this guy’s sandwich–”

“What did he order?” asked Sirius.

Everybody paused. Sirius blinked.

“That,” he started, zoning out—three wine bottles seemed to do it for him, “just came out of my
soul, I am so sorry, do continue.”

Dorcas looked at him, dead in the eyes. Waited for a moment, and then said, “You need to know
what this guy’s order was, don’t you?”

Sirius let out a desperate exhale. “I need to know, so badly, oh my God–”

She held up a hand. He went silent. She leaned forward again.

“Meatball Marinara,” she said, scrunching her nose. Sirius opened his mouth, and she held up a
hand again. He was enraptured.

“What sauce?” he said, darkly. Dorcas pursed her lips and covered her eyes with one hand,
pretending to be distraught.

“Honey and Whole Grain Mustard,” she choked, pitch unnaturally high and devastated–Sirius
immediately yelled something incoherent and they matched each other in dramatics. He dug his
face into his elbow and shook his head.

“Awful,” he said, as Remus looked at Mary and laughed, “disgusting, unforgivable–”

“So, you’re concussed,” said Mary, shaking her on the knee to get her to finish the story. Dorcas
emerged from her fake-crying and took a deep breath, held up a finger for a moment to recollect.

“Yes,” she breathed, eventually, “I’m concussed. I managed to grab a hold of the bread knife—
keep in mind, shapeshifters have claws, guys, so this dude is digging into my chest and trying to rip
my heart out—and I, knowing my own body, know that I have insanely sensitive pressure points
behind my ears, right? And so while this guy is trying to eat me alive, I manage to worm my other
hand out of his grasp—therefore giving me maybe three seconds before he uses his other hand to
tear into my chest—and I bring up my hand and dig my thumbs into the back of his—the back of
my—ears. And he screeches, goes limp for a moment, so I roll him over and do the only thing I can
think of doing. I press the bread knife into his throat.”

“Oh my God,” muttered Sirius.

“Because obviously you can’t really stab someone with a bread knife,” Dorcas explained,
defending herself, “the edge is curved, so I couldn’t just—I had to…”

“Did you decapitate him?” Sirius asked, jaw wide open.

Dorcas looked at him, and then nodded.

“Holy fuck,” he said. “That’s fucking insane.”

“Decapitation is also the only way you can kill shapeshifters,” said Remus, chiming in. “Their
power comes from the brain, so you have to separate it from the body it morphs into. And if they
come across someone they know is inexperienced, often they’ll pretend to die when you stab them
only to pounce on you when you think you’re safe. It’s lucky she didn’t, actually.”

“The hunter arrives maybe fifteen minutes later, and I’m in complete shock,” said Dorcas,
continuing her story, “and when you kill a shapeshifter they go back to their final form which
essentially looks like a hairless cat, so I’m sitting next to this thing with an incredible concussion,
and he—being experienced—knows what to do with the body, disposes of it, calls an ambulance to
the hospital. And on the ride there I’m about to conk out, and the paramedics are saying “keep her
awake, ask her questions!” and so this guy turns to me, and you know what he fucking asks me?
What my favourite breed of dog is.”

Sirius took a moment, and then he burst out laughing.

“No,” he said, jaw wide open, “that’s terrible.”

Dorcas laughed. “Mhm.”

“What happened next?”

“They treat me,” she said, “I’m fine, and I wake up in the hospital and this hunter is there, and so is
Moody. Once I’m stable enough they explain to me what happened, ask me questions and
everything, figure out who I am, how old I am. Moody asks me if I have any plans. I tell him that I
was thinking of doing Dance at Uni, that I’m in the middle of writing my personal statement. And
he gives me this business card and tells me that if that doesn’t work out, I should give him a call.”
She took a breath in, and let it go. “I called him a week later.”

The air was thick with the weight of the story, the dramatics of it. Sirius let out a laboured breath.

“Wow,” he said, staring into space. “Wow. That was insane.”

“Thank you,” she said, bowing slightly in her seat. Mary laughed and leaned forward to hug her
knees. Dorcas ran her fingers through her hair. “And then I met this one a week later,” she said,
tugging on Mary’s curls to make a spectacle of her. “Went to London and spent the whole summer
with her, and I thought that she was the greatest person in the world and that I didn’t need to meet
anyone else ever, and then September rolls around, and some lanky kid from Wales shows up.”

She gestured to Remus, who laughed and brushed her hand away. Sirius looked between the three
of them.

“Wait,” he said, “so how did you get there?” He was pointing at Mary.

She sat up properly on her knees, resting on Dorcas, and sighed.

“Right. If we’re doing backstories, I suppose it’s my turn then?”

Dorcas ran her fingers through her hair once more and nodded.

She took a breath in, and then began.

“It’s not as spectacular as Dorcas’,” she started, nervously. “When I was fourteen, my parents were
killed. We grew up in Trinidad, on the coast. Both of my parents were witches, and my mum,
especially, came from a… provocative family. They caused a lot of anguish, let’s say. Provoked a
lot of bad people. My parents wanted out of that. They suppressed their magic, tried not to use it as
much, and lived a very pacifist life. When I was born, my specialty—my fire—was very evident
from a young age. They tried their hardest to teach me to love my magic but it was hard when they
didn’t love theirs. Anyway, I grew up not knowing exactly what I could do, but I grew up happy.
And then their lives caught up to them, and they were killed by a coven of vampires that had been
spawning up and down the islands, tracked by hunters. They had obviously had a run-in with my
family at some point. My parents couldn’t defend themselves in time, so they told me to run, but
the vampires caught up to me just before I got to the front door. He said something taunting—I
don’t even remember what it was—and I just lost it. I screamed, and my magic exploded. I burnt
the entire house down with me still inside it. There was a circle of flames around me and I was safe
inside that circle. They found me the next day. My family tried to fight for custody, but I persisted
that I didn’t want to live with them, I wanted revenge, so they made a deal with me. I stayed in the
country with the promise that I could go and train once I turned seventeen. My first summer with
Dorcas was the first summer after my birthday. Once I was of age—witches age—I was viable for
the blood ritual that was required back then for hunters and witches to affiliate, and so I did it, and I
officially started my training.”

Mary dropped her head, rested her cheek on Dorcas’ knee. Grabbed onto her hand and laced it
together.
“Did you get it?” asked Sirius, quietly, a moment later. “Revenge? Did you kill the coven?”

“We all did,” said Dorcas, looking at Remus. “All three of us. We went back and we destroyed
them, together.”

It was silent for a long few moments. Sirius looked directly at Mary, and smiled at her.

“Good,” he said, and it was all he had to say. He rubbed Remus’ ankle fondly and up his leg,
before lolling his head around to look at him too, leaning on the back of the sofa.

He smiled.

“You know what I’m going to ask,” he said, and Remus laughed, breathily. He thinned his lips and
shrugged.

“Well, you’re not going to get anything as enriching as those two,” he said, gesturing to the girls.
Mary laughed.

“Remus is boring,” she chirped.

Sirius raised an eyebrow. “What? How were you recruited?”

“Moody came to my house,” he said, “around my seventeenth birthday. Spoke to my mum in

private for a little bit, and then brought me down and essentially told me there was an… opening.
Obviously I didn’t know anything about the supernatural world—that was a long conversation—
but he told me that they could use me. Gave me his card, his details. Said he’d be in touch. That’s
it.” He stopped, and bit the inside of his lip, feeling the anticlimax of his story against the other
two, the strangeness of how his was unconventional and how he never knew why. He coughed.
“He’s never said, but I think he saw me box.”

Sirius’ head snapped up. He raised an eyebrow. “You used to box?”

Remus grinned, embarrassed. “Don’t start. I had a lot of energy to let out as a kid.”

“Oh, that’s hot. You should take it up again. I really, really think you should take it up again.”

“Shut up,” Remus laughed, kicking him gently as Sirius grinned, lovesick, and Dorcas and Mary
shot each other awkward looks that turned into explosive giggles.

The end of the night was nothing more than a melancholic simmer. The amount of alcohol they
had gotten through was criminal, but it led everyone content. Regulus and James had been talking
for three hours. People had been in and out of the conversation, namely Mary and Lily, obviously,
but mainly it had been those two, chatting aimlessly about everything and nothing. James had, as of
just recently, gotten up and started dancing with Marlene as Andromeda played something jazzy on
the piano in the corner of the room. She had entered with Ted, clung onto by Tonks like an amoeba
(it truly was spectacular how well they got on, even on grounds of last names) and the two of them
were dancing goofily. James was twirling Marlene.

Sirius had been up there, not with Remus (whose head hurt too much to dance) but with—
spectacularly and yet not at all—Dorcas, who was perhaps out of practice but just as agile as the
seventeen year old who had wanted to do dance. They had waltzed and jived and Sirius had even
picked her up a few times, to her anguish and then, eventually, delight when they got the routine
right. The both of them were just as competitive and just as perfectionist as each other. And they
hated each other. T’was a match made in heaven.
And Regulus had been dragged up to dance by Pandora, very unexpectedly. He’d resisted but
eventually let loose. God knows how much he’d drank. Regardless, it was sweet, watching
Pandora twirl Regulus around, off the dance floor when he had finally had enough and watching
him brush the flowers out of his hair; the flowers that she simply levitated back up and weaved
back in whilst he walked away, shooting Remus a dirty wink as he tried to suppress a laugh.

Regulus sat down, heavily, beside Sirius who had just retired from the floor himself. A bud fell out
of his hair and landed on his lap. He picked it up, and then just dropped it, seemingly resigned to
his pastoral fate.

“I feel like I’ve moved more in the past hour than I have the past hundred years,” he said,
breathlessly. Sirius laughed.

“Get used to it,” he said. Regulus groaned and leaned his head back, neck curving over the back of
the sofa.

He looked inexplicably young, pink buds in his hair, empty wine glass loose in his hair, top button
undone. His face was clear, and yet Remus knew that he was feeling things, foreign things, things
he had not been in touch with in so long they all felt rusty and incognito. Remus knew, from the
working of his jaw.

He clenched it and opened his eyes, and they fell, glazed over, looking up at the ceiling.

“Is this how you feel all the time?” he asked. Sirius looked at him.

“Is what how I feel all the time?”

“Happy,” he said. The word felt alien out of his sharpened tongue. “Being happy for the sake of
being happy.”

He turned, eyes desperate and drunk and beseeching, looking up at his brother. A flower fell out of
his hair and landed on the sofa cushion between them.

“This is what your life has been like?” he asked, voice wavering, as if a thread has been unpicked
on the lapel of his best blazer and he is unravelling, calamitous and unstoppable, ruins or riches
depending on what angle you’re looking at, “since you left? This is—this is how you have felt?”

“Not always,” said Sirius, low and tender, as if minding something that may break with a slight
incline. “There have been rough moments. But that’s what life is. Especially for us. When you are
happy, you are on top of the world. When you are sad, it’s colossal. It consumes you.” He paused,
eyes darting to an arbitrary knot in the sofa cushion. “It takes some serious getting used to. That
balance.”

“I don’t blame you,” said Regulus, desperately, as if the words would leave him if he did not
capture them right that very second. He shook his head. “For going. I don’t blame you. I never
blamed you.”

“Regulus,” Sirius whispered, barely there, broken.

“They do this,” he continued, sort of crazed, “every day. They feel like this. They love and they
hunt. They crumble and they put themselves back together. Every day.” He gaped for a moment,
seemingly lost for words. “They–they fight—so hard, every single day, to feel these things. To
live. To love. I mean, we–we have power,” he nodded to himself, swallowing, “we have power,
and pleasure, and control, but they have happiness. And it feels– the way this feels—”
“I know,” whispered Sirius.

“Every oddity falls in line with humanity. It’s beautiful,” he sat up, beseeching. “Sirius. Sirius. It’s
so beautiful.”

“I know,” he whispered, nodding. “I know.”

“I’ve never been comfortable… in my life. Is that what this is?”

Remus and Sirius exchanged a brief glance. Thinking about a conversation, about a boy who
drowns in comfortability.

“Yes,” Sirius said.

Regulus exhaled shakily, nodded. And then he laughed. A bark of a thing, it felt sort of crazed and
sort of beautiful. He threw his head back again and the petals of the flowers in his hair shuddered,
but stood their ground, clinging to him like wisteria clings to the handprints against an old house
and the generational eyes that have surveyed it.

“I can’t believe,” he choked, still laughing, utterly wasted, “you ripped– off his finger.”

Sirius blinked. He looked at Remus, and then back at his brother, and burst out laughing.

“I did.”

“You ripped off his finger,” Regulus repeated, a single tear falling from his eye as he laughed, “and
—carried it–”

“And don’t piss me off,” Sirius said, warningly, smile around his words, “or I’ll do it to you, too.”

Regulus met his eye, smile contorted and goofy, and then laughed again. Sirius chuckled and shook
his head, in disbelief, perhaps, and leaned forward to grab the almost-empty red wine bottle from
the coffee table. He poured himself a glass, and then reached out, and Regulus lifted his hand up.
He poured him one too.

“To being happy for the sake of being happy,” said Sirius, raising his glass.

“And to living,” replied Regulus, in a murmur, “for a purpose.”

“Cheers,” Sirius said, clinking their glasses together. Regulus smiled at him, softly, and raised his
to his lips.

They sipped their glasses, sitting in line with each other. Remus got up. Made a route around the
room. Mary was not present; she had gone to bed about an hour ago, exhausted and droopy. Dorcas
was being twirled by Marlene, laughing as they swayed, awkwardly and beautifully, experiences
and feelings; James was sitting beside Andromeda at the piano, talking her ear off about something
or other while seamlessly playing the accompaniment to her piece. In all of the commotion, Remus
had not noticed their group expanding, but there was Astoria, in her pyjamas, being entertained by
Pandora who was summoning flowers and levitating them around her head. Jul picked one out of
the air and gave it to Isabela with a bow and a flourish of their skirt.

Lavender, Parvati, Percy and Oliver were all chatting in the reading nook in the other corner.
Lavender gestured wildly and Remus spotted the glint of an alcohol bottle that she definitely
shouldn’t have, but he didn’t say anything. He laughed, waved at Astoria from across the room,
and tiptoed around the sofas to leap into the empty place beside Lily. He wrapped his arms around
her and leaned his cheek on her shoulder.

“Hello there,” she said, chuckling and pulling her arm out to hug him in return. “You’re very jolly.
You need fire or something?”

“No,” Remus said, watching as Oliver ran up to the cloud of roses Astoria was surrounded by and
broke down the wall, making them all crumble to the floor. She whacked him on the shoulder as he
staggered back, laughing, and then she whacked him again. “Just wanted to see you. Why would I
need fire?”

Lily shrugged. He pulled his head up and leaned against the back of the sofa so they were eye
level.

“Hm. I don’t know,” she said, seemingly surprised, “most people do.”

Remus frowned. “Well,” he said, “I’m not most people. Am I?”

“No,” she said, smiling. She sighed and leaned her head on the back of the sofa too, arm dangling
over the edge. “You’re not.”

There was a moment of silence. And then;

“I wanted to thank you, actually,” she said, quietly. He raised an eyebrow. “For the other week.
When I… well, you know, lost it under the tree. And you talked to me.”

“That?” he asked. “It’s fine. You don’t have to thank me for that–”

“No, I do,” she said, sitting up. “I do, because you—you reminded me what we’re doing all of this
for. What gets me up every morning. Keeps me burning.”

“And what is that?” he said, quietly. She took a moment to respond.

“Hope,” she said, resigned, word curling around her lips like it was born to be there. The epicentre
of it. “Hope that I can burn so that others don’t have to.”

He took her hand, gently, played with her fingers and laced them together with his. He did not feel
like it was his due to speak. She was a ball of twine in a cataclysmic knot, and the end of the wool
is burning, red. She took a deep breath in.

“But there’s something,” she said, gently, “and I feel guilty for it, I do, there’s something–”

Remus sat up. “Lil.”

“I just,” she said, exhale staggered, “I don’t know how much hope I can manage before it fizzles
me out, you know?”

Remus looked at her. Bit the inside of his lip, and chose his words carefully.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

She rubbed her eye with her free hand and laughed, sort of bitterly, letting it drop after a moment
and sniffing.

“Do you ever look at yourself in the mirror and have no idea who you are?” she asked.

Remus nodded, instantly. “Every day.”

“How do you deal with that?”

“I remind myself of everything that drives me,” said Remus, after a pause. “None of that has ever
changed. I love people. It’s why I was where I was a year ago, and it’s why I’m here, today. My
drives haven’t changed. It’s just the outcome that has.”

“But– but Remus, my drives,” she said, struggling for words, “I don’t know that they’re mine. How
do I know how much of me is the phoenix and how much of me is me?” She bit her lip, exhaling
shakily; “I mean—why am I in medicine? Is it because I love humans and I want to help them, or
is it because there is a natural disposition in me to heal? Is this all I’m worth, now? How the
phoenix can be of service? The fire that doesn’t go out? How much of myself is going out to keep
the fire burning?”

Remus frowned. “Lily."

She sniffed, evidently on the verge of tears. He tugged her sleeve, and they got up, slowly; he led
her to the hall and shut the door, and the sounds were muffled.

She inhaled, shakily, and she was crying.

“Lily.”

“I feel like I don’t belong anywhere,” she said. “I don’t know who I am. I don’t know why the
universe made me this way, and I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do—”

She cut off as Remus leaned forward and pulled his arms around her. She immediately let loose,
sobbing quietly into his shoulder, clinging onto the back of his shirt as he rubbed her back and dug
his face into the crisp clean hair that hung gently just above her shoulders.

“What do I do with powers that I don’t want?” she said.

“You find the beauty in it,” said Remus, running his hands through her hair, trying to soothe her as
she rested her cheek against his shoulder. “And you take back what’s yours. You’re in medicine
because you love people, Lily. Remember in the clearing, when Sirius was dying and you fought
tooth and nail to heal him, human ways and magic ways? You didn’t look at him and try to fix him
for the sake of fixing something that’s broken. You looked at him and you wanted to fix him
because you love him. Your drive is love.” Remus licked his lips, and then chuckled. “Do you
wanna know what I thought when I found out you were a phoenix? I thought about how well you
know pain and suffering. And I thought about how you still fought your way in here tooth and nail
to make your presence mean something. You are, first and foremost, yourself. The universe made
you the patron for this war because you are the representative of everything we stand for. And that
is good.”

He pulled away, cupped her wet cheeks with both hands and tucked her hair out of her face. He
looked her in her deep green eyes, and he said, “You’re good,” repeated it, felt it, breathed it in
everything she did and everything she would continue to do. Being the Phoenix who burnt versus
the girl who challenged a Pureblood with zero experience to try and help her friend, she was all the
world needed in his eyes, someone to look to. A star to follow whether she was burning or whether
she was not. But she couldn’t see that.

“Thank you,” Lily said, over his shoulder, not crying anymore but voice still groggy. He held her
tight. “I think I’m just… finding things hard right now.”

“That’s okay,” said Remus. “We’ll all be here. We have to remind each other who we really are
every once in a while. Things like that get lost out here.”

She pulled back, sniffed, and laughed. “God, I love you. I’m so glad you called me on the way to
New York.”

Remus narrowed his eyes. “If I’m remembering correctly, you called me. And Sirius answered.”

She gasped. “Oh, God, yes! He did! And he called me Lilibeth, and I told him…”

“To suck your big fat human dick,” said Remus. She laughed, out loud, and pushed the door open
to rejoin the group.

“Still haven’t cashed that in yet, Lilith,” Sirius called, his head falling over the edge of the sofa to
look back at her.

“Would you stop eavesdropping, you lurker?” said Remus, scoffing.

“I heard my name.”

“Come by my room and I’ll show you a good time,” she said. Her eyes were still slightly red and
her voice thick, but she was smiling, genuinely. “What’s having an otherworldly connection with
someone good for if you’re not going to use it for sexual deviance, hm?”

“Oh, I have,” Sirius replied, grinning. “Trust me, I already have.”

Lily groaned, and threw a pillow at him.

***

Sirius’ bed, two-forty-five A.M. A starless, moonless sky. The silhouette of the other under the
covers, in their arms, a warm hand and a cold one against the small of his back and around the
curve of his neck.

“Are you nervous for tomorrow?” Sirius asked, into the quiet. Remus sighed.

“No,” he said. And then, “Yes,” because that was a lie.

He was nervous. He was always nervous, but he was more so here, for it was the first time they
were going on a proper mission in a while, since Malfoy Manor, and while Remus had brushed off
his dusty cogs and stretched his achy muscles he was still not entirely sure that the imprint of the
fire swallowing the dark on that night will ever leave the hollow of his bones, an oddset ivory
piano key stepped on accidentally at the worst, the best, the most average times, the fear of
stepping on it leaving a cloud above his head, the feel of it under his toes a pool of lava below his
feet. He was nervous. Had to be, to survive.

“Are you?” he asked, tracing a thumb over the back of Sirius’ neck, the baby hairs there.

“Yes,” he replied, instantly. Transparency.

“We’re a powerful group,” he said, nodding, as if trying to convince himself. “The odds are not
hugely stacked against us.”

“But they are,” Sirius said. “Stacked against us.”

Remus took a deep breath in. Moved his hand to the side of his neck, traced the cut of his jawline.
“Aren’t they always?” he murmured, inhaling again, wanting to keep this moment inside of his
system forever, to never leave. Their legs were intertwined. They could be one entity. Remus could
absorb him, take him in, swallow him whole. Sometimes he is genuinely scared that he will.

“We have something that he doesn’t have,” said Sirius, eventually. His voice carried with the wind.
Remus sighed.

“Don’t say a phoenix.”

“I wasn’t going to,” he whispered, shaking his head. He traced his hands up and down Remus’
side, his ribcage, the warrior hidden there in plain sight. “I was going to say that we have hope.”

Remus took this in for a moment. And then;

“You did eavesdrop on mine and Lily’s conversation, didn’t you–?”

“Only a bit,” Sirius chuckled, quietly, pulling him closer as Remus tried to roll away in petulant
disparity, “only a bit, only that part.”

“Bitch,” said Remus.

“The one and only,” he said, and then his voice dropped, his face dropped, the silhouette of it, the
dark side of the moon that Remus’ eyes had adjusted to, that he could chart over and over. “We do
though,” he said, “we have hope. We have something priceless to fight for.” He paused. His hands
were clasped around Remus’ back, now. “I mean, Regulus, today. Christ.”

Remus nodded. “You mean your brother, who just today discovered what happiness is after eight
hundred years? Mhm. It was lovely, actually.”

Sirius laughed. “My brother who can finally have a mind of his own. And it’s amazing to him. Do
you see that that’s the rest of them? No purpose, no endgame. Only their instincts.” A pause. “You
can’t survive alone on instincts. They choke you back, in the end. Turn on each other because they
don’t understand the value of what it means to have the other, and then they are alone, and they
despair. That’s what they are. We have so much to live for.”

Remus nodded, again. “We do. We do, sweetheart.”

They were quiet. Melancholic and choreless. No sounds came from out of the windows, no life
shone over the meadow. Sirius clasped his hands tighter. Pulled him closer.

“He’ll never know love,” he said, licking his lips and knocking his forehead against Remus’.
“He’ll never know love. He’ll never know what it’s like to be happy for the sake of being happy. I
feel sorry for him.”

“I don’t,” said Remus, immediately, cupping Sirius’ face with both hands and kissing his forehead.
“He doesn’t deserve to have this. He doesn’t deserve to know you.”

“I love you,” muttered Sirius, under his hold, his hands and his mouth and his chin, his love, a
boulder and a chain, a wrecking ball and they are the wreckage; he held him like this and kissed
him like that to memorise his face like the steps it took to get here, and it’s something
extraordinary, to feel this way, Remus thinks it might be magical on both ends.

Sirius tilted his head up and kissed him, properly. It was soft, and prolonged, and sleepy. He pulled
back and littered two or three more onto his soft lips and then closed his eyes. Held him close. Fit
themselves together like puzzle pieces.
“Sleep,” said Sirius, a murmur into the hollow of his collarbone.

Remus did not protest.

 twenty two
Chapter Summary

the fête, part one

Chapter Notes

CW// minor character death. & a bit of torture xo

<3

See the end of the chapter for more notes

The back lawn was packed. Packed.

From the outside (not that he was seen) Remus was a pair of eyes between a tweaked hole in the
blinds. From the inside he was a back, staring out onto the grass, hordes of people who lived
on/around the grounds and hordes of people that did not inter-mingling in groups, throwing around
weapons, displaying enhancements like it’s the last thing they’ll ever do.

He turned back to the room.

“Stop freaking out, Lupin,” said Regulus, blithely. He was sitting cross-legged on a kitchen chair.
His hair was blonde and his eyes a deep maroon brown; it was majorly unsettling.

“I’m not freaking out,” he snapped, turning back to the blinds and stopping his fidgeting hands
from taking another look.

Remus’ appearance had been altered, already. He didn’t look all that different than usual, his hair
was just darker and his eyes now a hazel-green. His face was his but it was not; not enough to
unsettle him entirely, for the real damage was being done on those that would already be
recognised, but his chin was wider, his lips thinner. It looked like he had been under a botched
Botox knife, thanks to Avni Patil, their resident couturier.

Remus’ hair was a deep brown-near-black as opposed to its usual mild tawny-brown; Lily’s long
again and strawberry blonde as opposed to her usual deep auburn red, her eyes blue, dress baby
blue and layered with silk that swished around her feet and made her look like a Disney princess.
Dorcas’ hair had been dyed a dark red. She’d taken her braids out and put it in long locs, pinned in
a half-up half-down bun on the top of her head. Her edges were sleek against the sides of her face;
as sleek as her carmine dress, lined with pearls on the seams. Blood red lip to match.

Pandora’s hair had been darkened to a light brown, shortened into a bob and straightened, to differ
from her usual long blonde curls. She was in a sage green low-cut satin gown, which complimented
her beautifully. The top half was very corset-like; the fabric was velvety and so nice to touch that
Dorcas had spent about an hour just running it between her fingers. Her transformation was more
dramatic than the rest of theirs, for as a part of the Black’s entourage back in the day she was much
more familiar to the lackey.
Remus turned and made eye contact with Regulus again—who was barely Regulus, more of him in
his facial expressions than in his actual face. It was funny how his eyes looked so painfully
different and yet the disbelieving look in them was the goddamn same.

“I’m not freaking out!” he said, again, as Regulus’ lips curled. He raised two hands in surrender.

“I am,” said Lily, anxiously. Her hair was in a slick high ponytail, straightened completely out of
its usual thick waves and still halfway down her back despite it being hitched up. (Mary, sitting
beside her, was running her fingers through it absently.)

“It’ll be fine,” said James, positively. Potter was putting up a face but he was fidgety. Darting
around, tightening Regulus’ tie and making sure Remus’ brooch was secure and the backs of
Dorcas’ earrings were tight and that Lily’s hair was not hurting her scalp too much, for they could
change it if she needed——

“It’ll be fine,” he said again.

Meanwhile, Sirius gasped.

“Deep breath,” murmured Avni; the murmur that they had all, bar Miyuki, heard thus far. He was
currently lying on a reclining chair with Avni sitting on a stool beside him, hovering over him with
a golden glow emanating off of her fingers that smelled like a sweet shop. Her fingers were
twitching over his eyes, but otherwise entirely still.

“Oh, that’s so weird,” Sirius muttered, biting down on his bottom lip in pain. His eyelids were
twitching; so were hers as she focused. It took about a minute for Avni to finish.

Nobody spoke for the entire time until she pulled her fingers into her palms abruptly and said,
“There it is. You can open your eyes.”

Sirius, involuntary tear tracks running down his face, sat up as she pulled back, blinking his eyes
profusely as if something had gotten in them. That was how her alterations felt; a sort of ache at the
front of your skull mixed with the feeling of something sinking deep into your eyes, something
foreign that you needed to get rid of; sand, dust, grit.

Regulus seamlessly passed him a tissue and he dabbed at them, eventually managing to keep them
open to show the changed eye colour; such a dark brown you could barely see his pupils. His eyes
were bloodshot. That would dissipate in 5-7 minutes. They had all heard it before.

Sirius swung his legs over the edge of the seat, dabbing his eyes again.

“How do I look?” he asked, smirking, reaching a tentative hand up to touch his hair. It was fluffy,
shorter, and light brown as opposed to black. His nose was longer, more downturned, his bottom lip
fuller, and his eyebrows more arched in the same way that Regulus’ had been pulled down. Their
features had almost been dulled. Black genes eradicated. T’was very odd.

Sirius looked at Remus.

“You look,” he started, scrunching his nose, as Sirius tapped parts of his face delicately, “horrible.”

Dorcas snorted a laugh.

“Which is perfect,” he continued, as Sirius stood up, “because you look nothing like yourself.”

Sirius laughed, and then shut his eyes and had to grab onto the mantle. Yep, they had all
experienced the light-headedness, too. Avni’s couturiering was not particularly painful so much as
irritating and almost all-consuming. It’s like when you have pins and needles, except crawling all
over your body. Five to seven minutes. Regulus rolled his eyes but still moved before Remus could
over to his brother, helping him to a seat.

As he sat down the door opened, and Astoria came marching in.

“Why are you here?” James asked, immediately.

“I’m here to see my mom,” she said, chin held high, before skipping over to sit beside her mother,
the last recipient for the transformation, waiting her turn as Avni prepared.

Parvati was directly behind her.

“Why are you here?”

“Also here to see my mom,” she said, sweetly, sauntering past him with a goofy grin towards her
own mother.

James turned to the last figure in the door frame, and narrowed his eyes.

“And you?” he asked, monotonically. Lavender flashed him a brilliant grin.

“I’m here to support my girlfriend,” she said, brows pulled together in the middle, as if it should be
obvious. And then, as if to hammer in the message, as she walked past James’ dumbfounded
figure; “Duh.”

She walked up to the group, in which Avni had summoned Miyuki over and was going over the
basics, the two daughters sitting and observing their mothers on the side. Lavender slotted in nicely
between them.

(let it be known that remus had no idea which the ‘girlfriend’ in question is. you never see one
without the other two, nowadays; it very well could, in his eyes, be both.)

“Fair enough,” James muttered, walking over and collapsing into a seat between Regulus and Lily.

(...let it be known that remus acknowledges the irony, and that he’s well aware he needs to talk to
lily.)

The issue was, here, that Lily was, and probably had been for a while, a stranger in her own skin.
A myriad of complications and unsolved mysteries in her past solved in the blink of an eye and the
loosening of a grip around her core; she had unleashed herself, unfettered against the wind, and
what had come out was something that she had no prior knowledge of or no prior relationship with.
It was like she was two ghosts in one body, aligned in genealogy (for phoenixes were not made but
born through a bloodline) and yet wrong; she had no sister, anymore, to tell. No mother to talk to.
Both had been taken from her, in blood she could have followed but she had stayed, had fought,
had given up the ghost for a larger cause no matter how deep the strain was on her body. No
matter how far the mirror multiplied when she looked into it and increasingly did not recognise
herself.

Remus looked at her now; Lily Evans, a lovesong to fire and ice. Her hair lighter and her freckled
skin on show, her lips a tan sort of pink and her nails painted baby blue. She summoned a flame in
her fingers; a tiny one, pouring out of the friction between her index, middle and thumb, pressed
together, and she rubbed those fingers together as if she were naught but a wooden log against a
coal fire.
And then James nudged her. He nudged her, and it dissipated, instantly.

She looked up and smiled at him, and then nudged him back, playfully. They went back and forth
for a few moments until Lily was laughing; a bright light, her own light. But the flame had gone
out. She simply didn’t know how to reconcile the light of her being with the embers of the
phoenix, the disarray inside of her. Internal. It was a wholly internal struggle.

And then there was Regulus Black, two seats across, blonde and dark-eyed and entirely not himself
and yet so much of himself bleeding through. Bleeding heart baby-Black. Remus, if you had asked
him two months ago, would not have been able to label much to Regulus’ personality. Granted,
they walked on coals around each other for a good couple weeks, but regardless he was in his shell
and it had seemed comfortable. It had been observed by Remus as him not wanting to clamber out
of it in the beginning, but he saw his mistake now. His foresight had been wrong. For it was not
that Regulus did not want to clamber out of his shell; it was that Regulus did not know how. He did
not know humanity, the beauty and the misfortune of it. He did not know himself, truly, outside of
who he was hammered to be; did not know other. Didn’t know there could be an other.

So it was rather lucky of him, actually, to be tied into this place in which humanity bleeds through
the walls even when it is the undead crawling through them day-by-day, for it’s not the case of
having a beating (bleeding) heart and rushing veins that labels one as alive, never has been.
(Remus looked at Sirius.)

His eyes flickered back. Regulus sat there, next to James and opposite his brother, as Remus
watched; as he attuned into Miyuki getting on the chair, the three girls leaning in to observe, Mary
chatting to Pandora about something magical and James and Lily nudging each other; Regulus fell
into such a comfortable conversation with Sirius he might have thought that it was a different
person altogether, had he not been observing the way Regulus had begun to ride with the waves in
the past few weeks instead of avoiding them altogether. He was wide-eyed, something optimistic in
the throes of the war; adapting to the way of life here, understanding the core of the house, the core
of the group being hope, and happiness—happy for the sake of being happy—Sirius said
something, and Regulus laughed. He had crinkles at the side of his youthful eyes that Remus knew
had been there before Avni had messed with him, for he had seen them yesterday, and the day
before that, and the day before that, too.

A laugh against a mouth built to scowl. So level-headed compared to Sirius you’d think he was the
eldest. Finding a way to unwind, amongst people that he, somehow, had learned to care about.
External. His struggle was on the outside. His struggle was one in glances, in conversations, in a
touch of a hand; each sprout that bloomed in his radioactive environment, each person who chose
to be there and water them and look, James caught him by the foot; twirled their ankles around each
other, rubbed up the curve of it and back down and did not pull away afterwards.

Regulus and Lily were so alike, in so many ways; perhaps that’s why they got on so well. For they
were two sides of a spectrum of self-discovery, but one needed everything, and the other needed
nothing.

Remus, in a burst of clarity, saw the answer in blinking lights above their heads.

But this was not his conflict. It was not his answer to give. He simply enjoyed to sit back and
observe.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Dorcas, shuffling across to whisper into his ear and thus
pulling Remus out of his stupor. It made him jump, which made her laugh. “You were miles
away.”
“Mmm,” Remus replied, eyes flickering over everyone in the room and back to her. He shoved his
hands between his thighs for warmth and shrugged. “Lots of things. Change, mainly. Do you
remember when we were eighteen, and we thought we knew everything?”

She nodded.

“Do you think it’s possible to change so fundamentally that the person you were before is gone
forever?”

She sighed, gave herself a moment to ponder this.

“No,” she said, eventually, gently. “Because that person lives on in memories of the people around
them.”

“But what if,” Remus said, eyeing Lily, who was laughing at something James was saying, “you
find out that that person was a lie? That there was something—some fundamental change that they
just hadn’t discovered, yet?” He tried to sound as nonchalant as possible. It wasn’t that he was
questioning Lily, more that he had been thinking a lot about what she had said, and he trusted
Dorcas’ judgement more than he trusted his own mind.

“What you are doesn’t make you who you are,” she said, rather firmly, following his gaze and then
pretending that she hadn’t. “They can be two entirely separate things.”

“Of course,” said Remus, “yes, and that’s the case with human things, identity and stuff, but what
about anthropomorphically? When, in a supernatural sense, is what you are directly tied to who
you are? Take–” he lowered his voice, “take Lily, for example. You know and I know that she
doesn’t have a single bad bone in her body, obviously. But she’s had this independent variable her
whole life that she didn’t even know existed. You can’t mark when it began, or distinguish yourself
outside of it. It’s just always… been. And they,” voice even lower, gesturing with his head to Sirius
and Regulus, “they’ve never even been human. Doesn’t that affect everything that they do? How
do you rid yourself of that when it stems from something you can’t change?”

Dorcas stared at him. Her brow was knitted together in the middle. They used to have
conversations like these all the time, stupid debates on not just the supernatural, on everything.
Life. Humanity, or lack thereof.

Mary used to say they were the only ones smart enough to keep up with each other. Remus,
personally, thinks he is waxing bullshit. But Dorcas always waxes it at the same frequency, and
that is important.

“I think,” she started, slowly, “you’re looking for an answer that doesn’t exist.”

He looked at her.

“Elaborate.”

“You’re looking for answers in science, in philosophy,” she continued, more affirmed, “but you’re
not going to find them, because the laws aren’t written for us. Everything that we do here is on our
terms, Remus. There are no morals written for us. There’s no handbook on primitive supernatural
identities.” She took a deep breath, and then continued: “All we have is… hope. Hope and love
and all that gooey shite. What we choose to do with what we’re given. They–” Sirius and Regulus
again, “–chose to do good—well, for a greater cause, at least—with what they were handed. Their
cousins, who lived the same fundamental experience, did not. That’s not their nature, that’s a
choice.”
“So,” said Remus, “you’re saying it’s entirely up to us.” That we’re all alone. Left to fend for
ourselves.

“I think we have a certain level of agency in separating who we are and what we are ourselves,”
said Dorcas, finitely. “And in the end, you find that when you find hope. Wherever that may be.”

Remus inhaled deeply. Looked back over to the group. James had gotten up, and Lily had scooted
over. She and Regulus were engaged in a conversation that Remus could not hear, but it was
animated on Regulus’ part. He spoke with his hands.

Lily laughed at something he said, and summoned a flame into her palm. It was tame. She gestured
to it, saying something, held it there between their enclosed spaces, and Regulus made some sly
remark, rolling his eyes, which made Lily laugh.

They smiled at each other, until she dissipated the flame. And then they smiled thereafter.

“Any reason why you’re feeling philosophical today?” asked Dorcas, gently, tugging at the bottom
of one of her locs. Remus shrugged.

“Life is… weird.”

She scoffed, and leant over to rest her head on his shoulder. “Tell me about it.”

Another ten minutes passed—of marginal silence and mild, hummingbird conversations—before
Avni finished with Miyuki’s transformation, the low “Deep breath” as she changed her eye colour
from its usual brown to a sky blue. Her hair, usually black and down her back, was trimmed short,
in a bob about the length of Astoria’s, except it was wavy and a deep blood red that complimented
her black dress drastically. Astoria’s eyes widened and her jaw went slack, slightly, at her mother’s
appearance.

“You look,” she said, pausing as Miyuki wiped her still-watering eyes. She took a deep breath.
“Beautiful.”

Miyuki blinked down at her daughter, and then smiled, wide.

“Thank you,” she said, opening her arms; Astoria fell into the hug almost instantly. She was only
up to her mother’s chest, and she seemed to melt into her, arms wrapped around her back. They
swayed a little.

Not many people were paying attention, but Remus was. Miyuki rested her cheek on the top of her
daughter’s head, closed her eyes.

“Be careful, mama,” said Astoria,

“いつも,” she replied, simply, before leaning back, having her daughter do the same, and cupping
her face.

Astoria was teary but very obviously trying to hold it together.

“私の月,” Miyuki said, endearingly, and then she pinched Astoria’s cheeks so hard they went red.

“Ergh–” she choked, laughing and sort of flailing, “Mama!”

“Peachy cheeks,” she said, cheesily, not relinquishing Astoria’s face until she stopped struggling.

“You’re embarrassing me,” Astoria grumbled, but there was no heat behind it. Lavender and
Parvati giggled from behind her. Miyuki smoothed her hands over Astoria’s hair; tucked the silky
front pieces behind her ears.

“Go get your father for me,” she said, and Astoria obeyed immediately.

Pandora, as Astoria passed her to skip out of the door, hopped off the table she had been sitting on
with Mary. There was a clock on the left wall; her eyes drew to it, and Remus’ followed, reading
the time just as she cleared her throat and begged for the room's attention. 7:55pm.

“Right,” she said, authoritatively, as Andromeda (in an emerald green dress and bright blonde,
curly hair) who had been beckoned out of the room with Ted half an hour ago and had just now
returned walked through the door, effectively completing their circle. “We should probably prepare
to go. Come on, everyone.”

And everyone followed her, because that is what they do.

Granted, after various thanks were given to Avni who had donated her time and energy to help
them (and had said it had been no chip off her shoulder, lovely woman that she was, arm around
her daughter) Remus walked through the door, side by side with Mary and Dorcas, and caught
Miyuki (walking in front of him) and Ambrose (hopping down the stairs with Astoria in tow). The
three of them, upon seeing each other, huddled to the side. Remus smiled at them, walked past.

Within four to five minutes everyone was out front. The portkeys were not on a timer. There had
actually been apparition points that Pandora had mapped just outside the venue, set up by the hosts
for magical guests, however they had collectively decided that it would be easier to go via portkey
as Pandora was the only witch and, regardless of how strong she was, did not really want to side-
along apparate eight people across the state.

Last goodbyes began being spread. Mary went round hugging everyone, Dorcas gave James a curt
handshake before laughing and pulling him into a hug. Marlene was being orderly; she and Mary
seemed to bounce off each other, both of them wandering around making sure everyone was set,
everyone had what they needed, everyone knew what to do, say, think. The plan was rather simple,
in all honesty. Their only aim was to find Daphne, find the locket, destroy the locket, and stay alive
within whatever entrapment the Purebloods and potentially the witches had set up for them.

There were three basilisk blades left, since Sirius’ had disintegrated when he had destroyed the
diary. Dorcas had her own. Sirius had Remus’—the one that had stabbed him—and Remus had
Marlene’s, in replacement of his. James’ had been used to destroy the ring by Pandora.

Regulus walked past Remus now, on the way to Mary, who turned from where she was fawning
over Pandora and immediately fell into his arms.

It was a tight, chaste hug, one reciprocated on both sides, as if it was timed. They mirrored each
other in a way only spending months upon months with one another could do. Mary pulled back.

She said naught, her face blazing with affection that would never be voiced, except for the words,
“Stay alive, vampire.”

Regulus smiled. “Of course, witch.”

She sighed and pulled him into one more hug, and then let go, turning away and bustling over to
Lily; Remus turned, expecting to see Dorcas, but noticed she had been pulled away by Marlene.
They were close together, hands held tightly together in the small space between their bodies, and
Dorcas was saying something.
Her mouth quirked upwards, and then Marlene sighed, pushed forward, cupped her face and kissed
her fiercely.

It was something shrouded, under a tree, in a time of bustle and incrimination when no one was
paying attention to them. Marlene pulled away and then kissed her on the cheek, pulling her into a
terribly tight hug. Dorcas was taller than her and yet looked like she was weak to her wiles.

Then the door opened, and Miyuki poured out with Astoria. She had evidently said her last
goodbyes to her daughter—Astoria was teary—but this was not the reason that the girl was at the
doorframe.

Remus had had his conversation with her. They made eye contact, and she raised her eyebrows, for
one last confirmation.

He placed his hand over his chest, right where her locket fell, and she smiled. Placed her own hand
in the same position.

It was their promise; I’ll find her for you. You take care of him for me.

She nodded one last time, and then hopped down the stairs and circled around to the back of the
house to find Draco.

Andromeda was standing behind her.

She was looking directly at Remus. Purposeful. She raised her eyebrows, perhaps trying to make
sure they were truly locked in this gaze, and then jerked her head, summoning him over to her.

He looked around, and then began to walk.

Andromeda’s eyes dropped directly down to his brooch—the one that deterred any prying vampire
ears—as he was walking up the stairs. She looked, warily, over at the group of fawning people,
and then took a deep breath in.

“There is a diary,” she started, voice low, no preamble, leaving Remus blinking in confusion, “in
the little library, on the bookcase left to the first end table. Fourth shelf up, next to the series of red
leatherbacks.”

Remus gaped for a moment. “A diary? Like–”

“The twin, yes,” she said. “Sybil brought it over from London. Sirius knows it's there. He does not
know it’s true owner.”

“You–?”

“We don’t have time,” she said, resolutely, looking around again as if someone might be lurking
behind a flagpole, listening in. She then, after doing a quick sweep, pulled out a folded up piece of
paper. Pulled his hand up from his side, and placed it in his palm. Enclosed his fingers over it.
“This is the password to enter it. Keep it safe. I’m entrusting you.”

She turned, intending to walk past him as Pandora began to yell for people to take their places, and
he grabbed her arm. She jolted back.

“Why are you giving this to me now?” he asked, cautious.

Something loaded flashed behind her eyes.

“Plan B,” she said, simply.

She went to move again; he pulled her back once more.

“But,” he started, brows knitting in the middle, conscious of two groups forming on the grass.
“Why me?”

Andromeda sighed and pulled her arm from his grasp gently, pushing her curly blonde faux hair
out of her eyes.

“You’re going to win this war for us, Remus,” she said, gently. “I don’t know why, or how. But
somehow I know that it’s going to be you.”

She turned away from him as his hand fell, slack, processing this; walking regally down the stairs,
pulling her dress up like a princess. Remus turned his back to the grounds. Opened his enclosed
palm, and slowly, with nimble fingers, unfolded the little piece of paper.

Across the lined page, embellished in capital letters and branded into his brain as, simultaneously,
he registered his name being called, was one simple word.

“NARCISSA.”

He took a breath, nodded to himself, and re-folded it, shoving it into his jacket pocket and having
to run to make it to the portkey in time.

***

Sirius’ arm was tight around his waist before they even landed.

“Easy,” he murmured, as Remus squeezed his eyes shut and willed the usual dizziness he felt when
travelling by portkey to succumb. The loss of his sight as he squeezed his eyes shut gave way for
his other senses to register the unfamiliarity; namely the smell, seductive, wafts of rum and woody
bergamot coming from somewhere foreign alongside the natural earthy smells of the marsh they
had landed.

He opened his eyes.

They had portkeyed in just down the road, aside to the apparition points, marked on the ground by
what looked like small, magical crop circles, rushing golden shimmers up a cylinder shaped circle
as people appeared.

There was a crack and someone appeared; a vampire of about forty, arm in arm with a young
blonde girl. His hair was slicked back and his eyes were dark and unfeeling, hazed in the golden
glimmer as it almost seemed to futuristically travel up their bodies before dissipating and letting
them step out. In the natural light, Remus looked at the girl. She was wearing a gold and red mask,
but he could see through her simple body language that she was hazy, nothing more than a piece of
meat on his hip; she seemed entirely out of control of her own actions. She was wearing a red silk
neck scarf, tied at one side, although it was not entirely covering the bites. He supposed it didn’t
need to, here.

As he straightened up, he watched the man walk away. There were quite a few people walking up
the street, in suits and dresses, men and women, men and men, women and women in pairs and in
trios and in groups.

All walking towards the large, overbearing mansion.

It seemed to be the epitome of the gothic; all towers to the side, large windows, shadowed by
drooping trees. An archway leading into a courtyard, lined with lights, draperies of gold and silver
—almost looking like fairy lights, except they were not attached to anything but floated on their
own. There were hazy shimmers shrouded over entrance to the arch, sparking every now and then
in the breeze; Remus knew, from living with Pandora for so long, that these were intensive wards.
(He couldn’t help but note that hers were usually a lot more seamless.)

The sun was setting gently over the mansion, but there were no stars to come out and play. The
sky, though not crowded enough that the pink and orange hues weren’t visible, was matted with the
clouds that ravaged over New York City.

Beckoned, he turned back to the group, now collecting around Pandora and the small purse she had
on a silver chain over her shoulder.

She was pulling out masks. An endless amount of masks in her endlessly charmed bag.

“Christ,” Dorcas said, once she had gotten around to her, one of the last to pull out. The mask
Dorcas was given was mainly red and gold, lined with small gems and pearls to match her dress.
“You could fit a body in there,” she remarked, going to put hers on as Pandora pulled out a white
and gold mask with red flourishes.

She smirked, handing Remus’ over.

“You wanna try and find out?” she asked, and Dorcas laughed, strapping hers around the back of
her head. Remus looked at his.

His mask was black. Most of the pairings had somewhat matching colour schemes; Dorcas and
Andromeda matching with lined pearls, though Andromeda’s was shaped more like cat-eye
sunglasses to Dorcas’ which framed her face rather nicely. Lily and Regulus were white and gold;
his in blocks, hers seamless, threaded and in that cat-eye style again so much so that the ends of the
threaded wires were tinged blood red like a fingertip deeped in deep blood, or deep fire.

Miyuki and Pandora were simple gold, which went nicely with Pandora’s sage green dress; their
masks looked like the hues of the sunset, hidden behind clouds of violence.

And Remus’ was black and red. It was a solid block, curved up at the ends like a jester’s. There
were flourishes of red in swirls of decorum over the underside and lining the edges. Sirius’ was
matching, except his was lined entirely with black gems, and the red in his was seamless; as if it
had been stamped on, like a work of art.

He put it on.

They were silent as they tied the backs of their masks, not stepping into the nest but loitering on the
outsides. They partnered up. Dorcas on Andromeda’s arm, Pandora on Miyuki’s. Regulus helped
Lily get hers on, for she had to tie it underneath her ponytail, and then held out his hand. She took
it with a smile.

Remus looked up, watched Pandora and Miyuki lead the way. He turned to Sirius. It was not his
Sirius, but it was Sirius. His smile wasn’t any less his because it did not look like him.

He held out his hand.

“May I?” he said, grinning.

Remus rolled his eyes, but took his hand.

They walked.

They passed through the warding without a hitch, courtesy of Avni’s magic being fundamental
rather than illusory; as Pandora said, the detection spells would only be searching for superficial
changes. Even then, the risk had not been all that high. They were intending to be caught. They
wanted to be found out. They wanted a fight.

There were a few trees lining the courtyard, down the path they were walking to get to the main
entrance; Remus looked up. The sky was bewitched to look like the sky. It seemed to be only this
space, for if he craned his head a little bit he could see the seam in which the glittering stars cut
out. And above them was, irrevocably, fog.

All this time he was analysing. As he walked. Everywhere he went, everywhere he did he was, but
here, it was their role, to hack out a vantage point. The plan was to scope the floor out as soon as
possible. Utilise senses of smell to attempt to find Daphne as quickly as they could; they were to
split up, each given designated spots to have a look around before regrouping in the hall. While
people roamed now, in about an hour or so the stragglers would be ushered into the ballroom and
the doors would close permanently. They had to figure out their play before then. Everything
hinged on what they could not control.

The first priority was Daphne and her locket. But Remus had the cutting edge feeling in his
stomach that she would not be their only play tonight. He saw the first two letters of fête in Stew
Podmore’s blood, written on the ground outside Boardwalk. The last two in the invitation
handwriting.

Dumbledore would be here, too.

He could almost feel him.

They walked up the outside stairs, following the floating lights and made it to the top, in which a
doorman was taking jackets and coats (of which they had none), standing beside the regal open
wooden doors, arched and about twice Remus’ height.

He held onto Sirius’ hand, clasped around the other, held up to their torsos, and stepped through
the threshold to blinding, regal, victorious light.

In this hall, which seemed to be more of an entrance hall, there were certainly not hordes of people
but there was enough of a crowd. There were servants walking around holding platters that looked
like pure silver with various glasses; champagne, mostly, as the food were the guests. The food
was the people Remus was looking at, walking around attached to someone’s hip, serving their sole
purpose. And it was awful, but Remus had seen this enough to—horrifically—be desensitised to it.

So he turned away from the suffering humans—most charmed and blood-sick, hazy and
uncoordinated unless alongside their wilful consumer—he turned away from the loveseats, the
little tables around the corner, the vampire sitting surrounded by two men and one girl, all with
blood trickling down their necks. One of the men with a ripped shirt from where she had obviously
been all-consumed for more. Everywhere Remus looked, there was a human being drunk from. It
seemed so seamless. Not even something to double-take at. He tried to make himself sublime,
indifferent to what he was seeing as they weaved their way in through the crowds; he focused on
the setting.

It was gorgeous. It was large. Enough so that people lingered in this hall, that beverages were
served and loveseats provided for food. The walls were dark, stone, contrast against the marble
frames of the portraits, some of them so big Remus thought he could fit himself thrice in there.
There were lanterns on the walls that hovered fire like the ones in Hotel Transylvania used to. The
sky was bewitched in here, too.

They walked, through the crowds, and everyone split up seamlessly through the different corridors;
Dorcas and Andromeda left, Lily and Regulus right, Pandora and Miyuki straight on and Sirius and
Remus weaving perpendicular to them until a fork in which they had to avoid a room that was
locked off not only by a red rope but a red wall of warding, and were led by draperies of pink
hyacinths that hovered against the wall, winding as if like vinery, through to a small courtyard in
the middle in which there were four doors on each four walls and all were open, but there was an
obvious way to go; there was a ballroom straight on from them made obvious by music, a palatial
orchestra and the most amount of bodies and voices by far.

There was a girl, dead, lying on the edge of the fountain.

“Oh my God,” Remus muttered, turning to Sirius, having to look away from her. Her hand had
fallen, dangling loose, fingers almost touching the floor but not quite; blood trickled down her arm
and weaved its way around her fingers. She can’t have been there for long, for the pool was
miniature, growing by the second.

“Shh,” Sirius said, dropping his hand and interlinking their arms, instead, pulling Remus along to
walk at a slow pace across the grounds. “You’re not supposed to care.”

Remus huffed, understanding his position but not very happy about it. “Who have you seen that
you recognise so far?” he muttered, and Sirius took a deep breath in.

“Nobody,” he said.

“Who have you smelled that you recognise so far?” Remus asked, rewording the question.

Sirius looked to his right, then to his left, cocking his head a little for the best vantage points.

“Everyone,” he muttered, pulling Remus along once more.

They walked.

“Don’t look suspicious,” said Sirius, echoing what Remus already knew, “don’t smile at anybody.
When the music starts, dance with me. If you look like you belong, they won’t be predisposed to
ask you where you belong.”

“Okay,” whispered Remus, swallowing, looking straight on, into the arch that seemed to glow with
anticipation. He could see people walking past, layered pink dresses and bloodstained clothes.

“Tell me again,” said Sirius, warily; they were protected from being supernaturally overheard, via
his brooch and Sirius’ necklace, but there would be some people within the vicinity in just a
moment so he lowered his voice in caution; “Tell me again that you’re fine if I have to hurt you.”

They had discussed this. To fit in, avoid themselves being caught out for however long they needed
to do that, it would be inevitable that some of them, at least, would have to be drunk from. It would
—and Remus hadn’t really taken this statement seriously until right this very second, in which he
was looking at a dead girl by the fountain and had seen copious amounts of two-wound-bites upon
human necks—be strange, and mark them as other, if they didn’t. Pandora could blot the pain and
heal herself easily, of course, and it would not be deep regardless but for the rest of them it was
something they’d had to think about and prepare for.

They stopped, briefly, before they entered the ballroom. Remus could not reach Sirius’ hand to
lace their fingers together, so he squeezed the side of his arm, hoping it garnered the same effect.

“Do what you need to do,” he murmured.

Walking into the ballroom, the air hit Remus like the clouds parting to reveal the blithering sun on
a cloudy horizon. This room was beautiful, and bombardingly large; if the charmed lights were
existent outside they were glorious in here, darting around the ceiling like little nymphs, trailing
the walls and draped over the marble pillars, accentuated with pure gold; sculpture-like decorative
features trailing up the panels of the walls and arching around the windows, spread over every
single wall except the one that they had entered. It was multiple floors high; there were paintings
lining what would be considered the second floor, and it was not the size of a regular ballroom but
a tad extended due to the royal staircase at the very end that led up to an open, half-walled panel—
sort of like the upper circle of a theatre plan, whilst they stood in the stalls.

The windows still lined the walls up there, albeit smaller, to make room for the decorum and the
cornerpieces on the walls. This was, evidently, the Pureblood area. Remus could see doors up on
the higher level. God knows where they led to. He looked back out into the crowd and registered
that there were at least two hundred people here, probably more, and the night had just begun.

“Keep an eye on the door to see when the others get here,” said Sirius, weaving between the
crowd. Some of them were in groups, glass in their hands; hair up in loose waves or down, pin-
straight, dressed to the nines in dresses that Remus didn’t think he’d made enough money in his life
to afford. A vampire walked past them with a witch in tow—if the headband made of vines that
were still moving was any indication—and the bottom of her dress swished along the floor,
creating what looked like blue fire with the friction. The vampire had blood on her bottom lip and
was smirking, fangs on show. As she walked past Sirius stiffened.

“Who was that?” Remus asked in a whisper. He was aware that the vampires were not privy to
their conversations with their enhanced hearing due to the brooch—that he kept touching to make
sure was still there—but he was wary nonetheless, of the people around them.

Sirius gave it a moment. They stopped in the middle of the room, and then he weaved gently to the
side, to stand in the shadows while they waited for anyone else from their party to arrive.

“Maeve Dolohov,” he said, “I killed her mother in ‘59. She had three children, which is rare. And
they’re all here. She’s probably going to find Lucretia and Hüsniye.”

The bustle of the crowd, alive and satiated and happy, did not cease around them. There was a
small orchestra stationed in the little alcove to the right of the royal staircase. They were all
wearing a uniform, and almost all of them appeared to be vampires except for one girl, who had
long black hair and was playing a harp that seemed to be formed of pure light. It sounded
magnificent. It almost made Remus feel comfortable, that sound, the high awe-inspiring prick of
the Gods and monsters playing their solemn song.

He looked to the right of them, and there was a vampire, teeth deep in a young man’s neck. He was
limp and unmoving. In the other corner there was another female vampire who, in the midst of a
conversation, servant coming around with a platter and serving all of them champagne, turned and
bit into the girl she was withs neck as if it was nothing. She pulled back, licked her lips, and then
pressed the top of her half-empty glass to the tender skin of the girl's neck, blood seeping in and
mixing with the wine, dyeing it red and bubbly. She laughed and took a sip, and then the women
that she was with moved forward, doing the same, as the girl stood, present but not moving. She bit
her bottom lip, and when she let it go Remus noticed that it was quivering. He felt a pang in his
chest.
Sirius, all of a sudden, turned to him.

“Cygnus and Druella,” he said, as they were sort of pushed against the wall in a wave by bodies
parting like the Red Sea. “Watch out.”

Remus turned, peering over the heads and the flourishing masks to see two figures walking, as if
down the aisle; his palm out flat and hers tucked into it as they walked like royalty. Her mask was
eccentric—gold, with pearl teardrops underneath her eyes and feathers sprouting out of the edges to
embody the fluffiness of her dress, cream white and layered, swishing around her feet as Cygnus
spun her. He was in a white suit with a black shirt, his mask matching hers. The crowd made awed
noises. Some clapped.

Druella saw someone in the sides of the crowd that she knew and segwayed, and the people
relaxed, slightly; but left that pathway, just in case they wanted to get either way, forwards or
backwards. Bending to the rules of these people like they are puppets.

“That’s being a Black for you,” murmured Sirius. “Goddamn royalty.”

“Look,” said Remus, and they turned and craned their heads to look at the entrance, where, out of
the darkness underneath the archway, Dorcas and Andromeda had appeared, arm in arm.

Not many people were paying attention to them, but Remus clocked the moment Andromeda saw
her mother; didn’t miss the quick set of tension in her shoulders and the quicker way that she
brushed it off, released it. And she walked into the room as if she belonged there. She spotted
Sirius and Remus after a moment or two, and her walking became pointed down the aisle that
Druella was standing on the edge of.

Andromeda walked brusquely, and, just as she passed Druella turned away from her acquaintance.
It was slow. Her face seemingly expressionless. She watched Andromeda walk away, perhaps for a
second too long, and then with a purse of her lips turned back.

By the time she arrived people had centred in more again, Druella and Cygnus making the rounds;
Remus stood on his tiptoes to spot them in the group from before, the ones mixing the blood with
champagne. Druella clapped once and there was a servant by her side in seconds. The filling of the
gaps allowed for the four of them to huddle, like other people were doing, at the sides.

“Well,” said Andromeda, “that was horrible.”

“She didn’t notice,” Sirius said, eyeing her over her shoulder. His eyes returned to her. “Everything
okay?”

“We found something,” muttered Dorcas, and then, aware of her position all of a sudden, shifted,
so that the whole group turned seamlessly to leave her with her back to the crowd, able to speak
freely. “In the right wing around two corners is a barred wall. She can hear people down there.”

“It’s a dungeon,” Andromeda interjected, “old prison cells.”

“Humans?” asked Sirius.

“Maybe,” she said, “but not as a holding cell for prey. Moreso prisoners. I could smell at least two
witches down there. Few vampires. No one I know.”

“You think there’s anyone of importance?” asked Remus, quietly.

“I really can’t say,” Andromeda said. “Regulus and Lily are round the other side. If there’s another
entrance, they’ll be the ones to see it.”

“Other than that, nothing suspicious,” said Dorcas.

“Everything suspicious will be going on up there,” Sirius muttered, eyes averting to the upper
circle. Remus followed him and then dropped his gaze upon fear of looking suspicious. The other
two nodded.

They fell into idle, watching conversation for the next ten, fifteen minutes or so. The upper circle,
Remus discovered, had put up protective wards that prevented hearing from penetrating, so neither
Sirius nor Andromeda could hear what anybody was saying. There was rarely movement, too;
every now and then one would see a pureblood up there that they recognised—

“Alouette Malfoy,” Sirius murmured, whilst Andromeda was in the middle of saying something
unrelated; she turned and looked up to see the snide-looking blonde woman leaning over the
railing. “Stop looking, idiot.”

“Who’s that?” Remus asked, lowly, in case she was watching; Sirius cleared his throat and smiled,
to make it look like they were having a jovial conversation. Andromeda imitated him.

“Lucius Malfoy’s mother,” he said. Andromeda laughed and nodded. “Not all that much younger
than us.”

“And from what I can garner of her face,” Andromeda said, “very, very angry!”

They laughed, as if she had just told a joke. Remus kept his face stoic, but looked to Dorcas, who
breathed out through her mouth slowly, looking around.

It was at this moment that Remus spotted red.

“Hey, door,” he said, nudging Sirius, who straightened up and turned to see Regulus and Lily, arm
in arm.

Lily had blood trickling down her neck.

The pair of them walked in, weaved around a few groups of people. It was Lily who spotted them
first. She, presumably, tugged on Regulus’ arm for they began walking that way, however
someone halfway there grabbed Regulus’ attention.

He pulled the both of them somewhere behind a flock of people, out of sight.

“What–” Andromeda started.

Sirius held a hand up.

And he listened.

“Ana’s here,” he said, after a moment.

“Who?”

“Vampire from the hotel,” Dorcas told her. “We met her in Queens a few weeks ago.”

“Makes sense,” said Remus, “they found the invite, too.”

“How long’s it been now?” asked Sirius, suddenly.

“About half an hour,” said Andromeda. “Forty minutes. Why?”

“People are getting antsy,” he said, turning his head to face the side, slyly spying on a group
somewhere behind him; he was tuned in, always tuned in. “They want to know when Riddle’s
making an appearance.”

“Surely it’ll be soon,” muttered Andromeda. “When the doors close.” She looked over him, again,
evidently antsy for Regulus.

“I’m wondering where the hell Pandora is,” said Remus, now that she mentioned the doors closing.

“I’m wondering when the hell this thing is gonna start,” Sirius said, and they all knew he did not
mean the ball.

Regulus and Lily found them another ten minutes later, in which they had had to spread out and
come back in again due to suspicion; Sirius and Remus (but mainly Sirius) having to socialise with
people he did not know, under a fake name, fake self, fake purpose. Regulus caught him by the
arm and they edged their way through the people to a secure side piece, beside a window. Lily had
hoped Pandora would be around to stop the bleeding but alas, she bled.

(They had been caught by two guards around a corner they did not belong in, and played it off as
finding a private space, which got them off their back pretty quickly.)

It was hitting the hour mark and very close to the doors closing before Pandora and Miyuki
appeared. They had split off for inconspicuity, so the other four were loitering on the other side of
the room and it was Sirius and Remus—who had just escaped from socialising within a group of
vile vampires—against the window; and now, Pandora and Miyuki.

“Where have you been?” Sirius asked, pushing off the wall. Remus locked eyes with Regulus
across the wall and watched as he turned to keep them informed. (Due to the fact that all of their
items were under the same spell, they could hear what each other was saying.)

“She’s here,” said Miyuki, suddenly. “It’s her scent. I’d know it anywhere.”

“And I can feel the magic,” said Pandora. “We scoped the bottom floor out. Found the entrance to
the dungeons–”

“Yes, Dorcas and Andromeda found those, too.”

“Around there is where it’s the strongest,” she said. “Unanimously agreed. There’s a foyer, and a
drawing room, and the kitchens are just adjacent so it’s possible that she’s in there as a cook–”

“Or she could be in the dungeon,” said Remus.

Pandora sighed, but nodded.

“That’s the other possibility we need to entertain,” she said, “because if she’s down there, our odds
just got exponentially worse.”

“If she’s down there, it means they know,” said Remus, “which means she wouldn’t have the
locket anymore–”

“Which means, more than likely, someone else does,” said Pandora.

“This house is not a permanent place of residence,” Sirius said. “Anyone in the dungeon, most
likely, would have only been in there for a week, max, whilst they were doing preparations. It’s
entirely possible it’s still here, somewhere.”

“It’s just as entirely possible that it’s not,” said Remus.

There was a moment, in which everybody paused. The orchestra stopped and then started to play
again. There was a small space in the middle in which people were dancing, twirling and spinning.

“The matter of the Horcrux is important,” said Miyuki, quietly, “but, to me, my daughter is more.
We do not know where the locket is. We do know where she is.”

“We’ll go down there regardless,” said Sirius, placating her; “We just need a good distraction.”

“There’s that,” said Pandora, dreamily, pointing to the upper circle. All of their heads turned to
look.

A door opened.

Up on the balcony stood an array of people that Remus did not recognise, masked and menacing.
Everybody was standing, and everybody was focused, because a door had opened out of that door
walked Bellatrix Lestrange, hand in hand with Tom Riddle himself.

Neither of them were masked. There was something metaphorical in that.

Bellatrix was beaming, a sore sight after the last Remus had seen her in Nova Scotia—hair
bouncing in curls down her back, in a tight black dress that, irritably, did wonders for her visage.
Their appearance seemed to pass over the crowd of laymen on the floor like a wave, as the buzzing
of sound died down and everyone looked upwards.

Once upon a time, they might have been joined by Malfoy and Snape. Remus felt satisfaction
knowing they were both indisposed because of them; he wondered, briefly, where Riddle thought
Snape was.

His gaze moved over to him.

Tom Riddle in the flesh sent a flash of what felt like lightning running through his bones.

Remus had a vague idea of what he looked like, from the one or two images that existed and
copious description, but nothing could have prepared him, really, to see the dull eyes and the stoic
face, upon pale, almost withering skin; not as if he was dying, more perpetually exhausted. A weak
visage for a strong interior, that was how he had always put it, the splitting of soul. For it drained
you of the life you possessed until it was a shred while ensuring that you kept that shred forever.

And it’s not like he was falling apart. He was quite beautiful, actually. He had a full head of brown
hair that settled nicely over his forehead, full, pursed lips. His eyes, while somewhat dull and
plagued with light bags in the circles underneath, were still bright enough to identify him as a
vampire; a twinkle of blue against the dimming nymph lights as some witch, somewhere, pulled
her magic back in and turned the focus on them, and only them, as they walked like some sort of
enigma across the way. Leaning forward on the regal railing. A king addressing his subjects.

And Riddle himself was not terrifying. He did not strike fear into Remus’ heart by existing, by his
looks, his face, his visage. What was scary was the way the room was silent. The way he scanned
it, slow and steady; not like Bellatrix, who seemed to be impatient to talk, shrugging her shoulders
every two seconds and smirking something devilish. Smug, for now she was ringleader to the
second rank, stood next to the man who had all of the power she could ever dream of and a guiding
hand over an entire house that, again, stood still, for him and only for him.

Remus wondered how many of these people had never seen his face before. He wondered how
many of these people had been worshipping him, faceless and characterless, like a deity; he
wondered how many he had manipulated into believing he was all that they had.

Gods and monsters, monsters and Gods. Remus would not say that a God is always a monster but a
monster can be a God, in the right circumstances.

With the right power.

The monster speaks.

“Hello,” Riddle said; a charming voice projecting magically over the silence. The first thing Remus
thought was of how simple a word it was for so monstrous of a man. “Welcome, everybody. It is
my greatest honour and privilege to host and serve you, my dearest legion, for our first summer
fête in sixty-two years.”

A wave of applause rang throughout the crowd. Remus, on Sirius’ arm, felt it tense.

“Six decades,” Riddle said, silencing the crowd and pronouncing each syllable with decadence,
every word slowly, so slow, as if they were teeth sinking into your skin; “and yet here you stand,
before me. As if it had been a mere winter’s night.”

His eyes scanned over the throes of people. A smile pulled up the corners of his chapped lips, as if
tugged by a ventriloquist, a puppeteer.

“When I fell into dormancy, all of those years ago, some mourned me,” he continued, something
bitter in his voice. “Some gave up. My circle, so many of my deepest and dearest; they betrayed
me. Scattered across the world instead of staying to uphold what I so generously built. Did not
believe—and belief, it’s the truest of causes——they did not believe that I could recover. I am
indebted my life to the witches in my liege,” he paused, holding the room between his taut fingers,
“and the sires who fought for my word, the word of hope, for a race against persecution, for an
immortalisation of the truest species.”

He turned. Every movement seemed to be alien. He looked at Bellatrix.

“I look to those faces of old,” he said, “and I give my dues.”

A flurry of movement, on the upper circle, as the heads surrounding Riddle bowed, including
Bellatrix’s.

“Always, my Lord,” she said, her familiar voice a simple hiss and yet travelling acres, booming
across the room in lieu of the captivation; she professed her always. He professed his dues. The
imbalance, improbable, corrupt in the best feeling way for those who want love and want power
and often find they are interconnected.

“But I look to those faces of new,” he said, turning back to the people; the masked people, those of
anonymity, those of utter enrapture, multiplied by the masses. “Those who have discovered their
glorious purpose and work to spread the word, I give you my hand. Those who found prestige in
our blood, our bone, the grandeur of being in the shadows, for shadows are found in every stretch
of the world as the sun rises and falls, and we are found behind every human. Every accolade of
knowledge they attempt to dissemble, we have tenfold.” He smirked again. It was horrifying. “And
that of which they do not understand makes them cower. They run and hide from my dementors…”
there was a rumble of laughter from within the crowd, “they cower beneath my children. They hide
behind windows we may break with a finger. It is liberation. Under the gloomy skies, we are the
sunlight that oppresses us so. I wish for you to go out in New York City, feel the rush of the wind
compacted within bridge upon building upon empty, forlorn street, and feel the power that
encompasses you, as you are protected. You are under my liege, and you will be protected as mine
under the gloom, as far as it stretches across the horizon. And when it comes that you tread across
our misguided brothers and sisters, do not treat them with violence. Treat them with pity. For when
the sun sets eternally, it shall be your world to claim, not theirs. In the end, they will all be
powerless. And we will be eternal.”

Remus blinked, and realised that he was under the spell too.

Oh, he’s good. So good. His words, his voice, the way they carve around the golden posts and
rattle against the thermal, glazed windows, this little entrapment of toxic black blood dripped over
the mouths of those he feeds insanity; he was enrapturing. Remus felt sick to his stomach, almost.
Watching him rule as if he should have a sceptre and a crown and two hands nailed to a cross. His
feet submerged, but not in kisses. The snivellers drip their red onto him despite the fact that they
need it themselves. With no identity but the selfhood that comes with the entire loss of self, blood
replaced with wine and water and nothing remaining but this deep curse and a little blood from
where your body broke that you lap up afterwards with your tongue. You find a God, to
compensate for becoming a monster.

But how does one love a monster? How does a monster love? You bathe it in hypocrisy. Angelicy.
A narrative choked in liberation; so deeply misconstrued that their self-love becomes love for him.
The hand that they need when they need one most.

And the hand that came too late twitched on Remus’ arm.

(Sirius is furious and he is might. He did it once and he shall do it again.)

Tom Riddle loves vampires and yet he kills those who find their home elsewhere but in him, and
that is not sovereignty, that is corruption. But those that are homeless will take what is offered, and
Hotel Transylvania burned to the goddamn ground.

He was so very good at it. Manipulating them all.

“My friends,” he said, after a long, grating pause, “may we celebrate the beginning of a new end, in
which our bodies will not be hunted but loved. In which we will not be reduced to fables. In which
our species may thrive, long persecuted, long awaited. Long live.”

“Long live,” was collectively muttered in response, like a garden hymn, a reciprocal prayer; and
then people began to bow.

It started at the beginning; rows of people kneeling, bowing their heads. Like a trail of dominos,
falling. It approached, people kneeling down and bowing their heads, hands on their knees, closer
and mightier as if it would wash over their heads. Remus looked at Sirius. Tugged on his sleeve.

“Bow,” he mouthed, as Sirius looked at him. He was barely concealing his fury as Remus went to
kneel, against Miyuki and Pandora who kneeled on the ground gracefully, and Sirius went with
him.

They bowed their heads. Remus could feel his anger, humiliated at the subjugation; he, covertly,
reached for his hand.

He slipped his fingers into Sirius’ palm and squeezed, and felt the tension thaw instantly.
“Thank you,” Riddle said, low and almost terrifyingly calm; the cue to stand up again. Remus
released his hand. “My friends, I thank you. I hope you enjoy your night.”

Remus looked up, then, just as everybody relaxed, the moment before they leant on their pristine
palms to stand up, and Riddle was smiling. His eyes were flickering over the sea of the dead,
undereyes gaunt and dark, white lips tugged upwards into a smirk that was nothing less than
satisfaction.

He knows we’re here, Remus thought, briefly; He knows we’re hidden. He knows we’re bowing.
He’s getting a kick out of it.

Apparently, Sirius had thought the same.

“I’m going to kill him,” he whispered, so very quietly it was less vocal cords and more mouth
noises that shaped the words together. Remus glared at him, and then dropped his gaze as fast as he
could. It was helpful that the mask concealed the top half of his face, for it was harder to see where
his eyes were going, but he knew what was too obvious.

“One day,” said Pandora back, out of the corner of her mouth to look nonchalant. The music started
back up. “For now, we need to figure out a way to slip out and get to that dungeon without being
seen.”

“The lackey are distracted enough by the speech,” murmured Miyuki, quietly, craning her head to
look at the snivelling vampires. Remus could smell iron, and blood; he didn’t know who was
bleeding. Perhaps everybody. “We just need to distract the two guards at the door.”

“I can’t enchant them,” murmured Pandora. They moved in time to the movement of the crowd.
“They have mental wardings up. I can feel the constriction.”

“Do you have anything,” Sirius said, leaning back to take a glass of champagne off of a passing
server's plate. He waited until the vampire had darted away to his lackey before downing the glass
in one, and continuing, “anything at all?”

Pandora thought for a moment, mouth downturned with stress, and then gasped. She straightened
up.

“I could blindsight him,” she said, half-confidently—in the way that one does when throwing in an
idea that is risky but also the only idea you have. “It’s a spell that affects the physiology, not the
mind. Slows down cell progression and brain function so you’re caught in a lapse for about five
seconds. It should be enough to slip away, but— I’d have to hit him from behind. It’s an extremely
close range spell.”

“Okay,” said Sirius, nodding, “so someone will have to distract the first guard whilst you blindsight
the second, slip out behind him. We should split up, it shouldn’t be all from this group; what are
the other four doing?”

“Apparently,” said Remus, stoically, watching a flash of red hair stagger across the far wall and
into the first guard’s uncomprehending arms, “the exact same thing that we were going to.”

The four of them turned just in time to see Lily Evans flick her hair up and out of her face, crying
real, fat teardrops that collected at her chin as she grappled with the guards blazer with one hand,
and swished around what Remus could see to be her very ripped blue dress with the other.

“Oh, fuck me, Lily,” muttered Sirius, and he began to move.

They made it to the scene—or, at least, a little bit adjacent from it, to look non-suspicious—and
tuned into Lily’s wails mid-sentence.

“–silk-pressed dress, hand-picked by the Princess of Geneva—hand-picked!” she was crying,

shrilly, shaking this man’s chest. He was trying to pull her off of him. Remus noticed blood
trickling down from a wound on her neck, smeared as he tried to push her off of him. “And he just
tore it! Just like that! And with it–” she flipped around, pressing her back to this man’s chest, and
threw a dramatic hand over her head, “my hea-a-art!”

“Darling,” Regulus called, in a pristine American accent, rushing over seemingly out of nowhere
just as the guards started to properly get rough with her. “Darling, stop, I told you–”

“Robert, you perfect pernicious bastard, you ruined my life!”

“–that I didn’t mean to–”

“This is your human?” the guard spat, fangs filling out. He grabbed her harshly by her arm and
pulled her to his side, making her trip over her own dress. She then, predictably, burst back into
tears.

“Robert,” she whimpered, bottom lip trembling, “he-he’s hurting my arm–”

“She’s my human,” said Regulus, laughing nervously, looking, for the first time, like a complete
stranger.

“She’s a sentient one?”

“Aaah–” Lily groaned, shoulders uneven as the vampire dug his fingers deeper into her upper arm.
She looked at it and began to cry again, loud and unencumbered.

The people who had begun to pay attention, upon seeing that the issue resulted from a rogue
human upset about materialism, began to dissipate, losing interest. The second guard, at that, took a
step back; still alert, but making to resume his station.

“Go,” Sirius whispered, watching the scene out of the corner of his eye; whispering to Pandora out
of the corner of his mouth. “Go, go, go.”

Miyuki and Pandora slipped away.

“Yes, she’s–” Regulus reached out a wary hand and the guard gripped onto her tighter, hissing at
him once more. “She’s mine, she has been excited about this ball for weeks, I ripped her dress,
she’s also light-headed—hey, darling, why don’t we go get some drinks? Hm? Look–” back to the
guard, smiling nervously again, “–we can settle this easily, no? We’ll get out of your hair. Won’t
we, darling?”

Lily whimpered again. “I want drinks.”

“She wants drinks!”

“Give me one reason not to kill her right now,” spat the guard. Lily immediately began wailing
once more.

“Shh—shh, Beatrice,—ah,” Regulus said, digging both hands into his hair and huffing in
frustration. He looked down, and then pressed his lips into a thin line, looking back up at the
guard. “Because I’m going to,” he said through his teeth. Lily stopped crying and cocked her head.
“Wh–”

“To turn you, my love,” Regulus preened, reaching out a hand to caress her cheek.

Lily smiled and leaned into it, and Regulus gave the guard a look that, even behind the mask, said
clearly that he most definitely was not.

“No one has to get hurt,” he said to the guard. “We wouldn’t want to overshadow the Dark Lord’s
regality by giving way to a dirty death on the dancefloor, would we? It would not only be our blood
spilled for punishment.”

A moment of deliberation.

And then: “Besides,” Regulus murmured, cocking his head. His lip quirked up at the side; “I can
still get so much use out of her.”

The guard did not loosen his grip on Lily, but frowned, evidently contemplating. Narrowing his
eyes. Remus shifted away from this scene and locked eyes with Pandora, edging her way
nonchalantly towards the guard, Miyuki right beside her. Standing behind him and facing away to
look as if she was talking to Miyuki, just as the first guard reluctantly released Lily into Regulus’
hold, she turned her head to the side, reached her hand up over her shoulder and curled it fluidly
beside his ear.

Pandora's eyes flashed red. And the guard went still.

Not rigid, just still. Almost as if the sentience was sucked out of him for a moment, he swayed,
looking—over everything—like he’d just had a little bit too much to drink.

Pandora pushed open the door a smidge, barely enough to notice that it had been open, and slipped
out, Miyuki straight after her.

It was in this frozen timeframe, blindsighted, cells curdling in on themselves in a pocket of time in
which your eyes dart around and catch every single fly on the wall; the moment in which Regulus
hooked his fingers around Lily’s waist as they began walking away; the moment in which the last
of Miyuki’s dress flew out of the door in a Cinderella-like flourish; that Remus saw her.

Andromeda, emerging from the shadows.

Darting like a wraith behind the blindsighted guard—three seconds, two—and out of the closing
door.

And Dorcas and her reflexes. Going right after her.

Two, one, zero.

“Hey!” the blindsighted guard gasped, back into consciousness with a hard blink and an even
harder grip around Dorcas’ shoulders, pulling her back in the room. The first guard turned around,
hissed again. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

She staggered, slightly, as he dragged her away. The first guard opened the door fully and left, out
of Remus’ vision, but evidently he did not see nor catch the trail of any of the three of them for he
came back barely a moment later. He ran back in and craned his neck to look for Lily and Regulus,
but they were long gone somewhere in the midst of the crowd.

“Shit,” muttered Sirius.

“Where are you going?” sneered the guard that had a hold on her, turning her around to face him
full-frontal and gripping onto both of her arms, only a few inches away from her face. He closed
his eyes and inhaled deeply. “And who are you… with?”

“I–” stammered Dorcas, eyes wide and terrified. She blinked, slowly. He cocked his head.

“Are you alone?” the guard preened. “Did your vampire abandon you? Oh–” he used one hand to
push her hair over her shoulder, revealing her neck. “Unblemished. Un…marked.”

The vampire licked his lips, and Sirius straightened up.

“Stay here,” he said, through his teeth, and—without a moment’s hesitation—walked straight up to
them.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he said, voice immediately heightening to something more vulnerable and
cautious, “what’s going on here? Daisy, what did you get yourself into?”

Dorcas looked to him, her eyes impossibly wide; she blinked again, slowly. Remus, all of a sudden,
registered what she was doing. She was making herself look like one of the entranced humans. And
she was doing it well.

“Who the hell are you?” asked the guard.

“She’s one of mine, she just likes being outside,” said Sirius in an exasperated manner, gesturing to
her. His voice took a deep, reprimanding glaze as he continued, “Daisy. I told you not to wander.
Come here.”

Dorcas hummed, cocking her head dumbly. The second guard held onto her, narrowing his eyes.

“I found her,” he said. He grinned and showed off his fangs, his grotesque animalism, leaning into
her.

“I lost her,” retorted Sirius. He took another step forward. It definitely helped that he was at least
two inches taller than both guards. “She’s mine.”

“Why haven’t you drank from her?”

Sirius huffed. “I was waiting for the first dance, if you must know,” he said, hands on hips. “Have
you never been to one of those things?”

The guard narrowed his eyes. “That’s an old tradition.”

“I’m old-fashioned.”

The guard released Dorcas into the grips of the first, taking a step forward.

“Take your mask off,” he said.

Sirius obliged. He squinted up at him. Remus could see his eyes scanning desperately, trying to
recall a feature, a similarity, a giveaway.

“Walk out of the door,” he said, after a moment of staring. The first guard huffed.

“Waylon, is the girl worth this scene–”

“Yes, she is,” he spat, opening the door and gesturing. He looked at Sirius. “Go on.”
Remus blinked. He looked up at the ceiling, and it was against the shimmering lights that he saw it
—the familiar glow of golden wards. Except it was not Pandora’s golden. It was unfamiliar. It was
a magic detection wall. It must have been put up when the rest of the crowd were ushered in, when
the doors were closed.

Sirius took a moment to register this, then nodded his assent. He walked slowly up to the door, past
the guards—looking them up and down as he went—and then took a deep breath before striding
out the door, one foot behind the other, through the golden sheen.

He stopped, back to the arch, and then he turned.

Three seconds. Five.

Nothing changed.

Avni Patil, you fucking genius.

Remus let out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding as time started going quicker. The
guards looked at each other, squinting in suspicion, but they had nothing to go on; they shoved a
staggering Dorcas into Sirius’ arms and closed the door, and within moments he was striding
towards Remus, his arm around her wrist.

The music had slowed and there were a few people swaying gently around them. Sirius wrapped
his hands around Dorcas’ waist and turned them, so that his head was directly in line with hers, and
her head was blocking him entirely out of sight on the guard’s side. He jerked his hand, gently,
beckoning Remus to come, and he realised what to do. He took a small step so he was in line with
Sirius, effectively blocking him out of sight from the other side of the hall; from the eyes of the
upper circle.

“Don’t say anything,” Sirius whispered into her ear, “either of you, don’t nod, don’t react. If your
lips move they’ll know they can’t hear us.”

Sirius, swaying gently with her in tow, glanced at Remus. They said nothing, and they did nothing.
He inhaled through his nose.

“I’m going to have to bite you now, Dorcas,” he whispered. No reaction. “They’re still suspicious.
It’ll quell them for the moment. I hope. I’m sorry.” A moment. No reaction. “I’ll count you in. Just
tilt your head a little for me, love?”

She did. Sirius closed his eyes.

“Three,” he whispered, opening his mouth, “two,” fangs filled out, “one–”

He bit her.

It didn’t last all that long. Perhaps a minute, in which he held Dorcas to his chest; she let her head
fall backwards, her hands strong around his neck. He wrapped his own around her back and Remus
had to look away, did look away, as they turned seamlessly to display the blood-drinking to the
parties that required it.

Sirius pulled away, and the blood spouted from her neck, trickling down her skin; Sirius caught it
with his finger just before it stained her dress.

“Sorry, darling,” said Sirius, after checking a quick glance at the guards and noting that they’d
faded out of interest, and a quick glance at the upper circle, making sure there was no one looking
out at that moment. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket.

“Shut up,” muttered Dorcas, taking it anyway. She locked eyes on a pillar, and guided them to it,
around the back so they would not be seen by the guards.

Once there, Sirius turned on her.

“Where the hell did Andromeda go?” he asked, and she sighed.

“I don’t know.”

“You were going with her?”

“She just said she saw something,” said Dorcas, holding the handkerchief to her neck, “and told me
to wait. I have no idea where she went.”

Sirius pursed his lips, evidently perturbed by this information. “I wish she wouldn’t fucking go off
on her own. What the hell.”

“Regulus said to us that they found Daphne’s scent,” said Dorcas, looking at Remus. “But she’s in
or around the dungeons.”

“Mhm.”

“So they’ve gone to–”

“To try and find her. Free her, if she’s in there.”

She let a hiss of breath out through her teeth. “Well, do we know if the locket’s on her person?”

“Nope.”

“Okay,” said Dorcas, processing. “Right. What about Regulus and Lily?”

“Too risky to be seen with them at the minute,” said Sirius. “After Lily’s scene, guards’ll put two
and two together.”

“Well, what the hell are we supposed to do then?”

The music changed to a symphonic ballad, and people started to crowd to the sides to clear the
ballroom floor. Make way for dancers.

“We wait until Miyuki and Pandora find something,” said Sirius, turning his head. “We stay alert
for any Pureblood riots or evil hunter-witch armies. And in the meantime, we try to fit in.”

“Don’t say it,” Remus warned.

“In the meantime, we dance.”

“And he said it,” murmured Remus.

Dorcas raised the—very valid—point of, if they were to dance, where the hell would she go. Sirius
contemplated this and then shushed them both and straightened his head, taking a deep breath,
evidently clinging onto his senses. He frowned for a moment and then seemed to find what he was
looking for, blinking back into existence.
He jerked his head, signalling for them to follow, and walked down the sides of the hall. There
were crowds lining the walls whilst couples waltzed and they, for the most part, managed to stay
behind them, circling to the little alcove to the left of the grand staircase that contained a
wraparound buffet, at which Ana was nibbling on the finger foods, Sebastian in tow. She was in a
long pink dress, gold pendant around her neck; Sebastian was wearing a white suit with gold
flourishings, hair neatly in cornrows.

“Oh my God,” Ana said, mouth full. She flicked her braids over her shoulder and gave Sirius a hug.
“Stephen! It’s so good to see you!”

“Out of all of the goddamn S names, you go with Stephen?” Sirius muttered, over her shoulder,
and she laughed.

“I know, I know,” she was nodding, “this place is just to die for, isn’t it? Have you tried the Hors
d’oeuvres?” Without warning, she turned, picking one of the (dwindling) platter and reaching it up
to Sirius’ mouth. He ate it reluctantly.

A group of vampires standing beside them were beckoned over by someone, and moved away.
Ana’s face dropped, and Sebastian—who had been laughing along with her—visibly deflated.

“Everything okay?” she asked, low, out of the corner of your mouth.

Sirius nodded. “Things are in motion. We’re just waiting for the play-out. The guards are
suspicious of me, so I think we need to try and fit in a bit more—can you watch,” he tugged Dorcas
into his side, “my lovely companion here while we dance?”

Ana grinned. “Of course!”

“Keep an eye on the upper circle for me, too, if you will?” he asked, to which Sebastian nodded
and said they already had been; “And please don’t bite her unless direly necessary,” Sirius said,
quieter. “I already owe her maybe three toes and my firstborn for that.”

“Four,” Dorcas said, and then grinned.

“Sure thing,” said Ana, linking her arm with Dorcas and looking to her boyfriend. “Every ten
minutes they magically replenish the food, so we’ll be here, gorging. Fattening up her bloodstream.
You know how it is.”

Dorcas cringed.

“Sir,” said Sebastian, to Sirius (as he was not exactly able to call him Mr. Black).

“You can call me—” he started, cutting off and evaluating. He sighed. “Stephen.”

He glared at Ana. She smiled innocently.

“Stephen,” he corrected, smiling briefly and then dropping it; “We wanted to know, in your
opinion…” he licked his lips. “Will Manhattan catch fire again?”

A disguised way to ask “Is something bad going to happen tonight?”.

Sirius hesitated.

“Probably,” he said, transparently.

“What can we do to help?” asked Ana.

“You two even being here knowing the risks is enough,” said Sirius.

Ana laughed, breathily. Shaking her head, as if in disbelief.

“You didn’t get what I said before through your head, did you, Stephen?” she murmured. She
looked him deadset in the eyes, and said: “We are always more.”

Her gaze flickered around the room. Their heads followed.

Remus realised, with a start, that the room was crawling with New York vampires.

It was pairing after pairing, a hefty population of the heaps of attendants, but present, and lurking.
Ana was evidently rallying them. They were tuned in; they looked over. A brief glance. Like a
split second blinking light in pitch darkness. Drinking their poison. Believing in the antidote.
Reinforcements, everywhere. Solidarity, everywhere.

“Go dance,” murmured Sebastian, “We’ll be waiting.”

Sirius looked at them, mouth slightly open, until Remus tugged gently at his sleeve and he blinked,
taking his hand and turning to walk away without another word, but with one last glance. One of
gratitude.

“Did Regulus teach you how to waltz?” Sirius asked, as they walked hand in hand out of the
dwindling crowds.

“He tried.”

“You know the steps?”

“...I think?”

Sirius stopped them. “Good enough for me,” he said, gripping Remus’ hand, placing his other hand
around his shoulder. They were at the cusp. “Counter-clockwise,” he said, “follow my lead—right
foot backwards first, yes, that’s it—three, two–”

On Sirius’ move, he stepped backwards. They fit into the circle nicely—a little bit stumbly, in the
first few movements, in which Remus didn’t move far enough, but they spun, the flourish of the
wind coming from spinning dresses around them brushing Remus’ ankles, counter-clockwise
amongst the dancers. Double vampire and vampire-human pairings alike.

“You’re not stepping together fast enough,” Sirius murmured a few times, in the first minute, or,
“Right foot—no, your right, babe—that’s it,” when he stumbled, or stepped on his toe, or did not
coordinate properly, but after about two minutes of this familiarisation they fell into a sort of
rhythm, as it was very repetitive, circle after circle, box step after box step around the undead;
hidden in plain sight. Sirius smiled.

“You’ve got the hang of it now,” he murmured, as they turned. And then; “Wait, move your hand
up on my shoulder a little bit, the positioning is wrong.”

Remus did. “Christ,” he muttered, “that’s a bit nitpicky. You’d think you were professionally
trained or something.”

The sarcasm made Sirius smile. “I have existed for longer than ballroom dancing has, I’ll have you
know.”
“Every time you remind me of your age it throws me into an existential crisis,” said Remus, almost
stepping on Sirius’ toe but avoiding it skilfully. “One day I’m going to sit you down and have you
debunk every historical myth there is.”

“I can do that right now,” he said, turning them clockwise. They had circled back round to the end
of the hall again. More and more people were joining in. “Let me see… Anne Boleyn was born in
1507, not 1501. Edward II did not have a red hot poker shoved up his anus, unfortunately, but I
have witnessed people be killed that way.” A pause. “I also slept with him once, but that’s neither
here nor there.”

“Oh my God,” muttered Remus.

“Regulus probably has more,” he said, “he was there the whole time. I’ll never forget once in the
14th century when we were posing as Lords in Essex and my parents were executed—in air quotes
—for witchcraft. He inherited the entire estate that they had been cultivating for 20 years. We were
posing as siblings then, the four of us. It was horrific. I was, on paper, the second son, but they cut
me off from the inheritance by saying that I was the result of an affair. So fucking dirty.”

“The more I learn about your parents the more I’m glad that I killed them,” said Remus,
nonchalant.

Sirius grinned, as they turned, and then his face fell into concentration.

“Hey,” he said, “I’m going to count you in, and then on the next left foot forward, I’m going to
spin you.”

“You’re what–”

“Spin right,” he murmured, “under my arm, holding onto this hand,” he squeezed it, “three, two–”

It was quite easy to get the hang of due to Sirius’ cue, which was pulling up their linked hand as
Remus stepped forward, so that he could step backwards again with his right foot and easily turn,
spinning on Sirius’ hand underneath their arms, left arm loose until he spun back straight into his
chest. There were a few claps.

“See?” Sirius said, “they love it.”

And then they continued to dance.

It became fluid, eventually, the underarm turns. When he got the hang of it properly it came easily,
left foot forward, right foot forward; as Sirius cued him with his arms he’d spin, and then people
around them cued on, copying; they did it in time. Their feet moved in time, a rhythm, cyclical and
strange—he and Sirius were cued into each other, palms to shoulders, hands clasped gently in the
others like a centrepiece, the thing leading them, as if they were on strings being draped around by
a guiding force. The people almost blended away.

Remus could only see Sirius; not his, he looked so different, but his thoughts, his memories, his
love was still his, succumbed to a hostile environment that smelled like metallic blood. But the
sweetness of him was enough to blot it out for perhaps a moment; to pretend that it was somewhere
else, that it was now, three hundred years ago or three hundred years into the future and they were
still here; arms empty, maybe, arms full, perhaps, dancing this same rhythm. Fighting and falling.
Falling and flying. Dancing and drowning. Perhaps they were all the same things, perhaps they
were all the goddamn same.

There seemed to be someone coordinating the dance. Remus had no clue—this was not his area of
expertise—but Sirius was paying attention to the hand gestures, the cues, as if this was an orchestra
and he was strumming a sweet silk violin, vitriolic and awed; he looked over Remus’ shoulder as
they were spinning and his eyes widened.

“In three more sequences we’re partner-switching,” he muttered; Remus felt a jolt of panic wash
over his body. “It’s fine. I’ve got you. Just follow my lead.”

They kept going; Sirius adjusted his grip on Remus’ hands, his eyes on an unseen force behind him
and then back at his face; softening with adoration and hardening with concentration as he went.
He manoeuvred them in a way they Remus was quite sure wasn’t where they were meant to go, but
nobody complained; muttered to Remus with each sequence—”Two more… one more…”—and
then, upon their last step back, moved the hand on his shoulder quickly to hold onto his, so that
both hands were joined between their chests, his breath washing over Remus’ face.

He stepped back and so did Remus in tow, following along, and then Sirius—with the air of grace
—side-stepped around and spun him on his left arm, pulling him in so that Remus’ back was
pressed directly to his chest.

“To your left, love,” Sirius whispered into his ear.

And then he spun him away.

Someone grabbed him and had their other hand on his waist, holding him in place, before he even
registered who it was.

“Hello,” said Regulus, low and comfortable; he stepped forward but Remus, caught up in the
movement, did not reciprocate and sort of stumbled back. Regulus laughed. “I thought I taught you
better than that, Lupin.”

“Shut up,” Remus said, side-stepping with him and turning on his arm, catching a glimpse of
Sirius, arm in arm with a girl he—obviously—did not recognise.

“Robert and Beatrice, then?” Remus muttered, back to Regulus’ stead. He scoffed.

“Yes, I’m okay, thank you so very much for asking. How are you?”

“Did you do that for Andromeda or was that to help us out?”

“To help you out. I was listening. Pandora also sent me a message.”

“A message?”

“When a witch reaches a certain level of experience, they can send mental messages to someone
they have a profound connection with. It’s like projecting your thoughts into someone’s brain. It’s
a tough connection to uphold. All I got was the word ‘Distraction.’ I guessed she needed an out.”

“Right,” Remus said, frowning; Regulus spun him under the arm, and he circled back to him, arm
on the shoulder. “Can Mary do that?”

“She tried, once,” said Regulus. “Only managed to get one word through, and it was ‘cunt’.”

“‘Course it was.”

“Mhm.”

“So–”
Another spin. Remus was getting irritated by these.

“So you don’t know where Andromeda went?” he asked, when they got back. Regulus shrugged.

“Nope.”

They fell silent, for a moment, as they danced. Remus sighed, debating.

“Regulus, look—Andromeda, she gave–”

“Shit,” Regulus interrupted, looking over his shoulder, “I have to spin you back in two.”

“Back to who?”

They spun once. “Sirius is behind us.”

“But we’re not turning that way–”

Regulus, in one fast motion, grabbed him by the hands, pulled him in, out. Remus went to spin one
way but Regulus tugged him the other, going with him, whilst Sirius spun around them with his
partner so majestically it felt choreographed; there was a moment, in the middle, in which Remus
came face-to-face with a pretty brown-haired vampire who looked just as confused as he was, and
then Regulus grabbed her hand, and Sirius grabbed his.

He yanked and spun him three times, straight into his chest, and—as Remus grabbed onto his
collar and tried not to topple over—there was an array of cheers.

“Hi,” whispered Sirius. They were nose to nose.

“Hi,” Remus replied, swallowing viscerally, as Sirius put their hands back into place and pulled
him a little harshly so as to avoid bumping into the people behind them. “That was smooth.”

“I told you,” Sirius muttered, “I practically invented this shit. He say anything?”

“Just that he doesn’t know what Andromeda’s doing, either. Listen, Sirius, I have something–”

“You have what?” he asked, and then underarm-twirled him. Remus sighed.

“She told me not to tell you, but I think there’s something in the other diary—in the little library?
She gave me the password.”

“But that diary doesn’t belong to her,” said Sirius. “What’s in it?”

“I don’t know, she only told me just before we left. Listen, the password is–”

A large bang sounded from the other side of the ballroom that made Remus flinch in shock.
Everybody stopped dancing to turn.

The doors had opened. That was the noise. They had banged with great voluminosity against the
walls, and there were four guards at the scene, shadowed by the two that were already standing
there. They were all tall, cowering trees over a figure Remus could not make out.

He blinked and took a step forward as the figure looked up, maskless, two glowing handcuffs that
locked off her magic around her wrists.

It was Pandora.
The second guard, the blindsighted one from before, spoke to them briefly, and then turned.
Pointed at them. Murmurs in the hall grew louder, and Sirius tightened his grip on Remus.

“Shit,” Remus whispered, making eye contact with Regulus, whose jaw was clenched.

The guard began to come their way.

“Fishsticks,” muttered Sirius.

Most of the attendees stepped aside to create a path for the guards. Sirius put Remus behind him
but it made no difference as when they got there the familiar guard grabbed him by the arm, the
new one, taller and more menacing with Pandora’s struggle all over him grabbed Remus so
aggressively he thought his arm might pop out of the socket.

“What are you doing?” Sirius asked, resisting; the other guard splayed his hand over Remus’ chin
and mouth, pulling his head back and pinning his arm to his back. “Unhand me at once, you foul—
bastard–”

“You lied,” the guard whispered, pulling his hair back, “didn’t you?”

“I did no such thing,” Sirius said, strained.

The guard let go of his hair and wrapped his hand around his neck in one movement. It was a
clumsy move. The reality was that Sirius could absolutely take him out without blinking, but that
would provide a beacon to who he was. He was weighing up his options. Weighing up the
outcomes.

“Who are you, really?” whispered the guard.

Sirius hissed in his face.

And—in probably the moment directly before this man would have seen the light of God, with
Sirius Black’s hand carved ravenous around his unbeating heart—he turned, and said quietly to the
other guard: “Take them to the dungeons. We are not to ruin the Dark Lord’s night. Get the other
human, too.”

And Sirius froze.

He tried to turn to Remus, but the way he was being held did not permit it, so he looked, instead, at
Pandora, the same exact direction Remus was looking as they pushed them forward in short,
staggering steps. He could hear the guards walking behind him, on their way to persecute Dorcas.

Pandora—she was a state, Remus registered, now, her disguise only half-present. There had been
some sort of attempt to rip it off, and now there were patches of burnt skin on her face, and spouts
of her long curly blonde was pouring out of her scalp against the fake short brown. There was a
whole patch of it at her right side, the hair mussed. Her face worn. Her makeup ruined.

She stood there, looked at them, and—slowly—raised her cuffed arms. Remus could see where the
metal was burning her wrists, and could see her fingers shake as she clasped them together and held
them to her chest.

It was the sign. The sign that they had found the locket. Found the Horcrux.

Sirius was turned around, roughly, by the second guard as he turned to ask what the hell was taking
so long—Remus could not see Dorcas being handled, but he could see Sirius, now. He watched his
eyes flicker around. Look at Dorcas, Ana and Sebastian. Others. The people on standby for them,
Remus could see them all, now; people straightened up. Lights within the crowd. A New York
vampire that he had made eye contact with earlier had her hand clenched into a fist by her side,
ready immediately to fight, to conquer.

He looked at Sirius. Sirius’ eyes flickered back, directly forward, to Ana and Sebastian, and he
shook his head. A tiny gesture.

A moment. The signal domino-effected. The woman’s fist loosened.

They were escorted roughly out of the hall, the three of them—Remus didn’t even get a chance to
look at Regulus or Lily—but he turned, near the end, as the music started up again and someone
said something to try and rouse the crowd again, to try and act like nothing had happened.

He turned. He looked up, and he locked eyes with Tom Riddle, standing braced against the wall of
the inner circle, watching them leave.

His gaze was haunting. There was no Bellatrix to be found, no one to be found but him. It sent a
shiver trickling down Remus’ spine, as he walked. And it did not fall, they locked onto each other
until the moment Remus was thrown out of the room.

Only when the doors were closing did he see Riddle push himself off of the wall, and disappear.

***

One of the guards was a witch. He waved his hand and the bars on the arch that led to the
dungeons disappeared, and they were yanked down the stairs, two at a time, and thrown into
separate cells.

The cell was not accommodating, though Remus had not expected better. It was almost medieval-
looking, huge block walls with scratches on the jaggedy rock, dirty iron bars from the ceiling up
that separated him from the outside. Remus groaned and scrambled up but by the time he had
managed to, the door had already been shut, locked and abandoned, and the guards were fumbling
down the dirty dimly-lit corridor, the sound of metal swinging on creaky hinges echoing through
the space.

Sirius was directly opposite him.

Remus was up, fists curled around the iron bars, by the time Sirius had been thrown in and had
been left, guards shutting and locking the door and the witch waving a spell over it. Sirius got up as
quickly as he had, quicker, and sped to the bars. They were holy watered. He did not flinch or step
backwards, but he hissed when his hands began to burn.

He looked at Remus, and his face calmed.

The last of the doors swung and the guards walked back the way they came, passing Remus’ cell
again. Some went back upstairs but the blindsighted guard stayed for a moment, along with one
other. They shuffled to the very far end of the corridor and Remus moved with them, to the end of
his cell, pressing his ear and listening.

“...and the Dark Lord told us not to disturb his fête for anything less than Black and his merrymen,
in the flesh. He will kill us if we are wrong.”

“He will kill us if we’re right and don’t tell him immediately. Howard—the spellwork, can’t you
undo it–?”
“You saw the witch girl! It’s incredibly powerful magic, it’s like unpicking a traverse sewing
thread from the beginning. I have to be poignant. It could take hours.”

“We do not have hours,” he hissed. “How much can you undo without damage?”

“I don’t—I don’t know–”

“If you can undo enough so that he looks familiar—not as usual, only familiar—familiar enough
for someone who is intimately or… familially acquainted to recognise him…”

Silence.

“Trevor, you’re not suggesting…”

“Can you or can you not?”

“I can. I believe so.”

Another moment of silence. A deep, uncertain breath.

“I shall rouse her then.”

“She will have both our heads if you’re wrong.”

“Better her than him,” came the final response, and then some shuffling. Another pair of footsteps
up the staircase.

Noise came from Remus’ right, and he stepped back. The witch guard stopped, looked at him, and
then, with a flourish of his hand, sent Remus flying to the back wall. It winded him like hell when
he hit it; he slumped to the floor, coughing his lungs up.

Sirius was at the bars in a second. Absolutely feral.

“Shut up,” said the witch, squeezing his hand into a fist. Sirius immediately stopped and began to
choke. “Get on the floor.”

Sirius, choking, hand to his throat, shook his head. His nose began to bleed.

“You do as I say,” the witch growled, and—releasing his hand—pushed him to the floor the same
way he had pushed Remus. He unlocked his door and stepped inside, Sirius still coughing,
insatiably angry.

The witch crouched down, and pulled Sirius’ head up by the hair.

“Let’s see what’s under all this pretty fakery, shall we?” he murmured, and he sat down, cross-
legged, back to Remus, obscuring Sirius from view.

What happened next was rather odd. Remus could not see the source but there was a growing light,
shining from in between the two bodies. The witches hands were tucked in, which led him to
believe it was curdling in his hands, like a ball of sunlight between palms. It was quier for a
moment.

The witch’s shoulder jerked. And Sirius screamed.

It was horrible. It sent a shiver running down Remus’ spine and made him want to scream, but he
didn’t think he could—he was still struggling to catch his breath, on all fours. Sirius screamed
again. This one was strangled.

The witch jerked—it was like his body was not his own, like he was a possessed man, inside the
workings of Sirius’ cells, pulling them apart and mix and matching them. Poking and prodding at
his being.

Remus crawled to the opposite side of his cell. The cell beside Sirius was empty, which meant one
of them was beside him.

“Dorcas?” he whispered, pressing his face to the bars. “Dora?”

“I’m here,” whispered Dorcas, a moment and a few telltale movements later. “I’m here, Remus.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, closer now. She was pressed up against the wall between them. “I’m okay.
Are you?”

“Mhm,” Remus said, nodding as if trying to convince himself. Sirius screamed again, and he
winced, squeezing his eyes shut as if it would block it out. “Where’s Pandora?”

“Cell next to mine.”

Remus exhaled sharply. “What about Miyuki? Where did she go?”

“One second.”

Remus heard footsteps, and he slumped against the wall, sighing shakily. He looked across at
Sirius’ cell and noted that the light had gotten brighter. And there was blood splattered on the floor
beside them.

Another scream. He was heaving, Remus could hear him, grappling for breath, for strength, for
life. The witches hands were up, now, in the air. His fingers were pinched in one hand and
stretched out in the other. They were moving, as if he was threading a needle, meticulous and slow.

“Pandora says they got separated,” Dorcas whispered, clearing her throat gently. “She was brought
and thrown in here, tortured. But Miyuki got away.”

“And Daphne?”

“Not in any of the cells we can see.”

Scream. Scream. Sirius, screaming in pain, utter pain, pain, pain.

“God, I can’t–” Remus breathed, choked up. It was a horrible, horrible thing to have to listen to. A
guard making a turn of the corridor passed him by—he didn’t pay attention.

“What the hell are they doing to him?” Dorcas asked, quieter as the guard had passed her too.

“Trying to undo the magic,” Remus replied. “Not entirely, but enough for him to be recognised.
The witch has to do it fast so he can’t be meticulous, which means it’s torturing him.”

“Recognised? Recognised by who?”

“I don’t know,” said Remus, shaking his head, “someone who knows him, someone–”
It hit him all at once. Of course.

“Familial,” Remus said, resigned, unfeeling tears falling from his eyes as Sirius screamed again and
they had to interlude their conversation. Dorcas seemed to get it in the moment that passed.

“Bellatrix,” she breathed. A whisper against Sirius’ desperate whimpering. Remus exhaled.

“Better her than him,” he said, repeating the words of the guard. “Better her than him.”

I am locked in a cell, Remus thought, so is Dorcas, so is Sirius, he’s being ripped apart. Pandora
has no access to her magic. Miyuki has disappeared. Andromeda is MIA. Lily and Regulus are
locked in the ballroom. There has been no Dumbledore activity. Riddle is getting a kick out of
playing with us. And Daphne Greengrass is not here; not where we can see.

“God,” Dorcas breathed, “what the fuck are we going to do?”

From the angle of where Remus was sitting, alongside the fact his cell was at the very end, he had
a pretty apt view of the bottom of the staircase and the end of the hallway. The guard patrolling the
corridor was a man with a bushy beard, dressed in all black. He watched him as he stood, preparing
for another sweep up and down the corridor, and then watched as he paused.

Looked up the staircase from where he was situated at the bottom of it. The light from the top
disappeared, shadowed over him, moving as someone traipsed down the stairs. The figure—much
shorter than him, also dressed in all black—hopped off the bottom step.

“Your shift is over,” she said, zipping up her hoodie. She had a black cap on. “You’re needed on
the North Tower.”

“Affirmative,” the man replied, and then he turned, walked up the stairs, covering the light once
more.

The new guard, the woman, took a moment to fiddle with her sleeves, brush herself off. The
shadow encompassed her completely as the man walked up the stairs and it was only when she
turned, back to the wall, did the shadow disappear; her face highlighted golden against the avid
beam of the upstairs light, where everything is transparent, everything is revealed.

A lock of bleach blonde hair peeking out of her hat. The glint of a chain around her neck. She
zipped her hoodie up to the top and it was covered up.

She could be anyone.

But Daphne Greengrass took a deep breath and walked down the corridor, past Remus’ cell, and
his eyes followed her all the way.

His mouth was ajar and Sirius screamed again for the first time in a minute or two as walked away
from his cell, out of sight of Remus, who had unconsciously pressed his face against the bars;
unconsciously aligned his heartbeat to the pendant pressed against his chest, her twin sister in such
close range he could taste it. He could feel it.

He stayed there, face pressed to the bars, hands gripping it so tightly the jagged metal grated
incisions that sent pain shooting up his arm. He stayed there. He listened to Sirius’ screams—God,
they made him nauseous—but he stayed there. So close. So close. So close. Breathe, breathe,
breathe, breathe.

She came back about five minutes later.

Remus heard her footsteps before he saw her, heard the echoing of the shoes against cold stone.
She stopped outside each cell, surveyed and made sure things were not awry. She stopped outside
Dorcas’, looking down on her, expressionless. She ignored Sirius’. When she was finished
surveying Dorcas she walked, slowly, small menacing steps towards Remus, and she took her
previous position at the top of the corridor; evidently able to survey him from there.

He watched her go, mouth wide open, and then crawled; as slowly as he could; to the other side of
the cell. Pressed himself against the wall.

“Daphne,” he whispered, and she stiffened.

She looked at him, inadvertently, as one does when one hears their name called, and then looked
away immediately. She looked so, so like Astoria. Remus could’ve cried.

“Daphne,” he replied, “Daphne, Daphne,” it’s you, it’s you, “my name is Remus. I know your
parents and your sister.”

Daphne’s eyes averted down to him again, and they stayed there. For a good few moments, they
stared at each other, Remus beseeching, Daphne unsure. Suspicious.

She looked away again.

“Please,” Remus choked, standing up, still gripping onto the bars like it was the only thing holding
him to Earth, “look. I can show you. Look.”

And he took both hands and dug his fingers into his collar, finding the chain and pulling on it. He,
with the help of an undone top button, fished the locket out from underneath his shirt. He gripped
onto the pendant, held it up, breathing so goddamn heavily.

“Daphne. Look.”

She looked.

Her face gave way instantly. It flashed through about five different feelings; suspicion, shock,
confusion. Anger and love. Family and girlhood. Her sister. Her father. Her pendant. She took a
breath in and let it out, heavily, eyes wide.

“How did you get that,” she said, through her teeth, less of a question and more of a threat. It came
out as barely a whisper.

“Your sister,” he said, again, “Astoria–”

Daphne inhaled sharply at her name.

“–I know Astoria, we’re friends, she–”

“How did you get that,” she repeated, more forcefully, snarling; pulling back her top lip to reveal
her fangs.

“She gave it to me,” Remus said, continuing what he had been saying before, “weeks ago, she’s
been looking for you for years. Your whole family has. Your mother is here, tonight. Astoria
wanted me to find you, and I did. I’m here to find you. I’m here to– to help you.”

“You hurt her,” she whispered, unabating. “You bastard, what did you do to her?”

“I didn’t,” Remus said, shaking his head, “I didn’t hurt her, but she knew you’d think that–”
Daphne was heaving, shaking her head. “What did you do to her?!”

“–and so she told me to talk to you. To show you the locket. Talk to you about Kaguya-hime,” he
said, and Daphne’s face did not clear but she went still, rigidly still, softening up with shock or
confusion or love, what was the fucking difference anymore. “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter,
right? The Princess from the Moon. And you used to read her all of the stories, didn’t you? She
was insatiable. She loved them.”

He swallowed, viscerally, tearing up. Daphne was still, her eyes wide and disbelieving and yet tears
curdling in her eyes, betraying her, betraying her.

“You were so close,” he said, “so close, weren’t you? And she was the Princess in your eyes.” He
bit his lip. “But the ending made her sad. Because the Princess had to go home. And so you’d tell
her—you’d tell her, at the end of the night, that you’d go instead of her. And you’d find your way
home. Didn’t you?”

Daphne’s bottom lip was trembling. Tears began to spill out of her eyes.. Remus was acutely aware
of how little time they had. He blinked and he was crying too.

“Didn’t you?” he asked, pressed, desperate. She nodded.

Sirius was still screaming. It wasn’t as loud, now. Perhaps that made it more haunting, echoes on
the back of the wall. A scratched palm against iron bars and Daphne Greengrass, here, as Remus
held up her sister’s locket and pledged everything that she needed to tell her herself.

“She told me to tell you that she’s waiting by the Bamboo,” he said, and Daphne’s mouth fell
open.

Remus gave her a moment. A tear tracked down her face. Her breath inwards came sharp, as if
something had stabbed her there; she looked back at him.

“You have to let me out,” said Remus, against another of Sirius’ screams that made him wince.
“I’m here to help you. Daphne. Please.”

She held her chin up. And she shook her head.

“I don’t need to be helped,” she said thickly, shaking it again. “Astoria, while good-intentioned,
was wrong by sending you here. I don’t—I don’t need to be saved. I’m happy where I am.”

“You’re a guard,” said Remus, “descended from two prestigious Pureblood families, you’re a
guard on the night of a fête in which there are half-blood vampires dressed nicer than you, treated
better than you. They don’t notice you. They have not noticed you in six, seven, eight years–”

“Yes they do,” she said, still crying silently. “Yes, they do–”

“Daphne,” Remus whispered, “I’m sorry, but they don’t.”

She stared at him. Eyes wide and unblinking. Almost imploring him to go on.

“They don’t notice you,” he said, again, salt into the wound; “and I know because if they’d noticed
you, they would have noticed that the locket around their neck is something that is priceless to
them. Something that they’d have your head for if they had actually seen it on your person.”

Her face fell. This was genuine confusion, now. “What–what do you mean?”
Sirius. Again. Sirius. Sirius.

“It’s–” Remus choked on his own words, chest in pieces, “your father gave you these lockets,
didn’t he? He didn’t buy yours from prestige, Daphne. He bought yours from someone who stole it
from someone else,” he gasped a breath, “who stole it from Tom Riddle, himself.”

Every single muscle in her face relaxed.

Every single one.

“You’re lying,” she said.

Remus shook his head.

“I’m not. I’m not—Daph—I’m here for you, but I’m not just here for you. Your family needs you.
I need your locket. We’re hand-in-hand, you see?”

She was silent. For a moment, a long moment, she was silent.

“Daphne, your mother’s here,” Remus said, pleading, now, “she’s somewhere in the house—surely
you can smell her? She’s here for you. She needs you. We need—please,” Sirius was whimpering
now, resigned, tortured, the air smelled of blood, she has the key, “please, God, please. Daphne.
Please help me. I am begging you.”

Remus was never here to save her if she did not want to be saved.

But here, now? He needs her to save him.

She inhaled. Her breath shuddered. The motions of her throat moved as she swallowed, and Remus
looked at her, and she looked at him. But any motion to move was squashed. As a shadow
shrouded over her.

Walking down the staircase, tight, clicking heels, the presence of a woman so much bigger than
what she’s worth. The monster within a monster, coming down the stairs.

Daphne stiffened instantly.

And everything faded away.

Bellatrix looked gorgeous up close. Shadowed by about four guards, one after another, the first
holding her dress up behind her so it did not trail on the grimy floor; she walked down the stairs,
one high heel at a time, the marker of impending doom, a rhythmic gong reverberating through the
air. Bella made it to the bottom of the stairs. She looked Daphne up and down. Emotionless.

Remus let go of the iron bars and staggered backwards, to the very end of his cell, back to the wall.
He could not take his eyes off of her. She, however, did not regard him for more than half a
second, walking leisurely past his cell with nothing but a sideways glance. Disgust in the
scrunching of her nose as her line of followers stumbled behind her, eternally trying to fit in the
small space she left behind.

“This place is disgusting,” she spat, stopping so abruptly that the guard to her back almost bumped
into her. He didn’t, but he did falter on her dress; the fabric swept the dirty ground, and she hissed
in fury. “Hold it up!”

“Yes, my lady,” stammered the guard, bowing his head, “I’m sorry, my lady.”
“Hmph,” she said, lips downturned. Her hair was pinned to the top of her head but was formed in
brilliant curls, done up for the occasion; her dark red lip colour was meticulous, matching her
smooth base and the smoked eye makeup that almost made her look haunting, like an apparition.
She pursed her lips and the red of the cupid's bow contorted so much so that it looked like she was
made of clay.

Bellatrix walked up to Sirius’ cell.

“Open the door,” she commanded.

Remus felt like he was holding in his own breaths, desperate to blend into the walls and become a
part of them. But, in his desperation to make sure Sirius was okay, he crawled slowly across the
floor to lean against the wall that connected with Dorcas’ cell, giving himself a clear view of
metal-upon-metal as the key jangled in the lock and the door swung open. Bellatrix stalked in, her
four cronies following after her, spreading out against the wall of the cell like soldiers on the front
line.

The witch was still sitting cross-legged in front of Sirius, but the light had gone dim. Lit up only by
the wall lamps, evidently pulling himself out of his trance, the witch shifted. One of the guards
reached a hand out to help him up, and once he was up he stepped aside and revealed, like a curtain
drawing open, a mangled, bruised and battered Sirius.

Remus couldn’t help the gasp that escaped from his lips.

It was horrific. His face was so covered in blood it looked like it had been torn apart by claws;
almost had, gashes on the sides of his face, one so large on his left cheek it was still oozing red
blood and what looked like black bile, dead cells, an unpicking of foundations. His skin was layers
deep. There was a patch on his forehead that looked like it had been burnt off. His nose was
crooked; it looked more like his nose, the nostrils the right stature and the height of the bridge only
a little bit off, as opposed to incredibly off. But it was broken and pouring blood. One eye was still
brown and marginally untouched, though the skin around it was tender and bruised; the other was
so bloodshot and swollen that Remus could barely tell the icy grey from the red. He closed his eyes
and it trickled blood down his already-bloody face, like a tear.

Skin hanging off his swollen jaw. Bottom lip bruised and battered, but underneath the cupid’s bow
that looked so like his cousins.

Bellatrix stood and surveyed him for a moment, before stepping to his side. The guard behind her
followed; he was almost pressed to the far wall as she looked over him, and then she began to
crouch and he went with her, bundling her dress up so that Remus could see the black heels
accommodating her curled feet.

She reached out a hand and gripped his face by both cheeks. Turned it towards her. Her thumb dug
into the gash on his face, pressed the skin back together.

There was a long silence.

“It doesn’t smell like him,” she said, inhaling slowly. She let go of his face and in the second it
took to droop grabbed him by the top of his hair and pulled it back up again. Sirius gasped in pain.

“We think they’ve used some sort of scent blocker, my lady,” said the witch in a hushed voice.
“Alongside the disguisive magic. They usually wear off after a day or two.”

“Can you not undo the disguisive magic?” she asked, harshly. She could not see this, but the witch
—standing behind her—shuddered with fright, his bottom lip trembling. He cleared his throat.

“I did my best in the timeframe, my lady,” he said, bowing his head, “but they have gained access
to very powerful magic, I–it would take hours to completely undo everything without damage,
perhaps days–”

“I do not care if you damage him,” she said, shrilly.

“Of course,” he said, quickly, “I simply mean that the damage may prove to be irreparable and
therefore make him even more unrecognisable than when we started, my lady–”

Bellatrix let go of Sirius’ hair and, in the moment it took for his barely-conscious head to fall
forward she spun around, stuck her hand inside of the chest of the guard who was holding up her
dress, and ripped his heart out. Unblinking. The vampire would not have even seen it coming.

She turned to the witch as his corpse crumpled to the floor, heart coating her hands with blood.

“Do you insinuate that their magic is more powerful than ours?”

“No, my lady,” he choked, trembling yet shaking his head.

“You acknowledge our magical sovereignty, yes?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“So you shall undo the magic that has befallen him,” she continued, heart still clutched in her hand,
“and you shall undo it on this night; are we in agreement?”

“Yes, my lady,” he said, nodding, looking to the floor, “of course, my lady, anything.”

She stared at him for a moment, and then she threw the heart to him. He gasped and fumbled to
catch it, the grotesqueness of it slimy and bloody on his pristine fingertips.

“Clean him up,” she commanded, and the witch immediately vanished the heart and rushed to the
space behind her, as she walked around Sirius, to the other side of him. One of the guards had
stepped in to take his comrade’s place and was doing a very meticulous job of making sure that,
unlike the previous dress-holder, he did not falter.

She crouched again. It was obvious that everybody was wondering upon her verdict, but nobody
would dare to say it. The only sound was the firelight flickering on the walls.

“I cannot tell for sure,” she murmured, gripping his face with her bloody hand once more; “he
looks like Sirius, but he does not.” Silence, once more, as she handled him like a doll, turning his
face, pulling open his eyes. They were so close their breaths were intermingling. “What of the
others?” she asked, and it took a moment for them to respond.

“Two humans and a witch. Male and female human; female witch.”

She hummed, running her fingers through Sirius’ hair and twisting two fingers between the strands.
She was looking back on her encounters with them. The hospital. The coven. Remus and Lily were
the two humans she was, arguably, most acquainted with; Remus was not sure she had come across
Dorcas at Malfoy Manor. This made him feel slightly comforted.

Better him than her.

Bellatrix stood, abruptly, letting Sirius’ head fall.

“Trevor,” she said, harshly; the second guard came out of the shadows, and bowed before her.

“Yes, my lady.”

“Fetch me my sword, from my vault in the armoury.”

Trevor hesitated. “My lady, you said that sword was not to be touched–”

“It is my sword, I may choose to disturb it if I so please,” she shrieked, increasingly angry; Trevor
cowered. “The sword was created by witches, forged with the pure Black bloodline. It takes in the
blood of my family. If this truly is Sirius, the sword shall prove it.”

Trevor hesitated, nodding in front of her. She exhaled angrily out of her nose.

“Go!”

“Yes, my lady–”

Trevor hurried out of the door, running up the stairs in twos. Remus watched the shadow of the
light dissipate as he rushed through the arch and out of sight.

“In the meantime,” Bellatrix hummed, and turned with the air of an apparition and almost floating
out of the cell door. She looked upon Remus, stopping; looked him up and down from where he
was sitting, pressed against the wall. He held her gaze defiantly.

“Show me to the witch,” she said, not taking her eyes off of Remus—only when they had led her
out of sight down the hallway could he relax, looking to Daphne, the only figure in his view.

A long five, possibly ten minutes passed.

Remus ended up against the bars again, gripping onto them, looking at Sirius. He did not dare try
to communicate with Dorcas again; he did not dare speak. He simply looked, watched him, the
slowly-abating dripping blood from his mouth and his face and the thick strands of hair falling in
his face. The only marker of consciousness was the way he was swaying every so slightly, and the
way his hands were tensing and untensing, curled into a fist and then splayed out in instances.

Bellatrix spoke gently to Pandora, but she did not respond. He heard her comment on her hair, the
sprouting of blonde against her brown, her slight familiarity due to Pandora’s ex-status as a Black
coven witch. And then there must have been a muffling charm cast, for he could not make out any
more of the words.

But at one point, Pandora screamed. And she screamed again.

And then she was being dragged by the arm down the corridor, by a guard, stumbling against the
cuffs around her hands and now around her feet. She passed Remus’ cell and locked eyes with him,
desperate.

“Warn home,” she whispered to him as the guard strung her along. “Warn home.”

And then she was gone.

It was about a minute or two after this that the light dimmed again, and Remus heard slow, solemn
footsteps, one at a time, heading down the stairs.

Trevor, upon hitting the bottom of the staircase, was white as a ghost. Remus had never seen a
signification of terror quite like the expression on his face at that very moment. He walked, as slow
as he possibly could, down the corridor, to which he presumably returned to Bellatrix.

It was silent for a moment. But the charm had been lifted, and Remus could hear them clear as day.

“Where is my sword?”

“My lady,” a pause, a visceral gulp, “I r-regret to inform you that your sword…your sword is not
present within its allocated spot in your vault.”

Silence.

“My sword is not… what?”

Her voice was so hushed it was terrifying. It was venomous.

“My lady–” a tremor in his voice, “I looked, I looked everywhere, but it seems to be missing–”

“So you have failed?”

“I’m–I don’t understand–”

“You have failed to fetch my sword from the armoury, Trevor.”

“My lady, I–”

There was a guttural choking sound that made Remus’ skin seize up, and then a heaved, horrible
wheezing, the sound of lungs collapsing. A snap. And a thud.

The click of high heels.

Bellatrix walked into Sirius’ cell with so much power it looked like the trail of her dress was about
to set on fire, and she crouched down, and slapped him across the face.

“WHERE IS IT?” she screamed, so loud it reverberated around the entire dungeon. Daphne
flinched. Bellatrix was utterly hysterical. “WHERE DID YOU PUT IT?”

“I didn’t take it,” Sirius choked, gritty and broken, into the silence. Bellatrix was heaving with
anger.

“Where is it?!”

“I don’t know,” came another wheeze, and then she reached out and grabbed him by the throat,
pulled him up like a puppet until he was only just dangling, toes curling onto the ground.

“You scum,” she spat, “you blood-traitor, you putrid woodlouse, you fucking rantallion, I shall rip
your skin apart until you are nothing but a set of bones.”

“And you,” wheezed Sirius, barely decipherable, hands scratching at his neck, “will still… not
have…. your sword–”

Bellatrix screamed, and threw him to the ground; he crumpled in the corner, coughing up blood,
and she screamed again in hysterical frustration. Turned and ripped the heart out of one of the
guards standing behind her. Bashed his head against the wall so hard that Lady Macbeth would be
proud, for his skull practically exploded—Remus gagged—and then she screamed again, turning to
the rest of her remaining liege, including the witch. She pointed at him.
“Hurt him,” she spat, “unearth his disguise. Find out where my sword is.”

The witch nodded, immediately beelining for Sirius. The two remaining guards looked at Bellatrix,
and then each other, and did not move until she screamed at them too, flying out of the door and up
the stairs in less than five seconds, anguished cries heard all the way down the hall.

“No,” Sirius whimpered, as the witch grabbed onto his flailing wrists, “no–”

“Move,” he spat.

“Fuck you,” Sirius repeated, groaning with exertion as he, with one hand around his forearm,
snapped something that made the witch scream in pain. “Fuck you–”

“Fucking vampire,” the witch screamed through his teeth, turning around to hold a trembling palm
to his bent-the-wrong-way arm whilst Sirius scratched his nails down the stone wall and spat out
more blood, coughing it up. Remus scrambled back over to Daphne, pulling himself up by the bars.

“Daphne,” he whispered, “I need you to let me out, now, please—God, now–”

He gripped onto the locket with a trembling hand, smearing blood over the pendant, and she looked
at him.

She opened her mouth. And then, for the second time, a shadow set over her again.

It was all-consuming, this shadow. Pulling her out of her stance and turning her head, looking up
the staircase, for it was entirely dark.

And then it was not.

A gentle, orange glow spilled down the staircased archway, like the overflowing of sunbeams over
a docile, tranquil sea at sunrise. It grew, and it grew, more powerful and more powerful, and
Daphne watched the staircase while Remus watched her face; growing brighter and brighter until
she had to squint to look.

Bright orange light.

“Daphne,” he said, softly.

She turned to look at him, eyes wide. They locked eyes.

“Run.”

And she did.

She disappeared down the corridor in the nick of time, for the clanging of metal against rock as
bars were thrown down the staircase—one landing at Remus’ feet, half cold metal and half molten
from where she had burnt it to rip it apart—and he felt Lily’s fire first but did not see her first, for
dimming the light was a flash of momentum, running down the staircase and banging the metal
door to Sirius’ cell wide open.

He wasn’t there and then he was, Regulus Black appeared behind the witch, grabbed him by the
throat and sunk his teeth into his neck.

The witch had perhaps one, two seconds to scream—one, two breaths left of life—before Regulus
had ripped through his throat so grotesquely it was squirting blood, snapped his neck and then
ripped his head right off for good measure and kicking the corpse along the ground.
Lily appeared at the bottom of the stairs just as a guard Remus had not seen—who had evidently
been stationed at the other end of the dungeon—came running, fangs out, ready to fight. She did
not hesitate. Her hands were burning up to her wrists, veins and cracks in her skin oozing fire like
lava burns through the cracks of volcanic rock, her eyes red and the tips of her hair sizzling like a
sparkler—she threw out a hand and set him alight, fire so powerful it looked like a blowtorch and
lobbed the man down the hall, screaming, until he was nothing but a light out of Remus’ sight, and
his screams burnt out to nought, a log fire in the place of where a vampire once was. Remus
gripped onto the iron bars and watched as Lily began to walk out of sight, and then he gasped.

“Don’t kill her!” he yelled; Lily stopped. “Don’t kill the blonde one. Lily.”

She turned, her hair settling down but the fire still curdling in her palms. She blinked a few times
and her eyes did not return to green but returned to all the fondness, and she gasped, looking at the
cells.

“Oh, shit,” she said, running to the lock—Remus took an obvious step back as she gripped onto it,
melting it within ten seconds and ripping it off the hinge. She kicked the door open and Remus did
not hesitate, running past her and into Sirius’ cell whilst Lily moved to let Dorcas out.

Regulus was already crouched in front of him, pushing his hair up and over his head.

“Oh, God,” he muttered, as Remus collapsed on the floor beside him. “Sirius. Sirius, can you hear
me?”

“Hi, Reggie,” he murmured, opening his eyes. More blood spilled out of the blue eye, bloodshot
and grotesque.

“Oh–” Regulus gasped, reaching out a hand to brush the blood away but hesitating so he simply
smeared it. “Oh, what the hell did they do to you?”

Sirius opened his mouth, and then had to turn to spit more blood out. He was leaning on his elbow,
though his arm was quivering horribly.

“Nothing special,” he muttered back.

Regulus exhaled sharply and looked at Remus, and then shifted to try and pull Sirius to a sitting
position. Remus helped him.

“Come on,” Regulus said, wrapping an arm around his one side. “Come on, we’re gonna stand.”

“Remus,” Sirius slurred. He nodded.

“Yeah, it’s me, sweetheart. Here–” he took Sirius’ arm and draped it around his own shoulder,
“look, we’re gonna stand. Can you do that for me?”

Sirius nodded and, on a count of three, he and Regulus pulled him up. He was surprisingly steady
on his feet, his hold on the two of them strengthening, though his head still drooped.

Lily ran in, almost tripping over the corpse of the witch, followed by Dorcas. She threw her hand
over her mouth upon seeing him.

“Is he not healing?” she asked, hovering for a moment and then stepping to the side with the other
two to let them out as they walked, one step at a time.

“The magical damage is too severe,” Regulus said, strained, holding onto Sirius’ hand with his
other, draped around his shoulder. “At the very least he needs to feed. It might heal a few of the
abscesses.”

Sirius huffed something that might have been a chuckle or a groan, and tried to pull his head up,
though it just lolled to Regulus’ side. He was smiling.

“Reggie,” he said, sudden and slurred.

“What?” asked Regulus, turning his head.

“All this torture,” he whispered, voice so gritty it vibrated, “all this mutilation… and yet I’m still
more attractive than you.”

Regulus took a moment to process this, and then let out a bark of a laugh. Sirius’ shoulders shook
childishly against the two of them by his sides, holding him up.

“Hah—oh, God,” murmured Regulus, voice shaking, “oh God, you’re insufferable. Please don’t
die.”

“Mmm.”

“She’s going to come back,” said Dorcas, panicked, “she thinks he took that goddamn sword.”

“Sword?” Regulus said, perking up. He turned to Sirius. “Black’s sword?”

“One ‘n only.”

“I thought they destroyed that centuries ago?”

“Mm-mm,” Sirius whispered, shaking his head minutely. “Thinks— thinks it’ll work ‘n us.” And
then he chuckled, blood dripping from his mouth as he did. “It won’t work on us.”

“This is a conversation to be had later,” Dorcas hissed, “we need to go.”

“Where’s Pandora?” asked Lily, looking around.

“Where’s Miyuki?” asked Remus, who had presumed she would have rejoined them.

“Where’s my daughter?!” called a voice, booming from around the corner.

A quick glance at each other. And then Lily and Dorcas went first, followed by Remus and
Regulus, strained as they held Sirius’ weight onto them and peered out of the cell door.

Remus craned his neck just as Miyuki appeared at the bottom of the stairs, running so fast she
almost fell down them; her dress swished around her ankles, and her hair was a mess. She looked
up, locking eyes with the faces peering at her from the cell door, and then her gaze averted.

Standing idly at the end of the corridor, beside the now-steaming pile of ash that was once her
guardmate, Daphne stood. The locket was pulled out of her shirt and visible on her chest. Her face,
while terrified, was fixated on her mother who did not look like her mother. Her gaze was utterly
indecipherable. But Remus got the feeling that some part of her knew, it knew, it knew.

Daphne gaped, looking over everyone’s faces for a moment, and then settling back on her
mother’s. Miyuki did not hesitate. With tears in her eyes, exhaling everything that seemed to be in
her chest like she’d received a sucker punch upon laying eyes on her, she strode down the corridor,
past Sirius’ cell and past Dorcas’ and past Pandora’s. Walked straight up to Daphne and placed
both hands on her little cheeks. Swept her hair away from her face.

“Baby,” she whispered. Daphne reached up and mirrored her.

“Mama?” she breathed. Miyuki laughed. She wiped her tears and kissed her cheek.

Laughing again, she pulled Daphne into her chest, and held her like she might never let her go.

“Listen, as lovely as this is,” said Dorcas, tapping her foot agitatedly and looking one way, then the
other. “We’re running out of time. Is she coming, Miyuki, or are we going to have to rip the locket
from her neck?”

Miyuki looked at Dorcas, briefly. Looked up to the ceiling. Then pulled back gently, and looked
at her daughter.

“Baby,” she whispered, clearing her throat. “I need you to come with me.”

“Mama–”

“You do not belong here,” she said, as quickly as she could. “You have been misled. They
promised you glory, they got in your head. Didn’t they? And what do you have now? Scars. From
the knives of bullies. Baby, they’re not what they promise they are. You’re nothing to them.
You’re everything to me.”

Daphne’s bottom lip trembled; Miyuki wiped her tears.

“Come home,” she whispered. “Come home, to me, to your father, to your sister. To Astoria. Come
home.”

There was a brief, held breath. Remus almost expected the shadow.

But:

“Okay,” whispered Daphne. She looked over her mother’s shoulder, at Remus, and then back.
“Okay. I’ll go with you.”

Remus let out a relieved exhale.

“Come on then,” Miyuki said, quickly, “we have to go.”

She turned.

Dorcas made her way first, followed by Lily. Miyuki began to walk down the corridor to meet
them.

Daphne reached her hands up to take off the locket.

And Remus felt his basilisk blade burning against the side of his leg.

“Ah—” he hissed, twitching with shock. It singed into his skin and he gasped, flinching, pulling it
out with great difficulty. The handle was cool, and unaffected; but the silver seemed to be bleating
white-hot energy, so hot he could feel it on his face a forearms length away.

He looked up to a spark. Lily’s fingers were twitching.

“What…” she whispered, taking two steps back from everyone else and holding her hands in front
of her. Fire was flickering all over them, the tips of her fingers and the centre of her palm; like a
lighter being turned, on and off, on and off.

“Lily, what are you doing?” Dorcas asked.

“I’m not doing anything,” she said, shaking her head.

“Seriously, Lily—”

“I’m not,” she said, looking up at Remus. His cheeks were warm with heat and there was fiendfyre
in her hands, Basilisk venom in his.

He didn’t want to turn. And yet, he turned.

Daphne was pressed against the wall, hands still up behind her neck, trying to unlatch the necklace,
but it would not come undone. Her head was leaning back, throat entirely exposed, and the fabric
of her clothes seemed to be smoking; the locket seemed to be burning through it, turning the air red
hot with energy. Darkness seemed to be slowly building up and swirling around her, from her feet
as if expelled by a fog machine. Except it was shadows, and it was smoke.

Miyuki had already turned.

“Daphne–”

“It won’t come off,” she whimpered. “Mama, it’s—I tried to take it off– it won’t come off…"

“Hey,” she whispered, taking a step forward. The smoke was filling the room. Remus absently
noticed Lily climbing up the stairs, her flickering light fading away. “Hey, it’s okay.”

“Mama—”

“It’s okay,” she whispered, placing her hands on her forearms. “It’s okay.”

Remus took a cautious step forward. In doing so, he thrust the blade closer to her. The darkness
increased exponentially, and Daphne began to tug at the locket; it was glued to her chest. The
closer he got the angrier it felt.

A vessel. A vessel of souls. A vessel of corrupt, dark souls who know when their time is up.

Riddle’s guiding hand.

“Oh my God,” he whispered. Miyuki turned. “It knows.”

“It knows what?”

“That we’re going to destroy it,” he said. He could feel something breaking. It might just be his
heart. “It knows.”

Miyuki’s face twitched, once. She stared at him, unblinking, and then turned on her heel and
stalked back over to Daphne.

“Miyuki—” said Regulus.

“No.”

“It’s possession,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do to fix it.”

“I am a mother,” she hissed, turning to look at him. “Fixing things is my job.”

Daphne whimpered, again. She was crying. Miyuki cupped her face, ran her thumbs over her
cheeks and tucked her hair behind her ears as the smoke poured from the locket, curdled on the
floor.

“I know it hurts, Daph,” she said, so soft. “I’m gonna make it stop. I’m– I’m gonna make it all go
away, okay?”

She held her ground there, but when she spoke again it was louder, calling to the group at her
behind.

“You all said this thing was a vessel, right?” she called. “That your evil witch sacrificed vampire
souls to sustain the power it needed to extract Riddle’s soul. That they live on the echo of his
power in here.”

“Yes,” replied Regulus, as no one seemed to be going to. The locket's chain was singeing into
Daphne’s flesh now. Remus had stepped back with his blade, but it didn’t seem to abate anything.

“And power matches power, that’s what you guys say, isn’t it?” she called, again. Her voice was
shaky. “What Sirius says. Exceeding is murder. Inferior is being murdered. But power matching
power puts it on pause.”

“Miyuki,” said Remus, warily, “what are you doing?”

She turned her head to look at him dead in the eyes.

“You and I both know, Lupin, that this has always been about my daughters,” she said. “My being
here in the first place, involving myself in your fight. It has been for them. It’s been for her.”

She smiled. Shook her head, slowly.

“I’m not going to let her die,” she whispered. As if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

And, uncaring of the blade, the anger of the air around them already about to choke him; Remus
stepped forward. Right into their space.

“But what are you doing?”

Miyuki looked back at Daphne. Her face fell; she looked utterly murderous. Determined.

“Putting it on pause,” she muttered.

And she reached up to the pendant burning it’s way through Daphne’s chest, and flicked the latch
open without a second thought.

The smoke engulfed them completely.

Remus was thrown back against the wall by the impact, having to take a moment to gather himself
and look back up. Darkness, all he could see was darkness, it was surrounding the three of them
like a tornado. All of the others were gone. On the other side of the wall.

They were encapsulated, as the energy tried to escape, and all he could see was Miyuki. Pressing
her splayed hand over the open locket, incredibly, stopping anything from coming out.

Daphne gasped; she was still choking, watching it happen with tears pouring down her face. They
twinkled and lit up as something began to glow from between the cracks of Miyuki’s fingers. Her
arm was shaking, but she held herself, strong. Mouth open in a gasp, the light grew blinding.

And black poison began to flow through her veins and slowly up her wrist.

(A soul for a soul. A mother for a daughter.)

“Miyuki!” Remus yelled over the wind, the chaos of the smoke that surrounded them. He opened
his mouth again and immediately began to choke on it. But he yelled her name again, as loud as he
could, as rot seeped through her. As the light grew stronger. As she stopped the darkness.

She turned to him.

“Destroy it,” she said to him. Her voice echoed, slightly, as if she was a higher being. “When it’s
done. Destroy it.”

“Mama,” Daphne whimpered.

“Tell Astoria I love her,” she continued, turning back to face Daphne. She was trembling, heaving
even; choking on sobs, body burnt and wracked with darkness no one but a mother could purge.
“You are both my princesses. I’d go to the moon over and over again for you.”

“Mama!”

“I love you,” she whispered, smiling. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

The light grew brighter, and the rot began to seep up her neck. She gasped, as if choking on it;
swallowed viscerally. But her force did not stop. The light grew brighter.

“Look for me in the bamboo,” she whispered. “That’s where I’ll be.”

He heard Daphne cry out, one last time. But the whooshing of the shadows came to a head; his ears
popped; and the light grew so blinding and painful that Remus had to cover his eyes and look
away.

And then, all of a sudden, it stopped.

All of the dust that had accumulated in the tornado around them fell to the floor like broken fridge
magnets, and with it fell Miyuki.

What happened next was sort of a blur. The locket closed, and Daphne was screaming. Daphne
was wailing, and the locket was closed, and it was closed and she was wailing and suddenly
Regulus was there; he had one hand over her mouth in panic, the other around her neck, grabbing
the pendant with a palm it burnt and ripping it off of her, throwing it to the floor.

It clinked, sliding across the ground, and came to a stop at Remus’ knee.

He hesitated for one second.

And then he raised his knife and brought it down like an executioner, directly into the glass of the
locket.

It let out a bit of a shockwave, but it wasn’t as deadly or as harmful as the diary had been. Because
power matching power puts it on pause. An overflow, that’s what it had been; they wouldn’t have
even seen it coming. They had it coming. Sentience can be blown out like a candle in the right
circumstances. Miyuki’s soul short-circuited the locket, gave them a reprieve, a redirect, and when
 he destroyed it, it simply blew Remus’ hair back, sent the glass shards skidding across the floor.
Lit up very briefly. That familiar blinding white light.

He’d suppose three seconds, maybe, went by in slow motion, before Dorcas was at his back and he
was watching the basilisk blade disintegrate into ash on the floor. And he was on his knees, dust in
his hair, and Miyuki’s body was crumpled in a heap as Regulus pulled a thrashing Daphne
desperately down the hallway, reaching out for her mother with a hand that would never touch.

“Come on,” Dorcas whispered, pulling him up from under the armpits. “I’ve got you. I’ve got
you.”

With Daphne’s muffled sobs echoing against the walls of the dungeon, Remus got up.

Chapter End Notes

astoria: be careful mama

miyuki: always
and then she says "you're my moon"

they're both rough translations absolutely from the internet as i do not speak japanese -
sorry if they're wrong!
 twenty three
Chapter Summary

the fête, part two

Chapter Notes

okay.
first of all, this is a MONSTER of a chapter. if it helps at all reading-wise, it's split into
two parts: the first is 19k, the second is 8k.

now, CW:
– major character death !!!!!
there are two of them; though the second is much less major than the first but also
much less minor than last chapter's minor character death, if that makes sense.
– There's also a lot of minor deaths, extraneous deaths. people die.
– there's a lot of violence, blood and torture.
– there is very visceral grief.

all of this to say that, as far as DSTG goes, it's a very heavy chapter.

if you'd like to spoil the deaths/know what you're in for, I'm going to put details in the
end notes. :) do not look if you don't want to be spoiled!

now strap urselves in and (hopefully) enjoy,

jude xxx

See the end of the chapter for more notes

I. WHITTAKER HOUSE

“Shit,” Dorcas breathed, as soon as she stepped out into the hallway.

This was immediately followed by a huge flash of purple lightning, hitting the wall behind her as
she ducked. Debris came falling down, bouncing on the stairs. Remus ducked on instinct, and
looked up, peering through each of their figures in front of him to see, at the top of the stairs,
Dorcas pull a knife out of her pouch and lob it in the same half-second.

It embedded itself right in the middle of the witch’s head.

“Come on,” she hissed, running out first, followed by Remus, beckoning Lily who was holding
onto a staggering Sirius, her hand glowing gently around where she was gripping onto him.
Regulus emerged last, holding onto a struggling Daphne; though she’d fallen quiet at the explosion,
and was now weeping silently.
Dorcas beckoned them and they immediately started walking, past the corpse of the witch and
down a long, dark corridor, lit up only by sparse wall lights and slits for windows, heads above
them. Lily lit a flame in one hand, the other giving her energy to Sirius; as the walls lit up with the
ochre glow Remus skirted around them to their leader.

“Where are we going?” he hissed, jogging to keep up with her speed-walk.

He pulled his blade out of his pouch and twirled it as he did, holding it back-handed in front of him
in preparation. His brain was still scrambled, the imprint of Miyuki’s sacrifice behind his eyelids.
But this was autopilot.

“I don’t know,” Dorcas replied.

“What are we doing, now?”

“I don’t know,” she repeated. Only a tad more frantically.

They made it to a corner, in which there was a little alcove; Dorcas tugged on Remus’ sleeve,
beckoned them all in, and Lily put out her light. Their faces were so dim they were almost as barely
recognisable as Sirius was.

“Checkpoint,” Dorcas said, as a breath. Every second was valuable. “What are we doing, now?”

“We need to get Sirius back to Boardwalk,” said Lily instantly. Sirius whined.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re bleeding on my suit,” Regulus hissed, brushing his hair away from where it was drooping
on his shoulder.

“The locket is destroyed,” said Lily, “that was our main goal, we’ve done it–”

“Riddle probably felt it,” said Remus, “he’s probably coming for us as we speak.”

“So we’re going back?” asked Dorcas.

“We can’t go back,” hissed Regulus, again; “not without Andromeda and Pandora.”

“Did you see where Pandora went at all?” Dorcas said, directed to Remus.

“I didn’t,” he replied, “she was just dragged past me and up the stairs by the guards. She told me to
“warn home”.”

Lily winced. “Oh, I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

“What about Andromeda,” said Dorcas, turning to the Black’s two. “The quicker we can get back
the better. What the hell is she doing?”

“I don’t know,” said Regulus, sighing.

“She didn’t mention anything to anybody?”

“She told me that there was a diary before we left,” Remus interjected. “The– the twin to the
Horcrux. She gave me the password; Plan B, she called it. I think she had this plan the whole time.
I don’t know what the fuck she wants to do, though, I didn’t get to read it.”

“Mmh,” said Sirius, with some kind of purpose that nobody paid attention to.

“Okay, well at this point all we have to do is find her,” said Lily.

“We could split up,” said Dorcas, nodding, “find them both, take them back–”

“Sirius needs to go back,” Regulus interjected. Sirius made a noise of dissent and shook his head.

“I’m fine,” he said, and then, “Mm– Andromeda is—”

“If we take you back we can bring someone else to step in. Mary, maybe. James.”

“Listen to me!” Sirius said, through his teeth, and it went silent. He took a deep, shuddering breath
in. “The sword.”

“What sword?” asked Lily.

“Black’s sword?” said Regulus, in equal measure, and Sirius nodded.

“It’s missing,” murmured Remus, leaning in, “apparently. Bellatrix found out in the dungeons.”

“The sword,” repeated Sirius, slurring but nodding, “the sword—” he turned to his brother, “Reggie
—”

Regulus looked at him, confused.

And then his face relaxed so suddenly it was like broken marionette strings.

“She’s gone to get the sword,” he muttered, closing his eyes, in what might’ve been exasperation
or pure terror. “She’s gone to get the bloody sword.”

“Why?” hissed Dorcas, genuine malice in her voice.

“I don’t know.”

“Why does she need the sword?”

“I don’t know!”

“Hey, idiots, we need to make a decision and we need to make it now,” said Dorcas, grave and
organised, head screwed on right. “What are we doing?”

“If he insists on carrying on, Sirius needs to feed,” said Remus. First priority. He looked up; locked
eyes with Regulus. “The witch,” he whispered.

Regulus took this in for a moment and then nodded.

Heaving Sirius’ weight entirely over to Lily (with a brief apology), he sped off back where they
came from, a gust of wind in his path. In the time it took Remus to step over the circle and help
Lily hold Sirius up, Regulus was back, limp but still-warm corpse over his arm.

“Come on,” he murmured, softly, as Lily and Remus helped direct his attention. “That’s it.”

Sirius turned, and his fangs filled out. He looked once at his brother, and then hissed and sunk
himself into the witches neck.
Regulus lowered them down to the floor.

Remus watched, as Sirius fed, digging his hands into the witch’s hair, breathing heavily, rabidly.
For a fleeting moment, he thought about how odd it was that he did not care at all about the dead
person before realising it was all just because he cared about Sirius that much more.

Dorcas sighed, and looked over Regulus’ shoulder.

“What about her?” she asked, quietly.

Daphne. Pressed up against the wall.

Remus, Dorcas and Regulus exchanged glances, but it was ultimately Remus who held a hand up,
darting through the group to get to her.

“Daphne,” he whispered. She was quiet and still, now; her head still in her hands, her hair mussed
and her shirt ripped slightly, stained with blood from burns that Remus could see still lingered on
her neck. “Hey.”

She let out a sharp breath. Remus felt the urge to reach out, to touch her, but he stopped himself.

“Daphne,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. There are no words. I know. There’s nothing I could ever
say.”

Slowly, slowly, she lowered her hands. Her fangs had popped in her anger; her face splotchy, two
tears rolled down her otherwise motionless cheeks. She took a deep breath in.

“Astoria,” she said.

“Astoria,” Remus nodded. “I will get you back to her. Do you understand? But we can’t go straight
away. I need you—” he closed his eyes, took a deep breath; “I know it’s a lot to ask you right now.
But I need you to comply with us. We need to find two of our friends and then we’ll go straight to
Astoria. And your father. They both need you as much as you need them right now. I just need to
ask this one, one thing of you. That you comply. Please.”

A long moment. It was almost painful. Remus heard Sirius gasp, pulling himself away from behind
him; he heard shuffling, he heard Dorcas’ voice, low, but couldn’t make out what she was saying.

And then Daphne nodded.

“Okay,” she whispered. Fangs away.

“Thank you,” he whispered in return, utterly relieved. “Thank you.”

“Remus,” hissed Dorcas; he turned back to them.

Sirius pulled away from the corpse once more; utterly exsanguinated, now, he lay there, pale and
bloody against a pair of hands gripping his body and Sirius’ mouth, dripping in his blood. The
latter threw his head back and took a deep breath in, reaching one hand up shakily to wipe his
mouth. Lily was crouched beside him.

“Hi, honey,” Remus whispered, as quickly as he could, understanding they would be found if they
lasted any longer. Dorcas was getting antsy. “Hi. You okay?”

Sirius looked at him. Some of the swelling and abscesses had healed; but not a lot. However, his
eyes seemed a bit more sentient. Less glossy. One brown, one that blood-tinged blue-grey. He
wiped his mouth once more.

“I’m okay,” he whispered. “I can go on.”

“We should go together,” said Lily, her hand on the back of Sirius’ neck. “I can fusion with him on
the way. I can heal him.”

“Are you sure,” said Dorcas.

The three of them got up; Remus on one side of Sirius, Lily on the other.

“I can go on,” said Sirius, still bleary but on his two feet, at least. He adjusted his grip on Lily,
locked their hands together instead of her golden palm around his wrist. Their hands were
cocooned very quickly with dim, but interkinetic fire. “I’ll be okay.”

“You cannot be a liability,” said Dorcas, firmly, “we have enough of those.”

“I won’t be.”

She paused.

And then, with a great sigh, she stepped forward to throw her arms around him.

Remus, upon the awkward positioning, moved himself away and the arm that Sirius had wrapped
around his shoulder went automatically around Dorcas’ back. They held each other tight. Short, the
both of them understanding they were standing on borrowed time. But tight enough to make the
seconds feel like minutes.

She pulled away.

“You,” she said, “me, Remus and Lily are going to find Andromeda. You,” Regulus, “take her,”
Daphne, “and find Pandora. Meet in the courtyard in twenty minutes. We’ll figure out where to go
from there.”

Nobody seemed to object to this. It made sense for Regulus the sleuth to seek out Pandora and for
him to take Daphne, who was arguably the biggest liability they had; while the four of them had
Sirius to sniff out the opposition, and a bigger number for whatever Bella-led force was leading the
search party for this sword.

Remus nodded, tightening his grip on the dagger. Daphne clasped her hands together. Lily held
onto Sirius tighter, her eyes glowing red now with the strenuity; as Dorcas set off in one direction,
Daphne in the other, Sirius turned to his brother.

He pulled him into his neck by one bloody hand in his messy hair. Regulus hugged him back with
equal briefness, but equal childlike desperation.

“I’ll get her,” whispered Sirius.

“You better,” replied Regulus.

And then he was gone almost as quickly as he had fallen into their embrace.

Lily and Sirius turned, and Remus slid into his side, arm in arm to help him go even though he was
significantly stronger than he was even five minutes ago.

“She said her vault in the armoury,” muttered Dorcas, turning back to them. “Where would an
armoury be?”

Remus and Lily blinked, shrugging.

Sirius took a deep breath in.

“I can’t tail Andromeda because of our scent-blockers,” he murmured. His voice was still croaky,
his physique still very evidently injured but there was a slight spring back in his step, a
determination in his heterochromatic eyes. “But I can find Bella. She’s probably our best shot.”

“Go towards her, then,” replied Dorcas, and Sirius took another breath and continued walking, Lily
at his side.

“Go towards Bellatrix,” muttered Remus, offhandedly to Dorcas. “What kind of a fucking world.”

She snickered, and on they went.

Round the corner they encountered three vampires that Dorcas and Remus killed silently and
skilfully. It seemed to be a universal truth to the party that they would take the heed in keeping the
path clear, and silent; for Lily burning them would result in screams of agony and Sirius did not
have the strength to take them out as efficiently as he might’ve. So, a headshot for the both of
them. No guns. A silent knife. It felt almost like a held breath. It felt almost like training again,
trajectories in the dim light; they hit it, every single time.

“Here,” Sirius hissed, when they came across a side staircase; the four of them climbed it quickly,
light on their feet. Remus, who was first in line, crouched behind the banister to survey the
landing. Dorcas settled in behind him.

“Give it a minute,” she muttered.

A candle flickered, lit and placed gently on a decorative chest. There was a regal-looking rug
trailing the middle of the hardwood floor, and a withering plant in the corner, where the hallway
curved. Remus blinked, squinting through the balusters. As of present vampires could not smell
them and could not overhear them, but footsteps could not be wiped out, as light as they were.

Dorcas moved slyly, like a wraith, side-stepping up and onto the rug so as not to make noise and
pressing her back to the corner. Remus watched, waiting, as she stood prepared. Soon enough a
vampire came circling around the corner, and in a split second Dorcas plunged a stake into his
heart, holding him by the back of the neck and lowering him to the floor gracefully, soundlessly.
The three of them stood up and tip-toed along the hallway to greet her, but she held up a hand.

Silence. Remus inhaled. So did the person around the corner.

He leaned down slowly to the corpse, and with Dorcas’ help held him up, standing.

“Three,” he mouthed, “two,” he turned to Sirius and Lily; “Duck.”

They threw the corpse into the line of fire and ducked to the ground, feeling the heat of weapons
soaring above them and ricocheting on the nice walls. They ripped the wallpaper and embedded
into the corner that Dorcas had been pressed against barely a moment prior.

She got up immediately and, launching herself out into the corridor, lobbed a throwing knife that
got who they discovered was a witch in the sternum. He died instantly.

Remus got up, and found he was at eye-vision with the oppressing weapon, embedded into the
wall. He pulled the spirally, sharp piece of metal out, and debris crumbled from it.

“Ninja stars,” he said, rather impressed. “Huh.”

Lily helped Sirius up and lit a flame in her hand as Dorcas gestured for them to go; they followed
her, breaths held for dear life, footsteps muted on the soft royal red carpet.

After coming across two witches patrolling—one that Remus slit the throat of, one that Lily burned
grimly, a flaming hand to his mouth so he could not scream—they ended up at an interchange, a
wide space with two visible doors, both just an ominous-looking as the other. Sirius could not
pinpoint which she was in. But Bella’s scent lay thick and brooding in this section of the house.

This part felt less like a house and more like a castle. It was darker, marble-floored and brick-
walled, devoid of portraits in favour of weapons, animal carcasses, draperies on the walls soaked in
blood. The further they got out of the facade of the ball, the fanciness and the regality, the more
things felt like they were just spiralling into horror.

They looked at each other.

“Is it worth splitting up further?” asked Lily.

“We wouldn’t be alone, at least,” said Remus, looking to Sirius, who was now standing erect and
alert despite the grotesqueness of his injuries; stemmed blood flow but sticky remnants trickling
down his neck.

“I’ll go with Lily,” said Dorcas, nodding her head to the first door, which had a stain glass window
on the top of it in the shape of an arch, though the image was incomprehensible and almost
certainly anti-ecclesiastical, blood red stains tinging the room the same colour.

Lily made sure that Sirius would be okay, and then nodded, separating herself from him and
passing over to her side, in which Remus and Sirius would enter the second door; black with a
golden-green handle and the overwhelming smell of methane the closer one got.

Remus wrapped his hand around the door handle, and then looked at Sirius. Locked eyes with
Dorcas across the hall.

She nodded. And then she was gone.

Remus looked again to Sirius, who was so unlike himself and yet so, so Sirius, looking at him like
the world could melt away and they could conquer whatever was in there together. He inhaled.

“Together?” he asked, gently.

“I think so,” Remus whispered back, and Sirius placed his hand over Remus’ own and pushed
down the door handle, opening them to darkness.

The most glaringly obvious part to the room that they could see once the door opened and closed
behind them was the huge, stone archway.

It was colossally tall. The room as it formed around it was in the structure of a smooth stone dome
with a small skylight at the top showcasing nothing but grey. The point in which it opened left you
about eight feet in front of the stone arch, and inside it lay a light white sheen, dreamy; like silk
mixed with magic, the consistency of a pure truth potion.

Remus recognised very quickly, taking a quick survey of the area, that the arch was a tunnel—a
tunnel of magic. The whole room was one big circle; there were shelves and cabinets lining the
walls, two stone steps to take down to get to the circular station in which the arched cylinder itself
was placed.

Sirius turned, preoccupied with the potions. There were vials of blood and tubs of newt and broths
of God-knows-what in cauldrons on the desks, shelves and cabinets. Heads of Goblins and tails of
ferrets and crushed up pills and pure mercury in a beaker with a cork in the top, left alone in a ring
stand. There was various laboratory equipment scattered around. There was a whole cabinet just of
blood in vials. As they walked, as they circled, there were books laid out; there were potions, there
were electric wires and sparking, contained blue fires under glass domes. There was the arch.

For as they got closer to the other side, Remus noticed that, halfway down the cylinder—halfway
down the tunnel—it began to darken. The magic. It blended in so seamlessly one might not notice
it was going until it was gone, unless you stepped back and looked at the whole thing–a tunnel that,
at one arch’s end, blinks with sentient white, creamy magic, blending gently into darkness until, at
the other end, it was nothing but shadow. Remus fast-walked to the exact opposite side, in which
he could see the door they entered over the top of the tunnel, and he was faced with the opposite-
siding arch; it was entirely dark.

He looked around, found a lone rock on the ground from the way the corners of the room were
crumbling, and, stepping down cautiously onto the bottom step, crouched down and rolled it in.

The stone did not pass through anything. It simply rolled through the arch, further and further, and
within two seconds it was too dark to see anything.

“What the hell,” Sirius murmured from behind him, as Remus stood up; he had been watching.
“What is that?”

“I don’t know, but don’t go near the arches,” he muttered, looking it up and down, “I don’t like it.”

Sirius nodded, and began to say something. It was probably something important, but as soon as he
began to speak Remus turned to him. And his face fell instantly.

“You’re bleeding again,” he said, brows knitting together.

He took a step forward and took Sirius’ chin in his fingers. Tilting his head to look at the wound on
his cheek, the worse one; the abrasion that had healed as he’d fed.

He turned Sirius’ head a little bit more. And it was at that point that he felt the blinding pain in his
wrist.

“Ah,” he hissed, dropping it immediately. He held it in his other hand and felt saliva pool in his
mouth at the feeling, a cold wash of dread falling over him. It felt like it had when it had been
falling apart. After Narcissa broke it.

“What?” Sirius asked, and then he began to cough. It was once, twice, three times into his hand.
Remus looked up at him, fingers beginning to tremble with the shots of pain darting through him
like lightning from his wrist, and saw him bring his hand back from his mouth, coated in blood.

He shivered, freezing cold and nauseous with pain, his vision blurring. As Sirius swayed, slightly,
blood dripping from his (now bloodshot again) grey eye like tears, it hit him all at once.

“The room,” he said, quickly, shaking, “it’s undoing all magical healing.”

His wrist was healed with magic. Sirius’ strength was healed with magic. It was opening all
wounds again.

“We need to go,” he said, desperately, as Sirius turned, coughing again, one hand smearing blood
on the table and one dripping it from his mouth, and Remus got three steps before something
happened, something odd, something extraordinary.

The room seemed to go dim, and the stains in which Sirius’ blood had shed began to glow.

Glow, luminescent, like a bright shining UV light.

He pulled back. Stared at it. Stared at his hands; they were glowing too.

And, in an instant, multiple things around the room lit up like stars in the sky. Some of them were
blood smears, but not many; most of them came from vials in the cabinets, potions in cauldrons and
beakers shimmering through and even, across the room, a spellbook, flipping to a page and a
splotch in the top corner glowing, from where blood had been shed via a papercut.

There were multiple glowing vials in the cabinet to his right, and Remus staggered over to it
instantly, finding that, aptly, the vials were labelled, little label-maker stickers on the glass
placements they were being held in.

Elladora, it read, Belvina, Cedrella, Phineas, Arcturus, Orion. He leaned over, one glowing
brighter than the rest, the brightest star;

“Sirius,” he breathed.

Beside him, Regulus.

Sirius, Sirius, Sirius behind him held onto the table behind him for dear life, breathing heavily;
Remus tried to help him up with his good arm. They didn’t get much further than the goddamn
cabinet before Sirius fell to the side and Remus fell to his knees, beside each other; as his broken
wrist hit the floor his vision got cloudy.

But “Come on,” he breathed, almost choking, “get up, get up–” and Sirius got up, shaky breaths,
determination; and then something lit up. Something that caught his attention and made them
stagger, into a table, Remus’ wrist banging against it.

He cried out in pain, gritting his teeth. He felt like he was going to throw up. Sirius' hands were
trembling, held onto him, but his eyes were elsewhere.

“Look,” he breathed, pointing a shaky finger towards the arch. “Look.”

The arch was being undone, as well, except perhaps not in the way to be expected. The glossy
white magic, foggy and pernicious, dreamy and delusiatory and toxic; it was eating at the darkness,
ever so slowly but surely, swirls of light and dark fighting each other, but this was not even the
most important part. For in the midst of that darkness, a shape was entirely lit up, just like the vials
of blood.

It was a sword. Incredibly, the shape of a sword, glowing, bioluminescent in the darkness.

The sword floated upwards, and began to move, as the magic progressed quicker. It moved and it
moved, across the darkness, until it made it past the arch and disappeared.

Reappearing as she turned in its usual regal silver, at the hand of Andromeda, who looked like
Andromeda.
“For fuck’s sake, Sirius,” she muttered, and then she sped to them so quickly Remus barely
registered the rush in his hair before he was outside, the door shut harshly behind him.

He fell on all fours and then collapsed on his bad wrist, but felt the satisfaction of it begin to heal
almost immediately. Sirius coughed maniacally beside him on the floor for a few moments, and
then looked up, at Andromeda, looking like a knight with the sword in her right hand and a blazing
fist in her left.

“God damnit, Sirius, I had a plan,” she hissed. His face contorted instantly into that of utter
indignation.

“What fucking plan?!” he almost screeched. Remus pushed himself up and on his backside,
leaning against the wall on the floor, breathing in and out now that he could. Willing the nausea to
go away. His vision spotted back into existence. “We had a plan! What the fuck are you doing?!”

She raised her arms high above her head and began to pace as Sirius berated her.

“We can’t afford for you to just go rogue, Dromeda,” he was saying, venomous and crisp,
perversely irritated with her and Remus understood why, “we could’ve been gone and avoided
everything–”

“We never could’ve avoided this,” she said, gravely, turning to him and pointing with the sword.
From the look on Sirius’ face, he was just as confused as Remus was, which comforted him a little
bit.

“Avoided what?!” he choked out, almost laughing with exasperation, looking at the sword, “any
ulterior motive you have with that thing you should have run by me.”

Andromeda turned her head, looking towards the door that Lily and Dorcas had gone into. For a
second, she looked panicked.

“Sirius,” she said, desperately, turning back. “I’m so sorry for this.”

“For what?”

Sirius barely even got the last syllable out before she was behind him, snapping his neck, a clean
break. He crumpled to the floor without another sound.

Remus, horrified, scrambled up; she turned to him as he, on complete instinct, went for her with his
knife.

As he moved she repeated her sentiment, I’m so sorry. And then she dug her hand into a pocket
Remus didn’t even know she had in her dress, and blew something in his face that made him pass
out, instantly.

***

The first sensation Remus regained upon waking was touch. Which is how he knew, instantly, that
his arms were being held behind his back.

It took a moment or two of grasping onto the rest of his senses before he was able to move; to hum,
blearily, blink his eyes open, swallow down the putrid taste in his mouth. Squeezing his eyes shut
and blinking against the light he raised his head, and the minute it was raised, he felt the press of a
cold blade against the soft skin of his throat.
Fantastic.

He opened his eyes and was met with a rally.

They were in, undoubtedly, what had been used as a meeting room; dark and gothic, marble
flooring and stone brick walls with thin, tall windows slitted into the stone, like arrowslits but
huge. He was on his knees on the floor, hands held behind him with someone’s one hand and a
knife against his throat with the other; sitting in the middle of the room, he had a perfect view of
two lines of Riddle’s soldiers on each side of him.

Facing the front stood another rally; Druella and Cygnus Black were there, standing out from the
crowd of the dark-clothed in their ball gowns and suits. A few more people who looked
distinguishingly Black lined behind them.

At the forefront, Bellatrix, rocking on her feet in excitement, tongue caught between her teeth.

And in the dead middle, up on a platform, was placed a regal, gothic wooden chair. Two spikes on
either side, the fabric black and cushioned, the end of the arms carved into snakes and a drape
attached to it like a veil seeping out of the sides like pooling blood.

On it, on his throne of darkness, sat Tom Riddle.

His face was calm, his features sagged but alive, dead but here, powerful but not. That pestilential
madness in his eyes. Drunk and malnourished. Nothing of the facade in the ballroom; here he was
all mad.

There you are, Remus thought.

He could barely turn his head as it was restrained, but in straining his eyes to attempt to do so he
could see Lily beside him, her hands in handcuffs—witch handcuffs, he registered, like the ones
they used on Pandora—and Dorcas on his other side. Sirius, he presumed, would be on one of the
ends. He did not know which one. But it was just them.

And here he was. In the endgame.

Because of Andromeda.

Andromeda betrayed them.

That was all he could add up in his mind. She betrayed them. She snapped Sirius’ neck and she
knocked Remus unconscious. And for what? Why? She was not standing here, beside her parents
and her sister. They were alone. She was alone, now. Remus couldn’t wrap his head around it. It
didn’t—he couldn’t make it make sense. Unforgivably, he felt tears pool in his eyes, but they were
unwanted; he blinked them away, and he looked back at Riddle.

Riddle was looking directly at him. But when he spoke, it was not him that he addressed.

“Bring him to me,” he said, booming through the icy, silent room like a bleating siren.

His voice was so much colder than it had been in the ballroom. Terrifyingly cold. An actor’s
narrative.

Remus swallowed, utterly terrified, but found it was not him that was addressed when he heard
shuffling from the side; sure enough, there was Sirius, being dragged from his left side as if he did
not have legs by two burly vampires. He was thrown on his knees before Riddle, and the three
Black’s circled around him like vultures.

There was silence, for a moment, as Riddle surveyed him, and they surveyed Riddle, and then;

“Well?” he hissed, top lip curling, at the three of them. “He is not my nephew.”

The three of them jumped immediately, Druella flicking her carved hair over her shoulder and
crouching down. She pulled his head up with her hands on his chin, just as Remus had done, and
after a moment her mouth curled into a gentle smile.

“Oh, you have hidden yourself well for five-hundred years, dear Sirius,” she muttered, stroking his
hair, half his and half not. She hummed. “It is a pity your parents are not alive to watch you burn.”

“It is him?” Riddle asked, though it was more monotonically, a statement rather than a question.

Druella got up immediately, straightened her back, and bowed.

“Yes, my Lord,” she said, hushed, her voice almost sure of herself but not quite, not quite; “it is in
the eyes. They are sequentially Black.”

Riddle took this in. And then he straightened his head.

“Bellatrix,” he said. She was up in half a second.

“Yes, my Lord?”

His lip quivered, in irritance, as if it should be obvious. “Your verdict.”

She took a deep breath in.

“I believe that it is him, my Lord.”

“You were unsure previously.”

“He has healed,” said Bellatrix, cowering her head slightly, not looking him in the eye, “partially,
and behind the bloodstains I can see what is undoubtedly he—and his brother’s—eyes.”

Riddle took a moment to absorb this, and then looked over her, at the three of them in the middle of
the room still with knives to their throats.

“If this is, indeed, Sirius Black,” he said, “what of the blood-traitor, Regulus Arcturus?”

It was a general question. It was a very long moment before anybody replied.

“Men are scouring the grounds, my Lord,” said an unidentifiable guard. “There is no news.”

Riddle’s lip pinched in one corner, but he said nothing more on the matter.

His eyes flickered back to Remus, who was holding his breath.

“And what of the humans?” he said, not dropping their gaze. Bellatrix brushed her hair out of her
face and bowed once more before she spoke. “Who are they?”

“I believe, my Lord, that they are the hunters that Sirius is cohabitating with,” she said, quickly.
“That they are the hunters that killed my husband.”

“And what was on their person?”

Two people almost immediately scuttled up the side of Remus, feet tapping comically on the
laminate floor. They bowed in front of Riddle, raising what Remus could see to be his and Dorcas’
pouches, their knives and their stakes. He closed his eyes. He was completely unarmed.

Pandora, Regulus, he thought, desperately; Pandora or Regulus, or even fucking Daphne; God, we
really need you right now.

Riddle dismissed them with a wave of his hand, and stood up.

Every single soldier in the room dropped on one knee, to bow, including the Black’s.

He walked past the lackey like that of a God, hands darting around almost dreamily, as if curious to
feel the air around him. Stepping light-footed down the stone steps he made it to Sirius, whose
head was drooping but not of respect, of hatred. To avoid looking at he whom he once destroyed,
put back together again like Humpty Dumpty, terrorising the villages on his wall once more.

Riddle pulled his head up viciously via his hair, and, for the first time, smiled. With teeth.

“Sirius Black,” he croaked, gently, as if he was an old friend reuniting with someone once held
dear to them. He held Sirius by the back of the neck and looked him down, up and down, trailing
his long, disgusting fingers over his cheek, down his neck, to his clavicle. Splaying a palm over his
chest and rubbing it, rubbing his hand all over Sirius as if placing his mark there or seeking
retribution over that of whom ruined the hand, fatefully, sixty years ago. He trailed it back up to the
bottom of his chin and held his head up. “It has been so very long.”

Sirius did not reply. He tilted his head up, looked Tom Riddle in the eye, and spat on him.

Riddle didn’t flinch.

Not breaking eye contact, he brought his hand slowly up to his face, and wiped his cheek.

There was a long moment of silence.

“He shall be executed,” Riddle boomed, unmoving, “publicly, in the ballroom. He shall receive a
sentence of death on charges of tyranny, treason and the felony theft of a dark heirloom artefact,
and he shall be lain waste to the mourning of the sun and, furthermore, decapitated. Any
sympathisers identified shall be executed alongside him. He shall be made an example of.”

Everybody nodded, except for Remus, Dorcas and Lily. Riddle let him go, let his head drop, loose
—Sirius had given up, given up entirely—and it took Remus a moment to register the charges,
being tyranny, treason, and theft——theft of the missing sword that Andromeda had betrayed them
for.

The sword that was held in the arms of two soldiers standing behind Bellatrix. Completely intact.
And definitely not in Andromeda’s possession.

Remus was indescribably confused.

Riddle stood up. Everyone looking up immediately looked down again.

“My Lord,” said Bellatrix, standing, as Riddle ushered the guards to drag Sirius aside, “what shall
we do with the humans?”

Riddle's eyes flickered to them. Dorcas, Remus, and Lily, in sequence. He stopped on Lily.
“We may be able to make use of the witch,” he said, contemplatively. Remus looked at Sirius.
Beseeching. “As for the hunters…” Riddle looked down at Bellatrix, and she didn’t even look
away; she was so enraptured, so filled with anticipation she was leaning forward on her feet.

“My Lord?” she prompted.

“I believe the hunters are your dues, dear Bella,” he said, slowly, “they did kill your husband, after
all.”

He sat back down on his throne.

“My Lord,” she started, “for clear transparency, so I am not mistaken; you are implying that… I
may kill them?”

Riddle stared at her.

And then he nodded.

“You may kill them.”

A pit of white-hot dread formed in Remus’ stomach, like the breaking away of debris on a rock, an
avalanche let loose all of a sudden; he struggled to breathe. He was trying to think analytically,
autopilot, autopilot, autopilot; he was trying to figure out how to get out, but they were riding on
other people, they were waiting. They had no power here. And Bellatrix was turning like a sly
ghost and Remus thought, of every close call in his life, this is the end. This is the end. This is the
one that we don’t make it out of.

Sirius’ head had snapped up. His eyes were blazing, fierce, and on Remus. An encyclopedia of
antonyms, he went from being stoic still to thrashing, trying to move, hissing and yelling. But he
was held down by his aunt and uncle.

“Don’t you touch him—” he hissed. His feet scuffed on the floor as they held him back. It echoed.
“Don’t you dare—”

“Oh, shut him up, Mother,” Bellatrix groaned, rolling her eyes. “Such a whiner.”

“I will kill you all,” he growled, heaving, eyes dilated to hell, “You lay a finger on him and I’ll rip
you to fucking shreds—”

“That’s quite enough of that,” Druella murmured, grabbing him by the jaw viciously and yanked
his head up, so he was facing the ceiling. So he couldn't even look at Remus. She shut his mouth,
so he couldn’t protest any more. He didn’t stop trying. But he got nowhere.

Bellatrix grinned, making direct eye contact with Remus.

“This one is yours, then, Sirius?” she called, her voice booming through the room. She skipped a
little, turning to look at him. “Your little hunter toy? He looks… delicious.”

Muffled thrashing.

“Oh, calm yourself, Sirius, I am not going to kill him yet,” she drawled, walking towards him. “He
looks like he can put up a fight. What a shame it would be, to let a hunter go so quickly, hm? When
we could have such fun? Give me that. Thank you.”

She took the knife from the vampire holding Remus’ back. The weight dissipated against his neck
as she held it in her dainty hands.

“Hmm,” she hummed, tucking her hair behind her ear and cocking her head. She smiled at him.
“You’re rather well-behaved. Not like the other one.” Her eyes flickered to Dorcas, who hadn’t
stopped squirming, and then back. “Shall we put that to the test?”

Remus’ breath shook. She was inches away from his face.

“Shall we show Sirius just how well-behaved his pretty boy can be?” she repeated, biting her lip in
a smile.

“Fuck you,” Remus whispered.

Her face fell.

She stood. Moving to step around him, Remus caught Sirius’ eye. Druella had relinquished her
hold on his jaw so he could see, but her hand was still clamped over his mouth, her hand in his
hair.

A bit of shuffling behind him, and then Remus felt the cold press of a knife against his throat
again.

His eyes fluttered shut.

“If you move an inch,” Bellatrix whispered, into his ear from behind, “the knife goes into your
throat, darling.” A pause. “And Sirius, if you move an inch, the knife goes into your darling’s
throat.”

She pressed the side of the blade into the ball. He gagged a little on it. And then she tilted his head
with her other hand, hissed, and sunk her fangs into his neck.

Right over his scar.

Remus gasped. But he was still as a statue. His hands were shaking profusely; every nerve receptor
telling him to run, to move, but he couldn’t—he could just sit there, on his knees, and take the hurt.
Feel it. Looking directly into Sirius’ eyes across the hall. Sirius, being forced to look at him back.
There were tears in his eyes. Bellatrix pulled back and then bit him again, in a different place, and
he had to bite his tongue to prevent himself from moving. His chest was twitching. Pain shot all
over his body; but, utterly, he was still.

After a minute that felt like a hundred, she drew back. Remus felt the blood spill immediately.

“See,” she drawled, smile in her voice, running her fingers through his hair. “That wasn’t so hard,
was it?”

The blade dropped from his throat. He exhaled in relief.

It would not be long-lived.

Turning back, she looked down on him. She raised her eyebrows.

“I didn’t say you could move,” she whispered.

His blood ran cold.

“Well,” she said, spinning a little jovially. A few of the guard laughed. “Shall we try that again?
But this time, go all the way? Give Sirius a show. It’ll be his last, after all.”

She turned, giggling, with a finger to his mouth to taunt Sirius.

And then, in a split second, she was behind him.

She pressed the knife back against his throat. Sirius screamed, but it was muffled; everything was
silent, as cold met cold, and Remus closed his eyes. He took a deep breath in, waiting. Waiting.

“No,” came a moan, then repeated as a scream. The sound of feet sliding across laminate, heavy
footsteps as if holding back something large, magnificent, “NO––”

Remus opened his eyes. Bellatrix’s hand faltered at the distraction; the both of them turned
simultaneously to the side to see Dorcas, who had been resistant but relatively quiet. Neck bleeding
because of the strenuity she put on the knife as she struggled, as she still struggled, tears falling
from her eyes, looking at Remus.

He shook his head. Began frantically shaking it.

“Stop,” he murmured, panicked, but it was too late. “Stop.”

The sound of feet on flooring, grunts of strenuous activity. Dorcas was never going to let them get
what they fucking wanted without a goddamn fight. If that’s what they want, that’s what they’ll
get. But Remus felt sick.

Standing up, Bellatrix grinned.

“Oh, the hunter truly is loved!” she cried, spreading her arms out wide. Laughter rumbled through
the guard.

Three strides across, Bellatrix knelt in front of Dorcas and the vampire holding her back
immediately let go.

“Hello,” she said, and then she giggled. Dorcas scowled at her, breathing heavily and brutally. “He
is… your friend, I presume?”

She said nothing. Just raised her chin up. Defiant.

“Your best,” Bellatrix said, pouting, “best friend?”

“You’re going to get what’s coming to you,” Dorcas growled, top lip curling, bottom lip trembling.
“I’m going to kill you myself.” Then, looking over her shoulder at Riddle on his throne; “I’m going
to kill him.”

There was a pause, and then Bellatrix burst out laughing.

Her cackles filled the air, she looked around, at the soldiers who found permission to laugh too, a
murmur of hilarity throughout the room.

Remus looked at Riddle. He was not laughing.

Bellatrix curled her index finger underneath Dorcas’ chin, her laugh fading to a wicked smile, hair
falling forward almost like a halo, or a tunnel, one thing to another; telephone. The light in her eyes
as she got the idea. While the light in Remus’ chest faded to somewhere he might never get it back.

“Oh, you’re not going to kill me, my dear,” Bellatrix said, taking her hands and brushing Dorcas’
hair out of her face. Her tongue got caught between her teeth, and her smile kept twitching and
fading; she was a monster. Entirely unhinged and unabashedly insane.

She leaned forward.

“You’re going to kill him,” she hissed.

Dorcas’ eyes went blank.

Remus was immediately let go of by the figure holding him back, and he fell forward, his arms
automatically reaching out to cushion his fall. He stared, wide-eyed, at the floor, trying to
conceptualise what he had just heard. Trying to— trying–

Bellatrix got up.

“Move,” she said, skipping along the hall, past Remus, “to the side, yes, that’s it, take the witch
with you. We have a show to watch.”

He turned. Horribly, horribly slowly.

He would find himself, for years to come, wishing he had not.

For the look on Dorcas’ face might haunt him for the rest of his life and eons after it. His best
friend, turning to him, eyes wide with glassy tears, mouth ajar; crooked, her chest rocketing up and
down but no breath seeming to be able to be acquired against the compulsion, against the knife that
had been deposited into her hand by an extraneous guard member that she was now twirling
between her fingers. Compulsion, compulsion. Face entirely broken, there were tears falling from
her eyes.

She took a step forward, and Remus scrambled back. One foot forward, and then the second to
match it. She inhaled, and it came out as a sob.

“No,” moaned Sirius, from across the room, managing to yank his way out of his aunt’s grip.

Looking back at the both of them, his face turned lethal, deadly; he hissed, and grotesque or not,
blue eye, brown eye, it made no difference to his blood-stained teeth—his fangs menacing and the
way that, even injured, he ripped himself out of the stronghold of Druella Black and broke her
neck.

She fell and he beelined across the room only to be stopped halfway by Bellatrix herself. She
grabbed him by the throat and held him up, like a rag doll.

He was the hanged man by the bloody burnt fingerprints of his foil, the eldest cousin. Wicked
smile on her face once again.

Sirius made eye contact with Remus, and a single tear fell from his eye, and he could not mouth
anything but Remus knew what he meant.

I love you, Remus mouthed.

And then, with one hand, Bellatrix snapped Sirius’ neck.

He crumpled to the floor like a dirty rag, and she brushed her hands off as if to corroborate this.

“That should give us enough time,” she said, and then she cackled, leaving him there, leaving
Remus, jaw open, about to perhaps throw up or perhaps cry or perhaps scream and burn the whole
house down; not ready for the end and ready for it entirely in turn, one step, each step closer to him
like a thunderclap.

He took one last, yearning look at Sirius, and then turned back to Dorcas. Bellatrix skipped to the
sidelines, and it was just them. In the middle of the hall. Dozens of eyes on them. They all fell
away.

He got up.

“Remus,” she whispered, sniffing, taking another step, holding her knife in front of her. “Remus, I
don’t want to do this.”

Her tears fell silently on her cheeks, her bottom lip trembling but her face as collected as it can be.
She was probably thinking about him. Putting on a face for him. While he was putting on a face for
her. The same wavelength, endlessly. How he loved her.

“I don’t want to do this,” she said, again, and her voice broke. Remus gasped something of a sob
and stepped back, into a guard who pushed him forward.

Bellatrix sighed.

“Someone give him a weapon, too,” she said, “this is boring.”

A vampire appeared out of nowhere, speeding in next to Remus, holding out a knife that was
burning his hand. Remus did not even acknowledge the vampire’s presence, to the point where he
huffed, grabbed his hand for himself and put the dagger directly into it. He almost dropped it, but
he didn’t. Perhaps it was instinct.

He circled around, to get more space, surveying the room. He looked to Lily.

She was crying, sobbing, silently; he caught her eye and she perked up, jangling the handcuffs that
were made for witches. Her fingers sparked but nothing came out. She seemed to be
communicating something, but all Remus could garner was that she was powerless. They were
alone.

It’s okay, he mouthed to her, because he couldn’t do anything else. She cried harder.

And he turned back around.

“Dorcas,” he said, slowly, as she gained on him, twirling her dagger and swapping hands. “You
can break out of this.”

“I can’t,” she growled, running at him. He blocked her with his arm and kicked her, sending her
staggering backwards, and she came back to jab at him; their knives slicing together and off each
other and creating a sound of metal on metal that reverberated through the air. Remus ducked to
avoid a blow and ran, underneath her arm and across the room, hyperventilating and looking
around for anything, anyone. Even if he got out of here she’d hunt him to the ends of the earth, but
at least there’d be something, some option, something to do, some magical solution. Magical
problems have magical solutions, Remus is all alone, he’s alone. There are at least fifty in this
room and he is all alone.

Sirius’ body was empty and barren on the floor, and Lily was powerless. She was nothing more
than the human that Remus dragged into this war all those months ago. Dorcas, gaining on him. If
they’re going down they’re going down together, that’s what they’ve always said. But he couldn’t
find that to be of any use right now.
Please, he thought, the only coherent thought, outside of reflex and Dorcas coming at him,
punching him round the face; he kicked her back and nicked her arm, she swung at him and he
caught her wrist, bent it backwards, punched her to get her to stagger back so he could run, please,
please, please, IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT?

He turned. He turned in a circle. All of these people, watching, silently. Tom Riddle on his wooden
throne. Dorcas, coming back to him.

Stop, think… please, he thought. Please just let them be saved before Bellatrix kills her too. I’m
ready to die. I’m ready to die. Please just let them be saved before Bellatrix kills her too.

I’m ready to die. For you.

“Dorcas,” he hissed, holding both of her fists in his as she pushed; he reached his foot out and
tripped her up, and she fell flat on her ass. He got a few feet on her. She got up. The tears still fell,
she shook her head every time she approached, sobbing. “Dorcas. It’s okay.”

She did not stop running at him but her face faltered, from that of upset to that of confused upset.
She spun her dagger and went in for the attack again, like a black mamba, a snake darting in and
out with grace. Above everything else, Dorcas Meadowes had always been graceful, in her
gorgeous dress and makeup and her pearl-drop earrings. It is almost a mercy to be killed by her.

Remus just wished he could see her true face first. The face that, as of right now, was contorting in
anger. She got Remus on the cheek, cut him. He tasted blood as it smeared into his mouth, and he
staggered back, coughing.

“No,” said Dorcas, figuring out what he was doing. She was walking fast, now, Remus walking
backwards, as far as he could go before someone pushed him back into the circle and he staggered
again, underneath Dorcas’ arm. She simply turned and went for him again. Her eyes were wide,
her jaw open, heaving.

“Dorcas,” he said, staggering back again. A soft thing. He thought he might have smiled along
with it. Her name would always bring a smile to his lips, even after she killed him.

“No,” she repeated. “Fight back.”

She punched him again. He did not run backwards this time. She punched him once more, and he
fought back, but not really. He managed to push her away for a few moments, enough time for him
to scramble backwards, touch his lip—she busted it—taste the metallic blood in his mouth. She
punched him again.

“It’s okay,” Remus said, laughing bitterly, tears falling out of his eyes and she gained on him again.
Standing above him, she was almost terrifying. But Remus had never been scared of her. He never
would.

Standing above him, he looked at her. Coherent thought escaped him. All he could think is that the
two people that mean the most to him are going to be on this Earth for longer than he is. And all he
could think is that he’d give his soul, his life, he’d give every virtuous spirit that he’d ever
banished, every vampire he’s ever killed, every soul he’s ever chipped a little bit off of and shoved
in his drawer, he’d give it all away for them to be okay after he’s gone.

Please just let them be saved before Bellatrix kills her too.

Dorcas dropped to the ground. And Remus, without a second of hesitation, flipped his knife
around.
Pressed the tip of it to his chest, right over his heart.

“Turn that around,” she cried, voice trembling, thick with tears, she was sobbing, “turn it around.
Remus. Remus!”

“It’s okay,” he breathed, shaking his head. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

“Turn it around!”

He shuffled back a bit, on instinct, and she followed him, holding out her blade. Possibly the only
stable thing about her. Remus found it incredibly ironic that the only stable thing was her
instability. It’s his too. His hand around the hilt of his blade, tip pressing into his chest, was the
only stable thing about him. It’s the only thing he seemed to know was right. The only thing that he
could do. And he would do it for her.

Her chest was heaving. So, apparently, was his.

She punched him again. Prolonging it. He took it. Blood in his mouth. He’d take it again and again
and again and again and all of this is procrastination when they both knew how the ending would
be—

“Dorcas,” he said, as she gained on him, straddling him; he was still holding himself up, still
holding his blade to his chest. “Listen to me. I love you. You know that?”

“Remus,” she said, face thick with tears.

“It’s okay,” he whispered, shaking his head, lip trembling, into a smile that puffs the apples of his
cheeks up in a way only she could. “I don’t blame you. I don’t blame you.”

“Remus, stop it.”

“It’s you, it was always you, you idiot,” he murmured. She threw her own knife away, wrapped her
hands around his. Around the hilt of the blade at his heart. “You were going to live. You’re the
better hunter. We were never gonna live long lives, come on now, Dorcas, all I ever asked was that
I got to live mine with you.”

She pressed forward, sobbing, leaning forward, knocking her forehead against his. He closed his
eyes. He could feel the exact moment the wound broke skin, seeped blood into his shirt.

He smiled.

“You’re my best friend,” she whimpered, in between hollow breaths, nothing short of shattered,
fragments of each other in each other's orbit. Intrinsically one. Halves of a whole.

He opened his eyes. She had pulled back, so that their faces were close, but not touching, and he
could see her properly. Even her fake face was enough. He smiled again.

“I love you,” he whispered. Her face crumpled again, and she tightened her grip around his fingers.

She took a deep breath in.

“I love you too,” she wept, earnestly, a gentle setting, a silk press on an ivory headstone. Weaved
with love.

She closed her eyes.

They screwed shut, and the blade stopped moving. Remus took a deep breath, looked up to the
ceiling and then turned his head, salty tears falling onto his shoulder.

He managed to get one last look at Sirius, crumpled on the floor. His face was on show. But it was
not his face. Remus thought of his eyes. The blue. The bloodshot. Remus craved that hue of blue-
grey so deeply he thought he might be able to bathe in it, drink it, live on it. But he could recall it
by memory. It was fine.

He closed his eyes. He was ready.

A long, strenuous, torturous five seconds went by. In which the only sound was Lily silently
crying.

And then Dorcas gasped.

She dropped her fingers from the blade completely.

Remus opened his eyes, as she scrambled back, completely off of him, heaving, in shock, in pain,
or perhaps in happiness; he let his hand go slack, dropping the blade from the press of his chest,
but not from her hands.

“I–” she started, swallowing deeply, “I don’t– I’m not—”

“Dorcas,” he gasped, and without a second of hesitation she launched forward, pulled him in, as
tight as she could. Cried into his shoulder, I love you, I love you, sobs of gold, silver and platinum.

Remus smiled. He let himself smile.

He locked eyes with Riddle, over her shoulder.

His smile faded.

“Dorcas, I–” he started, as she pulled back, but he would not finish this sentence, for as he opened
his mouth to say whatever word was coming next Dorcas gasped. Her jaw fell wide open. Like it
had been broken.

As Tom Riddle appeared out of thin air behind her, and ripped her heart right out of her back.

Remus stood, motionless, as she looked at him one last time. He stood, and watched her eyes
flicker, one place, another, back to him. Back to him. And then she crumpled to the ground.

And… nothing happened.

It all stopped.

Everything sort of just…

… stopped.

Every sound vibration in the air, every light, every iris, every twitch of every finger, every stutter,
every broken bone. Mending itself, tying itself together like the shattered carcass of Remus’ wrist,
the shattered carcass of his body, nothing moved, in the moment, the moment he watched his best
friend fall to the floor; every shot of every gun was utterly silenced, nothing was real. Remus was
not real. This was not real.

Lily was not real, where she was on the other side of the room—unbeknownst to Remus but known
to you, reader, for you are real, and he is not, floating somewhere above himself as his best friend
lies dead in front of him—slowly burning herself out of her shackles, for they are built for witches
and she is a phoenix, they tame her power but do not entirely suppress it.

Sirius was not real. His neck popped back into himself and he took a breath—it was silent, Sirius
Black has taken silent breaths his whole life, he’s loud when he needs to be and quiet when he’s
trained to be, hammered into perfection but never really fit the mould, he’s the circle in the square
hole like Regulus is the triangle—Regulus is not real, somewhere unbeknownst to Remus, too,
everything is unbeknownst to Remus, even tense, past and present and future for he is standing, he
is standing in front of his best friend, who is dead. She is dead. She died.

The iron shackled around Lily’s wrists melted quickly and silently for she was sobbing, phoenix
tears as corrosive and magically productive as anything; molten iron was dripping onto her knees,
and she had bitten into her tongue so badly to silence the pain that she had drawn blood, but it had
proved to be effective because nobody had been paying attention to the silent, shackled, crying
witch, who was not silent, not a witch, and not shackled anymore, as the last of the iron trickled its
way down her charred wrists. And Remus was not real. He could be bathing in the hot iron, he felt
like he was, he probably could be, he could die and he would not realise it for as long as it would
take the Earth to realise that the sun has exploded, for his has.

Sirius Black’s eyes opened. One was blue and one was black. Both of them saw Dorcas. (Remus is
not real). Both of them saw Remus, Riddle, and both of them saw Lily, in almost the exact instant
that the guards saw Lily; but even tortured, bruised and beaten, Sirius Black was stronger than all
of them combined. (None of this is happening). The iron trickled down Lily’s wrists, onto her
knees, searing through her dress and onto her skin, and he made a decision. (All of this is
happening. In the past three seconds. All of this is happening. He still has his blade in his hand. He
still has his blade in his hand. He still has his blade in his hand he still has his blade in his hand he
still has his blade in his hand)

So two incredibly significant things happened, here, all at once. For one, Sirius Black, his neck
entirely healed and his consciousness restored, before anybody could notice that his neck was
healed and his consciousness was restored, made a decision. And so did Remus Lupin.

Within the span of one point five seconds, Sirius got up, Remus looked up from Dorcas’ body;
Sirius sped across to Lily, Remus looked Tom Riddle dead in the eye; Sirius knelt in front of her,
grabbed her hand, and she exploded; Remus let out what might be the most blood-curdling,
harrowing scream that any man had ever released, and, blade up, ran at him.

The sky lit up with throughs of fire like lightning, and the both of them, before Remus could even
get to him, were thrown to the ground. The entire line of soldiers on the side that Lily was being
held were eviscerated, instantly. Into ash. Thus was her power.

Bellatrix grabbed her sword.

Remus, still screaming, acutely unaware of what he was doing, something superhuman, he was
quite sure, something not right, nothing is right; scrambled over to Riddle before anyone else
could, and punched him, cold in the face. Down to the floor.

Another clap of the thunderous fire lightning hit the room, Remus could hear Lily screaming, her
siren sound, Sirius held onto her like a time knife, a vacuum of sorrow; the soldiers all around
Remus were on fire. It was chaos. Running like headless chickens, screaming and burning to death,
there were pieces of debris falling from the ceiling; Bellatrix was gaining on them, somehow
Remus knew—he did not know how—he did not know who he was, when he reached over to grab
the blade that Dorcas had been fighting with, and turned, hurling it backhanded with all his might,
lodging it directly in her throat—she staggered back on the impact, choking, and Remus returned to
Riddle, who looked amused, he looked murderous, somehow they were one in the same. He
punched him again and Riddle pushed him by the chest; they were already on the floor, but
somehow he pushed Remus to the floor, stood up over him. Remus got up as well, went in to punch
him, his fist caught in Riddle’s hand—went to stab him, got him in the chest, Riddle barely
flinched, other than a sort of cowering of his chest. Other than that, he was tame. He was
frighteningly, horrifically okay, against Remus, who felt like the wrath of the world was against
him. He was letting it happen. He was amused.

Lily blew the windows out. They both flinched at that. Dark Lords can still have their eyeballs
poked out by glass.

Fire, fire, fire, every-fucking-where. Remus was on fire.

No. Remus, coughing, fell to the floor, his hands and knees landing in glass. His left hand clasped
around a large shard of glass and it sliced through his palm, blood pouring out within seconds; he
didn’t care. He got up; Riddle was still here, motionless in the darkness, there were dementors
swirling around from the windows, trying to come inside, but Lily was too powerful, burning too
hot for them to penetrate properly; they were surrounded by fire. So much he could breathe it. But
he didn’t cough. He spat the blood out of his mouth, and sliced Riddle’s throat with the glass.

Riddle staggered back and began to laugh.

Loud, obnoxious cackles. Unhinged and insane. Laughing like a madman, there was blood on his
teeth and yet he looked so pristine.

The wound healed. There was nothing left. He had taken everything from Remus and he could not
even get a mark on him. He had taken everything from Remus and Riddle did not even know his
fucking name. Riddle did not even know his fucking name. Riddle did not even know his fucking
name.

“Fight back!” Remus screamed, gaining on him as he walked backwards, “you BASTARD, FIGHT
BACK!”

His throat was hoarse. He threw the glass into Riddle’s chest; he simply pulled it out. Remus
roared again. There was a crack of fire. It sounded like thunder. He went to stab him again.

Someone pulled him back.

“Remus,” cried Pandora, she had come in through the door, the fire had destabilised the entire
house, distracted them from their own fight; she was covered in blood. “Remus–”

He shook her off, so aggressively she staggered, and he threw his dagger into Riddle’s throat. He
choked for a moment, and it gave Remus satisfaction until he pulled it out, threw it back to him.
Pandora had to pull him down to duck. It clattered somewhere behind him.

“FIGHT BACK!” Remus screamed, once more, struggling as Pandora tried to drag him away, voice
thick with tears and war and loss and pain, “KILL ME, THEN!”, his face red, eyes wild and
maniacal, bloodshot, trembling with anger and trembling with fear and trembling with the fact that
he should be dead, “FINISH IT OFF!” he wants to be dead, Tom Riddle can finish him off. He
staggered. Riddle was still laughing.

“Remus, we need to–” Pandora was saying, but he was not paying attention, for Riddle was
looking at him.
Cocking his head.

Smiling.

He reached a hand into the air, held up an index finger, and dematerialised, from the finger
downwards, like Lily’s hair when she let the phoenix overtake her, he turned into black smoke,
grey dust with a golden, magic tinge; a wisp that blew upwards and blended itself into the
Dementors. He was one of them. He could become one. They took souls and he had nothing to
give them, nothing left to offer.

Remus screamed. He screamed again. He screamed again.

Pandora pulled him away, Lily’s fire still raging around them, and it was then and only then that
Remus registered just how many people were in this room. Ashes to ashes in the atmosphere,
everyone was burning, there were corpses on the floor and some were soldiers and one was Dorcas
but he could see a witch he recognised, and when had she got there, when had she died, who had
killed her, and why was Pandora crying, and is that Regulus on the far side of the room—

“Remus,” Pandora screeched, holding the sides of his face, “he’s here, he’s here,” who’s here?
Remus didn’t know. He’s here meant Tom Riddle, and Tom Riddle has taken everything; Lily,
Sirius, burning the excess in his name, by God where did their army come from and why are they
dying, they shouldn’t be dying, I should be dying, I should be dying.

He could not form coherent sentences. He could barely even register what was going on around
him; he barely even recognised when Lily powered down, her fire ceasing to exist in the air but
tacked onto the walls, licking up the house like a power hose, on bodies tripping around,
screaming, burning alive, Remus revelled in the smell of their burning flesh. But he could not form
coherent sentences.

Only about ten seconds had gone by since she’d pulled him away. It felt like a million.

(His holy water blade had clattered just beside them. He reached over and picked it up.)

“Remus,” said Pandora, shouting over the pain, over the chaos. “I need you to listen to me. Can
you do that?”

Yes.

“Dumbledore is here,” she said, swallowing with every word, like she had spikes up and down her
vocal cords. “They arrived at the dungeons after you guys destroyed the locket. He felt the surge.
Regulus managed to make comms to home, so our army is coming. And Dumbledore’s army is
flooding in. But they took a piece of my magic in my cell, and they’re going to use it to break the
wards on Boardwalk. They have the coding of my magic. They’re going to use it to break the
wards and bring the fight to Boardwalk to destroy us. Do you understand me? Remus!”

No, no, “Yes,” no, “no, they can’t—not there—” he moaned, chest heaving, bricks upon bricks.

“We’re balancing, right now,” she said; Remus watched Regulus take out three at once out of the
corner of his eye; more kept coming, some of theirs, some of ours. Flooding through the double
doors. Vampires jumping through the window, trying to avoid Lily’s fire. Some didn’t even get
that far. It licked up as they grasped the window pane and they were crisp by the time they hit the
floor. He watched a knife fly across the room and intercept a witch launching luminescent spells
across the room. Remus recognised that hunter. Next to him, he knew that one, too. Running
through the door to join the fight, by God, he knew that one, too. “Did you hear me, Remus?
We’re balancing between here and there, but Dumbledore’s here, so we have to kill him as soon as
possible so we can set up the fort at home. Where’s your basilisk blade?”

“My blade,” he said, pathetically, “my—destroyed, with the locket—”

“Sirius has one,” she said; almost immediately afterwards, the skies cracked with fire again. “And
Andromeda—”

“Betrayed us,” said Remus, bleakly.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No. She didn’t. She came for us—look, she’s over there.”

Remus turned, almost on instinct, to see Andromeda. With the sword. She wielded it as if she was
born to, like a pro, slicing and killing any of the soldiers she could. Bellatrix was swarmed a few
feet away, fighting, but just one glance told Remus that would be a showdown, she had her eyes
and kept it on the sword, even as her body moved for her.

And then Remus’ eyes moved to the skies, and he saw, amongst the fire, a darting of black and
white against the crimson.

Like the arch, like the tunnel, encapsulating the other and then breaking free. They tossed and they
turned until they fell, like asteroids, onto the altar in which Riddle’s throne sat, regal; one of them
rolled into it. He could not tell who, for they fell together, Riddle following the dementors
network, Dumbledore darting like lightning through the fire, it sure as hell did not affect him
anymore, his body was charred up to his neck, half of his face bruised and broken and yet,
somehow, he held immense power.

There he stood. The old man, his charred, wrecked body. Blasting Riddle against the wall with a
flourish of his good hand. He hit the wall and fell to the floor, coughing, but it only lasted a
moment or so. A blur of darkness and he was behind Dumbledore, holding him there, hissing and
trying to bite, bite bite bite; Dumbledore reached two hands up and brought down the sky, debris;
the ceiling cracked louder than Lily’s thunder and Riddle was apprehended, a landslide falling on
him, knocking him to the ground.

“Come on!” Pandora yelled, pulling at Remus, over the glass; the hall had filled, fights everywhere,
bodies everywhere. They ducked to avoid fire, staggered to avoid falling debris as the roof cracked
from above Dumbledore and Riddle and began to cave in on itself, and made it, eventually, to
Sirius and Lily. About five square feet out from where Lily sat was burnt, the floor charred and
black; it stained Remus' knees as he fell to the ground. Lily’s hair was entirely fire. Her hands were,
too.

“Are you okay?” was the first thing that Sirius asked, looking at him, wide-eyed, deep concern.
Once upon a time he might have kissed him. Now, Remus had one thing on his mind.

“Your blade,” he gasped.

Remus was going to end this.

Dumbledore was fighting Riddle, and it was an extravagant show. Some of the fire was put out by
a massive tsunami wave that he summoned; Lily frowned, knitting her brows together. The
phoenix, evidently, saw this as an affront, and she held out both palms and with a yell sent a streak
of fire so aggressive it collided with the water. She entirely counteracted the spell. The water fell to
the floor and almost instantly evaporated, and Dumbledore evidently had not been expecting this;
he faced a moment of shock that allowed Riddle to get the upper hand, pounce, attack with his
darkness, the dementors that followed him and gave him their power alongside the tyranny that he
had of his own, shadows from his palms. Dumbledore summoned fire of his own, pure light.
Waved it around like some messiah. The dementors cowered. There were people everywhere, they
were choking in darkness and fire. But nobody was falling and screaming, for the dementors only
wanted Albus.

Remus turned back.

“Your blade,” he hissed, again, and Sirius shook his head.

“I don’t have it,” he said. “They took it off me.”

Someone ran past them, behind Remus, and fell to the floor. Everywhere you listened, there was
the sound of a body falling.

“They had the stash,” Sirius continued, pointing at the throne; knocked over, now. Riddle and
Dumbledore, battling fiercely. Their pouches and their weapons had been somewhere over there.
But now the room was crowded in smoke and fire and Remus could see people from their army
fighting hunters and vampires and witches, could not see past them.

Pandora took a deep breath in.

She reached a hand up, and it began to glow a gentle white light. Six seconds, and then she opened
her eyes. The blade did not come.

“I can’t summon it,” she gasped. “Too powerful.”

“You have to go find it, then,” Sirius said, “there should be two left—”

“We don’t have time for this,” said Remus.

“Remus.”

He got up.

“Remus,” hissed Sirius. Remus looked at him. Maybe he was going crazy, or maybe there were
tears in his bloody black and blue eyes. “Where– where are you going?”

“I’m going to kill him,” he said, simply, and he got up. Walked away.

Somewhere behind him, vaguely, he heard Pandora yelling. Telling him he couldn’t use his holy
water blade to kill Dumbledore. That it wouldn’t work.

He had no qualms. Stabbing someone in the head, shooting someone in the heart will always break
a person. And he was running on blood and grief. Sometimes those are the most powerful things
that can happen to a person. He had no qualms.

Remus spun his way through the crowd like a missile.

Ruined. Ruinous.

With only his small dagger, the blade perhaps the length from the bottom of his wrist to the tip of
his middle finger, he spun it and stabbed it into each and every vampire he could see. Punched
them round the face, by the throat and pushed to the ground; a stab in the heart, a stab in the dark.
He had blood all over his hands. His own and others. He lathered it. It was on his face; a hunter
shot at a vampire he was fighting, and it splattered blood all over him. He turned, and recognised
this particular hunter from HI2. He had a dark glint to his face. From about fifteen feet away
Remus lobbed his knife and embedded it into his chest; in the time it took the hunter to reach his
hands up, grasp the hilt, and gasp, Remus was there, running at him and kneeing him up against the
wall. Out the chest, back in, out, back in. He watched the light leave his eyes and then his arm
moved for him as a vampire appeared behind him; he stabbed him through the throat without even
looking, turning his head as he choked. Out the throat, back in. Up. Headshot. He kicked him
away.

The fire raged above him, debris fell beside him. He killed two more vampires and a witch without
blinking, all while looking at the altar. Watching the flashes of light and the figures, darting,
fighting. And he made his way through. He was going to kill him. He was going to kill him.

“ALBUS!” Remus shouted, pulling his dagger out of a witch’s eye as he approached the altar, over
the uproar, entirely unhinged. Dumbledore turned. He was held, both hands up, by darkness.
Remus wasn’t sure how long the dementors would help Riddle, whether this was a permanent
thing or something that he needed to recharge; really, he did not care.

Dumbledore’s eyes were narrow. Riddle’s were dark. Remus’ were red, bloody, determined.

Riddle hissed at him, baring magnificent fangs.

“Give it up!” Remus yelled, over the screams, the fire and the detriment. “You’re not going to find
another one here! I destroyed it!”

Riddle let Dumbledore drop, immediately growling and moving to pounce, but Dumbledore got
there first; he waved one hand, throwing Riddle to the side and launching three different spells at
him, red smoke from his palms. After taking him out of commission for a moment, he turned to
Remus.

“Stay out of this, boy,” he growled, with his sunken face, his crooked lips. The rot was crawling up
his jaw and the side of his face; it had reached the corner of his mouth, and there were pieces of
him missing, like he had had meningitis. A sick, sick disease, a wave of nausea washed over
Remus; he was power-hungry, he wanted to be more, but being more made him less, being less
made him dead.

Remus actually laughed.

He dug into his pocket, drew out the locket that he had dazedly grabbed in the dungeon, and
launched it towards him.

It fell with a clatter, on the ground at Dumbledore’s feet.

“That was your only power source, right?” he called. Riddle roared. A quick glance showed that he
was still down, rallied on by four hunters from Dumbledore’s side and four witches from theirs.
Back to him, Dumbledore stared down at the locket. Remus laughed again. “You were trying to get
that back, right? Trying to find another one to suck the fucking life out of again?”

Dumbledore’s face dropped. Into something terrifying. He looked at Remus, and he seethed.

“It’s gone,” Remus said, emphasising, “It’s gone.”

“He has others,” said Dumbledore.

“You don’t know where they are!” he cried, looking at the rot on his face, “it’s over, Dumbledore.
Give up.” He raised his blade. Made sure the man’s eyes were locked on him. “Give up.”
As he was about to launch his blade into Dumbledore’s head, Riddle appeared behind the old man
and, in a second, dragged him away; all the way up onto the platform and behind the regal chair.
Out of sight.

It hit Remus all at once.

He hadn’t known.

Riddle hadn’t known that Dumbledore was one of his.

Remus gasped at their disappearance, as the hunters descended onto him having seen him threaten
their master; realising while he swung on autopilot that Riddle had not known that he had been
thwarted; of course he hadn’t. How could he have known? That he had created another; or,
perhaps, the Horcrux had created itself. Dumbledore’s ultimate consumption of his soul and his
power was a magical loophole that nobody had ever thought possible. And now it was here, and he
was dying. And Riddle had just, just realised that he could not let him die.

Power matches power, it all came down to power, power power power, it’s what they both wanted,
craved, innately; it’s what joined them together. For if the rot killed him, another Horcrux
destroyed. If Riddle killed him, another Horcrux destroyed. If Dumbledore killed himself, another
Horcrux destroyed. If Remus killed Dumbledore—

He did not get to finish that hypothetical.

He did not get to finish, for there was an explosion. Remus cowered alongside the rest of them as
the ceiling broke some more; a large chunk of rock knocked a hunter approaching him out. Though
Remus didn’t even see him collapse, someone grabbed him and yanked him out of the way.
Vamping to the side of the room.

“Are you alright?” Regulus asked, shouting over the chaos. Remus blinked at him, gaping. His
hands were drenched in blood. Regulus had bloody remnants of cuts all over his body, mussed hair
and horror in his eye. Around his mouth. His ultimate weapon.

“I need to kill him,” said Remus.

“You need to find the basilisk blade,” said Regulus; there was another explosion, they cowered. A
vampire ran up to them and Regulus moved swiftly, letting him take his place and then sinking his
teeth into his neck from behind. He ripped his head off. Remus turned, looking over the chaos; he
could barely see. From the dust, debris and fire.

But he could hear people screaming.

The fight had been paused. Riddle no longer had use for the dementors, so they’d begun doing
what they did best.

Charlie Weasley was screaming, on the floor. Tortured.

And then, just as Remus was about to yell, about to turn to Regulus, demand—something, he
didn’t know what, whatever he had to do to do the next thing, to kill Dumbledore—where was
Sirius—where was Pandora—where was Lily, Lily, Lily. There she is.

That blinding light.

With a scream that cut above everything else in the room, Lily exploded again, and her explosion
hit the ceiling, and the ceiling broke and fell down right upon the throne.
Both Riddle and Dumbledore leapt in different directions. Dumbledore, on Remus’ right, was
coughing. Face broken. Skin rotting. Putrid and decomposing, a last thirst for power, a tyrannical
dictator on a suicide mission. And Riddle, on Remus’ left, sitting up. His face, horrifically calm
before, now angrier than the sun. Twice as shiny. He hissed.

And Sirius tackled him.

“Pandora’s trying to get—” Regulus yelled, but Remus shook his head.

“Don’t care,” he said, watching, watching.

As Sirius tackled Riddle out of nowhere; they rolled, Sirius ended up on top of him, hissing directly
in his face, but it didn’t last long for regardless of feeding and of fusioning and magic Sirius was,
ultimately, still weak. Still tortured. He got the upper hand.

Riddle kicked him off him and threw him six feet; he hit the wall.

Regulus, watching this, growled inadvertently.

“Go,” cried Remus, pointing towards them. “Help him. I’ve got Dumbledore.”

And he ran.

So Regulus and Sirius tag-teamed Riddle, while Remus threw people out of his way to get to
Dumbledore; he dodged a spell, punched a hunter in his way, ducked and staggered as Dumbledore
threw things at him, debris and glass. Glass cut his legs through his trousers and he hissed,
stumbling. His suit was ripped. Everywhere. But he kept going.

And then there was light.

Dumbledore ducked and it threw him off; every spell he had been cultivating dissipated, and
Remus turned to see Lily, gasping, her hair floating behind her. She rolled her arms over one
another; her fire was seamless, it was lethal. It looked like it was choreographed, the way she threw
it, launching it in balls at Dumbledore and being faced with his retaliation, green electromagnetic
spells that she burnt through and pieces of debris and brick that she stopped mid-air, launched
away through the windows or else eviscerated.

And, just behind Lily. Daphne. She was fighting four hunters at once. She was clearing a path to
the enemy for them.

And, just beside Daphne. Mary. Her fire-ropes caught Remus’ eye; she was helping Regulus and
Sirius, launching her ropes around his wrists to try and keep him stable while they did their worst.

However, the two brothers were to be separated, as Bellatrix, trying to defend her Lord, ripped into
Sirius’ shoulder and sent him flying backwards. Speeding to catch up to him she almost gained the
upper hand, but didn’t, for Sirius, in realising who this was, moved faster than Remus might have
ever seen him move in his life.

He snapped Bella’s arm like a twig, smashed her head into the wall and then the floor and then
dragged her up by her hair, mouth to her ear. And then he laughed.

“We haven’t been acquainted in so long, dear cousin,” he said, loudly and strenuous as she
struggled, “there is so much you still have to learn about me. Where should we start? Ground
rules?”
She screamed in frustration, but he would not let her go. Drunk on power, drunk on rage. He
smiled.

“Rule number one: you drive my car, I’ll get angry. Rule number two: you deprive me of blood,
I’ll get antsy. Rule number three: you touch Remus Lupin,” Sirius pulled her closer, ragged by the
hair, blood dripping down her scalp, “I’ll become your worst fucking nightmare.”

Bellatrix screamed again. Sirius’ bloody face contorted so brutally that he looked just like what he
had proclaimed to be. Terrifying. He had never scared Remus before. But he scared him now.

Sirius, subsequently, began to rip her to shreds.

In a daze, Remus turned back. Across the way, on the altar, under the chaos he locked eyes with
Pandora.

“Remus!” she screamed, on her knees, before pushing outwards with so much gusto it caused a
shockwave that completely upended two vampires and a witch in her path. Skidding weapons that
she’d found across the floor. Remus fell, underneath Lily’s line of fire as she battled Dumbledore
directly, to his knees to grab them. His gun. All of Dorcas’ throwing knives. Her gun. A spare pair
of brass knuckles. He slipped them on. He couldn’t see the basilisk blade. There was no time.

He picked up his gun, and stood up. Shot three times at Dumbledore.

He and Lily circled him. It was a choreographic fight. Remus gathered up all of those throwing
knives, all that could hold in one hand; he threw them. One got Dumbledore in the leg, one in the
arm. Lily burnt him on the forearm. Dumbledore, in retaliation, got her through the shoulder with
one of the throwing knives he’d pulled out of himself.

Although she healed naturally, Lily’s fire dissipated for a split second in shock. And in this time,
Dumbledore smacked Remus right in the heart with a stunner.

It felt like his chest had shattered. Like a mirror. Remus knew what being winded was like, but this
was not that—this was worse, it was like everything stopped, even his breath, even the fabric of
how he existed, for everything felt out of place. Staggering back, he blinked. Even though he’d
seen it coming, he was in utter shock.

Someone caught him from behind.

The light dissipated some more.

“Are you okay?” gasped Mary, his Mary, frantic, turning him around. He tried to breathe. She’d
dissipated her fire ropes to catch him. Across the way, Sirius had stopped dead. Bellatrix was in a
bloody heap on the floor.

Remus locked eyes with him.

If he wasn’t murderous before…

“EVANS!” Sirius yelled, as Riddle got to grips with himself and being free of Mary’s hold. Sirius
looked once at Regulus, looked once at Remus, looked once at Lily.

It felt like a ballroom dance move.

He vamped over to her, and she held her hands out and they spun. Spun directly outwards, they
fusioned; the gold licked up Sirius’ arms, blew his hair back. They were vibrant. In a room of
darkness, they were a ball of light. They both gasped, turning around, and then once they’d
swapped places they let go. Something was unspoken.

Sirius went directly for Dumbledore.

And Lily ran for Riddle.

Mary took a moment to press her hand to Remus’ chest and soothe him, so he could breathe, while
Lily launched past her and began firebending again Regulus was behind Riddle, apprehending him
(winning, but barely) with an arm around his throat. And then Lily curled both of her hands into
fists and imitated Mary’s ropes, perhaps a bit more unstable but utilisable. They immortalised
Riddle as he was. And Mary let Remus go, cupped his face roughly for a moment, and then walked
up to Lily’s side.

Lily held out her hand. Mary took it.

And there stood two women, four hands outstretched. Mary took a deep breath as Lily fusioned
with her. And then from their joint hands, Lily’s fire ropes intermingled with something else.
Something wispy, immortal. Something of pure rage.

Remus took out three vampires who tried to intersect, two on a headshot and one with his knife.
Turning, after this, he could see the scene better. Regulus, behind him, holding Riddle’s head up.
Lily holding him in place with her fire. And the grey wispy magic making its way to him. Two
feet. One.

Mary’s lips curled into a smile.

“Crucio,” she whispered.

And Tom Riddle began to scream.

It was nothing like Remus had ever seen before. It was utter carnage. Regulus hissed in Riddle’s
ear, clawing at his chest, ripping into his skin as Mary gasped, upholding the connection; her
power being amplified via Lily meant she wasn’t being drained, and she got to enjoy this. Enjoy
his screaming.

The dementors swirled above them, their job being done for them. They tried desperately to help
their tortured leader. But they couldn’t get close to Lily. They couldn’t get close to the phoenix.

Lily’s eyes, red and hazy, seemed to blink back into focus. Her consciousness mingling with the
phoenixes for a brief moment; she looked at Remus. And she gasped.

“Now,” she mouthed, desperate. “Kill him now.”

Remus burned. Remus burned.

He had maybe four point five seconds, max. For there was Tom Riddle, strong reflexes, intense
strength, who sold his soul to the devil for immortality on an already immortal body, playing God.
Playing God. Having to be tag-teamed by three of the most powerful creatures on the planet to
even slightly restrain him. But Remus can play God too. There is a knife in his hand, and there is
blood on his palms; to choose who lives and who dies, the ultimate question. The ultimate answer.
There is a knife in his hand and he’s stepping back, aiming at Dumbledore, but he’s looking at the
man who killed his best friend. He’s losing it again. He’s heaving. Chest and body and blood.

With tears in his eyes, a severed connection to a body lying under glass and frightful skies, and a
half a second's breath seeping through his cracked lips, Remus looked at Riddle, and Riddle
looked at him. Gasping through his torture. Riddle looked at him, and he knew.

Remus smiled, as he pulled back and launched the dagger at Dumbledore.

It embedded directly into his head. And all three of them went down.

***

Remus woke.

He was on the floor. This was the first thing he registered. His ears were ringing, and then they
popped, and then his eyelids registered the heat and the array of rainbow colours pulsating before
them and so they opened.

He looked up and saw a grey, swirling sky. He was outside.

“Remus,” said Mary, muffled and then loud, for it was Mary whom he was laying beside, on the
floor of the courtyard that they had passed through. She was looking down over him, her curls
shrouding her head. There was blood on her face. She looked tired, but alert.

Above her, behind her, someone lit up the skies with a spell, and Remus could see the dementors
swirling around like ghouls, could hear gunshots, could hear screaming.

Someone shot a gun directly behind Mary, making her jump, and then footsteps, hard on the
concrete went past. A body thudded somewhere to his other side. A spell was shot overhead. They
were in a warzone, but Mary looked back at him, and only at him.

“Are you okay?” she asked, frantic.

“I–” Remus started, finding himself unable to articulate how he felt. What he felt. If he felt. He
gaped on it, and then dismissed the question.“How long was I––”

“A few minutes,” she said, looking to her right, over his shoulder as he sat up; within the space it
took Remus to crane his neck to look Mary had rubbed her palms together and shot the quickest
fireball he had ever seen her produce, directly into the chest of a vampire. She cut a hole clear
through him and it caught on the rest of his body within seconds. More screaming.

“Why did I–”

“Never mind that,” she said, frantic, “never mind that, Remus, I need you to listen to me. They’re
breaking through the wards at home as we speak. The fight has broken out completely here. Ana’s
vampires in the ballroom revolted.”

Remus took this moment to take a look around, witness the shattered glass windows, the screams
coming from not just this space but the ballroom, too. As he looked to the door a pack of four
vampires in ballgowns came running, terrified through the doors, trying to flee. Three of them got
past him, but one was shot down, a chest shot to slow her and then a head shot. Her body thudded
right beside him. Her eyes were still open.

“It’s self-sustaining,” Mary said, “the fight is self-sustaining, now, so myself and the witches are
trying to apparate people back to help at home. James is rallying who we have. I’m taking you
back.”

She reached out to take his hand, and he pulled it away.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. He scrambled back a little bit, vaguely registering that his hand
was being cut on a piece of rock—no, not rock, he turned to look, ceramic, from the broken
fountain, the water coloured red from the witches body, that of whom had been drowned in it, her
white ball gown ripped and stained. He turned back. Looked around.

It was never hard to spot Lily Evans.

She was a supernova. Fighting against four vampires at once with one hand while trying to rally
the dementors with the other. She pulled her left hand into her chest, and then released it, like a
scythe cutting across a flat horizon. It burnt up and along her arm and she got one of the vampires,
charring his head. He staggered and screamed. On her other side, the darkness began swirling
around her, and she summoned fire in her right and threw it to the sky, like a beacon.

The dementors scattered to both sides, swirling down and around the cracked pillars and the
electric witches, and Remus’ gaze moved, spotting his friends, his family; throwing her hair over
her shoulder, Pandora began to run, away from the hunters she had just telekinetically snapped the
necks of and towards Regulus, who decapitated someone as Remus looked at him. Pandora
screamed his name, attempting to alert him of the recall. Unfortunately, someone else screamed his
name at the same time.

“Reggie Black!”

He froze.

In amongst the chaos, weaving their way through the blood and the broil, walked two relatively
unharmed men clad in suits and bow ties. The brunette was smaller and slightly feral, baring his
teeth as Regulus turned to look at them. The blond one stood up straight. He smiled.

“We’ve been waiting for you to show your face again,” said the blond, grinning.

“Evan,” said Regulus. Cautiously. “You don’t want to do this.”

“Oh, but we so desperately do,” replied the brunette, looking half a second away from pouncing.

Regulus tilted his head.

“I am five hundred years older than you, Barty,” Regulus said, loudly. His fangs had filled out on
instinct. “You know I can rip you both apart without blinking.”

Evan smiled.

“You won’t,” he said.

Regulus hissed. And he ran.

As they bled into the fight, a trio of black, brown and shimmering blond, gunshots sounding and
shadows whirling and fire raining ash on the poor, poor men, Pandora darted through the crowd. A
woman on a mission, she blasted three people out of her way and screamed another name, another
that Remus couldn’t pick up on until he followed her gaze, through the throes of hunters, vampires
and witches alike. Masquerading as something else. A pair of fangs and a bullet wound.

Sirius had a gun. Sirius had one of Dorcas’ guns.

How long he had been fighting his aunt, Remus didn’t know, but he turned his gaze just in time to
see him shoot Druella in the chest and then pounce on her; they went rolling across the floor, she
was splayed on her front as she landed.

Sirius recovered quickest—he’d fusioned recently, his veins were tinged golden, Remus could see
it from a mile away, he was a power-pack—he got on top of her, one knee on each side of her
waist. She attempted to get up and probably would have thrown him off, but Mary, watching
alongside Remus, held out her hands and yelled, summoning a ball of fire above her that whacked
her head back onto the concrete like an anvil. With this, she gave Sirius a window.

He pressed the gun to the back of her head, and shot. Her blood splattered for metres along the
pavement, and she went utterly still.

Sirius held the gun in front of himself as if bewildered about the fact he’d used it and, ridiculously,
laughed.

“Sirius!” Mary yelled. He looked up, and he cocked his gun.

Behind him, Regulus, again; they were blurs, the three of them, every few seconds Remus got a
glimpse of someone’s blood on someone’s hands; the blond—Evan—pushed him up against the
wall and dug a hand into his chest, but before Barty could attack further Regulus managed to get
the upper hand and slip underneath his arm, pressing a hand to his neck and bashing Evan’s head
against the wall. Neck snapped, he crumpled, and Regulus turned.

In a second he was at Barty’s front, hand in his chest, around his heart. Hissing, brutal.

He left it like this for a moment. Just a brief moment. Then his face cleared.

“For fuck’s sake,” he mouthed, before pulling his hand out of Barty’s chest, vamping around to the
back of him and snapping his neck.

“Regulus!” Sirius screamed, staggering backwards, dripping blood from his mouth. He screamed it
again, before he was apprehended by a witch he promptly took out. Attempting to run to Mary and
Remus, tailed by multiple of Riddle’s men he shot, and he shot again; some of them he missed,
having to shoot once or twice for the headshot; and this left him, two bogeys left and with no
ammo, clicking as he pulled the trigger.

He held it up, sighed, and—with an insane pull back—lobbed the gun itself, taking out one of them
with it.

For the other, he hissed. His instinct. The vampire did not stand a chance.

Through the crowd, Pandora got thrown to the floor. Regulus sped to help her up, gasping and
flinching them both against the spells being thrown left right and centre; staggering the last of the
way—Sirius launching into Regulus’ side at the last stretch, reaching out on his way to grab Lily
mid-firebend—and the four of them fell by Mary and Remus’ side.

“Where’s Daphne?!” screamed Lily, over the chaos. Someone’s spell hit one of the archways, and
it collapsed in on itself, making them all flinch.

“Here,” Daphne cried, falling to her knees amongst them. She staggered in from somewhere behind
them, where there was a trail of three dead bodies missing three hearts and her hands were coated
in thick, honey blood. She was her mother’s daughter.

Mary nodded, quickly, and then turned to look at them all. Do a headcount.

“What about Dorcas?” she asked, looking around.

It went horribly quiet.

Remus could not reply. He could not move, actually. He was unsure of how his heart was still
beating outside of anything but adrenaline. He was a broken down steam engine inhaling the fire
smoking from Lily, from the Dementors and from the burning ashes of his life, he said nothing;
Mary’s face fell into something of merged realisation and horror. The bags under her eyes
twitched. She shook her head.

“No,” she whispered. Her bottom lip trembled. “No. No.”

Tears fell out of Remus’ eyes, and they burnt on his cheeks. He couldn’t say anything. His skin
was buzzing to the touch. He was so broken.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of silver.

Andromeda still had the sword. He locked eyes on it as she decapitated someone, and then lost it,
again, for she was darting and vamping around the courtyard like a grasshopper, her father on her
tail.

It was like a game of cat and mouse. She ended up in the corner, fighting one person, fighting
another; another corner, a hunter with no vampire, an aimless army; Cygnus followed her every
move. But Andromeda was a beacon of light on the battlefield. Followed by an army of those who
have each other’s backs, Andromeda stabbed a man into the wall through her sword while Cygnus
was sidelined, again, by who Remus couldn’t see the faces of but could immediately recognise as
Bill and Fleur, supported by Susan Bones, supported by Charity Burbage.

Around them, people were screaming and falling to the floor. Lily was struggling; standing above
them all, she was trying to bend the fire in the air and shooting pails upon pails of it into the dark
skies. There was so much more than what she was capable of, and there were tears in her eyes, but
they didn’t break the surface, not even when Remus pushed himself up to look behind her and see
the twitching, gloss-eyed form of Fabian, looking directly at him but not seeing, under a
perpetually eclipsed sky.

Remus gagged and let his arms fall. He couldn’t look.

“Sirius,” Lily wheezed, frantically, as he dropped down beside Regulus, arm around his shoulder.
She could barely breathe. “I can’t—not by myself–”

She dropped to her knees beside him, and he gave her his hands without a second thought. The
explosion came from her chest, upwards, within seconds. Remus had to squint.

Andromeda, darting through a maze of warriors, finally slid onto her knees over to them and
dropped the sword to the floor with a clatter, taking a deep breath and looking over every single
face.

“What the fuck is that?” asked Mary.

Lily screamed from behind her in strife.

“It’s in the book,” said Andromeda, as quick as she could, directly to Remus. No heed for anyone
else. “It’s all in the book,” she gasped, over the chaos, “everything I’ve done will make sense when
you read it.”

“She died because of you,” he said, monotonously.

“Remus–”

“She was there,” he repeated, “because you put her there. And you didn’t come back.”

“It’ll make sense–”

“Nothing will ever make sense about this!” he yelled, trembling, blowing the top off the kettle;
Mary, beside him, pressed a hand to her mouth. Silently sobbing. He couldn’t seem to breathe.
“Dorcas is dead! How–—how dare you?! How–” Inhale. Exhale. In and out.

Andromeda’s face was trained. Unprovoked. She shook her head.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But I have to do this.”

Remus’ eyes unfocused, and then refocused, as the fire dissipated. He looked over Andromeda’s
shoulder and, as the black wisps swooped down and sucked the souls of more. Lily let up. So more
people around them suffered. Across the ground Remus saw, over everyone, the writhing form of
Jul, under the pain of a million knives, screaming. They had blood in their hair. Their pant legs
were ripped. They’d never been in this much pain.

Lily dry-heaved, turning away and then back, wiping her nose, out of which she had begun to bleed
profusely. “I can’t,” she whimpered, helplessly, “I’m not strong enough to save everyone. Not even
with Sirius.”

Screams, fights, metal on metal, clash, bright, fire on its natural enemy. Alone and barren in a
misty sky. Here, under the sun, they were warm.

“Yes you are,” said Regulus, looking at her.

She locked eyes with him.

He held out his hand. Lily took it. His face was blazing; he nodded, just one time.

“Yes,” he said, again, “you are.”

His hand lit up.

Regulus gasped, looking up, towards the sky. To the anarchy raging around them. Enclosed in
Lily’s other hand, Sirius. A gentle glow from both sides.

“We’re a team,” Regulus murmured, breathing heavily. Looking around. Looking for reassurance.
“Right?”

“Right,” said Pandora.

Mary looked around. She nodded.

“Right,” murmured Sirius.

A team. A team.

One hand on Pandora’s thigh and one hand on Sirius’. Mary, her hand in Remus’ hair, Lily’s
interlocked with Sirius’, Sirius looking at Andromeda. All we can do is be there for each other.
Those were James’ words. But it was a collective heart. Something that Tom Riddle doesn’t have.
A beating heart. Their family and their great big beating heart, at their home, miles and miles
away. Lily’s burnt tree and her burnt hands, hope hope hope. And all that gooey shite. Someone to
pick you up. Separating what you are and who you are. Hope, hope, hope.

When your hope dies, you can displace it onto something else. It means that if you can’t go on for
yourself, you can go on for those around you.

Back then, Remus had been going on for Sirius. Now, tonight, he was going on for her.

It was sort of seamless, how easily they pulled themselves together. Mary laced her hand into
Remus, Regulus’ into Pandora, Pandora into Daphne’s. Sirius, in the middle of Lily and
Andromeda, turned to his cousin. Held out his hand. She took it. They said nothing. But he didn’t
look her in the eye.

Mary looked to Lily.

“Can you do this?” she asked, quietly. “Can you fusion all of us? Can you channel all of this
power?”

Lily closed her eyes, took a deep breath.

“I don’t know,” she said, opening her eyes. Red.

Her hands began to glow, golden veins passing from one hand to another, up Sirius’ arms and up
his neck, down and around to Regulus. Oddly enough, it felt electric. It flowed like a current.

It hit Remus, and he watched as it trickled up his arm, splitting off into so many variants on his
hand it was hard to know where they began and ended. Glowing at first simply golden, and then
red, and then catching alight, an aura about three centimetres out of fire. Their circle began to glow,
the fire crackling and omitting sparks, bouncing off the incompatible concrete, and Lily frowned.
There were tears, squeezing out of her, again, closed eyes. She gasped, inhaling shakily, her hair
sparking and then going up in flames almost instantly, fanning out around her.

“Lily,” said Regulus, and she opened her eyes.

Cocked her head, slightly. There you are.

More phoenix than human. Animalistic and unsure of her provocaties. Unsure of whom she is
being addressed by but ultimately seeing that fire meets fire and Regulus skids on it across his
vivacious waves.

“Not the hands,” he said, gently.

She let go.

Sirius’ hand on one side, Regulus’ on the other, she let go. But they continued to burn. They were
cocooned in smoke. Lily pushed herself to her feet, and, drunk on the enchanting fire, looked up.
Squeezed her wrists into herself; the fire began to build there. Remus could tell, without seeing any
effects, that it was pure fiendfyre. All she has and all she ever… dot dot dot.

“She’s going to explode,” said Sirius, muttering, as the connection building up in the seven of them
began to dim, veins dissipating but fire lingering. Mary, letting go of Remus’ hand, threw her own
up above them and formed a protective bubble around the group of them.

Remus looked around. The fighting was still going on, but some of their side had noticed Lily’s
buildup. He watched as a few of the witches formed bubbles of their own, one holding the fort up
and one blasting Riddle’s men who were not welcome. He watched Jul, dementor abandoned due
to the close proximity with the building fire, coughing maniacally and unable to get up but
seemingly otherwise okay; to their side knelt a vampire with huge, frizzy hair. It took a moment for
Remus to register it was Sybil, her glasses long gone and blood tangled in her matts. Looking at
Lily, she fell forward onto Jul, keeping them both down.

Remus turned and watched as Mary locked eyes with Bill, yelled “get down!” and he caught on,
tugging at Fleur and dropping the both of them to the ground. Anyone of theirs they could make
eye contact with, they warned. He watched them drop.

And he watched a figure come staggering through the masses. Blood all over her, injuries so severe
they weren’t quick-time healing. Patches of hair missing. Almost as tortured as Sirius himself;
Bellatrix looked around, her jaw trembling. A beacon in the battlefield.

“Oh dear God,” Sirius hissed, “this woman refuses to fucking die.”

“I thought you killed her,” gasped Regulus.

“Evidently, I didn’t!”

Even despite her injuries, her face was cruel set. But it ebbed, slightly, as she spotted Lily, in
replacement of that of surprise, or perhaps fear.

She took a step back. Just a step.

“No,” growled Andromeda, grabbing the sword and, before Sirius could grab her, running out of
their protection zone.

“Dromeda no!” Sirius yelled, scrambling up only to be held back by Regulus. His eyes wide at the
scene as Andromeda ran across the courtyard, smashing Bellatrix’s head into the wall and initiating
another fight, teeth and claws and those that are so similar yet so different.

“Andromeda, get back here!” Mary yelled.

“Andromeda!” screamed Pandora, and then they were all yelling, as Lily quivered, Remus himself
even screaming for her above the noise. All except Regulus, silent as a statue, in shock and holding
his brother away from certain death like it was the last thing he might ever do.

Lily, throwing her head back.

Fire balling in her chest, manifesting behind her back as wings. Both a woman and the carcass of
one. Not fire but the master of it.

Andromeda, behind Bellatrix.

Getting the upper hand. Her sword with two hands against her neck. Blood spurting from Bellatrix’
ruined throat, trickling down the silver blade of the sword and being absorbed into it. Andromeda’s
hand, sliced open. But her blood trickled down the metal and dripped to the floor.

Lily. Fire. Fire, fire, fire.

Andromeda met Sirius’ eye. She said nothing, but her eyes seemed to say everything, poised in her
sacrifice. And then she looked at Remus. And he realised that this had been her plan all along. The
crumpled note in his pocket seemed to burn blisters through the fabric, into his skin; she nodded,
once. Parted her lips, against her sister’s thrashing.
“Narcissa,” she mouthed. A single tear falling from her eye.

And then Lily threw her head back, thrust her palms out, and exploded, sending a colossal burst of
fire in every direction.

It was incredible. It was horrifying. Her fire spread for eons, all over the courtyard and against the
house walls; breaking down what was already broken, burning anything that hadn’t caught. It
pounded against the walls, against the windows; smashed them with the pressure; caught onto the
trees. Things broke. Doors swung off their hinges. And there were screams. Everywhere,
everywhere, there were screams.

Remus looked upwards. He could not see through the fire.

But he was quite sure that the dementors were screaming, too.

Sirius cowered against it. Flinching when Lily exploded, he fell back into Regulus’ hold; both of
their mouths wide open, Sirius trembling. Regulus’ hair waving with the force of the flames.

The roaring of the fire gushed above them for about a minute straight, perhaps a bit longer; it was
like being pressed underneath a pipe as its gushing water, being underneath a train as it rushes past,
the rattling making his ears pop. Though they were in the courtyard and there was no stone directly
overhead, a few of the pillars collapsed in on themselves, crumbling and falling to the ground; their
people, pressed to the floor, had their arms over their heads in preparation for falling debris.

Lily was screaming. Remus could hear her. After a moment, he couldn't hear much else.

When the dust settled and the flames flickered out, Lily fell to her knees against the ashes in her
wake.

Perhaps the most horrifying thing was the silence. A hallowed ground. Smoke, smouldering rock
and ashes and grime. The courtyard took a moment to take a breath, another, to hear the knees of
the firebird hit the floor, and then the few people who’d dropped and avoided the head-level blast
started standing up, bewildered.

Remus looked up to the sky, and he could see the stars.

Go. go go go go go go.

“Dromeda,” Sirius was moaning, hands digging into the grit as the bubble that Mary had cast
disappeared. The moon was out. “Dromeda,” he was saying, he wasn’t crying, he was just—he was
just—Dromeda. Your whole life. Your own blood. Blood-traitor blood. Ash and ashes. “Dromeda”,
and the roof to the ballroom collapsed entirely. The crack reverberated, echoed through the trees. It
felt like the courtyard was a completely ulterior plane to the rest of the house, a different
dimension. It felt like a held breath. Go go go go go go.

“We need to go,” Mary breathed, inhaling and then coughing on the ash, as Pandora crawled over
to make sure Lily was okay. “We need to go.”

“No–”

Remus closed his eyes, squeezed them shut. He could not turn around and see the ashes where they
had stood, but he knew that they were there.

“Sirius,” Regulus hissed, grabbing his shoulder, holding him back; Sirius was struggling against
him but it was futile, for he had nowhere to go. “Sirius, she’s gone–”
“Dromeda,” he breathed, and then repeated in a scream; Regulus grabbed onto his wrist, wrestled
with him. Struggling, he pulled them behind him and pressed his face into Sirius’ back, the space
between his two shoulder blades, hunched as he heaved. He dropped his head in grief.

Regulus was crying. Remus had never seen him cry. It was like seeing a parent cry.

“Sirius, she’s gone—“ his voice broke, “Sirius, please— we have to go.”

Pandora grabbed onto Lily’s hand, onto Daphne’s, onto Regulus’. Mary grabbed Remus in one
hand and reached over to grab Sirius in her other.

Remus looked up to the sky. Got one last glimpse of the stars.

It went dark.

II. BOARDWALK ESTATE

They landed with a thud on the grass. Mary let go of Remus’ hand and he toppled over, bracing
himself on the marshy surface with his forearms. He took a deep breath and found no satisfaction
came from it.

He could hear and see, instantly, the bustle of a compound preparing for attack. They may as well
have metal enclosing doors, on the windows, procedures and red flashing alarm lights like sirens
going off. Lights flashed in and out of his vision—flashlights in the dark, the golden glow of
warding spells being projected out of palms up into the air, trying to reinforce the wards that were
breaking down. The crunch of footsteps, up the porch stairs and down them, down the rocky paths
and out, flattening the grass.

Someone seemed to notice them, yelling out, “They’re back!”

He pulled his head up. He was so tired.

The house was alive, lights on, people moving all around them. And they were stationary,
crumpled on the front lawn. Sirius was kneeling, folded over, his head in his hands. Pandora was
staring blankly into the sky, devastated, watching her warding collapse in on itself. Lily had
shuffled to the side and was curled up with her knees to her chest, the fluff of her ripped, bloody,
sooty ball gown fanned out around her.

Remus took a deep breath in, and a deep breath out. Did not dare look up and watch the darkness
try to penetrate. Looked up to the door, and watched it be wrenched open.

Watched James Potter run down the stairs, skirting around a group of people.

Regulus got up first and began to stagger towards him, hands outstretched. He looked so small. He
was of brightest stars and princely descent and yet there was something remarkable about how
simply he yearned. It was visceral, and when James reached him, encasing him violently into his
arms, face into his chest, his entire body seemed to melt with relief.

His hands reached up to hold onto James’ shoulders. His veins there were still golden, his hands
twitching, not of his own volition; it took Remus a moment to realise his was too.
James pulled back, breathing frantically, and they stared at each other, hands cupping Regulus’
face. He looked him up and down, cupped his cheeks in three different places and then grabbed
one of his palms in both of his hands, kissed it twice, once on the ball of his palm and once on the
wrist and then dropped it, running over and beelining to Sirius.

“Dear God,” he muttered, gravely, at the sight as he pulled Sirius’ head up.

“Jamie.”

“Hey—”

“Jamie?”

“I’m here. Oh, I’m here,” James whispered, touching Sirius, all over. He gasped something utterly
strangled, and fell into James’ arms. Into safety. He wrapped a hand around him as Sirius clung—
he was not crying, he was not speaking, he was in shock, he was destitute and clinging and on his
other side, Regulus collapsed beside him. James held one on each arm.

At some point, Marlene appeared.

“Oh my God,” she gasped, running through the crowds up to them; “is everyone okay? What
happened? What–”

She stopped abruptly. Counting.

Remus clocked the exact moment it hit her.

And for some reason, of everything that had happened; blood and broil, seeing Mary, watching the
light as it swept out of his reach; it was this. The way they locked eyes as Marlene’s face dropped.
The realisation. The emptiness.

This was what did it for him.

This was when it hit him, too.

He opened his mouth, and a sound came out he didn’t even know that he could make. And Mary
caught him, as he fell, and as he screamed.

His throat was raw. The world was too loud. It felt like a mesh of electricity around him. Like he
was encased in film and everything else was shiny and new; Marlene, shaking her head, this has
happened to her before and it will happen again and it is never-ending, we’re stuck. This is it.
James caught Marlene, little sister, Mary caught him, little brother. Regulus pulling Sirius into his
chest. Actual little brother with his head screwed on right. Lily was mute, Pandora couldn’t take
her eyes off her foundations breaking, James’ legs were giving out under the weight of a broken
scaffold and Remus was sobbing, wailing, completely indeterminate of anything happening around
him and clinging to Mary’s skirt and her shirt and feeling her cling right back to him through
broken hands. None of this was real. Everything was wrong.

Grief. He had felt that before. He had never, ever felt it like this.

It was disparate and harrowing against the power that still thrummed through him from Lily; he
gagged on it a few times, feeling like there was some sort of obtusion in his throat, but there was
nothing to actually throw up so as his body fell he dug his fingers into the mud and breathed in,
except every breath felt like knives to his lungs. Every thought felt like being run through, a blade
twisting around flesh for every moment that he sat there and breathed fresh air. For every moment
that his heart beat, a thump thump thump along to the rhythm of drums along colosseums, the final
showdown, Remus was murderous, and Remus was destitute.

Haunted. Hollow. Gutted all the way through. Choking on the life that is still his, I don’t want it I
don’t want it I don’t want it I don’t w

He screamed again.

Mary held him silently. She was frozen in the amber lowlights. They’d go on. But they will also
stay here forever.

“Astoria?” called Daphne, staggering across the lawn. Pulling her jacket off. It was ripped at the
seams. “Astoria!”

“Daphne!”

Daphne ran.

Through Remus’ clouded vision he watched them reunite, so aggressively they staggered back a
few paces. Daphne pulled back, cupped her face. And Remus watched Astoria break. He watched
her look over to the group, looking for her mother, and he watched her break clean in half.

She looked over her shoulder as she began to cry, looked at Remus. Face mushed against Mary’s
sternum, her hands wrapped around him just as tight. His breath was shuddering.

He wanted to say that he was sorry. He could not. Couldn’t—couldn’t form the words.

Something hit them up above. An explosion. It boomed through the echoing woods and shook the
fabric of the marsh they sat on. Mary gasped and looked up, swallowing thickly.

“What the hell was that?” she gasped.

“They’re trying to get in,” murmured Pandora. She had not moved from her position. Marlene was
sitting beside Lily, who was still mute. And Regulus’ eyes were closed, now. His face pressed into
Sirius’ hair, holding him with both arms. Inhale, exhale.

The dust settled.

All that Remus could feel was fucking rage.

“Okay,” said Marlene, voice wavering. “This isn’t over. We’re still– we’re still under attack. We’re
still…” she looked around, blankly. Her face was puffy, her eyes glazed over.

James cupped her face. He’d been comforting her. He’d been comforting Sirius. He’d been
comforting Lily. He had tears in his own eyes.

“I’ve got it,” he whispered.

He stood up. Cleared his throat

“Right——Dora, you’re needed round the back,” he said, authoritatively, against a backdrop of
raining stars. A group of people apparated in someone injured beside them and immediately started
yelling, helping her across the lawn. It was only here that Remus realised these had been the
sounds he was hearing. Recalling troops from Whittaker. The house was alive. Alive, alive, alive.
“Sirius, Regulus, inside. Your—I know,” James murmured, softly, seeing their faces, “I know, but
your vampires need to see you. Mary—if there’s anything you can do–”
He looked to Mary, and then looked helplessly at Lily, whose forehead was braced in two shaking
hands. (At what point does one become more of a weapon than a person? At the point in which
they have no other choice; but a person remains a person, so long as they are loved.)

Mary crawled over to Lily, took her face in her hands. Brushed her hair away.

“Hey,” she murmured, kissing her gently on the forehead. “We’re gonna figure this out, okay?”

Minutely, Lily nodded.

Remus, now alone and unsupported, braced his hands against the grass. Somehow he pushed
himself up. Against all odds. Standing, he looked up, around at the claustrophobic horror that
encompassed them; lights being thrown to the sky, explosions on the horizon. Dementors trying to
get in. The trees quivered all around him. He followed the wind to Astoria, in her sister’s arms,
safe.

Safe.

Safe.

“Draco,” he murmured, moving his wrecked limbs.

He hadn’t realised he had begun to run until he was running, staggering, footsteps soft and
unnoticeable upon the soft summer grass; around the corner of the porch, one hand on the side of
the house lest he topple. Wind against his face as a vampire ran past him, a metal taste on his
tongue. There were crowds everywhere. Spells and screams. He bumped into people. He didn’t
stop.

In the back garden, by the lake, groups were bustling—a bonfire had been started, vampires were
setting up small enclosed spaces to help the injured witches that were coming in and, in the same
breath, an enclosed space for the mourners, those drained of the sun. He looked around
desperately. Felt like he was choking on how overwhelmed he was. Someone had grown small tree
stumps from the ground for people to sit on. He caught a flash of Pandora, and, as she ran across
the lawn, spotted a flash of red, flickering against the fire.

“Perce,” said Remus, walking over to where Percy was sitting, Isabela on one side and Draco by
the other. “Draco, Bel!”

All three of them stood up. He made it to the circle, hopping over one of the stools, and stopped
directly in front of Draco. He was wide-eyed but otherwise fine. He looked more shocked to see
Remus if anything. Or perhaps shocked and how much of a state he was in.

Remus stopped, breathing in and then out, surveying any of them for damage. “Are you guys
okay?” he asked, and while Percy and Bel nodded, Draco did nothing except step forward and hug
him.

He gasped, and then wrapped his arms around him, too. It was brief, but rather remarkable.

“I thought you’d died,” he said, in the moment in which he was still lingering in his chest while
pulling away, as if he thought it right to do so but did not want to.

Remus contended with this for a moment, before managing to choke out a tender “I'm fine.”

Isabela stepped forward. There was blood on her white collar.

“Jul,” she said, without any preamble. Eyes blazing. Remus pointed.

“Round the corner,” he said, “look for Sybil, they’ll be with her.”

Bel was gone within a second.

“Have you seen Oliver?” asked Percy. Remus shook his head. “My mum?” Another head shake.

Percy deflated a little bit, his brows knitted together. People zoomed past them, but a witch
approached them, quickly, eyeing the kids.

“We’re evacuating children and elders,” she said, looking over Percy and Draco. “Portkey goes in
ten minutes by the big birch tree.”

Remus nodded, and she scuttled off. He turned back to them.

“You’re both going,” he said.

“I am twenty-one years old,” said Percy, disbelievingly, “I broke into HI2! I was literally at
Whittaker twenty minutes ago!”

“Which means you’ve done enough,” said Remus. He looked back to Draco. “You have no
chance.”

“I didn’t say anything!”

“You were going to,” he said.

There was a crash, above them.

All three of them jumped and looked up to see the remnants of what looked to be a magical bomb
hit the surface of the wards. Some of the debris fell through the sporadic holes; Remus pushed
them to the side, far enough away to avoid everything, whilst vampires on the main lawn sped
around pulling people out of harm's way.

“Yeah,” he breathed, nodding, “yeah, mhm, you’re going.”

“What about Astoria?” asked Draco.

“She’s with her family,” he said, “she’ll be there too. Jul and Bel as well. We don’t know how long
this raid is gonna last, I’d rather you all wait it out somewhere safe.”

“But–” Percy started; Remus shot him a look. Something sombre, he’d think. Percy seemed to pick
up on it, anyway. Maybe he just looked pathetic. Maybe his heart was smeared up his sleeve.

“Please,” he breathed. Desperate. “Go.”

From behind him, he could hear the voice of none other than Regulus, yelling something; he
turned to see him, regulating the masses of vampires. James was near him, ordering around some
witches. He approached them but turned to walk backwards, pointing at Draco.

“Go,” he repeated.

“Stay safe,” Draco replied, and that was that.

The witches scuttled off around the bend, to the front of the house, and Remus ran to catch up to
James.

“What’s going on?” he asked as James turned. Regulus, behind him, was screaming something
shrill about incompetence at a vampire.

“They’re trying to do it again,” he said, “mass-fusioning into Lily. God knows if it’ll work—God
knows if she can even take it—but it’s the only idea they have to try and completely fix the
warding. And she won’t hear of any other option.”

Regulus, upon dismissing his vampires, stalked over to them. He flicked his hair out of his eye and
groaned bloody murder.

“Every single vampire in this house is useless,” he hissed. “Ridiculous, incompetent fucking
bicentennials, wasting space when I have clearly told them what they should be doing—”

James watched him. His jaw fell slightly slack as he spoke.

“Do they do it? No! You can’t get a single thing done!” he continued. Remus noticed his hands
were still shaking rather violently. “I—just, no respect for authority. No common sense. As if we
have time for fucking dawdling when the sky is, quite literally, collapsing in on us—”

“Oh, God,” muttered James, suddenly.

Regulus turned to him. He looked furious.

“What?” he hissed. “What the hell did you do, James? If you tell me you sent Vera’s witches to the
wrong side of the border I think I might actually slaughter you.”

“No,” said James, “no, no. Actually. You see. The thing is. The thing is.”

Regulus blinked. “What is the thing, Potter.”

“I’m in love with you,” said James, all in one breath. “That’s what the thing is.”

“You’re in lo—” Regulus started, sneering, on autopilot.

And then he stopped.

His face dropped. Completely.

“Oh–” he breathed, mouth wide open. His face seemed to almost melt, seeping into something of
the innocence he so very physically enraptured. “I––”, he stuttered, blinking profusely, his eyes
soft for a split second, before hardening again as he came back into himself.

“What the fuck, James– are you insane?! Not now!” he hissed, shooting him the dirtiest look
imaginable and stalking off without another word.

James turned back to Remus. He seemed just as shocked as Regulus did.

“I–” he started. “Oh, God. That really is what the thing is.”

“Christ alive,” Remus muttered.

He pressed his fingers to his eyes and tried to breathe, as another explosion hit the warding.

“Right. Where’s Sirius?” he asked, desperately. James cleared his throat.

“He’s inside,” he said. Remus didn’t waste time.

By this point most people were evacuating the house. The raid they were under was not a threat for
full-scale invasion but to simply destroy, they knew that. There was a reason why they were trying
to get in from the top. You can’t have a resistance if there’s nowhere for it to rest. So there were
people pushing past Remus to get outside and there he was, clinging to the banister, staggering
across the wooden floor.

He found Sirius in the living room. The fire was still simmering, and there was an alcohol bottle in
his hand.

“Oh, no,” said Remus, immediately flooding with irritance. Sirius turned. “We’re not doing this.
Absolutely not.”

He strode across the room, around the sofas. Grabbed the bottle and, without hesitation, turned and
threw it with all his might.

It smashed the wall, plastering the floor with glittering shards.

Sirius gaped. “What the–”

“No,” spat Remus, turning back around, eyes blazing, “you don’t get to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Stand here and throw a pity party for yourself while our people are out there risking their lives to
save yours.”

“This place is going down,” said Sirius, horrifically low. Oddly calm. “May I not stand for five
minutes to mourn it?”

“No,” Remus cried, bringing his hands to his face in disbelief and then dropping them again. He
turned, paced once and then turned. He felt like he was going to explode. “This isn’t over yet,
Sirius. You don’t get to stop. We never get tostop, don’t you understand?! This is—” he paused,
choking on air, on life. He waved his hand indeterminately in the air and let it fall to his side. “This
is it,” he finished. “They’re——they’re gone, and this is it. Sirius. This is us.” Resigned. Hopeless.
This is what it is, now.

Another explosion against the warding. Screams from outside.

Remus took a step forward.

“We don’t get off this ship,” he said, firmly, putting emphasis on every single word. “We don’t
have that courtesy. I don’t care what grief you’re feeling, Sirius. I don’t care. You don’t get to
leave right now,” he hadn’t realised he was choking on tears again until his breath hitched, voice
thick; “you don’t get to leave me here right now. You don’t get to do that. They need their leader
and I– I need my partner.” A gasp. A sob. “Don’t you dare fall apart on me right now, Sirius Black.
I will never forgive you.”

Sirius choked on a sob, though his tears did not break over. They just simmered as he took this in.
And then he exhaled everything he had, covering his entire face with his two hands and almost
flailing, turning and moving so agitatedly he could cause an earthquake.

His shoulder blades flexing with his heaved breaths, he kicked the coffee table and it went flying
across the room, smashing into splintered pieces on the opposite wall. Remus barely flinched.
“Do you feel better?” he said, emotionlessly.

“FUCK,” Sirius screamed, grabbing the lamp sitting idly on the end table and throwing it as well.
It made a dent in the wall. He was hysterical, he was a sensation. “When will it FUCKING END?”

He dashed a bottle across the floor, sending shards of sticky chardonnay all the way up to the door.
Sugar tears dripped from Remus’ eyes like he’d just been drowned in it, shattered to the core.

Another bomb hit the top of the warding. This one evidently fell through shards of holing ripped
through the golden glisten, for debris hit the roof of the house, and the walls shook. This time,
Remus did flinch.

Sirius turned, horrifically slowly, back to look at him. His pupils were dilated so wide his eyes
might have been black.

“If we all let our losses debilitate us then we’d be incinerated by now and he would have won,”
said Remus, blankly. “I don’t think you understand the privilege you have, Sirius, to be able to
throw a tantrum the likes of the one you’ve just had and still have a fucking roof over your head.”

“I want to go with them,” Sirius replied. Plain and simple. A death wish. To be whole for a crowd
when all you want to do is crumble. When is it pitiful and when is it selfish?

Me too, Remus thought, for under all of his selflessness he is and has always been, selfish: I’d go in
a heartbeat, and I’d take you with me. The way it was always supposed to be.

“Fuck you,” he said, instead.

His piece done, he turned and walked away, leaving Sirius in the dark.

It took Remus angry-striding across the room and three steps out the door to fulfil what had been
his desired effect, effectively, and always: Sirius, pissed off, stomping after him.

He strode past him, and then turned around, walking backwards through the dwindling people in
the hall towards the front door.

“I hate it when you’re right,” he muttered.

“They need you,” said Remus. “I need you.”

Sirius stopped at the door. Hand ghosting over the door handle.

“I know,” he said.

He pushed down the handle and turned, opening the grand double doors and stepping out like a
king. People stopped and turned. People smiled. People relaxed, and they straightened up. He’d
fought. They’d fight. Leader or not, selfish or selfless, he’d always be the one to get the people to
fucking listen.

“Right,” he yelled, chest puffed, striding out onto the porch and down the stairs, “let’s get this
show on the road, shall we?”

Embraced by the crowd, they sauntered off somewhere to where people were being sent to defend
the borders of their wards. Remus stepped out—the fresh air brushed over him like a glaze—and
took a moment to scan over the running people.

He could hear Regulus’ voice, but could not see him. He could see Jul and Isabela in a corner, Bel
tending to their wounds. He spotted Molly, who had driven her car up to the front lawn and was
currently handing out weapons to anyone and everyone who appeared, witch and vampire alike. A
recovered Charlie was helping him out. Fleur, beside them, had Moody’s flamethrower in her
hands.

The warding was pulsing with the weight of the attempts to take it down and the force of the
witches trying to keep it up. Everywhere you looked there was at least one witch, holding their
hand up to the sky and shooting a golden, wispy beam out of it. Pandora’s spell. Another explosion
hit the warding, in front and a little to Remus’ right; this one as not as big. It was also further away.
It made him ponder how many were patrolling around the ground, waiting for the warding to
totally collapse so they could hop over it and run, with their fangs and their scythes and their dark,
ancient eyes.

Against the right side was a huge group of witches. Remus was walking before he had even told
himself to, towards the group which increased in density as he hopped over an outdoor lighting
post, so much so that he had to push past a few people, looking around aimlessly for those that he
was seeking.

He saw them, eventually, leaning against a thick tree, left majorly alone.

Lily’s hands were out, palm up in front of her, shaking and sparking with fire that would catch and
then dissipate in equal measure. Mary was in front of her, holding one hand and gazing at the
other. She tucked her hair behind her ear just as Remus approached; he had been soundless,
apparently, he gave them both a fright.

“Oh,” gasped Mary, upon realising it was him, and then she pulled him in for a chaste but deep
hug. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said, “kids are fine, they’re going. Are you okay?” He turned to Lily. “James
mentioned something about the fusion–”

“Yeah,” Mary interrupted. She wiped sweat off her brow with the back of her hand, inhaling deeply
and patiently. “We’re– we’re trying.”

“It’s not working,” Lily whispered, sniffing. Mary, her brows knitted together, looked to her, then
to Remus. It was almost resigned.

“That’s okay,” he said, the words tumbling out of his mouth in an instinct to be gentle to her the
way he wished people would be gentle with him. “That’s okay, Lil,” he looked up at the flickering
wards, “how much– mmm, how much time do we have?”

Mary looked at him. Gravely. “Not long,” she said, wincing as the sky lit up with fire again a little
bit further away from them.

“And this is the only way you can patch it up?”

She sighed. “Pandora’s spell needs to be overridden. Their side has the means to unpick the coding
for the current spell, so it needs to be completely written over so that their unwriting doesn’t work
anymore. It’s like a lock and key. It took a lot of power as it was for Pandora to even put up the
lock in the first place, so to have to go through that, and keep it stable enough to shield around it
and replace the lock so their key doesn’t work—we don’t have a single witch powerful enough.”
She took another breath, rubbing her fingers over her eyes. Thinking and thinking. “Witches can
channel each other but we’re not natural conductors for each other’s magic. It requires rituals that
we don’t have time for and setting conditions that we can’t have right now to form that link. But
Lily’s fusion essentially does the same thing, so it’d be quicker but–”

She stopped, turning to Lily and faltering. She was still trying, strain evident in the way her fingers
were trembling.

But she couldn’t do it.

“We’ll find another way, Lily,” she murmured, slipping her hand into hers and stopping them from
sparking. “Stop it, honey, you’re gonna hurt yourself.”

“Would Sirius help?” asked Remus.

“I think so,” Mary said, “but I can’t find him.”

“I can,” he said. He looked up, around, and then back. Rubbed Lily’s shoulder comfortingly. “I’ll
be right back,” he said, taking a step backwards and turning just as Lily’s hands sparked again.

“Wait!”

He paused and turned. Lily was looking at him. Her hair was dishevelled, her dress ripped. Her
eyes red. Her fingers flamed a little bit more, gold rushing through her veins and then dissipating
again, but she was alert. Frowning. Staring at him.

“What?” he asked.

She took a step forward. Slowly, she reached out her hands. They sparked again.

He took a cautious step forward. Mary was craning her neck, frowning also; Lily simply looked
blank, perhaps a little bit determined. But she was always a little bit determined.

She nodded as he walked back over to her, a fiery glow budding and unfurling around the casing of
her hands, up her wrists, lingering there. Remus, reaching out his own hands—she nodded again,
eager for them—hesitated, afraid of the burn, instinctual about his survival even if he perhaps did
not care for it anymore. But the burn never came.

It felt like flying.

He had felt Lily’s fire on her own before, but it was never, never like this. It was enchanting. She
was hurtling to the ground; he was pulling her up; it was him. In the same way that her flames
caught onto Sirius and lit him up, it caught onto him, like a wiry string burning down and down
until it hit the ground and took everybody with it. It trickled up his arms and blew his hair back. It
felt… natural. Natural, natural. Fundamental. Intrinsic.

Mary, jaw dropped, circled around to look at them.

“How?” she breathed, and then looked at Remus.

They locked eyes. It was as if she didn’t know him. Or, perhaps, as if she had drunk the divine
gold, her eyes opened to a whole new world, a new plain.

“What are you?” Mary whispered, lips dry, lined creases filling in the deep of her forehead, etched
there over years of concern, for him, for her, for us.

He opened his mouth. No sound came out. He could feel the heat prickle on the sides of his cheeks
like tears, see the glow through his eyelashes.
A grandiose, flashing gleam, like continuous electrical lightning came flooding his senses from a
space to his left. All three of them turned, looked upwards—Lily’s connection with him broke but
lingered—the wards were breaking once more, and there was ash, fire and sweet sweet light being
hurled at them, hitting the barrier of the warding like a machine gun of bullets on an unsuspecting
corpse. A few people around them cowered on instinct. When Remus turned back to Lily, her face
still lit up by the attack, her jaw was locked, her eyes strong.

“No time,” she said, grabbing him by the hand. They set alight once more. It was seamless. “We
have to do this now.”

He followed her.

As she dragged him through the gaps, Mary collecting the rogue witches that had not already been
beaconed like moths to the flame around their joined hands, Remus took a moment to wash over the
area. He couldn’t see far into the dark wooded area, the path that led to the private estate but he
watched as vampires emerged out of the darkness, some with blood on their hands and some on
their bodies, running out from the front lines. Riddle’s army must be on the front lines, lining the
wards. If they could get the new spell written and running there would be no possibility for
breakage. There would be no possibility for this army to come ravaging, for another battle, a battle
they craved but could not complete on these grounds, here, where so many called home and had no
other.

Remus could see Sirius. He was being communicated as to what was going to happen by someone,
the witch from earlier, big gestures with her hands around his head.

But Sirius stopped dead still the moment he saw Remus. His eyes moved down to his and Lily’s
hands. Back up again. He looked like a man with a million questions in one corner of his mind and
all of the answers on the other, like a Northern and Southern Hemisphere. But with the return of
the mighty, from where the running vampires would try to take out as many of the army as they
could to give the witches a chance, any chance—for they were all holding hands, really, when you
put your heart in it—he couldn’t question it.

“To the edge!” he called, to his vampires, to anyone that would listen. Which was everyone.
“Don’t hesitate! You know your perimeter blocks but if you clear your own just move along! Help
each other out! Help our witches!”

Vampires and hunters were running, in all directions, some hand-in-hand, some free and wild.
Some saying good luck to the witches. Some admiring the fire before they relented to the
darkness.

As the last of the vampires ran into the woods, Marlene and James going in a blur of blonde and
black, Sirius turned.

They locked eyes. A gentle gaze.

And then he was gone.

“I can’t–” Mary was saying, as Remus tuned in to her. He came back to Earth noticing one hand in
flames and one not, the line of witches at Lily’s side of him prepared, a connection broken to his
own side as his hand lay idle, and Pandora and Mary stood, the former stern, the latter shocked.

“You have to, Mary,” she said, “I can’t put up the warding again. It was my magic they tapped
into, there’s no guarantee they wouldn’t be able to just get back in.”
“Protection magic is your specialty–”

“And I’ll walk you through it,” she said, softer, “okay?” She took Mary’s hand, settled in place,
joining up with the other line. The breakage, now, was only between Mary and Remus. “I’ll be
right here.”

Mary swallowed, nervous. She turned to Remus. He held out his hand. And she took it.

The thing about Lily Evans is that the fire goes when she says it goes.

It happened so quickly, Remus couldn’t be sure when it even started. Flames catching down like
matches lighting up one another was enough, but when Mary took a deep breath in and closed her
eyes, casting the spell, the surge of energy felt like a circuit board. Both of Remus’ hands were
aflame, Lily’s hair entirely gone, made of fire, sending golden up the supple palms of human and
not human and everything in between.

The chaos of battle ensuing to give them time was not audible but Remus couldn’t even envision it.
It was here, and now; he couldn’t go anywhere further than the lining of the trees, where his tearful
eyes rested, the horizon of darkness settling upon a blanket of a million stars that were glazed over
in shattered Ollivander sepia. And those trees shuddered. Those stars flickered, they shifted, three
in a row, stacked up high. It was the weight of the world. And Lily’s guiding hand.

It was hard to notice the difference ensuing at her creation as Mary cast her spell, but it was
happening. Slowly, but surely—once you caught onto it you could not unsee—the materialising
red, licking up the outer wards, over the already-built walls of a fortress. Women and their
unseemly hands and their love for one another and the universe filing on top of each other. One at a
time until a bond was unbreakable, a brick wall unpillageable; fire-red. Blood-red. Mary’s magic
was fire red and travelled up the dome as smooth as a brush of paint did on paper and twice as
translucently beautiful.

More light flashed. Remus’ ears popped. He could hear the fight, now, though it was jumbled, and
nothing to the roar of fire, and the feeling of flying.

Remus squeezed Mary’s hand harder.

She was murmuring something, under her breath—he had no idea what, perhaps an incantation to
solidify the magic of which was usually mostly nonverbal, but she and Pandora were trembling, all
of the magic put into this thing. Mere particles jump in the space between Lily’s hand and Remus’,
trapped in there like that of evil—what was evil? Those trying to get in. Inevitably it would always
be those trying to step into places that they were not welcome. Witches, witches, witches. When
they burn of their own volition they can weave miracles.

The red sheen of Mary’s warding rushed upwards, further. It picked up pace. Remus inhaled,
exhaled, watched as their curtain closed. He watched as the gaps filled themselves in. He watched
as the shelter covered them up, and he watched as the fog built up, at the top, like a tornado of
doom.

Spinning and spinning a whirlpool dug into the sky and he watched as, just as the warding was
about to reach the top of the dome and seal, it dropped directly downwards and struck.

The dementor was charged with magic. There was a golden glow within it as it swirled like an
angel, an eagle; a glow as it struck Boardwalk with a deafening explosion, weaving itself through
the windows and setting the entire thing alight, caving the roof in on one side.
The world stopped.

And then a lot of things happened very, very fast.

For one, Lily and Mary both let go of his hands. As everyone turned, somehow Remus was pushed
back, or something pushed him back; something led him to the floor in which he hit his head rather
magnificently on the charred grass and his ears began to ring.

Outside of the ringing were screams, a million of them like an auditory kaleidoscope, something of
the sort that he was sure he could hear a million times over; and yet as he caught his breath, he
realised it was just Lily, only Lily, screaming so loud it shook the heavens above with two hands to
the sky. Alone. She was floating six feet up in the air. The dementor darted around the sky, like a
writhing animal, as Lily’s fire gushed out of her hands like a waterfall and she tackled him. Again,
and again, and again, and again.

Remus’ own hands were sparking, but he was dazed. He was unsure of how he had even been
thrown backwards, unsure of whether the heat on his face was the residue of Lily or the pulsation
of the house on fire before him; everything he could see was glazed over with a slight orange glow.
He could taste blood in his mouth.

Against Lily’s attacking flames, her hoarse scream and the tear tracks on her cheeks, he blinked
and the rabid dementor stuck in their enclosure came into focus.

He blinked. For a moment, just a moment, as the black smoke dodged Lily’s eternal attack, a pale
white figure seemed to unshroud itself for just a moment and lock eyes with Remus. Grinning.
Taunting.

Tom Riddle’s face. Singed into his soul.

A tantalising glimpse for just a moment before whatever spell was pulled away and he disappeared
out of the dementor’s hold.

And the dementor was just a dementor. And Lily was killing it cold-blooded. And Remus could
see his face in white against the dark when he closed his eyes. And he had killed Dorcas and he
was to blame, they were to blame.

Andromeda was to blame.

He opened his eyes.

Andromeda’s diary.

Any semblance of survival instincts; anything at all; it was left in the ghost of where Remus had
fallen, the blood where he had landed. Unable to live without knowing the answer. Unable to live a
life he did not deserve. All of it, gone.

He got up, and he ran.

Past Mary, who screamed his name once.

And then screamed it bloody-fucking-murder twice more as he ducked under a flaming pole and
ran into the burning house.

The deep breath he had taken had not been enough to stave off the entirety of the smoke, though
thankfully he could still breathe on the ground floor as he ducked to climb the stairs. The fire had
not encompassed the whole house yet, catching on the left side perhaps more than the right, so
much so that he could hear things falling above him and he could see fire through the open door at
the top of the landing; to his left, rooms ruined, the glass of the familiar balcony door shattered and
splayed across the floor and the roof above the two storey entrance hall caved in, a hole in which
he had rampaged, splinters of wood that Remus had to jump over at the top of the stairs as he
surveyed the scene for maybe point one of a second and then ran, down the hallway. His hand
clamped over his mouth. Towards the little library. Narcissa, Narcissa, Narcissa.

He knew this place. Like a map on the back of his hand. See, this way he could get to his room,
that way he could get to the study. That way there was fire catching on the doorframe and up here
there was smoke and he was coughing, stumbling and tumbling through the door. This memory
here, that memory there. Running through the flames. The library had caught fire.

The floor directly above it had evidently been rampaged for there were wooden beams and debris
falling, catching fire onto the carpets and the books faster than Remus had seen anything. This
room was lethal and so was he; Remus held a shaking hand to his mouth and felt his lungs begin to
seize up and burn, unlike the heat that was making him dizzy and nauseous, hitting his skin as he
stumbled face-first into one of the bookcases. He coughed. He coughed again. He could still see.
He could still see. He knew this diary, he had killed this diary, he was yanking books out with
burning fingertips and throwing them to the floor trying to get to the red hardbacks, it would be
slotted just there.

If he had to go on, he was going to do it with a reason why. If he didn’t, well, this was a way to go
out.

(I want to go with them.)

You’re going to kill yourself. Trying to save the fucking world.

(I’d go in a heartbeat and I’d take you with me. )

You’re going to kill yourself and you’re going to kill everyone around you too. You’re going to kill
me.

His fingers shaking, he prayed on, digging dirty fingernails into spines and crouching down,
coughing and inhaling black. Perhaps this was peace. He could hear nothing else over the roar of
the fire and his own determination. He had no idea where it was coming from. He had assumed it
had all burnt out, but something pushed him forward. Dorcas’ hand. Drawing back the red. That
fucking bitch.

You wouldn’t shoot me.

How could you?

It was me and you, Remus. It was always me and you.

He found the diary.

Can’t believe we’re kissing vampires, now. What would Moody say?

He wouldn’t say anything. He’d raise his trusty Beretta and have at our skulls.

It fell to the floor alongside a few other books, all of them falling open, curling into ash as the
flames from the fallen wooden beam caught and embers and debris from the ceiling fell onto the
back of Remus’ neck.
I love you, you know.

The leather diary, that funny thing, he grabbed onto it and held it to his chest. Looked up. All he
could see was black. It was claustrophobic, dark and red, blazing, his skin was alight and it hurt, it
fucking hurt. His lungs were raw like sandpaper and they hurt. It all hurt, perpetually, so much so
that it almost cancelled itself out—he tried to stand but his legs were shaky, clinging onto books
that fell and took him with them—the more pain he felt now the less he’d feel then—stumbling
across the room, going to throw up, nothing there but a scratchy afterthought and smoke that might
not have been inhaled but might have actually been there all along—he got to the door, fell out into
the hallway.

I love you too, you daft bastard. And you have me, alright? You’ll have me until we’re frail and
old. Until I breathe my very last breath and then probably afterwards too. I’ll manifest as an
unrested ghost ‘cause I didn’t kick your ass enough when you were alive.

His eyes were burning. They don’t tell you that your eyes burn. He’d like to take them out and give
them a good clean. Put them back in again and maybe he’d see the world as it is and stop trying, or
maybe he’d continue trying, trying for an eventual cease. Ash in the wind as the burnt wood turned
cold. He closed his eyes.

The house was catching like it had been imploded from the inside. There was some sort of
metaphor in that. Remus cannot feel his legs. Also, someone is screaming his name.

Hm?

You–

Hm????

Burning. Something burning, something sweet, cold, cold—the passing over, he can drown now, in
the cold, you’re a fucking idiot, he is found now in the snow, selfish stupid fucking idiot, Remus
John Lupin, you will be the death of yourself and everyone you know and you are lying limp in the
grass in the arms of the man you love as he screams at you, and it is all quiet. And you don’t care.
You are burnt. You are charred regardless. It wouldn’t have done anything.

His eyes slot back into the holes in his skull, the world comes back to him in red.

Sirius’ hands had healed of their burns as he fell to his knees, letting Remus down gently and
letting himself down roughly. He took a deep breath and was saying something. (Everyone says
something but Remus never hears what they say.) When he opened his deep-cleaned eyes he saw
naught but blue and behind it, red. Against it, red, blood trickling down his jaw as third degree
burns healed in five seconds. A hand behind his back, hand on his face, (Remus doesn’t think that
he is burnt but he thinks something has changed fundamentally inside of him, and he’s not sure that
it’s for the better.)

He didn’t have the strength or the voice to say any of this. But he had a funny feeling that Sirius
already knew.

“What the fuck are you DOING?!” Sirius was yelling, his hands shaking viciously with terror
against his skin as Remus coughed, began to heave, inhaling cold fresh air so vital that his body,
accustomed to smoke, could not take it in, and it scorched white hot down his throat the more he
breathed. He rolled over, dropping the diary beside him. The sandpaper scratch made him gag and
he coughed up blood and bile into the grass. He grasped onto the earth. The dirt under his
fingernails would stay there forever. It was decreed.
“Why would you–” Sirius cried, his voice hysterical, absolutely hysterical and unhinged and angry
and so angry and so so angry, his touch never leaving Remus; not for a second. “What is fucking
wrong with you?”

“I’m,” a vague word, croaked, he rolled back over onto his back and Sirius held him again, as he
breathed.

“You selfish fucking idiot,” spat Sirius, no malice, just upset, you don’t know— “you don’t do that
shit,” and you do?, “you don’t—you can’t—you’re everything, do you understand, you don’t—not
without–”, he was screaming, Remus was quite sure, but his voice was miles away, Sirius Orion
Black sobbing and sobbing, “you idiot, you idiot,” an alcohol bottle dashed against the wall, we are
the fucking same, my love, the same type of monster, the same type of ruined.

You made me like this, Remus wanted to say, but it wouldn’t be the whole truth. The whole truth is
that he made himself like this. And now he has to go on and contend with what he is. And what he
is is something ugly and unimaginable and so far from here and now. Sirius holding him by the
back of the neck and getting him to breathe, against Boardwalk, the fire dissipating now that he
was outside, Remus was all that Sirius saw, we are one and the fucking same and we will both go
or we will not go at all. Neither of our prides enough to leave this place, both of us stubborn
enough to end up here. And it’s every single time. Every single goddamn time.

“I can’t lose you too,” Sirius was whispering, he pulled Remus up into a sitting position and they
were embracing, clinging onto each other like it was the rapture. “I can’t lose you too. Oh, God, not
you. Not you. Not you.”

“I know,” whispered Remus, for it was all he could say.

“I can’t–”

“I know. I know. I know.”

“I can’t.”

I know, he knows, he does not know, he did not know, he would never know, he might always
know, too loud, too loud too loud too loud. Please let it be quiet. Can you let it be quiet? Can he
have a break?

Can he have a break? Will you offer him this much?

III. WHITTAKER HOUSE

One hundred and sixteen miles from the figures in stone, a snapshot of Medusa’s tavern under the
ever-lit flickering stars on earth like that of fallen angels, a fire rages upon a sleepy hollow.

Under the burning sky, a burning throat partnered and reassembled toward the hell their kind
belongs to, Dorcas Meadowes wakes up.

And she’s hungry.

 END OF BOOK TWO

Chapter End Notes

the first death is dorcas.

while captured by riddle & his men, bellatrix mind-controls dorcas to kill remus. she
manages to break out of it at the last second, but then riddle appears behind her and
rips her heart out of her back right in front of him.
HOWEVER! at the very very end of the chapter it's revealed that dorcas is actually
alive and has accidentally been turned into a vampire (remember sirius biting her?).
I've warned it as if she died for good simply because they don't know and it's pretty
horrific and there's like 15ks worth of grieving and thinking she's dead before it's
revealed (to the reader, not any of the characters) that she's been turned. also I know
some people won't read this all in one sitting, so. yeah.

the other death is andromeda. essentially she sacrifices herself to kill bellatrix, and
they are both burned alive.

this chapter took me days upon days to write and days upon days to edit. it's probably
the most important chapter of them all. things are going to be pretty different from
here on out. I really hope you liked it and (in the wake of hitting 200K HITS WHICH
IS INSANE) I want to emphasis how dearly I love and appreciate all of your support
and how much it keeps me & this narrative going (even though I suck at replying okay
I'm going to go reply to comments on 22 now I'm TRYINGGGG)
mwah. mwah mwah mwah xxxx thank you thank you thank you. see you soon x
(also if you see the end chapter count slowly going up. NO YOU DONT)

p.s. OH! AND BY THE WAY! in the wake of everyone's heartbreak I made a a
playlist for dorcas & remus :) I made it a while ago it's been simmering but I thought
when better to drop it in the fic than now lol. enjoy xx
 twenty four
Chapter Summary

a slight interlude

Chapter Notes

things to know before this chapter:

there is about a two week time skip, and some of the gang are split up. it's passed
through an epistolary (letters exchanged) section in the beginning, but is not like this
the whole chapter.
also, there is a POV switch. this chapter, for the first time in this fic, is not remus's
POV.

CW's:
- identity issues.
- grief.
- sort of hallucinations. mainly caused by malnourishment, which is caused by not
taking care of oneself due to depression/grief. this is in the POV character
- a hint towards dissociation (not the pov character).
- more grief.
- alcohol abuse (only mentioned, not seen).
- minor character death (only mentioned, not seen, but it's someone you know and
might make you a little sad).

i hope you enjoy babes! <3<3<3

See the end of the chapter for more notes

BOOK 3: The Hunter

L.E,

Phone lines are down. Something to do with the new spell fucking with the signal. Dora’s trying to
figure it out but, obviously, it isn’t exactly at the top of our priority list down here. She’s dropping
by later – you should know that – and so will bring this letter with her, along with a secure two-
end postbox for us to use until the issue is sorted.

She should also have something I found under the rubble for you. Sorry if it’s a bit ruined.

I’m writing this really quickly because I have to go help the building effort – me and Regulus,
being essentially the only vampires who can stay in the sun long enough to do anything productive
during the day, are being absolutely bled for our labour by the witches. Though I don’t blame
them. Anyway, will check in more thoroughly later, but I hope everything up there is okay. Regulus
sends his best. I do too. & Mary, as always, sends all of her love.

Yours,

JP.

James,

Oh, gosh. Thank you so much for the book.

Seeing Dora’s face – the first friendly outsider face in days, perhaps – was comfort enough, but
having my copy of Emma back, regardless of how tattered it is and how most of volume 2 has been
blackened with ash, is wonderful. (I might have cried a little, but don’t you dare hold that against
me, Potter.) I don’t know. It was a sort of… homecoming feeling. Maybe that’s silly, we were only
there for a few months, but that place really started to feel like home. It’s horrible how things
turned out.

How are you? How’s Mary? I haven’t caught even a minute with her since the explosion, and I’m
worried. Remus still hasn’t spoken to anybody. Not even Sirius. It’s not from lack of trying. The
kids have tried, I’ve tried, Dora has tried when she pops in. I don’t really know what to do. I don’t
think any of us do. I’ve barely seen Sirius, either, but that’s not for lack of talking; that’s because
Dora’s grandparents have a wine cellar.

Have you found Oliver yet? I keep hoping that he’s just going to turn up, all goofy and unharmed
and coated in ash. Percy’s distraught. Everyone is, I suppose. Everyone’s grieving in their own
way. We’ve all lost something. But I really, really hope he appears.

I’m sure Dora’s told you what I’ve lost. I don’t really want to talk about it, but at the same time I
suppose I’d love for someone to ask. What with Remus and Sirius reclusive, and the rest of you
over there trying to repair the house, I suppose it’s fallen to me to try and hold everything together
here. But I don’t know how to do that anymore. The fire was easy, it was simple, innate. It wasn’t
me holding things together on the battlefield, it was her. The phoenix. And now she’s… gone. Lost.
Whatever. We don’t know yet, I guess. Rebuilding and recovering is the priority, not me, but I just
can’t stop thinking – how am I supposed to hold anything together when I couldn’t even hold
myself together?

I wake and I try to cook for Dora’s poor mother who seems too frail for what she’s been set up for.
I replace the bandages over Remus’s burns silently. I peel Sirius off where he’s passed out on the
table and try to drag him upstairs, but he won’t come. In the afternoons I’ve taken to sitting in the
attic room with Draco. There are a lot of old books up there. He doesn’t talk to me, but I know he
misses Astoria. We haven’t seen much of any of them after Miyuki. I leave cups outside their rooms
in the morning and they’re gone by the afternoon, but that’s more or less it. Without Toria, it’s
almost hauntingly quiet here.

Draco misses Remus, too. I don’t know what to do about him. I don’t know what to do, period. The
thing is, I think I would do the same, were I in his position, so I feel like I can’t really do anything.
It’d be rude of me to drag him out of a stupor he has the entire right to be in. After everything he
went through, I think he needs a break from it all. From the noise. It’s been loud for so long.
And so, it’s quiet here. The birds chirp and the wind whistles and nobody really speaks. But with
the world looming over us, I don’t know how long it’s going to last. I don’t know how long we’re
going to have before… well, before we’re blown out for good.

I can’t kill the dementors anymore, James. Can’t even repel them. I can’t do anything.

We’re losing, now. He has the upper hand, and we’ve lost our only party piece, and we’re losing.

Anyway, enough of me. I hope the girls are doing okay. I know Mary’s processing her grief by
working but please try and be there for her. Or at least make sure she reads my letters and knows I
am there for her, just not physically. She doesn’t even have to reply. I just need to know she’s
reading them. Gosh, I miss you. It’s hurting that I can’t be there with you guys; that I’m all the
way in fucking Canada while everyone is over there making an effort to go on. Doesn’t feel like
I’m making an effort at all. Or that all of my efforts died on that battlefield with the Phoenix. My
hands are cold. Not even Sirius warms them up… however much of Sirius is left down there. And
now I’m talking about myself again. Fuck, I’m sorry. Let me wrap this up.

I miss you so so much. Miss Reg so so much, miss Mary so so much. Give them all a kiss from me.
Give everyone a kiss from me. Give Marlene two. Tell her how brilliant she is as our leader and
then tell her again. Also, don’t let Dora exhaust herself going back and forth trying to fix what’s
broken. Some broken things should stay broken. Sometimes they start out that way.

Love you,

Lily. X

Sirius,

I’ve been sitting with this pen and paper for forty-five minutes trying to figure out what to write. I
still don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to say.

I’m not sure of much. I’m not sure who I’m mourning. It feels like there’s something very very hot
inside of me that wants to explode, and I think it might be justified anger, but I don’t know what
that feels like. I think you’re the only person that can understand the feeling of freedom after
escaping our family, and I also think you’re the only person who can understand the loneliness.
One day there’s thousands, the next day there’s nobody. I think there’s a part of me that is trying to
push it away, trying to masquerade whatever grief I’m feeling with that loneliness, because being
lonely is all that I’ve ever known. But I’ve gotten a taste of the opposite, of love, and it’s ruined
me. So now I’m just on fucking fire.

Sirius, I understand it all. I understand why you left and didn’t come back. I understand why you
stayed out of the country for three hundred years. I understand why you tore your heart out of your
own chest and broke it in half, why in leaving me us, you wiped all the good away, because the
good is bad. The good is always bad. And the men are always lonely. “You can do anything”, but
not that, and not that, and not that—&c.

When we are alone, there’s no one to nitpick what we cannot do. But being able to do anything
defeats the purpose of living, I think. How does one decide what they want and what they don’t
want when there’s no one to want the things they don’t and rebuke the things they do? I think
you’ve been that person for me in my head. I think Andromeda was, too. But one of you was wrong.
And I don’t fucking know who.

I don’t know much, but I think I need you. Write back.

R.A.B.

L.E,

No Oliver. We have people going in and out of Whittaker to collect our dead. First thing anyone
did was try to find Dorcas, but nobody could find her body. Don’t tell Remus that, please.

Anyway, they brought back Fabian today. Both of the Bones’ and at least a third of the vampires
from London, all gone. Dearborn, too. Benjy’s devastated. Molly’s thinking of sending Fred
wherever his twin is, someplace safe, so if that gets accepted she’ll be dropping in. I, personally,
think it’s about fucking time, but her parenting choices are none of my business.

We’re in tents and little cabins, right now, crafted by the witches up and down the lake. We have to
stay away from the main house for at least twelve hours of the day because of magical radiation,
so we’ve been put on alternating shifts. Marlene and Mary are on the shift adjacent to me and Reg.
‘Course, Marlene’s around 24/7 regardless. She’s given up sleeping. Regulus, surprisingly, hasn’t.
I think he enjoys it.

He hasn’t spoken about Andromeda. I’m quite sure my efforts at getting him to talk about it are just
as futile as yours with Sirius. I just don’t understand why she did what she did. Why she didn’t tell
any of us about it. I think that’s what’s troubling Reg the most. Because it’s not about losing
someone you’ve known your whole life. It’s about finding out you never really knew them. And
then, if you never really knew them… well, did you ever really know yourself?

I’m sorry. About your powers. But Lily, I need you to know you’re not the be all and end all. You
are not our ‘party piece’. That would imply that you’re some flashy object that we whip out at our
convenience and store away until we can make use of it again, and you are not that. You’re so
much more – as yourself and as her. And I know you don’t believe it, so I’m going to keep saying it
until you do. I also know it feels like you have to hold up the fort and I have never been able to stop
you from saving the lives of others at your own expense & won’t lie and say I ever could, but just…
please take care of yourself as well. I think you minimise your own strife in the face of others that
you perceive to be worse off than yourself and as wonderfully strong as you are, it’s okay to be
weak sometimes. Alright, Evans?

Anyway, back to your powers – if you do want to talk about it, you know that you can talk to me.
I’m asking!!! But, after all you did at Whittaker are we sure you’ve not just.. burnt out? I’m sorry
to ask, I’m sure it’s miles more frustrating for you to hear as it is me to say, but… well, you did go
through a lot. And I thought, typically, Phoenixes rebirthed. You didn’t do that, right? Of course,
you summoned your own Fiendfyre in murderous amounts and killed a dementor which is typically
the end of the course of action, but… I don’t know. Does it feel like your ‘divine purpose’ has been
fulfilled? Aren’t you supposed to know these things when they happen?

I’m starting to think it’s all just a sham, to be honest. The idea of having a purpose. A divine
purpose, at that. There are no divinities anymore. They’re not shining on us, at least. We’ve all run
off-track, there’s no guidelines to what to do next. It’ll come as it goes. Just let me know how you
feel. I’m asking, Lil.
Anyway, how’s Remus doing now? How’s he healing? Don’t presume that he’ll be anywhere near
alright, of course, but are his burns healing? His cuts? I feel like by the end he was less a man and
more one big open wound. I understand why he won’t speak, I think. It’s already sucked in so much
pain. He needs to heal over. But, alongside that, a part of me fears that leaving the infection to
brew will just make it all that much worse when the wound bursts open again.

… Have you thought much about how he conducted your fire?

I have. I know that Mary has, because I overheard her mentioning it to Regulus. And I’ve noticed
other things about him. I suppose I’m the one who challenges him the most, stupid challenges, so
(apart from Sirius) it would be me to notice, but… I don’t think he’s just… human. He has almost a
sixth sense, and it’s not one you can build up, it’s just there. He’s intuitive to a level that straight
up should not be possible. And I never wanted to say anything because I thought I was going crazy,
and I still don’t want to now, because I fear he’ll spiral into the same hole that Regulus is in and
that you are in and that probably all of us in some form are in – that of not knowing who the hell
you are, of everything being a lie. I so desperately don’t want it to be true. He’s dealt with enough.

And yet.

I can’t stop thinking about how he killed Dumbledore, directly. With a dagger that was not laced
with basilisk venom.

Lily. He didn’t actually destroy the Horcrux.

I don’t know what’s happening. Reg is being secretive about whatever research Mary’s put him up
to so I’m just as in the dark as you. All I do know is that we’re trying to persevere until we see the
sun again and yet the skies get darker every day. It’s very grey here, now, not just overcast. Ergo,
Riddle’s expanding his forcefield. I don’t know how many Dementors he has, or how many more
he’ll create. But if the entire world goes dark, who will be left?

Take a deep breath of that fresh Canadian air for me, will you? I’ll keep you updated about goings
on here. I’m hoping we can drop in soon. As soon as it’s actually stable here, stable enough to
leave, we will. In the meantime, keep me updated; on everyone, but mainly you. Don’t ever
apologise for talking about yourself. You know I love to hear it. All of it.

Miss you.

JP.

Perce,

We found him. Whittaker. I know you didn’t want anyone to fuck you around, so I’ll tell you
straight up. Ballroom. Shot through the head. Will’ve been one of Dumbledore’s.

I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.

JP.
James,

I’m so fucking sorry about Oliver. There are no words.

Percy’s just gotten your letter, now. He’s with Jul & Bel, they’re looking after him, but fuck do I
wish there was more I could do. I’m perpetually wishing there was more I could do. But I guess
being here and doing the little I am is doing so much for those who can’t do anything at all. I just
can’t stop thinking of him, the amount of life he had. I want to come and take care of you. I know, I
know, you’ll roll your eyes at that but I can’t help it. I’m a lover, I’m a mother. I miss you like a
phantom limb.

Finally managed to drag Sirius out on one of my walks along the coast today. Obviously, I can’t
tell you exactly where we are, in case we’re intercepted – to be quite honest, I don’t know myself –
but the house is about a ten minute walk down a plain, and then there’s a rocky cliffside coast.
There’s a sort of pathway – not really, it’s just where the rocks are a bit lower – and we climbed
down, stood and threw stones into the water. It was very refreshing. I had almost forgotten what
fresh air was like. And a blue sky. It’s cold as hell but it’s beautiful.

We didn’t talk about much. I tried to bring up Andromeda but he shoved it away, and so we spoke
more about the past, about you. About me, actually. He sat and listened while I ranted to him
about – God, who knows what at this point. I took your advice, I guess; I let myself be weak. If I’m
going to do it with anyone, I suppose it’s fitting that it’s Sirius. He and I know each other's bests
and worsts. We feel the worst of each other's anguish. He says he felt the phoenix pull away when I
killed the dementor. He also says she’s quiet but he can still feel her. I thought that would make me
feel better, but it doesn’t.

He also asked me if I felt his pain recently, which was… well. I sort of fumbled my way through it. I
couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I’ve had a headache for two weeks straight. And I couldn’t
bring myself to tell him that when he was sobbing over Remus in front of the burning house, I
couldn’t fucking breathe.

Anyway, I let myself be weak and Sirius listened and the world didn’t end. It was actually quite
nice. I wish he’d let me do the same, but I was never that person for him. Not really. Not like
Remus, or you.

So, Sirius is getting a bit better, I think. Instead of sitting in the cellar he’s begun sitting in Remus’s
room. They’re together for hours on end sometimes, but they barely speak. Remus doesn’t speak.
He clings onto that book that he risked his life for everywhere he goes but doesn’t do anything with
it, won’t let anyone else touch it, won’t tell anyone what it says or why he risked everything for it.
But his burns are healing, and he’s eating; albeit, scarcely. I thought he was doing okay for a few
days, but I made him a fried egg sandwich yesterday morning because we didn’t have much else
and a bit of yolk dripped onto his duvet and he lost it. Dropped it onto the floor, smashed the plate.
I came in and he was making these… sounds, like he was choking, but he wouldn’t look at me, and
they eventually went away. I think it was a panic attack. I put a glass of water by his bedside and
when I went to check on him a few hours later it was entirely drunk and he’d fallen asleep. One
hand on the book, beside him on his pillow. Unopened.

Thank you for asking, and for caring. I guess I just don’t ever want to be selfish. I know there are
bigger fish to fry around here, but I just… miss you and Mary and Regulus a lot. Because you
understood. Me and my relationship with myself, what the Phoenix meant to me. I never said, but
you know that a part of me hated it. It felt like a scab inside me that wouldn’t go away because I
kept picking at it, or something foreign in my stomach that I had to claw out, you know? And I
wished that it would disappear all the time. All the time. I said this to Sirius earlier and it’s been
rolling around my head since: as much as I loved helping and being of service, it felt like all I was
was service, and I wasn’t ready for that. I don’t think anyone who’d grown up oblivious would be
ready for that. But at the end of the day, I think I feel more lost without it than I did with it. Isn’t
that unfair? Some higher power is laughing at me, I know it.

And I know it’s the best outcome, that I’m fine, and I should be thankful because I could’ve died,
but it almost feels like a part of me has. And if I felt lost with it, and lost without it, does that mean
I’m just… lost? What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?

God, sorry, I said I didn’t want to talk about it and then I went ahead and talked about it. Sorry for
no good news. And sorry for saying sorry again. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. As long as we
have each other, I like to think everything will be fine. I suppose that’s why it’s hard right now; I
miss you. I know I already said that, but I do. And Reg, and Mary. Do let me know when you’d be
able to drop by. How are things? How’s the rebuild going? You still in tents? Gosh, I used to
practically live in a tent. I always had to share with my sister. One time, the pegs weren’t in the
ground hard enough, and I woke up and the entire thing had blown away. We were just lying
underneath the stars. Do knock your pegs in hard, boys. Especially you, Potter. You sleep naked.

And finally, regarding the last thing you spoke about in your letter: I have thought about it. Not
gotten very far. But, when we put up the warding, he felt just like Sirius does. So there’s that. And I
hadn’t realised that he’d killed D with the normal knife – most of the battle is a blur to me – does
that make a difference? If a Horcrux is mortal, destroying the body means… I’m drawing a blank?
Have we ever even talked about this? Where does it go?? Is it still in him even though he’s dead?
Did you get his body and run him through with one of the basilisk blades for good measure??? Or
did it get displaced into something else? We haven’t lost track of it, have we? I don’t think I could
handle that.

Oh, gosh, everything is so confusing. We really need a family meeting. I can’t wrap my head
around any of this.

Just… let me know. Anything and everything. Sending all of my best & more.

Lily. X

Sirius,

I know that Lily is giving you my letters. I don’t blame you for not writing back, because I know
you. Your cold shoulder has given me chronic frostbite on my fingertips. Luckily for you, being
cold is all I’ve ever known, so I’m not going to stop writing. Oddly enough, because I don’t really
know what else to do.

For the first time in my life, I have no idea where to go from here. It’s sort of freeing. Mostly
terrifying.

I think I need you. Write back.

R.A.B.
Remus,

Lily says you’re still not talking to anyone, which is fantastic, because you’ve always been great at
staying silent while I chatter away at you.

Today we started fixing the East Wing. It’s hard, because the building was destroyed via magical
means, so it’s a lot harder to fix. It’s very draining. The particles in the air are smooshed, one
might say; everything is disorderly here, because of the rewritten spell over the grounds. I don’t
think I could ever accurately explain to you how different a witch’s magic is to her friends without
you being a witch and understanding. But… remember in Hackney, when you told me you could
almost taste mine? Almost smell it? You could attune yourself to me. And you told me you did it
again when you found the ring, in that elevator all those months ago? It was remarkable to me, the
first time, because I didn’t know much about magical theory, and nobody had ever told me that
they could smell me like a perfume. It’s fascinating. And it’s true. It’s how we work. So the spell
has been rewritten, by me, which means the coding of our wards is now my magic and not
Pandora’s, which means the atmosphere now tastes like me, and not her, which everybody had
unconsciously grown used to. And so we all have to adjust. Some more than others.

We’re sleeping in tents. Do you remember when we went camping down in Devon? I think we were
on a case. I genuinely don’t remember. What I do remember is cooking rice and sausages on a
portable stove and disposable BBQ. And target practice on the trees. And sleeping on blow-up
mattresses under the stars. I have to say, even though I lived with you down the hall for years upon
years, it always made me obscenely happy when we’d have sleepovers. Stupid sentiment, really, but
we were children. In a way, we still are. We’re too young.

I miss you even though it’s only been 4 days. I’m going to pop round again tomorrow. I shouldn’t
leave, it makes the place unstable, but I’d abandon everything if it’s you. You know that, right?

I love you,

Your Mary.

L.E.

We were pretty productive today in fixing up the place.

It’s odd, because we’ll go to bed satisfied, and then when we wake up it always looks in more of a
shit state than when we went to sleep. Mary says it’s adjusting to the magic. New set of rules.
Atmosphere, something something – I really can’t wrap my head around witchy theories, so excuse
me for butchering it. Either way, we finished the porch, got rid of the rubble and two of the witches
with nature specialties rejuvenated the flowers that had been crushed and sliced through by the
broken windows, so things are a tad more lively. We’ve also discovered that a lot of the piping and
most of the foundations of the house were saved, so we don’t have to go down to brick to rework it.
Wiring will need fixed, though. At least I’m no longer coughing at the dust from the rubble, as it’s
been all cleaned away now. An asthmatic’s nightmare, I’m telling you.

With this in mind, we’ve all been talking about when it’ll be best to drop by. What with trips into
the city with the remaining lanterns and days spent treating our injured, immortalising our dead
and trying to pick up the pieces that we’ve been left with, it’s been hard. I’m sorry. I know we need
each other more than ever. But you can understand. You’re so goddamn strong, Lily, sometimes it
hurts.

Sorry, I don’t have much to say today, but I’ll keep you updated. Hopefully phone lines go back up
soon. I’ll call you again next time I go out of the vicinity and can get signal, though I do apologise
that the last phone call was a bit rudely interrupted by a dementor. I’ll give him twos next time and
tell him that my Lily killed his mate, see how he likes it.

Love and bests, from all of us, including Regulus who is reading over my shoulder,

JP.

P.S. please keep dragging Sirius out on those walks you mentioned a few letters ago. I know you’ve
got tremendous amounts to deal with but what with him ignoring every letter that gets sent his
way, the two of us are worried. He’s our guy, you know.

P.S.S. please keep keeping an eye on Remus. He’s not replying to Mary’s letters either, which isn’t
shocking, per say, but we’re all worried about him too.

P.S.S.S. please keep an eye on yourself. Disregard any of that ^ if you need to put yourself first.
You don’t have to hold the world up, Lil. There are people on the ground to break your fall. Mary
(who is now reading over my other shoulder) sends all of her love and the minute amount of
strength that she has left. (Her words). My words are that Mary Macdonald has just sent you a
little bit of strength, so presumably you’ve now turned into the Hulk. Congratulations.

(she’s laughing, at that. I thought you’d like to know.)

Eternally yours, Lily Evans;

JP, RB, MM.

Sirius,

I think I need you. Write back.

R.A.B.

Lil,

Given the green light! The five of us will be apparating in round 2pm today. Can stay a night
before we have to be back to hold up the fort. See you soon, flower.

JP

8am, Lily Evans, sitting on the armchair beside the magical postbox Pandora set up for them,
hands gone limp.
She dropped the small piece of paper to her lap and breathed, and then breathed again, and then got
up.

It was a show of affairs. Everything ran smoothly in this place, once the routines had been
established. Every morning, Lily woke up first, she checked on Remus, filled his usually empty
water glass to make sure he stayed hydrated. Checked on Sirius, usually still asleep in his own
room (where Pandora’s grandparents' little house had in fact been enchanted to seem miles larger
than it does on the outside, the spell apparently did not compensate for double beds, so everybody
was in singles. Lily made sure to get herself positioned down the hall from the both of them. It was
a happy coincidence that she also ended up opposite Percy, for she could (and did) check on him
too.)

There was a window at the end of the hallway, four panels, with a stain glass flourish in a half-
circle at the top. At a certain point in the morning, the sun would illuminate the hallway in burnt
orange and bathing red, and it was in this window that Lily tended to get up, wrap her dressing
gown around herself, and pad down the hallway to the open seating space in which the postbox lay
happily on a shelf. And she would check for letters. First thing in the morning.

A spring in her step, down the winding stairs. Everything in this house was made of wood or some
sort of adjacent, and, aside from the bedrooms, they did not seem to like doors. Underneath the
deep oak archway into the kitchen, she stepped onto the harsh brick-coloured tiles, always to be
greeted by Pandora’s wonderful ageing mother, her face permanently in smile lines, with a cup of
PG Tips in front of her at the splintery table.

“Good morning, Elizávet,” Lily would say, dipping to give her a quick kiss on the cheek, spinning
in place to pull up the bread bin and throw it into the toaster, nabbing a blood bag on the way to the
crockery cabinet and balancing it on one arm whilst balancing plates and a metal cup in the other.
Whilst waiting for the toast to pop, she’d twist open the bag, holding it carefully with two hands
and making sure nothing spills as she poured it into the cup—one bag tended to fill the whole cup
with a little bit to spare, which made it very easy for her to regulate that the vampires were eating
enough—she’d pull out her spares, the cups that Elizávet had kindly duplicated for her to
accommodate Percy, Isabela, and Astoria; the toast would pop, usually in the middle of her second
pouring, and so she’d hop over to pull it out and place it onto a plate, drop another two slices in and
go back to pouring, one, two, three, four metal lids and one, two, three, four straws. Three of them
were metal, but she dug out a glittery pink bendy straw in the shape of a swirl from deep in one of
the drawers, and assigned it to Sirius instantly.

Her waitress training had prepared her for this very moment, and so she’d carry four cups upstairs,
sojourning into rooms. She deposited Sirius’ last, always, beside his bed, so that she would have a
free hand to whack him one round the head and wake him up.

“Mmpgh,” he groaned, this particular morning, head turning to her so quickly it was owl-like. She
placed both hands on her hips and raised her eyebrows.

“Home is coming today, at 2pm, all five of them,” she said, pointing to the cup. “Drink. You look
too pale. And then–” she wrinkled her nose, “get in the shower, Sirius. My God.”

He pulled the cover back over his head, as always. When she got back downstairs the second set of
toast had popped, leaving the first two slices cold enough that the butter would be thick and not
melt into the bread, the way that Jul liked it, and leaving the last two warm so the butter would
melt and subdue the crunch, the way Remus liked it.

She, upon spreading, and cutting, and nabbing a glass of water for Jul, as she’d filled Remus’,
balanced both places and the glass in her arms and left. Elizávet usually would light her first
cigarette at this point. Today, she did not, but then again, she’d used PG Tips instead of Yorkshire
Tea, and home is coming at 2pm, so perhaps it was a special day.

Jul was awake, as always. They were the early bird of the bunch, and very often Lily’s only
company between 7am and 10.

“Oh,” they groaned, cross-legged on their bed when Lily knocked and entered, arms full and
fumbling slightly. “Lily, I told you you don’t have to do this every day.”

“I want to,” she insisted, kicking the door closed behind her.

Jul pursed their lips, and then sighed. Their hair was mussed and longer, now, shaggy around the
ears and curling at their neck, the mousy brown past their collarbones. Lily had been meaning to
ask if they’d like a haircut. She had never exactly done it before, but she figured there’d be no harm
in trying.

“It is unfair labour,” they complained, through fond laughter, moving to shove the alarm clock
aside and place their crockery on the end table. They paused, wiggling their fingers, looking
around. “You need compensation.”

“Jul, it’s fine,” Lily laughed, but they’d already leaned over.

“Here,” they said, picking up the packet of Skittles from the bedside table. They rattled it a bit.
“Bel nabbed these from town for me yesterday. I offer you payment in the form of Skittle.”

Lily, smiling, walked forward and held her palm out. A grand total of five skittles fell as Jul shook
the bag.

They grinned, sheepishly. “I’ll have more tomorrow.”

“This is plenty,” Lily said, and then, to prove it, threw all five in her mouth, continuing all muffled,
“no more compensation needed, thank you, I’ll be here all week. How are you doing?”

Jul smiled, though it seemed more like a grimace. They shrugged. Jul, though not killed by the
dementors, had gotten very close and, as a result, had motor and sensory nerve damage in their
arms and legs; worse on the left side, but still there on the right. Yesterday, they couldn’t get out of
bed.

But: “Better,” they said. “Better today, I think. Knock on wood.”

Lily leaned over to do it for them on the end table; Jul laughed.

“Davide is coming at noon, anyway,” they continued. Davide was their medi-witch. “So we’ll see
then.”

“Right,” said Lily, nodding. “I’ll bring your lunch up early, then.”

“Oh, Lily–”

She laughed, going to leave before Jul could protest at her insistent hospitality.

“Make some for yourself, at least!” Jul shouted as they left; Lily made a noise of assent and
sauntered down the hallway to knock gently on Remus’ door.

“Remus?” she called, softly, knowing she would get no answer but unable to stop herself anyway.
After a moment, she twisted the doorknob and it clicked open.
The room was dark, no lights on, but the curtains were thin enough that the natural light from the
window shone well enough to illuminate it. Remus was awake, sitting up against his headboard.
The window in his room was long and placed on the wall his bed was pressed up against, and this
is where he had been for the majority of the past two-odd weeks since Whittaker. Against the
window, watching the trees blow outside. Lily took a few tentative steps forward and deposited the
plate on the end table. There was a clunk as it hit the wood.

“Morning,” she said, gently, straightening up. “I made you toast.”

He did not reply. He stayed where he was, blank, staring out of the gaps in the blinds.

“Remus,” she prompted. “I made toast.”

This got him to jolt. As if he’d not even realised she was there. He turned, looked at her, wide-eyed
as if he didn’t even recognise what he was seeing. Like a deer in headlights. His face was stubbly;
he hadn’t shaved in a while; and his eyes were heavy-lidded, bruised pale and purple on the
underside. With help from the witches his burns had, for the majority, healed. They had scarred up
his arms. They couldn’t be avoided, but, like all scarring, they could be treated. What couldn’t be
treated was the vacant look in his eyes. That of a stranger.

He looked at the toast. Shifted, slightly, to turn his body around—his knees were up to his chest—
and he reached his hand out, fingers outstretched. Brushed the very tips of them against the edge of
the plate. Twitched back, slightly, and then went in with more confidence, gripping onto the edge.
As if making sure the plate was real and would not turn on him, or perhaps even disappear; he held
it for a moment, and then picked it up. It shook a little bit, but the toast did not drop as he brought it
to him, balancing it on both his knees, like something precious. He looked at her again.

“Thank you, Lily,” he whispered.

This was the extent of the scarce words she had gotten from him. Yes, Lily. No, Lily. Thank you,
Lily. And then he turns, he sits, he watches the world move but does not move himself. He went to
turn back around here, now, fingers gripping onto the plate so hard his knuckles were white, and
Lily cleared her throat.

“They’re coming today,” she said. Remus turned back to her. “Home. The five of them. James,
Reg, Marlene, Dora. And Mary.” She licked her lips. “They’ll be here at 2.”

He nodded, once. His face unperturbed. The plate did not sway on his knees, did not move in the
slightest. He was gripping onto it like it was the core of his earth.

She smiled.

“I’ll see you later, then,” she said, sort of hastily, choked up—feeling a threat behind her eyes and
turning as quickly as she could to stop Remus from seeing it.

She took a deep breath, facing away from him, and then walked the three paces back to his white
door post-haste, opening it and shutting it behind her just in time for the tears to fall.

She pressed her back to the door and squeezed her eyes shut, pressing both hands to her mouth with
as much force as she could muster. It took her about ten seconds of breathing and blinking the tears
away to register the figure to her left, tattered shirt low on his chest, hair tucked behind his ears, a
figure in the shadows of the edges, outside of the dwindling red light of truth.

She sighed.
“I thought I told you to shower,” she muttered thickly, and he smiled.

“I will,” Sirius said. She noted the gloss of red on the inside of his bottom lip when he spoke,
which soothed her, for at least he’d eaten.

His eyes moved to the door.

She sighed again.

“He’s awake,” she whispered, sniffing. Sirius nodded, once. She stepped aside, and Sirius slid into
her side to enter, but stopped before the door. He turned, and reached out. But he didn’t reach her.
His hand dropped, awkwardly.

“Go on,” Lily whispered, hushed. “I’m fine.”

He took this in and then darted past her, opening the door as gently as she had, entering the den to
sit by his bedside and watch the world go by with him. He’d sit there, and they’d pass ten words
perhaps at most, but he’d be there, beside him, in the fire as he always was and perhaps he’d make
Remus eat the toast, too. Lily could only hope.

The door swung shut.

Back in her own room, Lily sighed, feeling her own stomach grumble but also feeling a sort of
displacement of nausea cancelling it out, turning it into something more of an ache, something
seeping into her abdomen and turning it inside out. She stood in front of the mirror in her bedroom.
The light shone against the left side of her face from the open curtain, and so she shut it, so the
natural light still illuminated but was muted enough for her to see both sides of her face for what it
was. Her hair stuck up oddly on one side from where she’d slept; she tried to pat it down, but it
refused to tame. So she retrieved a hairbrush that smelled oddly of coconut oil from a drawer in the
old, creaky desk and began to run it through, tugging at knots with such vigour that she felt the
repercussions on her scalp, saw it in the red on the hairbrush; ends first, that had always been how
her mother had taught her, and even with her hair so much shorter now she followed the tradition,
but, as she hadn’t done this in so long, the matts followed her. She tugged the hairbrush through her
hair so much that it began to go frizzy until, tears in her eyes, she gave up, scrunching some of it up
into a little bun on the top—a failsafe to hide the tears, rips and matts in her hair and the patches
from where she’d tugged at it so hard that it had fallen out, or maybe lost it from stress, or maybe,
maybe lost it when she lost everything else.

Her knuckles flushed red as she double-tied the hair tie. The bones of her fingers jutting out as if
trying to escape from their confinement.

She took a deep breath. Scrunched her fingers into a fist, and then splayed her palm out, closing her
eyes and straining to trying to reach that place. That paradise and that hell; tugging at the strings
looped somewhere between her two lungs, those sick old things, still wheezing like a smoker. It
was like she’d get halfway up the steps and then suddenly the stairwell disappears. One step up
and her foot did not hit the step she had been expecting, and she’d fall, and her fingers sparked
against the mirror but that was all they were. Sparks. She opened her eyes and they were still
sparking, like a residue, like a smear of paint scratched off the wall with nails bitten down to the
skin until they drew blood of their own, bold and red as if it was an achievement of some sort.

The spark bounced off the white wall and onto the floor. Sunk into the woolly white rug and left a
burnt patch not five centimetres away from where the last one had been.

She sighed, and went to brush her teeth.

In the bathroom, the light is even, you see, overhead, and so Lily could, most mornings, get a
glimpse of how she is truly seen in this one cabinet mirror. There were two mirrors as there were
two doors. She favoured the left side; she didn’t know why.

It was in this mirror that, after washing her hands, peppermint lingering on her tongue, she’d look
at herself truly for the day. On this particular morning, she leaned closer. She registered a frown
line on her forehead that had not been there before, a few breakages across her skin, the tenderness
around her eyes and cheeks dark and blotched and gaunt. There was a red, sort of bloodshot patch
in one of her eyes, barely noticeable to that of whom were not herself; her eyes, the muted swampy
green. But most particularly, perhaps, it was at this mirror, under the equal light of Newton and the
equal light of God, that Lily looked into her reflection and had no clue who was staring back.

“What do you want?” she asked herself. Her lips rustled against each other like sandpaper. Her lip
balm was somewhere under her bed, she quite thought; she hadn’t had the energy to lean over and
pick it up from where she’d accidentally kicked it there yet. Two days ago. “What do you want?”

The woman in the mirror did not answer. Just mouthed the words she did right back to her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “You should know.”

You should know.

“I don’t know.”

I don’t know.

“You should know.”

You should know.

She stared. Deep, at the mirror, biting the inside of her cheeks; they hollowed and she truly looked
like the corpse that she felt like. The corpse that she was. The thing that had died inside of her.

“Fuck,” she groaned, reaching up a hand, balling it into a fist beside her face, so hard her
fingernails dug crescent moon markings into her palm, so hard her knuckles were white, white and
red and red and white. She gasped, putting everything into it. Everything she had left. Her hand
sparked. She could smell smoke but she could not see any. She turned her hand around, painfully—
it felt painful to even move her wrist, the exertion she was putting into it, there was a bead of sweat
on her brow and her veins seemed to pulse a colour that was not gold nor black but something in
the middle—she splayed it out. Palm out, facing the mirror. If she moved a bit closer she could put
her hand against the mirror, through the mirror, possibly fall into it. She imagined toppling over
into the silky metallic pool and hoping that someone else might come out. The other mother. The
flame and the gasoline.

God knows she wishes for it. Wishes to swap their places. And yet she doesn’t. Why?

Because she is scared. That’s why. Past, present, and future, she’s terrified.

Lily’s hand was on fire.

It was momentary; she dragged her eyes away from her reflection, and there it was. Silky flames,
caressing her bones, breaking them, degrading and defiling and disintegrating them in the sack of
her ruined skin, against blood that she had drawn from her nails. Just fire. She could perhaps stick
her hand through it and feel no resistance. Her hand was on fire.
And then it was not. Her hand was just her hand.

And yet, when she looked into the mirror, the person in the reflection’s hand was, still, on fire.

She stretched her fingers, drew them in and out, wiggled them a little bit and the person mimicked
her every movement, but their hand was a figure. Theirs was burning and hers was not. Her hand
was cold, pale and freckly, stained with gentle blood from cuts that were too thin to trickle and
bruised on the inside out like a peach, something she could hide if she simply did not cut into it;
her hand was not on fire. That was certain. And yet, in the mirror, embers were bouncing off of her
like city lights.

Lily did not remember the last time that she had eaten.

Malnourishment hallucination, she thought, at once, and then she realised; which one? Which is
real? Is my hand on fire, and is hers not? Or is it as it seems? Is it all in the mirror? Does the mirror
tell the truth, or does the mirror lie? Do my eyes deceive me? What is real?

She wiggled her fingers, breath quickening in panic, feeling gaslit and uncertain and a tightness of
frustration and terror, terror and terror in her chest, she does not know which is real. But there is a
Lily with nothing and there is a Lily with everything.

There is a Lily that burns and there is a Lily that doesn’t. They have never been the same. Never,
they have never been one, and she does not know if that is her fault.

“I hate you,” she said, tear dripping onto her apple cheeks, a strand of hair clinging to the wetness
—she hadn’t realised she’d already been crying—it looked so majestic in the reflection, with the
fire dancing orange and red on her face, giving it the gold flush she had been so sorely lacking, the
flush that losing had mummified her.

In there, her tears were romanticised. Out here, they were naught but tears, and snot. It’s fake. It’s
not real. None of it is real.

I hate you.

The other Lily said exactly what she said. The woman in the mirror spoke in her voice. The
reflection hated her, and she hated the reflection, and so where were they to go from here?

She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, the fire had dissipated. And all she was was a
woman, ugly crying, splotchy and unrefined against matted hair, and an outstretched palm, dry and
calloused and smeared with blood that she may never wash off. Damned spot.

And the reflection stayed out of her reach. And if she hated them, and they hated her, what were
they to become but rivals?

Lily and the Phoenix could never be friends. They both had too much fire to contend with the
other.

Compromisation might be nice, but impossible. For Lily hates herself, and the Phoenix is a mimic.

***

Cleaned up, showered, fed and watered, Lily sat in the armchair by the postbox almost all morning.

People passed through, in and out, Bel, Davide, a few witches; Poppy went back and forth for some
reason that Lily inquired about and then did not listen to. Come lunchtime she made a pasta dish,
enough for at least five but primarily for Moody and Minerva, the former of which could not
stomach much in his illness and therefore regularly skipped breakfast and the latter of whom
tended to hold her own, no matter how much Lily tried to provide for her. After popping Jul’s
portion round early she called various people to dinner—primarily the witches, who could make
the food last in a very fish/bread biblical story way—and went to sit back in her position, next to
the postbox, by the armchair.

The apparition station had been set up on this open deck. It consists of something of a circle of
metal on the floor, filled in with a wooden panel that glowed when someone was to arrive. It was a
cylinder shape, from the floor to the ceiling, with a very thin sheen of cream-toned magic that you
could not see unless you truly looked.

Come 2pm, Lily was sitting, agitated, her knee jiggling from where she was sitting. She’d
unconsciously turned the chair to face the apparition station and was now watching for any sign of
light, any sign of twinging magic.

Come 2:05, both of her knees were jiggling.

Come 2:07, the wooden flooring of the centre began to glow, golden.

She sat up, instantly, eyes wide and watching as the foggy magic sheen thickened. It was almost as
if, instead of a sudden appearance, the person was materialising before her, like every particle and
atom of their body was being plucked away from where they were and refigured into a clay model
in this place.

It lasted about a second or two, and then the magic lessened, and James Potter stepped through the
glisten. Glasses askew, as always.

“Oh my God,” Lily breathed, getting up and projecting herself into his arms.

The sound, the glow and the magic of the others coming through was muted to Lily as James took
a moment to gather his bearings, and then squeezed her, in a way that only he could. He walked
them away so that the others could arrive safely, across the landing, still with their arms wrapped
around each other. Lily had not felt as secure or comfortable in two weeks. She was almost elated,
a bubble of joy sparking at her chest; she dug her face into his neck and inhaled. He smelled like
himself.

“Hi, Lily,” James murmured, holding her tight. She smiled.

“I missed you.”

“I know,” he said, swaying her slightly and then reducing his grip. She pulled back, to look at his
face, and then looked directly over his shoulder.

Regulus’ lips quirked into a devilish smile the moment she caught his eye.

“Oh, you fucker,” she grinned, “come here right now.”

“Hi, Lil,” he said, meeting her in a hug. He was hard, her face smushed against his chest, his hands
always held her very reservedly and yet they squeezed, as if he wished to pulse some of his
affection but did not exactly know how. She pulled back, grinning, and then turned, Pandora next,
smiling gently at her. Her curls were all bunched up in a top knot except a lot were falling out. She
looked like the human embodiment of a weeping willow tree.

“Dora,” Lily breathed, hugging her too; Pandora grinned, swinging her animatedly from side to
side, arms curled around her back, hands at the top of her spine.

Behind her, Marlene, as she pulled back, in a bomber jacket, looking all the same, persevering.
Marlene always knew how to put on a face. Lily hugged her, feeling pure warmth, that of which
Marlene carried with her; she’d learnt how to curdle it herself after years of being weighed down in
the cold. Lily could use some of that.

Once she’d pulled away from this, there was one left. The few of them stepped aside like parting
curtains.

Mary stood with her hands together in front of her, sort of rocking forward and backwards in
anticipation, or maybe nerves, or maybe that was just how she was. Regardless, Lily looked at her,
and then looked again. She did not want to pity Mary; she knew pity was the grieving woman's
worst enemy, the fire in the fog, but she felt a twinge of upset in her stomach paired with
something of warmth, perhaps care and love. The care of her wanting to smooth over Mary’s face
and run her hair through with a comb, the love wanting to engulf her and keep her safe and kiss her
forehead and never let her go, ever.

Mary had actually visited, twice. Funnily enough, she was the one Lily had seen the most and yet
the one she was probably most excited to see again. She’d been the only one coming for she’d been
the only one that they knew Remus needed, really needed, or perhaps she needed him or perhaps it
was both—it was both, of course it was both—she’d come to see him. He hadn’t spoken to her any
more than he had spoken to the rest of them, but she kept him company. Would chatter away at
him. Reserving all of her misery to the back burner, locking it in a dumbwaiter and sending it
down, somewhere far, far away from here; it was how she was coping. Rebuilding. Control. All
she could do was rebuild, and control, and so she was rebuilding, and she was controlling, and
perhaps she and Lily were foils of each other on different plains, and perhaps they were so
painfully alike it hurt. And perhaps that was why they needed each other so.

Lily missed James and Regulus like an ache, but she had missed Mary like a tomb, that of which
held something of yourself, the rock sliding open and the snake slinking out and into the sandy
apple of the plains she snoozed in; it had left Lily feeling somewhat empty. Her fire had been
Mary’s. It almost felt like the walls were cracked.

Mary leapt forward and squeezed her so goddamn tightly the cracks began to heal themselves all
up.

They had seen each other not four days ago, but something about it had felt like a lifetime.

Once they had hugged, they had smiled, Mary had sniffled and pretended she was not overcome
with something that Lily wasn’t sure they’d ever name; she turned around, beaming, unable to stop
herself. There was a padding up the stairs and Lily craned her neck to see Elizávet herself, with her
cane, smiling.

“Pandora,” she said, smiling.

“Mum,” replied Pandora, grinning and bounding over to her.

In the interim of this happening, as she weaved through James and Regulus to get to her mother,
there was the creaking of a door opening and closing. Lily craned her neck again, stepping forward
in between James and Regulus, to see, coming up to the wooden arch that separated this landing
from the hallway, Sirius.

Still in his tattered t-shirt and jeans. Awkward. Small.

Lily did not catch both of their reactions, but she caught James’. His face softened. He did not
waste a second.

It was odd, for Sirius was taller than him, and yet James somehow managed to engulf him into
something that made him look childlike, a tall child, feeble and fragile with his arms pressed in the
space between them, unable to move. His face was deep in James’ neck so that his eyes were only
visible over his shoulder; where there were no tears, but there was anguish, a brow furrowed so
deep Lily could fall into the creases and drown there. Lily had hugged Sirius, but she didn’t think it
meant anything close to what this did. When he pulled back, he opened his mouth and then closed
it. As if he wished to say something but could not find the words. Everything was unspoken. Last
we left off, Sirius had been mad at him. Now he was clinging to him like he needed him more than
anything in the world and Lily thought he just might. Perhaps second to one other, in an odd sort of
way.

After a moment, James stepped aside. Sirius looked at his brother.

“Hi, Reggie,” he said. Regulus scrunched up his nose.

“Christ,” he muttered, looking him up and down. “Have you showered? Ever?”

“Rude,” Sirius muttered. Regulus took two, agitated steps up to him. Grabbed onto the hem of the
shirt that was too big for his decrepit bones, pulled it up. Swept some of his hair away—Sirius
swatted at his hand, but he did not stop—and let his hands fall, to Sirius’ shoulders, and then the
sides of his arms. They lingered there for a moment. Regulus was smaller than Sirius—by a
noticeable amount, this time—but he was the docile wave, laying bare on the ravaging forest fire,
and so Sirius slumped.

“Come,” Regulus whispered.

Sirius leaned forward into him, and Regulus wrapped his small arms around Sirius’ back. They
looked so colossal and so little at the same time.

“I told him to shower,” Lily pointed out, butting in, slinking into James’ arm like it was the easiest
thing in the world. “For the record.”

Mary came up beside her and she lolled her head around. Somehow her pinky finger found her way
to Mary’s front jean pocket, and it stayed there.

“I’m going to dump a bucket of water over his head,” muttered Regulus, pulling back. Sirius
scowled at him.

“Awful, the lot of you,” he tsked, “awful, awful.”

“Mum has said that we can use the kitchen,” said Pandora, jumping up the last two steps onto the
landing, getting to the chase as only she could do. “The table’s big enough for everyone.”

“Perfect,” said Marlene. “Let's settle in, first, though. If we’re staying the night.”

“There are rooms,” said Lily, pointing up the corridor. “This place looks so unassuming from the
outside, but in here it never seems to end.”

“Magic,” breathed Mary, smiling something feeble at her. She turned to Lily, pinky finger still in
her pocket, and clasped a hand around her wrist, gently. “I’m going to go see Remus.”

“I’ll take you,” said Lily, pulling out of James’ hold. She turned, pursing her lips. “There are rooms
down the corridor and to the right. None of them past the clock are inhabited. You,” she pointed to
Regulus, noticing the bags under his eyes, “there are bloodbags in the fridge. Drink. You,” she
whirled around, pointed to Sirius, “shower. You,” she whirled back, pointing to James, who was
grinning at her, “make sure he showers.”

“Are you giving him permission to see me naked, Evans?”

“Nothing I haven’t seen before,” said James, chuckling. Regulus rolled his eyes.

“Well,” said Marlene, smiling. “Go on then. Everyone listen to Lily.”

Lily smiled.

***

Sitting at the kitchen table, next to James, Regulus on his other side and a chair for Mary on
Lily’s.

Sirius directly opposite her, damp hair tied up in a bun, drowning in one of Remus’ hoodies, and
Marlene next to him. Pandora next to her.

An empty seat, beside Sirius.

“We’re not working at the rate we’d probably like to be,” James was saying to her, tugging at the
tassels of his jacket absently, “but we’re getting somewhere. It’s a learning curve, I suppose. It all
depends on how amicable Mary’s magic wants to be; some days it’s completely normal and we can
get whole walls rebuilt, some days each spell we cast crumbles within the hour, you know? We’re
taking it day by day.”

“It’s looking up, though,” said Pandora, nodding. Regulus got up silently and sauntered over to the
counter. Nobody really paid attention to him as he opened a cabinet, and then another, and then
another, looking for something. Eventually, he landed on what he wanted and pulled two teacups
out, setting them on the side. “We’re growing more positive as the days go on. Routines are hard to
create but once you’ve got them sorted, they flow quite easily. It’s just getting to that point. Getting
used to the new atmosphere.” She pursed her lips. “I think we’re looking at, maybe, a month? A
month and a half?”

“I’d say and a half, yeah, to give ourselves a grace period,” Marlene nodded. She tucked two pieces
of her hair behind her ears, looking down at the table. “And then we can… you know. Start getting
things back into order. The upside is that now we have a very strongly protected base, so we can
work our forces back up.”

“What forces,” said Sirius, turning to her, slowly. She frowned, probably at his tone and the way it
did not match up to his words, so he rephrased. “What forces do we have left?”

In other news, what have we lost?

It was silent, for a moment, save for the gushing of coffee coming from Regulus, pouring it into his
mug. He turned.

“Where’s the sugar?” he asked, blithely.

Pandora pointed.

“We’re not certain yet,” Marlene continued, quieter. “It depends on if we’re counting the resistance
in the city, because that’s not our regiment. But they’re still there. Ana dropped by, her and Seb are
okay, as are a lot of their underground circle in Queens. Don’t know about any of the other
boroughs, but it’s looking like we have a strong foundation—I think she’s rallying them–”

“Us,” said Sirius, “from us, Marlene. Our forces.”

She looked at him, sadly. So sad.

“The death toll is currently at forty-two,” she murmured. Sirius’ face did not flicker. Lily suspected
that he had come to terms with this long ago, but it did not mean it still didn’t ravage him whole.

Forty-two, accumulating witches, vampires and hunters, was a hefty chunk out of their side. Not
debilitating. The steam engine would still churn, if malnourished. But every life lost meant
something. Every life lost was that of home, and they had lost forty-two of them, alongside the
victims of the dementor attacks over the past few weeks, and Malfoy Manor, and so on, and so
forth, it goes back. A trail of bodies linking hands across the skyline, all the way back to 1959.

Sirius is acquainted with death. But he is also acquainted with sorrow. He wears guilt like eyeliner,
it’s what makes him so special and it’s what makes him so manically depressed. The ghost of
James’ hands still lingered in his hair. Having to wash it for he could not bring himself to do it. The
distance between your hands at your sides and your hands in your hair is a mileage; Sirius will run
for someone else’s life but he will not run for his own. He’s acquainted with death.

Lily is not acquainted with death. Even as a nurse all that time ago she could never deal with the
death she faced. Perhaps that’s where the two of them meet; they cannot deal. They’re parallel and
they’re perpendicular, her and Sirius; her wrongs become his, his losses become hers, they lost
everything in the fire and Lily, despite her stunt with the dementor, lost everything in that
courtyard. She suspects that she overrode her system. Took on too much at once. Broke her other
heart, and paid the price; now she’s cold, and he’s cold, and they’re both on fucking fire.

Some of those forty-two deaths were Lily’s fault. She knows it, and Marlene knows it, and Sirius
knows it, and they all know it. She killed some of their own in the explosion in the courtyard at
Whittaker. She couldn’t control it, but she did. This is fact.

But nobody says it. Marlene doesn’t say it. Sirius doesn’t say it.

Lily can’t say it, because if she says it, it’s real. And it can’t be real. It can’t.

Maybe she understands Remus’s stupor more than she thought.

The silence broke and Lily blinked back into existence as Regulus dropped his two china teacups
on the table with a gentle clunk. He pulled one to himself, and nudged the other one across their
barrier, across James, over to Lily.

He’d made her a coffee. She hadn’t asked for one.

“Thanks,” she said, surprised, and looked up to catch his eye. His face was stable, a little twitch in
his T-zone, hands cupped around the warm mug as if his hands weren’t eternally frostbitten.

“Have you eaten?” he mouthed.

Oh, her heart ached. How he cares.

Lily nodded. She actually had, as well—she’d had some of the pasta she made, if only able to
stomach half the portion, it was better than nothing. And nothing had been on fire in mirrors again.
Though she had been actively avoiding them all day, so there is that.

Regulus’ eyes lingered on her for a moment, and then he nodded, and pulled his cup up to sip at it.
They both had a penchant for black coffee. He’d made hers just how she likes it, two sugars. His
was plain. How he cares.

“It may not be accurate, though,” said Marlene, again, almost wincing, as if she didn’t want to add
fuel to the fire that already scorched, “because, well.” She glanced at Lily, then looked away.
Nobody says it. “A lot of Whittaker burned down. Took a lot of corpses with it. We don’t have all
that many missing persons, though, so it’s safe to assume that a lot of the damage was the ulterior
sides, Riddle’s army and Dumbledore’s. We made a dent.”

“A dent,” Sirius breathed. But he didn’t say much more.

The door clicked open, gently, and Mary slipped through. Each and every face turned to her, and
she hesitated, before clicking it shut behind her.

She shook her head.

“He’s not coming,” said Mary, gently.

Sirius rubbed at his eyes. A few people exhaled, looked away at different points to try and not look
each other in the eye and link their grief up, but Lily’s fell onto the empty space next to Sirius. The
way he looked incomplete. Mary floated over and took her seat beside Lily, and, unblinking, Lily
took her hand under the table. Squeezed it, let it go.

“Well,” said Pandora, sniffing once, clasping her hands together. She looked over everyone. She
regarded Remus that of a brother, Lily knew, but she was also, in her eccentricity, somehow the
most level-headed of the lot of them, bar maybe Marlene. “Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it
would be easier to do this one without him.”

A few nods.

And then, silence.

“How do we… start?” asked James, into the abyss. It felt like a broken cog, sitting around at this
table, trying to decide what to do next. The next right thing, surely. But right was wrong, up was
down.

Lily inhaled, slowly, trying to regulate her heartbeat.

“Well, we’ve gone over the basics of the house,” said Marlene, frowning, trying to piece together
the bricks in a way only she can, the mortar a paste from the palm of her hand. “A month and a half
on a grace period. We’ve lost…” she cut off. Cleared her throat. Lily caught the wobble of her
bottom lip, but she tugged it in between her teeth almost as quickly as it had come, and nudged her
head up high. “Why don’t we start with our mission and go from there?” One glance up, at
everyone's faces. “The Horcrux.”

“You guys destroyed the locket,” said James. “That’s three of… did you say six?”

Regulus nodded, and then frowned. “I suppose two and a half. The third was split. We destroyed
the vessel.”

“That’s something,” said Marlene, nodding. “And then Dumbledore. We defeated him, he’s dead,
so that’s the other half. That’s three. Right?”
Pandora shifted, awkwardly, on her seat. James looked directly at her. Marlene followed his gaze.

“What?” she muttered, looking between the two. “What is it?”

“Regulus,” said James, gravely, “tell them.”

“Tell us what,” said Sirius, monotone. Regulus sighed. As if he didn’t want to say it, or he didn’t
want it to be true.

“I–”

“Is he not dead?”

“He is dead,” he said. “Remus killed him. He’s not coming back.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is living Horcruxes,” said Mary, breathing deeply, in and out. “They’re fickle.
Horcruxes shouldn’t be placed into mortal things, because it doesn't afford the same sustainability
that an object does. The body is perpetually changing, people bleed, people hurt, people die. And
people move. You’re at risk of losing track of it.”

“Are you not at risk of losing track of them anyways?” asked Sirius. “We’re three fucking lockets
in, and some power-hungry maniac practically swallowed Riddle’s soul. It seems like it’s risky
enough on its own.”

“It is,” said Regulus, “that’s why nobody ever does it. But this is different. Spreading them far and
wide runs the risk of losing track of them, but if you check regularly—which Riddle evidently
didn’t, considering he was dormant for fifty years—then you have it in yourself that you know
exactly what, and where they are.” He thinned his lips. “Emphasis on the what. Right? Because,”
he turned to Mary, and then to Pandora, “theoretically, if there is a power imbalance in the souls,
like Snape was talking about, then the Horcrux can overcome a mortal being. And then you lose
control of it. It becomes unstable, without a vessel.”

“But he said that their souls were equal,” said Sirius. Regulus nodded.

“Exactly. Which is why—provided Dumbledore had the original vessel, the locket— he was fine.
For a period of time, at least, he could sustain it. He was fine,” he said, pausing, “until Remus
killed him.”

Sirius’ mouth closed. His face relaxed at a speed something might say was inhuman.

“What are you saying?” he asked.

“But that’s not possible,” said Pandora, picking up on his suggestion. “That’s not– Horcruxes
sustain themselves on replenishing power. A human’s soul, while natural, is not replenishing or
powerful. Nothing to match a dark creature’s essence, something that powerful– it’d–”

“He killed Dumbledore,” said Regulus, “with his holy water blade. That destroyed his life force.
But the part of him that was self-sustaining, replenishing, that sliver of Riddle–”

“Regulus,” said Sirius.

“–without Dumbledore’s life to match it, the power became imbalanced. It became homeless.”

“Regulus.”
“And if you lose control of it,” he said, with finality, “it needs somewhere to go.”

Lily, turning to him now, registered a note of emotion on his usually docile face. Sirius’ was ashen.

He shook his head. All he did, he shook his head.

“You’re not listening to me, Reg,” said Pandora, leaning forward, enunciating each word. “Humans
cannot become Horcruxes. He would have died.”

“Unless,” said Regulus.

Pandora’s face softened, immediately. She leaned back. Slumped into her chair, introspective, lips
parted in shock or something like that.

“You don’t think he’s human,” she murmured.

Regulus said nothing. But he turned to James, and then Lily. And then Mary.

The latter, who had been staring at the table, leaned forward.

Her face was crumpled, slightly, lips pursed as if attempting to stave away tears, and her eyes
would not rest, darting from one place to another but never laying bear on another person’s gaze.

There was a moment of silence.

“Remus has a dog bite on the side of his ribs,” she said, quietly, passively.

Both of Sirius’ hands flew up to cover his mouth.

He exhaled once, and then twice, something of hyperventilation, or sudden realisation.

“He was attacked as a child,” she continued, “and he doesn’t remember where he got it from.”

“Oh, God,” Sirius choked.

“He’s always had naturally good reflexes,” said Mary, “natural senses, it’s like he has eyes on the
back of his head. He has good aim, he learns quickly, he’s the best fighter of all of us, he’s a
completely different person in combat.” She took a shuddering breath in. “Being a hunter has
always been about revenge for me. It was a challenge for Dorcas. But for him? It was like
breathing.”

She looked up. Locked eyes with Sirius, Dora.

“It was like it was written for him, doing what we do. It always has been. And I never thought… I
never thought about it, because I trusted them. I was brought into this life at seventeen, and I
thought that everybody was exactly who they said they were.” Two lone tears tracked a gentle
route down her cheeks. She smiled. “I was wrong.”

“Are you saying that he’s been lying?” asked Marlene.

“No,” said Mary, immediately, almost harshly at the insinuation, “I am saying that I think that
we’ve been lied to. And we’ve been lied to. And we’ve been lied to. And I don’t know what’s real
or not, but if he’s–” she cut off, here, her voice breaking, jabbing a pointed finger towards the door,
“–if he now has what Dumbledore has, if he now is what Dumbledore is, and he’s still alive? It
means that everything was a lie. It means that we were pawns in their game. It means that
someone, along the way, has decided that he is not who he is but what he is worth. And nobody
has the right to do that but yourself. And he didn’t get the chance to. And he has to die.”

Lily, tears prickling at her eyes, let them fall, but brought her sleeve up to wipe them away. The
table was detrimentally quiet. Mary’s words singed at her chest, tugged at it, something itchy on
the blades of her back as if wings, trying to be set free. The concept of all you are being what you
are worth. She thought of the person in the mirror. She thought of the burning hand. But most of
all, she thought of Remus. She thought of that dog bite, and she thought of lies, and more lies, and
more lies, and more.

“He doesn’t,” said Sirius, shaking his head, as Mary succumbed, collapsed into tears; Lily turned
and pulled her in. Tucked her chin on top of Mary’s head, to watch Sirius as he continued, “He’s
not going to die.”

“Hey, lets not jump to conclusions,” started Marlene, trying to peace-make, “we don’t know, yet–”

“Yes, we do,” Regulus said. His facade dropped, and he slumped. Nodded at her. His eyes were
sad. “Yes, we do, Marlene.”

“Oh,” Sirius breathed, mouth behind one shaky hand. HIs eyes were everywhere and his heart was
beating on the outside of his chest at a rate that, if he was a human, would kill him twice over.
“Oh, I should’ve— known, I should’ve, I saw the bite, and he killed—” he inhaled shakily, “he
killed so much, he couldn’t have… he was too… Oh, God–” choking on his own breath, he pushed
out of his chair, standing, pacing in a circle, somehow desperate to move and yet unable to fly from
the coop. Hands jittering against his mouth. Eyes rapid.

“Sirius,” whispered Lily. She didn’t know where it came from.

“Eight years,” he said, in return. Talking absently. He focused on a point somewhere vaguely on
the kitchen table, and then, absurdly, laughed. “Oh, my God. Eight years. I always thought it was
me, but it wasn’t. I could never kill him. He was too fast for me. I thought I’d just gone soft, for
this stupid hun–”

His voice broke and he turned, facing away, hand over his mouth. Nobody could seem to make eye
contact with anyone else.

And then he whirled back around, crazed, eyes of glass and skin of parchment, pointing to God
knows fucking where. “He won’t,” he said, seemingly unable to say the word, “we’ll find a way.
We’ll do something. I’ll bite him myself, for God’s sake, it cancels out— if he is dormant, a
dormant gene, would it cancel ou–?”

“You can’t bite him,” said James.

Sirius shot him a look. Of utter fury. James sighed.

“Sirius, not without his permissio–”

“I don’t care!” he yelled, shaking his head, aghast in disbelief, “I could not give a rats arse about
his fucking permission, James, he’s not– what do you mean–” another choke. He’s swallowing
words like they’re sustenance, Remus could never give him that. Lily, stroking a quivering Mary’s
hair, watching him like he’s made of lightning. They shall all burn. Shaking his head, shaking his
head, shaking his head. “You can extract it. Put it—just fucking put it in something else!”

“I don’t know how!” cried Pandora, wound up enough on her own. “Dumbledore was the greatest
witch–”
“Don’t,” said Sirius, warningly, “don’t say it, don’t, don’t, don’t don’t don’t.”

Pandora fell silent. Her chin trembled. Sirius was the harbinger of power, the scythe and the
wielder and the wielded all in one. Welded together like brass knuckles and copper centrepieces,
he speaks and they listen, he loves and they love, he fights and they fight. For he’d break if they
didn’t.

“You’ll figure it out,” he whispered.

So cold.

She gaped, closed her mouth, opened it again. “No question about it,” she said, eventually, shaking
her head. The tears fell, now. “I’ll figure it out.”

“We’ll find something, Sirius,” said Regulus, licking his lips. “We can… maybe activating his
gene, his werewolf gene,” the first time anyone had voiced it, “it would do something–”

“It’d just make it stronger, surely,” murmured James.

“And nobody even knows how to do that,” Lily pointed out, remembering what Remus had told her
of dormant werewolf children; the will they won’t they explode. Nobody knew what triggers a
dormant werewolf gene. There were not enough of them to truly figure it out.

“I don’t care,” Sirius hissed. He was still standing, Remus’ hoodie up to his hands and over, full-
body shaking with rage and fury and energy, a hurricane. “I don’t care. He does not die. He does
not die. He– fucking LISTEN to me!” he bellowed, leaning forward, bracing himself on the chair.

Marlene, who had been looking down, her lip trembling, snapped up. Mary looked up at him.
Pandora jumped when he yelled. Lily felt light-headed.

“We’re not doing this,” Sirius whispered, after a brief interlude. Shaking his head. “He is the best
of us. Remus Lupin is the utmost best of us. So I don’t care what it takes. He does not die.” He
shook his head. Tears falling gently, curling at his lips. “He doesn’t die.”

“He doesn’t die,” Lily found herself repeating.

Sirius looked at her.

She felt his pain.

Unrelenting. Regardless of anything divine they will always be the nurse with the fire and the
vampire she saved. And she’d save him again, a thousand times. She’d save anyone in this room.
And out of it, too.

Feeling it firsthand, Lily wondered, momentarily, if she might ever love someone like Sirius loves
Remus. And then she realised she cannot love someone if she does not love herself.

He sat back down.

Mary, whos tears had abated, sniffed and wiped her face. Regulus procured a tissue and handed it
down, through him, through James, through Lily. She stared into space as Lily wiped her tears
away.

“If Dorcas was here, she’d know what to do,” she whispered. Lily’s chest turned. Marlene looked
away, immediately.
Sirius took a deep breath in.

“She would,” he said.

They all sat there for a moment.

And then, as always, Marlene cleared her throat.

When she spoke, her voice was thick.

“Right,” she said, taking a deep breath and releasing it in turn. “Okay. We’ll—we’ll deal with this
as it comes. We need to figure out what to tell Remus…”

“Give him time,” whispered Lily. “He needs time. He can’t handle this right now.”

Marlene nodded her own assent, cleared her throat once more. “Do we have… anything else to go
over?”

Regulus thinned his lips, purposefully. Avoided Sirius’ gaze, as Sirius avoided his. Andromeda,
unspoken.

“The cup,” Lily put forth, because it was speaking of her without directly speaking of her. And
then she frowned. “Wait. Where’s Ted?”

A moment's silence.

“Ted’s gone,” said James, gruffly. “Was gone when we got back. Took Tonks as well.”

She frowned. “So… he knew? He knew what she was doing?”

“Knows more than us,” Sirius muttered.

“He knew Andromeda was going to…” Lily trailed off. Die. He knew she would die. He knew she
would betray them—or, not betray them– or——

She exhaled sharply, squeezing her eyes shut.

“None of this makes any sense. Why would she…”

Silence, again.

“Yeah,” muttered Regulus, drinking the last of his coffee and placing the mug onto the table with a
harsh clunk. “Why would she.”

“Sirius,” Marlene said; he closed his eyes, drooping his head at being addressed, “Sirius. Sirius,
what happened out there? Really?”

“I told you,” he hissed, looking up at her, pure anger; “She betrayed us. For a sword. I don’t
know–” three fingers over his eyes again, inhale, exhale. He was not in the right frame of mind to
be asked anything right now. Lily wished the others could see that. “I don’t know, I don’t know
why. She ran off, she stole the goddamn sword, she didn’t run any of it by me. She didn’t say
anything. No clues. Just that it “always had to end this way”. She—” he laughed, bitterly, “the
whole time, she was… ha, oh, she was tricky, fucking Dromeda–”

“Wait,” said Mary.

“At least she dragged that devil down with her when she went,” Sirius muttered, “to burn in hell.”

“Sirius,” Regulus whispered, defeated.

Mary placed her hands on the table.

“No,” she said, “no, stop. She did say something to Remus. She said it’s all in the book.”

Sirius looked at her. Everybody looked at her.

“The book Remus has,” she said.

“It’s the other diary,” said Sirius.

“Yeah,” she said. “Do you not remember, in the battle? She said, ‘it’s all in the book’. She
probably wrote her explanation in it. And told him, that’s why he went in to get it–”

“No bother,” said Sirius, leaning back. Lily got the sudden impression that he knew all of this. “He
won’t let any of us fucking touch it. Goes insane if you try.”

Mary blinked. Cocked her head.

“You knew what it was,” she said. “You knew what was in it.”

Lily, sensing hostility, felt it pertinent to jump in.

“Well we have to look at it somehow,” she said. Mary, still with her eyes on Sirius, scoffed in
disbelief. “Maybe Mary could get him to open up–”

“Of course you did,” Mary whispered, shaking her head. “Of course.”

“She told him,” said Sirius, “not me, not you.” He raised two hands in a blase surrender. “As far as
I was concerned, it was none of my business.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“Guys,” said Lily, “if we just… give him time, to show us, I’m sure he’ll—”

“We don’t have time, Lily,” Sirius hissed, aggressive out of nowhere, like a switch had been
flipped; he slammed his hands on the table, making it shudder. Making Lily’s coffee spill over the
walls of the little cup. “We don’t have time for this.”

“Time for what?” asked Mary, jumping in. “To grieve? To breathe?”

“To pause,” he said. “To– to shut down.”

Lily felt the blow before it came.

“Dorcas is dead,” spat Mary. It stunned everybody into silence. “She’s dead, Sirius! I know you
don’t have a fucking heart but at least show a little bit of empathy?”

“EVERYONE is dead!” he screamed, almost hysterically, pulling out from his place yet again to
stand with a deafening screech, sending his chair halfway across the room. “Everyone dies!
Everyone–” he choked on air, “they will all die, we will– he’ll—if we don’t move, now, he–”

“You are such a fucking hypocrite,” Mary seethed, standing up to match him. “You? The guy who
runs when he feels anything? Where were you, after the battle? Where were you the past two
weeks? Where was your word, to your brother,” her voice raising; she pointed at Regulus, who
pointedly avoided everybody’s gaze, “who lost just as much as you did?! And the diary? Did you
not think he might perhaps like to know about that?”

“Mary,” whispered Regulus. “It’s f–”

“No,” she said, turning to him. “No, it’s not. He can’t fucking treat people like this! It’s like, he
can run but no one else can. He can sit and wither until it’s someone he cares about in the shitter,
and then we’re all terrible people for not moving instantly; need I remind you, Remus wouldn’t BE
here if it wasn’t for you! This is all your fault!”

“Mary, please,” Lily breathed, looking up to her, grabbing at her sleeve; Mary jerked it away.

And Sirius was just staring. Just listening to her. He just took it, as if he knew—believed—that he
deserved it.

Mary’s face flickered through about a hundred emotions before landing on something that was best
summed up as nothing but cold.

“God,” she whispered, shaking her head, disbelieving, “and you want to say Remus Lupin is the
best of us? He’d disagree with you. She was the best of us. Down to the bone. So you don’t care.
Her life and how we feel about it means shit all because you don’t care, you want to push
everything away, you want to get on with it, that’s fine, but I hope he fucking hates you for it. I
hope he hates you for it.”

Nobody was trying to stop her now.

“You do that, Sirius, you do all of that and save his life and run away and leave the world in flames
behind you. He’ll still hate you for it. You had no right to not tell us about Andromeda’s last word
and no right to sit here and berate us for shutting down when you— you’ve done it all and fucking
worse. You are selfish, Sirius Black. You’re selfish.”

Sirius, standing, pathetically. His arms by his sides, his face not thunderous but lax, lips parted. He
swallowed heavily.

“I have never claimed not to be selfish,” he said, voice gritty. Mary made a choking sound.

“I know,” she said, nodding, furious. “Oh, I know. Just don’t be surprised when your selfishness
leaves you completely and utterly fucking alone.”

And with that, she turned on her heel and walked out.

Lily was stunned. All of them were. Pandora was staring at the table; Marlene, tears in her eyes,
turned her head to look up at Sirius. Regulus had not taken his eyes off of him.

Sirius, looking over them all, took an unsteady step backwards, as if he were drunk. With big,
pretentious, exaggerated movements he bowed, muttered, “Scene,” and then walked right out as
well.

He disappeared the moment he got out of the room, a rush of momentum blowing at the curtains
and making them swirl.

The room was left with a horrible, thick silence. Something tangible. It tasted bitter on Lily’s
tongue. Marlene took a breath in, and then out.
“I suppose we’ll talk later,” she said, looking over them all. Regulus sighed and pushed his chair
out.

“Gonna go check on Mary,” he said, walking three paces to the door, and then stopping in the
frame. He turned around, his face softer. Looked at James. “Will you…?”

“I’ve got him,” James whispered.

Regulus shot him a small, gratified smile, and then left.

***

They dispersed, after that, different ways and directions. Lily, wishing desperately to go comfort
Mary but knowing Regulus had the job sorted, made her way outside, feeling almost suffocated in
this house and desperately wishing for some space, some sort of change.

Down the road, the tarmac cut off into a dirt road and there was a path to be found through a field
that led Lily to the coast, a different place to where she had taken Sirius before, but a similar
prospect.

She was sitting on a patch of grass, on a cliff that dropped about twenty feet down below her,
trying to light a flame in her hand and failing horrifically when she heard footsteps from behind
her.

She turned just in time to see James, sitting down beside her.

“Hi, Lilyflower,” he murmured, leaning over and kissing her on the cheek. She smiled, letting her
hand relax and clasping them together to stretch them out, sniffling against the cold of the coast
that she knew had absolutely made her nose red.

“Hi,” she whispered, as he shuffled to get comfortable. “How's Sirius?”

“I don’t know,” said James, smacking his lips together, looking out at the sea. “Can’t find him.”

“You can’t?

“Nope.”

“Oh,” she said, frowning. “Well. He’ll turn up eventually.”

“I know,” he replied, “I just worry. He’s… well, he's in a bit of a state, isn’t he?”

Lily nodded. And then shrugged. “I guess I don’t blame him entirely.”

“No?”

Lily sighed.

“He’s ruled by his emotions,” said Lily, gently. “And he’s lost someone he’s known for… what,
eight hundred years? Can’t imagine how he’s feeling.”

“Hm,” said James, nodding once. “Yeah. Well. I’m still actually rather pissed off at him, actually.”

“Well, that too,” she said, laughing slightly, “I’m perpetually pissed off by him. And Mary was
harsh. As much as I love her, perhaps too harsh in saying it was all his fault, everything was his
fault…” she sighed. “But in the heat of the moment, especially after learning what he learned about
Remus… like I said. Ruled by his emotions. I think he puts them first and puts everybody around
him after, sometimes, and so he can say these cruel, callous things.”

“Sirius is cruel,” said James, shrugging. “He can be very cruel. He’s selfish. He’s stubborn.
Arguably, he’s not a good person.”

Lily smiled. She rather felt the wish to have a cigarette, right this second.

“Are any of us good people?” she drawled, nudging James with her shoulder, and he laughed.
Looked to the floor.

“You are,” he said.

Lily flushed, looking away. She lolled her head down, and then back up, let the wind guide her,
feeling like all that was left was it and her, and perhaps him. She leaned over and rested her head
on his shoulder.

“I miss her,” whispered Lily, her voice hoarse.

Her love for Dorcas had not been minute. Lily didn’t like thinking about the moment it happened,
didn’t like reliving it. It had felt– the way it had felt– it had been like her entire spine was going to
collapse in on itself, her entire soul would break away, float into the magma of her brain as it
dashed itself across the wall. But Lily thinks of her every day. Misses her every day.

Lily wondered, briefly, if the Phoenix liked Dorcas. She supposed she’ll never know.

“Sirius does, too,” said Lily, deeply inhaling, in and out. “Mary was wrong about that. Insensitive,
sure, but uncaring? Never.”

“He cares so much that it eats him whole,” James replied, clicking his fingers in his lap, looking
wistfully over the ocean. “It ruins lives, I think.”

“I hope she’s okay,” whispered Lily, pouting slightly. James continued clicking his fingers, and
Lily reached over, clasped her hand in his, and made him stop.

“She will be. She’s with Regulus; he understands her. I think they’re twin flames, or something.”

Lily nodded. Squeezed his hand.

“Do you think it’s true?” she whispered. So quietly.

James turned to look at her.“What?”

“Remus,” she said. “Being… one of them, now. A Horcrux.”

He took a long moment to reply.

“I think it makes sense,” he said. “He didn’t use the basilisk blade. If Dumbledore was a Horcrux
of himself, then sure, it would have killed him, but the fact that he had the power of someone else’s
soul makes me think that… well. It was self-sustaining before he had it in him. It would try to
survive, right? That’s all this is about. They try to survive.”

Lily, unforgivably, felt tears prick up at her eyes. They were both looking out into the sea, so
thankfully James didn’t notice. She blinked them away and rested her head on his shoulder.

“But,” she said, when she trusted her voice. “If he is one of them, then that means…”
“We don’t know what it means,” said James, immediately. No hesitation about him. “We don’t
know.”

Avoiding the inevitable, a pessimist would probably say. Lily has never considered herself one.
But perhaps she is not the same person as she was when this war began. Maybe she will be a
pessimist by the time it ends.

James won’t.

“I just can’t help thinking,” Lily said, eventually, “that Dumbledore is still out there somewhere. Is
that stupid? I guess because the threat of him was silently looming over us for so long that I keep
thinking he’ll be around the corner.” A pause, and then; “What if he became a vampire? And it’s
still in him and he goes and hides and we can never kill Riddle.”

James huffed something that sounded like a laugh. “Well, he didn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because we found his corpse. And we burned it.”

“Oh.”

Lily paused. She turned to look at him, squinting.

“Are you sure?”

Here, James outright laughed.

“Yes, I’m sure,” he said. “I know how it works, Lily.”

“I don’t,” she said, all of a sudden realising it to be true. “Oh, God. I really don’t. Remus explained
it to me once upon a lifetime ago. But you– you’re a vampire.”

“Good deduction. Wouldn’t have guessed it myself.”

Lily rolled her eyes. “How do you turn people? How does it work for you?”

James turned to her. And then he smiled, baring a double set of menacing fangs.

Lily rolled her eyes and shoved his face away, to which he laughed.

“Well, obviously,” she groaned. “Bite. Sure, I know that. But. How do you not just turn everyone
you bite?” She paused, and then her face fell in horror. “Oh, my God. Regulus bit me. If I’d’ve
died at the fête would Regulus have turned me?”

“No, because he was biting you to drink from you, there’s a difference.”

She squinted at him.

“Explain.”

He sighed. Turned to her, and then pressed his two forefingers of each hand on each side of his
neck, just underneath his jawline.

“We have venomous glands,” he started, “here. They naturally excrete when our fangs come out or
bite into someone or something. When we bite someone to drink from them, our fangs are only
used to make the wound, so you bleed. Then we remove them and we drink from the bleeding
wound. But when we bite someone to turn them, our fangs stay in the skin. After about five or ten
seconds of being all up in there our bodies go “Oh, we’re turning someone, fantastic”, and it all
sort of… pulses out.” He grinned, bearing his fang. Then he closed his mouth, licked over his top
set of teeth and when he spoke again, they were gone. “The hunters are all wary about it when they
get bit to drink and have, like, a two day grace period to make sure they don’t die before it’s out of
their system, but it’s stupid in my opinion. I’ve never, not once, heard of a vampire being turned
when they were bit to drink from. The tiny bit of venom from the wound bite is just not potent
enough for that.”

Lily blinked, settling back.

“Have you ever turned anyone?” she asked. James shook his head.

“Nope,” he said, simply. “Never found any human I like enough to turn and keep with me for all
eternity. It’s a hell of a commitment.”

Lily nodded, looking down to the grass. She picked at it, and they were quiet for a little while, and
then she felt James nudge her, gently, shoulder to shoulder.

“I’d turn you,” he said, quietly. She turned to him, and he had a gentle smile on his face. “If you
weren’t already eons cooler than me and probably immortal anyway; I’d turn you.”

Lily faltered. The smile plastered its way onto her face before she gave it permission to; she
scoffed a laugh, and nudged him back.

“Shut up,” she muttered, and he laughed, and she felt warm.

She basked in it, for a moment, as the waves crashed onto the shore. And then;

“James,” she said, rather suddenly. He shifted, and she raised her head, their hands still linked,
faces close.

“Yeah?”

“While we’re here,” she said, gently, “‘cause I don’t know when we’re gonna get the chance again,
I think we need to talk about some things.”

He paused. Briefly.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think we do.”

They stared at each other for what felt like a long, long time. And then Lily exhaled what might’ve
been everything she had and reached forward, fingers on jawlines, lips on lips.

She kissed him, and he kissed her back, shuffling forward and moving his hands to her lower back
as she gripped his jaw, his neck. She pulled him in, turning their heads against each other, in and
out like a wave on the shore. Kissing James was always lovely. This one was, against the whipping
wind, slightly bittersweet, but horribly familiar. Lily quite thought for a moment that he tasted like
smoke before realising that that was not him, but her, that she was bleeding it. The fumes got to her
head and cauterised all and everything and all she could do was kiss him, for a moment, before
pulling back, eyes closed. Inhale, exhale, hallucinate, regenerate, she was lost, blindfolded; James’
kiss a sin against her unknowing lips. She sighed.

“You have to be with him,” she whispered.

She could not see him, but she felt his sharp exhale, the way his hair fluttered in the wind, and the
way he jolted back to look at her, properly.

“What?” he murmured.

Lily opened her eyes. He was lovely, lips parted, nose tall, brown skin a gorgeous hue under the
blue sky, that of which he had not felt for so long, tangible. James needs the blue sky. His sky is
her fire. She can’t give him that, not really.

She ran her thumb over his cheek, dug into his cheekbone, released.

“I think I could love you, James,” she said, sadly, “I think that I do. But I can’t give you what you
want. We can’t give each other what we want. We’re in different places.”

“What do you mean, different places?” he asked, reaching his hand up, placing it over hers. “I’m
right here.”

“No,” said Lily, shaking her head. She swallowed, trying to articulate it, trying to feel this. “James.
Eight months ago I was a nurse, on call, living in a ridiculously extortionate Manhattan apartment
with a friend I’d call every month or so who just so happened to hunt monsters, and that was my
life. I was removed. And then Remus came to the city, and I found out that you were you, the same
you I’d been watching for months, and I found myself caught between two worlds, almost, trying
to balance them. Going to work to stake out possible vampires infiltrating my hospital. Up and
down the island, every other day. Killing purebloods, burning hotels… and then my sister died.”
She sighed, closing her eyes, letting the wind take her to where she ought to be. “My sister died,
and everything changed. This became my life. And then I found out that it was supposed to be my
life all along.”

She looked down to the floor, twiddled her thumbs together. Picked a little bit of grass out and
sprinkled it.

“I don’t think you understand… how it feels, growing up thinking you are one thing and then
finding out that the entire time, you were something else,” she said. “As if everything was one big
shiny lie. It hurts, James.”

She opened her eyes. James had clasped his hand between hers, and was watching, listening
intently, and Lily knew they were both thinking about Remus.

“You’re my favourite person in the room at all times, you know that, right?” Lily said, laughing,
sort of bitterly as tears sprung to her eyes. “Maybe joint with Mary. You’re my favourite. I adore
you. And I know you love me. I know you love us both, and that’s okay, James. It’s okay that you
love us both.” He shook his head, but she nodded hers. “It’s okay. I never wanted you to choose.
We were never anything serious, you know that we weren’t, and I think you needed more of a
constant from me that I can’t give you. To learn to love you, wholly, the way you deserve, the way
you’ve loved me, I have to learn to love myself. I have to learn to love the Phoenix. And I think I
have to do that on my own.”

James was teary, but upheld, brow furrowed so much his face contorted entirely, that of splendour
and confusion and the loyalty Lily knew that he had, the loyalty that was the reason he was here,
now, the loyalty that had tinged the colours of Italy a decade a hundred and twenty years ago and
the charred grass of Boardwalk, now.

It was never about James choosing Regulus or Lily.

It was about Lily choosing herself.

“I could wait,” he whispered. She shook her head

“I can’t ask you to wait for me. And you don’t want to. Not really.”

“Lily–”

“James,” she said, cupping his head once more, firmly. “I need you to listen. I’m going to live
forever. I have no clue how to deal with that. I can’t ask you to put everything on hold for me, and I
can’t ask you to avoid something that has been inevitably running to catch up with you for one
hundred and twenty years,” he tried to speak, Lily shushed him, and continued, “because Regulus
Black is a wonderful person. He’s a bit odd. He doesn’t really know how to exist properly. He’s
blunt, and violent, and he shows that he cares in strange ways, through– through making you
coffee, learning your ins and outs and the proper ways to cater to you, smiles that he tries to hide
and protective reflexes he doesn’t even think about having. He’s only ever seen the world through
the lenses of those that made him. He’s been trapped for years by others. I’m trapped by myself.
This is a journey I have to go on by myself, to find rest, but he can find his rest in you.” She
smiled, genuinely happy, so happy; “He can find it in you. You can’t pass up that opportunity
waiting for me. When you and him are so obviously made for each other. I simply won’t allow it,
James Potter, I won’t. I want you to be as loved as you’ve made me feel. I want that for you. Will
you let me give you it?”

James, biting down on his top lip, wobbling ever so slightly but firm, knowing, they’re eternal
regardless of whether they do or not. At the end of the day, in the climate, in the heat, they care for
each other and that is all that matters; love is all that matters, past or present, real or fake, this or
that, Lily needs James like she needs none else but she cannot need him the way he wants to be
needed.

But they’re going to live forever. And they’re going to love forever.

James nodded.

“Then set me free,” she whispered. “And when I come back, it’ll be in fire that won’t burn
anymore.”

James smiled. “I always quite liked when you burned me, actually.”

“Well. Maybe I could make an exception.”

He laughed, and then he cried, and she pulled him in. They held each other. There, on the rocks, on
the grass, the health and the nurture no match for Lily’s face; the waves no match for James’. Two
paths that divulge to the same ending. An ending together, perhaps not romantically. But Lily has
never quite cared for specificities.

Love tastes a million different ways. Lily wants to experience James in every single one of them,
and this is naught but the first.

They’re going to live forever, you know.

***

Once they had departed, wholly satisfied and cathartic, salt water on their tongues and heartbreak
on their patchwork sleeves, Lily made her way around the bend. It got very hilly as she went on.
She quite liked the climbing. She had one goal in mind, nothing of speaking, just of being there for
someone who she felt might just need someone there.

Sirius, still in Remus’ hoodie, was standing on a rock. His shoes were barely out of range of the
thrashing waves. His hair was everywhere, a whirlwind, back and forth whipping against his face,
and whether he heard Lily coming she might not know, though she suspects not, for she knocked a
rock and he turned.

He saw her. And he immediately began to cry.

Lily glided over wordlessly, caught him in a hug, down onto the damp rock; being splattered with
dainty little droplets of goodness under a blue sky she had never felt so gloomy, never perhaps so
wronged. Sirius cried so rarely. But when he did, she felt it in her soul.

He wept, chronically, against her, clinging so hard his knuckles went white, crying as if somebody
was ripping his heart out; it was both grief and madness and the harsh blow of reality upon his
dreaded heart, his damp hair, when he had taken it down Lily did not know but the way it cut
against her cheek felt like something of a knife. The mortifying ordeal of being known. Sometimes
one feels the repercussions of their vitriolity, and then one moves on, but Sirius Black has been
moving for eight hundred years. Dare he say that he is tired. He is tired. They all are.

“Sorry,” he whispered, shakily, still sobbing gently, the both of them on their knees on the rock.

“I know,” she whispered.

“I loved Dorcas so fucking much.”

“I know,” she said, throat thick with tears.

“I want it to stop,” he breathed, lip trembling. “I want it to stop, Lily. I want it to stop.”

Lily had nothing more to say to that.

She just pulled him back in.

Four hours later, Lily had hugged Mary, kissed her on the forehead, on the cheek. Sirius and Mary
had apologised to each other. Lily and Marlene had spoken, Lily and Dora, they’d found
themselves skirting away from the prospect of their utter doom and mortal destruction in this war,
both physical and emotional, and back onto stupid things, like magic, like herbs, like food, like
water. Sirius went to speak to Remus, brought him some food, came back.

And, sitting in the tiny little living room, against a dark wood mantelpiece and a fire with a metal
grate, on loveseats that looked like they were from the eighties with an orange fluffy rug to match,
Remus walked in, book in one hand, the other balled into a fist.

“Remus,” murmured Sirius, sitting up. They all fell quiet as he walked, skirted past the sofas, stood
in front of the fire.

Launching his right fist towards it, he threw what Lily eventually recognised to be a small piece of
paper, ripped out of somewhere, directly onto the fire. She could see the making out of letters in a
large scrawl—an N, and an A—but could not make out what the word said before it inevitably
burned around the edges, and then disintegrated into ash, sinking into the wooden log.

He watched it burn. He held the book in two hands, almost as if he wanted to throw it in there, too.
Almost as if he craved it. And then he relaxed. Dropping it to his side, he clutched in one hand, and
watched as the paper disappeared.
 “Remus,” said Mary. It was desperate.

Book in hand, he turned and walked straight out of the room.

***

11pm, Lily Evans, standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom, favouring the left side. She took
a deep breath, looked herself once over. Her round face, her drizzling hair, the blemishes on her
skin, the bags under her eyes and the lines by her mouth and the way her chin sat, protruding
outwards. She thinned her lips and let them fill out. Tried to smile. Dropped it instantly.

“I forgive you,” she said, to the reflection.

I forgive you.

The woman in the mirror cocked her head slightly. Brushed a few strands of hair out of her face,
flared her nostrils, bared her teeth.

“I forgive you,” Lily repeated, watching her eyes, the green, the flecks of brown in them, the flecks
of gold.

I forgive you.

Lily held her hand up. She watched as the reflection moved, as her fingers twitched, the hand
balling into a fist and splaying out, the back and the front, the veins and the freckles and the moles
and her crooked finger and her broken, brittle nails. She held it there.

She reached out. Gently, slowly, she pushed closer to the mirror until there was barely light
between her hand and the reflection, until the cold glass of the mirror pricked at her fingerpads,
exuded throughout her palm as she held it there, solid, not falling through, a port of call and touch,
touch to the parts deep inside of her that longed to work. Touching the parts that were too broken to
be fixed. The parts that had been fixed when they should have stayed broken. She stared herself
down.

After a moment, Lily smelled smoke. Her eyes averting to her hand, she pulled it back, feeling the
tickle of flames in her fingertips, the thrum of red through her calloused palm like the darting of an
arrow, back and forth and back and forth. It was gone almost as soon as it had appeared. But for a
moment, there, she had been red.

There was a black, sooty handprint on the mirror.

“This is gonna take a while, isn’t it?” Lily muttered, and she could’ve sworn that her counterpart in
the mirror smiled.

Or maybe that was her.

Chapter End Notes

to the people who have been riding the remus werewolf train since like chapter 7:
congratulations ;) LMAOOOOOO
 twenty five
Chapter Summary

pet project

Chapter Notes

HELLO!

welcome back! I've missed you all! this chapter is a very very important one, in which
we go back to remus, see how he's doing. learn a lot through his eyes. feel a lot
through his heart. learn his backstory (!!!!)
obviously, because we're going back to him for the first time since dorcas, there are a
few CW's:

CW's:
– vomiting
- heavy dissociation and general... detachment from life (in remus)
- suicidal thoughts
- on par with the past few chapters, generally very visceral (and oftentimes unhealthy)
grief
- childhood trauma
- what i think is a very sad betrayal
- ongoing manipulation and mindfuckery that's all being brought to light

i feel like that's it? there may be more. as it has been the past few, this is a generally v
heavy chapter. I know it may get exhausting to see no light at the end of the tunnel yet
but I promise it picks up a bit more in the next one and things will slowly get
lighter/better. I mean, we're seeing through his eyes, and this is pretty much rock
bottom for remus in this fic; it's only up from here.

it's also disintegration's birthday today, which is INSANE!!! look at the double date
up top!!! (unless it's the 11th already where you are, in which case.. sorry lol). I'm ofc
feeling all grateful and emotional and shit but to save you from that when I know you
all really just wanna read the gd chapter I'll stick it all in the end notes.

for now, enjoy <3 Xxxx

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Something motivated Remus to get up after Mary had gone.

He couldn’t fathom what it was, exactly, that made him get up and flip the fan in his room on.
Made him pad over to the bathroom, turn on both taps and the shower. Give it a minute or two, so
the overflow wouldn’t be too noticeable all at once. And then go into Pandora’s room and flick on
the small TV set in the corner, buzzing with white noise. He turned the volume all the way up.
It was like everything he was doing was being commanded to him for an unidentifiable prize that
he would never get his hands on. Now get up. Now take a step. Now take another.

Flip the light switch on so you can see. Inhale through your nose so your lungs don’t burn. Work
through the dizziness and walk, and walk, and walk.

The door was an arch. He could hear every word they were saying. With shallow breathing and
light footsteps and all of the static and water, his breaths could be Mary’s, or Pandora’s, or Lily’s.

White noise buzzing around his mind and blocking all of the channels with sound, he stood at the
top of the staircase, and he listened.

***

See, it hadn’t been quite real until Regulus had voiced it.

Nothing had been quite real. Not before, and not after, but Regulus. Regulus voicing it. Activating
his werewolf gene. His werewolf gene.

Those words, they had been all Remus had needed to hear. He had been living with puzzle pieces
in his chest sort of darting around each other out of timidity instead of slotting into where they
should be. It was a lightbulb moment.

Perhaps he had been feeling too much to feel anything at all, because shock was muted, sadness
was muted. He sat and listened to his family talk actively about him and felt nothing but…
resignation. Understanding. Of the feelings he could differentiate through choking breaths,
watching himself from an outsider’s perspective like the stranger he truly is to himself, a part of
him thought: ah, of course. Of course I am. Of course I always have been.

Everything makes sense now.

And yet it did not. Whatever serenity that you are supposed to receive in those “everything makes
sense” moments was bypassed and hearing those words ultimately did nothing for him. Okay.
Werewolf. Fantastic. This does utterly fucking nothing for me.

His body was still bruised. He could still feel fucking nothing. A tag on his ankle and a death
sentence felt like nothing. Funnily enough if anything the way he was bent out of shape was almost
rectified with what he discovered now. Given the full infopack. Bent back into shape. But is it
considered going back to something when you have secretly been that something all along? Where
is the line? Between acceptance and intrusion? Remus could not find it. He could not find a lot of
things. He couldn’t find his heart, beating inside his chest. It wasn’t his and it never had been. He
couldn’t find the part of him that was supposed to feel anything but anger. All he was was anger.

And yet, somehow, he found his legs.

It’s a tumultuous process, you see, finding those things. Every time he needs them recently he has
to go from the top to the bottom like some sort of secretive process, as if reminding him which
parts are his and which aren’t. Head, shoulders, knees, toes. He can’t feel them most of the time.
He can’t give you an explanation, either. When the worst thing that could happen to you happens,
you don’t tend to have much forethought for what comes after. After seems like the worst thing in
the world. After seems like it shouldn’t be real.

Remus shouldn’t be real. Technically, he should be dead.

He wished he was dead.

And yet, his legs. Despite it all, he found them.

Walking away, he had to grab onto the bannister on the landing so as not to pass out. The
conversation continued downstairs. Noise carried up. He blurred it out, after what he needed to
hear, because if he didn’t, it would continue onto after. It would continue onto her, and Remus
couldn’t—he can’t.

It maxed out. He felt so much he could not feel anything at all and this and this and this but what
he could feel was the floor on his feet, and he clung to that. Walking barefoot, he had discovered,
tended to ground him, and so he dealt with the splinters as he had always done. The bannister
didn’t do much for how dizzy he was but he was moving, and that was a feat—though he was
unsure of where to, point A to B becoming a scrambled scribble long ago, but the softness of the
carpet was a relief on the soles of his feet, for it was a texture he could sink into, proving that
gravity was still working. Proving that he was still there.

He blinked, revelling in this feeling, suddenly finding himself awake, suddenly finding himself
outside a door, somehow finding that he knew all along that this was where he was going to go.

Moody was a state. He was halfway to dead. You always knew when someone was halfway to dead
in the world Remus lived in. The witchy witchy world. You knew it when the witches gave up on
magical methods of healing and echoed humans in their electricity. The room reeked of desperation
and Remus shut the door and vacuumed it all in.

Of course, witches used a blending of both—always had, Poppy had had an EEG machine in her
office at Boardwalk—that must have been destroyed—burnt in the fire, it was all gone——they
mixed and matched when they saw fit. But this room was different. This room was grey, bland,
bewildered. This room looked like a hospital bedroom the way they saw it on TV, an IV in his
crumbling hand, hooked up to certain machines that Remus did not even know A) how the witches
got their hands on and B) what the fuck they did. But they were there, and it was desperation.

There was a heart monitor. In, and out, on, and on it went. Mad-Eye’s mad heartbeat. Remus shut
the door, and looked at him.

His eyes were sunken. He looked horrifically ill. At some point in the last two weeks, they had
finally taken the leg, but apparently it had not done much—the infection must have spread.
Magical malediction. Blood poisoning, if he remembered correctly. There was no saving him.
Remus did not seem to have that realisation until this very second, watching him wheeze slightly as
his body continued to breathe.

Moody was dying. Perhaps three weeks ago he would have been horrifically upset. Perhaps
yesterday he would have been horrifically upset.

Somehow, he was not upset today.

Might he be upset in the future? Perhaps, but, as previously affirmed, after does not exist, Remus
does not let himself stray there. So he stood. He stood over his mentor, feeling naught but naught;
the tart fabric of his shirt over his skin, a piece of hair tickling the back of his neck and the internal
flame of something he didn’t recognise as anything but his internal workings, lit up by something
else. A fire behind a cage; a hand on puppet strings. And in these moments he thinks, gosh, how
had he never thought to question how he ran? All of these internalisations and instincts he’d seen as
second nature. But now he knows they are somebody else’s nature. Somebody else’s fire entirely.

He felt sick.
But his chest, oddly, felt clean. Oiled. As if the magic that was inside him—for he knew now, too,
what else was inside him, and he knew now, too, what he had to do—had eroded away some of the
rot that had built up. It had chipped at the walls of his chest cavity like a pickaxe, but Remus had
not been wearing a helmet, and what had been behind them had shone like that of the moon
eclipsed over the sun and had been blunt force trauma inducing as it had dropped, out of goddamn
nowhere. Plummeted him into somewhere where the sun did not shine. The moon shone, instead.

Remus had always looked at the moon and felt something of fondness. It was almost comical.

No, it was very comical.

He, strangely, found his lips quirking upwards—god, he is broken—and before the throes of
hysterical giggles could fall out of his lips, like birds, the way he knew they would do before the
information really sunk in and shot them all down with an air rifle, he looked back down at
Moody.

Watched him swallow, open his mouth to breathe in, evidently struggling. Close his mouth. His
eyes, looking like they were carved with a serrated knife, opened slowly and tumultuously. As if
the sleep coating them were stitches.

They were glassy, for a moment, and then he blinked again, and they regained some sentience. He
was not completely gone. He was still present. Remus was glad of it, because if he hadn’t been, he
might’ve had to force him to be, and that would not be pleasant for either party.

And—ah. There it is. That’s why he’s here.

The overwhelming, intrinsically life-ruining need to know why.

Moody looked at him.

“Hi, sir,” Remus whispered, emotionlessly, feeling like he was not in control of his voice. He heard
it like an echo from another room. None of this was him.

Moody seemed to know something was wrong. He blinked, opened his mouth, and no sound came
out. He tried again.

“Remus,” he croaked, his eyebrows twitching as if out of his control. Remus smiled.

“Hello.”

Moody coughed, and then coughed again, a chest-rattling thing. Remus watched. There was not a
seat beside him, and so he stood, feeling cold under the grey even though the curtains were open
and sweet daylight was spilling through.

Once he had stopped coughing, he looked back up. Letting his hands drop to his side, from where
he was tucked tightly into this bed, he stared at Remus, and Remus stared at him. As if waiting for
him to say it. As if waiting for confirmation.

Remus got the sense, all of a sudden, that this was all he had been waiting for. Oh, Remus had been
a fucking ticking time bomb, in more ways than one.

He felt inflamed, and he felt furious.

“You lied to me,” he whispered, and Moody exhaled.

He knew.

“Remus–”

“You lied,” he repeated, almost in a hiss, giving into the levelling and kneeling down. Wanting to
be on the same platform as him, see him equally for the last time, instead of looking up and yet
perpetually being looked down upon.

“I never lied to you,” Moody croaked. Remus almost choked on his laugh.

“And you’re lying again,” he said. Unforgivably, he felt his eyes well up with tears. “Was any of it
real?”

“Remus.”

“You call me by my first name,” Remus said, leaning forward, “where was that before? Was I
worth less when I was your little werewolf pet project?”

“You,” he coughed, “were not—”

Cough, cough, cough. Weakness.

“Was it an experiment,” Remus whispered, emotionlessly. “Use me until you had no use anymore?
Hm? See how long he can hold it all up before he breaks?”

Silence.

“Answer me.”

The severity of his tone made Moody’s eyes widen.

“Everything that I did,” he rasped, chest stuttering up and down, “was for you. For what you were
—”

“What was I, then?” asked Remus. “What was I for? Why did you recruit me, Alastor?”

He turned to the side. Cough, cough, cough.

Weakness.

When he had finished he turned back, leaning his head back on the pillow and inhaling something
phlegmy, shaky, shuddering. The lines of ageing, wear and tear on his face seemed to have been
slashed in. The cuts were deep and scarring. He had scars, but somehow Remus found these gentle
lines to be more telling of the life he had lived. And he hated them. He fucking hated the softness
that this man was granted when all he had ever known was rough edges. Because of him.

“No more lies,” Remus whispered, trembling with anger, feeling tears he’d been numb to curl at his
chin. “I want—to know—why.”

Moody sighed. If he had been capable of any sort of emotion, Remus might’ve thought he felt
remorse. Luckily for him, Moody had been reserved from that long ago, for remorse was the last
thing Remus wanted. Remorse would make him murderous.

“I can show you,” Moody whispered.

Remus blinked.
“You can what?”

“Show you,” he choked, coughing once more, and then dragged his limp arm upwards and pointed
towards the door. “Get Fleur.”

“Fleur?”

“Delacour,” he said, nodding once. “Get her.”

Remus, in his obsolete confusion, did.

Fleur, who was residing in one of the rooms furthest away from Remus and tended to keep to
herself, spending all of her time with Bill, came soundlessly. Her face dropped in something akin to
realisation when she heard that Moody had asked for her, and her movements were robotic.

When they walked back in, Remus clicked the door shut gently behind her. Fleur walked, again,
daintily, over to Moody’s bedside, and crouched down beside him. Took his hand in hers.

He looked up at her with one glassy eye, and smiled.

“I know you have it,” he said.

“I do not know—”

“Delacour,” he said, sternly. “I am your superior. And I am Tonks’s. Give it to me.”

Fleur hesitated, exhaling sharply in agitation, but straightened up anyway. Reached one hand into
her pocket, and pulled out a vial.

It was glass with a cork in the top, and the liquid filled inside was silver and shimmery, almost
wispy. It was liquid, but had the tenure and the appearance, almost, of a gas, something mist-like in
the way it swam around itself, over and over. It was oddly beautiful. It looked deadly.

She handed it over to him. He nodded.

“You may go,” he said.

Fleur stood. She turned, her long, sleek ponytail of dark brown hair swishing around her, and her
pretty eyes latched onto Remus. She cocked her head, slightly, and sighed.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

And then she was gone.

Remus was utterly bewildered.

“What the hell was that?” he asked, kneeling down again beside Moody like his legs had given out
on him. The man was coughing again, gripping onto the vial for dear life, though Remus felt like it
was in no danger of cracking or breaking. He could feel the seal of protective magic underneath his
tongue like it was a razor that had been placed there.

Moody turned, again. When he inhaled something horrible rattled around at the back of his throat,
but he stormed through.

“This,” he started, “is an engineered recollection of the few years prior to, and the first five years
of your life. It is the memories we took from you.”
Inhale.

Exhale.

He swallowed the razor and it came rushing back up in blood for blood.

“Oh, you bastard,” Remus whispered.

“I knew when you started with me that you’d figure it out eventually,” continued Moody,
undeterred, “so I used both your samples and mine and employed Tonks to help me create this. It
works like a potion. You’ll see everything happen from an outsider's perspective. And it will
explain everything.”

Remus stared at the vial held out to him. Looked back at Moody.

“Only you can open it, Remus Lupin, for it is yours,” he said.

“How do I know this won’t be more lies?” asked Remus, breath shuddering, staring at the wisps of
silver swimming up, and down, and up, and down. “How do I know that what you’ve engineered is
real?”

Moody smiled. As if he had been expecting this question.

“You don’t,” he said, gruffly. “It’s a gamble. But we’d never get anythin’ done if we only did
things we were one hundred percent certain about, now, would we?”

Remus took the vial.

He stood up, looked around, stoically. Saw an armchair in the corner of the room, and went to sit
on it. The moment his knees got to relax he thought he might never be able to stand again. Moody
watched his every single move.

He popped the cork, and the wisps tamed. Glanced back up.

Moody was smiling.

“What?” he snapped.

“You’re just like him,” Moody said, chuckling. Fond. Horribly fond. “Just like him.”

Remus didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t.

He took a deep breath, and downed the vial.

***

Remus was dreaming.

As he opened his eyes, he registered two things. One, that the world was materialising in ribbon
from where he was standing. And two, that he was in a dark alleyway, and there were vampires
here.

He could smell them.

High on that, the fact he’d never been able to do that before, the fact that he was being pulled on a
string, he walked, and each step gleamed something glossy and creative from his foot, as if the
stone flooring did not exist until he walked on it. As he continued to walk, closer to the noise, the
picture got clearer. He could see blood splatters on the wall, and he could see vampire corpses on
the floor—three, so far, and two more being fought up ahead—the swinging of blades, grasped
between two hands so familiar to him it was obscene.

The figure fighting was agile. He was stealthy. While staving off one of the vampires the other
came up behind him, hissing, and he turned in almost an instant, darting around to avoid the attack
move of the vampire in front while swinging his long blade in a half-circle so smoothly that the
decapitation of the vampire that had been creeping up behind him could have been surgical.

With one vampire left, he hovered for a moment. Staved his attack away before finally managing
the fatal shot, a stake through the heart; he twisted and the vampire howled, and then without
further ado he twirled his sword around the body and swung it through the neck, with two hands,
taking the head clean off. His hair was covering his face as he looked down on his mess. The blood
from his blade was dripping at his shoes.

Someone yelled from behind him. He deflated, taking a breath, and flicked his head up. Looking
directly at Remus.

Lyall Lupin was looking directly at Remus.

It lasted for about a moment, before he turned to where the sound was coming from. From around
the corner appeared Moody, up in front, significantly younger than he had been—seeing through
both eyes and walking on both legs, shall the sight be immortalised—and two other young hunters
behind him. Remus circled around to stand in between the two, watching Moody’s harrowed,
shocked face as he looked at the corpses, and his father’s playful shrug.

You couldn’t have waited? Moody asked. His voice was somewhat distorted as if Remus was
listening to it through water, or glass. But it was still sounded like him.

Why should I have? replied Lyall, a chuckle in his voice. Remus had never heard his father’s voice
before. They sounded so alike. They were newly-turned’s. Easy-peasy.

Lyall grinned, boyish and rogue—he can’t have been older than twenty-eight, perhaps, the age
Remus was now—and kicked one of the arms of the cold corpses with his toe. Remus turned just
in time to see Moody’s face falter, and then his lips quirk up, into a smile he absolutely could not
hide.

Lyall laughed and walked past Remus, going to join his companions. Moody scoffed.

You’re gonna get yourself killed one day, Lupin, you know that?

Remus watched his father shrug from behind.

Better me than the world, Alastor. Better me than the world.

The scene shifted.

It took a moment for Remus to gather his bearings, and register not only the harsh lights and gentle
humidity of the place he was now standing in, but the people. He was surrounded by people—he
was at a bar. The thrum of conversation and the hum of the music was there, but muted, as if he
was listening through earmuffs. He turned and Moody and his father were sitting at a little round
table, two pints in front of them, laughing.

Moody slammed his glass down onto the table, eyes widened in shock.
The hell you mean you’re engaged, Lupin?! he almost shouted, and Lyall laughed, looking down,
almost shy.

I know it’s quick, said Lyall, grinning boyishly up at him. His hair, shorter now, the same colour as
Remus’ if a bit sandier, fell beside his excited eyes. But I love her, Alastor. I love her so much I
could die.

Moody blinked. Remus took a step closer, wanting to immortalise his father like this, the gentle
strobe lights painting him gold, and a rosy pink, as if through tinted glasses.

What about your profession? asked Moody. Straight off the bat. Lyall’s lips thinned.

I’ve told her, he said. And I’ve tried. I’ve tried to get her to run away, but she doesn’t care.

She doesn’t care?

No. Lyall laughed. I promise, you can’t get that woman to do anything. The more I tell her it’s
dangerous, the more she wants in. She’s a firecracker.

And what about a family?

She can’t have kids, said Lyall. So it’s just me and her. Her and me. I love her, Moody.

Moody took another swig of his drink. Swallowed, soundlessly.

I’m happy for you, Lupin, he said, eventually, and Lyall’s face brightened. Truly.

The scene shifted once more.

Remus recognised this room almost immediately, for he’d been in it before.

Albeit it had been decorated slightly differently; the wear and tear of age was evident. But it was
instant. For he was standing in Moody’s office at HI1—the office that did not exist anymore—and
there, behind the desk, was a younger Moody himself. He was sitting, going over paperwork.

Remus jumped as the door slammed open, and so did Moody.

What the hell do you think you’re doing? Moody yelled, as Lyall stormed in. He shut the door
behind him, and it was only here that Remus registered how haggard he looked. He was a few
years older, yes, but it wasn’t the age. It was stress. It was strife.

Hope’s pregnant, he said, no preamble. Moody’s face did not falter, but it fell.

You said she couldn’t—

We thought she couldn’t.

Silence. They simply looked at each other. Remus watched his father, watched his tells. Watched
him slump.

She wants me to quit, Alastor, he said. He fell into a chair. Says it was worth it if it was just her, but
she won’t risk putting our child in harm's way. He paused, and then, She’s right. I think… I think
she’s right. I can’t put him in harm’s way. I just can’t.

Silence.
Him? asked Moody. Raising an eyebrow. Lyall smiled, and he shrugged.

I just have a feeling.

The scene shifted.

This next setting didn’t come to him as easy, but he caught on quickly enough. He was standing at
the end of a hallway. It was homely. There were pictures on the walls of a little baby. There were
pictures on the walls of Remus’ parents, smiling,that he had never seen before.

He had no memories of this house.

He stood in front of the window. Turning around, he looked outside. The full moon seemed to look
back down at him.

A door creaked open.

A young boy, no older than three or four, clicked the door gently behind him. He was wearing a
matching set of Spider-Man pyjamas, and his hair was mussed, his eyes bleary and gentle when he
turned around to look out the window. He seemed to see through Remus.

It took him a moment, even when it should have been obvious, to register that this child was him.

It was the fact that he was clutching his favourite teddy bear as a child that made it hit him so.

Enthralled by the idea of witnessing something he could not remember, he followed, as his
barefoot three-year-old self tiptoed across the wooden landing and down the stairs. It was windy
outside. This house seemed to have terrible vents; there were odd sounds creaking in and out the
house. But Remus walked straight past his mother and father’s room. He was not scared. It was
almost hilarious. Remus Lupin had never been scared of that of which he did not know, his craving
for it was innate.

Seeing a younger version of himself felt like whiplash, and following his trails gave him such a
dizzying sense of deja vu that by the time he got to the bottom of the stairs, his younger self just a
few paces in front of him on the carpet of the small living room, he did not notice his father at the
door until his younger self did.

Daddy?

Lyall looked up, took a step forward from where he was—what Remus knew now, but what his
younger self would not have registered—wiping the blood off of his blades. He had the beginnings
of some flames going in the fireplace, something burning in it already.

He stepped into the light, shoving the bloody blades somewhere where his younger self could not
see them. But nobody could mistake the splatter of red on his face for anything more than what it
was, not even a three year old.

Remus, Lyall hissed, rushing forward. There was a smile on his face, though it looked forced. His
younger self seemed to step back on instinct, but he smiled when Lyall scooped him up, put him on
his hip. He wrapped his arms around his father’s shoulders and squeezed, digging his small head
into his neck.

He was so little, so very little.

Lyall sat them down on the sofa, Remus on his lap.

What are you doing up, baby? he asked, smiling. Remus frowned.

Too loud, he said. There are monsters outside.

Lyall faltered, visibly.

Are there? he asked, carefully.

Remus nodded.

And… are you scared of them?

Remus shook his head.

A small smile tugged on Lyall’s lips. He held Remus closer.

Why not?

Because Daddy will make them go away.

Remus, himself, watching this scene with an ache in his chest, almost laughed at this. At the irony;
little did he know just how true that really was. And so did Lyall, if his smile was anything to go
off. He leaned in and cuddled him a bit, hand holding the back of his head nodding.

Yes, he said, Daddy will. Daddy won’t let anything hurt you, you know that? I promise. Cross my
heart.

Remus found the scene blurred through his tears. Unable to stay up, his knees giving out on him,
he collapsed at the other side of the sofa. It did not make a dent, and the two of them did not notice
him as he watched them, as he cried.

His younger self leaned back, on his father’s lap, and reached a hand out to point at his face.

You’re bleeding, Daddy.

Lyall’s face seemed to flicker through about fifty emotions at this. He swallowed, and scooped
Remus back up again, swinging him around a little bit as he rushed over to the counter, making
him giggle. The older Remus followed, and watched as his dad took a paper towel and rubbed at
his face. He drew it back and the stains of red lingered on the clear white.

He looked back at Remus.

All gone, he said. Remus cheesed, giggling.

Daddy, are you a superhero?

Lyall, looking over his shoulder at where Remus knew the bloody blades had been stashed, smiled
again, and walked back over to the sofa, balling up the paper towel and throwing it into the fire as
he went.

Yes, he said, grinning, depositing Remus on his lap once more. But shhh. It’s a secret. Like Spider-
Man, he tugged on Remus’ pyjamas, making him giggle. So you can’t tell Mummy you saw me
here, okay? Ever. It’s our little secret.

The boy nodded.

Pinky promise, he said, holding up his tiny hand. Lyall smiled and linked their pinkies together.

Pinky promise, he repeated. I’ll always keep you safe, baby.

Remus—the onlooker, the adult, the tainted—couldn’t seem to breathe. But he couldn’t stop
watching. Through bitterness, through tears, looking at himself so young and so innocent.
Untainted. His father gave him one last hug and then let him down, telling him to go back upstairs,
and that he’d come and check for monsters one last time before he fell asleep.

The younger Remus jumped down from the sofa and ran up the stairs, and the scene dissolved
around the onlooker.

Things got messy after that.

Remus looked around—he was in total darkness—he stumbled, around, looking for light, until he
found it, a sort of fragmented hollow of a memory, as if it had been tainted by something—he
stooped underneath the falling tiles and jumped onto the cliffside edge of the wooden panelling of
his childhood bedroom, a box in the sky; there were noises, growling and creaking, howling
outside. The wind, or something else. And there was a lump under the duvet, shaking—it took a
moment to hear the crying, Remus was not sure whether that was his younger self or whether that
was him now, but it was there, nonetheless.

Past and present and future.

Growling, and howling, and crying.

Remus turned around, and in the space of a blink he was suddenly in his living room, clear as day.

The fire was on, and there was his mother—oh, his lovely mother, and she was screaming,
hyperventilating, her hands covered in blood and a shirtless, five year old Remus in her arms, hands
pressed to the bite that seemed to be taking up his entire side—she was yelling. Remus couldn’t
make it out for a moment over the ringing in his ears, everything was happening so fast, but he
could read her lips before he could even hear the noise. For she’d said his name when Remus was
growing up, so many times in her sleep.

Lyall. Lyall. Lyall.

Lyall!

LYALL!!!

The door slammed open, making Remus jump, and Lyall ran in, slamming it behind him. One arm
over his chest, clinging to his shoulder, the other limp, he staggered across the room, almost
skidding as he dropped beside his wife and his son. His shirt was soaked in blood. The words
started to become coherent to Remus, but barely, he could only catch glimpses.

Ambulance, he gathered, and blood, and gone, they’re gone, I don’t know why——I don’t CARE,
that was a different voice, that was his mother, and she was hysterical—call, call, call—they began
yelling at each other, Remus could not make out the argument but Lyall, with shaking hands,
smearing blood on the phone, dialled out a number and pressed it to his ear as Hope wailed; Remus
could not look at himself. He felt sick. He could only look at his father, blood in his hair, seeping
through his shirt and down his back. He circled him, as he tried to breathe, phone to his ear; he
looked.

He saw.
The bite mark on his father’s shoulder. The puncture wounds.

And then he circled back, and whoever was on the other end picked up the phone, and Remus
could make out four words, just the four. The scene eroded away around his father until Lyall was
the only person he could see in the darkness, saying four words, over and over again.

They’ve got my boy, he said. They’ve got my boy, they’ve got my boy, they’ve got my boy.

The scene shifted, melted away. Remus wanted it to be over. But he was flashed, with multiple of
them, all at once, things to see and to hear and to watch.

To see: a dark room, at five years old. The haggard, heartbroken face of his mother at the door as
they locked him in, the way he had wailed through the night until morning. He had not said any
words since the incident but he had wailed. Oh until his little lungs gave out.

To hear: the howling. But not his. Adjacent to him, somewhere linked off to his heart, something
half of him, his father, the howling, but not his, and always his. The howling.

To watch: people, in and out of his house; hunters, doctors, government officials, witches.

His father on the couch, broken-bodied, as the moon fell into Waning Gibbous.

Heart monitors, strange potions. Moody, sitting on a couch beside him. Entirely cold. But curious.

The pet project would not speak to him.

The pet project would not talk to anyone.

The little Remus turned into Lyall, as he circled, again, the two of them, on the same sofa, against
the same fire. Moody’s face was stoic. Lyall’s was broken.

I’m still me, Alastor, Lyall said. A harsh breath, a plea. I’m still me. I’m no different. Neither is he.

You’re a werewolf.

I’m a hunter. First and foremost. Always.

Remus seemed to realise what he’d said just as Lyall did. His face sunk into something of
disappointment, perhaps realisation, perhaps self-hatred. He looked up at Moody. Swallowed,
heavily.

Looked over his shoulder, and his face slacked. Remus turned around to see his mother, slinking
out of the shadows. Eyes red-rimmed and dark with hatred.

Being a father was always second to him.

It’s why superheroes don’t make meaningful connections.

Because they can never put them above saving the world.

And now look at the price he has to pay.

Everything melted around Hope, that heartbroken mother’s gaze, that of which held so much love,
that of which was all for Remus; until she was gone too, and he was in the dark once more. He took
a deep breath in. It had to be the end. It had to be.
Light shone through the cracks. He could hear birds chirping. Remus hadn’t realised that every
single scene had taken place at night until it was day again.

Hope materialised first, and then Moody, sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table. Steaming
mugs placed in front of both of them.

Time had passed. Time passes.

Hope’s hands were wrapped around her mug, as if yearning for the warmth. Her eyes had
tumultuous bags under them. And Moody had lost his eye. At some point in the past few months,
he had lost his eye.

So he’s gone? asked Hope, emotionlessly. The sun shone through the window and onto the table,
but it did not feel very warm. It was a cold sun. It was a haunting, icy Spring. Remus’ sixth
birthday had come and gone and the Spring had stayed icy and raw.

Moody swallowed, viscerally.

They came for him, he said. In the night. We tried to fend ‘em off, but the whole pack—we couldn’t
—

A silent tear fell down Hope’s cheek.

They broke him out, Moody finished. They began heading East, but we lost ‘em around Gloucester.
We’re going to track them as hard as we can—

Don’t bother, said Hope. Cutting Moody off in his tracks.

There was a tense silence.

We’re going to have to relocate you in the meantime, said Moody, filling it in, and Hope nodded, as
if she’d seen this coming. Hopefully we can keep you close, but it all depends on how far the pack
goes. For the time being we’re going to send you up to a safehouse we have on Bute until we know
Wales is safe.

Hope nodded. She seemed to sense that Moody had more.

We’re gonna have to monitor him, he continued, carefully. Remus. For the rest of his life. We don’t
know what triggers it, not for certain—we have a list of possible domino effects, ‘course, the info-
pack’ll be emailed to you as soon as possible. But there’s no certainty. We haven’t come across
enough of these children to know. He’s… well, he’s…

A guinea pig, Hope replied. Bitter. My child is your guinea pig.

Moody sighed. He looked genuinely upset. Remus had never, ever seen that look on him.

I wish that it had turned out any other way, Hope, he whispered. I wish that there was any more
that we could do. I’m going to do everything that I can to make your life comfortable.

Hope nodded. I know, she said. Thank you, Alastor. For everything.

‘f there’s anything you need, you have my number.

Thank you—

Hope was interrupted by a plodding on the stairs. It echoed throughout the entire house. Remus
stepped back, clearing the path, and watching his six year old self run through the living room, into
the kitchen. He was no longer wearing his Spider-Man pyjamas. These were green, and plain. He
was scared.

Mummy, he said, as Hope drew out her chair and hauled him up to sit on her lap. Mummy.

What is it, babe?

He simply shook his head, and sniffled. His breathing was coming quickly, in sharp panicked
wheezes. He refused to speak, except to say the words, Mummy, Mummy, Mummy.

Hope held him close to her chest. Nuzzled her face into his hair, and her face crumpled entirely, if
only for a minute, if only slightly, while he wasn’t watching.

But when he pulled back she had poised herself. As if nothing was ever wrong. A mother, first and
foremost.

Hey, she said, smiling, her eyes only slightly shiny. It’s okay, sweetheart. Everything’s okay.
Mummy’s here. A pause, as she held him, and then; Why don’t you go sit on the sofa, curl up into
the blanket, and after I finish here and our guest is gone we can have sweeties and watch a movie?
Yeah?

Remus sniffled, and then nodded. She kissed him forcefully on the forehead and placed him on the
floor. He plodded out of the room; Remus craned his neck to watch his tiny self crawl onto the
sofa, curl himself up. Cry silently.

He turned back to Hope.

She was sobbing into her hand.

Hope—

He doesn’t remember, she said, as quiet as she could, through her tears. He doesn’t remember
anything. They say it’s– it’s the trauma. That he might never remember. And sometimes he’s just
like he used to be. But most of the time…

She cut off. Moody stared at her, frown etched into his face.

He’s so sad, she whispered. Alastor, my baby is so sad.

Utter silence. She wiped her face and looked at him, shaking hands over her cup of tea. She cried.
She cried.

The scene fizzled out into nothing, and Remus was falling.

***

He woke with a start, blinking back into existence. Finding his feet on solid ground and the room
around him not materialised but built, from the ground up. Inhabited. He blinked once more,
finding his cheeks wet, and looked up to see Moody; so much older, so much wiser and so much
more broken, body and heart. He was staring at him. He was nervous.

Remus did not know what to think.

He hated everyone. All he felt was anger. To the very core of him, himself, his father, Moody,
everybody who had lied, the witches, the hunters, the werewolves. His mother. No. No, he could
not ever hate his mother. He did not. And yet he felt a bubbling bitterness for the fact that after
everything, she let him go. A moment in his life that, pointedly, had not been included in this little
recap.

That little boy Remus had watched bound around, watch cry and laugh and wail in pain. Her little
five year old, her little love, he could not blame his mother for what she had been thrown into and
what she had had to navigate all on her own because he had been thrust into the same thing, here,
and that’s just it, isn’t it? For they recruited him anyway. If he had known, he never would have
wanted to join them. He is betrayed and he is lied to. He misses his Mum and he wishes she was a
stranger before remembering that she is and it is all because of the person in front of him and the
person that he is half of. It hits him like bricks the way the DNA eschews his stability and he wants
to claw at his chest until it all goes away. And he can’t be angry at anything else and yet he is
angry at everything. He wants and he wants and it goes on and on and on. But nothing will change
what he is. His mother cannot turn back time and beg him to stay. The fact that she didn’t in the
first place is what breaks his heart in two. Nobody has been there for him and now nobody is.

In the end, everyone comes down to this: he had been impressionable and Moody had taken
advantage of that. He had been taken so he could have his guinea pig close. Have his pet project by
his teacher’s side. Because he was Lyall Lupin’s werewolf boy. Twenty-three years since he has
seen him, he is still his father’s son.

Remus stood up. He could see himself stand up. Nothing felt real. His legs were wobbly, his legs
were not his own, he was going to collapse. Fall over or float out into the ether, maybe. He’d have
no control of it. All he could see was the here and the now and the banner flying above his head:
LYALL LUPIN’S WEREWOLF BOY. A facade. A scam.

“That was…” he started, swallowing down his heart. “The memories…”

“You repressed it,” Moody whispered. His voice was shaky with weakness. “But it still lived in
there. Hope asked me to do anything I could, so with help from the witches, I tried… I took–”

He took.

They took, and they took, and they took.

“That wasn’t your choice to make,” Remus whispered, voice thick.

“It didn’t make you any less sad,” Moody continued, as if he had not spoken. “But I kept them. To
show you, one day. When you wanted to see it. When you had to know.”

Remus closed his eyes. Took a deep, deep breath in.

“After everything,” he whispered, his voice somehow a bit too harsh for him after the muted
dreaminess of the experience he had just been through. “After everything that happened, you
should have left me alone.”

Moody nodded.

“You,” Remus said, and this was dangerous, this was hellish, he was not speaking but the words
were his, “you came to me, at seventeen, and you—you took me away from the only person who
ever cared—you made me what you wanted me to be——you,” he choked on air, feeling himself
verging on the wrong side of panic, “oh, God, it was all for you, you never cared. You never
cared, you just wanted a good fucking hunter.”

“I cared,” whispered Moody.

“No you DIDN’T,” shouted Remus, breathing quickening, voice thick with tears; “no you didn’t,
you didn’t, you didn’t, if you’d cared you would’ve left me alone. If you cared you wouldn’t have
used me. If you cared, you wouldn’t have lied. And now?”

He exhaled, laughing, dry, spreading his arms out wide.

“I am what you made me. I am a hunter. And I am a Horcrux. And I am a werewolf. And I am
your pet project. So are you happy? With what I turned out to be? Are you happy, Alastor, with the
way you oh so gracefully cleansed me and then ruined me all over again?”

“I'm sorry.”

“I didn’t ask you,” Remus hissed, walking over to him, grabbing onto his arm with too much
strength and getting in his face, “if you were fucking sorry.”

“Re—“

“I asked you if you were happy. I—”

He let go, exhaling once more, feeling the flow of air into his lungs as realisation hit his very skin,
his heartbeat, his wrists tingling with the feeling of their flex and his hands burning, a holy water
knife with no gloves, breaking down the layers, he is layers and he’s in pieces, he is making
everybody around him cry and he has nobody to blame and he has everybody to blame and he
killed and killed and killed because—

“The wolves,” he whispered. “I killed the wolves.”

Silence.

“They found my mother,” he continued. “And they kidnapped her. And I killed them.”

His eyes flickered back to Moody.

The old man was crying. Silent tears, out of one eye. His heartbeat was quick. The bleep in the
room was Remus’ metronome.

“I killed him,” he whispered, voice breaking on the last word. Moody shook his head.

“We don’t know,” he croaked, quickly, stumbling through the words, “we never found your father,
nor the pack. We presumed him dead. They would have killed him.”

“I killed him,” Remus choked, ignoring everything, feeling like he’d never been certain about
anything but this. “I killed him. For you.”

“Remus—”

“I killed all of them,” he said, his breath quickening and his voice raising, “for you. I killed
everything—”

“Remus—” Moody groaned, his own breath quickening.

“–for you! Oh, my God,” Remus moaned. His hands were shaking. He couldn’t feel them. He
couldn’t feel anything. “It was all for you! It was all—all of it—and everything was a lie–”

Moody groaned, once more. It was at this moment that Remus noticed something was seriously
wrong.
“Remus,” he whispered, once more. As if on a mantra. Remus, Remus, Remus.

Remus leaned down. Hovered his hands, and then dropped them, as Moody writhed a little, opened
his mouth and made these horrible, horrible choking noises.

He froze. He was frozen.

The monitor speeding up, something awful, something horrible happening, something churning in
Remus’ stomach, something grabbing onto his hand. Moody, unable to breathe, grabbed a hold of
his hand.

Remus looked down at it, dumbly. The touch. The touch grounded him back to earth. He felt like
gravity had squeezed her iron knuckles around his chest, plummeted to the ground; he felt like he
was in the wrong atmosphere; everything was suddenly in colour, and everything was suddenly
tangible, and he hurt, he hurt, oh God it hurt.

He looked back up.

Moody opened his mouth, one side unmoving, grotesque and terrifying, as silent tears rained out of
his eyes like rain over the edging sea. He gaped, for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Remus stared. He thought of everything, he rather thinks, in that one moment, those two, maybe
three seconds. Of HI1, of home, of hunting. Of his mentor. Of his professor. Of his blade. Of his
life. Of his mother, in the woods, his mother at home, his mother’s smile; his mother, crying at the
kitchen table. Of Dorcas, and Mary, but Dorcas, that Dorcas, the worst thing to have happened to
him before the worst thing that happened but also after it, everything, everything led down to him.
Everything led down to this.

He wouldn’t be here, if it wasn’t for him. And none of this would’ve happened, if it wasn’t for
him.

Remus’ eyes seemed to fall dead, the curl of his lip menacing and cold. He leaned in, very close,
inches away, so Moody could feel the words on his teeth. So he’d hear them, before and after.

“I don’t forgive you,” he whispered.

Moody’s face crumpled.

But all Remus felt was anger.

He let go of his hand, and stood up. Moody’s helpless eyes followed him the whole way, to the
door, where he opened it, walked down the corridor, weaving through the rush of medi-witches,
running to Moody’s room. He kept walking.

He kept walking.

He kept walking.

He kept walking.

***

He barely made it to the toilet before throwing up everything in his stomach.

His stomach was churning, and his head was spinning. He was half-hysterical, a mess, breathing in
shakily, hands gripping the rim of the bowl, eyes closed, unable to think, unable to feel.

Mary found him like this.

When she entered, she looked angry, but her face softened as soon as she saw him. He couldn’t tell
her. He didn’t think he could physically get the words out. This is what it had been. He had tried to
speak. He had tried to function. He could not physically get the words out, anything deeper than
getting by. They were tied to his stomach lining, to the bottom of his spine, they bent him out of
shape. He was one physicality before—her—and one after, he was a skeleton with bones out of
shape—something out of shape. He’d been out of shape since Malfoy Manor, he thought, but
apparently it runs deeper. Turns out he had been like this his whole life.

He hadn’t spoken then. Perhaps he couldn’t then as well. Perhaps all he could do was sit and sob.
Sit and wail. Oh, he couldn’t speak, but he could wail.

She crouched beside him slowly, rubbing his back as he threw up, cradling his head and running
her fingers through his hair. She had no rings on; they felt bare. Remus wondered what she was
angry about, but couldn’t find it in him to ask. He was terrible. He was reeling, and she was
stroking his hair, and it made him sob harder.

Once he’d calmed down, the lid of the toilet closed and flushed, sitting opposite each other on the
dirty bathroom floor, she looked at him. A question without a question.

“Mad-Eye’s dead,” he said, croakily.

She betrayed no emotion outside of slight teariness. Her love was overconsuming.

He brushed his teeth, and she suggested he get some sleep because he looked tired, so he went to
bed, but he didn’t sleep.

Sirius came up at one point, gave him some food that he didn’t eat, gave him a hug that he didn’t
think he would reciprocate until he was in it, when he realised that he might’ve needed this more
than breathing itself.

None of them would tell him what they all now knew. They thought he was too fragile. Perhaps he
was. And perhaps it’d be insulting, the insinuation that it’d break him, if Remus wasn’t already
broken. Perhaps it’d be a betrayal if Remus had any more room in his heart to be betrayed.

“Everyone’s downstairs,” murmured Sirius. “Dora, Reg, James, Marlene. They’d like to see you, if
you’re up to it.”

Remus shook his head.

“Okay,” Sirius whispered, raking a hand through his hair. And that was that.

He ran his fingers through Remus’ hair and it was just as grounding as it was with Mary, and
Remus clung onto him like he was a buoy and he was far, far out at sea. He should have told him,
but he was tongue-tied. Moody was dead and Remus knew nothing now.

“I’m sorry,” Sirius whispered, again, a minute or two later. “About Mad-Eye.”

“Please don’t,” Remus replied, digging his head further into his neck.

“Okay,” Sirius whispered, again.

And that was that.

***

As the sun hit the horizon and began to plunge the depths of his room into twilight, Remus, rolling
over, accidentally knocked Andromeda’s diary.

It fell off his bed. Instinctively he leaned over to get it, picked it up, and the piece of paper fell out
of it. That crumpled, tattered thing, it fell onto the floor face-down but Remus knew it by heart,
could see it, the thick imprint of the biro on the thin sheet of paper, if backwards, he could still
read what it said.

Narcissa.

He saw it in his dreams. This book. He hadn’t been able to open it. He hadn’t wanted to. He’d
needed to know why Dor— she, why she had died. He’d burnt himself up and fucked himself up
and then he’d got it and he couldn’t actually read it.

How fucking pathetic.

He was a pitiful excuse of a mourner, grieving in white. Walking on the coals with his arms spread
out wide for balance when there was a pathway and a handrail a step to his left. He had the
epicentre of one of the worst moments of his life in the palm of his hand, a shitty ballroom in one
hand, a fatal clearing in the other; but he couldn’t open it.

He couldn’t open it.

He would open it.

But, of everything going on—everything that had broken him down to what he was now—there
was this. There was a case. Everything he knows is nothing now; had he been engineered to work a
case? Had he been manipulated into his skills? Had they been his, or had they been—whatever was
inside of him’s? The domino effect lined up in front of them, that of which were unreal felt glossy,
everything, his life up until he was seventeen years old and then most of what came after. But the
vampires he had killed, that of which he had banished and exorcised and murdered, regardless of
how he had ended up in that circumstance… surely that had been his. Violence. The way he had
stepped into it perhaps ran genetic. The way he fought against it perhaps ran supernatural. But
underneath that coercion and manipulation was those kills, the act of taking a life and the choice,
choices, all of those choices, they had been his.

And Remus hated it, but it was also all he seemed to have that was his anymore. All he seemed to
have that he could actually grasp onto, everything tangible about his life, every choice he’d made
that was his. As if he was put into a big sealed empty room and given free will. With foresight,
everything is tainted, but those choices; to go left instead of right on the walkway that led him to
the vampire coven that had been about to kill that young girl he’d saved, to pick A instead of B on
the block of flats on his first day to be dormed with his Hackney girls, each and every time he’d
been able to kill Sirius and had chosen not to, they had been his, they had been his.

The amount of times his dagger had been against Sirius’ heart. Everything in his life—
environmental, natural, genetic—everything had pushed him to do it. Do it coward. Do it. It had
been a mantra, playing in his brain, and yet he never had. Something had stopped him. Whether
conscious or not at the time, he was conscious to it now, that had been his choice. His choice to not
kill Sirius, because he needed more information; his choice to not kill Sirius, because at this angle,
he would die too; his choice to not kill Sirius, for it would draw too much attention to themselves.
Mine, mine, mine. Words murmured against lips in the darkness. The act of becoming one’s other
as a conscious choice does not make you any less of your own. It is when you are made someone’s
against your will that you become what you are defined as. Choices.

Perhaps that’s why, at the time, he’d loved Sirius so horribly and hated him so fiercely. Those two
emotions had been his to discover.

Not a lot was his, but Sirius was, and so were his friends, and so were those choices, and so were
those people he saved.

His memories weren’t, his voice wasn’t but now that the dust had settled he could see his hands in
front of him and feel the alignment in telling them to move and watching them curl. Barefoot to the
wooden floor, that feeling was personable. He was tainted and grey and gloom but maybe that just
matched his new soul. Maybe this betrayal was a good thing. It gave him fog and it gave him a
perspective. To see things clearly. To see it all, past the guts and gore.

Because no dissociation or detachment could marr the fact that in this moment Remus could take a
deep breath and could see one clear goal through the fog, and that clear goal was that of what he
wanted to do, and what he wanted to do, over anything and everything, was kill Tom Riddle.

That was his choice. That was his.

Mine, mine, mine.

Of course, the more surefire way of killing Tom Riddle would be to kill himself—with the basilisk
blade this time, he wouldn’t be so hot-headed and stupid—but then he would leave without
knowing, without really knowing, for there were still two Horcruxes out there beside himself and
he could not be sure that anyone else apart from him would fill out this mission. It had to be him.
Surely it did. If a divine purpose existed, Remus’ was this. And it was his choice to fill it out. No
matter who or what was against him.

So, in true case fashion, he made a list.

It was the only thing he could focus on to get the ringing to stop and to get his hands to feel like his
again, when he held a pen in his shaky fingers and wrote.

1. read the message in andromeda’s diary.

2. fish for clues. do whatever it says. find out where the next horcrux is.
3. if there are no clues, go through the tracking history we had on bellatrix. follow her route. go
to every city if you have to. hunt down every person she ever spoke to if you must.
4. destroy it.
5. find the next one.
6. destroy it.
7. lure him and his soldiers to the place in which it had been destroyed.
8. send a message to Sirius, telling him everything.
9. let riddle kill you before sirius gets there.
10. hope to god that when he meets his match, he shall be mortal once more.
11. hope to god that sirius’s grief will be enough.
12. it will be enough.
He faltered. That was unfair on Sirius.

It was horribly unfair on Sirius. But it could not go any other way.

He could not see any other way.

He accepted it.

And yet his body rebuked it. In the form of the piece of paper, clutched in his hand, that small
thing, that name. Narcissa. She of motherly love. Remus did not know Narcissa, not really, but he
knew her sacrifice. She had represented love and Remus cannot have that reminder. Because with
Narcissa comes Draco, and with Draco comes Astoria, and with Astoria comes James, and with
James comes Sirius. All of these people that would miss him. These and more.

His hand clenched. He hated that he still had sentiment, he wanted it gone, he wanted it gone, he
wanted it gone.

Before he knew it, before he even registered what he was doing, he had gotten up. Stumbled, a bit
—he hadn’t eaten anything today, a plate cold and untouched on his bedside table—possibly
dehydrated after getting so sick earlier. But his legs moved regardless. He walked downstairs.

He ignored everybody, when he walked into the living room, for they were not his concern. His
concern was this piece of paper. He still had the book in his hand. He didn’t realise he’d brought it
with him until he’d thrown the piece of paper with the word Narcissa onto the fire and the book
had almost gone with it.

He thought about it. He looked at it, and he really, really thought about it.

But the strength of needing to know, needing revenge, needing anything for— her—death was
overconsuming, and so he didn’t.

He didn’t open it, however, either. He got into bed and tried to sleep.

Lily came in and deposited a glass of water on his bedside table a few hours later, and he, still
unsleeping, kept his eyes closed. He felt her watch him for a moment, and then she left. And he
was alone.

He must’ve dozed at some point.

***

It took Remus three more days to work up the courage to open the book.

It was another three days of not entirely being sure of what was going on. The morning after the
night he burned the piece of paper he threw up again—this time Lily was the one who found him,
and had sat him down on his bed and forced him to sip his water, citing dehydration for real—
Remus hadn’t truly thought it, but apparently t’was so.

She said it was moderate and so she kept an eye on him for the next two days, forcing him to drink
double his body weight in water, and eventually he could keep food down. She had been rather
worried about the vomiting. He hadn’t the heart to tell her exactly why he had been.

Nobody told him about the werewolf thing. To be fair, he didn’t blame them, here, especially since
he had gotten sick. He still found it somewhat funny. Once upon a time he might’ve despised the
idea of everyone—even Sirius, would you believe it—darting about him like he was fragile, but at
this point, he didn’t care. He could be fragile if they wanted him to be. He wasn’t thinking about it
anymore.

All he could think about was what he had to do. It was all he had left.

And to do that, he had to, as a first step, open the diary.

On the third night after Moody’s death, just before midnight, he got up after everybody else was
asleep.

He knew that people—read: Sirius—would hear him if he left his room, and so he stayed. Flicked
on the lamp. He picked up the book, and felt his stomach turn, holding it in his hands.

This is stupid, he thought. This is so much smaller than you’ve made it out to be.

But perhaps it wasn’t.

Yes, the reason for D—her, death, would be in here. But what if there was more?

What if there was less?

What if Andromeda really had flat-out betrayed them? It seemed to be what Sirius thought. Remus
hadn’t been too sure, as he had had this book, but of course he hadn’t fucking read it, so he
wouldn’t fucking know. All he knew was that regardless of what she said, nothing would make up
for what had befell because of her.

But he may as well read it.

He’d almost died retrieving it, so. Bombs away.

Remus, hands sort of shaky, pulled the book open. It fell naturally on a page somewhere in the
middle, as if it had been open straight onto this page many times, or the spine had been broken at
this very place.

He brought it up, close to his lips, and whispered the word, “Narcissa.”

Words began to form in black ink.

Remus,

If you’re reading this, I’m dead.

There’ll be no other way. I’ve accepted that now. If you’re reading this then I’m dead, because if
I’m not dead, I would’ve taken this away, for it’ll be useless. And if I’m not dead, then Bella isn’t
either. And I’m not leaving that place until she is.

I don’t know what I’m going to have to do. You might read this hating me. That’s okay. I’m going
to explain why I’m going to do whatever I’ll have done when you’re reading this, and if you still
hate me, that’s okay, too. But I need you to know that my death wasn’t for nothing. I need you, and
specifically you—because I believe that you’re everything that this war hinges on, Remus—to know
what to do next.

I’m not sure where to start. So I suppose I will just start with the facts.
I lied to you all. When I told you I hadn’t located the Horcrux that Bella was hiding. The cup. I
had. I know exactly where it is. And I’m going to tell you where it is, but you need to know a few
things about it first:

She’s hidden it in Sweden, on an island off the coast of Luleå, and she’s hidden it underground.

There’s a series of cave systems that she’s enchanted to Bedlam and back. It’s like a maze. A series
of challenges. They’re all different, different kinds of challenges for different areas. The idea is
that one person won’t be able to defeat them all and too many won’t fit. So you have to pick your
smartest. And don’t just think magic smarts, either. Human smarts. Street smarts. As far as I can
tell, she’s thought it all out. I’m not joking, Remus, don’t underestimate her.

You need people who are smart—all ranges of smart—are experienced, and won’t panic. This is
important. It’s programmed to sense panic. I know this, cause I’ve completed the first one for you.

And this is where Whittaker comes in. And Bella.

The first challenge, in the series of challenges, was a blood test.

Seems simple, right?

No. I’ll set the scene. In a rocky, dark cave, there is a marble altar, and a smoothly carved bowl. It
looks like it’s Roman, or perhaps Greek. It doesn’t matter. There’s a hole in the bottom, and a
knife supplied for you. You have to cut your hand and bleed into the bowl.

But here’s the catch. If you’re of any blood other than Black, you die instantly. And if you’re of
Black blood, but have been pronounced a blood traitor, you die instantly.

Do you see how we’d have a little bit of a problem?

The fact of the matter is, Bella has drawn on Black’s sword. Sirius will probably tell you about it
but all you need to know is that it takes in Black blood. And everything it takes in makes it
stronger.

Essentially she’s linked her life to the sword’s consumptive ability—which she has applied to that
bowl to use almost as a tether—and, subsequently she has linked her life to anyone who enters that
cave. So if I, or Regulus, or Sirius were to bleed into that bowl, while the sword still exists and
Bella is still alive, it would kickstart a ritualistic process in which the room would, essentially,
transfer our/their life source over to Bella through the sword. And so she’d grow stronger. We
would die. And nobody would get through to the next section.

Yeah. Not very fun, right?

The easiest solution would surely be to steal Narcissa’s/someone else’s blood, you’d think, and
perhaps that would be doable if Narcissa wasn’t… well, dead. For I believe it has to be straight
from the vein. Of course, I wouldn’t know for sure, barely escaping with my own life the first time.
But I have a feeling loopholes aren’t in the cards. They may be insane, but they’re smart. There’s
only one way to break a spell like that. There’s only ever been one way to break a spell that binds a
life to an object back to a life.

Fact of the matter is, to get past the first challenge, Bella has to die. And the sword has to go with
her.

I know that I could tell you about this—I could tell you all—but I know that none of you will let me
do what I have to do. The plan will get skewed, because we’ll be focusing on killing Bella in a way
that does not afford us any casualties, when really I think this has been coming for a long, long
time.

And, really, there’s only one person who can best her still living. Not to toot my own horn, but it’s
me.

I think this has been coming since Narcissa died.

I’m going to be transparent with you, Remus, because I’m going to die anyway: I miss Narcissa. I
miss her like a limb. I mourn for her like a part of me has been carved out and cast away into the
sea. She was my little sister for eight hundred years, and even despite everything she did, even
despite everything I did, I loved her.

I think a part of me still loves Bella, too, though for the most part that’s been snuffed out. But oh,
Cissy. How I loved her. How I still do.

So I think there’s something noble in my sacrifice, or at least something worthy, in going out the
way we were born and raised: together. Of course, Bella’s going to put up a hell of a fight, but I’m
expecting that. I’m only five years younger than her, you know. But to kill Riddle—and that’s what
all of this comes down to, that’s what I’m sacrificing myself for, because this is more important
than me—it’s bigger than you or me or the world, you of all people should know that—to kill
Riddle, we have to get to this cup, and to get to this cup, I have to disable the first challenge, and to
do that, Bella has to die, and her sword has to go with her. I’m riding on the fact that she’ll have it
with her—because she will. Because I know her. The plan is to slip away while your plan is in
action, find the sword, destroy it in the Fiendfyre I know they’ll have somewhere. And then kill her.
And die alongside her. At the end of the day, simply fighting her won’t work, because we’re just as
powerful as the other, and so we’ll just go in circles.

We best each other, me and her. Power matching power puts it on pause. And I need her gone. We
have no time to pause. It has to happen now.

So. I don’t know how it’s going to happen, but that’s the aim.

Anyway, I’m going to write something for the two of them, too, but tell Sirius and Regulus that I’m
sorry. Tell them I love them so, so much. That they are my boys, from the ground up, and that
everything—everything—I did was for their future. Because they have bright ones. Especially
Regulus. He has his whole life to live, by his rules, and I can’t wait for him to enjoy that. I’ve been
living my life by mine for six hundred years. But I don’t have a you to cure my ennui like Sirius
does.

I’m tired, Remus. The truth is, I’m tired.

Ted already knows. I’ve said all of my goodbyes to him. We had a good 200+ years together, that’s
more than enough. I believe he’s planning on going to Europe with Tonks to try and find
reinforcements to replenish the army that I know we’ll lose tomorrow. If we lose anyone because
of me, know that I’m sorry. Know that I tried my hardest not to skew the plan. I’m sorry for what I
might have to do. But this might be my only chance and I need her dead. If not for you, to end the
war, then for me.

I’ve lived my life. I’m happy. If I’m going to die with anyone, I’ll be glad that it’s Bella. I’ll be glad
to see Cissy again. In the afterlife. Whatever that is, if such a thing exists.

But then, maybe I’m being pessimistic. Maybe this is all fucking stupid and mushy and ridiculous.
You might not even read this. I guess we’ll find out.

To conclude, and listen carefully, here: on the next page, there will be a set of coordinates. They
will take you to a town just south of Luleå. The caves are on one of the islands off the coast. It’s
called Vallskären. They’re a small, old attraction. They used to be open to the public until around
the sixties, when they closed because they were too unstable. It’s a bit difficult to get there in the
summer when the ice track isn’t available but hopefully the locals will help you find your way. You
can still find terrain plans if you search far enough. I’ve looked; there should be five
compartments, including the first one, so four more challenges for you to go through until you get
to the cup.

If I’ve really pulled it off and killed Bella and the sword, then if either Sirius or Regulus bleeds
into the bowl, the door should just open. It will override the identification system, and take all
vampire blood to be an acceptance, regardless of blood traitor-ism or else.

I’m sorry that this is all I can do. If I knew what the rest of the challenges were, I’d tell you.

Good luck, Remus.

Andy.

Remus read the letter once, and then he read it again. And then he read it a third time.

He flipped the page, saw a brief message written for Sirius and Regulus, and flipped it back.

He closed the book.

And then he opened it.

Ripping out a page from the very end, he wrote a hasty letter to Pandora using his barely-working
biro, and then tip-toed out of the room and down the deserted corridor, towards the small landing
where the postbox stood besides the actively working apparition station. He slipped the letter into
the outbox, and then kneeled down and turned off the station so that anyone could apparate in
anywhere in the house. And then he tip-toed back to his room, praying that Sirius would not hear
him. If he did, he didn’t do anything about it.

He crawled into his bed, wrapped the duvet around him like a swaddle, and closed his eyes.

He might have slept, at some point.

Nowadays, there’s no way to tell.

Regardless, he pushed through the motions of his day, agitated for the most part, jiggling his knee
or cracking his fingers and eyeing the clock as if it might run away. In the interest of having people
ignore him, he spoke a little bit, but not much—for saying nothing would flag him up to be
monitored, and saying everything the exact same—and so he acted as if it were any normal day.
Held the book close to him. Thought about one thing, and one thing only, his choice, his mission.
Watched the clock tick down to ruin.

At 12am that night, as planned, Remus was sitting on the armchair in the living room when
Pandora apparated in.

He’d gotten one of the witches to cast a silencing spell on this room—after shaking her hand in
confidentiality—so that the crack of her apparition wouldn’t be heard. Under the low light, she
looked weary but alert, her curls up in a flourished ponytail, hair hanging to the sides of her face.
Her skirt was silver but looked somewhat warmer against the flickering of the fire.

She turned.

“Remus,” she breathed, and as he stood up, preparing to launch into his plan and all of the nitty
gritty details care-free, she pulled him into a hug.

He blinked in shock. Gave it a moment, gathered his bearings and the throb in his chest, and
hugged her back.

“I’ve missed you,” she said, in his ear. “It was so nice to hear from you.”

She pulled back and smiled, and he found himself smiling back, though he was unsure of whether
that was just a mimic.

“Missed you too,” he said through slightly numb lips.

She smiled, leaned back. Squeezed his shoulders.

“Right. What do you need?” she asked.

And so Remus showed her the book.

It took her a few minutes to read Andromeda’s letter fully—she was reading it slowly, savouring it
—and Remus watched her the whole time. Watched as her eyes flickered, her expression changed,
her mouth fell open. When she was done they had ended up sitting on the sofa beside each other;
she dropped the book to her lap and looked at him, grave-faced.

“Challenges,” was all that she said at first. Remus nodded. “A series of challenges. Like. A game.
She’s playing a game.”

“Essentially,” said Remus.

“I don’t—” Pandora cut off, swallowing, opening the book again and flicking back and forth
through the few pages that Andromeda’s words had taken up. She flicked through the rest of it
quickly, trying to find something else; Remus had done that. There was nothing. She sighed.
“Wow. I mean, do we trust Andromeda?”

Remus thinned his lips.

“I suppose she killed Bella,” said Pandora, “that counts for something… and she would know,
considering that she was tailing her all that time… there was no indication of any actual betrayal…
oh, her plan was so stupid, why did she have to…”

Pandora trailed off.

Really, Remus, after intense rumination on Andromeda’s letter, understood why she had done what
she had done. Looking at it from her viewpoint, it made sense not to tell them—Sirius or Regulus
primarily—it made sense, to leave instructions, to complete this leg herself, to ensure that the
Horcruxes they had intended to destroy at Whittaker had been destroyed. To ensure the locket was
their first priority. And it had been destroyed. Ironic, then, that the second half, that the pseudo-
fake, that he was here. That it was him. But Andromeda’s death had not been in vain. And Remus’
wouldn’t be either.
He had not had time to process it, he would not have time to process it. And he would never forgive
her for what had transpired as a result. But all he could think about was this cave. All he could
think about was the next step. The next thing to do. Get through the day to blend into the night. Be
at one with the fog. Fight his way through it for a clear ending.

“If this is all true,” she said, quietly, rereading it yet again, “and the cup is actually there… Remus,
that’s five of six. We’d just need to find the last one… and then we could… then we…” she trailed
off, again.

Remus swallowed.

“And then you kill me,” he said, gently.

Her head snapped up faster than Remus had ever seen anything move, and her eyes instantly filled
with tears.

But she was not stupid. Pandora was not stupid. She did not beat around the bush. She did not sit
and gawk, she sat and she looked at him and she understood.

“You know,” she breathed, two tears falling onto her cheeks. Remus wished she would not cry.
“You know?”

“I know.”

“Oh, Remus,” she murmured, reaching out to throw her arms around him, book abandoned. He did
not reciprocate. “Oh, Remus. I’m going to– I’m going to do everything I can. I’m going to change
it. I can,” she pulled back, sniffling, nodding, “I can do it, I just need to figure out how—”

“Dora,” said Remus. He shook his head. “I’m not our priority.”

“You’re always our priority.”

“This,” he picked up the book, “is our priority. We need to figure out what we’re doing; or, more
pointedly, who we’re taking. We have no time to waste.”

Her face cleared, tears drying on her cheeks. She did not seem to question the ‘we’. She had been
his first choice from the very moment that he had read it.

She sniffed.

“I don’t know,” she said. “We’ll have to evaluate our strengths. We… Andromeda made an
emphasis on different kinds of smarts. We’ll need a Pureblood, I think—well, we’ll need a Black,
obviously, but which one is the question…” she looked at him.

Remus had realised the second he had read that damn letter. He should’ve known, in retrospect,
that list would be made redundant. Leaving him would never be an option.

Where Remus Lupin goes, Sirius Black follows.

“Me, you, and Sirius,” he said, and she exhaled, nodding once. “Who else?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe—”

She was cut off by the creak of a door.

The both of them turned sharply behind them, to the door, directly behind the back of the sofa in
which they were sitting on; it began to creak open. Against the glow of the low sunset lighting,
Sirius Black’s hollow face fell down upon them, looking between the two in confusion. And then
the door opened wholly.

Standing beside her, hair in a ponytail, arms crossed and crease indented between her brows, was
Lily Evans.

Remus and Pandora glanced at each other.

“Come in,” Remus said, still looking at her.

He turned to the door, in which they were both standing; in which Sirius’ eyes had fallen onto the
open book in his hand, the words on it. Lily looked shocked that he was saying more than his
cyclical four words.

“Both of you, come in. I have something I have to show you.”

The door shut behind them.

***

Forty-seven minutes later. Sirius had been pacing for about thirty-six of them. Remus, on the other
hand, was rather at peace, sitting on the armchair while Lily wrote a letter from the ripped out
paper at the end of the book, leaning on her arm on the floor beside the coffee table.

Sirius had tried not to betray emotion, but it was clear that Andromeda’s note—and, further, the
small follow-up to he and his brother of which Remus had not read and wouldn’t—had rushed a lot
of feelings to the surface that he had no clue how to contend with, because he was pacing, as if
trying to outrun them. Pandora had been talking for about fifteen minutes straight, trying to
strategize—mostly to herself, honestly, over and over, things it could be and ways they could
escape, the plan, from point A to B—Canada to Sweden, house to cave, blood to broth.

Remus had rather wanted to go without saying anything to anyone, but, of course, the three of them
opposed that, and so Lily was writing a letter. Pandora already had. Sirius was pacing, but he’d
have a pen in his hand—it would be a disservice to himself to leave Regulus the same way Regulus
had left him, for the same reason, without word—but he wasn’t happy about it. And then Lily had
brought up Mary, and Remus had to give that to her. He deserved to give her an explanation.

Maybe she’d hate him. After losing D—for fuck’s sake, her, so soon. But Remus couldn’t find it in
himself to care. When they were so close to killing him. When he was so close to destroying Tom
Riddle and getting vengeance, when he was so close to having everything be okay for those who
were left that he still loved.

Of course, Sirius coming and they forming this team put a spanner in the works of the plan he’d
had, for, assuming they all got out of the caves alive, they’d be going to find the last one all
together, and thus Sirius would be present to stop him from doing what he had to do.

But, then again, it guaranteed he’d be present to rip Tom Riddle’s head off his body, too, so that
was something. And yes, where one goes the other follows, but Remus had always been good at
slipping away, from everyone, even Sirius, though he refused to believe it.

His plan would work.

So sitting here for forty-seven minutes, they had put their assets into order, aligned their plans,
their views, the things they could bring to the table and the things they could not.

Pandora had stared them all down, and then said something along the lines of:

“I can’t see a more diverse group than this,” she’d said, looking over the four of them. “In terms of
knowledge attainment. Think about it. I have witch knowledge. You,” Sirius, “are a Pureblood with
three hundred years of compliancy under your belt, and five hundred years of survival. A double
threat. You,” Remus, “are a hunter, and a smart one at that. You know the ins and outs of
supernatural creatures that the two of us don’t affiliate with.”

And then she had gotten to Lily.

“And you—” she’d started, but Lily had sighed.

“I’m not an asset anymore, Dora,” she’d said, holding up her hand.

Flat-palm to the sky, she’d bitten on her bottom lip, and summoned a flame that was only a little bit
bigger than a tea light. It swirled around her palm, as if yearning for sentiency, and then had
extinguished herself, disintegrating into little embers of ash that settled on her dry palms, brushed
to the ground as she dropped her hand.

Remus…didn’t know. He hadn’t known that she’d lost it.

He felt utterly terrible.

“I was going to say,” Pandora said, pointedly, lip curling upwards, “that you’re a nurse. And you’re
a human. And you’ve had a normal life. You can bring forward things that we might not even think
of, Lily.”

Lily blinked.

“But– but I’m not useful anymore,” said Lily, bewildered. “Not in the ways that matter.”

“All of it matters, Lily,” said Remus.

Lily looked over all of their faces, once over, twice over. Perhaps trying to discern how far the
truth stretched until it morphed into lies. But they were not present here. Remus would know. He
knows lies like the back of his hand, and so he knew, when Sirius reached out and grabbed her
hand—Sirius, who had been looking wary for the entire time they’d been talking—Remus knew
that that look was one of pure trust, and true belief. He nodded, once.

“We need you,” he said. Gently.

She smiled. And she nodded.

“Right,” said Pandora, slapping her hands onto her knees. “Do we go now, then?”

Perhaps any other group of people—literally anyone else—would recognise the rashness of leaving
in the early hours of the morning, without having sat down and informed anyone, packed anything,
or figured anything out.

But this group was formed of Remus, who, insane in his grief, wanted to kill Tom Riddle and
wanted to do it now over everything in the world; Sirius, who was, perhaps of everyone, not
exactly known for his rationality; Lily, who has been tortured by herself and had been stuck in a
Groundhog Day hell in this little house for the past two plus weeks; and Pandora, who, may God
forgive her, loves a fucking challenge.

Lily, however, still had a strand of rationality, and so there they were, writing letters, there they
were, going back to their rooms and packing bags, and there she was, at Remus’ door, waking him
up at 7am on the dot as they had planned, bleary-eyed with his bag beside him, Sirius standing
behind her, Pandora at his side.

He skidded past the landing on the way to the living room to slip the letters they had written into
the postbox, and flick the apparition station back on, too. Nothing might’ve ever changed.

And then Sirius caught him, as the two girls made their way silently down the dark corridor.

“Hey,” he said.

Remus turned.

Sirius’ jaw was locked, his eyes hesitant. Scanning him all over. They fell to his hands, where,
peeking out from his sleeves, you could see the burn scars from Boardwalk. His hand was on
Remus’ arm.

“Are you,” he started, quiet and wary, “okay with this.”

Remus took a moment to take in these words.

“Yes,” he said, slowly. “I– I initiated this. So, yes, I’m okay with it.”

“No, I mean…” he trailed off. Ran a hand through his hair, and dropped it. When he continued it
was slow. “Sweetheart, you’ve not been.. okay.”

Remus closed his eyes.

“And I know you’ll want… revenge or to do what you know because of–”

“Stop it,” Remus breathed, bringing two hands up to cover his eyes. “Stop it, stop it, stop it,
please.”

Sirius went quiet instantly.

It took ten whole seconds for Remus to calm the storm in his chest.

“I,” he whispered, dropping his hands to the side of his face and then all the way down.

He didn’t get any further.

“Baby,” Sirius whispered. He had not called him that in a long, long time. Remus’ eyes snapped up
to look at him. “I just want to make sure that you don’t need more time.”

Oddly enough, there seemed to be the hint of tears in Sirius’ eyes.

“Because I can give you it,” Sirius said, thicker. He thinned his lips and let them go, nodding.
“Yeah? We have time. We have– we have all the time in the world.”

Remus felt a twinge of guilt. Like a hammer to a wall.

He bit down on the inside of his bottom lip and looked away, trying to avoid the heart that was
breaking in the pedestal in front of him. How clueless Sirius thought he was. How they never had
time and they never will.

He looked up.

“We’re leaving at seven, Sirius,” Remus whispered. “We have five minutes.”

He felt something shatter.

“Let me hold you for four of them,” said Sirius.

Remus took a shaky breath in, and took a step forward, and then another until he was walking into
safety in the form of Sirius’ arms, feeling him hold him and kiss his head and finding the strength
in him to hold him back.

Where you go, I follow.

“I love you,” Sirius murmured into the side of his hair. Remus pulled his head back and Sirius ran a
hand through it, leaning over to kiss him on the forehead. “You know that, right?”

Remus, feeling overwhelmed with a sudden wave of emotion, leaned forward again so it didn’t
show.

“Yeah,” he said, when he trusted his voice. “I know.”

INBOX: BOARDWALK, 9AM, JUNE 23, 2021:

James,

We’re leaving.

I’m so sorry to drop this on you all of a sudden. In my defence, it was dropped on me suddenly too.

Remus opened the book—you know the book, you remember it, the one he wouldn’t let anybody
touch—turns out Andromeda wrote us a letter. Well, wrote him a letter. It was very explicitly
written for Remus. Somehow, she trusted him the most. I think I do too, which is why, when you get
this, I’ll be gone. Following him like the mother duckling, I suppose.

Andromeda found the Horcrux. The next one.

It’s in Europe. I can’t disclose exactly where, obviously, but it’s somewhere in Europe. To cut a
long story short, Bellatrix has formed a sort of maze. A challenge, with levels—five of them, if I’m
correct—you have to beat all five levels before you’re able to get to it. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t
it? Something out of a video game. But that’s what Andromeda says. If she’s wrong, then I suppose
we’re dead, but I don’t think she is. I know you won’t get to read the letter, maybe not for a long
time or maybe not ever, but it was heartfelt. For Narcissa.

Essentially, to dumb it down, her plan went like this: to bypass the first challenge, you have to
bleed into a bowl. If a person of non-Black blood bleeds into the bowl, they die. If a person of
Black blood who has been labelled a blood traitor bleeds into the bowl, they die. If a person of
Black blood who has not been labelled a blood traitor bleeds into the bowl, but it is not directly
from the vein, they die. I’m sure Regulus will understand this far better than I do, but Bellatrix
linked her life to Black’s sword, and then linked Black’s sword to the bowl, and then linked
whomever so bleeds onto the bowl’s life source to this chain. If I bleed, I die and she gains the
strength from my life source. It’s a chain reaction. To break the chain, Bellatrix had to die, and the
sword had to go with her.

That’s why Andromeda did what she did. So call her a traitor, or don’t. I’m not sure where I stand
with it all, because at the end of the day, Dorcas is still dead, and so is Oliver, and so is Fabian.
Jul has nerve damage from the dementors. And Remus isn’t Remus anymore. Grief has warped
him into something I’m not sure that I recognise. So, call her what you want. But she’s brought us
a step closer to killing Riddle, and that would have been impossible had she not done what she did.
If it was worth it is subjective.

I’m hoping that since the first challenge is physically impossible, and I highly doubt Bella believed
she would die anytime soon, the rest go smoothly. And we can get the Horcrux, and we can destroy
it. And I can come back to you three.

But in the meantime, fix up the place so we have somewhere to come home to?

Because I’ll come home. That’s a promise.

Eternally yours, JP, RB, MM;

Lily Evans.

Reggie,

Attached to this letter should be a shittily-ripped-out piece of paper. It is our dear cousin’s
goodbye to us.

Feels a bit anticlimactic, doesn’t it? It’s one page long. After all of these years. Eight hundred of
‘em, to be exact. Feels a bit strange, that she’s gone, and all we got was a sense of betrayal and…
five hundred and fifty six words on a page. I had a few hours to ruminate on it this morning and
counting the words was all that I could do to stop myself from blowing my brains out. Five
hundred and fifty six words. If one word was a year, that's only 70% of our lifespan. And if you add
one thousand words (a courtesy we were not given) that’s the exact year I left our family. 1556.
Isn’t that hilariously ironic? It’s almost as if she knew. But of course she didn’t, because she only
cared enough to write five hundred and fifty six words. She definitely didn’t care enough to count
them.

But then again, yes, it’s been eight hundred years, but it’s not as if we are the best at keeping in
contact with each other. Cornwall comes to mind. I was about to ask if you knew Andromeda
thought I was dead for six years post-Cornwall, but then I remembered that yes, you did know,
because you’re the one that told her that I was alive. When you visited her in France, whilst
evading me for eight years. But I can’t exactly say anything, because I evaded you for five hundred
before that. Though I think at this point we can accept that neither of us are in the wrong for how
our parents chose to ruin us. At least, I hope you can, because that would leave us working with a
clean slate and therefore the way that I’m about to mess it up, yet again, might not be as
detrimental.

Because I’m leaving.

I know you’ll read Lily’s letter, and I know she’ll have outlined every little detail and left nothing to
chance because she’s Evans, and she’s more put together in her 27 years than we are in eight
hundred, so I guess all I have to say is… we’re going. To find the next one, and then hopefully the
one after that. And I don’t mean to abandon you again, but that’s essentially what I’m doing. I’m
aware that I am not the brother that you need. And I am sorry. I think we still need to figure out
how we work around each other, Reg. You don’t know me, not really, and yet you know me better
than anyone on the planet. Isn’t it weird how that works? And isn’t it unfair that we can never line
up? We keep missing each other like this. We’re constantly missing each other. But at the end of
the day I think I love you larger than life itself and I feel like that has to count for something,
right?

I’m going to go, like this, like you did, because we understand the weight of something larger than
we are even though it messes us up on a molecular level. And you’re going to stay here, you’re
going to be with James—this is me giving you my blessing, you lovesick bastard—and you’re going
to be the voice that I know you can be, you’re going to be the hope that I held onto for five hundred
years. And when I come back, we can destroy him together. And then we can figure out how to live
our lives.

For the first time, we’ll be free, Reg. Write a bucket list while I’m gone. I’m going to show you
everything I love about the world and maybe one day you’ll love it again, too.

Just this one thing. And then it can be you and me. We’ll build a home somewhere. I think I need
you too.

Through fire and blood.

S.O.B.

P.S. This amount of sappiness is a bi-millennium thing, by the way, so savour it while you can. And
stay safe. Over everything, stay safe, you tart. I’ll be back before you know it.

P.P.S. Seven hundred and three words. What were you doing in 1703? Think about it and get back
to me. I’d like to hear about it.

Marlene,

You should see the little key sellotaped to the bottom of this letter. If you pry it out, it’s a password-
protected portkey. The password is LUNA. Once you say it, it’ll take you to an unidentifiable room
—don’t bother trying to identify it, you won’t be able to get out—and in that room will be a
bookcase. This room is my life’s work.

In particular, the leatherbound red grimoire (the one that says η σφραγίδα της Αρτέµιδος on the
front) contains all of my protective warding spells, most of the coding for what protects Boardwalk
—I invented the spell Mary overrode it with, so it is still mind—and all of my protective magic,
including dimensional rift rituals, long-lasting shield magic, and the techniques I use to siphon and
transform warding into powers of my own.

The one that should be on the bottom shelf that looks black and rather menacing with a serpent
called “ναγκίνι” on the front contains all of my attacking magic. The brown one that is almost
falling apart with wiry wool holding the seams together is all of my Horcrux research. All of it.
And the records book that is the most obvious—it’s written in English on the front—is, as stated, a
record of all of our assets at Boardwalk or otherwise. It is essentially the entire war crammed into
one big, big book.

There’s other research, of course, but these are the ones that will probably be most important to
you. You can peruse—you can go back and forth, the portkey can be used limitlessly—but the room
won’t let you take any of the books back with you unless I’m dead, so please don’t try and take
them away from their place. There are potion books, there are diaries—many, many diaries—logs
from experiments, records of my time with the Black’s and records from beforehand. The grimoire
holding my medical theory might be something that Avni and Poppy would be interested in. There
are a lot of potions and rituals that I think might be beneficial. Half are unfinished, but in the case
that I can’t I’d want someone else to fill out my visions.

This is not a suicide note, before you think it—this is a just-in-case. Lily’s letter seems to be the
consensus for explanation, so you’ll find out what we’re doing from James. I’m giving you this
because I trust you, Marlene. I trust that you can hold up the place—not just the vampires, but the
witches, and the hunters—in my absence. And I trust that you’ll do what’s best for the war, as our
leader.

This place would be nothing without you, Marls. So keep this safe, please. I'll see you soon, and we
can have a real long chat about my theories, if you’d like. You know I love to talk about them.

Dora. X

P.S. If you happen to hear a little girl’s laughter on the other side of the door, please don’t
interact. Savour it, though. It’s the most wonderful thing in the world.

P.S.S. If Alice’s test really is positive, tell her to come here and tell my mother. She’ll know what to
do.

Mary,

I don’t know what to say.

I’m going to presume you’ve been debriefed on what we’re doing through Lily and so you know
that when you read this I’m going to be in Europe and you probably won’t see me for a while.

Mary. Mary. I love you so much.

And I’m sorry, but I can’t. I can’t stay here. I can’t do nothing. My chest is so hollow it feels like
my bones are rocks shattering every piece of me they can get their hands on, I can’t think about
her, I can’t even touch her in my mind. It doesn’t let me. I’m a dormant werewolf (yes I know about
that now, by the way) and I’m a Horcrux (I know about that too) and I am my father’s son and I
am a pillar of lies. All I am, lie after lie on top of each other and moulded to form an odd shape of
 a man, shoved into a shirt and some trousers and left to fend for himself. This is what I have to do.
I have to kill him. Mary, it’s all I can do, because if I don’t then I’ll break, and I can’t get any
worse than this. I can’t do worse.

So I’m channelling it all into revenge, and don’t you dare say what I know you will, because you
did the same. YOU did it, Mary. And I don’t mean to compare our pasts or our lives or insinuate
that your parents dying is on the same level as this or this is the same level as that. I just mean
that… that my grief and how I choose to handle it can either be murderous or it will murder me. I
can’t be productive to distract myself like you are. And I can’t unsee the image of her dying in front
of me. Every time I close my eyes, Mary, I see it and I can’t do anything except think about killing
Tom Riddle, and so I have to go. I have to do this on my own, I have to destroy the last two
Horcruxes and then… well. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, shall we.

I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you, you are a sister to me and you are all things good and
it’s because of you that I’m even able to stand here and blink and move and do what’s right, do
what’s right, because you taught me up from down all those years ago when I had nobody except
my mother and a past that was taken from me and a choice that I wasn’t allowed to make. You are
my sister. You are a part of me. So is she. I can’t bring myself to mourn her yet. Just– just not yet. I
can’t bring myself to let her go.

Once Riddle is dead…

Nothing has ever been on my terms and if I’m going out I want it to be

I don’t know if I’m going to come b

I’m going to make sure you live comfortably without any trace of threat or unrest because that is
the life that you deserve, Mary. I’m going to fix this. I’m going to fix us. And I’m going to win this
war.

I have Pandora with me. She’ll figure everything out. I’ll be fine.

I love you.

Your Remus.

Chapter End Notes

a whole year is... wow. as silly as it sounds it's almost a huge achievement for me? this
fic is so much of me and has taken up so (SOOO) much time in the past year and so
much of my life has revolved around brainrotting about it or writing it or brainrotting
about writing about it and honestly, when I was writing the beginning last
june/july/aug pre-publish and I was really getting into it all and growing to love it I
could neeever have imagined any of the kindness you guys have shown me or ANY of
the love that I felt for my characters being felt by other people. the fact that you guys
love them like I do is, like, the whole reason we're still here. as silly as this feels to
write for a fic this has been genuinely a huge part of my life and has brought me back
into touch with writing and creating and helped me understand so much of myself so i
just want to say thank you I suppose for being here with me? and blaaaahhh blah blah
all of that sweet stuff. thank you for everything, see you in the next one Xxxxx
 twenty six
Chapter Summary

sweden, part one

Chapter Notes

...hiiii

so. it's been a while, i know. my summer was insane and filled with... well, work,
which is boring. and the ol' mental health was not perhaps the healthiest, but we're
here now! we made it! i'm not intending on leaving you with an update gap as large as
the near-two months that we've just had, but I also can't promise to go straight back to
two week intervals. I want to thank you all endlessly for sticking around and being so
incredibly kind

a few things:

- pretty importantly, I go by the name Jude now! so! i'd appreciate it if you were to call
me that :)

- this chapter is both lighter and heavier than the last. I think. I mean, well, perhaps not
heavier but there is, in fact, wolfstar angst in this one, which I know will get some of
you in your little hearts. I want to mention here, briefly, that they fight twice in this
chapter, and that it's... quite brutal. they both say some quite nasty things. they're not
dealing with things the healthiest way (most particularly remus) and i want it to be
clear that, even in the instance that they make up, this is not to be heralded as an
example of healthy communication and/or resolution. they're not healthy. they are, on
some level, a little bit toxic. i know this and I've never shied away from it, regardless
of how hard they try and work at their love, and I think you see that a bit here.

– I dropped geography (the subject) when I was, like, 13. take all of the geographic
talk with a pinch of salt – magic makes it all possible, okay. shhhh.

– to lead on from that, I want to say that every city and island and most of the cultural
stuff mentioned here is real, except for the island where the caves are located, which
is entirely fictional.

now that that's out of the way:

CW's!:
- firsthand depictions of grief, mourning, and both conscious and unconscious
repression of emotion
- dissociation and dissociative amnesia - not very visceral but it is happening
- in depth discussions of suicide and firsthand suicidal ideations. there is a description
of suicide as "selfish" which I want to make clear is something that I do not believe at
all – it's a lot more complex in this situation which is why the descriptor is used – but I
just wanted to give a heads up incase that is triggering for anybody.
 if there is any more please let me know and I'll add it up top! and furthermore if I
think of anything I will add it

it's nice to be posting again. sorry for the extremely long note. love you all

jude, X

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Appearing out of thin air, in a line, the four of them dropped, somewhere where the sun shone a
little brighter and the air tasted a little saltier.

Remus did not have time to blink before a lorry was driving past them at full speed, perhaps an
arms length away from his face.

“Holy FUCK,” yelled Lily, instinctively reaching both arms out and pushing those who were
beside her—Sirius to one side, Pandora to the other—back. Remus, who was holding Pandora’s
hand on the other end, staggered backwards too. The lorry honked and drove away.

Sirius flipped his hair up, smirking.

“That wouldn’t have killed me, Evans, but thanks for the protection,” he said, and she screwed up
her face and whacked him twice around the shoulder. He recoiled and hissed at her, face darkening
into the animal immediately—Remus had not seen that face in so long—but it abated after a second
or two; his fangs cowering when she stood tall and put her hands on her hips.

He raised both of his eyebrows.

“Alright, Lilith,” he said, chuckling, fangs still out. He swiped his tongue over the top set of teeth
and they sunk back in, leaving him unsuspecting once more. “You have cooler eyes than me, I get
it.”

Lily turned around, to Remus who was watching and Pandora who had crouched down, fumbling
with her backpack. Her eyes were, in fact, red.

“They’re red?” she asked.

“They’re red,” Remus said, nodding sheepishly, as she blinked once, twice, a third time hard
enough that when she opened them again they were their natural green. “Ah. There we are. Green
for go.”

“Hm,” she said, frowning. Sirius plodded over to stand in between them. “Well. At least we know
the Phoenix is still in there, somewhere. I guess.”

“And apparently she doesn’t like me,” said Sirius.

“Oh, that’s not her. I don’t like you.”

“You’re a bad influence on her, the Phoenix loves me, remember,” he said, grinning, reaching out
his hand and wiggling his fingers, obviously referring to their connection. “Remember?”

Lily slapped his hand away.

“No,” she said, primly, and turned to walk away. Sirius caught up with her immediately and settled
into her side. They were both laughing.

“Erm,” said Pandora, looking at a gold-plated compass she’d found. “Actually, guys, it’s—this
way.”

Sirius looped his arm into Lily’s and swerved her around seamlessly, playing it off as if they hadn’t
made a mistake at all, which made her laugh. When he got to Remus he darted a little to the side
and looped his other arm into his too so the three of them were walking arm-in-arm, tucked into
Sirius’ side.

He leant over to drop a harsh kiss on the side of Remus’ head, which made him smile, if gently.

Pandora, who’d already begun walking on the side of the dirt path, was ahead, and they followed
her. Lily raised an eyebrow.

“You’re in a weirdly chipper mood this morning,” she said.

Sirius shrugged.

“I got a whole three hours of sleep between four and nine,” he said, “and we're going to kill Tom
Riddle.”

Remus turned to him; from where they were standing, Sirius was on a slight ridge, as the mound of
grass at the edge of the road jutted upwards. So he looked up at him. And then he realised that here
he was the perfect height for Remus to rest his head on his shoulder, and so he did that, too.

Pandora, already somehow twenty feet ahead of them, turned around and waved her arms.

“Hurry up!” she cried. They all looked at each other.

“Here's to hoping Dora doesn’t kill us first,” said Lily, and then she fell into giggles as Sirius
tightened his grip on the both of them and dragged them forward, running.

It was a long walk. Maybe thirty to forty minutes down a lonely road, only coming across one more
beaten-down truck and one hiker that did not speak English until they came across a hut, and then
another, winding through forest-y woodlands to emerge into a quaint little town, quiet and
secluded. It was one long winding road and little cul-de-sacs of vibrant red wooden houses, the
road bordered by ditches and the grass saw-like and dead, twinges of green amongst brown and
beige. Trees with a bare amount of life. Despite the open, all-encompassing sky the town felt a
little sequestered, and a little suffocating. A little scary.

They walked through the residential areas for what felt like miles without seeing anyone until
swerving a corner and making it to a small convenience store.

The bell jangled as they walked in. Lily had somehow ended up in front, and she took her role in
stride.

“Hello,” she said, slightly hesitantly, with a big smile on her face. The guy behind the counter was
mostly blond with a peppery beard, wearing overalls and a thick jacket even though it was rather
warm outside. “I was wondering if you could help us?”

The man stared at them sort of warily, cloth in hand—as if in the motion of wiping down his desk,
though there seemed to be absolutely nothing to wipe down—and Lily cleared her throat.
“Could you direct us towards somewhere to stay, maybe?”

“Ursäkta, jag förstår inte,” said the man; Lily deflated.

“Ah.” She nodded. “Of course. Erm—”

She turned to Pandora, who bit down on her bottom lip.

“Little Swedish town, the people speak Swedish,” muttered Sirius. “Who knew.”

“Shut up and distract him while I do the translation spell.”

Sirius glared at her, and then stepped forward, darting past Lily and leaning onto the desk. He put
on his best smile and almost immediately started rattling off in very fast, very unintelligible
French.

The man—who looked horrified—was sufficiently distracted, to give Sirius credit, and Pandora hid
half of herself behind Remus and muttered something under her breath, clasping and then opening
her hand and letting forth a gentle blue spurt of magic that burst and fell like snowflakes onto her
palm.

Sirius’s ramblings immediately became coherent, as if he’d switched to English mid-sentence.

“—and then, if you’d believe such a thing, he breaks my fingers and stabs me in the throat—this is
all while his bestie is blowing my poor mother to smithereens two floors down—but I can’t even
hear her, because he’s just slit my throat and it’s turned me on—”

“Your mother exploded?” said the man, looking at least fifty three times more horrified than
before. Sirius stopped speaking immediately. His mouth hung open.

He turned, suavely.

“Well,” he said. “I see the spell worked.”

“Erm, you broke my fingers,” Remus said, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Oh, forgive me for not remembering all of the details, Lupin—”

“Your mother exploded?” repeated the man; Sirius seemed to have forgotten he was there.

“No,” he said, quickly, shaking his head. “No, no. She was burnt alive. Common misconception.”

“Your mother was—”

“We don’t have time for this!” said Lily, exasperatedly, turning to the man behind the counter and
putting on her warmest smile. “Hello, Mr…”

“Bergström.”

“Mr. Bergström,” she said, “apologies for the confusion earlier, my… Swedish is… rusty…” she
turned to give Remus a panicked look, which almost made him laugh, but he repressed it; “Myself
and my friends are passing through the area and we were wondering if you knew of any places that
we’d be able to stay for the night later on? Or, perhaps, a pit-stop to catch our breath? And get
some food, maybe?”

The man pursed his lips, looking at them, wary.

“There’s not much tourism around here usually,” he said, “your best bet for lodgings is probably to
go into Luleå. There are cheap hotels in the city centre.”

Lily faltered, and then nodded. “Ah. Okay. Anything else specifically around here? It’s an…
awfully long journey.”

He checked the tight watch around his wrist, and then looked back up. “There is a bus station down
the road. If you were to catch the 220 you could make it to Luleå in fifty-five minutes.”

Lily paused.

“Well, we’re not planning on going to Luleå right this second—”

“The last bus for the day is at 7:45am,” he continued, as if he was on a mantra, “so you may miss
it, however, if you hike up to Antnäs the 21 will come more regularly and take you straight into
Luleå. It’s a fifty minute walk, so you could be there by 9am.”

Lily was stunned into silence. She opened her mouth once, closed it, and stared at the man, whose
gaze was so aggressive with something they couldn’t place it was almost boring into them.

“What about the islands?” she asked, raising her eyebrows. “Do you know how we might get to
Vallskären?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, deadpan, with absolutely no emotion.

“But—”

She was about to speak again when Sirius stepped forward, putting a hand on her shoulder.

“Thank you,” he said, “your expertise is appreciated. I think we will hike into Antnäs. But a fifty
minute walk so early seems like an awfully tiring journey. Do you know of any place we might be
able to stop in to have breakfast before beginning our hike?”

Mr. Bergström paused to think.

“If you begin hiking up the E4, ten minutes down the road there should be a small diner.”

Sirius paused, as if waiting to see if he would say something else, but when it became evident that
he wouldn’t, he smiled and leaned forward.

“Are you telling the truth?” he asked.

The man’s eyes glazed over, slightly, his features relaxing and his head cocking ever so slightly as
he looked into Sirius’ eyes. He cleared his throat, and smiled, dazed.

“Yes,” he said.

Sirius gave it a moment and then leaned back. The man snapped out of it, blinking a few times and
smiling as if he had no recollection of what had just happened—because he didn’t.

“Thank you,” Sirius said, ushering the three of them out rather quickly. “Thank you very much.”

When they got outside and far enough away, Remus turned on him.

“Why did you do that?” he hissed. They were still walking. After the strangeness of that fiasco, it
sort of felt like they were being watched. “Waste of energy.”
“Oh, I asked him a yes or no question, no energy wasted,” Sirius said, rolling his eyes. “And I had
to know that he wasn’t leading us into a trap.”

“He still could be.”

“I mean that the diner actually does exist and that he wasn’t just trying to send us away,” he
whispered. “I know it wasn’t just me who felt like he wanted us gone.”

“And he didn’t know about the island?” Lily asked, from Remus’ side. “I thought the caves were
infamous.”

“I mean, they haven’t been open to the public in sixty years,” offered Pandora.

“Hmph.”

“Look,” said Sirius. A car drove past them. It was the first they had seen, a little black car with a
scrape on the side. The woman behind the wheel did not look at them but simply stared ahead,
robotic. Hands at ten and two. Remus shuddered. “Let’s just get to this diner. Try and find some
more of the locals, figure out what the hell is going on.”

Pandora had to cast a direction spell, for none of their phones worked against the terrible signal.
The small flame in her hand guided them, forward and to the right through the woodlands and onto
a two-lane highway. There was not a purposeful pathway but there was a thick grassy mound to the
right, so they walked on that, until they came across a bridge over a river and a split in the grass, a
small crumbling cemented road leading around to what was, in fact, a run-down but open diner
with the bright sign labelling it “Blomson’s”. Remus could see at least three couples eating in the
window, and there were four cars parked outside.

Everything seemed rather normal at first; the waitress was a kind-faced teenage girl who sat them
down at a table. It was dark-wood themed with red flourishings and a candle in the middle of the
table. Homely. After ordering—Sirius only got a coffee, while the rest of them ordered various
portions of bread, cheese, and eggs, hard boiled and fried—the place grew quiet, the other couples
talking in hushed conversation at a frequency so low you could hear nothing but a buzzing and the
low hum of whatever music was playing for ambiance.

When the waitress came to bring their food, Lily looked up at her with a smile and tried again.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” she said—Pandora had enabled the language spell again, so everything
the waitress heard was Swedish, and everything they heard was English. “Are you from around
here?”

The girl nodded.

“Ah,” said Lily, “so—if I may ask—do you know how we might get to Vallskären? The island
with the caves?”

She paused, tapping her pen against her pad of paper, the smile lingering on her face to the point
that it was almost scary.

“I don’t know what that is,” she said, smiling. “Sorry.”

She turned and bounded off to another table, and they watched her go.

“Are we sure we’re in the right place?” muttered Remus. Pandora exhaled.
“Yes,” she said. He turned to her, leaning in, and their voices lowered to that of secrecy. “It
definitely exists. The caves exist. There’s a goddamn Wikipedia page for them, for crying out loud.
But whenever the locals are asked about them…”

“They don’t know what we’re talking about,” said Sirius.

“Is it possible that it’s just a generational thing?” asked Lily. “If they’ve been out of use for so
long. It doesn’t seem like the island is very populated, either? What was it, twenty people?”

“Wait until she comes back,” muttered Pandora, taking a bite of her bread and butter. “I’m going to
try something.”

They sat and ate for about six or seven minutes in silence. The diner had a comfortable energy, but
the silence was almost eerie. Remus found his eyes wandering, noticing things that might be him
being paranoid or might be viable things to notice—the way that the girl sitting to the left of them
beside the window with an older woman had been slurping at her coffee the whole time they had
been there, and yet the coffee had yet to run out. Or how the man sitting with his wife on the
opposite side of the room had the same laugh, it kept repeating every two minutes, the same
tenebrous frequency as if he was a record on repeat.

And then, Remus’ eyes flickered to the other table by the window, diagonal to the left of him.

And he caught eyes with the woman sitting there.

She was sipping with both of her hands curled around a mug. Her hair was brown and flouncy,
around her shoulders, and her skin tanned and freckly. She was sitting opposite a dark blond man
who was speaking, but she did not seem to be listening to him. She was looking at Remus. He
looked at her, and she looked away, and then once he did he felt her eyes on him once more.

The waitress came back.

“Is everything okay with your meal?” she asked, and Pandora smiled.

“Everything’s fine, thank you,” she said, and then before the girl could walk away; “can I ask you
something?”

“Of course.”

“Me and my friends are passing through the area,” she said, smiling, “and were wondering what if
you could give us an insight into the best things to do or see in the province? We’re not too sure
where to begin.”

“Oh,” said the girl, letting her arms flop beside her. She looked instantly more relaxed. “Hm. Well,
you’ll get most of your entertainment in Luleå, of course, there’s not much to do out in these rural
areas. There are museums in the city; the Kulturens Hus is very diverse, they often show live music
and have various exhibitions, conference rooms, and a library. It is too warm for the Isbanan now
but if you return in the winter you can go ice tracking up the road, which is delightful.”

Pandora nodded along, feigning interest.

“And what about in the towns outside of the city? And the islands?”

“Well,” said the girl, not missing a beat, “we are on the coast, so there are various trails and
boating hires to go up the Luleålven. A few of the smaller towns have very dedicated football
clubs. And, yes, there’s the islands. You can boat to Gråsjälören from the city, and Hindersön from
the docks. And you can probably boat up to Vallskären in this weather, and there you’ll find the
caves—”

All four of them perked up.

“The caves?” asked Pandora. The girl blinked. She raised her hands, slowly, and began tapping on
her pad of paper with her pen.

“What caves?”

Tap, tap, tap, tap.

Remus and Lily exchanged a look. Pandora’s brows creased exponentially.

“You just said…that there were caves to go see,” she said, slowly. The girl, looking terribly
confused, shook her head.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. Her disposition adjusted so smoothly she was a
different person in the blink of an eye, and she smiled that waitress's smile, looking over their table.
“Is everything okay with your meal?”

They were utterly silent for a moment.

“Everything’s fine, thank you,” Lily choked, and the girl nodded and turned to attend to another
one of the tables.

Lily watched her go and then turned to look at Remus, white-faced.

“Did Bellatrix do this?” she whispered. “Mind-control them all into forgetting that the caves
exist?”

“A whole municipality?” Sirius asked, eyebrows raised. “No. Not even she could do that. I think
it’s an enchantment.”

“It’d have to be a huge enchantment,” muttered Pandora, “but I think you might be right.”

“Getting the last laugh from beyond the grave, yet again,” said Sirius, and their voices melted
away.

As they continued to murmur to each other about what to do and where to go from here, Remus
zoned out. And his gaze ended up back to the table by the window.

He looked at the woman, and she looked immediately back at him.

She raised an eyebrow.

He took a breath in.

“I’m going to go to the loo,” he said, quietly, glancing at his peers; they nodded. He got up,
brushed himself off.

Looked at her once more.

Looked away.

The toilets were small, only two cubicles in the men’s, and two sinks. One of the mirrors was
cracked and one straight-up wasn’t there anymore. The soap had run out; he ran the tap and it took
a moment to flow. Bracing his hands on the counter, he watched it run for a moment, an echo
against a broken vent system whistling against the summer breeze, and then he flicked it off. The
cubicles were formed of actual doors and so the door to enter the bathroom had been taken off for
whatever reason and formed of naught but an arch into the small hallway that led back to the
diner.

Remus took a deep breath in, and watched the grey wall through the arch. It was very, very still.

Walking on silent toes, he moved to the side of the arch, pressing his back against the wall
adjacent to it and listening. He couldn’t hear anything. But there was something gnawing at him.

He hadn’t done anything marginally hunter-y since finding out about his genes, since being
pedalled with the back-end of Tom Riddle’s used-up soul. He didn’t know how; he didn’t know
what he was capable of, because he’d never known. But now he knows everything. So, in closing
his eyes… in tuning in… perhaps he was gaslighting himself but pressed against the wall, listening,
listening to the silence, he was quite sure he could feel it.

It was hard to split up what came with what he had, apparently, always been—the werewolf—and
what came from what he was… now. Perhaps it would be something that would come with time.
But he was quite sure he was not gaslighting himself, had never gaslighted himself, when
something shivered at the back of his neck and when something tugged at his chest, that tender
space between two lungs. Something instinctual that he only recognised now, after twenty three
years, to be canine.

In one sharp movement he pulled a small blade out and spun around the archway, to the other side,
finding himself both face-to-face and knife-to-throat to the woman who had been looking at him.

She faltered, barely inches away from his face, swaying at the shock of his knife at her throat but
not abating, with her own reinforcements. Her hand was burning, fingers inches away from his
cheek.

A fire witch. Just like Mary.

“Now, now,” Remus murmured, pushing his blade forward, not far enough to hurt her but far
enough for the cold of the metal to glide across her skin. “Is the fire really necessary?”

“Is the knife?” she said, through her teeth. Her voice was accented.

Remus made a fair-enough face, but still did not drop his hand.

“Who are you?” she hissed, embers dripping from her hands.

“I might like to ask you the same question.”

“You’re looking for the caves,” she said. “You’re not affected by the spell. Which means you
either have an incredibly powerful shielding witch, or you’ve somehow overridden it with your
own magic.” She looked him up and down. “And I don’t see what could be magical about the likes
of you.”

Remus truly, truly almost laughed.

“I’d reconsider that thought if I were you,” he murmured, lip curling.

She scowled. Remus could feel the heat from her hands against his face.
“What do you know about the caves?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“You don’t have to tell me,” he said, pushing his blade forward again. The fire danced off his skin.
He began to feel beads of sweat sting at his brow. “But we have to go somewhere, or we’re going
to stand here all day, and I fear my hand will cramp up.”

No movement.

He leaned forward, a touch.

“There is an eight hundred year old Pureblood vampire out there who would kill you in the space
of a blink if you put a hand on me,” he whispered. “I’d choose your next steps wisely, love.
Because I may not be able to get you to talk, but he can.”

She bit down on her bottom lip.

And then the flames slowly rescinded from her hand, dissipating until the orange glow was gone
and Remus could see properly again.

He loosened, and then dropped his dagger.

“Meet me around the back in five minutes,” she hissed, and then turned on her heel and walked
away.

Remus gave it a second, and then went after her.

Settling back down onto his chair, the three of them were silent. Sirius was sipping his coffee when
he sat down, and upon placing it back onto the table, Remus noticed a slight smile tugging at his
lips.

“Nicely done, pretty boy,” he murmured. Remus closed his eyes. “Though, for the record, it
wouldn’t be the space of a blink. A half-blink. No, scratch that, she wouldn’t even get to close her
eyes.”

“Pull your head out of your own arse and finish your coffee, Sirius. We have four minutes and
thirty seconds.”

Sirius chuckled.

“Twenty-nine, twenty-eight…”

Sirius sipped.

***

When they made their way around the diner, to the dingy grassy parts in the back, the witch and
her companion were already there.

She saw them and her hands burst into flames.

“You leave one fiery lady, you get smacked in the face by another,” Sirius muttered. “By God, will
it ever end.”

Lily stomped on his foot.

“Hello,” said Pandora, holding her hands up, taking a step forward. “We’re not looking for trouble.
We just want to know what’s going on.”

“Why are you looking for the caves?”

“We asked you first,” said Lily, crossing her arms and trying to look way more intimidating than
she could at five foot four.

“We’ll tell you our business if you tell us what you know of yours,” said Remus. “Why does
everybody around here feel robotic? Why does nobody know what we’re talking about when we
directly ask them about the caves?”

“Because what is in there is not for us to know,” she hissed, stepping forward. Her hands sparked.
She looked at Sirius. “One of your lot came by here. I went to bed one night and the town was
warm, and I woke up and it was cold. And changed.”

“It’s an enchantment,” said Pandora. “They’re programmed to try to get anyone inquisitive to
leave, and to forget about the caves as soon as they’re asked about them.”

“You cannot come where you are not welcome and mess things up,” the woman replied, lowly.
Her face was like stone. “If you wish for power, or for a challenge, find it elsewhere.”

“Look,” said Sirius, stepping forward. “We know about the vampire, we know about the power.
We know why she’s enchanted the town. And we know more than you do about what it actually is
for. We’re not here to ruin your province any more than it already is, we’re here to destroy what is
in those caves.”

She shook her head. “It is too dark. It cannot be destroyed.”

Sirius scoffed a laugh, glancing at Remus.

“Trust me, it can.”

“If we destroy it, the enchantment will let up automatically, right?” asked Remus, looking around.

“There would be no reason for it not to,” said Pandora.

“That magic is unstable,” said the witch, firmly. “And so is the land. If you let the magic sealed in
the cave loose, it will cause irreparable damage.”

“Listen,” said Lily, sweetly, smiling. “What’s your name?”

The witch swallowed, looked back to her male companion, standing two feet behind her who had
not said a word.

“Esmeralda,” she murmured. “And this is Henrik.”

Lily gasped. “Oh, you have a beautiful name,” she said. She took a step forward. “Esmeralda.
Look. We’re the same.”

Lily held her hand out, palm facing the sky. She took a deep breath in and tensed—perhaps it
would be unnoticeable to that who did not know her very well, but Remus had seen her create fire
seamlessly—and, after a moment, a strenuous, small ball of fire animatedly appeared in the palm of
her hand.

Esmeralda’s hands went out immediately.

Lily jutted her wrist out and sent the ball floating across the small space between them. Esmeralda
blinked, surprised, and reached one of her hands out. It was nimble, and timid; the fire danced
through the air, and when it hit her fingers she absorbed it, it flowed down through her fingertips
like a shock of lightning, and when she exhaled, it was smoke.

“That’s not…” she murmured, looking at her hand. And then she looked at Lily. And it clicked.
“You’re supposed to be extinct.”

Lily spread her arms out as a sort of flourish to herself.

“Surprise?”

“Listen,” said Remus, stepping forward again. Esmeralda swallowed, looking at her hand once
more and then dropping them both. “There’s no need for any of this. From what I can gather, we’re
on the same side. You want to bring peace and stability back to your home, and we want to destroy
what’s in that cave. Surely together we can figure out a way to do those two things without
harming anyone or anything in the process.” He looked at her. Raised his eyebrows. “Yes?”

She looked back to Henrik. He shrugged, a minute thing, and she turned back. Her skirt flowing in
the wind, she jutted her chest out, and nodded.

“Okay,” she said.

Sirius exhaled and clapped his hands together.

“Right,” he said, “okay. That’s fab. Now… where are we actually going to stay? Because I lied
when I said that I was up for hiking to Antnäs. I really can’t be bothered.”

“Says the one with the most strength of all of us,” Lily muttered.

Esmeralda’s companion tapped her on the shoulder, and she turned, skirt flowing around her as she
did. They whispered something animatedly to each other, seeming to have an argument under their
breaths. After a moment, he nodded, and Esmeralda groaned and turned back to them.

“We… erm. We have two spare bedrooms,” she said, blankly. The man behind her grinned and
gave them all a thumbs up.

The four of them, in a hilarious imitation of the two witches, turned to each other to form a huddle.

“Us two share, you two share?” said Lily.

“Erm, firstly, five minutes ago we were enemies with this lady,” whispered Sirius, “and now we’re
going to live with her?”

“Do you want to have to go all the way to Luleå?” asked Pandora, agitated. “A whole hour on the
bus. God forbid.”

Sirius gaped.

“You can literally teleport! Are you a witch or not?!”

“I think it’d make sense,” Remus whispered, as Sirius and Pandora’s bickering faded out, “to keep
her close. If we’re going to work with her. She knows the area, she knows where the caves actually
are. She knows the history. She’s our best bet. And you’re you. It’s not like she could ever try
anything.”
“Christ, bit of pressure there, darling?”

Remus cocked his head. “Are you a Pureblood or not?”

Sirius bit his lip in an attempt to stifle his smile, and elbowed him. Remus, grinning and feeling
lighter than he had in a long, long time, elbowed him right back.

“I’m with Remus,” said Pandora. “And not just because he vindicated me.”

Sirius pressed a hand to his chest as if betrayed. “My witch and my hunter, standing against me?”

“Not your witch.”

“Not your hunter.”

Sirius smiled.

And then he frowned.

“I still don’t like this,” he muttered, coming back to the real world.

“When do you ever like any of our plans?” Lily whispered.

“When I come up with them.”

“Oh, pack it in, you whiny bastard,” Remus muttered, turning back around and putting on a smile.
“We’ll stay with you guys.”

Esmeralda nodded.

“But remember,” said Sirius, craning around from behind Remus and pointing at her, “before you
could even blink.”

Esmeralda rolled her eyes, entirely unbothered, and made a follow gesture, walking away with her
companion trailing behind her.

Lily grinned.

“I kinda like her,” she said, exhaling sharply and climbing up the marsh to follow after her back
around to the car park.

The three of them shared a glance.

And then, God forbid, they followed.

***

Sirius filled Esmeralda and Henrik in on the intricacies of the war, and it went something like this:

“So imagine,” he said, “there’s this guy. He’s like me, but uglier, and less powerful, and all-around
inferior. He gets turned into a vampire, and he sucks up to my parents—also like me, but uglier—
and finds himself with a solid half of the population of Purebloods shoved up his rectum. Right?
Keep in mind that we’re a dying breed, by the way, so that’s not actually a lot; but it is enough. So,
the forties come around, the world’s at war, you know how it is—this guy decides immortality
isn’t enough. He decides he wants to be the most powerful person on the planet and lead us like
some sort of self-applicated messiah and just start fucking killing vampires until they’re the only
ones left. So,” this part being said with very intense, wild hand gestures, “he splits his soul. Fully
just rips it the fuck apart, scatters the pieces across the world.”

Esmeralda, fully invested, gasped viscerally.

“No.”

“Yes,” said Sirius. “And so my brother—now seriously this time, think me but uglier, and more
annoying, and more grumpy—”

“Sirius,” Lily groaned.

“Alright, alright. My brother. He figured it out first. That’s important for the future. Now skip
forward to nineteen-fifty-nine,” he set his mug of tea on the low, peeling oak coffee table, and
cleared his throat. Tucked two pieces of hair behind his ear, and hissed, fangs on full display.

Henrik jumped so aggressively that he spilled his sunflower seeds.

“Yeah,” said Sirius, face clearing instantly. “So, I did that, and the ugly guy fell asleep for sixty
years even though he should’ve died, realistically; in that time my brother truly figures out why
he’s, like, not dead, cause his soul is in six pieces instead of one. Cue my parents dying, my brother
running off, destroying three more of them,” he faltered, here, for a moment, before clearing his
throat and carrying on. “Yeah. This will be the fourth. And then we have the fifth. And then—
well, a few more hurdles, and then we can kill him for good.”

He smiled, sat back and put his hands behind his head.

“So, that’s the story. That’s what’s in the cave. An ugly man’s soul,” he said. Esmeralda took a sip
of her tea and smacked her lips.

“Wow,” she muttered. “You English people truly are crazy.”

“Ew,” said Pandora, physically recoiling.

“Don’t ever call me English, my God,” Remus groaned, simultaneously.

“Well, I’m French, originally,” Sirius said, raising a hand. Esmeralda raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, the other side of crazy.”

“I’m American,” said Lily, piping up for the sake of piping up.

Esmeralda looked at her, almost pitifully.

“Sweetie,” she said, “we’ve heard you speak. We know.”

Remus cackled.

Esmeralda and Henrik’s hut was on the outskirts of the town they had apparated into, closer to the
coast than to the land mass. It was smaller on the outside than it was on the inside, but even
regardless of this it was simply quaint. Red panelled on the outside with white skirting and a
chimney that seemed to be smoking 24/7, the interior was homely, plants lining the windowsill
alongside potion ingredients and ashtrays. Patchwork quilts over the springy red sofa beds, a
fireplace against a peeling mantle and one of those metal kettles that squealed when it was done. A
photograph of the two of them on the bookshelf. It was, for all intents and purposes, a home.
The stairs creaked when they went upstairs. There were two spare rooms, both rather plain, double
beds with blue quilt covers and empty wardrobes. There was a radio in one room and a candelabra
in the other. Remus and Sirius took the one with the candelabra. God knows why.

Henrik apparated Sirius and Lily to the edge of the peninsula closest to the island in the early
afternoon, at the Hamnen Stallarna port, while Pandora and Remus stayed home, settled their
things in, and helped Esmeralda cook.

By 4pm, they were full, and they were strategizing.

“So, you have to go through four challenges,” said Esmeralda.

“Essentially.”

“And, if you complete all four of these correctly, you’ll get the cup, which is the… soul.”

“Horcrux, but soul works. And yes, that’s the goal.”

“And you have weapons to destroy the cup?”

Remus glanced at Pandora. Yes, they did, was the answer; they were in possession of a blade; but
at this point he could not actually think whose it was. For Sirius’ basilisk blade had been destroyed
with the diary; Pandora had used James’ while destroying the ring. Remus had been in possession
of Marlene’s when he had destroyed the locket, and that blade had disintegrated with it. And
Remus had not killed Dumbledore with a basilisk blade. Obviously. So Sirius had his. It was
originally Remus’ blade, the one they were in possession of, and it was one of two left, because…

She had had hers at Whittaker.

He shoved that thought out of his head immediately.

“Yes, we do,” he said. “We have one left.”

Esmeralda blinked. “But there is more than one to be destroyed? How will you kill it?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” said Remus, hoarsely. He rubbed his hands over his
face and dropped them. “So. Four challenges. Presuming we complete them all, we end up in the
last compartment; then what? We destroy it then and there?”

“We can’t,” said Pandora.

“Why not?”

“Well, first of all, logically, it probably won’t let us,” she said, “but second of all—that cave
system used to be a tourist trap, remember? Until the sixties when it was determined to be eroding
and therefore be too dangerous to show anyone.”

Remus blinked. “Yeah?”

“Remus, we’re gonna be in there. You destroyed the diary. You felt the shockwave. It’ll be enough
to have the whole thing collapse in on itself, and we’ll get buried alive.”

“Ah.”

“Could you apparate out?” Esmeralda suggested.

“I doubt it,” said Pandora, “but anti-apparition spells always take place in the form of a rune, so if
we find that and destroy it—like Mary scorched the one in the cave, when we found the locket—
we can. But who knows if we’ll have time or how well it’ll be hidden. Or if it’ll be too old and too
ingrained to destroy.”

“Okay,” said Remus. “Can we– could we leave with the cup and destroy it elsewhere?”

“I doubt it,” Pandora said, again, “the cup’ll be linked to the cave systems. They’re trying to trap
us, remember? It’s either destroy the cup in there and die, or don’t destroy it at all.”

“What about a portkey?”

“It’s possible, but I doubt it.”

“Is there anything we can do to ensure our safety that you don’t doubt?”

Pandora looked at him, somewhat pitifully. “Has there ever been?”

They ended up putting forth the apparition rune theory first, presuming they had time to breathe
and search in the last cave. If they didn’t, then they’d attempt the portkey, and if that didn’t
work… well.

“But,” said Esmeralda, gently, “if you destroy the cup in the cave systems, and the cave systems
collapse… surely the shockwave will… magically destabilise the already unstable ground all
around it.”

Remus frowned at her.

And then he realised.

“You think the whole island will go,” he said.

“I think that amount of power is no match for an island that has been decaying for sixty years,” she
replied, carefully. “I’m only fearing the worst.”

A pause.

“Then we’ll evacuate all of the residents,” Pandora said, nodding resolutely.

“No,” said Esmeralda. “I mean, yes. But it’s not just that. What do you think happens when a
magical island collapses in on itself?”

Remus leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and sinking his head into it. He looked up
at her, frowned. Thought about it. Really thought about it.

He sat up.

“The landslide will cause a tsunami,” he said. She swallowed.

“That’s what I’m scared of,” she murmured.

“Fuck,” groaned Pandora, rubbing her eyes and then dropping her hands. She had a flare to her
voice, an indignancy. “Do you see how calculated this all is? It’s a huge circle! You have to
destroy the cup and die and therefore not pass anymore Horcrux information, or leave the cup and
live and never kill Tom Riddle. And if you want to break the enchantment over the municipality,
you have to destroy the caves, but destroying the caves will kill everyone in the municipality
anyway!” She sighed. “It goes on, and on, and on. Round and round and round. There’s no winning
this for everybody.”

“Well I’m not letting my home drown. No matter what it takes,” said Esmeralda.

“And I’m going to kill Tom Riddle,” said Remus. “No matter what it takes.”

Pandora, leaning on the back of the sofa, sort of slumped, glanced between the two. Took a deep
breath in, a deep breath out, and then covered her eyes with her hand in utter anguish.

“I’ll figure it out,” she muttered.

And that was that.

***

Retiring to their bedrooms around 9pm, Remus spent a savoury ten minutes in the shower, brushed
his teeth, and found himself unable to glance at the person staring back at him in the mirror.

He did not dwell on it deeply. He did not dwell on much deeply, at the minute, because deep
feelings only lead to deep, swollen holes.

Sirius was sitting on the edge of the bed when he padded in, still rubbing at his hair with a small
towel. Not looking at him, he moved to the desk to rummage through his bag, putting his
toothbrush and the scarce toiletries they’d shoved together back in the little compartment. He heard
Sirius inhale, slowly.

“Remus?”

“Mm?”

“...Are we going to talk about it?”

He froze, one hand on the zipper, one in his bag. Dropped whatever he had grabbed onto—his
notebook—and zipped it shut, resolutely, before turning to lean back against the drawers, to face
him.

“Talk about what?” he asked, heart hammering behind a frighteningly calm exterior.

A moment of silence.

“Moody,” Sirius whispered, and then; “Dorcas.”

“Don’t say her name,” Remus said, immediately.

“Remus–”

“Don’t.”

He turned away, and after a second of silence turned back. Sirius nodded, once, when he caught his
eye.

“Moody’s still dead,” he offered. Pushing her right off the table.

Remus closed his eyes.

“And?” he asked, eventually, swallowing through the lump in his throat and moving to hang the
towel off the radiator.

“And,” Sirius said, shuffling a bit. “Shouldn’t we talk about that?”

“What the hell do you want me to talk about, Sirius?” Remus shot back, perhaps a bit harsher than
he’d intended. Sirius opened his mouth and then closed it. Opened it again.

“Poppy said you were the last person to see him,” said Sirius, quietly. “Her witches saw you leave.
And then he died.”

A moment passed as Remus took this in.

“Are you accusing me of killing him?”

“No,” hissed Sirius, scrunching up his face and looking so indignant at the approach that Remus
could only believe him. “I’m saying that you got to speak to him. Before he died. And Fleur–”

He cut off abruptly, as if the words had escaped his mouth.

Remus’ whole body felt like it was freezing over.

But he understood. He could see what Sirius was getting at.

“Fleur?” Remus whispered. It was so cold.

“She said that you know,” replied Sirius, as nonchalant as always. It was not grandiose. He was
never one to fuck around.

“Know what?”

“Remus.”

He sighed, here, but Remus only raised his eyebrows.

“Come on. I want you to say it. What do I know, Sirius?”

Sirius looked up at him. From his position, sitting on the edge of the bed as Remus stood at the
other side of the room, it was through his eyelashes. He looked small but severe.

He licked his lips and tilted his head back and the shadows on the walls ran away from him.

Never one to fuck around.

“You’re a werewolf,” said Sirius, plainly. Simply.

Remus let this sit. Waited a moment for the second half.

It didn’t come.

When he realised it wasn’t coming, his lips curled into a bitter smile. He turned away, laughing.

“What’s funny?”

Remus shrugged. Laughing, his eyes filled with tears. He blinked them away and busied his hands
with absolutely nothing. They moved without reason.
“Remus,” Sirius pleaded, in a rush of momentum suddenly right behind him. Remus whirled
around on instinct and there he was. Wherever you go, there you are. “Talk to me.”

“About what?”

“Anything,” he breathed, shaking his head. “Anything.”

Remus stared at him for a moment, and then found another laugh he hadn’t planned escape from
the brittle hollow of his throat.

“You’re unbelievable,” he muttered, slipping away from him to move across the room, fumble
with his hands, do anything, to not look at him.

But of course he is Sirius Black, and so there he is, beside him. In his line of vision. His peripheral.
At all times, always, when Remus doesn’t want him there and when he oh so desperately does.

“Remus,” he said, and if Remus didn’t know better he’d say he was almost choked up, “please.”

“What? What? Talk to you about what?!” Remus snapped, increasing in volume and stepping back
to face him. “I don’t know what you want from me, Sirius. I don’t know why you expect this. You
want to know what Moody said—you want to know my past? Why do I have to lay my lifelong
fucking trauma out in front of you? So you can get a kick out of saying that you tried to help?”

Sirius’ jaw dropped. It was harsh. Remus knew it was harsh.

He groaned, head in his hands, paced back a little bit. He heard Sirius exhale sharply behind him.

“I don’t expect anything, Remus,” he said, harshly, “you know that’s never been what we are. We
want. I want you to talk to me, because I love you, and this– us—” he cut off, fumbling for his
words; “this has never been a suffer-in-silence type of arrangement. You’ve made damn well sure
of that with me. Why is it a crime that I’m now trying to make sure of it with you?”

“Because you’re a hypocrite!” Remus near-yelled.

And Sirius, the bastard. He actually laughed.

“There it is,” he said, bitterly, bringing both hands to his face and pressing his fingertips to the line
of his jaw. “The be all and end all. My fucking hypocrisy and your unabating need to call me out
for it—you’re a bloody fucking stubborn piece of work, you know that, Lupin?”

“You ran,” said Remus. “You’ve run so many fucking times, Sirius, from so many fucking things
—”

“And when has it ever benefitted me?” Sirius shot back, spreading his arms out wide. “What have I
gotten out of that, Remus?”

“I don’t fucking know?!” Remus yelled. “Quiet! Fucking quiet! You run away and nobody follows
you and it’s quiet. Sirius, I just want it,” he breathed out shakily, pressing two fingers on each hand
to his eyes, “to be quiet, I just want it to be quiet, I just want it to stop. I just—I just don’t
understand why it’s different for me. Why can’t I run? Why are you– why can’t I–”

“Because you’re loved,” said Sirius, carefully.

Silence.

“Remus, listen to me. Listen.”

“I’m listening.”

“You are loved. That’s why.”

He so, so very viscerally did not want to hear those words, he felt them to his bones. They
simmered and they came shooting back up.

“You’re loved,” Remus murmured. “Your vampires love you.”

“My vampires respect me,” Sirius countered. “It’s different.”

“It’s not.”

“It is. You can’t run because you don’t deserve that,” said Sirius, shaking his head. “You can’t run
because you’re loved and people will follow. And quiet isn’t always good. Too much quiet and
you end up–” He cut off, licking his lips. “You end up like me.”

The kettle on boil, he snapped.

“Oh, the eight hundred year old pity party,” Remus groaned, hands slapping by his sides as he
dropped them. Registering the stoop he was taking and feeling so, so uncaring in his rage. Needing
to stop it all. For love means staying, and he can’t stay. “You’ve had it so much worse, right?”

“That’s— that’s not at all what I mean, Remus—”

“But it is,” said Remus, lip quivering. “You’re barren and you’re hollow and you’re dead inside,
alright, let’s talk about that. Go on. Lifelong fucking trauma; you’ve lived a million lifetimes, no?
I’m sure you have some stories to tell.”

Sirius stared at him, eyes narrow, mouth open. He shook his head in disbelief.

“Are you a child?” he breathed, indignant, “this isn’t a challenge, Remus. We’re not at war with
each other. I’m so fucking sorry if I want to talk you through the good and the bad, because that’s
what we do. At least it’s what I thought we did. But I suppose you’d rather give all of your love
and never receive it, right? Me, I can bare my soul but you, no, that’s too far–”

“Don’t talk about my soul,” Remus snarled.

Sirius went on.

“And I’m the hypocrite,” he laughed. “We’re– fuck, we’re as bad as each other. But I’m not sorry
enough to stop. I’ve made it very clear that it’s me and it’s you, Remus. So if you’re going to kill
yourself saving the fucking world and not putting aside anything for yourself, I’m going to be right
beside you. That’s what we do.”

“No, you’re not,” muttered Remus. “You’re not going to be anywhere near.”

A long, long, painful silence.

Sirius did not betray anything with his face. But he let forth everything spill with two words; the
hollow, vulnerability behind them. Light spilling out of a collapsed, necrotic sun. He knew him. I
knew you.

“You know,” he whispered.

Remus watched his face twitch, and nodded.

Bitter. Furious.

“I know,” he said.

Sirius inhaled, very slowly. Remus went on.

“When were you planning on telling me that I’m a walking eulogy, then?” said Remus. Cocking
his head. “So loud about talking and now you’re fucking quiet, huh?”

“Remus–”

“You want to hear me talk, Sirius?” he said, rage brimming up to the very top of the hairs on his
head. “You want to know what I am? You probably have a better grasp on it than I do. Let’s list
them, shall we? I’m a hunter,” he began to count off on his fingers, “I’m a werewolf, I’m a
murderer, I’m my father’s son. I’m a saint. I’m a Horcrux. And I’m yours,” he began to choke up,
here, linking his two fingers together and letting them droop. “But what the hell do I have that’s
mine? Where’s my choice? This is my choice. I have nothing,” he stepped forward, and Sirius had
tears in his eyes, “I have nothing that is mine, Sirius, not anymore, I have nothing, I–ha––”

His voice broke. He paced, placing his shaking hands over his forehead and trying to catch his
breath, and then turned back. Sirius remained quiet.

“I have nothing except vengeance in my heart and some cold shell of a soul that was once yours.
Chip away at the infection and I think it still is, probably always will be, but all of this darkness at
once changes things and you know it. And you know what I have to do.”

Sirius was shaking his head.

“This changes nothing.”

“This changes everything.”

“You are a fool if you think this changes anything, Remus,” Sirius spat, stepping forward. “I know
what you’re trying to do, and you’re an utter fucking fool if you think whatever you’ve warped into
in the past month is anything mangled enough to turn me away.”

“Sirius—”

“No, you listen to me right now, Remus Lupin,” Sirius walked up to him. Looked him dead on in
the eyes, a small thing, a massive assurance. “I love you. I loved you hopelessly. I loved you when
I hated you, I loved you as a werewolf, as a hunter, a murderer, a saint. You’ve never had nothing
when you’ve had me. And you’ve never had nothing when you’ve had your choices. You do have
choices, Remus. You chose to be here. You chose to come with me. You choose to love, despite
everything. And it’s not about me but you have to understand, darling, that all I see of you is the
love that I hold, and I see all of you in the love I hold. So if you’ve changed I all but fucking love
you more for it. This changes nothing. For God’s sake, Remus–”

He walked forward, pulling Remus via two strong hands on the shoulders, into his chest, for he
was crying. Racking ribs and hands clinging to fabric.

“I’m sorry,” Remus choked, spluttering into his neck as Sirius held him like a frame. He shook his
head.

“Shh.”
“I don’t– it’s too much—”

“I know,” whispered Sirius. “We don’t have to talk, darling, all I want is for you to know that you
can. Because this is what it is for us, isn’t it? Our worst parts and our best. You told me once,” he
adjusted Remus on his shoulder, leaning down to press a kiss to his temple and speak the words
into his hairline, “you told me that you’d love every bit of me you get. However I obtained it.
Can’t you see that I’d do the same for you? Can’t you see that I do? This changes nothing.”

Remus could hardly breathe from the sobs, but Sirius held him there. Put him back together.

“I’m—sorry.”

“Don’t apologise.”

“I didn’t mean… that was unfair—”

Sirius shook his head. “No, it wasn’t. It was justified. But we’re trying, aren’t we?”

Remus wrapped his arms around his neck and just tried to sink into him in response.

“I killed my father,” he choked, still sniffling, in the deep hollow of his neck where his
vulnerability was caged and Sirius couldn’t see him, “I think. He was– he was a werewolf, and I– I
killed him.”

“Eh. You killed my father, too,” Sirius said, shrugging. “Changes nothing.”

“And Moody,” Remus whimpered, “I was horrible to him, and– then he died—”

“Changes nothing,” Sirius whispered, hand on the back of his head. “He probably deserved it.”

Remus laughed. A raw, wet kind of thing.

“He did,” he said, laughing into Sirius’ shoulder, and then almost immediately crying twice as
hard.

“You’re okay,” Sirius whispered, rubbing his back; sitting them down on the edge of the bed and
caressing his hair in the low lamplight, letting him let himself go, letting him bleed out all over the
floor and over his hands and into Sirius’ mouth. It took a while for him to calm down. It took a
while for him to come back, to register the boundary between he and his lover and his feet and the
floor, where one ends and the other begins. But Sirius held him there, and touched him here;
stopped when he asked him to, continued when he needed it most; whispered things like, “you’re
okay, you’re real, you’re everything, you’re here,” that perhaps made Remus cry all the more
harder.

Because that grounding, it’s the safest thing alive surrounded by the danger his own mind creates
by trying to let go. They’re harmonious, an understanding of a soul to a soul through darkness and
despair; you don’t recognise the hand reaching out to you but your blind heart beats for it
regardless, it’s this love, it grows and overflows and feels soft and black and velvety when it wraps
biceps around you like a blanket, Remus is monstrous, he’s cradled by the opposition.

When he pulled back he knocked their foreheads together, lips barely a centimetre apart. Remus
was wrecked, disparate and incomplete. And yet that conscious movement sent blood to his brain
from the place his fingertips touched along Sirius’ cheek and up his hairline.

His heart slowed but never stopped. He breathed slowly. He could taste blood that wasn’t his.
“I still have a choice to make,” whispered Remus. Unable to open his eyes. Being touched and
being here instead of frolicking somewhere in the before and after, watching himself happen like a
TV show. “We have to talk about this. You know what I have to do.”

“Stop.”

“Siriu–”

“Stop it,” said Sirius, firmly, not pulling back but tightening his grasp on the sides of Remus’ neck
and the curve of his shoulder as if to cauterise him. “I don’t want to talk about this right now.
Please. Because we’re going to disagree.”

Remus opened his eyes. Leant back a fraction, if only to see him in a focus that did him a service,
and nodded. Leant back in and kissed the corner of his mouth, shuffled forward into his arms.

Sirius, holding onto Remus’ waist with one hand as he wrapped his arms tightly around his neck,
seamlessly scooped him up bridal style and stood and began to walk around to the side of the bed.

Remus squealed (don’t ever tell anyone) as Sirius picked him up, laughing into his neck, and after
three steps he was gently laying him over the side of the bed like a pack of rose petals, and Remus’
arms were slipping from the air, to his hair, to the back of his neck. In that prime moment in which
they aligned—Remus’ hands able to pull him forward, Sirius not yet pulling back—he kissed him,
tugging on him so he toppled forward and had to reach out a hand to hold himself up over Remus,
top half of him hovering over Remus and the bottom half still half-off the bed, balancing on the
floor. Remus balled his hand into a fist at the back of his hair and snogged him quite happily.

Sirius pulled back, lips wet, amused. He pursed his lips.

“Eugh,” he said, “you’re all cry-ey and snotty.” Wiping at Remus’ face with his fingers, Remus
pulled him down further so that he sort of had to crawl onto the bed on top of him. Once he was
there he rolled his head around, reached over for the tissue box on the bedside table and nabbed
one.

Balling it up and throwing it to the side, he looked up to Sirius. “Better?”

He pouted.

“Mm. You’ll do.”

Remus kissed him soundly once again, feeling every part of him slot against every part that needed
him there, the soft and the touch and the leg between leg and the hand on his cheek once Remus
pulled him over, lying on his size, able to push and pull as much as he’d like. Remus moved to
straddle him and Sirius pulled back, dazed, mouth open in perhaps shock or awe.

“We can’t have sex in the scary fire lady’s spare bedroom,” he whispered. Remus frowned.

“Why not?”

“Because!” he spluttered, and Remus laughed.

Sex hadn’t even been his endgame, here, it was not what he craved any more so than the grounding
touch and perhaps something that made him feel like honey in his chest again, where it had all
dried up and grated on his sternum like sandpaper.

Sirius melted him.

So Remus just kissed him. Kissed him as damnation kisses the eternal flame, something of
darkness and misery and a sunrise; gravity winding over his feet like wisteria. Remus kissed him.

Remus loved him. And so, when they fought, when he said horrible things in the heat of the
moment and in every second afterwards, til the end of the line when Sirius leans over to turn the
lamp off and they are plunged into the night, he thinks, every time, I’d live in darkness forever if I
could still feel you.

But love means staying. And he can’t stay.

So he loses himself in Sirius, and he tries, he tries, he tries to forget.

***

The standstill that they were in lasted two days, of which included Pandora portkeying in and out to
wherever she’d go and coming back with spellbooks bigger than her torso, poring over them so
deeply that Remus had to snap his fingers in her face to ask if she wanted lemon in her tea (she
didn’t).

It included another fucking whiteboard, that Sirius had got Pandora to transform out of a metal beer
mug, and it included three hikes up the knolls of the harbours on the Luleå archipelago, and one
boat trip across to the actual island, though they did not venture near the caves.

After a general scope in which they split into three groups, Remus, Lily and Esmeralda made it
back to their meet up point first. The witch darted across to the pier of the harbour to test the
water’s strength, while Remus settled in beside Lily, who was looking out at the stretch of sea and
the foggy, faded shape of the mainland in sight with a strange look on her face.

Remus looked at her, nudging her with his shoulder.

“What?” he asked. She blinked, as if jolting back into sentience, and then frowned at him, cocking
her head when she looked back. He followed her movements.

“What about the ice track?” she asked.

Remus paused.

“What do you mean?”

“The ice track,” she repeated, “the ‘Isbanan’. The waitress was talking about it. In the winter it
completely freezes over, and you can drive from the mainland out to the islands in the bay. I was
googling it last night. Apparently, in prime winter it can hold up to two tonnes.”

Remus whistled. “Wow.”

“What if we could use that?”

Remus turned to her. She had a nervous look on her face; he frowned.

“Lily, it’s June.”

“I know,” she hissed, looking back out at the very un-frozen tide, “but think about it. If the water
was frozen when the magical shockwave happened, would the impact be as bad? Especially if we
could somehow… maintain it?”

“The ice would still cause a tsunami,” he said. “It’d just be an ice shove.”
“Not if we melted it.”

He turned. Frowned.

“Lily, what are you suggesting to me?”

“Listen,” she said. “We freeze the bay.”

“Which is already an insane premise, considering that it’s June—”

“But if we could,” she said, “we freeze the bay. Just two miles between here and the port. We
complete the caves, we destroy the Horcrux. The island caves in on itself. We—somehow—get
back onto the mainland, and then, as the ice comes, me and Esmeralda melt it and just… send it
back.”

“It’d still flood the islands.”

“Not if we aim correctly.”

Remus sighed.

“I think you’re forgetting one key element here, Lily,” he said, gently. She frowned.

“What?”

“You don’t have your powers.”

Lily deflated like a goddamn balloon.

She held her hands out in front of her, outstretched fingers. They were nimble and ever so pale.

“Right,” she said, hoarsely. “Yeah. Of course.”

Remus sighed.

“Listen,” he said, “bring it up to Pandora later. Maybe she’ll think it’s a good idea.”

He highly doubted that Pandora would think it was a good idea.

***

“That,” said Pandora, four hours later, “is a fucking brilliant idea.”

“It is?” asked Lily.

“It is?!” asked Remus.

Count him wrong, then.

“How the hell are you supposed to freeze an entire bay?” asked Sirius, aghast.

“We wouldn’t have to freeze the entire thing,” Esmeralda pointed out. “The island is close enough
to the port.”

“And,” said Pandora, “it would be easier than most, since the bay freezes up anyway. Ritualistic
magic is always easier. If we prepare a ritual that mimics the ritual of the yearly freezing and
unfreezing it’d be easier to grasp onto the molecular structure of the water, if only for a few hours,
because it’d just be mimicking itself.”

Remus blinked.

“In English, please?” he asked, perplexed.

Pandora turned to him, holding her hands out.

“Magic is all about nature, and repetition,” she said. “I can do this,” she raised one hand slowly,
palm out facing Remus, and from the bottom of it trailed a shimmering gold sheen like a snail trail
in the air that Remus knew to be one of her wards, “as seamlessly as I can because I have repeated
it. Whereas this,” she snapped her fingers, and a small flame appeared at the tip of her index finger,
“isn’t as seamless as Esmeralda’s would be, for example.”

She turned to the other witch. Esmeralda snapped her fingers, and from her index finger drew a
larger, much more powerful flame, that she blew into a fireball hanging in the air and then curled
her hand around it in a fist; smoke rose when she opened up her fingers.

Lily tutted.

“Show off,” she muttered, and Esmeralda grinned.

“The water in this bay is natural, but it also knows repetition, because for half of the year it is
frozen and for the next half it’s not,” continued Pandora. “That’s cyclical. The freezing isn’t magic.
What I’m saying is we can make it magic, by drawing on this repetition, so it’s much easier to
freeze than, say, the water on the coast of California which has never been frozen in its life.”

Remus blinked.

“Magic is so fucking cool,” he whispered, and Pandora grinned.

“We should create a swear jar for every time you say that,” she said.

“Okay but,” interjected Lily, leaning forward. “It’s still a lot of water. Three witches can’t do that.”

“We have an advantage because Henrik is good at liquid manipulation,” said Esmeralda, “but even
then, we’d need something stronger and more replenishing to draw on. And a cycle to attach it to.”
Turning to Pandora; “I was thinking the moon…”

They trailed off into quiet conversation, strategizing, but Remus zoned out for a moment. Thought
about the last thing he’d heard; the moon; thought about it a little bit more. Pressed his fingertips
together. Felt the matter that was there.

“Me,” he said, looking up. “Use me.”

Pandora’s face dropped immediately in realisation.

The ever-present, double beating heart of his two souls. A power source. And the connection,
whether willing or not, to the moon. A cyclical event.

Werewolf. Horcrux. Hunter. Lyall Lupin’s boy. The ritual was inherent in him. What could be
more replenishing than that?

Pandora smiled.

***
With this idea, filling in perhaps one of the many, many gaps they had to fill, things began to flow
a bit quicker.

In an irritating turn of events, they tied up this strategy not two days after the full moon of June,
coming to decide to need it as it had just settled into Waning Gibbous. This was incredibly
inconvenient as July was the hottest (and lightest, with an almost constant midnight sun) month of
the year here, and the warmer the temperature was the harder it would be to pull off their (utterly
ridiculous) endeavour. So, instead of waiting for the next full moon, in which it would be
sweltering, they decided on using the New Moon instead—which gave them a two week reprieve,
which wasn’t much, but it was something—and praying that the astrological event would be
enough.

Although in the wake of the temperature rising the two week reprieve was annoying, it also
benefited them in multiple ways. The first, and perhaps the most important being that it gave
Esmeralda, Henrik and Pandora more time to prepare the ritual and thus more time to grow its
power in preparation. The second being that, in the wake of this plan, the island was still going
down, and Sirius was thus required to use his compulsion on over thirty people to get them to
evacuate. (He was not particularly excited).

When dumbed down, the spell was rather easy to understand, as, just like the rituals that they were
drawing on, it was cyclical. Beginning with Henrik, who had a connection to the water; the water, a
connection to the moon; the moon, a connection to Remus; Remus and the replenishing power
source inside of him a connection to Pandora, who completed the circle. And where Lily’s
phoenixisms would, ideally, have been used to help melt the ice and lessen the devastation, they
had worked out that the ice shove that would possibly occur would still be less devastating than the
tsunami. While Lily worked every day to try and tap back into the Phoenix, reapply the connection
that had been severed, this plan was as good as they could make it.

Remus was really quite unsure as to what the ritual actually consisted of—there was a circle of salt
in the cleared-out shed behind Esmeralda’s house, and a bowl of coals that would sizzle and
spitting green-toned magical embers every now and then—but he did his part without asking as the
witches bustled around, for they had enough questions to answer without Remus’ own.

He had to give his blood every day until July 10 (the day of the New Moon) to complete the
connection. And so every morning Pandora would wake him, cut the palm of his hand with a knife
and make him squeeze into a fist, and then, once the coals spat red instead of green she’d heal him,
and send him on his merry way.

So, he tried not to dwell too much on the shed; each time he went in there were more witchy books
floating around, and sometimes the three of them would spend hours upon hours in there together.
Sometimes Sirius would join them, too. A lot of the time, actually.

Whatever was cooking had to be big, and the moon waned ominously over bright Scandinavian
skies.

And so time passed. They went into Luleå a few times, for various reasons—supplies, or money, or
blood. Always as heavily disguised as could be. They all missed the others dearly, of course, but
contact was too risky. They couldn’t risk anything. But Lily continued to write letters for Mary,
James and Regulus, every night or every other night.

They would never be sent. Remus thought they were quite ridiculous, at first. But upon missing her
Remus had taken Lily’s advice (and gentle prompting) and written a letter to Mary, after a week or
so. Just the one. He would never send it. She would never see. But it filled the gap of longing he
had for her, if only a little bit.
Lily… insinuated that he write her a letter, too. But it was different. It was different, because
Remus didn’t miss her. He didn’t miss her because he didn’t feel anything for her. He didn’t feel
anything for her because he couldn’t. He couldn’t go there. He just– he—

For the most part, by the tail-end of June, at least, the witches three were dealing with something of
Macbeth-like infamy in their little hut, saving the day once more while Sirius was often out
scoping, hunting or doing whatever he did that he didn’t tell Remus about. Meanwhile Remus and
Lily, the stragglers, were left to consider other things, like the logistics of getting out of the cave
(get as close as we can to the exit, destroy the Horcrux, leg it, was Remus’ idea) and other such
things, like Lily’s powers, and Remus’ senses; a feat that left them on the coast of the Vallskären,
testing each other’s wits.

Remus lit a match and dropped it onto the ripped paper and dry wood he had shovelled into a pit. It
took about two to properly get it going. Lily sat opposite it, as he stood.

“Alright,” he said, flourishing his hands. “Siphon it.”

She sighed.

Closing her eyes, she held up two hands, wriggling her fingers and shuffling her bum a little bit to
get comfy. Remus watched her focus, swallowing her nerves down and breathe; slower, and
slower. The tips of her fingers smoked, slightly, and the veins of her wrists from where her sleeve
had ridden down began to run a smooth, but faint gold, and the fire dimmed.

And then, in a second, she lost it and the fire burned an aggressive foot high.

As Lily scrambled back, yelping, Remus turned and grabbed the bucket of sea water he’d pre-filled
for this exact reason and dumped it over the fire, watching as the ash smoked and the water
trickled down the pebbles, towards the liquified sea. Lily groaned.

“She wants to kill us,” Lily muttered. Lily tended to talk about the Phoenix like she was a separate
person. Remus got the sense it was so she could shit-talk her.

“She does not want to kill us.”

“She wants to kill us,” she groaned. “Petty bitch. Can we do you, now?”

Remus sighed. “Lily, I really don’t want—”

“Please. Just one time.”

He sighed, again. He really, really did not want to think about his werewolf side—or the other
thing inside of him, for that matter—but Lily was relentless. He understood that they had a sort of
mutual understanding, here, of what it’s like to find out you have been something ulterior to what
you thought you were your entire life, the imposter syndrome and the dissociation associated with
that to something that you physically can’t get rid of, can’t claw out of your chest. But it didn’t
mean that he wanted to acknowledge it. Perhaps he wanted to stew in a pit of self-loathing and pity
and grief for the rest of his life until his untimely, but most likely heroic, demise for the sake of
defeating evil. It would be easier.

Lily would not have that, though.

And so they moved to the grass, a tightly packed spruce tree area, and he stood in the circle and
closed his eyes. They’d done this a few times before. Most of the time, he was spot-on, but
sometimes it was a bit off. He had come to accept that he had slightly heightened senses; as much
as he hated to admit it, as aforementioned, these little tests that Lily had had him doing were quite
enlightening, and almost useful in the ability to separate his taught hunter instinct and his
inherent… supernatural, he supposed he would say—gosh, he could not believe he was saying that
after all these fucking years—instincts. There was a certain pull to it. To him. God, he doesn’t
know. He dreaded to think what being a fully-fleshed werewolf would be like if this concept had
his brain this scrambled.

He also dreaded to think, momentarily, of how he would have felt if he’d had this revelation
before… well, all of this. Before he’d fallen in love with Sirius, he supposed. Or maybe, before
he’d fallen in love with the idea that there was something else. In love with potential. He’d’ve
hated himself for being any sort of supernatural being, would’ve been constantly disgusted in his
own skin—sure, he still was, and he still hated himself, but not for those same reasons. Disguised
as the worst time possible for him to discover this secret—and it truly was, the past month truly
had been the worst month of his entire life—it might have just been the best.

He still hated it. He still hated it, even when he felt that pull, when he heard things he shouldn’t
have heard, when the back of his neck prickled with the usually-pseudo sense of being watched,
entirely real here, for he turned and he threw his knife.

It wouldn’t have hit Lily—he can change when he throws to hit, and when he throws to throw—but
hit the trunk of the tree just beside her.

And yet, almost as a reflex, she gasped and held up a hand.

The flying knife was engulfed in flames and paused mid-air about a foot away from her, before
falling unceremoniously onto the grass.

They both stared at it.

“Well,” said Remus. “Maybe she doesn’t want you dead, after all.”

She scowled at him.

Back at the house, the other four were nowhere to be seen, so they ended up in Lily and Pandora’s
bedroom, lying on the bed beside each other. He shuffled over to lie on his side and cleared his
throat.

“Let’s see, then,” he said.

She sighed, and held her hand out, summoning a weak flame into her palm. Remus blinked at it,
and then nodded, sagely.

“It’s better than last week.”

“It’s the same as last week, Remus,” Lily groaned, putting it out.

“Well, at least it’s not worse.”

She huffed and shuffled so that she was lying on her side opposite him. She didn’t say anything for
a moment. Bit her lip. Remus waited.

“What if I don’t get any better?” she asked. “What if I’m useless?”

“You’re not here because you’re a phoenix, Lily,” said Remus. “You’re here because you’re street-
smart and brilliant. You’re useful in other ways.”
“I don’t just mean in the caves,” she said, shaking her head, and then backtracked. “I mean, I do.
Partially. I feel like I’ll be useless against all of these magical devices. What if we need fire?”

“You’re not useless,” whispered Remus, “and we have a witch. Pandora can summon fire.”

“Not like I can.”

“Nobody does fire like you can,” Remus smiled. “But I think you deserve a break from it.”

“I don’t feel like this is a break,” she replied. “It feels like a disconnect. Something’s been
severed.”

Remus contemplated this.

“You know,” he said, eventually, “I think the most beautiful thing about humanity is the fact that if
something breaks, our first instinct is to fix it.”

Lily sighed.

“And if you can’t fix it?”

“You try a different method, until it works,” he said. “One time my mum broke a ceramic and she
got it back together with superglue, and then one piece wouldn’t stay, and so she had to find this
like mortar paste to get the one final bit to stay in place. Had to trek all the way to Carmarthen to
get it.”

Lily raised an eyebrow. “For a ceramic?”

“It was my grandmother’s. Don’t get me wrong, she didn’t actually care about it, but my Grandma
would’ve thrown a hissy fit, so.”

She laughed.

“Neither of us are even human,” she said, and Remus blinked at her, and then laughed.

“Can you stop trying to poke holes in my motivational speech, please?”

“I’m sorry—”

“I’m the one who’s supposed to be burning with pessimism, not you,” he chuckled, rolling over to
lie on his back. His laughter dimmed rather quickly.

So did Lily’s.

“Remus,” she said, slowly. “Have you talked about it?”

He had a very visceral flashback to the last time he’d been asked that. He closed his eyes.

“Please don’t.”

“Have you?”

“Talked about what?” he asked, repetition, repetition. “My life being a lie or the death sentence
inside of me?”

Lily blinked at him, confused. As if she hadn’t even considered those two things.
“Dorcas,” she said, plainly, savoury. Remus felt his throat close up.

“No.”

“Remus—”

“Lily, stop it,” he whispered, “Please. I can’t… go there.”

Lily propped herself up, leaning on her elbow.

She sighed.

“Do you… know what Sirius does all day?” she said, quietly.

Remus glanced at her. This was a curveball. “What?”

“He sits in there,” she said, “with Pandora, and he tries to come up with ways to… undo your death
sentence. He sits in there for hours. And he tries to fix it.”

The room ran cold, Lily no longer warm, and Remus felt bile or something akin to guilt, survivor’s
or otherwise, rush up his throat.

“I know you’ve resigned yourself to your fate,” she said, softly. “I think you want to just kill
yourself and have that be that. But he’s not going to let you. And I’m not going to let you. And
were she here, she’d be right in that shed with Sirius, you know that, right?”

“Lily,” Remus breathed. He couldn’t say any more.

“You try a different method until it works,” she said. “Because as humans, we preserve what we
love. And if we can’t fix it, we learn to live with the mess all the same.”

“None of us are human,” muttered Remus.

“Oh, but we are.” She rolled onto her back. Lit her little flame in her hand, and extinguished it.
“We so, so desperately are.”

He had no more to say to that.

***

Remus dreamt about Dorcas that night. He dreamt that she was there, with him, in a red dress with
the beads in her braids and he was howling at a light that was not the moon but something else, and
she reached out and took the light away and he continued to howl, and then she was a wolf, too,
and she howled with him, and the light shone over them both, the light of change, something old to
something new, and they learned to live with it.

He woke up crying and Sirius held him until he fell back asleep.

***

On the first of July, the group of them trekked onto the island. And Sirius said the same thing to
thirty-one people.

“You’re going to pack your things,” he said, gently, holding onto the arm of a grey-haired old chap,
his granddaughter in his arms. “All of your essentials, everything that you couldn’t live without,
and you’re going to leave the island and go visit family or stay somewhere at least three hours
away. You’re going to be gone by July ninth. And you’re going to think that you left of your own
free will, and forget this entire conversation.”

He stepped back, and the old man blinked. Cleared his throat, and looked up at Sirius, nodding
courteously as if he was passing him on the street.

Sirius gave him a tight smile, nodded back. The gentleman took his infant granddaughter into the
little red hut, and as he was walking down the path, Sirius turned and immediately toppled over.

“Woah,” said Lily, holding out an arm to steady him. He blinked slowly, twice, as Remus
stabilised him on the other side.

“Oh, God,” he muttered, faintly. “Something has gone very, very wrong.”

“What?” asked Lily, looking sort of warily between Sirius and Remus; the former looking
exhausted, the latter exasperated.

“He didn’t drink enough,” Remus said, dryly, wrapping an arm around him and walking down the
dirt path. The sun was setting, and Esmeralda was waiting to apparate them back home on the
shore. “Eight hundred years, you’d think he would’ve learned how much he can take.”

“What’s life without a little risk?” Sirius drawled, grinning against Remus’ shoulder with his eyes
closed.

“Peaceful,” replied both Remus and Lily, both of them on either side knowing that if they moved
the big bad pureblood would topple over like a teenage drunkard.

“I don’t do this enough to know, okay,” Sirius mumbled. Remus scoffed.

“Bullshit,” he said. “Do you not remember when we went out on field into the city and you forced
that woman to give you a Diet Coke for free?”

“That was one woman,” Sirius replied, haughtily and slurred. “And one action.”

“Sirius, you did it three times.”

The offender himself tutted. “Diet Coke curbs the cravings.”

“And yet I distinctly remember you downing four blood bags that morning—”

“Oh dear God, do you remember everything?” Sirius muttered, almost horrified.

“Everything I can use against you.”

“Fine.” Sirius wobbled a little bit at the vigour of which he said this simple word; he almost
toppled Lily over, in a visage quite amusing considering the fact he towered over her as it was, but
she held her own. He flicked his hair out of his eyes, his movements slow, dreary. “Fine, maybe I
wanted something carbonated without having to give money to the blasted soul-sucking world-
ruining corporation that is Coca Cola, okay, what, are you going to sue me, Lupin?”

“I just might,” Remus snapped back, teasing smile curling on his lips. Sirius, though not even
looking at him, mimicked it.

Lily grunted as she shifted Sirius’ weight on her shoulder, and her little head popped up as she
curled it to squint at the both of them.
“Remind me how this conversation is relevant?” she asked.

…Neither of them could really procure an answer.

There was a moment of silence, and then Sirius cleared his throat and groaned.

“Oh, God, there it is. I’m fucking hungry.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Remus, I’m so hungry.”

“I heard.”

“Can I just eat someone on the island?” he asked, looking longingly back at the group of people.
“One less person to evacuate.”

Remus’ lip curled. His theatrics, while exasperating, were also amusing.

“Not here,” he muttered. “Too obvious. Wait ‘til we get home.”

“Mmmm. Okay.”

Lily frowned, craning her neck to look at him.

“I thought Pandora was going to raid the Hospital.”

“She’s busy.”

“But–” she started. Trailed off, biting her lip.

Sirius lulled his head to the side to look down at her.

“I could eat you, Lilith,” he said, jokingly. “You’d be like— a barbecue.”

She scoffed, slapping a hand to her face. “That is the worst thing you’ve ever said.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Stop being impatient,” she said, swatting his shoulder. “I think we have some reserve at the house.
Then me and Remus can go find a blood drive or something.”

“I want to hunt,” murmured Sirius, petulantly.

“Well, you can’t,” she said.

“Please?”

“No.”

“Booooo,” he murmured deliriously, fluttering his eyes shut. “Seventy thousand people in Luleå
and I can’t kill anyone?”

“Sirius. No.”

“Boooooo,” he said, louder. Lily laughed.

“Sometimes I forget you’re Regulus Black’s brother,” she said, quietly. “And then, sometimes, it
could not be more clearer.”

“Hmph.”

“You’ll be fine,” she said, squeezing his arm. “We just can’t have you drawing attention to us. Can
we, Remus?”

Remus, who had been quiet for this entire exchange, said nothing.

She frowned. “Can we, Remus?”

“We need him at full strength for the caves,” he said, as quietly as he could. “He should do what he
needs to.”

Lily stopped, abruptly.

“Are you serious?” she asked, disbelief on her face. Remus closed his eyes and groaned,
exasperated.

“Lily–”

“I thought you meant—” she cut off. “You’re being serious? What the hell, Remus?”

“Lily, he’s exerted himself massively today,” he said. “He knows what his body needs. There are
seventy thousand people in the city, if he– if he needs to kill three or four…”

Lily gaped. Even Sirius, here, turned and looked at him.

Remus blinked, looking between the both of them, feeling hot behind the neck.

“Stop looking at me like that,” he said, feeling misplaced agitation bubble up his throat.

“I’m not looking at you like anything, Remus,” said Lily, calmly. “I just didn’t expect that from
you.”

She continued walking.

Remus went after her, Sirius in tow.

“I just think that we have bigger things to worry about than a few people being killed when the
stakes are this high.”

“I know!” she said. “We do. You’re right. Whatever.”

“So why are you so pissed off about it?”

“I’m not,” she said, turning so swiftly that her hair swung against her chin. Her face was stoic, her
lips thinned in agitation. “I just didn’t expect it. It caught me off guard. But I of all people have no
standing to judge how anyone changes. You just…” she looked up at him, biting the inside of her
bottom lip and then releasing it with a sigh. She looked at Remus like he was an entirely new
person. And she smiled. “Caught me off guard. That’s all.”

With this, she turned and walked away, saying that she’d meet them back at home.

Remus watched her go.

“Does this mean I can eat people?” Sirius whispered, from the side. Remus looked at him and
huffed.

“Let’s just go,” he muttered. “Come on, honey, I’ve got you.”

***

On the fifth day of July, Remus gave Sirius blood again, from the neck, pressed into the bedspread,
clothed and unclothed and tragic and harrowing and unspeaking, not speaking, not talking about it.

That night, he dreamed of Riddle. He woke up. Fell back asleep and dreamed of magic.

Remus does not have dreams very often. And, yet, now he is dreaming and he is dreaming and he
dreams.

He wonders what it means.

(He falls back asleep).

***

July sixth, one thing at a time. Remus, braced against the windowsill on a nightless night, the sun
and the moon coexist in the sky; he is so far from canine and so purely squeezed, fresh orange
juice in the way his soul beats like a metronome. Tom Riddle rattling around like a rock in a
garbage disposal. But when Remus thought of her, he didn’t think about the rest. He didn’t know if
that was a good thing or not.

His notebook lay scattered on the drawer, his pens without lids leaking ink onto the fabric, he can’t
remember writing anything. The basilisk blade was on the windowsill, he can’t remember if he put
it there. It lies vibrant under the holiness of the midnight sun. Everything is out in the open but
Remus can’t reach it.

He is terrified at how far removed he is from his own brain. There is nothing. Sometimes, there is
just nothing.

And then, at other times, there is Sirius; wrapping his arms around Remus’ waist and resting his
chin on his shoulder. Closing his eyes briefly to come back to his senses, Remus tilted his head to
the side to nuzzle up against him. He stared unflinchingly at the moon. It is broad daylight and she
is no longer alone. He feels her joy like the dead at a requiem, like the way he feels Sirius’ arms
pulling him away from that holy gaze.

“I was going to kill myself,” he said, into the darkness. He felt Sirius freeze up. “Not now. At
Whittaker. You were unconscious. When they made me… fight her, you were unconscious, and
she was compelled to kill me, and I was going to kill myself. So she wouldn’t have to.”

Silence.

“And then she broke out of it.”

“If I’d’ve done it in time,” murmured Remus, “she’d be okay.” A moment. “I should have done it.
It should have been me.”

“You can’t think like that.”

Remus felt a flush of anger touch him, head to toes.

“You can’t think like that, Remus, because you can’t change it,” said Sirius, firmer, as if feeling his
indignancy. “Thinking like that will destroy you. For the rest of your life, it will destroy you.”

His words cut deeper than a knife. Because they were with forethought.

For Remus had no intention of having a rest of his life.

Sirius’ hands, all of a sudden, felt less comforting and more constricting. Remus’ breath quickened
and he felt utterly rotten; disgusting, dysmorphic and wrong, like he didn’t fit, like he was being
squeezed of sunlight. Spiked with nausea, from guilt or grief or maybe both, he excused himself to
the bathroom, only to stare at himself in the mirror for five minutes and then flush, run the tap,
shut it off. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

Upon walking back into the room, the blade had been moved from the windowsill.

His notebook was open, and Sirius had it in one hand, the other bracing himself on the wall.

Against the perpetual daylight outside his face was stormy. The room fell cold.

“Sirius…”

“When did you write this?” he asked, his voice low and throaty.

Remus swallowed down the lump in his throat. He knew exactly what Sirius was looking at; the
list he had made, all those weeks ago, now. The day he had sealed his fate.

“When did you write it, Remus?”

“The day that Moody died,” he replied, quietly.

Sirius looked up. His lips were parted, his face sunken. His hair was tucked behind his ear on the
side facing Remus but fell opaquely on the side facing the window, as if curtaining them from the
outside world. But the midnight sun came pouring in nonetheless. There was nowhere to hide, not
here, not with him.

Sirius straightened up, smacked his lips. His eyes were glossy.

“And the others?” he said.

Remus blinked. Processing.

“What?”

“The others,” he said, “when did you write the others?”

“What–” Remus frowned, cocking his head, “what others?”

Sirius let out a sharp breath. Almost of disbelief. He flicked through, pages and pages and pages
and pages.

“Remus, you’ve written this list seven times,” he choked. “The same exact thing. Over and over
again.”

He stared at him. Looked down, to the pages, where he could see, undeniably where there should
be blank pages, the splattering of ink, the numbers in the margins. One, two, three, four.
With shaky eyes and a quivering jaw he looked down to his hands and found ink smudged on his
thumb, the forefinger of his right.

He looked up, through teary eyes, to see Sirius looking at him as if he was no longer his own. As if
he was a stranger.

“Hope to God that Sirius’s grief will be enough?” said Sirius, voice breaking. “Is that all I am to
you?”

“No,” Remus whispered.

“A means to an end,” Sirius continued, slowly sounding less heartbroken and more angry. He
choked a laugh. “Always the weapon, right?”

“Sirius–”

“You wrote this the day Moody died, so you made the decision immediately, right?” he continued,
spitefully. “No hope. No further thought. Just resignation. You decided to kill yourself and not only
that, you decided to drag me into it. Because I love you and because if I lost you I’d burn the world
without a second thought and you knew that. You’re using that for–” he waved the notebook
around, “some sick reminder to convince you to go through with it? What, every time you doubt
yourself you imagine me following you in a blaze of glory to kill Riddle and it gets your jollies,
yeah? You rewrite it to remind yourself of the eight hundred year old Pureblood whose love you
can abuse to get your fucking revenge fantasy? Is that why?”

“I don’t know,” Remus whispered. “I don’t– I don’t remember.”

Sirius’ face flickered, faltered, fell.

“Oh, don’t do that,” he whispered.

Remus bit down on his lip, letting tears fall. Stood up straight.

“Do what?” he said, forcefully.

“Make me want to take care of you,” Sirius said.

They stared at each other for a long moment, and then Sirius groaned, dropping his head into both
of his hands.

At the end of the day, this fight is complicated, and this fight is utterly and indescribably simple.
Sirius kidded himself into having hope and this and love too is the downfall of each and every one
of us, Remus knows, Remus knows, Remus knows. He has no pity for Sirius’ holding on. He did
not tell him to do that. But he sees the situation in black and white. He severed himself from
emotion and so he sees it; this is wrong. This is right. Say this, next: he knew it was coming.

“I tried to tell you, and you shut me down,” said Remus. “We were going to talk about this. Sirius.
You knew this was coming.”

“No, we weren’t going to talk about it,” he spat. “That was never what you wanted to do. You
don’t want to talk about it. What you want to do is sit me down and tell me that you’re going to kill
yourself and have me accept that, blindly. I’m not going to accept it, Remus.”

He has to accept it.

“You have to accept it,” Remus said.

“I don’t have to do anything!”

“And I’m sorry, I–” he swallowed, taking a deep, shaky breath and trying to compose himself.
“The list is wrong and I shouldn’t have– I don’t know why. I don’t know why. There are moments
when I wake up with ink on my hands and I can’t remember anything and moments when I feel... I
feel so far from you and everyone else that your grief is something I can– can mould with my
hands. I don’t know how to explain it.”

That doesn’t excuse it.

“That doesn’t excuse it.”

“I know it doesn’t excuse it!” Remus took a deep breath in, regulating his heartbeat. “I know it
doesn’t. I shouldn’t have included you in the fucking list in the first place, I know, but I’m not—
this is all I have, and I–”

“Do you realise how much of a fucking slap in the face it is that you keep saying that?” Sirius shot
back. Walking forwards, arms out as if pleading for Remus to understand. “Do you understand how
much I’ve given to you and how badly you’ve just ripped me to pieces by using that against me?
How much— how hard it wa—” he cut off, running a hand over his face. “Fuck, do you
understand that you hurt people with your actions, Remus, because I don’t think that you do?”

“Sirius,” Remus whispered. “Please.”

“I’m–” Sirius stopped, taking a step back. He shook his head. “No. You can’t do that when you’re
the one that has fucked up. I’m– I have the right to be pissed off at you. I am pissed off at you.
You’re leaving me.”

It’s black and white, it’s black and white.

“You’re leaving me,” Sirius whispered. “And I’m angry at you.”

“Be angry at me, then,” said Remus, calmly. “I will acknowledge that I shouldn’t have written the
list and I will apologise for that but you’re not going to change my mind or take away my choice.”

“Oh, my God, shut up about choices,” Sirius shouted. “Your choice is bullshit! Your choice is
selfish, Remus.”

Remus’ mouth fell open. For some odd reason, this struck a nerve, and he felt a rush of something
he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.

Red.

“Selfish,” he repeated, cocking his head severely.

Sirius exhaled. Nodded once. “Selfish.”

“I’m selfish?” Remus said, taking a step forward.

“Yeah, you are,” Sirius spat, taking a step to match him. “You want to know why?”

“Tell me why.”

“You want to know why?”

“Tell me.”

“It’s cause you’re fucking giving up,” Sirius hissed. In his face. “It would be noble if you’d have
tried, and failed. But you’re not the martyr you want to be, Remus, because there was no trying.”

“Get out of my fucking face,” Remus snapped, pushing him. Sirius staggered back a pace or two,
but his posture did not change, the malice in his intent did not abate.

“You see this as a way out!” he continued, shouting. “That’s selfish, Remus! That’s giving up. It’s
pathetic and it’s unfair and you’re no less a martyr by doing it than a king with no bloody fucking
kingdom.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that I don’t care about what anybody else thinks?!” Remus yelled,
walking right back up to him even after pushing him away. “That it’s not about being a martyr than
doing the right thing, making the right choice?” He turned, groaned, whirled right back around.
Seeing red. “Has it ever occurred to anyone that I’m the only one fucking doing anything around
here?”

“Oh, that’s rich.”

“It’s true,” Remus whispered harshly, unsure of who was speaking. “What are you doing?”

“That’s– how you can be so fucking oblivious–”

“Abandoning your brother again?” Remus asked.

Sirius’ countenance changed entirely.

He froze. Looked at him like he’d never seen real life before.

And Remus smiled, even as he gained on him, even as he got in his face, nose to nose. Remus is
still taller.

“Too far?” the stranger behind Remus’ eyes asked, pouty, innocent and fucking terrifying.

Sirius’ exhale was shaky with rage.

But he did not lose it. He’s not fucking fragile.

“You’re getting a sick sort of joy at trying to make me love you less, aren’t you?” he murmured.

“I’m not trying anything–”

“I see right through you,” Sirius said, through his teeth. Remus squinted at him, furious. “You
forget that, pretty boy. I know exactly what you’re doing and it’s not going to work. Because I see
your mutilation and I raise you this; I have mutilated worse. I see the grave that you have dug and I
raise you the fact that I’ve crawled my way out of deeper. So you can have your right choice,” he
hissed, “I don’t fucking care. All I hope you know is that if you’re going to kill yourself, you’re not
going to get your stupid fucking drama show, because you’re going to kill me too. By fucking
God, Remus Lupin, like the sun in the midnight sky, I raise you that.”

Remus’ eyebrows raised. The room felt hollow, creaky. The moon cowered against the sun’s blare,
but they were standing in the shade.

This is where the light can’t hit them, and these are the creatures of the night. Right here. Right
now.
In the interlude of silence, he could feel Sirius’ breath on his face. Neither of them moved for a
long, long moment.

“Is that a threat?” he said, eventually, quietly.

“That’s a promise,” whispered Sirius.

“So you’re guilt-tripping me, now.”

“Doesn’t feel good, does it, babe?”

Remus, in a fit of anger, reached out, unsure of where he was even going. He grabbed him by the
wrist and Sirius immediately twisted it around so he was grabbing him instead; Remus’ other hand
flew up, Sirius’ other hand caught him.

A few moments of resistance and Remus staggered back, Sirius following him, until he managed to
wrench his arms out of Sirius’ grasp and push him with all the force he had, sending him
staggering back the way they’d come.

“God– fuck you,” Remus said, striding across the room after him as he went. “Fuck you entirely.”

“Yeah,” muttered Sirius, looking up at him with wide eyes, as Remus walked up to him and kissed
him like nobody might have ever kissed anybody before.

Alone, desperate, real and not. Lips and teeth, that messy combination; Sirius grabbed him by the
jaw and immediately kissed him back, viciously walking him back until Remus hit the windowsill,
paying no attention to the things lying on it. Letting the notebook and the pen all fall to the ground.
Smudging Sirius’ jaw with the ink.

His hands were everywhere, unable to settle, his back to the window, his back to the light; he
reached his hand out and braced it on the windowsill and then immediately lamented the lack of
content and brought it back again to his body, desperate riding up his shirt and his tongue desperate
in Sirius’ mouth.

Sirius without warning picked him up and had him pressed against the window instead, legs around
his waist, one hand holding him up by the ass and the other under his shirt. He moved down,
nipping and biting at him as Remus threw his head back; lips pressed to his neck, the scar, bite,
bite, bite. Remus made a series of incoherent noises, his hands moving in a sequence of aggressive,
unforgiving touch wherever he could. He’d never been this aroused before. Every touch was
golden.

“Touch me,” Remus breathed, breath quick, heart going quicker, beating against the palm of
Sirius’ hand, flat on his chest. “Touch me, everywhere, do it– do this–”

He cut off.

And then; “I’ll touch you forever if you’ll let me,” Sirius murmured against his skin.

Forever. Such a huge prospect for such a damaged heart. In a world in which they’re twenty-seven
and that ten times over they’ve had a long time to learn to share, and yet they play tug of war like
the rope is on fire and the Bothnian bay is ice, the fire dances on top, and it’s such a far cry from
home it doesn’t even echo anymore.

But they echo home in their own way and it’s just kiss me; “Just this,” Remus found himself
saying, gasping at the touch, cold skin and cold hands. “Just this, just now.”; just this. Nothing
more.

I love you.

I hate you.

Anger bleeds passion, hell bleeds fire.

Sirius kissed up his neck, open-mouthed, tugging at the skin under his jawline, before getting to his
face. Their lips brushed against each other, and for a moment—a mere moment—Sirius Black
looked horribly, devastatingly sad.

Drowning in it. Drowning in him. Fucking drowning.

“Okay,” whispered Sirius, dolorously, deliriously, devoted, “okay. Just this. Just… now.”

They stared at each other, for a long moment. Mirroring sadness in each other’s gaze. Sirius let
Remus down, slowly, gently, his feet touched the floor like a ballerina; nose-to-nose, Remus curled
a hand, brushed the back of it over Sirius’ cheek. He nuzzled into the touch. Two hands splayed
over his cheeks, breaths intermingling, a weary widow and a dug grave, a second opinion, or two,
or three. Remus held his breath.

“Okay,” he breathed.

And Sirius’ face crumpled.

But he leaned back in, and he kissed him, and Remus pretended not to see it.

***

July tenth. There was a calendar pinned to the back of the wooden kitchen door, with eight grand
X’s counting down the first eight days of July and a circle around the tenth, with D-DAY written in
Pandora’s grandiose, pink felt-tip pen clad writing.

Remus stood, cup of tea in hand and sweatpants on, staring at it. Lily slotted in beside him.

“You nervous for tonight?” she asked, quietly. The room was humid from the wheezing kettle, but
Remus felt cold drip down his spine.

“Nah,” he said, making a face and shaking his head.

She smiled. They turned back to look at the calendar.

“I am,” she said.

Remus sighed.

“Yeah,” he murmured, sipping his drink, “I am, too.”

The door opened, making both of them jump out of their skin.

“Fuck me—” Remus gasped, spilling at least a quarter of his tea down himself. Lily covered her
mouth to stifle a laugh and darted past him to grab a tea towel, while Pandora, the door-opening
perpetrator, quirked an accusatory eyebrow.

“Rise and shine, Lupin,” she said, voice booming through the room. She shuffled through and past
him (it was a very narrow little cubby, and Lily was there, now, handing him the tea towel to try
and lessen the damage—he was wearing a thick jumper, so at least he wasn’t burnt). Pandora had a
bunch of papers in one arm and a black furry book in the other, but she still managed to clap her
hands, continuing with joviality, “be alert, be alive, we’ve got a big day today! Big day, big day, big
day!”

She dumped everything in her arms on the coffee table with a resounding thwack, and the door
opened again, except this time slowly; pushed open by the windy momentum of a bed-headed
Sirius vampire-running downstairs, slipping through, rubbing at his eyes. He was wearing all of his
own clothes and none of Remus’. Remus didn’t remember the last time that had happened.

Sirius groaned.

“What are we being so loud for?” he asked, looking at Pandora—who ignored him—and then
turning to Remus and Lily, still dealing with the tea fiasco. Remus caught his eye, and immediately
looked away. If Lily noticed the cold that lingered between them, she said nothing. Just buffered,
as always.

“Don’t moan,” she quipped, looking up at Sirius and grinning. “We’ve got a big day today, Sirius.”

Sirius rolled his eyes and side-stepped past Remus, going to pour himself a coffee; Lily followed
him.

“Big day, big day, big day!”

“Shut up, Evans.”

The plan, on that new moon, that crisp July tenth, was as thus:

Pandora, Henrik, and Esmeralda would journ out to a magically hidden spot on the shoreline of the
Bothnian Bay. There was about five miles of water between the mainland and the island, and so
they’d have to spend up to twelve hours prepping in order to freeze the water long enough for it to
hold. The new moon, to their delight, was above the horizon for all twenty four hours of the day.
Following the sun all day, their only chance would be within these three hours in which the moon
would be alone in the sky—not that one would be able to see it, but the point stands—to draw on
its power without interference to truly freeze the thing. They’d split at sunset, Lily and Sirius
heading to the island to prep (scope out the entrance of the cave, make sure everybody was gone,
make sure the car they’d left on the shore was ready—just in case something went wrong.) They’d
need Remus for the actual spell, which was expected to take about an hour, leaving them with two
hours of sunset to complete the caves, destroy the Horcrux and make their daring escape, of which
Pandora hoped would be them leaping out of the confines of the cave itself and apparating away,
but could very well be more dire than that.

They had various back up plans. It still did not feel secure.

Out of the caves, they’d apparate to the shore. Lily, though her powers were still lacking, would try
her best to help Esmeralda, Henrik and Pandora with the ice shove to a. And then they’d apparate
immediately into London. It seemed to be the best bet; Mary had a house there that was a)
disassociated with the hunting society and b) warded to hell and back and practically untouchable.
Her multiple stints in dark covens had left her with the want for protection, which they were
thankful for, now.

Dora had the coordinates.

And, if the island went the way they expected it to, the ice—to Pandora’s calculations—without
interference would cause 67% less damage to the mainland than it would if it were water. With
interference, which was the plan, it all depended on the strength they had left from the moon.
Esmeralda, Henrik and Pandora were planning to shun the ice away before it shoved over the land
and potentially harmed any communities, but, well. You don’t know if something will succeed
until you try it.

The plan was rickety, on splintering scaffolding, but if every single thing fell into place, it would
go swimmingly.

If something went wrong, well. It would not.

Remus had to commend Bellatrix for her creativity. But he was determined to wipe it out with a
smile.

After breakfast, of which Henrik donned an apron with the graphics of a nude body that he found
hilarious and made everybody french toast, and Esmeralda poured the coffee and pretended to not
see Sirius drip a flask of whisky into his, the witches set off for 9:30 to give themselves a bit of
leeway on the twelve hours.

Remus caught Pandora by the arm before she left. Sirius and Lily were somewhere upstairs, it was
just the two of them.

“Dora,” he whispered, sort of quickly, eyeing Henrik and Esmeralda who were laughing, walking
down the path in the front yard. She turned to him.

“What is it, Remus?”

“I need to know,” he said, biting his lip, “that we’re on the same page. That our top priority is this
Horcrux. And surviving to destroy the next.”

Her eyebrows twitched slightly, but she betrayed no emotion. Just nodded.

“Of course,” she said.

“I need to know that you understand that… that if worse comes to worse, and we need to leave for
London directly from the island—” he cut off, eyes flickering through the door to the backs of the
two witches and then back to Pandora. His grip slackened on her arm. And her face slackened in
realisation. “You understand our priorities?”

She sighed. Remus thinned his lips. It is not like he wished for it to come to this either. But he sees
what is most important and what is, admittedly, less so. Through his tinted eyes.

Killing Riddle is more important than anything. Anything.

After a moment, Pandora nodded.

“You understand?”

“I understand,” she breathed. He nodded. “I know. If… if worse comes to worst.”

Remus exhaled. He nodded, again, and gestured for her to go; instead of doing this, Pandora
stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug.

He reciprocated immediately. It was a knee-jerk reflex, the way he cared for her like that of a
sister. He hugged her tighter. She was soft and she was gentle and she was kind, Pandora.

“I’ll see you tonight,” she whispered into his ear. Pulling back, she squeezed comforting two hands
on his shoulders. She smiled. “Big day.”

“See you later,” he said.

And then she turned and was gone, the door shutting behind her.

Remus would have to be fetched from home at about half past ten that evening, Sirius and Lily
required to meet them on the (frozen) shore of the island at midnight, but until then they were free,
alone in the hut, preparing themselves for the night to come.

So, of course, they ended up playing Monopoly.

The game lasted three whole hours until both the boys went bankrupt and Lily prevailed, to which
it was about midday, and so they had a timely three-way-sous-chef lunch that consisted of Sirius
cooking the chicken, Lily chopping and roasting the veggies, and Remus making the rice, which
was a lovely meal they ate together outside with a glass of Swedish wine they’d found in
Esmeralda’s cupboard. They talked, about everything; while the air still lay a bit cold between
Sirius and Remus, Lily and her perpetual sunlight warmed the frostiness up. She quizzed Sirius on
his past, fascinated with his interlinking with history over all of those years, and the three of them
sort of temporarily forgot everything happening in their lives, the turmoil and the loss. In the gentle
breeze they shared thoughts, on TV shows, literature, politics, nature, flowers. Art history and their
favourite painters. The state of the world outside their grieving bubble. The Lilies growing in the
pot on the windowsill that Lily had sniffed every morning for the past two weeks, for she loved the
scent of her namesake, even though Remus and Sirius thought the smell was rancid.

They drove to Luleå for the afternoon at around 2—Sirius driving Henrik’s car that he’d
schmoozed his way into being able to use—just to pass the time, get something to eat, sightsee.
They spent about two hours there, maybe, and then they drove back down to the harbour which
was another half hour drive, and ended up on the island to do a last little scope out, except it fell a
bit flat and they ended up sitting on the beach—or, Remus ended up sitting on the beach, watching
Lily and Sirius run after each other, Lily attempting to shoot fireballs at him and Sirius dodging out
of the way, every time.

It almost seemed like the wider her smile grew, the more powerful her fire flickered. She was
magnificent, red hair blowing in the breeze as Sirius tried to catch her out; he said something that
she obviously found quite horribly funny, as she snort-laughed, summoning the fire into her palm
and letting it go seamlessly and it actually skimmed him, burning the skin on the side of his arm
before dissipating into air.

Sirius picked her up from behind and tried to throw her in the ocean, and she burnt him again. It
made them laugh harder.

It made Remus laugh, too.

They returned home at about 7. They’d gone very early, Sirius and Lily didn’t have to be there
until midnight, and so they returned home for a few hours, intending to set off at 10; Lily went for
a nap, and so did Remus, except he didn’t sleep. He just laid in bed, staring at the ceiling, until
Sirius came and wordlessly clambered on to lie his head on his chest, directly over his heart.

They did not speak. They had not spoken; not about… well, the inevitable. The morning after
they’d gone through the motions again. Sirius had left for a whole afternoon (which worried
Remus sick) and came back with blood on his bottom lip and a clearer mind and they had just…
continued on. Because what else are you supposed to do?

Sirius laid his head on Remus’ chest and, eventually, he moved his hand up to run his fingers
through his hair, and that is where they stayed until Sirius nudged him, saying he’d probably have
to get up and go about now, and Remus, bleary-eyed, wondered if he’d slept afterall. He had had
no dreams.

July fifth, July sixth; July tenth, 8 and 9 and 10pm.

Sirius, standing outside, backpack on. Lily already in the car. Remus at the front door.

They stared at each other. So close, so far.

And then he sighed heavily, so very heavily, and strode forward, taking Remus’ cheeks in between
two hands and kissing him with reverence. It was a tongue and a heart and a soul, or two, or three,
and Remus sighed into it; he melted into it stroking a thumb over his hands, covering them on his
face.

Foreheads together, eyes closed. Breathing each other's air. They stood.

“Sirius, I–” Remus started, but his throat closed up. Sirius opened his eyes and looked at him,
pulling back just far enough so their faces could be in focus. Remus swallowed down the lump in
his throat and tried again. “I– I just…”

“I know, Remus,” Sirius murmured.

Remus looked at him, and deflated. Nodded.

He was beautiful even in his sorrow. Remus would always think it. Those grey eyes, searching for
something familiar; he seemed to find it rather easily. Remus wondered if he’d ever find it again.
Sirius’ gaze might be enough to hold him over, though.

He held him.

“I’ll see you at midnight,” Sirius whispered, bottom lip wet, the ice on the floor, the blood in his
mouth.

“See you at midnight,” Remus whispered back.

Kissed him once more, and let him go.

July 10th, 2021; 9:46pm.

Dorcas,

I don’t know what I’m doing, writing to you. It’s not like you’ll ever read it. But Lily has been
telling me to do this for weeks, and you were always the first one to tell me to stop being cynical, so
I guess I’ll just see where this takes me.

You’ve been gone for over a month. I just realised this, now, writing down the date at the top of
this page. It’s been a whole month.
It doesn’t feel real, still. I think removing myself was the best and possibly the worst thing I
could’ve done, because while we’re being productive here and I’m getting closer to avenging you
and killing him for good, it’s also provided a sort of dreamscape in which it’s sunny 22 hours a day
and every step I take is one I’ve never taken before and I can still pretend that you’re back in New
York, or that you’re in London, or that you’re somewhere and I’m going to come back to you
eventually. But I’m not.

God, I miss you. I miss you like nobody has ever missed anything before. I have so much to tell you.
Did you know I’m a werewolf? Dormant. And my dad was a hunter, can you fucking believe it?
You always used to say I was born for what we do, do you remember? Always thought it was
insane how easily I adapted. I’m not surprised you had your doubts. You knew me inside out, even
more than I did, apparently.

There’s more. There’s so much more to say. I killed my dad, I think. I killed Moody. I didn’t mean
to, for either, but I’m also as of current not sorry about either of them. Moody might hit me in a
month or two. But I’ve got so much hitting me that my skin has gone numb.

He lied. He took my memories and he took me away from the safety that I deserved—I think I
deserved it, you would tell me I deserved it, I deserved it—and that hurts. It hurts. I’m a werewolf,
and I’ve always been a werewolf, and so now everything that has ever happened in my life is in a
different light. Everything I look at is tainted. Like, this is why, and that’s why, none of it is
because of me but because of something I am. My father chose hunting over his child and twenty
two years later I’m here, ten years into a career that I thought I loved in which it seemed like all I
had and I don’t think I’ve ever hated it more. I feel sick to my stomach. I think you would too.

I’m also a Horcrux. If we’re doing a life catch-up. It was an accident, of course. Latched itself onto
me ‘cause I killed Dumbledore. And I’ve resigned myself to it. You’d hate me for that, of course.
But you’re not here. I don’t know what else you expect me to do, Dorcas. Even if I didn’t die now
I’d die in ten, twelve years, I’d rot like Dumbledore did, and I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to
wither away. To choose, for myself, to choose to die and to do it for the good of thousands,
hundreds of thousands… it feels right. It feels like the right thing to do. It’s the next right thing to
do.

The only things holding me back, now that you’re gone, are Sirius and Mary.

I’ve done and said some shitty things, I think. I don’t know… Dorcas, I don’t know who I am
anymore. Sirius doesn’t. He says he still does but I can tell that me pushing him away is working
and it makes me feel like I’m fucking dying. But I can’t handle it. I can’t handle anything. It’s like I
close up, my throat closes when he loves me and my mouth is on fire when he kisses me and it all
comes down to the fact that I know he can make me change my mind. I know he can make me stay.

And I’m so scared of that. I’ve never been more scared of anything in my entire life.

I don’t know what to do. You’d know what to do. Please, Dorcas, I miss you like a lung. Every
internal organ beats but I’m not here, they could be gone, I miss you and I miss the part of me you
took. Without it I’m drowning. I don’t know anything else.

I miss you. Please come back. I’m so sorry I’m so sorry I’m so sorry I’m so

He didn’t sign it off. Couldn’t.

Chapter End Notes

okay so I flipped back and forth a lot on remus's actions this chapter, and how people
might perceive them. I was slightly worried that I might hurt some people by depicting
him being what is objectively quite cruel to sirius at points, deflective and doing
objectively hurtful things, like the list. but at the same time I think it's very real. you
might notice he never says i love you back to sirius throughout this chapter, and in the
letter to dorcas he writes how fucking terrified he is becauase he's stuck in this idea
that he's going to sacrifice himself for the greater good, he's had his whole past ripped
away from him and lost control of everything, it's the only choice he has control of and
the ONLY – seriously, only – way he's coping, by giving himself a purpose, by
latching onto that. he hates the fact that people love him and the fact that despite
everything he, too, continues to love because it makes it Harder. so when he says these
cruel things to sirius or blows up at him he is trying to simply make sirius love him
less, so that it's easier when he has to go. I suppose the point I'm trying to make here is
that remus's trauma doesn't make him a bad person, but he can do shitty things
simultaneously and still be loved viscerally and tangibly, which he is. I know there are
very harmful tropes and depictions out there of traumatised characters and I just
wanted to sort of... draw attention to the complexity of this situation in particular, and
make you aware that I'm treating him with as much care as possible and am also open
to any conversations people might want to have. this might not have been necessary
but it clears my mind a little bit to have it here because the LAST thing I want to do is
unintentionally upset anyone. xxxxx
 twenty seven
Chapter Summary

sweden, part two

Chapter Notes

welcome to the caves, my friends!

CW's:
– everything you usually experience in the fic in general (like violence, blood, injuries,
etc)
– near-drowning
– near-death (i know this happens very often but i mean it this time)

that might be it. just be aware it's a very action packed chapter! we're in the caves!!
ahh!!!!

enjoy, my loves xxx

11:12P.M.

The sky was in civil twilight, being dim but light enough that Remus was able to see and exist as
prior normal without artificial light. The dimness, however, made the scene that tiny bit more
frightening.

Remus, though growing into adulthood around magic and witches, had very purposefully stayed
out of the specificities of ritual spells, for they were magnanimously difficult and required a huge
amount of effort that he would usually be no help in. However, he knew the basics, and so when he
made it to the small mound of short grass besides the lapping waters, he was unsurprised to see the
circles of blood, the runes drawn into the ground and dug up, and the open-top lanterns lit with fire
that seemed to spark green and purple as the wind wafted at them.

There were hordes of symbols and concoctions spread out across the ground that Remus did not
understand. Within the circle were four marks, drawn in a grey substance that Pandora still had
staining her fingers, and this was where he was directed to stand, as the time hit 11:13 and the sun
officially began its descent under the horizon.

Pandora stood in front of him, mud on her face, her hair up in a bun of curls and unfamiliar words
written in Latin up her arm. She pressed two fingers of each hand to his temples, and told him to
close his eyes.

He did.
Whatever warmth of a spell she cast shot through his head and down his neck like a trickle of hot
water. The air smelled like pine and saltwater; he inhaled, slowly, and Pandora murmured
something, and she took her hands away. It felt like a loss. But he was still buzzing.

“You can open your eyes, Remus.”

He opened them, and there was the moon.

Sitting on the top of the horizon—quite genuinely right on there, white reflection rippling out onto
the docile waters, it looked no different than a full moon—it was a full moon—except it had not
been there a minute ago, and now it was. And Remus felt like he was seeing the world through
roses.

“Can you see the moon?”

“How—” he choked, frowning, unable to take his eyes off of it. She looked behind her, following
his gaze. But she could not see what he saw. “How did you…”

“No time for questions,” she said. “I only gave you what’s always been yours.”

It was a New Moon. The moon was not there. But it was there. There was a metaphor in there,
somewhere.

So, his job was, essentially, to look at the moon. And to stand there. And to be channelled from.

The hums of growing fires were complex, a hand in a hand in a hand in a hand, the tides moved in
and out in the cyclical nature that the moon gave them, and something felt cyclical inside of him,
too. Remus felt, inexplicably, like he was always supposed to end up here.

The tides grew angrier, and the water splashed against his feet.

It was terribly cold.

11:58P.M.

Remus felt like he’d slept for hours the moment the final sheet of ice creaked over the surface of
the water.

It had been forty six minutes.

“Oh, shit,” Pandora murmured, holding his hand to one side. She did not let him go as she stepped
forward, kneeling down to observe as the ice seemed to form from the bottom up, creaking into
place like rusty hinges, it came from a core, came rushing at them like something of a threat or a
desperate angel; the last tides threw themselves over the solid ice, and the magic caught up with
them as they went.

A blue sheen around the liquid. It turned into ice in mid-air, as Pandora reached out her hand—the
droplets froze a centimetre from her fingers in an almost perfect stereotypical wave.

She snapped a bit off. Dropped it.

The bay was frozen.

Pandora dropped Remus’ hand and Esmeralda dropped it on the other side at the exact same time,
as if a switch had been flicked, and as Henrik shuffled out of the circle to proccupy himself with
something to maintain the spell Esmeralda checked her watch, and looked up at the two of them,
her face dim and haloed in orange from the fire.

“You have two hours,” she said. “Go.”

Pandora grabbed onto Remus’ hand, and before he could even blink, everything went black.

12:00A.M.

He almost threw up when they landed on the sand, but he didn’t, so that was a win.

His knees definitely buckled, however—he’s not good with apparition, you know this—and his
vision clouded, but not enough to not see Sirius and Lily get up from where they had been sitting
on a rock and rush towards them.

“You did it,” Lily breathed, as she approached, looking out at the frozen bay. The air was freezing
around them, and clouds had started to swirl. Though Remus could still see the moon. “Holy shit. I
can’t believe that worked?”

“It’ll only last two hours,” said Pandora, “and that’s if we’re lucky, so we have to go.”

Sirius, ignoring all of this, fell to his knees in front of Remus.

“Hey,” he whispered, cupping his face. Remus took a deep breath and felt his body jerk into place
again. “You okay?”

He nodded. Oddly, enough, he was okay. Both he and Sirius had thought that the ritual would
either exhaust him, or charge him to the maxes, but really, all he felt was… cleansed.

Enlightened. Almost happy. As if a severed connection had been tied together, and the electricity
was sparking out of him and onto the grass.

“I can see the moon,” he whispered. He had tried to say yes, but it was all that had come out. Sirius
blinked.

“You can—” he looked up at Pandora, “what?”

“No time,” she hissed, beginning to walk, “no time, no time, no time.”

“Big day, big day, big day,” Remus murmured, lips curling into a grin.

Sirius took one look at him, scoffed what was almost a laugh, and they stood up together.

They began to walk.

The island being as small as it was, the cave was no more than a seven minute walk through the
spruce forest and a small hike down a rocky hill. The entrance felt a bit horribly ominous; it was an
opening hidden behind a weeping willow that they had to duck to get into, but once inside and
down in the depths the place was a lot bigger than it looked.
Stalactites hung from the ceiling and glowed fluorescent as Lily lit a meagre flame in the palm of
her hand, Sirius holding a lantern and Pandora casting a light spell, flickering gently from her
hands. Regardless of all the artificial light they had, it still felt dim. It still felt cold.

Remus felt rather dull, actually. It washed over him like a cologne.

“Do you feel that?” Pandora whispered, nudging him. “This place sucks the magic out of you. But
if you really try, you can feel the Horcrux. It’s definitely here.”

He frowned, hopping over a rock ledge and holding onto the ceiling above him to jump down and
continue their journey, and at first the dullness overcompensated, and then it simmered and he
realised that yes, oh yes, yes he could. Like lava bubbling at the bottom of a pit, granite lodged in
the the grazes of his palms, an eternal stinging. It was here.

He was almost giddy.

They made it through the rough parts to what looked like an open tomb, something biblical. Sirius
ducked underneath the small opening first, then Lily, then Remus, Pandora behind him. This room
was circular, lit with two torches on the walls, and he knew, immediately, this was the room
Andromeda had been in.

The bowl was on a podium in the centre of the room. The knife, silver and glimmering, placed
beside it.

Sirius took a deep breath in.

Turned to them.

“Well, I guess that’s me,” he muttered.

Stepping up to the podium, he looked into the bowl. It was white, made of marble or pearl or
something, with rather Romanesque accentuations. He picked up the knife with his other hand.
Hesitated, for a moment, and then held his palm out over the bowl and sliced it open, letting the
blood pool and drip, tainting the ancient artefact.

Something rumbled; Remus jumped, looking up, as dust fell from the ceiling. Sirius put the knife
down, balling his hand into a fist and squeezing the blood out, and it stopped. A crack appeared at
the top of the ceiling, and Remus thought they were done for, and then it tracked down the
opposite side of the wall and split off, forming an arch.

The wall pulled itself apart. It was an opening.

Sirius splayed his hand out, and his cut was healed.

“Okay,” Pandora breathed, as he stepped down. Remus took Sirius’ hand, making sure it was okay
in the odd magical climate, and then locked eyes with Lily. Solemn and red-faced against the dim
light, she looked scared, but her chin was up, morale was on. Dora approached the entrance.

“Okay,” said Lily, nodding. “Well, one down. Three to go.”

“Gods help us,” murmured Pandora, slipping into the dark room soundlessly.

The second room was less pristine than the others, more rocky; rocky walls and one torch mounted
on the wall behind a dark wooden table that was littered with what looked like ingredients.
The cavern walls were covered in runes. As Remus stepped in, he noticed that on either side of the
table were two cauldrons, adding up to four, and the room had an oddly medical smell. Something
minty and highly acidic.

Pandora examined the runes on the walls, whilst Lily went straight for the table. Remus turned
around a few times to take it all in; in the darkness some of the runes were hard to make out, but
Sirius slotted in beside him and held up his lantern as he looked.

“Hey,” he said, voice echoing in the hollow cave, pointing at a rune in front of him, “that’s anti-
apparition, isn’t it, Dora?”

She turned and hopped over to have a look for herself.

“Mhm,” she said.

“Is it blanketed?”

“...No,” she said, after squinting at it for a moment. “Conditional for this room.”

“So if we destroyed it, could we just use this room to get out?”

Pandora frowned, and then held out her hand. It sparked golden for a minute and then the rune sort
of pulled out of the wall, like a hologram or an astral-projection of the original. She turned it in the
air and then let it fade back in.

“No,” she said, somewhat sadly. “It’s been here for too long, the make-up is too strong.”

“Too long?” asked Sirius, as Remus moved over to join Lily at the table, peering into the
cauldrons. “Hasn’t it only been here for a month?”

“Do they look like they’ve been here for a month? This cave must have had a magical purpose long
before Bellatrix invaded it.”

Sirius sighed. Ah. Of course.

It would be Bellatrix to taint magic that was not hers to be tainted.

Remus heard Sirius walk up behind him, as he was peering into the cauldrons. They were filled to
the near-brim with potions. One of them was a still, dark blue, and one a rippling, aggressive thick
black. He turned, and Pandora had made it to the table, so Remus shuffled over.

Observing. Concentrating. Two hours, two hours, two hours.

The table was littered, as aforementioned, with what looked like potions ingredients. The lab
equipment was plentiful, racks on racks of test tubes with odd, colourful substances in them, boxes
of things like crushed wyvern claws and diced eye of newt, beakers upon beakers of water and
empty measuring jugs, piles of roots of varying colours, things that were bubbling and things that
were not. There were protective laboratory eye glasses, which felt a bit like a piss-take, to be
honest. There was even a microscope, and some petri dishes.

Pandora exhaled.

“Okay,” she whispered, eyes whipping frantically over the table, and then over at the cauldrons.
“I’m presuming they want us to create the antidotes to the potions in those cauldrons. Sirius, can
you identify any of them?”
He moved, crouching down between each one and examining it with the lantern above his head.
Pandora picked up various tubes and put them down, swirled around beakers, flourished her hands
to cast spells that didn’t seem to be doing anything.

“They’re blocking my detection magic,” she muttered. She turned to locate what Remus guessed
would be the rune in question.

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Remus, I don’t know what half of these are,” she said, sounding, for the first time, slightly
panicked.

He licked his lips, and nodded.

“Okay,” he said, trying to sound comforting, “well, we’ll figure it out. We’ve got this. You’ve got
this.”

“I fucking hope so,” she said, swirling around a beaker, and it was at this moment that Lily opened
one of the four drawers down the side of the table and proceeded to yelp and jump back.

All three of them turned to her, panic shooting right through them. Her mouth had fallen open,
though she did not look horrified, more shocked, as she hadn’t been expecting whatever was in the
drawer. She tugged at it, pulling it open again, and the three of them peered down to have a look.

There was a severed human arm in the drawer. Hand still attached.

Lily, breathing heavily, slammed it shut and, carefully, opened the next one down. There were
more. There were bones, guts; Remus, though no stranger to violence, started to feel a tad
nauseous, especially when Lily opened the third drawer and there were body parts that had totally
or at least heavily decomposed placed alongside what looked like a still-beating heart. Evidently
under a preservation spell. There were at least four stomachs, all in separate compartments so they
didn’t intermingle, and some had samples of hair on top of it, some were labelled in numbers, some
standalone. The smell was horrific; he had to press the back of his wrist to his mouth to stop
himself from gagging.

Lily shut the last drawer. Looked up at Pandora.

“Sirius,” said Pandora, dangerously, “did you identify any of them?”

He inhaled, sharply.

“Only… the black one,” he said, gesturing to the bubbling black potion that Remus had seen
earlier. “This—it’s necromantic. It’s a vampiric potion. It used to be a punishment, for me and
Reg,” he scratched the back of his neck, and laughed, hollow but somehow filling the entire room.
“It poisons us. We called it dead man’s flesh, because it rots you from the inside, but obviously we
compulsively heal, so you never die. You just have these horrible, horrible muscle spasms,
continuous fits and convulsions, eventual seizures. The only thing that helps is lying in the dark.
Complete sensory deprivation.” He bit his lip, and huffed. “My mother used to use it on me to get
me out of the way. Makes sense that Bella would have it.”

“What’s the end goal? If you have no antidote?”

“Dormancy,” said Sirius, shrugging, “eventually. After about… two weeks I think it’s supposed to
be, you fall into dormancy. Though I suppose it’s just death. It’s dormancy, but… you never wake
up.
“That sounds like it could be an alteration of living death,” Pandora said, turning to him. “Potions
in which the end goal is suspended animation are always somehow interlinked.”

He nodded.

“I suppose. It’s rare. I haven’t seen it in five hundred years.”

“Living death,” she murmured, completely ignoring him, turning and pacing, “living death. A
potion that causes muscle spasms and convulsions.”

She listed a few names, muttering to herself, but shook her head, none of them fit.

“Doxy hyperostosis?” Remus put forth, putting his potions hunting course to use.

“Did your bones break?” she asked Sirius.

“No.”

“Then no,” she said. “DP breaks your bones.”

“What about Weedosoros? That causes convulsions?”

“The antidote to that is just a salt-soaked diospyrobezoar, though,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “I
feel like it’d be too easy?”

Lily, who had been very quiet, had picked up a little corked glass bottle filled with small blue
pills.

She rattled them a little bit. Frowned to herself.

“Did it affect your stomach?” asked Pandora.

“Couldn’t keep anything down,” said Sirius.

“Then we’ll probably have to use samples of one of these,” she said, opening the stomach drawer.
She had opened her mouth to say something else and then Lily’s head snapped up, looking at him.

“Could you breathe?” she asked, sharply.

Sirius raised his eyebrows.

“I—” he frowned, scratching his head, “Well, I don’t have to breathe—”

“I know,” she said, “but if you tried, would you have been able to breathe or would you have had
respiratory issues?”

Sirius took a moment to contemplate this.

“I don’t think I could,” he replied, eventually, “no.”

“How agitated were you?”

“I had to be put into sensory deprivation,” said Sirius, “so, very.”

She blinked, deep in thought. Rattled the bottle once more, and then leaned onto the table, scouring
it for something.
“What, Lily?” asked Remus, watching her search. She paused, turned to him, and held up the
bottle.

“This is Diazepam,” she said. Remus went to ask why that was important but she stepped back,
opening the drawers on the other side, so all three of them moved to let her do her thing.

She opened a drawer, slammed it, opened another, slammed it. The third one she opened she
gasped, placing the Diazepam on the desk and rummaging through a bunch of labelled ziplock
bags, until she found what she wanted.

Standing up, Lily had a bag with what looked like tree bark in her hand.

“What the hell is that?” asked Sirius.

“Oak,” she said, placing it on the table. “To make Tannic Acid.”

“To make what?”

“Strychnine poisoning,” she said, giddy, looking over all three of them, “I’m almost positive the
potion utilises strychnine poisoning. Muscle convulsions, respiratory problems, eventual death,
that’s all it. This is what we use to treat it.” She held up the pills. “Diazepam is an anticonvulsant; I
can make tannic acid from the oak which would oxidise the potion, I’m sure there’s some charcoal
in here somewhere—”

“You think it’s a mix of both?” asked Pandora, as she rummaged. After a moment Lily gasped, and,
from a bowl of what looked like 20 little tubs, pulled out one filled to the brim with fine charcoal.

She looked at her.

“This is just chemistry, Dora,” she said, laughing. “It’s just chemistry.”

Dora’s lips curled upwards.

“Sirius, use this pipet,” Lily commanded, handing him one, “and get me a sample of the potion.
Don’t touch it. Dora, if you work on the living death antidote, I can work on this— but–” she
paused, turning to her. Faltering. “Tannic acid takes hours to make.”

“I can speed it up,” said Pandora, pulling an infusion of wormwood towards her.

“Will that work?”

“It’s going to have to,” she said, putting on the eyeglasses.

Sirius squeezed the sample onto a petri dish and placed it under the microscope, as the two of
them, essentially, got to work.

Remus, to stay out the way, tried his hand at identifying any of the other potions, but he fell rather
short except for the fact that the smell of one of them reminded him very much of Pandora’s
Basilisk potion, which she noted. It was fifteen minutes later that Lily had the oak shredded, had
her eye in the microscope while Pandora was pouring something purple and gooey into a bowl.
Remus eyed the drawers with the body parts. He eyed the black, bubbling potion.

“Hey,” he said, “does Living Death work on vampires?”

“Yeah,” said Pandora, muffled as she had a pencil in her mouth, “but not for long. Maybe two
hours or so.”
“What about your poison? Is it just for humans?”

Lily looked at him as if he was fucking stupid.

He cringed. “Right. Stupid question, you wouldn’t know. I– what I’m saying is, considering the
potion is made for vampires and obviously works on them, do you think the straight-up poison
would be strong enough?”

Lily raised an eyebrow at him, again. “Remus, what the hell are you talking about?”

“I—”

He groaned, simply leaning down to pull out the drawer with the stomachs inside, and pointed at
them. Gave her a very poignant look.

“How do you poison a vampire?” he whispered. “You poison its food.”

She looked down. All of the organs seemed to have had different causes of death, at different
stages of decay, and they were all labelled. A, B, C, D. Remus eyed the test tubes on the third row
of the rack; there were four labelled accordingly, filled with blood, and hair samples in a box
underneath. All labelled. A, B, C, D.

“They’d have had to have killed a human this way first,” she murmured, “and then used them to
make the potion effective. So, the antidote would have to contain the blood of whichever person
here died of Strychnine poisoning.”

Remus smiled, and cocked his head.

“Assistant to the medical examiner,” he said, flourishing his hand to the open drawer, “examine.”

Lily looked at him, eyes wide, gloves on; something about her felt comfortable. Even in this
horrible, horrible cave, she was in her element.

She smiled, and the flames seemed to burn brighter.

It took her another fifteen minutes to determine which organ had befallen the poisoning they were
looking for—she wiped off two of them rather quickly (one had died from cardiac arrest, one,
presumably, from natural causes) but the last two were very similarly poisoned. She ran her fingers
over it, under all of the flaps—it made Remus feel rather nauseous, to be honest, but Sirius was
intrigued—and, eventually, she determined that it was person C. Warily. But wariness would have
to do.

In the meantime, Remus had taken over the task of stirring the antidote—four times clockwise,
five times anticlockwise, count to thirty and then repeat—as Pandora had had to take over Lily’s
own jobs, mostly being the production of the tannic acid, which didn’t seem to be doing anything
even despite Pandora’s magic. She was starting to get visibly frustrated, and only slightly panicked.
If they couldn’t speed it up, they wouldn’t be able to pass.

Lily stood up, halfway through her examination, when Pandora inquired about something, and she
held the rim of the bowl. It was Sirius who noticed the water begin to stir, and colourise a little bit
more—Lily released her hand, and it simmered again. But the process had been sped up. She
blinked.

“What the hell was that?” asked Pandora, and Lily put her hand over the bowl again.
Even with her blue surgical gloves on, you could see the tinge of red emanating from her hands,
and the process began to speed up again. Flames coming out of seemingly nowhere licked up the
bowl and settled there, flickering, spinning the oak around and around; and after a minute, when
Lily dropped her hand, the flames still lingered.

She exhaled.

“That was your…” Sirius started, gaping. And she nodded.

“I know,” she said, nodding once. Looking sort of dazed. She closed her eyes, exhaled in utter
relief, and Remus noticed a breath of “thank you” tumble from her lips up to the sky.

When the antidote was done—forming a sort of blue liquid, probably from the crushed Diazepam,
or at least it looked like it—Pandora carried it over to the cauldron, the three of them leaning over
to witness.

“It should go clear,” she said, her voice shaking slightly. For if they messed this one up, it was
over. “It should go clear.”

“Clear,” Remus repeated, nodding. Sirius crossed his fingers.

She poured the liquid into the cauldron, and when it intermingled it looked almost like the
sensation of pouring milk into black coffee. And then, as the rest of it went in, it mangled into a bit
of a purple, and then a brown, swirling and bubbling around itself. Eventually, the pigment began
to settle.

It turned clear.

All four of them let out a relieved breath, Sirius a sort of bark of triumphant laughter; Lily jumped
into his arms and he spun her around, whilst Remus leaned his head onto Pandora’s and patted her
on the back. God knows she deserved it.

Things went a lot smoother for the last three. As it turns out, they had picked the hardest one to do
first, which might have been a mistake, for when Lily and Pandora fell into their routine they were
abominably good at what they did. Sirius procuring the samples for them to unwork under the
microscope, theories being thrown back and forth that Remus and Sirius barely understood. The
two of them worked as personal assistants anyway, as Lily had to examine two more bodies, chop
up a mouldy carrot and mix Arsenic with Sodium Bicarbonate and another chemical component
that had a seven syllable name Remus could not even attempt to pronounce.

Pandora, on the other hand, worked with the magical ingredients, though they definitely crossed
over; Pandora, giving her advice on ways she’d projected magical techniques onto human
resources before, and Lily, piping up with things she’d picked up at home, reminding Pandora of a
certain technique she used when creating the Basilisk potion that cut their prep time for potion
three, which ended up containing a mimic venom from a creature closely related to the Basilisk, in
half.

The second potion turned clear, and then the third. By the time the fourth was ready, it had been
almost an hour. Lily had an indescribable amount of juices on her hands and the bottom of
Pandora’s hair was singed, as was Sirius’ sleeve. But the air was warmer again.

The last antidote needed 50ml of water to be added, and then it would be done and they’d be able
to progress. Out of the beakers of water provided, there were two left, both unlabelled. Lily picked
one up, and, against the torch behind it, it glinted something strange.
She went to pour it.

“Wait—” choked Remus, grabbing her arm; a drop of the liquid fell out of the beaker but missed
the cauldron by an inch. Lily blinked.

“What?”

He stared. Took the beaker out of her hands, and raised it, looking at it through the light.

Exhaling in relief and almost shock, he put it down.

“That’s laced with Doxy venom,” he said, breathless. “It’s colourless. But it’d ruin the potion.”

The three of them blinked in realisation.

“Holy shit— that was close,” Lily muttered, clutching at her heart; for they were so close, and to
ruin it now when they’d come so far—

He locked eyes with Sirius, who was smiling at him. Gently.

Pandora made him check out the other beaker, which, after examination, was in fact water; Lily
poured their measurement in, and Remus stood next to her as Pandora poured the fourth antidote
into the potion, squeezing her hand, ridden with nerves.

It went clear.

The ceiling cracked above them—a good few rocks fell this time, Sirius nudging Remus out of the
way of them—and the crack split off to their right, to the wall on that side, in which the same thing
as the last compartment happened; it formed an arch, and then the wall pulled itself apart, the rock
disappearing to form their entranceway. Light spilled from the next room through the open
archway, and they all looked at each other, triumphant, but wary.

“We’re halfway done,” said Sirius. He ruffled Lily’s hair and pulled Pandora into a side-hug.
“Never let me underestimate witches ever, ever again.”

They both laughed, and Remus led the way into the cave, this time.

01:03A.M.

SUNRISE: 01:57.

Remus did not like this room as soon as he walked into it.

A strange sense of ominousness washed over him, a cold sweat and something that felt akin to a
heart breaking. As much as the previous rooms were dark, and gloomy, this one felt… fatal. It felt
like the happiness was draining out of him like the plug in a bathtub, swirling like a whirlpool into
nothing. And, to top it off, Lily shuddered beside him. Nowthat doesn’t happen.

Pandora gulped, nervous, and slotted in next to him, looking around.

“I don’t like this,” she whispered. Voicing everyones thoughts

The room was dark, lit only by a single torch shining so far above their heads it barely did
anything. There were a few runes on the walls, the anti-apparition one that Remus had clocked and
some others; this one was more stereotypically cave-like than the rest, the high ceiling covered in
stalactites, and the walls jagged and rocky. Remus ran a hand over one of them and the rock
crumbled and fell to the floor, with a resounding clatter. He turned.

“Is there anything in here?” he asked. His voice echoed.

“Here,” said Lily, a figure somewhere diagonal right; he could see her outline but he followed her
voice as opposed to her figure, as it was so dim. When he got there, he could see—his eyes
adjusting ever so slightly—all four of them were there, and Lily had a piece of parchment in her
hand that had been slotted on a rock. She pulled it to her face, squinted, and then sighed and
snapped her fingers.

Nothing happened.

She hesitated, and then snapped them again. Nothing happened. She turned to Pandora.

“Dora, cast a light spell,” she said, and Pandora raised her hands, and it was dark.

She frowned.

She cast something else; it looked like a simple warding spell. The gold shimmer came as normal
out of her hands.

“They’ve blocked off any light-bringing spells,” she said. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Here,” said Sirius, who, of course, had the best eyesight of all of them. He took the piece of
parchment and brought it to his face, squinting. His face relaxed as his eyes ran over the words.

“It’s in French,” he said, softly. Remus tried to peer over to look but couldn’t make out the words.

“What’s it say?”

“Oeil pour oeil,” he murmured, “dent pour dent… eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth…”

Remus felt cold wash over him.

“Un coeur… a…a heart for a heart…” he licked his lips. Exhaled, slowly. “A soul for a soul.”

Oh, God.

“Vous avez dix minutes,” he muttered, dropping his hands harshly. The paper rustled. “You have
ten minutes.”

Silence.

“One of us has to die,” Pandora said, slowly.

A painful… painful silence.

“Fucking Bella,” Sirius muttered. “Should’ve expected it.”

He moved to pace, agitated, into the darkness; Remus watched his body move, and felt the cold
rush all over him like an ice shower. He couldn’t look at Lily or Pandora.
It was all too obvious.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Lily said, gently. As if voicing his thoughts.

He turned to her. Sirius stopped pacing.

“What?”

She shrugged. “It should be me.”

Remus started. No, that was not his thought–

“Lily—” he said, dumbfounded.

“What do you mean?” asked Pandora.

“It should,” she said, “objectively. It can’t be Sirius. We need Pandora to get out of here, Remus
is…” she trailed off. Looked at him.

He smiled.

“The Horcrux?” he said, dryly.

“I was going to say the person who is going to win this for us.”

“By dying,” he said. “Two birds, one stone, guys.”

“No.”

Sirius. Booming, agitated, horrible, haunting.

Remus sighed.

“Sweetheart–”

“No.”

“Sirius—”

“Shut up,” he snapped. “Shut up. You dare say anything about your fucking choices—”

“It is–”

“No,” he said, shaking his head, “I’ll die. It’ll be me. It’s what she wants. At the end of the day,
Bella wants me and Regulus dead more than anything. Maybe she’ll spare you if it’s me. If I die.”

“Sirius,” said Remus, shaking his head. “There’s no way in hell I’m letting you do that.”

“There’s no way in hell I’m letting you do it!” he snapped. Remus blinked, aghast, and turned to
the girls and then back to him.

“Why?” he asked, breathly. “It’s going to be my fate anyway! I’m the least valuable of you all—”

“We’ll find another way–”

“There IS no other way!” Remus shouted, his voice echoing around the room. “There never has
been!”
“No,” said Sirius, shaking his head. “What will happen if we just– don’t? Ten minutes. What’s she
doing, counting us down on a goddamn timer–?”

“The shadows,” said Pandora, sort of dreamily. She raised a hand to point at the wall opposite
them. “They’re dancing.”

All three of them turned, slowly, to look where she was pointing. And sure enough, there were
flickers, shadows and movement on the walls that looked less like tricks of the light and more
like… sentience.

Sirius exhaled.

“Inferi,” he said.

Pandora nodded.

“I think so, yes.”

A beat.

“FUCK,” Sirius groaned, turning with his head in his hands. He kicked the wall, and dust crumbled
from the ceiling. Remus felt tears wash over his cheeks and was rather thankful it was too dark to
see.

“I have an idea,” said Lily, breaking the silence. She turned to Pandora. “I have an idea.”

“What is it?”

“Your magic is still there, right?” she asked. “It’s just the light spells that have been blocked off.”

“I believe so,” he said.

“And the–” she waved her hand around.

“Inferi.”

“Those,” she said, “they’re… like the ones you told us the dementors came from, right? Creatures
from the shadows on the walls.”

“Inferi can be materialised from many things,” said Pandora, nodding, “but, yeah, I’d say these two
are closely related.”

“So they’re not super sentient? They’re just, like, puppets of darkness? At their masters bidding?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“So,” she said, “if you were to, hypothetically, stop a person’s heart for as long as possible before
resuscitating, maybe– maybe they’d be tricked.”

Sirius turned.

“What are you saying? Trick the room?”

She shrugged, and crossed her arms. “Well, there’s no clause that states the person can’t die and be
resuscitated. Her own fault, really, for trying to be mysterious and giving us a riddle instead of clear
rules.”
Sirius stared at her. He blinked.

“You’re a genius,” he said, shaking his head, and then, to Pandora; “can you do that?”

“I–” she cut off. “I can try? But it’s difficult to– bring someone back.”

“Do you know how to do it?”

She nodded. “I’ve never done it before, but I do know the procedures. It’s– to prevent brain
damage, it’s–”

“Three minutes,” said Lily. “After three minutes of no oxygen to the brain you’re liable for brain
damage. But– if it’s enough… but who…”

“Do it on me,” said Remus, eyes flickering up from where they’d locked onto the floor.

He looked at Sirius. From what he could make out, he still wasn’t happy with this, but Remus, as
objectively the most human of them all (and that was a long stretch) seemed to be the best option.

“It makes sense,” he said. He turned to Pandora. “And I trust you. Do it on me.”

She sighed. Looked at Sirius, as if he would give her the answers; at Lily, and then back to him.
The both of them were poignantly silent.

“Okay,” she breathed, eventually, a will’o the wisp of nerves. “Alright. Lie down.”

She moved, along with Lily, to the centre of the room. Remus went to follow them, but Sirius
caught him by the sleeve.

“Promise me,” he said, low, grating. “You promise me you’ll come back.”

“I believe that all depends on what happens out there–”

“You know it doesn’t,” he said. He was pleading. Pleading. “Just– we can talk about your choices
in the future. About this, about us; Remus, we can talk it through. We can cross that bridge when
we come to it. But don’t make us cross it today. Promise me.” A moment of silence, and then, his
voice breaking: “Please, Remus.”

Remus looked at him. Sighed. He reached up and cupped Sirius’ face, pulled him in and kissed
him, softly.

“I promise,” he murmured against his lips.

They stayed there for a moment. Sirius’ aching was visceral.

And then: “Is this really the time?” Pandora called from over his shoulder. And Remus actually
smiled.

“It’s always the time, darling,” he said, pulling Sirius by the sleeve over to them and crouching
down. “I’m dead, anyway.”

Sirius looked away.

***

Lying down flat on his back on the ground, he could see nothing but jagged ceilings and haunting
figures. Pandora’s two hands were pressed to the centre of his chest, and Sirius had linked his
pinky with Remus’ in the darkness. It felt clandestine.

“If this doesn’t work–” he started, quietly. Lily shushed him.

“It will.”

“But if it doesn’t–”

“We will discuss it after,” said Sirius, firmly, and Remus sighed. Nodded.

“Three minutes,” said Pandora. “Lily, I’ll give you the signal to count down. Remus…” she
faltered. “I’m going to put you under, now. It’ll be like falling asleep.”

He nodded. She reached up with both hands, pressed four fingers to his temples. Brushed a hand
over his eyes.

The last thing he registered was Sirius squeezing his hand.

??:??A.M.

SUNRISE: ?#:%^A.M.

Remus opened his eyes to darkness.

He could feel nothing. He could see nothing. He could hear nothing. As if his body was detached
from his mind.

But he knew this one, he was familiar with it. He embraced it. Inhaled.

Something seemed to spurt against his eyes; he shut them again, and colours and shapes appeared,
like those that you see when you rub your eyes a little bit too hard. He felt himself materialise and
somehow simultaneously felt himself float away. There was a hot, iron fist on his chest, and a hook
around his navel, and when he opened his eyes he was somewhere entirely different, feet on the
ground, light spilling from windows to both sides of him. He inhaled.

He was in the ballroom.

The one at Whittaker.

It was long, and thin, just as he remembered it. Stain-glass windows. Unbroken. Unburnt. The
walls were lined with a silent vampire guard.

And, at the very end of the room, sat Tom Riddle.

None of the guard seemed to notice him at all, as he scanned his eyes over them, looked at the ones
closest and met their blank stares. But Riddle did. Remus took a step forward, his shoe clicking
against the glossy marble floor, and nobody moved, but Riddle—Tom Riddle, sitting in his robes
with his sceptre on his throne. His eyes widened. Remus might even say that he looked shocked.

It was odd. Shock did not work on his face. It was so carved and poised and young, Remus’ age or
younger; shock looked twisted, warped on him. Something so human on such an inhuman face was
bound to breed terror. He was young, and pristine, an uncanny valley; though he had something the
other vampires didn’t have. He had a weariness in his eyes. Bags underneath them, a specific way
that his face almost sunk into his bones like his exoskeleton was trying to absorb him. Remus had
never noticed, in the violence of the only time they’d met, that he’d given away all that was a part
of him. That he looked… ill.

And now, here was another one, standing at the end of his throne room. Disregarded by anyone.

Riddle stood up. None of the guards moved, or acknowledged him. He seemed to be perplexed by
this.

Remus took a step forward.

“You,” hissed Riddle, taking one step down the stairs. None of the guards moved. Not a sound.

“Me,” said Remus. “Hello, Tom.”

Riddle turned to look at his guard once more. And then he whirled around, back to Remus. He
snarled. Remus wasn’t scared of him; he didn’t even flinch.

“What is this?” he snapped, as his face cleared. “Is this real?”

Remus shrugged. “I’m not sure,” he replied, lightly. “See, my heart stopped, and I woke up here.
Seems oddly like something of yours stopped at the same time, though.” He gestured around to the
silent night. “Does this feel real to you?”

Riddle blinked at him. His stare was menacing. But Remus also, oddly, did not feel scared of him
anymore.

“I’m not scared of you anymore,” said Remus, voicing this. Finding himself smiling.

Everything was odd. This was odd. His soul felt content, he felt like he was floating.

And Tom Riddle snarled at him once more.

“I will ruin your life,” he spat.

“You already have,” hissed Remus, stepping forward.

All smiles dropped. The room almost got a little bit colder. His demeanour was freezing, evil
radiating around him, washed over him the colour of darkness of which he had never had a taste
but felt obliquely attracted to, enhanced by. Gripped by the day the blood had stained the marble of
this very floor. Months before that. Twenty-four years.

A soul for a soul. His soul was in the cave. But Riddle’s, inside of him, oh—Riddle’s had brought
him here.

“You can’t hurt me anymore,” said Remus, slowly. “You want to know why? Because I have the
power. Because I know that I can hurt you so much more than you can hurt me.”

Riddle blinked, his face utterly indignant.

“You insinuate you have power over me,” he said. And then his lips curled into a menacing smile.
“Me? I, who has magic? I, who has beasts?”

“No,” said Remus, laughing. He bit his lip. Shook his head, laughed a little bit more. “No, I don’t.
I’m telling you, Tom, that I have your power.”

Remus watched his face fall in realisation.

Out of nowhere, he felt a strange heaviness on his hip. Pulling back his jacket, he found the last
remaining Basilisk blade; Sirius had it, in the cave, and yet here it was. He unsheathed it, the
gorgeous thing, regal and shining and bleeding venom. Riddle eyed it.

He pressed the point against his finger, not deep enough to break skin, of course; enough to twirl it
in one hand. Watch as it glinted off of the natural lighting from wherever the hell they were. He
looked back up at Riddle.

“I could do it,” he said, “and then you’d have but two more. And my friends would find them, and
they’d hunt you down, and they’d rip you apart. Sirius Black, would rip you apart.”

He bit his lip, took another few, slow steps forward. Cocked his head.

“But fortunately for you,” he finished: “I made a promise.”

He stopped pressing the point to his finger. Twirled it between his fingers, and then sheathed it.

Riddle snarled at him once more. All he had, his vampirism, his shattered soul and the power that
Remus was breaking down from the inside out. Against the bloodthirsty snarl of the ferocious,
Remus smiled.

“And besides,” he shrugged, idly, “I think I like that you don’t know if you’re protected or not. I
think I like having the balance of your existence in my hands. Don’t tell me you can’t see the irony
in this, Tom. I’m twenty-eight years old. And I have your entire life in my hands. Isn’t that funny?”

Another step forward. Just the one.

Riddle was silent.

And Remus was monstrous.

“You killed her,” said Remus, low and terrifying, “and I’m going to make you regret it for the rest
of your pathetic life. And when that life ends; when your little protective scheme runs out, you’re
going to know that it was me. That I was the one to end it all. You’re going to remember me.”

“I don’t even remember your name,” Riddle snarled, lip curled up.

They were in each other’s faces, now. Inches apart. Remus could stab the blade through his chin,
up into his brain, watch him bleed out, but it would ultimately do nothing. So he didn’t.

“You will,” said Remus.

He felt the visage shattering, felt himself unravel, become undone. And to his right, Riddle’s left,
slithered a huge snake, girth the size of his thigh or larger. Down the steps, she hissed, tongue out.
Settling at her master’s side, she looked up at Remus. He looked down at her.

They’d met before. They were the same.

He smiled, again. As everything fell into place.

“You will,” he whispered, looking up at Riddle, and they had a moment of raw, raw truth before
the world disappeared around him, and everything went dark.
 1:15A.M.

SUNRISE: 1:59A.M.

Remus awoke in the darkness with a start, the air burning his throat and his lungs and causing him
to splutter, sitting up and having his wrists collapse on him. Three pairs of hands reached out for
him.

“Oh, thank God,” murmured Pandora, squeezing his arm. “Oh, my God. You really scared me,
Remus.”

He coughed, a few times more, managing to properly sit up; someone patted him on the back as he
breathed heavily, his chest blooming, his mind racing. He patted himself down, but the blade was
not on him. It was, like it had always been, on Sirius.

He didn’t know where to start. Thankfully, Lily started for him.

“It worked,” she said, and he closed his eyes, breathed out in relief. It was only about here that he
realised he could see a lot better now, and, turning, he saw the crack as before, down the cave; he
saw the opening, light spilling out of the next compartment like the reckoning.

“It worked,” he murmured. Sirius, hand around his waist, helped him up. He staggered, a little,
light-headed from standing up, but got his grips eventually.

“You okay?” he asked. Lily fished a tiny bottle of water she’d had in her bag, and he downed
almost the entire thing in one, pocketing it and wiping his mouth.

“Yeah,” he said, croakily, still breathing heavily; his heart would not slow down to recompense
with the time that it had missed. “Yeah, I’m okay. I– I saw Riddle.”

Sirius stopped.

“You what?”

“The snake,” he choked, closing his eyes, clearing his throat, “he has– he has a snake and he’s
made her into one, too. I felt it. He’s made her into one too.”

Sirius, hanging back in the room with him whilst Pandora and Lily had ventured into the next one,
blinked, and squeezed his arm. Lily called for them. He exhaled sharply.

“Sirius, the snake,” Remus wheezed once more, pleading; Sirius nodded.

“The snake,” he said, “the snake, okay, we’ll deal with that after this one. Okay? Let’s get this one.
I’ve got you.”

He led him into the next, and final, room.

This room seemed rather ingenuous at first; the walls had obviously been sanded clear at some
point, for they were smooth, along with the floor which was only a bit dirty.

On the far wall, implemented onto the wall, were what looked like four clay tablets, like that of
which you’d find historical writings from Ancient Rome or Greece. Above them, drawn onto the
wall, were little Runic writings—a feat which made Remus shudder, for he was utterly no good at
Ancient Runes.

The wall on the right side was covered in runes, that of, yet again, anti-apparition and so on and so
forth.

The wall on the left side, drawn in what looked like blood, had the bright, striking words “Une
Minute” written over the smooth slab stone.

Even Remus could translate that.

“One minute,” said Sirius, “what the hell do we have one minute for?”

Pandora and Remus made their way over to the runes.

“Are there any instructions?” asked Lily.

“Not that I can see,” came Sirius’ voice, “just that we have one minute.”

“What do they say?” asked Remus. “I’m dogpile at Ancient Runes. I failed that class. I–”

“Remus, shut up,” hissed Pandora, looking up at them. He did. He watched her eyes scan over
them, panickedly, one and then two and then three and then four.

She stepped back, to take them in.

“They’re riddles,” she said. “I think– I think you have to solve the riddle, carve the answer into the
clay tablet, and then…” she trailed off, shaking her head. “I don’t know.”

“That’s a start,” said Lily, moving over to them. “Can you translate them? Write them down?”

“Do you have paper?”

“I took the parchment from the last room,” Lily said, muffled as she rummaged in her bag. “And I
have a sharpie here somewhere.”

Remus nodded, turning back to the wall.

As Lily handed Pandora the parchment and the sharpie, the cave began to rumble. Remus whirled
around and, just as he did, he watched the walls, where they’d opened to let them in, close in on
themselves. Closing the door.

Sirius moved to bang on it, once, twice.

And then the water started.

From four points in the room, one on each wall, water began rushing out like a waterfall onto the
floor. It pooled at Remus’ feet, made Pandora almost slip. Sirius stepped back, and, as the water on
his end hit the floor it splashed onto him, and he hissed in pain.

“Fuck,” he groaned, stepping back and pressing himself against the wall. It pooled at the bottom of
his feet, and he looked up, locked eyes with Remus. Utterly panicked.

“Is it–” he started, eyes wide.

Sirius reached out a tense index finger, and stuck it underneath the water stream.
His finger began to burn.

“Holy water,” he said. He exhaled, sharply, looking around, up and down for any sort of reprieve.
“Oh. Fuck.”

“Can’t you withstand it?”

“Not when I’m submerged in it,” he snapped, turning around to them. “Healing would stop
working almost immediately. I don’t– ah—” he hissed again; a knee-jerk reaction, Remus
presumed, for he knew that holy water did not hurt Sirius like it hurt a younger vampire. But it still
stung. In copious amounts.

He turned to Pandora. He was going to ask her to stop it, but she was already trying.

And not getting anywhere.

She dropped her hands.

“My magic’s gone,” she said, looking at the wall with the runes, turning to the walls adjacent. She
walked over to the wall on the right, splashing slightly in the puddle-like water now on the floor,
and examined them. “Fuck. Fuck.”

“What?”

“The rune’s completely blocking my magic,” she said. “I can’t give us oxygen, I can’t stop it, or
create a pocket in any way. Unless—” she turned to Lily.

Her face went slack.

“Fiendfyre,” she said. “Would destroy a rune this old. I think.”

Lily gasped.

“I have some!” she yelled, running through the pooling water to her bag, and rummaging in it.
Pandora had, evidently, cast an extension charm on it, for her arm went straight in. When she
pulled it out, she had a little glass bottle with a cork on the top, fire swirling around itself and
burning intensely inside.

“You’re brilliant, Evans,” said Pandora, stalking over to take it. Lily grinned.

Pandora moved over to get into position, and held the bottle out in front of the rune.

Ripping the cork out, she threw her arm out to dash the fire across the wall. It caught onto the rocks
and stayed there, beginning to, slowly, burn up the rock.

She turned around, and held out her hands. The water began to move, as if she was bending it, but
it dropped rather quickly.

“Okay,” she said, “okay. It didn’t do much, but I think it did enough. Sirius, come here.”

He moved, as she slotted in beside him, and moved her hands around each other cyclically. The
water began to spin, and then she began to push her hands out and it pushed up, like a wave hitting
a cliff, except the cliff was plain air. She was creating an air pocket for them.

The water continued to gush.

“I have to stay here!” she yelled, Remus and Lily up to their ankles in water, now. “But if you write
the runes down on the paper, I can still try and translate.”

Remus looked at Lily.

“I guess that’s us, then,” he said.

“I guess that’s us,” she said, kicking into action immediately. “You take the left two, I’ll take the
right two.” She ripped the parchment in half, and gave him his part. “We’ll share the sharpie.”

“Deal,” said Remus, and he turned to the wall.

The first riddle, on the far right, took up about half the page. When he got back to Pandora, wading
through water that was up to his calves, now, Sirius held up the piece of paper in front of her.

“The magic land that you must go,” she said, slowly, “to find the high, give us the low.”

“As if it fucking rhymes,” muttered Sirius. “She is entirely too much. Good God.”

“Magic land that you must go,” said Remus, “to find the high, give us the low. The high. What is
the high?”

“Is the magic land the cave?” asked Sirius.

“I don’t know,” said Remus, “I’d suppose so. What’s the high?”

“High,” Pandora said, “high, high, happiness, triumph, victory… do they mean the cup?”

Remus blinked.

“To find the high, give us the low. It makes sense. We’re in the last challenge. What’s the low?”

“To find the high, give us the low,” said Sirius. He kicked a rock as he spun on his heel, unable to
pace but getting the feel of it. “To find the high, give us the low. The low. Opposite. What’s the
opposite of finding a Horcrux? Creating one?”

Remus frowned. “Surely not? Do they mean death?”

“They already fucking killed one of us in there!”

“Or are we looking too much into it,” Pandora said, woozily, looking up at him with wide,
triumphant eyes. “To find the high, give us the low. Physically low. Maybe they mean the dirt on
the floor.”

Remus blinked. He looked down.

“They mean the dirt on the floor,” he said, “Oh my God, they mean the dirt on the floor. Earth.”

“The rune for earth,” said Pandora, wasting absolutely no time. She reached out for the sharpie,
and drew it. It was a vertical stick with two appendages. It looked like a slightly fancy T.

Wading back, he passed Lily on the way, and passed her back the sharpie.

Looking at the piece of parchment, he carved the rune that Pandora had drawn into the clay with
his knife. It took a moment, because it was so dense and hard to carve into, but he got the hang of
it.
He stepped back, after completing it. A beat, and then the outlines to the rune glowed golden, and
the compartment opened, like a fucking safe.

The only thing in there was an empty test tube.

It hit Remus like a freight train.

“They want samples,” he said, plucking the test tube out and holding it up. He turned to wade
towards Pandora and Sirius, catching Lily on the way by the arm. “Lily, they want samples.”

She blinked in horror.

“Mine’s blood,” she said, showing him the rune for human blood. He recognised it vaguely from
classes. “Human blood. Oh, God. Who’s more human? Me or you?”

Remus opened his mouth and closed it.

“That’s the fucking riddle,” he muttered, and then, “just– do you. If it doesn’t work we’ll try me.
Okay?”

She nodded.

Remus went to procure some of the actual dirt on the ground, stuffing it into the test tube. When he
got back to his station, he popped it back into its place, and shut the safe door, his clay carving in
the front.

As it clicked it immediately shimmered golden, and then began to harden. In a minute it was
hardened, blending in with the wall, and the runes had vanished. Only his carving remained, in the
sordid brick.

He exhaled. The water was just above his knees.

He had to wait, for Lily had already completed hers—her blood had, apparently worked—and
written down her second one, needing it to be translated. He waded over to them after a minute of
what looked like bickering—he could barely hear it over the water rushing—and they all looked at
him.

“What’s going on?” he asked, having to hold his arms up at his torso, now, as the water built up.

“It’s Fiendfyre,” Sirius said, agitatedly. “Lily’s next one. The answer is Fiendfyre.”

Remus looked at her. She looked like she was about to cry.

“I don’t have any more of it in my bag,” she said, sadly.

Remus looked at her, and then at Pandora, panicked, and Sirius, solemn.

“Lily,” he said, eye twitching, “are you a Phoenix or not?”

She exhaled, frustrated.

“Yes, but– no—”

“Lily.”

“She won’t let me,” she said. “It won’t work!”

“You need to stop separating yourself,” said Remus, sternly. Perhaps it was the adrenaline of the
moment, perhaps it was the panic of imminent death. “You need to stop acting like you and the
Phoenix are separate people, Lily, you’re the same person. You are the same thing. Haven’t you
noticed that every time you’re happy you get more powerful? Your flames flicker higher? For
God’s sake, you were born for this, Lily. And it’s been horrible, I know, but it can’t be one or the
other. You can’t be Lily or the Phoenix. You need to figure out a balance of them both. You need
to figure out how to accept this part of yourself, Lil. The more you shun it away, the worse it’ll
come back to bite you in the end.”

Lily stared at him, stunned, tears dropping silently from her eyes. She sniffed, wiping her face, and
took a deep breath. Took a long, long pause.

Remus cleared his throat.

“Preferably, you could do that now?” he asked. “Before, you know. We drown.”

She gasped.

“Oh–” she said, turning to go, and then passing him the parchment and sharpie. “Yeah. Yeah.
You– yeah.”

She waded away, and so did Remus, to their respective stations in which he copied the runes down
and returned post-haste.

“The chilling night is cold and dark,” said Pandora, translating, “procure that which can standstill
your heart.”

“Fucking hell,” murmured Sirius.

“That which can standstill your heart,” said Remus. “That could be literally anything. And what
does the beginning part have to do with it?”

“I don’t–” Pandora groaned, putting a hand to her head in exertion. “God, I don’t know.”

“Any ideas?” asked Remus, to Sirius.

Sirius gaped. He seemed to be muttering the words under his breath. He gave it a moment, and then
shook his head.

Remus heard a cry from behind him.

The water was now up to their necks, just underneath Remus’ shoulders, which meant it had almost
gone over Lily’s head; he turned, and, yes, she was swimming, trying to get her footing on rocks on
the wall to attempt to shoot Fiendfyre into the little test tube.

“God–” Remus hissed, “I need to help her, can you… just think about it, please,” he said, shoving
the parchment and sharpie in Sirius’ direction before turning and swimming up to Lily.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Lily was panting, her breaths quick with panic as the water threatened to choke
her. She looked at Remus and sighed, tears in her eyes. “I can’t. Remus– I can’t.”

“Yes you can,” he said. “Here–” he grabbed her by the waist with both hands and sort of hauled her
up, a little bit, so that her arms and top half of her chest, at least, were above the water. It was a bit
easier due to the fact that they were in water; she waded. “Look at me, Lily.”
She did.

“Look,” he said, blinking, words simply coming out in his oncoming panic, “You can do this, Lily.
I know you can do this. You just need to calm down. Close your eyes, try and– and envision the
fire.”

It took her a moment or two to slow her breaths, and then she closed her eyes. Her bottom lip was
trembling a little bit. Remus, nervous as all hell, tried to keep his voice steady to calm her.

“Focus on where I’m touching you,” he said. “Channel that. And think about all of the stuff we’ve
been doing the past few weeks. Think a– about how happy you were, on the island, throwing
fireballs at Sirius.”

Her lips trembled. Her hands sparked.

“Now,” he said, trying to think of how Regulus did this, “feel it in your… diaphragm?”

She laughed, and nodded, eyes still closed. “That’s where it is.”

“Why?”

“Fuck knows,” she said, shrugging, balling the hand not holding the test tube into a fist and letting
it go. She smiled. “Regulus asked the same question.”

Ah. Remus had an idea.

“Think about Regulus,” he said. “He used to do this, right? Calm you down. Think about him, how
patient he’s always been, and how alike you guys are. How well you get on. How– how gently he
cares.”

Lily nodded, breathing deeply, now, in and out.

“Think about James,” he said. “You two are soulmates. In whatever way you want to be. James,
who believed in you like no other. Right?”

She nodded.

“Think about how James would be encouraging you right now. Pretend he’s here.”

Her lip began to tremble once more. Her fingers sparked. Remus felt the warmth coming from his
hands on her waist and knew she was channelling him, like before. He knew she could do it.

She just needed one more push.

One more—

He stopped.

“Think about Mary,” he said, softly.

He needn’t say any more. For Lily began to cry.

No more, for the fire began to swirl around at her fingertip, hot and horrible against Remus’ face;
residual warmth, she threw her head back and opened her eyes and they were red, and she looked at
him. Even despite how submerged she was in water, her face was glistening with flames. Her hair
went with a flourish, and she looked down, at the test tube, and, with a jerk of her hand, pushed
some fire into it. Corking it with her thumb.

Remus had never, ever seen her that controlled.

She moved away from him; he let go, his head, now, barely over the water even as he paddled to
the top. Lily dived under the water—it was the strangest phenomenon Remus had ever seen, for
she was still on fire and yet she was submerged in water—forest fires, tidal waves, she put the tube
into the air-pocketed safe and closed it with a bang. Her hair flying everywhere around her; Remus
ducked under the water to watch, and it glowed gold, and then hardened into the wall.

There was only one to go.

They both surfaced at the very top of the room, dripping, gasping. She was still fiery but her hair
was her own, but her skin glowed orange, the veins pulsing fire, and her eyes were red. It was a
nice balance. Sentience and non-sentience. Phoenix and Lily. She looked down at the remaining
safe and looked back at him. There were inches of air left.

“What’s yours?” she cried, over rushing water.

“The–” Remus spluttered, water getting into his mouth. “The chilling night is cold and dark. Give
us that which can standstill your heart.”

Lily stared at him. Licked her lips. They were so close to the top Remus’ head was pressed to the
roof.

Her jaw dropped.

“Cold and dark,” she said, “standstill your heart. Remus. It’s a vampire!”

His jaw dropped.

“It’s a vampire,” he gasped, “shit, it’s a—”

They both took deep breaths and dived underwater, as the water filled over their faces, to the top.

Desperately, holding their breaths, the two of them swam down towards the air pocket, in which he
could see Sirius and Pandora standing, nervous, looking up at them both. Remus popped his head
through just after Lily, the both of them still floating in the water. He gasped for air.

“Vampire,” he choked, “I need vampire venom.”

Sirius took one look at him.

And then he reached up, grabbed him by the back up the neck, pulled him down and kissed him.

Remus was shocked, for a second, but melted into it. Sirius’ hand was harsh around his neck, he
could feel him burning, but Sirius didn’t care; he swiped his tongue in his mouth once and then
Remus felt him pop his fangs out, felt him cup his face with his other hand, and, in one movement,
bite down on his bottom lip, hard.

It made Remus jump, but he didn’t break the kiss. It took him a moment to realise what Sirius was
doing, but his mouth pooled with a mixture of his own blood and Sirius’ acidic venom as he pulsed
it out, the way he were to do if he was planning on turning someone. It lasted about thirty seconds,
and then he broke away, Remus thinning both of his lips and holding it in his mouth.

Pandora, not wasting any time, grabbed his arm and drew the symbol for vampire in sharpie on his
wrist.

“Go,” she said. “Go.”

Remus took a deep breath in through his nose, and turned, diving back into the water.

He swam as fast as he could across the room, having to grab onto the corners of the clay slab to
stabilise himself and push himself vertical in front of it. Biting his teeth down on his lips and
resisting the urge to swallow, he began to carve the symbol on his wrist out, taking quick glances to
make sure he got it right. Two circles on each side of an intricate rune—halfway through his lungs
began to burn—and by the time he finished the last circle he was almost choking, that horrible,
horrible tight feeling at the bottom of his throat beginning to knot itself in; he pushed himself back.
Watched, as the clay slab registered the rune, sparked golden and then, with a creak, opened.

Remus wrenched the door open, chest convulsing with lack of air, and grabbed the test tube from
the air pocket with such aggressively shaking hands he thought he’d break it.

Shoving his face in the tiny pocket, he spat the contents of his mouth into the vial—it just looked
like blood, the venom being clear and so low density—and then took a huge, relieving breath,
another, and another, closing his eyes and squeezing them shut. Feeling his lungs unravel, and
thank him. He popped the vial onto the stand when he felt okay to do so and took one last deep
breath, pulling his head back out of the air pocket and into the water, slamming the door shut.

The clay slab took a moment to register, and then it glowed golden, once again, and began to
harden. Remus watched this happen, watched as the runes above it disappeared and it melted itself
against the wall, and then all that was left was four runes carved into bricks on a sandstone wall;
blood, fiendfyre, vampire, earth; for a moment nothing happened.

And then the room began to drain itself.

Remus swam to the top as it drained, rapidly, and took a deep breath that was so harsh he coughed.
Once the room drained entirely, he hit the floor spluttering, and when the coast was clear Pandora
dropped the spell and they rushed over to him.

All three fell to their knees around him, Lily and Remus soaked, Pandora and Sirius not; looking
around themselves, wary of any surprise attacks. Holding onto each other.

Sirius placed his hands on his back and patted him, put the other one in his hair. Remus took a
deep, shuddering breath in and looked up, his wet hair in his face.

“You’re burning,” said Remus, gravelly. Sirius grinned.

“I don’t care,” he said, laughing with exhilaration, leaning down and kissing Remus even if it left
him with chapped lips. “I don’t care.”

Remus kissed him, and he kissed him, until the ceiling cracked and dust fell upon them, the crack
leading to the wall that told them they had one minute. They all watched as the entrance formed.

Light spilled out from the opening as the walls pulled apart.

“Is this it?” asked Lily. “Did we do it?”

“Stay on guard,” said Sirius, warily, helping Remus up. “This isn’t over yet.”

Remus, staggering against his side, went with him as Sirius walked, slowly, to the entrance of the
new room. He was shivering, and still dripping, barely having wrung his clothes out; but as he
passed the threshold he felt a brush of warmth fall over him, something calm and comfortable, as if
his mind had just been cleansed of all of its misdeeds.

He looked up, and found himself gasping.

It was a trophy room. That was the only thing it could be. The room was covered in treasure,
golden coins and diamonds, gemstones, emerald and amethyst and pearl. There were racks of
swords that glistened in the light, the floor was covered in loose coins—it was a small room, and it
was cluttered. Remus’ first thought was, oddly, that it looked like the cave of wonders from
Aladdin.

There was a small walkway through the room, to the opposing wall; at the very end of the
walkway was a huge, intricately carved mirror. On the sides, piles and piles of riches.

Pandora, halfway through the room, turned. There were torches lit and lining the top of the room,
and it shadowed her, bathing her and her frame in an orange glow.

“Don’t touch anything,” she said, which was obvious.

“You think she’s hidden it somewhere?” Lily asked. “How do we even know what we’re looking
for?”

“I feel like it should stand out, no?” Pandora said, with fake-optimism. Sirius tutted, spinning,
slightly, to take it all in.

“Everything stands out, here,” he muttered. “Just—” he let go of Remus, who could stand up on his
own. Lily had darted back to the doorframe and was wringing her hair out. “Have a really close
look, I suppose, and if we can’t find it easily then we’ll… reconvene.”

He looked to Remus. Nodded, as if to say, that okay?

Remus nodded back.

Lily, still at the doorframe, began scouring the towers to the right of her on that end, standing on
her tip-toes to try and see the higher stuff. Sirius mirrored her. Pandora was a bit closer to Remus,
repetitively levitating things to see behind them and then putting them, carefully, exactly where
they were before.

Remus, spending a few minutes silently looking at his unspoken designated section, found himself
zoning out. He found a few necklaces that looked like they were worth more than he could even
fathom, almost touched a few gold coins; found collections of copper and silvers from the
medieval ages, shillings and Ancient artefacts; bowls and rapiers and so on. But, progressively, as
he side-stepped and made his way closer to the thing, he found himself instinctively wanting to
examine the mirror.

It was gold-plated, and so intricately carved Remus could not even fathom how many fingers had
bled for this mirror to exist. Unblemished, it had no name at the top, just the carvings of angels and
demons on each side and swirling geometric patterning down the sides, he looked into it, and he
saw himself.

But something about himself was different.

He looked healthier, he looked brighter. His face was not as gaunt and his eyebags were not as
deep, bruised grey and brown against the pale of his decaying skin; he looked good. Happy. He
was in the exact same outfit, he moved and the figure moved; it was a mirror in its plainest form;
and yet it wasn’t. He was different.

Slowly, quietly, he brought his nimble fingers to the edge of his jacket, and pulled it to the side.
Revealing his pouches, the small knives slotted into his jacket pockets, the gun at his hip and the
knife on the other one.

He looked up, and, in the mirror, there was nothing. Looked down, saw his weapons. But in the
mirror? There was no weaponry.

In the mirror, he was weightless.

He caught his own eyes, dropping his lapel, and let his arm fall. So did the figure in the mirror’s.
They were a gentle reincarnation of the other, each other’s muse, these two eyes meeting these two
eyes; he felt his mouth go dry, feeling entirely numb to himself as the figure in the mirror smiled,
and he did not.

The figure smiled, and his eyes flickered upwards. To somewhere at Remus’ right. Following his
gaze, trying to mirror it, Remus saw it glinting against the flickering amber fire.

He saw the cup.

He turned around, and there it was; there, on top of a box, on top of another box, right at the top of
the huge pile—literally higher than his head—there it was. He lost his breath, for a moment, and
turned back to the figure in the mirror.

He, still smiling, nodded once. And that was it.

“I found it,” Remus breathed, almost too quiet for anyone to hear. Pandora turned.

“What?”

Remus turned around, and then pointed up to where the cup was sitting, idle, standing up in an
open velvet box. She gasped.

“That’s it?”

“I—” Remus stared at it. He blinked, once, cocked his head; felt some sort of a tunnel vision, knew
in his heart, in his soul, in the soul adjacent to him— “Yes,” he gasped, “it is. I can feel it.”

Sirius was suddenly there, alongside Lily, both of their eyes wide, looking at him rather than the
cup. Back and forth, he quite thought. Remus couldn’t think of anything else. They were so close.

“Sirius,” he said, “give me the knife.”

Sirius dug for it; grasping onto the hilt, it burned his hand, but he passed it over without a second
glance to Remus’ willing hand. Lily’s breaths were quickening in anticipation.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

Pandora held up her hands, curling them and trying to cast a spell; she slumped when it, evidently,
failed.

“I can’t levitate it,” she said. “Can you reach it? Without touching anything else? I don’t trust that
the rest of this shit isn’t cursed.”
“I don’t trust that that’s not cursed.”

“We could hold the diary and the locket, couldn’t we?”

“Not the ring, though.”

“Stop talking,” muttered Remus, an echo into the cave. They fell immediately quiet.

Pushing himself onto his tip-toes, he reached up, stretching out his fingers to try and get it. Even at
six-three the cup was placed so high that he couldn’t really get a proper grasp on it; he stretched his
arm further, straining the muscles, and, very carefully, looped his pinky finger through one of the
handles of the small cup.

He tugged on it, tried to pick it up out of the box carefully to avoid touching anything else.

As the cup came out of the box, it swung, slightly.

It swung just enough to knock on one of the jewellery stands placed lopsidedly on the piles of
coins.

It swung just enough to hit the jewellery stand hard enough, to make it slide a little, like a landslide
on the coins.

It swung just enough to, like a 2p slot machine in an arcade, push the coins down, and down, and
down; like an avalanche.

Three, or four coins fell, as if in slow motion, down the trickling waterfall, and landed on the floor
with an uproarious clatter.

And all of the torches went out.

Plunged into darkness, Remus fell forward and knocked a few more things over, whilst also getting
a tighter grip on the cup, feeling like he may never let it go; he registered a few things, suddenly,
one being that his friends had circled, their backs to each other, in preparation of whatever had just
happened, and the other being that Lily had lit a flame in her palm, and, oddly enough, it crossed
his mind that this was the biggest flame he had seen her summon since Boardwalk, and also that
the veins of gold in her arms hadn’t dissipated, and he wondered, strangely, what that meant.

Of course, this was all before the shadows on the walls began to move, and he realised that they
had much, much bigger problems.

“Oh, God,” moaned Pandora, casting some sort of spell, Remus couldn’t see her but he could feel
the friction of her magic, “it’s triggered—”

The water started gushing in the other room.

“—everything,” Sirius finished.

The four of them stood with their backs to each other, circling. Things began to fall, clatter on the
floor; coins, bowls that smashed, diamonds jangling over each other as they went top-heavy down
the landslide and paintings, cups and glass, everything shattered. Falling in front of them and
falling behind them as these godforsaken creatures began to crawl out of the walls like the undead,
materialising out of the darkness, like the dementors, like the torture curse, like the inevitable.

They had to destroy it. Now.

A huge ball of light came from behind him, and he craned his neck to see it had come from
Pandora. She was throwing them, as aggressive as anything; they’d hit the wall and dissipate but
the horrible, creaky creatures would cower, temporarily. Of course. They were made of darkness.
They repelled the light.

Sirius, out of nowhere, lurched forward, as Lily picked up on Pandora’s tactic and began her
burning hands, up her wrist, her hair itself but her eyes red and glowing in the dark. She threw fire
against the walls that scorched the treasure as Sirius projected himself towards it, and Remus
yelled, unsure of whether it was purposeful or an attack, only understanding when Sirius reached
up and yanked one of the torches off the walls, turning to Lily:

“Lily,” he said, breathless, “light me up.”

She turned. She was aghast, silhouetted by the light of her own fire; in the background, the
zombie-like incarnations of darkness staggered their way towards her, clambering off the walls and
across the floor like something of a horror story as the water began to pool in through the archway.
She looked half-alien. She looked like your worst nightmare.

She lit Sirius’ torch, and he flourished it around, fire roaring through the air as more things
crashed, and crashed, and crashed.

“Oh, God,” groaned Lily, sending a burst of fire down the open walkway that was slowly but
surely filling with miscellaneous, glinting treasures from where the monsters were making them
collapse. Remus looked up, and saw one clambering over where the Horcrux had been. It’s
shadowy hand looked noncorporeal but had also never been more present, grasping onto the box
with one and the other pressing onto the top of the tower of coins and almost immediately slipping,
hordes of treasure falling on top of Remus along with the thing itself, hissing and snarling and
making the most horrible noises Remus had ever heard tear out of a creature.

As coins hit him in the face and he felt a push of a tsunami-like outpour of treasure as the creatures
began to tunnel from underneath and burst out, making things collapse from the inside out like the
cave would destroy the island, he looked up, directly at the shadow creature. It was a horrible,
horrible incarnation of a body, with no eyes, no hair, no face except a hollow, horrible mouth and
pinching teeth—a cross between a corpse and a dementor, something terrible in between. The teeth
were about two inches from biting off Remus’ face before the creature was blasted away by a burst
of fire, and then, before he even got time to breathe, there was another one. And another. Another,
at his leg; another, squeezing out of the gaps between the coins, now up to his knees, he could
barely move in them. Another. Another.

“Remus!” Lily yelled, from a few metres away; with one hand, she was blasting fire towards the
entrance, with the other, towards him. “Remus, you have to destroy it!”

“It’s what—” Sirius groaned, grunting as one of them leaped at him and he flourished his torch like
one might slice a sword through an enemy, setting the thing alight; the most horrible squeal came
from it, and it began to writhe on the bed of treasure; “—they want!”

“Destroy it!” screamed Pandora, forming a big ball of light in the middle of her chest.

With a scream, she let it go.

A thousand little particles of light filled the air at once, like stars all around them; the Inferi
clawing at Remus’ arm cowered, shrieking at the light. They dimmed after a moment or two, in
which Lily used the reprieve to try and shoot as many as she could, and Sirius waved his torch
around so much that he set fire to a few of the pieces. A painting in the corner of an old regency
lady was burning. He leaned forward, upon seeing this, and set fire to another in his grasp; a small
one, but enough. But something.

Remus took a deep breath.

There was nowhere to put it. By this point, coins, pearls and boxes were flying all over the place;
something exploded behind him, and he cowered instinctively; he heard Sirius yell as he fought it,
and the pig-like squeal of the creature as it died. Something jumped on his back, and he shook it
off, and then another tugged at his arm, the arm holding the Horcrux; he swiped the knife at it,
knowing it wouldn’t help, but unable to pull his arm up high enough to plunge his knife into the
cup with the extra weight.

Pandora let a ball of light go again and the entire room filled with the weightless pearls. The figure
on his arm squealed and cowered, and he heard the scream from the one on his back, but it did not
move. It had its legs around him, its arms underneath his armpits and it dug its claws into his chest,
over his collarbone; painting his shirt with blood and sending shooting pains up Remus’ neck, to
his head, down his body.

He yelled, and so did his party as they fought off these horrible creatures; he vaguely registered
Pandora’s scream of pain, Lily’s curse and the on again, off again light, the fire that was licking up
the walls and the water rushing into the room. He held up the cup, by the bottom, in front of him,
and the Inferi on his back plucked its claws out of Remus’ bones and placed them on his face,
squeezing.

He felt one jump onto his arm, one squeezing at his chest.

Fingers around his neck. Claws pushing his chin up, on his cheek, breaking skin; he couldn’t
breathe, he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe.

He screamed.

He screamed, and he raised his arm against all the odds, Inferi clinging to it still, and stabbed the
blade directly into the cup.

The entire room lit up.

The shockwave hit them, sending the treasure around him flying as if gravity had been switched
off, as if the world had been put in slow-motion. He felt the flailing of bodies around him, heard
the harrowing screeches of the Inferi, it popped his ears, he could breathe, but he couldn’t. He
stood, the weight on his chest lifted, the pressure on his face abated as the Inferi clinging onto his
back disintegrated.

It was a shockwave, but Remus did not go anywhere.

The entire world spun and shook around him, a goddamn explosion, glass hitting the walls and fire
twirling through the air and the walls beginning to crack, but Remus was not affected. He was
entirely stable. He simply stood there as everything collapsed around him and watched as the cup
began to melt. Almost as if it was bleeding, or screaming, it sucked all of the air out of the room
and all of the gravity out of the world and all of the torches were lit, flames gigantic and
oppressive; the cup bled. It bled all over his hands. It bled all over the world.

Yet, he did not burn.

Unshakeable.
The blade disintegrated into ash, right there, in his hand. And the cup melted, over his hands,
dripping down his wrists and down, down, down, down.

A droplet of the molten gold hit the floor. And pressed play on the world.

The torches went out again with a hiss, and everything hit the floor, everything; all of the Inferi,
dead and sizzling and disintegrating into ash, and the cups, and the coins, the boxes, the shattered
glass, clattering and soaring and slicing and rattling like a snake. They fell into darkness, and so did
Sirius, Lily, and Pandora, crumpling to the ground, hitting the wall, going entirely out.

Sirius’ torch rolled across the floor, hit the water, and went out with a low hiss.

And Remus collapsed to his knees, topped by treasure, debris and ash. Choking on it. There was a
long, long moment of silence, as he swayed, trying to push his way through the treasure
avalanching onto him. He fought his way out and gasped, trying to grasp onto something, anything.

He looked up and he saw rocks falling from the corners of the room.

“Is everyone okay?” he asked, as the dust settled, hearing his voice shake. He turned and saw
movement, and Sirius hauled himself out of a pile of glass and debris, coughing maniacally. His
face was bleeding; there was a shard of glass lodged in his cheek that he had to grasp and yank out,
blood squeezing through his fingers.

He tossed it away and tried to stabilise himself on something, anything, but he couldn’t and so his
arms gave out on him. Three deep breaths, and then he sat up again, drooling blood. He wiped his
mouth.

“Pandora,” he groaned, his voice echoing. “Lily!”

“Here!” called a small voice from across the room; Lily, coughing as well, lighting a flame to
signal where she was, caught underneath everything. Sirius crawled over to her and began to dig
with his shaky hands, eventually finding her and hauling her out. She heaved, retching against what
was a mix of debris, smoke and fumes, and her face was covered in soot and burn marks, but she
seemed otherwise okay.

Remus, pulling his hands out of the pile, looked down; they were still shaking, lathered in what
looked and felt like molten lava. He tried to wipe it off. It drooled off his hands like a bloodstain
and pooled over the swords that had fallen in front of him, the rack to his side.

He looked up, and there was a crack in the ceiling.

His stomach lurched.

“Dora!” he yelled, louder than before. Turning to where she had been, he began digging, rather
frantically at the lack of an answer. Sirius stumbled over to him, after making sure Lily was okay,
and began yelling her name, too. Though the Inferi had gone, the water was still rushing in the
other room. And the cave began to creak.

Dust and debris splattered down on them, in this tiny claustrophobic space; Remus spluttered, but
kept yelling her name, until he and Sirius pushed away enough of the treasure to find her arm, and
then her hair, and then her.

She was awake, blinking, eyes wide. Bottom lip lined with blood.

There was a sword impaled in her gut.

“Shit,” Sirius breathed, grabbing her as gently as he could underneath the armpits, as Remus
grabbed her legs. They unearthed her from underneath the rubble and gently placed her on top of it,
the sword deep through her gut, her breathing coming slow and rushed.

“Shit,” he repeated, as Remus stared, “shit, shit. Dora. Dora, look at me.”

“I’m fine,” she whispered, looking at him. “I’m f– fine.”

The ceiling cracked again. She looked up to it.

“Oh, fuck.”

“Dora,” Remus whispered, hands hovering around the sword, unsure of whether to yank it out.

Pandora pressed her jittery hands to her stomach. They came back covered in blood.

Clutters of rocks began to fall from the wall opposite them. Remus let his eyes flicker up, and
noticed that the mirror he’d been looking at had been utterly shattered.

Pandora gasped.

“Lily,” she groaned, bossy as ever, “bag…Dittany—”

“Lily,” called Sirius, high-pitched and panicked. He turned and crawled over to get to her. Pandora
looked at Remus.

“Take it out,” she gasped. Remus blinked.

“Dora, you’ll—you’ll bleed out—”

“I can stem the blood-flow,” she whispered, and then she smiled. “Don’t you remember? I’m very
—mmh—good at keeping myself alive.”

“Dor—”

“Remus,” she hissed. “Do it.”

He exhaled, sharply, reaching out and grabbing onto the hilt as gently as he could. She winced,
closed her eyes, but nodded. He yanked, but it was harder than it looked—she cried out, once, and
then bit down on her bottom lip so hard it drew blood as Remus pulled the rest out, and blood came
bubbling out of her like a fountain. Her hands immediately began to glow pink.

Remus leant over her, as she pressed it to the wound. There was blood dribbling out of the corner
of her mouth.

But she looked at Remus, and it was all fire and intent.

“I need you to get me into the runes room,” she whispered. “We scorched the rune, so I should be
able to get us out—”

“You can’t apparate like this,” hissed Remus, panicked.

And then, on the opposite side of the room; another crack down the cave wall. And a landslide of
rocks broke off it, some from the top. Remus couldn’t breathe.

“I can and I will,” she said, firmly.

Lily got there, bottle of dittany in hand. She gasped, horrified, at the sight, but Pandora did nothing
but point, and Lily poured it over her.

It did not heal her, but she visibly relaxed, and closed her eyes. Squeezed them shut.

“Dora,” said Sirius.

She opened them.

And the set of cracks above them turned into two, into three, into five. A hefty chunk of debris fell
just to the side of them.

With a haunting creak, the cave, on the other end, began to collapse in on itself. In chunks.

“The runes room,” she hissed, “now, now—”

Sirius scooped her up without another word.

It was unstable and rocky, the room now, everything having collapsed on the floor in piles and
piles. There was not much space, so Sirius led the way with Pandora in his arms and his head
ducked, trying his best not to stumble. When they got close enough to the entrance, it began to
descend naturally as the treasure pooled through the arch and he began to slide down the landfill,
Remus and Lily hot on his tail. He fell into a pool of water, hissing as it burnt him; it was up to his
calves but he straightened up, and they followed, frantic, the cave rumbling around them. The
fiendfyre that had been dashed against the wall was still there, lit and flickering. It was the only
source of light in this room.

Sirius was facing it, and Remus and Lily waded through the water to join him, as the room filled
with dust and rocks began to fall.

The cave rumbled.

It rumbled again. And the treasure began to pour out at a much more rampant speed, as the cave
they had just been in collapsed in on itself.

With the pressure build-up, the water began to rise terrifyingly quickly.

“Put—” cough— “put me down,” she groaned, and Sirius did—Remus was coughing, and he was
quite sure Lily was panicking, her breaths coming quickly, golden fire up her neck and the tips of
her hair, her hands were still flames.

The water went up to Dora’s waist, and she took a deep, deep breath. Held onto Sirius’ hand with
the one that she was not using to stem the blood. Remus grabbed onto her shoulder, and held onto
Lily as tightly as he could.

Pandora turned to him. So, so slowly. They locked eyes.

A moment. And a question.

You understand our priorities?

Remus took a deep breath in, and he nodded.

If worse comes to worst.

Turning back, she bit down on her chattering teeth. Decision made.
“Three,” she said, rickety, as the world collapsed around them. Rocks fell into the water, splashing,
and it rose. Up to her chest. Blood swirled around the water like a watercolour painting.

“Two,” she said, her bottom lip trembling, barely standing. “One.”

She closed her eyes.

For a moment, nothing happened.

And then the world went black. And they disapparated.

 twenty eight
Chapter Summary

something was familiar about this tree.

Chapter Notes

hello!

it's been a while, i know. can't really say much except i'm sorry, life just really caught
up to me these past few months. but i've missed posting a lot :) i hope youve all been
well <3

CW's for this chapter:

– panic attack. (remus has a pretty nasty one right at the beginning, like straight out the
bat. it's confusing and he's not having fun and also it's terrible timing lmao but it's kind
of a build up of the whole nights events breaking loose, plus sorta triggered by
something else you find out soon after that kinda tips him over the edge)
– suicidal ideations. there's a direct threat of suicide (not because of the horcrux and
also not said out loud) so watch out for that.
– injuries and depictions of grief? i dont know if i even have to warn for these atp
because they're kinda just ongoing lol

i think that's it? i guess i should also mention there's some unhealthy wolfstar, and re-
clarify that this is not an example of a healthy dynamic and never has been. also remus
might piss you off a little bit at the end? idk. we'll see. <3

ALSO if you haven’t read “the aching kiss before i feed” (the next work in the series,
literally just press “next work”), i would recommend reading it. i mean you definitely
don’t have to! everything SHOULD make sense without it, buuut it comes into play
this chapter, and you might catch a few more nuances and stuff if you’ve read it
already :-) ❤️

enjoy!! love you all,

jude xxx

See the end of the chapter for more notes

JULY 10, 2021

01:59A.M.

SUNRISE: 05:04
Remus’ vision clouded when they landed, as always. But this did nothing to change the fact that he
immediately, from all of his other senses, clocked onto the fact that something was wrong.

They had meant to portkey into the outskirts of London. Remus, kneeling on the floor to catch his
breath, felt his fingers curl into marsh and, taking one inhale, knew he had been here before. But
here was not London. He couldn’t place where here was.

Sirius’ hand was cold on the back of his neck.

He opened his eyes to darkness. Complete, utter darkness, not even any light coming from the sky,
no stars, no moon—for a second it felt like he had gone blind. And then he turned, and there was
Lily; radiating the gentle glow of a dying orange streetlight. Her hair was shining gently, the
lingering veins in her arms letting off an incandescent shimmer that his eyes had to adjust to.

She lit up a flame in the palm of her hand. It was the most seamless flame he had seen from her in
weeks.

“What–” she gasped, breathing heavily. Pandora was on the floor, gentle pink glow from her hand;
Sirius was by her side in a flash. The absence of his hand felt like a decapitation. Lily looked
around. “What is thi– where the hell are we?”

Remus exhaled shakily and looked up. She was dripping from the waist down—they all were.
Remus’ hands were shaking. He couldn’t stop them from shaking. Lily was blinking furiously.

“What is this?” she asked, barely higher than a whisper. “What the fuck?! Remus?”

“Lily.”

“Where are we,” she said, now, with fiery firmness, her mouth cupping each word like a death
sentence.

“I don’t know,” he said, truthfully. He looked up to the sky. It was overcast. Even without the
clouds, it would be futile. It’s a new moon.

They were in a forest. This was all he could process. They were in a forest. The air was crisp. And
there was this… awful feeling in his chest.

There were perpetual awful feelings in his chest, of course. But this one seemed to be different, it
felt… purposeful. Personable. He inhaled the air and exhaled what felt like smoke ravaging
through his chest. No, not his chest. His bones. He felt like—like something impending. Something
impending was going to break him apart and put him back together again. He felt sick. His hands
were still shaking. My God, whose hands are these, why won’t they stop shaking?

“You—you betrayed them,” said Lily. Her voice shook. She fell to her knees sort of gracefully; she
looked at Remus like he was hell itself. “You betrayed them.”

“Lily,” he said, through his teeth.

“All of those weeks,” she said, covering her mouth, “they helped us. We were supposed to help
them save their town, we—we were supposed to be a team.”

“This is our team!” Remus tried to yell, though the effect was somewhat diminished, because his
voice broke halfway through it. “Thi—this, this is what matters, there’s—” there’s, there’s, there’s
melted gold on his hands still and they’re still shaking and he can’t see in the dark, never could, his
dad used to come in from the dark with blood on his hands but Remus has something else that he
doesn’t think he’s going to be able to wipe off with a paper towel, he could taste iron, smell it. He
could feel it.

Lily gasped like her heart was breaking, and he could feel that, too.

“If you’re done with your lovers spat,” growled Sirius, strenuous from a few feet away, “I could
use some fucking help over here, Evans.”

“Oh, God,” Lily whined, clambering over—crawling over, through the mulch, breaking a twig,
dripping water. Her bag was still intact and Remus watched her arm disappear into it. He tried to
make his way over to them too, but this awful feeling in his chest would not let up, and in the light
of the overwhelm he, oddly, could not breathe anymore.

Head to the grass, his hands were entirely numb and oddly enough his face was tingling. His
temples and his cheekbones. An itch at the back of his throat. He couldn’t scratch it, not with
fingernails and not with claws—something, there was something here he didn’t like. Something
that didn’t sit right… maybe something that had been sitting there all along.

He didn’t like it here. The metal was burning his hands. It wasn’t. There was no burning flesh. But
it was burning his hands. Dirty hands. Whose hands? He doesn’t know. Something’s burning. And
he cannot fucking breathe.

He dry-heaved a few times, scraping the palm of his hand on the ragged bark of a tree as he tried to
stabilise himself. Trying desperately to wipe some of the gold off. Some of the blood. Something
was familiar about this tree.

Wiping his hands, the gold, the dirt, oh he tried so hard. He was trying so hard. And “Is she—” he
was saying, looking up through the black spots in his vision, climbing up and up this tree like a
monkey, like Draco. Up the tree until he was at the very top and he could see it for what it is, hear
something that is not rushing water and shovelling ice against a force entirely too incompetent.
Throwing up against a tree in a deserted clearing brought back memories he could not surrender to.
So he held himself there, and held his chest together, and tried to breathe. And couldn’t. And tried
to speak. And couldn’t. Something was familiar about this tree.

Speak. Speak, speak, speak, speak speak speak speak— “Is she—”

“Is she—”

Something was familiar about this tree.

“Dora, this is gonna sting—”

“Use the—it’s at the b-bottom of the bag—”

“Lily, are you sure—”

“I think—”

“Is she—”

“Dora—”

“Put pressure—”

“Sirius there’s so much—”

“Is she—”

Something was familiar about this tree.

“Remus,” said Sirius, hoarsely.

Who knows how much time had passed.

He looked up. Sirius was a noncorporeal figure in the darkness, touching someone who was miles
away; there was blood, smeared on the side of his neck as Sirius grabbed him.

“Remus. Hey. Hey. Look at me.”

“My hands are dirty,” Remus choked.

Sirius blinked, and looked down. Took his hands in his own. Too numb to feel.

“Remus, your hands are clean,” he said, slowly.

He shook his head. He shook it as aggressively as he could.

“No,” he moaned. “My hands are dirty. My hands are burning. He’s all over me.”

“Okay,” whispered Sirius, shuffling closer.

“He’s all over me,” Remus whispered. “Everywhere.”

Sirius blinked at him. His breath came out laboured, shaky, with what? Panic?

“Sweetheart…”

He blinked, only realising his face was hot with tears. He looked past Sirius’ shoulder.

“Is she—Dora…”

“She’s alive,” whispered Sirius. “Lily’s stabilised her, but she needs further attention somewhere
stable in itself. We need to figure out where we are and what went wrong with the spell.”

That feeling in his chest.

“Sirius,” Remus whispered.

“Lil—Lily? Do you have your phone? Do you have signal.”

“Sirius, something’s wrong here,” he whispered, again. Lily said something back that Remus
didn’t hear. Sirius turned.

“What?”

“Something’s—” he said. He was only just regaining feeling in his face and his hands; with the
numbness receding, it felt white hot, but with no pain. That feeling in his chest had not gone away.
If anything, it was getting stronger. “I can feel something here.”

“You can feel what? The Horcrux?”

“No,” he breathed. “It’s me. It’s me. Something wrong, something—somewhere I am supposed to
be. Somewhere I’ve been. This tree.”
Lily said something again. Sirius turned and replied to her. Remus did not hear any of the words
with the way everything drowned out. Something, familiar, tree.

“Sirius,” he said, again. “Sirius. This tree.”

Sirius turned back. “Wh—what?” he asked, shuffling one pace closer. “What are you—what do
you mean?”

“This tree,” Remus said, again. Running his palms over the bark. His hands were dirty. They were
scraped. Sirius tried to pry them off but he would not go. It was only when he let him do what he
was doing that Sirius sat back and realised, this tree, this tree, this tree.

“Oh,” he said, genuinely sitting back. Blinking up at it. “Oh. This tree.”

“This tree.”

“You pinned me into this tree,” Sirius whispered, “through the throat. Hampshire. 2015.
Werewolves. We’re in—” looking around, “we’re—” looking around, “we’re in Hampshire. Oh my
—God,” he choked on the word, leaning back on one hand to look frantically to the sky. “We’re in
the New Forest.”

“Why?”

“Pandora’s injured,” he said, “shouldn’t have been apparating, ‘cause she splinched me—obviously
I healed, thank fuck that it wasn’t either of you—Lily—we’re in Hampshire, Lily—”

Lily’s face, from a few feet away, was lit up with the artificial light of her phone. “I don’t have
signal but the blue dot is telling me we’re somewhere between— between two towns called
Lyndhurst and Ashurst?”

“Yeah,” said Sirius. He coughed, rubbed both of his hands over his face roughly. Tried to shake
whatever he needed to shake off. Remus had ended up leaning against the tree. It was the only
stable thing he could find. That and the feeling in his chest. It lit up at the name. Ashurst.

“Ashurst,” he said, just as Sirius turned to him.

“I was about to ask—”

“Werewolf case,” he shut his eyes, “little boy was bit. Little boy, like me. They live in Ashurst.”

“Shouldn’t we find Dora a hospital?” Lily asked. Pandora herself was lying against a tree trunk.
Remus could barely see her in the dark, but what of her face he could make out seemed stable
enough.

“A hospital?” asked Sirius. “What the hell do you think they could do with this?”

“She’s been stabbed—”

“By a magical weapon,” said Sirius. “Witches heal witches. We need to go to London. It’s what—
two, three hours if I steal a car?”

“She can’t take another night of travelling,” said Lily. “She has to rest. Can’t we find a place in
either of the towns for the night?”

“At two in the morning?”

“I don’t know!” groaned Lily, her voice oddly high-pitched with stress. “We were supposed to be
on the shores of Luleå right now! We had a house to go back to back there, if you've forgotten?”

“We wouldn’t have been able to stay for long,” croaked Remus. “They’re probably there for us
already. Riddle’s men.”

“It would’ve been long enough. Esme could’ve helped.”

“We were supposed to be at Mary’s,” Remus whispered, pressing the heel of his palms into his
eyes once more. He wished for sensory deprivation. He wished he was dead. “She has stuff there.
Maybe London is the best option—but I—”

He trailed off. Looked up, out into the darkness; by the light of Lily’s phone and the light omitting
from her hands, those golden veins and those golden eyes, he could see a foot or two out. But it
faded into darkness. As most things do.

He had the obscene urge to follow it. The darkness. The feeling in his chest.

“I think I’m supposed to be here,” he said. Sirius, who had since sat back in anguish on the marshy
grass, looked over at him.

“What?”

“I don’t know,” he whispered. He looked out into the darkness. And then he looked the opposite
way.

A moment.

“There’s a place,” he said, gripping onto the bark to try to pull himself up. Sirius crawled over and
helped him, pulling himself up in the process. He looked down at Lily from where he was
standing. Pandora had one hand over her stomach and her breathing was shuddering. “Oh, God,
Dora.”

Remus walked over on shaky legs and knelt beside her.

“It’s okay,” she said, gently. A semblance of a smile worked its way onto her chapped, pale lips.
“I’m okay for now.” She closed her eyes and her hand glowed a brighter, more vibrant pink. Remus
placed his own over it, and she opened them again. “I kept myself alive in that clearing, eh, didn’t
I? Just like this. I’m fine.”

“It’s not just like this,” said Sirius, “you didn’t spend the whole night in the clearing, which is what
we’re looking at doing unless we find somewhere to fucking go. I’ll steal a car, drive us up to
London. We can be there by sunrise.”

“No,” said Remus.

He wasn’t entirely sure where it came from. It didn’t even sound like his own voice. It was simply
—now that the place had festered in his mind. He had to go. It was go or walk into the forest. Walk
somewhere.

He was being drawn somewhere.

The tree wasn’t the only thing that was familiar.

The itch at the back of his throat returned.

And he wanted to follow the darkness.

“Remus.”

He turned around to look at Sirius. “Ashurst. I killed the werewolves that hurt her son. She owes
me a favour. She’ll let us spend the night.”

“Need I remind you that it’s two in the morning?”

“It’s a better bet than driving two hours,” Lily said, so quietly. “I wouldn’t let Dora travel in her
condition.”

Sirius sighed.

“Just—” Remus inhaled, shakily. Let it out. “Just trust me. It’s somewhere to sleep, for Dora to rest
so Lily can keep her stable. I wouldn’t suggest it if I didn’t—if I didn’t think that we’d be safe.”

Sirius contemplated this. He and Lily gazed at him—Sirius was slightly more unreadable as was
his general facade, but, despite her support of the plan, Lily was… unhappy. Her eyebrows were
knitted together into a frown and her lip was curled downwards as she pursed it. She was angry.
She had a right to be.

“You know what,” Sirius whispered, walking over to kneel by Pandora’s side. He stepped on a
twig on the way there. “We’re not going to get anything done by sitting here and coming to a head
over decisions. We’ll stay the night. Come immediate morning we’ll drive up to London. And, up,”
he said, digging his hands underneath Pandora’s body and picking her up bridal style. She
transferred her magic to the other hand and used the first to wrap around Sirius’ neck, to stabilise
herself. “You okay? This alright?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

She looked at him and smiled. “I’m okay. Just get me to a bed, please.”

Sirius, in the dim light, smiled. He looked over at Remus, then Lily—still on the floor—and jerked
his head.

“C’mon, Remus,” he muttered, flickering back to him. “Your call. Lead the way.”

Lily ended up lighting a flame in their darkness while Remus tried to navigate them out of the
wood. He remembered the way out very vaguely from that case, all those years ago—six, to be
exact—but it came to him the further he walked. Sirius and Pandora walked a foot or so behind
them while Lily and Remus walked side by side.

She did not speak to him.

They eventually found their way onto a dirt path, surrounded by trees still but a tad less sporadic.
Remus continued to walk, leading them down the winding path; they passed a campsite, in which
Sirius had to sort of sneakily avoid so as not to alert anyone by carrying a woman bridal style as if
she was dead; eventually, after perhaps an hour, they made it onto the main road that led swiftly
into the small village of Ashurst, the civilisation they were close to.

Lily managed to get signal and was tracking them on maps.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t walk into the village?” Lily, eventually, whispered to him as they
walked up the road. Her voice was cold. “I’m sure we could find somewhere to lay low. We don’t
even know if these people are still here.”

“No,” Remus said, engrossed in where he was going. The further he got, the more magnetic he felt.
His head, somewhere along the way, had begun to hurt; to pound. As if his brain was overwhelmed
by all the sensations. But he went on. “No. I know a place.”

Lily went back to being quiet after that.

The small house was reclusive, on the outskirts of the village and up a little hill. It was upon a cul-
de-sac of houses; Remus inhaled and felt something so familiar it tickled the insides of his nostrils,
felt like hot wax dripping down the back of his throat. He couldn’t tell what it was.

He could tell, however, that his head hurt. He was in a half-daze, halfway still coming to terms
with the past week—month—year—and halfway thinking of nothing but survival until his job was
done, but a part of him felt animalistic in the way that this place seemed to call to him. It felt
exponentially different to how it felt the last time he was here. It felt aware, it felt alive, it felt like
something was coming. The feeling in his chest was warping. Addicting.

Sirius caught up to him.

“So, this is…” he whispered, as they trudged up the gentle hill. Remus had told him about the
place they were going to all of those months ago in Hotel Transylvania. The first conversation they
had about dormant werewolf children, about that Hampshire case. How ironic that he had been
speaking on dormancy while experiencing it himself. How odd awareness is.

“She owes me a favour,” he repeated, and that was that until he knocked on the door.

There was an outdoor light. It looked like, perhaps, once upon a time it might have been motion
sensor. Now, it lay unused, and the front door was dark.

He knocked again.

“It’s really late,” said Lily. “Maybe they don’t want to answer the door.”

Remus sighed. He gave it a minute, and then raised his fist up to knock one last time.

“Wait,” whispered Sirius. Remus froze.

And he waited.

Sure enough, he heard movement inside before he saw anything. The lights stayed off but the place
thumped quietly, the handle of the door turning ever so slightly and opening ever so minimally.
The door had a chain on it. Hitting the limit, it stopped, the gap a few inches wide. It took Remus a
moment as his eyes adjusted to realise he should not be looking forward but looking down.

Visible only by the gentle glow of a street lamp outside was a young, worried face. A mop of hair,
and green eyes that looked a weirdly similar shade of green to Lily’s.

“Harry?” Remus whispered, raising his eyebrows.

The boy stood very, very still. It took Remus a moment to recuperate.

“Hi,” he said, smiling. Harry stared up at him, unmoving. “I’m Remus. I’m a friend of your mum’s.
I’ve met you before, actually, I think you were only nine. I stayed here with you for a few weeks.
To fend off the bad men. Do you remember?”

“I remember,” said Harry. His voice was volatile and shaky. Remus nodded.

“Is—is your mum home?”

Harry shook his head. Remus inhaled sharply. A snag of dread formed in his chest.

“How about your dad?” Another small shake. “Are there any adults here with you?”

Harry exhaled slowly. Shook his head.

Remus thinned his lips.

“Harry,” he said, quietly. “Do you… live here alone?”

There was a long vote of silence. And then Harry shook his head once more.

“I live with my aunt,” he said. And then; “She leaves, sometimes.”

Remus swallowed thickly. He turned to the rest of them; Lily, standing just an inch or so behind
him, was looking down at Harry with such empathetic sadness in her eyes it could move
mountains. Sirius had placed Pandora down, but he was holding her up, still, his arm around her
waist and hers around his neck. He was looking around.

“Remus,” he whispered, “maybe we should do what Lily said. Find a place in the village for the
night.”

“No,” said Remus, harshly. Harsher than he’d intended. His breaths were coming quickly and he
didn’t understand what he was feeling, only that he was feeling it. Moreso now Harry was looking
up at him. He had to stay here. It was the only way.

You killed four werewolves in Hampshire in 2015. You slaughtered them, one by one, after a plea
for a nine-year-old son of a single mother who had been bitten. A boy whose body couldn’t handle
it. A little dormant werewolf.

One of the werewolves might have been your father. You do not know. A little dormant werewolf. A
big one.

A little werewolf. A big one.

Harry looked up at Remus. Big green eyes.

“Why?” asked Sirius, slowly, as if knowing there was something else.

He knew there was something else. There was something that he didn’t know. Remus blinked in a
flurry, looking out into the darkness of the street, down the hill that held no streetlamps. The abyss
of milky darkness. It could be a descent into hell. Anything could come from there.

“We have to,” Remus whispered, frowning. He swallowed. Blinked again. Looked all around him,
at the grass, the trees, the gate, the houses. He frowned again. Clarity washed over him. “We have
to… we have…” he inhaled, shakily, “why am I here?”

Why had he come here? Why have you come here? Remus, Remus, Remus, why have you come
here, what don’t you know?
The door clicked shut, and Remus whirled around. Looked at it, forlorn, for a minute. Heard the
britches of chains jangling like it was directly beside his ears.

The handle pushed downwards once more, and it opened, fully, now, with Harry in the frame. He
was biting down on his bottom lip. He was so little.

“Are they pack?” he asked, deadpan. Looking Remus in the eyes.

“What?”

“Are,” he repeated, “they pack?”

He flickered his eyes to Lily, and then to Sirius and Pandora. It felt like an ultimate truth. It felt like
the answer was something Remus didn’t know yet. It felt like something that he’d known his
whole life.

“Yes,” he replied, without hesitation.

Harry stepped to the side. “You can come in,” he said, in a voice that was so very small.

Remus took a deep breath. Walked in.

And when the door closed, his head stopped hurting.

***

Harry directed Pandora and Sirius to a spare room—the only spare room, presumably his aunt’s—
while Lily and Remus ambled into the kitchen. Too unnerved to sit down until Harry directed them
to, they loitered; he walked back in, this small, small child, and pulled out two mugs from a
cupboard. Placed them on the side. Put a teabag in each one, boiled the kettle, placed the milk and
the rusty tub of sugar alongside two teaspoons on the table. It was here that he directed them to sit.
So, they sat.

Harry placed the mugs in front of them, boiling water with a teabag, along with a small plate. For
the teabags, he said. He sat, back straightened, watching the two of them with wide eyes. It was
oddly over-attentive. At one point, he even nudged one of the teaspoons so that it wasn’t crooked
but straight laid alongside its companion. So that everything was perfect. It was here that Remus
noticed that his hands were shaking.

“How old are you, darling?” Lily asked him gently, taking a sip of her tea. She had put a dash of
milk and two sugars into it. She smacked her lips, and smiled. “This is gorgeous. Thank you,
Harry.”

His eyes widened, but he didn’t say anything.

“I’m fifteen,” he said, quietly. It checked out. Hampshire had been six years ago, he was nine. Now
he was fifteen.

Remus couldn’t stop looking at him.

Lily placed her mug down gently. “Can I ask,” she said, warily, looking between him and Remus.
She cleared her throat. “Where’s… your mum, honey?”

A moment of silence.

“Dead,” said Harry. Remus sighed. His chest was in knots. “I was twelve.”
“I’m so sorry,” Lily whispered. “You’ve lived with your aunt since?”

“She comes and goes,” he said, looking at the table. “It used to be her and her boyfriend. But he
died, too.” A pause. “Since then. She comes and goes.”

Lily frowned, looking to Remus. He could see her out of the corner of his eye. But he couldn’t stop
looking at Harry.

His heart lurched when the young boy’s face pulled upwards, and his eyes came to lay on Remus.

“You’re confused,” he said, gently, as a statement. Slowly. He tapped his index finger against the
edge of the table. Tap, tap, tap. Then: “You haven’t triggered it yet.”

Remus blinked.

“You have?” he asked.

Harry’s brow creased. He nodded.

“It’s why I let you in,” he said. “Your scent. You’re pack.”

“I’m…” Remus started. He stopped.

Something seized up in his chest.

Oh. Oh, oh. Is this what I’m feeling?

Is this what is is? This familiar breath?

“I’m pack,” he gasped. “Your pack?”

Harry nodded.

“The person who bit you was the same person who bit me?”

He nodded once more.

Remus inhaled, shakily, frowning to himself. His mind was going a mile a minute.

“But I—” he whispered. “I killed them. Here, for your case. I killed them.”

“Not all of them,” he said. “Not him.”

“How—” Remus started. He exhaled slowly. Tried to recalibrate. Lily placed her mug on the table
with a gentle clink, and cleared her throat.

“I’m going to go check on Sirius and Dora,” she said, quietly. “Thank you for the tea, honey,” she
directed to Harry. He shot her an uncertain look and did not reply. Lily did not look at Remus.

The door clicked shut gently behind her.

“Did you… know?” is the first thing Remus said once the door closed, because apparently it was
the most important thing for him to know. “I know you were a child. But when I came here for
your case, I stayed with you for weeks. Did you know about me?”

Harry shook his head.

“I only know because now I’ve triggered mine,” he said. He was still tapping his fingers. Tap tap
tap. “Could smell you a mile away. New, but familiar. I bet you could smell me too.”

Remus didn’t get the chance to answer; though he didn’t know what he would’ve said. These
feelings were so alien to him it was unreal. Are you the awful feeling? he thought. Are you the
magnetism? Are you?

“It’s good that you came here.” Harry nodded, as if trying to convince himself. He looked miles
older than he was. Probably had had to act like it, his whole life. “It’s good. Because they can’t
come in here. Not while I’m in here.”

“What do you mean?”

Harry looked at him. His face was so youthful, and yet it looked so resigned.

“When you’re bitten as a child,” he said, slowly, “when you’re like us… pack mentality doesn’t
work the same. The bite is supposed to come with loyalty to the person who set you free. But we
didn’t turn when we were bit. When we turn, it’s because we’ve set ourselves free. So we’re not
obligated to any pack and they’re not allowed to touch us until we turn 18.” He paused, looking up
and down Remus’ frame, and then corrected himself; “Until I turn 18. You’re fair game.”

Remus blinked, processing, and then he scoffed. “Wow.”

He noticed a flicker of worry cross Harry’s face, and then it relaxed upon seeing Remus’ small
smile. He almost had one of his own for a second there.

“I suppose that makes sense,” said Remus, feeling oddly absurd about the fact that he is the patron
of this knowledge, the hunter, and yet he knows so little and is being enlightened by the wiles of a
fifteen year old. “As to why they rarely bite children. That’s a bit inconvenient.”

“A bit, isn’t it,” said Harry, blandly.

“How did you trigger it?” Remus asked, trying very hard to act like he hadn’t been bursting to ask
this question for the past ten minutes.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Harry muttered. Remus had to train his face very carefully to not
react; Harry had obviously been through a lot. He felt a sympathy and a kinship to the boy in front
of him. But he’d get it out of him, of course; this gap in his knowledge had been leering for so long
that to be so close to the truth almost ached. The truth about himself. About his identity.

Their identity.

“Okay,” said Remus. “What about—” he almost said our, “the pack? Who…” he paused. Harry
watched him fumble patiently.

Remus swallowed, and then, quieter: “What’s his name?”

A gentle silence.

“Greyback,” whispered Harry, and Remus felt the ends of his ears twitch, the tips of his fingers
tingle.

And there it is, that awful feeling. The scar on his side itched. It’d been itching his whole life. The
beginning and the end lay there in the scars on his skin; how ironic it was, that teeth sinking into
skin was the progenitor of the violence in Remus’ bones and also all that soothed it.
“Greyback.”

It felt like a mouthful. Like biting down on something before your broken bones are snapped back
into place.

Harry nodded. “I see him once a month on moons,” he said. His eyebrows raised with some hidden
emotion. “He dotes on me.”

Remus felt slightly sick.

“Harry…”

“There are others,” he said. “A girl, my age. She triggered hers last May. I think they coerced her
into it.”

Remus stopped, having to take a moment to restitch the fabric of his chest and take in what he
could do and how he was going to do it.

“And, er—Greyback and his pack,” he said, very much not close to saying our this time, “they’re
still in the New Forest?”

Harry paused. “They move around,” he said. “To big open spaces across the country. But they’re
here a lot. They like transforming here. It’s familiar.”

Remus’ first thought was to grab his dagger and grab his jacket and go out and kill them himself,
right fucking now.

His second thought was to call James this very instant and bring him here to take this child home.
Perhaps send him away with the Weasley kids.

His third thought was of Riddle. Tom Riddle. That of monsters. That of beasts.

I, who has beasts?

An… uncomfortable pit of dread seeped into Remus’ stomach.

“Harry,” he said, gently. “Does the pack ever… leave the country? That you know of?”

Harry considered this, and then he shook his head.

“No,” he said, “but sometimes people come here. People with—unpleasant people. I don’t like
them much. They’re very… cold.” He paused, and then; “Last month, we were visited post-moon
by someone. And I’ve never seen Greyback scared. But this man scared him.”

Remus closed his eyes, and thinned his lips.

Oh, God.

“Do you know what the man was doing?” he asked.

“I think he was negotiating,” said Harry.

Oh, God.

“Okay,” Remus breathed, nodding once. “Okay. Okay. Thank you for answering my questions,
Harry. But I—” he cut off, licking his lips. “I can’t help but wonder about your friend. The girl.
Who you said was coerced into triggering her gene. I was wondering what… exactly you meant by
that.”

Harry was quiet for a long, long moment.

“I don’t know,” he said, eventually. “I wasn’t there. And she wouldn’t tell me.”

Remus exhaled slowly. Nodded once.

He went to say something, but was cut off.

“My aunt’s boyfriend,” said Harry, quickly. “He used to drink a lot. And he didn’t get on with my
mum, when she was alive. Sometimes they fought. And then he died.”

Harry fumbled with a hangnail on his thumb, looking down, looking anywhere except at Remus.
He was holding his breath. Letting it come. Harry took a deep breath and spoke again.

“He was killed,” he said, quietly, his voice sort of strained, “and when it happened—when he was
killed. He said he was sorry. He said he was sorry for it. He said it—it was an accident. But the
person who was killing him killed him anyway.” He swallowed, and the next part came out
forceful, with an air of importance to it. “He was sorry and that person knew he was sorry, but they
killed him anyway.”

It hit Remus like a ton of bricks.

To kill a remorseful man. That was how you triggered your gene. Your curse. A human? Most
likely. If it weren’t, Remus would have triggered his gene years ago. To kill someone who was
sorry for the bad that they had done.

This was why so little of them existed, why so little were found out. To kill a man is enough. To
kill a man who is sorry is a needle in a haystack. Men are not sorry. Men are naught but never
sorry.

“I think that there’s a lot more to being sorry than saying the words ‘I’m sorry’,” said Remus,
slowly, quietly. Trying to be gentle with this boy who had evidently not had anybody be gentle to
him since his mother died. “I think the person who killed your aunt’s boyfriend, if they had been
hurt very much by him, shouldn’t dwell on the fact that he said he was sorry. You have to earn
forgiveness. Sometimes sorry isn’t enough, and that’s okay.”

Harry looked at Remus. There were silent tears in his eyes. He nodded, and Remus nodded back. A
mirror, or just a shiny surface.

“Harry,” Remus said, after a lapse. He had got up to refill Remus’ mug of tea. Remus got the
impression that he was used to doing this, and he was used to doing it quickly and efficiently. The
boy, who had just sat back down in his chair, perked up. “Out there, I had this… urge to come to
you. I could feel you. But I could also feel… them. How can I feel them if my gene is untouched?”

Harry took this in.

“You’re still one of us,” he said, eventually. “Triggered or untriggered, we’re the same. We’re still
werewolves the other 27 days of the month. We’re just better at hiding it.” A pause, and then:
“Greyback always says that like calls to like. And—and power calls to power. Whether it’s obvious
or undiscovered. Sometimes the most unassuming people can do the most damage.”

Power matches power. Power and power and power.

A flash. Tom Riddle sitting on his throne. And then Remus. Opposite him, in the ballroom, dagger
in his hand.

Power, power, power.

My oh my.

The conversation fizzled away after that. Remus felt like everybody and nobody at fucking all.

***

Harry’s aunt’s room held a double bed, a wardrobe, a small bookshelf and not much else.

Pandora, of course, took the bed. Her breathing was light and laboured, but she’d been stabilised—
Lily had called the shots with some concoction, mixing together ordinary and magical medicine to
both slow the deterioration 80% of what it was normally—almost like Pandora’s bodily functions
were frozen—stem the bleeding, and soothe the wound itself.

Sirius, of course, did not have to sleep, and thus would staying up to keep an eye on her. Even
wounded Pandora was headstrong. When he tried to perch at the end of the bed she flipped him off
and now he was sort of just standing in the doorframe, or wandering on light feet around the house.

They got clean clothes—some from Lily’s bag, some from Harry’s aunt’s closet—and Lily
scavenged for a few spare pillows and a few moth-eaten blankets to make a makeshift bed on the
floor. She directed this to the room at large. She didn’t talk to Remus, and she fell asleep quickly.

He eventually nestled in beside her and the world fell silent.

They just needed to breathe. Just to breathe, for a moment.

There was a gap in the curtains. With Pandora breathing rhythmically on the bed, Lily lightly
snoring by his side, and Sirius’ light footsteps up and down the stairs as he surveyed the place,
Remus laid on his side. Looked into the darkness of the room.

If he tried hard enough, he could hear howling. But perhaps it was only in his head.

He dreamed.

Awaking to the same, persistent dizziness that befell him when he apparated or portkeyed, he
found himself yet again identifying his whereabouts by touch. The marshy ground was soft
underneath his knees, but this time he was kneeling up, and the dry palms of his hands were
scraping against bark.

He opened his eyes, and he was facing a tree.

It took him not very long at all to realise it was the tree he’d pinned Sirius into. The tree they’d
encountered when they’d apparated in here just earlier. The familiar tree.

Except, now, it was light.

It was artificial. He looked upwards and the sky was burning with lights. They looked like floating
fairies, lanterns, even, glowing white. Obscuring his view of the sky—no. There was no sky. There
was nothing.
He realised with a jolt that he seemed to be on an island of his own fabrication, that if he looked far
enough it descended into white, into nothing. This was a hallucination.

He got up and he turned, and there was Tom Riddle. In a black suit and bow-tie standing about
twelve feet away from him. He was blinking. He looked less confused than he had last time. In
fact, he didn’t look confused at all.

He took a step forward.

“Hello, Tom,” said Remus, quietly, his voice wavering whether he’d like for it to or not.

“Hello again,” he said. All of his movements were slow, like he was pretending to be delicate. It
was so fake it made him look nothing but clunky, and the yellow light in the sky did not befall him
with a youthful glow but made him look more agéd than he might’ve ever seemed.

Remus stared. Nothing felt real. Everything felt real.

“We’re in the Mallard Wood,” said Tom, casually.

He tugged at a low hanging branch. Plucked a leaf off, rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger,
and then let it drop. Remus watched his every move.

“You’ve put my next endeavour together, then. Clever hunter.”

“Hardly by choice,” muttered Remus. He tsked. “You’ve been fraternising with beasts, Tom. A bit
uncouth for you, no?”

Riddle flashed him a dashing smile. His canines glinted under the glow. “You have no idea who I
fraternise with.”

“How am I seeing you right now?” Remus asked, cocking his head. Tom raised his eyebrows. “The
first time was because my heart stopped. Here, I’m dreaming. How am I seeing you?”

“The first time wasn’t just because your heart stopped,” said Tom, tutting as if he was a stupid
schoolboy. “The first time was because you were close to me.” He looked Remus over once. Up,
and down. “You’re a part of me now, hunter. Correct? And so I call to you, and you… me.”

Remus gritted his teeth.

“Why here? Why now?”

Riddle hummed, tugging at the leaves once more. “I was standing here not three weeks ago.
You’re in my footprints, I’d suppose.” He looked over at him. “You said you were not here by
choice. Am I to presume you were led here by magic?”

Remus did not respond. Riddle took that for what it was.

“Ah,” he said, flashing that grin again. “But you didn’t wish to be… here.”

Remus, again, did not respond.

“Hm,” said Tom. He smirked. “As it is and as it always will be. Don’t you see that all roads lead
you back to me?”

“You didn’t do this with Albus,” said Remus, through his teeth, gesturing all around them. “You
didn’t know he was one of yours until I killed him. He was trying to find you for a decade. Which
means your mind is protected. So why am I in it?”

Riddle turned to him. Raised an eyebrow. Plucked another leaf, let it fall to the floor.

“You’re letting me in,” said Remus, realising. “You find this fun.”

“I find this useful,” he said.

“You are sick.”

“I am you,” said Tom, jerking his arm down and taking with it a whole branch.

The crack of where the wood broke echoed three, four times. All of the leaves immediately wilted.

Remus took one step back, and Riddle was suddenly in his face. Mere inches from it. Each line,
each haze, each speck of colour in both of his dead and gone irises, standing in front of Remus.

He didn’t flinch. But he held his breath.

“You let me into a nice little secret our last meeting, hunter,” Riddle hissed. “And now I know
you. Now you are mine.”

He reached a hand up and grasped Remus by the chin. Remus’ hand immediately went to clasp
around his wrist, and there they stood, in stasis. Entirely unmoving.

“You’re an asset,” he said. “A subsidiary. A pawn. I like to know where my assets are.”

“And yet it took you seven years to notice that the locket was missing,” Remus whispered. “Your
assets are running away from you, Tom. Can you run fast enough to catch them all?”

“I will make more.”

“You will die.”

“I will live,” Tom hissed, his face contorting so viscerally it sent Remus’ stomach into a whirl; his
tongue moving like it was venomous, his eyes dark, as if possessed. “In you. You are mine, now.
And I protect my own.” He smiled, and shook his head. It was menacing. “You should be
grateful.”

Remus spat at him.

His face fell. It was awfully cold. The lights above them began to dim as he brought his other hand
up to wipe his cheek. When Riddle spoke again, it was low, his voice tinged with something…
new.

“You cannot hide from me,” he whispered. “I am you. I am that echo of darkness I feel in your
soul. I am the vines festering in your bones. And I am the blood coursing through your veins.
This—” he dug his thumb into the underbelly of Remus’ neck. Sliced the skin open, dug his nail
into the open wound. Remus gasped in pain as he felt blood trickle down his throat. “This is mine!
I am always there. As long as you shall live, hunter. In every shadow behind your back, in every
drop of blood you spill, in every dreamscape you succumb to, I will always be… right… there.”

His hand had moved lower, to press at the ball of Remus’ throat. It made him want to gag; it made
his eyes water. Riddle smiled.

“You don’t have to die, you know,” he murmured, looking Remus up and down. “Let the echo
become something more. Give up. There’s no point running from what is inevitable, dear hunter.
And you cannot tell me you don’t feel it. The allure to power. The fragility of human life.” He
hummed, lips curling. “You didn’t have a problem extinguishing it in Sweden, now, did you?”

“Fuck you,” Remus spat. “Fuck you.”

“You feel it,” Riddle said, grinning, almost laughing. “You feel it! We could be magnificent. You
already are magnificent. Join me. Come out of the shadows. I can show you the light.” He leaned
in. “We could be heroes.”

Remus felt his bottom lip tremble. He felt the knot around his sternum like festering vines, that
chest about to collapse. But he was not dead weight. He was not dead yet. Remus was a series of
movements and a cause, one cause, just this; he exhaled, sharply through his teeth, and held onto
Riddle’s wrist tighter. Tighter, and tighter.

He inclined his head, and looked him dead in the eyes.

“Do you know my name yet?” he whispered.

Riddle’s face twitched, once. And then everything fell into blurry decay, the world around him
unravelled, and Remus let the darkness swallow him whole.

He woke up gasping, choking, his hand reaching up to clutch at his throat. The blood poured warm
over his fingertips, and Lily was up in a flash.

“Remus?” she asked, sitting up and scrambling across immediately to get to him. He gasped,
looking at the blood staining his hand.

“I’m fine, I—”

He took a breath, and then another. In the time Lily opened her mouth to speak again Sirius was
there right beside her, the curtains whooshing. Sunlight blinking in and out of the room.

“Remus, are you alright?”

“Breathe,” Sirius said, placing a hand on his knee. Remus squeezed his eyes shut. Let his hand fall
from where the cut on his neck was leaking blood, ruby-red.

“We have to leave,” he said, hoarse; he cleared his throat, and it hurt. “We have to go. Now.”

Lily’s face fell.

“We have to go, he knows. He knows.”

“He knows?” asked Lily.

“You saw him again?” asked Sirius.

Lily whirled around. “Again?”

“Yes, yes to all of it,” he took a deep breath in, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. By this
point Pandora had awoken. Lily, sighing, made her way around the side of the bed to tend to her
for a moment, and Sirius shuffled into his space, placing a hand on his knee. “Fuck. Fuck.”
“What happened?” he asked. Remus dug the heels of his palms into his eyes.

“Riddle’s recruiting wolves,” he said, as quickly as he can, “the wolf pack, he was here— he was in
that wood not two weeks ago, recruiting the wolves—mine and Harry’s, the—our pack—he was
there. I was there. It took me there, but it was like a dreamspace, and there were burning lights and
everything outside of the trees and the grass was white, and he was there. He got in my head.”

Sirius listened. Eyes wide.

“It wasn’t just because my heart stopped, Sirius, it wasn’t a fluke. He can get in my head, he can
—” His voice broke. Inhale, exhale. Sirius squeezed his knee.

“He can get in your head,” whispered Sirius, processing. “And he knows we’re here right now?”

“He knows,” Remus said, nodding. “I think he’s why we ended up here. Our connection—with
Pandora’s weakened state—the magic overrode her, or something, took us to the only spot in
England where we’d both stepped foot. Took me back to him.”

He looked into the distance. He felt sick to his stomach. He felt wrong in his skin, like it was a suit
he should zip up and leave on the washing line.

His voice echoed in Remus’ head.

“All roads take me back to him,” he whispered.

Sirius blinked. There were gentle voices from the other side of the bed, and the door creaked open,
slightly.

Harry.

“Get dressed,” Sirius said. “Now.”

Remus did. His head still sort of in a blur, but he helped Lily get Pandora up, as she dressed, held
her around the back for support. Sirius was gone for a minute, and so was Harry. Then he was
back, and he had everything they’d brought with them. It was not as if they had unpacked anything.

The curtain blew open again, gently. But the sunlight did not touch them.

“She shouldn’t apparate,” said Lily, as the three of them congregated in the middle of the bedroom.
Remus slid on his backpack. Lily had one arm around Pandora.

“I can apparate,” said Pandora, defensively.

“You shouldn’t.”

“But I can—”

“No.”

“What about a portkey?” Sirius asked. Lily glared at him.

“Sirius, she shouldn’t be using magic—”

“It’s easier—”

“In general!” Lily hissed. “She’s not stable enough—”

“I don’t know what you want me to do, Lily,” Sirius said, harshly. “How do you suggest we get the
hell out of here?”

“I don’t know!” she snapped.

“Well figure it out!” Sirius snapped right back. And then, angry, he stepped closer into her space.
Voice quieter but still venomous. “We destroyed a Horcrux and along with it a whole fucking
island not twelve hours ago, Lily,” he hissed. “Did you forget about that? If he knows where we
are he is going to come for us.”

“Obviously I didn’t fucking forget about that,” she hissed right back. “But I—she’s not—”

“We don’t have time for this,” muttered Sirius.

“She’s weak and shouldn’t be using magic!”

“We do not have time.”

“I can make a portkey,” said Pandora, firmly. All eyes moved to her, but she was looking at Lily.
“Just—just stop. There’s no time. I can do it.”

Remus stepped in to help Pandora kneel down beside the bedside table while Lily and Sirius
continued to whisper-bicker. She held out her hands, shakily; her fingers omitted a few golden
sparks.

“I hope this clock isn’t important to Harry,” she muttered, lip curling, as she curled her fingers
around it and began the Portkey spell.

Remus straightened up.

“Harry,” he whispered. He turned. The door was ajar, and he was standing in the frame silently,
observing from a distance.

Keeping an eye on him, Remus took two steps and slotted himself into the little huddle Sirius and
Lily had formed.

“We can’t leave him,” was the first thing Lily said.

“Yes, we absolutely can.”

“He’s probably apparating people in now, his hounds will track us here, Sirius,” Lily said. “He
lives alone. He’s fifteen. It’s a death sentence!”

As if on cue, Remus felt a shiver at the back of his neck. He tensed his shoulders and jerked his
hand up. Dug his fingers into the hairs at the nape.

They both looked at him. Sirius took a deep breath in.

“What are we supposed to do with him? He’s not our problem,” whispered Sirius. A gentle golden
glow came from behind his back as Pandora continued the spell.

“He’s mine,” said Remus, breaking his silence. “He’s my problem. Sirius, he’s me. I have to help
him.”

He thinned his lips. Exhaled, slowly, looking in his eyes.

“I have to help him,” he whispered.

The three of them turned to look at the door.

Slowly, it creaked open.

***

Sirius caught Remus before he toppled over.

“I’ve got you,” he whispered, as Remus squeezed his eyes shut. “Come on, I’ve got you.”

Remus took a deep breath in to stabilise himself and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms
before opening them.

They were in a cramped, dingy little alleyway. It was not dark, given that it was around eight A.M.
by now, but the buildings overhead were cramped, and there were dumpsters to their right and to
their left that they would have to skirt past.

In front of him, with the alarm clock in the centre on the floor, was Lily, Pandora. And Harry.

Remus straightened up, took three breaths in and out, and looked around him. As they were going
to somewhere only he had been before—the off-grid house Mary owned, as he and Pandora had
decided what felt like forever ago but was only, actually, yesterday—he was the main navigator.
Pandora had apparated them about a five minute walk away from the house.

He looked left. He looked right. Grounded himself, as much as he could.

“Follow me,” he whispered, turning right and leading the way.

The four of them followed.

They walked mainly in silence. A few people did a double take at them—Sirius had picked
Pandora up again, which garnered a few looks, but he played it off as if she was pissed, which
seemed to work. No blood was that visible. They were in fresh clothes, though showers had not
been viable so they were all still a bit grimy. The cave had been merely six hours ago.

A break. All he wished for was a break.

But he wasn’t to get one, for now Riddle could get in his head. He couldn’t let that happen. By the
time they walked up to the house he had already decided to not sleep until he could protect his
mind. But he had no idea how he was to do that.

One step at a time.

The next right thing.

“Are you sure no one else has been here?” whispered Sirius, as they approached. The house was a
narrow little townhouse, completely attached. The navy blue door was framed with white columns,
the brickwork natural, red and orange and dusty. As far as Remus remembered, there were three
rooms and two floors with a loft.

He hadn’t been here in years. But he knew nobody else would have been.

“Yes,” he said, walking down the pathway. “The only people keyed in are me and Dorcas. To
everyone else, the house looks completely disinteresting. It’s a repellent spell. Even if somehow
someone else gets past that, the wards are too powerful. They won’t get in.” He hopped up the two
steps to the doormat, looked up at the navy blue, the black knocker in the middle. He took a deep
breath. “Only I can.”

He reached up to grab the hem of his shirt, bunched it up and stuck it in his mouth to bite down on.

“Remus, what—” Sirius asked.

And he reached out and placed his entire palm over the doorknob.

The burn began as a prickle. It started in the centre of his hand, as if something was poking at him.
And then it spread. A prickling sensation. A sharp jerk into his skin. And then the burning.

He bit down harder.

It took about twenty seconds. It was awful. Always had been, always would be. When the pain let
up, he released his hand immediately, pulling it up to cradle and gasping, sweat beading down the
side of his face.

“What the fuck was that?” asked Sirius. Remus looked at him, then down at his hand.

No blemishes, no burns. Just his hand.

The door handle turned, gently, and clicked. And then it swung open.

“Fucking fire witches,” Remus muttered, “that’s what that was.”

He turned in the doorframe to face the rest of them, but his next words were directed at Sirius.

“Come in,” he said.

They followed.

***

Mary’s house was still just as neat as Remus remembered.

The door entered into a hallway. It was thin, and not very long, consisting of a staircase that curved
at the top, the landing open and fenced. There was an arch to the left that led into the sitting room,
and a white door to the right that led into the kitchen. There was magic all around, magic
everywhere; lining the hallway were little arched portraits that looked more like stain glass
windows, and their contents changed every few minutes, shifting into different views; a rainy river,
a sandy wasteland, a tangible grassy knoll with an oak tree that swayed in the breeze. At the end of
the hallway was a bouquet of flowers that watered itself with a replenishing watering can.
Everything was the same. All of the magic was intact.

They settled in sort of wordlessly. Lily, who was restless about Pandora, had Sirius bring her up to
the first bedroom and had Remus look for all of the magical medications that he could find. It
turned out to be a lot; Mary had a whole wooden basket full of different things, potions and salves
and bandages and ingredients to make things of a higher skill than the basket provided. Lily settled
into her role as nurse and mother as seamlessly as she always had.

Harry, who clearly had no idea what was going on and was jittery and nervous as all hell despite
how hard he tried to act like he wasn’t, ended up floating into the sitting room and perched on an
armchair while everything moved around him. Remus, after passing the box off to Sirius who
carried it up, found himself aimlessly walking into the sitting room. Harry watched him the whole
way, but he did not regard him. He simply walked to the sofa and, exhausted, let himself sit down.

The world stopped. Finally, finally, finally, the world stopped.

Remus could breathe.

“Fuck,” he murmured, letting his head drop into his hands. He took a deep breath and then another.
Tried to reevaluate everything that had occurred in the past few hours. And then he peeked through
his hands at the clock. Sunrise had been at 1:57, and then it had been at 5:04. Now, it was 9:45am.

Okay, he thought to himself. Plan. The plan. Is there a plan? There isn’t a plan.

Let us breathe. For a moment. What has happened? What have we lost?

What have we gained? We destroyed the cup. Beat all the challenges. Straight from the cave to the
forest. Pandora is injured. Riddle is recruiting werewolves. That’s… not particularly surprising.

Werewolves. Werewolves. Start here. In 2015, you came here for a little boy and you killed the
monsters in the night that hurt him. You’ve wished for weeks that someone had killed the monsters
in the night that hurt you. You realise, now, that you killed them yourself. The little boy is sitting
opposite you. There’s a little boy sitting opposite him. Mirror to mirror; you are the same.
Regardless of whether you want to be.

Riddle wants him.

Riddle is recruiting werewolves; that’s not particularly surprising. Riddle is recruiting

werewolves. Riddle is recruiting you. You, you, you, he’s in your head, BLAHHH, you can feel him,
he’s in your bloodstream. AHHH he’s everywhere and he’s nowhere. He’s all over you, he’s a
million miles away. You must not sleep. You must not dream.

BLAHHH.

Werewolves. A hunter. A werewolf. A boy. The Horcrux. No guidance. The next right thing. The
next right thing. Return Spacebar T H E N E X T R I

He dropped his hands, took a deep, deep breath in. Listening to footsteps on the stairs as he thought
himself in circles. He tried to let his mind wander, tried to monologue, tried to work it out through
words, through speech. But, see Remus had never been good at words. They got caught on his
tongue. He’d felt such big emotions in such a little body as a child, and they had morphed into
something that towered over him, something terrifying. He’d grown up in alignment to them but
even now, at 6’3, they towered still. There were never any words to encompass how he felt. No
monologues.

So with every thump of a footstep on the staircase, on a downward spiral, he made a list.

One, two, three, four—

1. Riddle is recruiting wolves.

2. I am part of the pack he is recruiting.
3. I am something else he is recruiting.
4. I do not want to be recruited.
5. The coast of Luleå has suffered an ice shove in the middle of July.
6. Pandora is very badly injured.
7. We destroyed the fourth Horcrux.
 8. There is a child I met six hours ago and six years ago and have known my whole life since
before he was born, the moment teeth punctured a heart that was pure and twisted it into
something grotesque and irresistable.
9. I am part of the pack he is recruiting.
10. I do not want to be part of the pack he is recruiting.
11. Repetition, repetition, repetition, hahahahahahahahaha—

“Fuck,” Remus groaned, leaning forward. Rubbing his eyes. The sofa dipped beside him, and a
hand kneaded its way into the rift between his shoulder blades.

“You okay?” murmured a voice, soft. Sirius.

“Can’t focus.”

Remus raised his head, barely aware of the hand on his back. Since their fight, it was probably the
most intimate physical contact they’d had in days. Kisses in deathtraps never count. They’re
goodbyes, ready to be snatched away as soon as lips part again. But here, things are quiet,
everything except for Remus’ mind, and Sirius’ hand makes no noise as it kneads into the muscles
it knows so well and despises so largely.

“Focus on what?”

“What's next.”

Sirius tsked. “You’re thinking about that right now?”

Remus looked at him. Blinked, sagely.

“What else would I think about?”

“Nothing,” said Sirius, blankly. He looked at Remus as if trying to unpick him with a knitting
needle. “Genuinely, nothing. Stop thinking. We destroyed a Horcrux not twelve hours ago. We’re
safe.”

“We’re never safe,” muttered Remus.

“We’re in a house that no one ever looks twice at, and there are only two people who can enter it,”
Sirius said, rephrasing. “You don’t need to think about what's next, think about right now. Right
now, you need a shower.”

Remus looked at him. His lip was curled slightly.

“Mm?”

“You do,” he said, running a hand through Remus’ hair. “Look at this. Grease. There’s blood in
your hair.”

Remus closed his eyes and laughed, a hollow breath. Sirius dropped his hand from his hair and let
it rest on his knee.

“And sleep,” he said.

Remus’ eyes opened.

“No.”
“What do you mean no?”

Remus blinked at him, as if it should be obvious. He reached up and pressed two desperate hands
to his temple. “He can get in my head, Sirius. When I’m sleeping. I can’t sleep. Not until I—I get
some sort of—some sort of spell. Mental barriers.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Sirius said. “Okay, slow down. We haven’t talked this one through.”

Remus sat, expectantly.

“So… he can get in your head. When you’re sleeping or unconscious. And he’s done this twice in,
like, four hours; but why hasn’t he done it before?”

“I don’t think he knew that he could before my heart stopped in the cave,” said Remus, staring at
an odd spot on the floor. “He has mental barriers. Had, maybe. I don’t know. But it’s so people
can’t purposefully get into his head; witches and the like. But the reason I came to him in the cave,
the first time, that wasn’t on purpose, it was because my heart stopped, right? And so my soul—his
soul,” he corrected, quickly, feeling a tug in his chest at how he misspoke, “in the moments before
death it went back to where it was supposed to go. That’s how I got through. It was a loophole and
now he’s taking advantage of it.”

“He was never supposed to have a living Horcrux,” Sirius said. “Would make sense he didn’t
know he could do it.”

“No, he does,” said Remus, straightening up. In all of the hustle of the past eight hours he’d almost
forgotten. “That snake. I saw the snake, the first time. It’s one of us. I know it.”

“Us,” whispered Sirius, so small.

“Them,” said Remus. He cleared his throat to break the air, and then continued. “She’s a Horcrux,
too. But she’s a snake. Maybe it doesn’t work the same way. Evidently, he’s never tried it on a
human, because then he would’ve known about Albus. But he managed to reach out to me. By
taking down his mental warding, he all but confirmed that. So I need a witch to put them up for
me. So he can’t track us again. And I can’t sleep until I do.”

A moment of silence. Of tense, tense silence. Sirius sucked in his bottom lip and let it fall out in
one movement.

“Well,” he said, eventually. “There are three people who are keyed in to enter this house alone.
And… one of them is a witch.”

It took a moment for this to hit Remus.

“Mary,” he whispered. “We call Mary.”

“We’re not alone, Remus,” said Sirius, softly. “Even though it feels like it out here. But we can’t
risk any interference. So we need to figure out a way to call Mary—only Mary, tell her to come
alone. And she can—” he cut off. Turned to look at Harry, who was still perched on the armchair.

Remus followed his gaze.

Harry, who had reluctantly agreed to come with them after learning he was, in fact, in imminent
danger (at least he had good survival skills) had been perched on the armchair, peeling at the skin
around his thumb for this entire conversation. It took about ten seconds for him to register the quiet
and look up. He immediately tensed.
“I wasn’t listening,” he whispered, panickedly, dropping his hands. “I promise. I’ll—” he got up,
looking down, and made to go out the door—Sirius began snapping his fingers to get his attention
back.

“No, no,” he said. “I don’t care about you listening.”

Harry looked nervously at him, and then to Remus, who nodded and tried to look comforting even
though it was more than impossible at that moment.

Sirius pursed his lips. “I’m thinking about what we’re going to do with you.”

“Do with him?” Remus muttered. “He’s a person, not a dog, Sirius.”

Harry squirmed a little bit, obviously uncomfortable. His eyes were constantly flickering around
and he’d been scratching the back of his hand since Sirius had addressed him.

Sirius shot Remus a look. It was unamused.

“You’re a person,” reaffirmed Remus, getting Harry to look at him, “and you don’t have a part in
this mess I’ve dragged you into.”

Remus paused, as if waiting for the protestation, and then remembered that he wasn’t talking to
Draco or Astoria; though Harry did look very uncertain. He gave himself a moment to ponder when
the hell he’d taken over James’s role as surrogate parent to all of these supernatural youths, and
then continued:

“We have places,” he said. “Places you’ll be safe. Mary can take you there.”

“I don’t want to go with her,” said Harry, immediately.

And there it was.

“Harry, you have to.”

“I want to stay with you,” he begged. “With—I want to be with pack.”

Oh, that stung. Remus swallowed, thickly. He got up, made his way across the room and over to
him, making sure to not touch. Just to be close.

“Harry,” he said, softly, leaning down to be eye-to-eye with him. “You’re not safe here. We’re
doing some really dangerous stuff. You saw—I mean, I was in your house for four hours and
almost got you killed because we’re on the run and they’re chasing us. But nobody is chasing you,
alright? You’re not a part of this. So we’re going to call my friend. And you’re going to go with
her. You can stay with a nice lady and a group of kids around your age in Canada. They’ll take care
of you. I promise.”

“No,” said Harry.

“It’s non-negotiable,” said Sirius, loud and irritable, from where he was sitting on the sofa. “You’re
going. You have no part here, kid.”

“Sirius,” Remus hissed, turning to him and giving him a “simmer down” sort of look. He huffed
and looked away, crossing his arms, and Remus turned back to Harry.

“I want to stay with my pack,” Harry said. “I’ll go back and be with them.”
Remus had to train his face so it didn’t flicker. He licked his lips.

“Harry,” he said, very slowly. “They treated you very badly.”

The kid frowned, as if he was confused.

“No,” he whispered, shaking his head sullenly. “They didn’t.”

“I think they did,” he said. Harry shook his head again. “Harry. Harry.”

“They didn’t.”

“Okay, they didn’t,” Remus said, gently, noticing he was getting wound up, “but if you go back,
I’m scared that they’ll begin to. Do you remember the man you told me about, who visited? The
one you didn’t like; the one Grey—Greyback, he was scared of?”

“The cold one,” said Harry.

“The cold one,” said Remus. “He’s bad. Very, very bad. He’s the man we’re fighting against. He’s
the villain, the one chasing us. You understand?”

Harry nodded.

“He visited Greyback to make deals with him. To use him and his pack. So if you go back, you’ll
be forced to fight on his side,” he said. “If they don’t, he will treat you badly. Really badly. Do you
understand that?”

Harry hesitated. And then he nodded.

“Alright,” said Remus. “So. You understand that you can’t go back?”

Harry looked at him, his chin tensing. There were tears in his eyes, though he seemed to be making
the utmost effort to get rid of them. All he knew was pack. It was his only family. It was the only
thing he had left to go back to. It was a testament to how much the bond meant to him—or,
perhaps, how little personal bonds he’d had, as opposed to bonds made out of necessity, out of
force—that he’d attached himself so quickly to Remus. To Harry, pack was the only trust he had.
Remus had felt that, once, too.

“Hey,” he said. Harry looked up at him. For a fifteen year old, he was very small. “I’m not going to
pretend that I know much about… well, about pack, or being a werewolf. I only found out I was
one a month ago. I don’t know much, but I do know what it’s like to find a family. I found mine at
seventeen.” He shrugged. “You can make your own pack. You can create your own family. And it
can be the people you’re tied to now, but it doesn’t have to be. Pack can be anything you want.”

“Anything I want,” whispered Harry.

“Anytime, as well,” said Sirius, piping up from the sofa. The both of them turned around to look at
him. “Took me three hundred years to find my family. You don’t owe anyone anything just
because you’re related to them. Through blood or magic. It’s the most important thing I’ve ever
learned, I think.”

Harry stared, took this in.

And then: “You’re three hundred years old?”

“Oh, God,” Remus muttered, feeling an insensible smile creep up on his face. Sirius flat-out
grinned.

“Something like that,” he said. Harry’s eyebrows were so high on his head it looked like they
might fly away.

“Wicked,” he breathed.

“Yeah,” said Sirius, strenuous as he pushed himself to stand up. “And I’ll tell you all about it,
when we’re not fugitives on the run from an army of vampires who want to slit our—”

He locked eyes with Remus, who shot him a glare.

“When we’ve killed the bad guy,” he amended, slowly. “And we’re safe. C’mon, we’ll call Mary
later. We've got all day, we’re safe here, and you’ve probably barely slept. You can take a nap in
Lily’s room, which—” he cut off, turning to Remus. “She’s set up camp for Dora’s on the first on
the right, so hers will be…?”

“The room next to it,” said Remus. Dora was in the spare room. That was Mary’s room. And the
third, across the landing on the other side, was Remus and/or Dorcas’.

“Come on, I’ll show you,” grumbled Sirius, when Harry was hesitant; they walked away through
the arch side-by-side. Harry turned to look up at him.

“So… did you fight in the world wars?”

“Shut up, kid.”

Remus watched them go.

***

Harry and Sirius set up camp in Mary’s room, Lily and Dora in the spare. Remus stood in front of
the white door, up the step, and he hesitated.

This was the room that he and her would stay in. Of course, only when it was just the one. When
both of them wanted to stay at the same time they’d have a massive row over who got The™
bedroom and who got the spare—it was a ridiculous, stupid playful argument that had Mary rolling
her eyes every time. At some point, they ended up shaking on taking turns. Remus was quite sure
his next turn was to be in the spare, not here. It felt wrong. But neither of them were here. That felt
wrong, too.

He pushed the door open.

Even despite his oddness, the room was comfortably familiar. The sheets that were on at the
moment were dark purple. It was a weird stand-out colour against the light woody feel to the room.
There were living plants on the windowsill. With a sigh, Remus flopped onto the bed, and the
morning sun reflected onto him through them, casting a shadowy leafy pattern over his face.

After a few minutes, feeling weirdly agitated and unsure of what to do, he went looking around.
There was a snowglobe on the mantelpiece that he shook and put back. Mary evidently hadn’t
cleared up properly after the last Christmas she was here. There was linen in the wardrobe, towels
piled up and sparse shirts and blazers hung—some Remus’s, some not. He rubbed his thumb and
forefinger over the leaves of the plants sitting in their blue plant pots on the windowsill. Stuck his
finger into the soil to see how dry it was. He couldn’t tell what plants they were—if they were
flowers, if they’d ever bloom. It was July, you’d think they would have if they could.
He turned to the chest of drawers by the right side of the bed.

The middle one was open, just a crack.

It took him a moment to remember. Every hunter’s room has a stash, obviously. It’s simply a rite of
passage. Remus and Dorcas had had to agree on theirs, here. They’d chosen the middle drawer;
folded all of the worn clothes and old things of Mary’s that really should have been put in charity
bags in there for a facade, over the top of their just-in-case weapons. A few of her throwing knives,
a forearm-length machete over three guns. Or four. Remus couldn’t really remember.

He dropped to his knees, pulled it open. This is how Sirius found him, arm-deep in these frilly
frocks and faded graphic tees, frowning.

Remus turned when the door creaked open, and Sirius stepped in. He blinked, for a moment, taking
it in. He rather thought a flash of something uncertain hid behind his eyes, but he was too hyper
focused on what he was… not finding.

“Weapons,” he said, looking up at him from the floor. Sirius frowned. “This was open a little bit.
We hid weapons in this drawer. Nothing’s here.”

Sirius took this in. “Well, surely Mary has a stash in her room as well?”

“No, that’s—not the point, Sirius,” Remus snapped. He shut the drawer, and opened the one below
it. “No one has been here. They should still be in here.”

“It was probably Mary, or—” he cut off. “Someone, at some point in the past few months. They
probably came back to get backup.”

Remus’ hand stilled. He exhaled slowly. Turned to Sirius, who was looking around. His breathing
was so quiet Remus could barely hear it, but he could see it when he looked—Sirius was inhaling,
and then exhaling. Inhaling, exhaling.

“What?” he asked.

Sirius’ head jerked back to him.

He shook his head almost too quickly. “Nothing. Nothing. Nice room. Are there any towels in
here? Lily showered and used the last ones in the bathroom.”

“Wardrobe,” Remus said feebly, pointing. Sirius found them quickly enough.

“Right,” he said, hauling them all under one arm. Enough for the both of them.

Remus slumped a little. Falling back on his knees, he slowly shut the drawer and sat there on the
floor. Looking at him.

“Right.”

The silence was deafening. As the dust settled, the leafy shadows from the window covered specks
and cut out pieces of them in the darkness on their faces, hid them away. It was hard to reconcile
with the frostiness now it lay so thickly between them, lathering the puzzle pieces in the deep until
you couldn’t see them anymore, couldn’t even begin to put them back together. With nothing to
aim for, no plan and no high stakes, there was no desperation in this room. There was just anger.
There was just sadness, and something else.
“Do you want to go in the shower first, or shall I?” Sirius asked, after a minute. Remus looked at
him, and he looked back, but only for a second. He dropped eye contact. Swung from foot to foot
as if to keep himself busy so he wouldn’t fall back into his eyes.

“I don’t mind,” Remus said, softly. “You can go first.”

“Sure?”

“Yeah,” he said, placing a hand on the bed and pushing himself to his feet. He looked around
briefly. “I think I’m just going to sit in here for a little bit.

Silence.

“Alright.”

Remus thinned his lips. “Alright.”

“Harry’s asleep in Lily’s room,” Sirius rattled off, “and Dora is asleep in the other one. Lily’s
pottering around downstairs somewhere. She’s agitated. I’d avoid her. She might snap at you.”

She’d have the right to, Remus thought. But he didn’t say it.

He didn’t say anything. He just nodded.

Sirius opened his mouth. Closed it.

And then he turned to go.

“Sirius,” Remus said. Heard come out of his mouth, really. He didn’t know he was going to say it
until he did.

He froze in the doorframe, and then turned, slowly, to look back at him.

“Are we going to be okay?” Remus asked.

It was horribly vulnerable. Quiet. Almost like an offering; that’s what it felt like. But somewhere
along the way what Remus had to offer had become stained with untruth. He couldn’t steer
anymore, so his words had become questions had become libations. He couldn’t give Sirius what
he needed from him, and maybe that was the answer to his own question. With the way Sirius’
face twitched it seemed all too vicious.

“Heh. I—” Sirius cleared his throat. He looked to the floor, his mouth pursing and then twitching
into an unforgiving, bitter smile that dropped almost as quickly as it came.

And then there came the eye contact. He was entirely still, this time.

“Yeah, you’re going to have to figure that one out for yourself, Remus,” he said, eventually.
Angrily. The air had grown cold and Remus felt something prickling at the back of his neck,
shame under his collar. Frustration and want and desperate dissociation. “Try again later.”

And with one last glance, he left the room. Shutting the door behind him.

Remus flopped back onto the bed and tried to will his heart to detach from the body in the
bathroom. But it beat the same frequency as the pelting of the showerhead. It yearned in the same
simple system; just this. The past. The things he turned away from. Everything hindered around
follow, follow, follow. A dog to a fuckin’ bone, he is. But it’s either follow the last person who
slept in this bed, or the next person who will, and quite frankly with the dust settling Remus is
finding it harder and harder to make the decision.

This is what you wanted.

The bed smelled like her.

Isn’t this what you wanted?

Remus’ hands smelled like him.

He shoved them under the pillow and breathed in, breathed in, breathed in.

Can’t stay. Can’t stay. Can’t stay.

***

“What is this?” asked Lily, when Remus walked into the living room at around 2pm. He stopped to
see what she was fiddling with.

It was a radio. An old one. Wooden panelling around the edges, a dial and a little microphone
connected to the thing with a coiled phone cable; the same cable that was on the teal-coloured
traditional old phone on the side table in the sitting room.

The radios being slightly retro were HI1’s doing, as they were designated stationary radios, for
hunters with full time residences. They could connect to the comms devices that they carried on
missions. They could also hack into the police wiring, which is what Remus, Dorcas and Mary did
for the majority of their time living together as trainees and thereafter.

The phone, however, was Mary. Her personal preference. She thought it matched the “vibe of the
room” better.

“Radio,” answered Remus, eventually. She switched the dial, kept switching it, but it was only
static. “There should be two. Mary got a spare.”

“There’s only one, and it doesn’t work.”

Remus hummed. “When HI1 and 2 went down I presume so did the frequencies this one would’ve
been connected to,” he murmured, walking closer to the kitchen isle where she was sitting to have
a look. He fiddled with the antenna for a moment. “Twist it all the way right. Channels one
through five are customised but six is usually the BBC or something generic like that.”

She did, switching it all the way. Almost immediately the voices came, a little garbled and static-y
but undoubtedly a news reporter. Remus pulled the antenna again and fiddled with it until he got
the broadcast as clear as he could, and the voice crackled into coherency.

“—ice shove on the coast of Northern Sweden, devastating many of the rural communities
bordering the city of Luleå. The ice is said to have travelled at least four kilometres, scratching the
edge of the city centre; residents are piling together resources and helping hands to bring relief to
these communities, while authorities are scratching their heads on what caused the island’s
collapse, and, more questionably, where the winter ice came from in the middle of July. The
community has been bordered off from visitors due to scientist’s concerns that the ice has relations
to the freezing toxic fog slowly making its way through the U.S.A. The BBC’s Sophia Stafford
reports directly from the outskirts of—”
Lily twisted the dial once more. The radio fell back into static.

It was silent for a long moment.

“Lily…”

“Thanks for helping with the radio,” she muttered, scraping her chair out and standing up.

“Lily.”

She turned. Bit down on her lip and then released it with a sigh.

“Look. I’m mad at you, Remus,” she said. “I’m mad at you. We promised.”

He swallowed, thickly, looking to the floor. “I said from the beginning that we had our priorities
and that they came first, no matter what—”

“You left them there. Stranded on the coast after everything they did to help us, to help you—”

“We broke the enchantment, I let them use me to freeze the entire bay. You heard Pandora, the
damage was reduced to over half of what it could’ve been if we didn’t—”

“You’re kidding me,” Lily replied, emotionlessly.

“Pan—Pandora was injured,” he said, desperately. “She couldn’t have helped. You couldn’t have
exactly helped! We had a concise agreement to put this group and our aims first and that is exactly
what I did. To destroy Tom Riddle. To stop him.”

Lily—who had flinched at the direct address of her futility and was now breathing heavily—leaned
back. She looked at him as if she didn’t even recognise who he was anymore.

“They’re saying that almost two hundred people have died,” she said, quietly, swallowing back the
tears in her eyes. “Because of you. Esmeralda and Henrik included, no doubt. And you write it off
because it’s not as bad as it could’ve been. You used to break your back to save even one person.”
A pause, and then: “I don’t know what kind of avengement you think you’re pulling off but Dorcas
wouldn’t want this, Remus. She would hate this.”

“Stop it.”

“She is dead,” Lily said, pronouncing every word finitely, curling her lip back with anger as the
tears broke their way over her waterline and onto her cheeks. She took a step forward. “Dorcas is
dead, Remus, and none of this is going to bring her back, okay? None of it.”

“It’s not because of her,” Remus said, shaking his head. Tears that he didn’t even know were
festering curled at his chin. “It’s not. It’s because of him. Everything, is because of him.”

“And you need to stop him,” Lily breathed, cocking her head. Her jaw was set. Her hands sparked,
and she curled them back into her sleeve, as if taming an angry beast. Perhaps they both had a
beastly side.

“We do,” he said.

Lily took this in. Stared at him, for a long, long moment. Tears shedding like dead, used skin.

“I think you’re the one that needs to be stopped,” she whispered, eventually.
And with that she turned around and stalked out the room.

Remus stood there, sort of dumbstruck for a moment, until he caught onto footsteps behind him.

He turned.

Sirius was there. Hands by his side. His eyes were stormy, jaw clenched. That grinding was a nasty
habit. Remus hands twitched as if he wanted to reach out but he kind of couldn’t remember how to
move.

“I don’t… feel anything for it,” Remus whispered.

They stood, three feet apart, just staring at each other. Remus was carefully and terrifyingly calm.

“I don’t…” he shook his head. “I don’t feel…”

“I know,” said Sirius. “I know you don’t.”

Silence.

Remus looked at him. In the frame of the door he looked tall, carved from something that missed
the shape of him every single day. His hands twitched again but this time he didn’t feel the urge to
reach out but the urge to pull back. Sink his claws into the soft underbelly of Sirius’ throat and rip
it open. Have him just that much closer. Flesh in his hands and down his throat. Dirty his hands
some more, but do it on his own terms. Wasn’t this what it was all for?

The phantom blood dripped from his fingertips as Sirius spoke. He could feel the bob of his adam’s
apple on the ribbing of the pads of his fingers.

“I think we should call Mary, now,” he muttered. “I’ll go wake the kid.”

And he walked out of the room.

Fifteen minutes later, Sirius and Harry were sitting on the sofa while Remus stood in front of the
phone. Lily was in her room; she had been summoned, but her no show wasn’t unexpected.

“You’re sure it’s untraceable?” Sirius asked.

“It’s untraceable,” said Remus, nodding. “The spellwork is firm. It comes up with a different
number every time you call it, so we have a system.”

He pressed the numbers in gently. Picked up the receiver. The phone rung once.

He placed the receiver back down onto the handle.

“Seven, six, five,” he whispered. Counting down. “Four, three, two—”

Punched all the numbers in, and the line rang again. He held it up to his ear this time.

“Seven, six, five,” he whispered, “four, three, two—”

The line clicked.

Remus’ heart leapt. It was silent for maybe two seconds.

“What did I cook the first night we met?”

He almost cried at her voice.

“Trick question,” came his response, a drawl attached to the way his lip had curled. “You didn’t
cook. We ordered Dominos, and you heckled me for getting a Hawaiian and then stole a piece
from the fridge in the morning.”

“How do you know that was me?” she shot back. “Plausible deniability.”

“Because Dorcas is allergic to pineapple, Mary.”

There was a long moment of her silence.

“Yes,” Mary whispered, chuckling. “Yes, she is. Remus.”

“Hi, Mary.”

“Remus,” she breathed, pure relief and something else, too. “Oh my God, Remus. Oh my God.
Hi.”

“Hi,” he repeated, grinning inadvertently. “Hi, Mare.”

“Oh my God. You fucking idiot. I have been so worried, I’ve been so worried. That fucking letter,
I could wring your neck right now! Where have you been?!”

“Around,” said Remus. “Can’t say here. But. Erm. Well, we’ve destroyed one.”

There was a moment of pure silence.

And then: “Oh my GOD,” came her laughter, a little far away from the speaker, as if she had to put
her phone down for a minute and process what she had just heard. “Holy shit. You did it. Is– is
everyone—”

“We’re all okay,” he said. “One of us is injured but going to be alright, I think. That’s actually part
of the reason why I’m calling you. We’re at…” he paused, trying to convey it in a way she would
understand. “The teal phone. Where my palm hurts.”

She laughed. It was a bit thick.

“Right.”

“And I need you to come to me,” he continued. “There’s not much I can tell you over the phone. I
can fill you in in person. But you can’t tell anyone. We made a big statement of ourselves and
we’re… suffering the consequences of that.”

A pause.

“Sweden,” she said. “I knew it was you.”

“Plausible deniability,” he murmured, and then: “Can you come?”

“Without anyone knowing? I can—I can get an hour. Maybe two. Sooner rather than later,
preferably, because around six Glasses always wants to congregate and Robo-boy can’t say no to
him and I can’t say no to him, so.” She stopped, breathing in deeply and letting it go. “But I can
make time.”

“Please do,” he said.

“Anything for you,” she whispered. Remus nodded into the phone, closing his eyes against the
tears that threatened him. Holding the receiver so tight that it strained his palm. “Anything, yeah?”

“Mhm,” he murmured. “You can get in. I’ll be on the lookout.”

“Okay.”

“And don’t call this number back.”

This, she scoffed at. “Remus, I know how to work the goddamn phone that I installed.”

He grinned. “Sorry.”

“Bye,” she said, smile in her voice. “See you soon.”

“I’ll see you, Mary. See you. Okay, bye.”

He put the phone down. It clicked throughout the silent room.

“Right,” said Sirius. “Now all we have to do is figure out how to tell her that we’ve stolen a child.”

“And that you’re hallucinating,” Harry piped up, pointing towards Remus.

He blinked. “I’m not hallucinating.”

Harry hummed. “Sounded like you were hallucinating.”

“I’m not hallucinating,” he said, raising his eyebrows, “I’m… I’m just…”

He trailed off. Harry pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows. A fifteen year old has never looked
so patronising.

The nap seemed to have rejuvenated him; he was less nervous, though still sort of fidgety and
keeping an eye on everyone and everything as if the pictures on the walls were going to jump out
and surprise him. It was either this, or the possibility that he just… felt comfortable around Remus.
Which made him feel all warm and gooey inside.

Come to think of it, looking at Harry was… the first time that he’d felt comfortable in his
lycanthropy since he’d found out he had the blasted thing. This mirror of himself. This kid. This
pack.

“Oh—go upstairs,” Remus hissed, fondly, shooing him out of his seat and out the archway. “Go
away. Adults are talking. I’ll tell you when she’s here, okay?”

Harry smiled as he went, hopping up the stairs. Remus scoffed and turned back into the room to see
a small smile on Sirius’ face.

“Do not start.”

“I quite like this one.”

“Oh, shut up.”

***

“Oh, shut up,” was the first thing that came out of Mary’s mouth as the front door swung open and
subsequently shut, an hour and forty-five minutes later. “Shut up.”

With two steps and a hoppy sort of leap she projected herself into Remus’ arms.

“I didn’t even say anything,” he murmured, hugging her as tight as he could and digging his nose
into her hair. She swayed them, clinging to him like she’d fall if she didn’t. Huffing into his neck.

“Shut up.”

“Mhm.”

“I cannot believe you,” she said, leaning back. “You bastard. I have so many fucking bones to pick
with you it’ll be like when the dinosaurs went extinct. Except worse.”

“I’m sorry,” he offered.

“So much worse,” she hissed. She pulled him in for one more hug and then stepped back. Placed
her hands on his shoulders and squeezed.

Once they detached themselves from each other, her attention drew to Sirius. There was… a pause,
and then she smiled a bit sadly, opening her arms. It was only slightly awkward.

“Hi, Sirius,” she said as he hugged her. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Hi, Mary,” he said back. When they pulled away, she looked around, expectantly.

Turning to Remus: “You said on the phone… someone was injured?”

“Pandora,” he said. She exhaled, and nodded. “She was—well, it’s a long story. Stabbed with a
sword in a treasury room at the bottom of a cave. You know how it is.”

She blinked at him. “I very much don’t, actually.” But she was laughing. “Look, I enlisted Jul’s
help to cast an illusion and cover my ass—sorry, I had to tell them I was going to see you but
they’re the only person who knows. They also said you owe them a fag by the way.”

Remus shrugged, in a gesture that said “fair enough”. They all trusted Jul. At least, Remus did,
wholeheartedly.

“Anyway I think I’ve got about an hour and a half until someone notices I’m gone. So I’m
thinking, half an hour catch-up time, and I do whatever you need me to do—cause I know you need
me for something—and then I can tell you about…”

She trailed off, gently, her eyes wandering away from Remus and upwards; looking over his
shoulder, up the staircase.

Lily was standing on the landing.

“Oh,” she whispered.

“Mary,” Lily said, as if she had not been expecting her. Processing. “Mary.”

“Hi, Lil.”

“Mary,” she breathed, “Mary–” and then, there she was, catapulting down the stairs, running into
her arms.
They laughed as Lily threw herself at her, staggering slightly as Mary took in her weight and held
her, two hands around her back with Lily’s hands around her neck. They couldn’t stop laughing.
Remus stood back, settling into Sirius’ side and watching them, waiting for them to get enough of
each other. But they didn’t seem to. They looked like one being, the way they clung, and Mary’s
laugh was hysterical and heavenly.

“Okay,” she said, thickly, wiping her eyes. “Alright.” Her hands went everywhere, to Lily’s face, to
her neck, her hair. Hands on her shoulders. The next few words were directed to the room at large
but she seemed simply unable to take her eyes off Lily. “I want to know everything. What the hell
happened in Sweden. Where we’re at now. Where—whoa, what is this?”

She gasped, pushing Lily’s sleeves up to see the glimmering golden veins up her freckly arm. It
wasn’t unusual for Lily’s veins to glow alongside her magic, but it was out of place when she
wasn’t actively summoning fire. And yet they’d cracked through in the cave and simply hadn’t
dissipated since. Rushing gold and fire throughout her body, like a symbiosis, Remus quite thought
they even…spruced up a little bit as Mary traced them.

“I’m not quite sure myself,” said Lily, quietly.

Mary, holding onto her arms, looked up at her. Her grip slowly moved down to her hands.

“That’s alright,” she whispered. Lily smiled.

And then she turned to Remus and Sirius.

“Come on, boys,” she said. “What the hell have I missed?”

And thus, an hour passed.

Granted, they had had a break in which Mary and Lily left—clad in hoodies, face masks and, in
Lily’s case, a blonde wig—to get a Chinese takeaway from the place on the corner. And then they
had piled into Pandora’s room, where she was groggy but on the mend and conscious—conscious
enough to be snarky whenever any of them got anything wrong—and told Mary everything.

She had taken it majorly well—ooh-ing and ahh-ing at appropriate moments, as one does. It had
been fun to talk to her about his and Lily’s training, even if she still would not look at him. Mary
found the magic side of things overly interesting, and could not believe the brilliance of
channelling the moon to freeze the cyclical water. She had been on the edge of her seat for the
entire cave debacle. When they’d gotten to the second challenge, she had sat back, mouth full
(they’d gotten the food by this point) and raised her eyebrows.

“You saw him? As in, him him, not a hallucination?”

“Yeah,” said Remus. He licked his lips. “That’s actually sort of… half of the reason why you’re
here.”

“Half?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, God,” she muttered, waving her spoon at him. “Okay, we’ll get there. Continue.”

When they got to the end, she asked about the ice shove. It went abnormally quiet.

Remus swallowed thickly. “We had to leave,” he said. “It wasn’t safe.”
She did not press, and nobody interjected. But Remus didn’t miss the way Lily’s jaw locked, and
neither did Mary.

She didn’t pick up on the second half of the plan until the story was over.

“So,” she said—plate empty now, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees, in a chair by
Pandora’s bedside. “What happened to the kid? Did you just leave him there?”

A tense silence.

She sat up.

“Tell me you haven’t found another forlorn supernatural child to dump on us, Remus,” she warned.

“I haven’t found another forlorn supernatural child to dump on you,” he said.

Her shoulders relaxed for a mere moment.

“I was actually thinking he could go to the Weasley’s?”

Mary immediately threw her hands up in exasperation.

“For God’s sake,” she groaned, dropping her head into her hands. “Okay. So I’ve been summoned
here to be babysitter. Fantastic.”

“Baby relocator, if we’re being precise,” said Sirius. “He also refuses to go without promising that
we’ll go retrieve his friend, too. A girl, over in Chiswick. Think he said her name is Hermione?”

“Baby relocator. Baby-hunter,” Mary said. “What’s next? Baby driver?”

“Well, kind of that too, if you’re going all the way across to Chiswick…”

She scowled at him.

“And then there’s also the whole… well,” Remus tapped on his temple. “This thing.”

“And also,” said Lily, flicking her hair and turning to her, “you get to see me.”

Mary turned. Quirked an eyebrow at her.

“Hmmm,” she muttered, as if assessing. “No. Not worth it.”

“Fuck you, Macdonald.”

“Mm-hm,” she hummed, grinning. With a clap of her hands on her knees she stood up, brushing
herself off. Everyone followed her, except Pandora, for obvious reasons. “Right.”

“Right.”

“Show me the kid, then,” she said, in her usual organised way. “And then I want to look over you,”
she pointed at Pandora, “see if you need anything I can grab from home and send over.”

“I’ve already made a list,” croaked Pandora.

“And then,” she wheeled around on the spot, turning to point directly at Remus. Her face softened.
She looked like an exasperated older sister, which was kind of what she was, even though she was
only a month and ten days older than him. “God. What the hell am I going to do with you.”
Remus got the sense it wasn’t a legitimate question.

Going to their designated spots; Lily took Mary into the middle room, where Harry had been
waiting, eating his own food that Lily slipped in the room and more than likely eavesdropping.
Remus went to his room. They moved systematically. It felt, almost, like he was back at
Boardwalk.

Something about it was bittersweet.

***

“Okay,” Mary murmured, sitting beside him with her two forefingers pressed to each of his
temples. They had been in that position for perhaps two minutes, maybe three. She pulled them
away, and let them hover beside his face. “That’s done.”

Remus opened his eyes, and almost died.

“Fuck me.”

“Oh, shit, sorry—” Mary got up quickly to turn the overhead light off and close the curtains.
“Yeah. I forgot, eye strain is a side-effect of that spell. It gives some people migraines.”

“Good to know,” Remus muttered, making a mental note to remember he’d seen some ibuprofen in
a drawer in the kitchen.

She sat beside him again, dipping the bed.

“So, that should work for the time being,” she said. “Obviously—it’s not 100%. He might be able
to override it. But it should protect you from any unwanted intruders in your head. However, it’ll
stop you from getting into his, too.”

“That’s fine,” Remus muttered. “My first trip wasn’t exactly pleasant.”

She smiled. “It’ll last about four weeks,” she said, continuing her lecture; “most spells of this
nature are ritual spells which last much longer, but since you gave me such little notice, this is what
we’ve got. In that time I can whip up a ritual and have it ready for when this one runs out. Should
last a bit longer and be a bit more powerful.”

Remus took a deep breath in. He nodded.

“I’ll stay in touch,” he said, quietly.

“You better,” she replied almost instantaneously. Her hand crept over his, rested there. He flipped
his palm up and encased her small hand into his larger one, and she looked down, bit her lip in the
telltale way she did when she was trying not to cry.

“Mary…”

“I thought you were going to kill yourself,” she said, gently, looking up at him. “After that letter. I
didn’t think I’d see you again. I have it with me, actually. I never—I never set it down.”

She rummaged in her pocket, pulled the paper out. It was folded a few different times and slightly
crumpled, wrinkled at the edges from where it had been shoved into a pocket or two.

“I’m going to make sure you live comfortably without any trace of threat or unrest because that is
the life you deserve, Mary,” she read. Bitterness laced through her voice. “I’m going to fix this. I’m
going to fix us. And I’m going to win this thing.”

“Mary—”

“This was not a sufficient goodbye,” Mary snapped, throwing the letter down on the bed. Her
bottom lip was trembling. “Remus. That was not a good enough goodbye.”

“It wasn’t a goodbye,” he whispered.

“Don’t lie to me,” she said, sadly. “It was. I wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t needed my magic.
It was a goodbye. A hopeful one, but a goodbye nonetheless.” Tears fell down onto her cheeks.
“And it wasn’t good enough. It hurt me, Remus.”

He looked at her. He felt her pain like a gaping hole in his chest, clutching at one side to try and
close it. But nothing stretches that far. You stretch it too far and it breaks. So you’re gasping for air
and paper straws for the rest of your life.

“God,” she sniffed, wiping her face. “You’re so selfless that it’s selfish. Do you know that?” She
gave it a moment, but he didn’t respond. He just watched her. “I mean,” she continued, shrugging,
“one sacrifice over millions, right? That’s what it is to you. If you die you can kill the part of you
that’s his and you can kill him and everybody’s happy. But—what about me, Remus? What am I
supposed to do when you’re gone?”

He looked down into his lap, unable to look her in the eye.

“It wasn’t just you and her, you know,” said Mary, quietly. “It was me, you and her. And I know I
was the best friend of two people who were best friends—”

“Mary, that’s not what it was at all—”

“Oh, it’s fine,” she hissed, shaking her head, grabbing his hands. Sniffing. “I was. It’s okay. I don’t
mind, I never minded, I never cared.” She looked at him, steadfast, taking her bottom lip in and
releasing it. “But I loved her just as much as you did. And I needed you. So much. Can you
imagine what that was like for me? I lost her. And then I wake up and you’re gone too. And you’ve
lost—everything—” she shuffled forward and took his face in her hands, stray tears falling he
hadn’t realised he’d shed; “I know that. But if you can be selfish I think I can too. and I can’t lose
you. You’re all I have left. You’re my best friend.”

“Mary,” Remus whimpered, cheeks hot against her supple hands. She smelled like rosemary and
vanilla and something he’d almost forgotten.

“Talk to me, baby,” she murmured. Tears falling silently onto her cheeks. “Just—just talk to me.
Please. Let me be here. Let me in.”

Remus closed his eyes, their foreheads knocking together. Her hands on his face were so soothing.
So gentle.

“Mary, I’m so lost,” he croaked. Voice breaking.

She exhaled.

“I know.”

“I feel like I’m drowning,” he said. “Every day. Like I’m in that fucking cave. And every time the
water threatens to run me over a little bit of the rock chips away, forms a little hole, and a bit of it
drains away. And I get a moment to breathe. But it doesn’t stop filling. It will never stop.”

Mary listened. Tracing her thumbnail over his cheek. And then, leaning back, she shook her head.

“No, it won’t,” she replied, “it will never stop. I know. When my parents were killed it hurt to
breathe, Remus. It felt like my lungs were filling with water and leaving just enough room to
breathe in the shallow, to keep me alive, keep me living this torturous, torturous half-existence.”
She sniffed, looking down, taking his hands in hers. “But if I learned anything from that it’s that
eventually, the little hole will grow bigger. And more of the water will drain away. And one day,
you will wake up and realise that you’re paddling, and it won’t make you sad. It’ll make you happy
that you learned to swim in the first place.”

He stared at her, away and afar, half-hearted against the clawing of something grotesque against
the waterproof dome over his heart. Whirlpools are horrific to one and extraordinary to the next.
The water rocked, but it didn’t crash. It stayed in time to the rhythm that she was rubbing circles
with her thumb into his hand in.

After a minute, so gently, Mary laughed.

“Do you remember when Dorcas took us swimming? At Waterworld?” she said, biting her bottom
lip. “Made us get three trains out of London ‘cause she wanted to go on all the fancy slides.”

It felt like a punch to the gut. It felt like taking a deep breath.

“She made fun of you the entire way back,” Remus croaked, his lip curling, “because you were too
scared to go on the adrenaline ride with the big drop. She said—”

“Are you a witch or not?” said Mary, interjecting, chuckling to herself. “If you’re so scared just
levitate.”

“And then she screamed like a banshee on the way down,” Remus said, and Mary nodded
vigorously, really laughing now.

“She did,” Mary nodded. “But she did it. Twice, I swear?”

“Twice with us,” said Remus. “And then she went again, right?”

Mary took a moment, and then she gasped.

“With Peter—”

“And he was—”

“Peter was a professional swimmer,” Mary finished, grinning. Christ, Remus had not thought about
Peter in a long, long time. He couldn’t remember when. He also couldn’t remember the last time
he’d laughed, and yet here he was, now. Doing that. “Absolutely showed her up. God, that was
when she was training him with the group in the states, right? Why was he even here?”

Remus nodded. “She brought him over to London to visit. Take a class they only offered at HI1, I
think. But they also did all the touristy things. Took me on an open-top bus. I saw more of London
on that one day than I’d seen all of the years I’d lived there.”

Mary laughed. “I’ve still never been to Westminster Abbey.”

“Who the fuck has?”

“Dorcas and Peter!”

And they burst out laughing again.

She squeezed his hands, and he fell into her slightly as he keeled over, chuckling at the memories.
It was bittersweet. It was almost like everything was normal, for a second. Like the people they
were referring to weren’t dead. Like he hadn’t seen their bodies. Well, hers, at least.

They fell quiet.

“Remus,” whispered Mary.

Their hands were still joined. With the dust settling he felt utterly drained once more. But he was
bright enough to look at her.

“You need to talk about it,” she said. And then, quieter: “I spoke to Lily.”

Remus scoffed.

“She knows that some of what she said was too far,” continued Mary. “But she’s fair in her
feelings.”

“I know,” said Remus. “And I think that I am fair in mine.”

“Hurting the people that hurt you doesn’t change the fact that you’ve been hurt.”

“You have no right to say that.”

“Remus.”

“I don’t understand,” Remus snapped, firmly, taking his hand out of hers, “why I am being made
out to be the bad guy. For—for doing what? Doing what everybody else is trying to do? Or for
changing?”

“That’s not what—”

“I’ve done everything for this operation,” Remus hissed. “I’ve been everyone. But now, now that
I’m actually doing something productive, I can’t be this because—because it’s not me? You went
back to Trinidad and killed everyone who had a hand in your parents deaths. Lily’s ex boyfriend
decapitates people and plays football with their heads. Your best friend is a Pureblood vampire
who rips people apart for sport, but I have to be what Alastor Moody made me for the rest of my
life?”

“I’m not saying that,” said Mary.

“How the fuck is that fair?”

“I’m not saying that, Remus!” He was vicious, but she could always match his temper. “I’m saying
that I think the way that you’re coping is going to come back and bite you. I’m saying that
everything we talked about before is obsolete if you’re going to bottle it all up and drown yourself
from the inside out. And I’m saying that—”

She cut off. The silence hung heavy in the air.

“That I’m acting like Riddle?” said Remus, blithely. “I need to be stopped?”
“Absolutely fucking not, don’t you dare put words in my mouth, Lupin—”

“Lily thinks it,” he murmured. “Tom thinks it.”

“Lily regrets saying that,” said Mary. “I told you. And he is getting in your head.”

She reached out, shuffling that little bit closer and gripping him by the cheeks again. Remus tried
to move but she pulled him back, digging her nails into his cheeks. And so he let himself go.
Looking into her fiery eyes.

“You listen to me,” she snapped. “I don’t give a fuck about Sweden. I don’t care that you made a
selfish decision and that it hurt people. I want you to be selfish. You deserve to be selfish; I have
no right policing any decision you make. But Lily’s entire world revolves around helping people.
Her persona in life is twice as shiny as any of ours, as shiny as the gold in her veins. She feels what
the people feel. That doesn’t make her right. But it makes her, her.”

She cut off, exhaling and hanging her head gently. Remus curled one hand around her arm. He was
so tired.

“I just want you to be okay,” she whispered, barely even there, raising her head again. Her hair fell
over her face and there were tears in her eyes. “I want to kill him too, Remus. For what he did to
her. I know why you’re doing what you’re doing. But I just don’t want you to lose yourself in the
process. To lose your truth.”

“What truth,” he murmured.

Mary pulled back, sniffing; dropped her hands. Tucked her hair behind her ears, and swivelled her
body, feeling around for something until the distinct sound of rustling paper rattled through the
room. She turned again with the letter in hand.

“I’m a dormant werewolf,” she read, “and I’m a Horcrux, and I am my father’s son and I am a
pillar of lies. All I am, lie after lie on top of each other and moulded to form an odd shape of a
man, shoved into a shirt and some trousers and left to fend for himself.”

She turned, dropped the letter back on the bed. Remus watched her every move.

“You are a dormant werewolf,” she said. “And you are a Horcrux. But you’re not your father’s
son. You’re Hope’s boy. You’re Dorcas’. You’re mine.”

Remus’ eyes flickered back over to her. Something at the back of his throat was itching, or
unravelling.

“Your truth is who you are, not what you are, Remus,” she said, shrugging. “The trivial shit. It’s
the best part of all of us. Like, you like pineapple on pizza. You’re a cat person. You’re a fucking
brilliant shot, always have been. You give really good advice and yet never take it for yourself.
You’re hilarious. You meddle in people’s relationships. When you’re bored you make it everybody
else’s problem. You’re insanely smart. You put together stuff I wouldn’t even dream of connecting.
You hold the love that Hope raised you with. You have so much love, so many huge emotions that
fester inside of you, but you never let them die. You love. And by doing that you hold the rest of us
nightmares together. All of us, even if you don’t realise you’re doing so.”

Mary took his hand.

“And you will never have to fend for yourself,” she said. “Do you understand? Never.”
Remus nodded.

He couldn’t do much else.

There were a million words swimming on his tongue. He wanted to tell her everything. He wanted
to give her everything. But nothing seemed to move for him, but his head, nodding yes.

Yes. Yes, I understand. Yes. Yes, I’m hearing you.

I don’t want to lose myself. I don’t want to lose my truth.

And I don’t want to die a stranger.

(somewhere, someone is screaming the words “I DON’T WANT TO DIE AT ALL”)

***

Mary left at around 9pm, with Harry in tow. They were planning to go pick up his friend and then
head straight over to the Weasley’s to drop them off somewhere safe. While doing so Mary could
check the warding, check up on Molly and the twins. In a war isolation is the biggest killer. Remus
knew, through Lily. She’d smiled more today than she had the past three weeks.

By the time she’d gone, Pandora was stable, with promises of a delivery in one or two days of
things she’d given Mary on a list, things she needed. Remus had presumed that it would be things
she needed of the medical sort, but he’d peeked at the list, and… while there was a lot there, there
were also a lot of other things. Books, namely. Research. Potion ingredients for things he knew
were not medical or healing. He had no clue what she was working on, but at the same time it
wasn’t all that surprising that she was. Pandora existed for the challenge. He never saw her brighter
than when she was trying to figure something out; except, obviously, in the moment that she
succeeded.

Regardless, he spent about half an hour sitting in her bedroom with her, chatting about—nothing,
really. Just stupid shit. She was antsy being stuck in her bed and so he tried to enrich her a little,
putting aside—everything, really, for the sake of just having a bit of fun. He popped some popcorn
because she was craving it and spent ten minutes throwing pieces and trying to get it into her
mouth. Until, of course, he poked her really hard in the eye and it made her cry and then laugh and
then cry harder because she was laughing.

By the time they’d soothed her and her eye had stopped watering (and they’d stopped laughing)
(which was an important thing to do because every time she laughed it hurt and that sort of made
her cry harder) they decided to turn in for the night. Pandora was exhausted, so he kissed her on the
forehead, and made his way.

Lily had already shut her door for the night. Remus hadn’t seen her since Mary left.

Making his way to his own room—the room he was sharing with Sirius—he found it empty, bed
untouched. Frowning, he turned on his heel, ambling his way downstairs. He curled his hand
around the archway into the kitchen as he peered his head around, and there he was. Sitting at the
head of the kitchen table, resting his chin on his interlocked hands, glass of whiskey alongside the
bottle sitting in front of him.

Remus sighed.
Sirius didn’t look at him as he walked in. Didn’t look at him as he went to the cupboard, procured
himself an identical glass, or to the freezer as he scooped up a few ice cubes and deposited them in.
He didn’t look at him as he walked over, as he pulled out the chair beside him, or as he picked up
the bottle and poured the whiskey into his own glass.

He only looked at him when he brought it to his lips and took a sip.

“On the rocks,” Sirius murmured. “Of course.”

“Oh, shut up.”

And so they sat.

And so they drank, the pair of them. Just sitting there. It was dark outside and the big light was
switched off, the only warmth coming from the lamplight in the corner of the room. Sirius polished
off his glass first, and set it down. When Remus picked his up the condensation left a circle on the
wood. A mark. Sirius watched it, as he sipped; continued to watch it when he set it down.

Sirius was still staring at the glass when Remus murmured, “I want us to be okay.”

This got him to look up. There was a gentle pause, in which they simply looked at each other.

“Yeah, I need another if we’re going to have this conversation now,” he murmured, gruffly, and
went about with just that. Remus sighed.

“It’s not—we don’t have to—”

Sirius pressed his tongue against his teeth as he struggled.

“Take your time,” he murmured, pouring. Remus bristled.

“Stop it.”

“I mean it,” he said, placing the bottle back down.

“No you don’t. You’re being a patronising dickhead.”

Sirius simply sipped.

“Listen to me.”

“I’m listening,” Sirius said, placing his glass down and looking at him. “Always am.”

Remus sighed. He maintained eye contact with him for a second, and then picked up his glass and
downed the rest of it, feeling the hiss of the ice pressed against his lips. He dropped it, licked his
top lip. Caught the bottom one in between his teeth as he tried to figure out what to say.

“I want us to be okay,” he said. “I don’t want to fight with you anymore.”

Sirius leaned back, looking at him with something akin to pity.

“We’re always going to be fighting, baby,” he murmured. “As long as you stick by your choice, we
are always going to be fighting.”

“I know.” Remus sighed. Ran a hand over his face. “I know. But I can’t—I don’t want this.” He
gestured, hazily, between the two of them. “Whatever the hell this is.”
“You think I do?” asked Sirius. “It takes everything in me to stay away from you. But it also takes
everything in me to stay.” He thinned his lips, exhaled and picked up his glass jerkily, taking
another sip and avoiding eye contact. “Everything I have. ‘S yours.”

Remus sighed. His expression must have twitched, faltered, bordering on sympathy or something,
because Sirius looked at him and scoffed.

“Stop it. Don’t look at me like I’m a wounded puppy.”

“I’m not,” said Remus, shaking his head. “If anything, that’s me.”

Sirius licked his lips.

The room grew quiet.

“I just—” Remus said, breathing, rubbing his hands over his eyes to try and make sense of how he
felt. “I hate this. I hate this so much.”

“You did this. You pushed me the fuck away.”

“Yes, and I’m regretting it,” Remus spat, dropping his hands. “Is that what you want me to say?”

“Yeah, it is, actually.”

“Mm. Always want to get the one-up, don’t you?”

“No,” said Sirius, tenaciously. “I only want to hear you say what we so obviously both know,
which is that you’re acting like a fucking prick for the sake of making me love you less to make
yourself feel better about the fact you’re going to die.”

Remus stared.

“That’s not it,” he whispered. Well—yes, it was. Perhaps it was for the most part. Perhaps it was
that he knew that Sirius’ love could ruin him. Perhaps he always had. It was his lifeline, the thread
that he dangled from, over the pit of fog half as toxic as New York, double the amount deadly. He
has to stay to love, and he can’t stay. Loving Sirius is so dangerous. It’s so dangerous, but Remus
does it anyway.

It’s so dangerous, but he does it, which is why he did what he did. At least, partly. In his head. He
rationalised it to be selfless, because that was how he coped, it is how he copes. Clinging to the
shred of the boy who spun daggers and killed bad guys for the sake of the greater good. The shred
of the boy at seventeen and twenty-seven who found a pack and then found another one. He just
thought—he thought if he could get as far away from that boy as possible then it would make
things more seamless. But he wasn’t just thinking about himself. He convinced himself he was
thinking about everyone else, because you can call Remus Lupin a lot of things, but selfish is the
one that will get to him. It’s the one he’s consistently outrunning. So it was for Sirius. It’s all for
Sirius, really, in the end.

“Yes it was,” he amended, because there’s no point in lying. “But I also wanted it to be easier for
you. To make you feel better about it. Make it easier. Show you—I don’t fuckin’ know. The real
me. Bones and all. The gritty shit. The shit that’s unlovable.”

Sirius’ response was instantaneous. “There’s no way.”

“What?”
“There’s no way that you could possibly think, at this point, that there’s anything about you that
makes you unlovable to me,” Sirius said. Calm and resolute.

Remus spun his glass around the table to do something with his hands. “Maybe I wasn’t thinking.”

“I’ve told you this. The gritty shit. Bones and all. I’ve told you again, and again, and again.”

“Maybe I wasn’t listening.”

“No, you weren’t,” he said. “I don’t know if I have it in me to say it a million more times knowing
you’re only going to listen to me once every five hundred thousand, Remus.”

Remus looked down at the table, and licked his lips.

The air staled between them.

“Unstoppable force meets immovable object,” he murmured.

Sirius hummed.

“Mmm. Something like that.”

“I want us to be okay,” Remus said, looking up. Begging. Pleading. “At least for now. None of this
is happening right this second, I’m not going now. And we’ve just destroyed a Horcrux. Pandora is
injured. I’m—and I have—” he swallowed, reassessing. “Sirius, I don’t think I can survive it. You
being mad at me. Maybe that makes me obsessed or makes me selfish as all hell. Maybe it makes
us unhealthy and maybe we’re as toxic as the fumes back home. But it is. Home. And you’re—I
can’t. I won’t survive this much misery. I won’t survive it without you.”

I’ll kill myself for a whole different reason, he thought, but did not say.

Sirius stared at him. Took this in. Took another long sip of his drink, and then set it down,
straightening up.

“How do you plan for us to move past this, then?”

Remus’ brows twitched, and he almost laughed.

“Ignore it?” he said, and then he did laugh. At the sheer absurdity. Sirius simply stared at him. “I
know it’s—ridiculous. I know it’s stupid. I know I have no right to say any of this, but God, I miss
you. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all of it. I’m sorry for the list. I’m sorry.” He looked at him,
leaning forward. Their hands twitched closer together. Reciprocal. Remus stared at him, searching,
searching for the stars. He sighed. “Just—make the most of the time we have. While we figure out
the next steps. We’ve lived in delusion before, my love. I daresay we’re rather good at it, actually.”

This made Sirius crack a smile. A small one, down to the table, but a smile nonetheless.

So, Remus was selfish. That’s the catch-all, the beginning and the end. He’d claimed not to be and
it had not been true. Because the truth is, he is going to die, and he thought love meant staying, and
it does, but it also means existing. It means leaving a mark. It’s what all of it is for. Life and death.
For love. It’s all for love. That was what he took from Mary. It’s what she gave to him.

So—they’ll ignore it. They’ll ignore it, and he’ll be loved. Because it meant that after he’s gone
there’ll be someone to remember him in the same way he remembers Dorcas. And it also meant
that he could sate the part of him that is still alive and wants Sirius by the trachea, melting in the
 palm of his hand. It means Sirius could sate that part too. Because he knows, he knows it’s all
reciprocal, even down to the heart they both share, the way they bleed the same rhythm, the same
red. He knew Sirius wanted him the way he wanted Sirius. He knew the same delusion lingered
there.

All of it comes down to this: he doesn’t want to do it alone. He doesn’t want to fend for himself.

He wants to die.

Perhaps, over everything, he wants to be kissed.

And Sirius did just that, in this moment; he sighed, leaned over, and kissed him. Neither of their
hands touching neither of their bodies. Connected by the lips, by the tongue. Sighing, gently,
breathy noises and whimpers into each other’s mouths until Sirius was scooting his chair around
the bend of the table and touching him, electric, swinging a leg over his lap and straddling him and
kissing him and kissing him and kissing him.

Sirius latched onto his neck, head thrown back, and sucked. Traced his fangs against his skin.
Fistful of hair. Fistful of life.

Remus leant into the feeling. Fistful of life and he’ll live it until he can’t. They could not keep their
hands off of each other, and it’s a weapon and a curse. But Sirius kissed him and all that was was a
blessing.

Sirius. Sirius. Sirius.

You see? There’s no room for anything else.

Chapter End Notes

hellooo!
out of the blue but i kinda wanted to mention (because i saw like one (1) comment)
that it's completely fine if you have conflicting views, or dislike certain characters.
thats kinda the point – it's a very complicated nuanced plot and situation, and so i get
that people will like or dislike things to different extents. if you're not liking remus
right now, it's fair. see, me personally, i will fight 2 the death for him, but ive seen
people saying they hate him rn, and like. i mean, fair enough. he kinda hates himself
rn. i'm not trying to market him as the one whose every action you should support. i'm
not doing that for ANY of them; they're all different kinds of fucked up here, and i'm
just telling the story. how you feel about the story is your own (however at the same
time remus has never done anything wrong in his life btw and i’m right and ur wrong
x) (sorry i really do mean it i just can’t help barking and snarling and defending him
he’s my little guy. my little dude.)

anyway. like, i thought people might be pissed off at him near the end because of how
he's handling the situation with sirius. it is pretty selfish – like, the line "because it
meant that after he's gone there'll be someone to remember him in the same way he
remembers Dorcas" is fucking BRUTAL. i think it kinda depends on how you see the
list (like how severe you think that was) because it's almost the same thing? as in he's
secretly using sirius's love for his own gain, i guess? anyway just wanted to say that &
i will be interested to hear the different thoughts and opinions – i get great joy out of it,
lol.

(ALSO, if you didn't catch it because i know it was implicit – harry's aunt's boyfriend
accidentally killed harry's mum when he was drunk, and so harry killed him in
retaliation. he was remorseful of the fact that he'd killed his mum because he didn't
mean to. but he was also probably a bit of a cock for fighting with her a lot in the first
place sooo good for harry ig. also, this rule only counts for humans. sure, there are
probably some remorseful vampires out there that remus has killed, but it just didn't
count. he has never killed a remorseful human because he's rarely killed humans full-
stop, and when he has (chapter 23, he killed a few hunters), none of them were
remorseful bc they still viewed vampires/the supernatural and anyone associated as the
enemy.)

(ALSO also — like i said, the aching kiss before i feed comes into play this chapter. if
u haven’t read it (you’ll find it if you press “next work” or go to the series) it’s a
oneshot depicting the hampshire 2015 werewolf case, and like. it’s stuff like, the tree
in the beginning is the exact same tree that remus and sirius fight against in that fic,
just 6 years later. and obviously harry and everything (who i don’t think is actually
referenced in TAKBIF but IS talked about in chapter 7 of dstg, if you want a
refresher). again it’s not super important to have read it but i enjoy the little hints and
the way things all tie together :))

can’t believe i’ve actually been influenced to write these long ass end notes. you know
exactly who is to blame.

see you next chapter,

Jxxx
 twenty nine
Chapter Summary

regret me, regret me, regret me

Chapter Notes

heyyy... jude here<3

this chapter is both a really light one and also a really heavy one? don't ask me how
that works because? i have no idea? there is a) wolfstar fluff, b) wolfstar smut, and c)
the worst most angstiest fight they've ever had. they kept me on my toes for this one. I
don't even know how to conceptualise this chapter but... it's a big one. ig i'll just move
straight to the content warnings:

CW's!!!!
- as usual general grief-y moments and remus's general acceptance of his suicide & the
negative thought processes that come with that
- explicit smut. i don't think it's as explicit as chapter 20 but you definitely know
what's happening. if you'd like to skip it, stop when they kiss in the kitchen and you
can continue at the "They breathed." line.
– big fight! a very big fight! wolfstar are really quite mean to each other! they say shit
that they don't mean and shit that they do mean and shit they didn't realise they meant.
they use things against each other. they're MEAN. you'll be mad at them both for
different reasons, I think. it is kinda toxic, i think, maybe, but i've never strayed away
from the fact that they're pretty unhealthy, especially in the narrative's current climate.
as always, this is not marketing a healthy relationship.
- attempted physical violence within the fight (one of them throws shit at the other)

not sure what else to tag, i think that kind of encompasses it. it's very complicated. but
on the whole this chapter actually has a looot of happy moments and a lot of visceral
healing. it's not all bad!

enjoy, J xxx

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Things progressed from where they left off.

It was tragic sex. Bothersome and deadly. They held onto each other like they’d never let go again,
and there were two roads, two paths in front of them. A reminder that they’ll be ripped apart again,
facing that brutal reality head-on. Or drowning in each other’s mouths until their heart stops
beating and pressed up to the other they can freeze, all of this can freeze, it can stop; with the curl
of Remus’ fingertip just edging its way into Sirius’ open mouth and this, this, this thing. This
blessing, the sigh of relief. Forgetting. Coated, slapped thick against taut skin with plaster until
they were nothing more than stone and bone broth underneath it, together as one thing, one entity,
and they can…

Pretend.

But pretending doesn’t get you everywhere. Pretending can’t erase the past, primarily. After, they
lay beside each other, pulling the duvet up to their chins, legs intertwined sort of to the point where
Remus lost feeling and every limb could be his. But his thoughts were not; his mouth was not.

He spoke.

A seal broken? Perhaps. Quite frankly, Remus had not been intending to tell Sirius about what
Moody had shown him, at least not in full. He’d blurted out the fact that he was quite sure he’d
killed his father in Sweden, in a blur, in a breakdown. Stupid of him was what he’d thought at the
time. And he was stupid; stupid to let it slip, yes, but even stupider to think it’d change anything.
But he’d always been stupid about Sirius. In every which way.

Bones and all, as he’d said.

It felt, for a night, for the few hours—they talked for four, maybe? Three and a half?—like
everything was okay again. Like Remus wasn’t gore in a skin suit and Sirius wasn’t charred to dust
only stuck together with the wetness of each kiss his lover offered him. It was nice. It felt—better.
Gentle, loving, tender. They laughed. They talked into the night, bare naked under silk sheets in a
dim light that they didn’t even really need because Remus would recognise him blindfolded, he’d
be able to sculpt his features blind—yes, see, Remus had been quite stupid indeed to keep it all in.
Though he wouldn’t admit this yet, he’d been quite stupid to think that—that he was alone.

He’d been stupid to try and turn away from how desperately and soul-achingly he needed to feel
love.

So, it all comes down to that, doesn’t it? Love. Love and the things it can do for you, the things it
can take away. He talked for maybe an hour, maybe longer about what he’d seen; what Moody had
done, his dad, the bite, Harry, Wales, each and every childhood home and each and every blister
from his youth that stuck and burst the second the lights went out in Dorcas’ eyes and Moody’s and
everyone’s, extinguished in the fog. Sirius spoke about things too. Regulus. History. Christ knows
he had a lot of history to talk about.

They did not speak about the Horcrux. They did not speak about Sweden. They spoke about the
hunt, the chase, the bite and for those fleeting moments it could be four months ago, in Remus’
bed; it could be I’d give you the sun if it wouldn’t burn me. Blink and we’re there. Sirius had said
that but it worked both ways.

Remus spoke about who he was, not what he was. For the night they were immortal and they were
so mortal every pulse point ached.

And then sleep came, and he dreamt of nothing but woke up unsettled through the night, once,
twice; every time he was greeted by the snaking of an arm and a bloodless body warmed by his
own warmth. And who he was lay nestling underneath the paper of his skin.

Yet when Sirius got out of bed, whenever he did, he must have ripped it off, because when Remus
woke up it was to an empty bed, to a cream ceiling, and to his warzone thoughts.

How he felt about what—not who, what—he was was a mess to detangle. Perhaps the most apt
way to convey it would be that he felt so much it cancelled out and he felt nothing at all. It felt a bit
like a slap in the face that all of the poeticisms and metaphors he’d used to try and conceptualise
his overbearing life with before his candle wick burnt out (oh, no, he’s still got it) were now less
than metaphors; they were true. Shadows and fog on the horizon. He was choking on fog at this
point and he had a shadow on his horizon. A chip on his shoulder. Two of them; wolf, soul. He had
something inside of him that fundamentally pulled him one way, something else that pulled him
the other. He had so much. He carried so much, every part of him fighting like snarling dogs to get
to the top, to get to power.

The Horcrux and the Wolf had happened so quickly it had almost short-circuited him. And it
lingered at the back of his mouth. Something that is numb and white-hot pressed against the wall of
his throat, two things that have different routes but all lead to the same battered ending.

Back to darkness. Back to—and ah, here the pretences drop.

Back to him.

And those feelings. Those feelings and those morals that Remus had spent so long ruminating on
before. They all seemed so futile; so small. So fucking little against a world so grand. A topic
avoided last night, springing to the surface; yet again, always and forever, all of his thoughts
brought him back to Luleå.

Back to the fundamental change he had not realised he’d gone through. But he had, he must have,
because truth be told Remus didn’t care that he’d indirectly killed those people. Or, at least,
potentially. They had no solid idea of knowing whether their plan to stop the tsunami magically
would work; sure, Remus picking on Lily’s (current) lack of ability in their argument was harsh,
but it was true. She couldn’t have stopped it on her own. There were no magical happy endings like
that. The world was not that kind to people.

If Remus had learned anything over the past seven months—fuck, it had only been seven months—
he had learned that the world is not ever that kind to people. He had learned that attempting to
bridge that gap, attempting so desperately to patch the gap in the atmosphere that humanity ripped
apart was futile. It was an effort for naught. The bad people were bad. All trying to fill in that
emptiness did was suck the fucking life out of you and hurt your feelings against people who didn’t
have any. And Remus was sick of it. He was sick.

Sick, dying, selfish and strong. Red paint overpowers all of the other colours by sheer pigment.
Sometimes Remus can taste blood even when his skin is unbroken. When seeing the world as it is,
five million light years away upon an orbital plane that spins for a hive mind, individuality does
not matter. He can’t— he just can’t. Everything seems so fucking futile when you take a step back.
A sick and dying person seems like the epicentre of your world when you’re kneeling in front of
him, hands lathering with blood holding pressure onto his wound, but if you take ten steps back
he’s a fly caught in a crowd. Twenty, he’s unnoticeable. Turn the corner and you might intercept
the man that stabbed him. And more good comes from that than pressing your hand into wounds
that won’t heal and lathering yourself with blood that won’t wash off. Remus is certain of it. He is
certain. He knows this because his hands are red and red and red.

Once upon a time, a little boy existed with a father who put the world over his son. They got him
once and then, fourteen years after that, they got him again, and now within Remus lies a carcass of
divine absolution burnt to a crisp by the very people he was supposed to absolve, and that is
important. That is why he can’t absolve himself. Because he could not absolve those who made
him this way. The way of Gods and monsters perhaps aligned to them both. That nasty streak in
him had to come out sometime and they put him in a box acting like it was a protective ruse when
really all it did was cage something that can seep through the cracks like a noncorporeal shadow
when you add a little bit of pressure. Remus can’t forgive them and he can’t absolve himself and he
can’t protect the world, his patchwork on the atmosphere rips into the fire of the night when he
turns his back, and so. And so.

So it goes, he’d suppose. So goes his thought process. Everything seems to lead to darkness. To the
colour black.

He wished that it would be easy.

He thought of Sirius, and then he thought of Dorcas, and then he thought of his mother. Terribly,
he felt his chest constrict. That pain— that rip, away from his fabric, like a kitten being taken away
from his mother too early—all he could think is why? Why did you let me go, Mum? It’s so easy to
find blame in the past. Remus understood that right now perhaps more than anybody.

It becomes a little bit harder when you try to function in the present with one leg stuck there. Leg
in the ditch, foot in the grave; one arm. One soul.

He closed his eyes. Cream ceilings and empty beds faded to nothing but the colour black. To live
in the past is to hold vengeance; Remus’ bloodstream is running on vengeance. The figure above
him, floating there, watching his body from an ulterior perspective—the figure of which his hands
belong to, his hands which are not his hands and his legs which move, the feet that are grounded to
the floor when they are bare so he doesn’t float like an astronaut into outer space—that figure, he
lags. He lives on a twenty-three hour day while Remus lives on twenty-four. Sanity lags behind
him. There are shadows of his former self and shadows of who he could have been fighting and
power matches power. It’s a double homicide.

And what’s left is Remus. Remus in this bed, staring at the cream ceiling. Yearning for the colour
black.

Remus had been so much for so long. But, really, his truth was black and white. Who Mary knows
and who Lily knows and who, to everybody else, he cannot be—the hunter, the killer, the man
with a chip on his shoulder, the man with spots of blood on his hands that he cannot wash off and
the man who drowned Luleå—they’re cosigned. They’re synonymous. They are him.

So, he is going to get out of this bed. He is going to blink away from the cream and the deterrence
of the ruffled sheets, the way it is cold in the space beside him.

He is going to get up, and he is going to do whatever he can to kill Tom Riddle.

Whatever it takes. All of the cards are on the floor. All of the cards are Remus’. He warps them
into playing knives and throws them onto the wall, because the leaves on the trees, the way the
clock ticks, the wet sand and the dry, the eyes that gaze at it and the hand that feeds, none of them
have ever cared about Remus. Why should he care about them?

Does he not have the right to be selfish? Has he not earned that right?

(Truth and lies are horrifically similar when you skin them down to the bone. You can warp a
truth. Even the greatest men have been able to warp the truth.)

(He feels utterly nothing for Sweden.)

Remus opened his eyes. Cream. It was a horrible, bright colour; too much of a strain on his eyes.
Too vibrant. Again, yet again, he yearned for the colour black. Again, yet again, the door opened.

“Morning,” said Sirius, gently, edging his way in and shutting the door behind him.
His fingers were peeking out of sleeves that were a bit too long for him. Remus’ hoodie. He was
wearing one of Remus’ hoodies. One that was already baggy on Remus’ much broader frame so
was, by every meaning of the word, drowning Sirius. His hair was tied back. He looked like a
dream.

“You hungry?”

Remus sat up on achy bones, shook his hair out. Squeezed his eyes shut as his head got to grips
with the movement.

He looked back up and, disoriented, blinked at him.

“Hm?”

“I made food,” Sirius said, leaning against the wall. “Erm. A lot of food, actually. Did you know
Mary’s fridge is replenishing? What the hell is up with that?”

Remus’ lips twitched. “It’s connected to a magical food distributor. I thought it would’ve
discontinued ‘cause no one has lived here for a while, but. Apparently not.”

“Nope,” said Sirius. “Apparently not.”

He moved over to sit on the bed, by Remus’ side. Just looked at him for a moment. The curtains
were drawn but the daylight shone through the curtains on the side, and Remus watched his eyes
flicker down, back up.

Sirius leaned forward, so their noses were almost touching; hesitated. He looked Remus in the eyes
again, and then closed the distance.

The kiss was slow, and tender, but not chaste. Remus opened his mouth and tilted his head, his
eyes fluttering shut—he thought briefly about how he must taste awful, as he hadn’t brushed his
teeth, but the grip of Sirius as he reached up to cup his neck, press his index finger harshly under
his jawline to tilt his skull seemed to prove otherwise as he went in deeper, shuffling instinctively
forward as Remus made space for him, as Remus always made space for him.

After a minute or so, Remus pulled away. His heart was racing. Sirius had always made him stupid.

“What’s this for?” he whispered into Sirius’ mouth, still moving with the momentum of their
breaths, back and forth. Sirius licked his lips. Let out a harsh blow of air in some semblance of a
laugh, and then shook his head, looking down.

“I—” he started, smiling while desperately trying not to. “I went out today, to nab some blood from
the hospital—”

“Sirius.”

“No no no,” he whispered, shaking his head, “I was in and out, nobody saw me, promise. I had to
eat, baby. And you know how I get… jittery,” anxious, he means, “when I haven’t fed?”

Remus frowned, nodding slowly.

“Well,” Sirius breathed, pressing his finger pads into Remus’ skin, rubbing them into his hair, “the
opposite… happens with the opposite. And Mary… has a magically replenishing fridge. You put
one bloodbag in there and, like, fifteen come out.”
Remus leaned back, raising his eyebrows.

“Are you high on blood?”

“No,” Sirius laughed, and then he laughed again. He pushed forward, crawled up Remus’ body,
kissed him once more. “No, no. Yes. Sort of. This doesn’t usually happen. But produce was so
lacking in Luleå. We had so much more to do that I didn't eat properly. And I haven’t been full—
properly full—since before the fête. It’s a rush—endorphins, something, heightened emotions,
someone did a study on it in the eighties; Marlene took part and had to ration herself for two
months and it looked fucking abhorrent then but now, now I realise the payoff is so good,
especially when there’s so much I want to avoid…”

Remus’ smile, which had grown throughout the little speech, faltered a little bit.

There it was. The crack in the pretence.

They had talked through a lot last night but Sirius and Remus had not talked through Dorcas.
Remus had not talked through Dorcas to anyone, really. Talked about her. Thought about her. He’s
rather sure the letter he wrote her in Luleå was still in his trouser leg pocket, somewhere crumpled
and probably never to be read again.

But he could say her name now. He could say it, and what’s more, he wanted to. He’d felt it run on
his tongue like velvety wine yesterday when talking with Mary. But Mary was Mary. Mary had
been there. Mary loved her the same way Remus loved her. Loves. Loved. Fuck. Maybe not to
everyone but to Mary, oh to Mary he could say her name. He wanted to.

Of course, they had other things. But it was so tender right now, so precious. Talking about their
fate always ended in war and Remus was so fucking sick of war. He just wanted to breathe Sirius
in; let the fire catch around them. Let him swim through them. My eyes only on you.

So Remus looked at him, now; punch-drunk and love-drunk and all of those lovely things in
between. And oh, God, he loved him so much. He loved him like a sunset. Like the colours that
you unearth when something is hidden under the surface; the way Remus adored Sirius sliced
down to the meat of him, the deep enamel of his bones. And, perhaps worse, perhaps it would
always be worse, he knew that Sirius loved him the same. Stupid or not when it comes down to it
Remus knew he loved him all the fucking same. The way the east light breaks through the
window. The way the sun threatens to burn him but never ever does, that was how Sirius loved
him. And so his throat got caught here, too. Identity and discrepancy. For if they ignored the fact
that to kill Tom Riddle for done and for good, Remus had to die too, they could just be two people,
staying at their friend’s house, in love. They could just be the sun and the moon and the songbird
that sleeps on a weary cliff and the stars that scorch her pearl red breast and the worms that she
catches and the babies she feeds. They could be anything if they pretend they don’t have to be this.
Anything, anything, anything. Everything and nothing. Christ, been a while, hasn’t it? They’ve
been everything for so long they forgot that they can be nothing at all and that can be okay, too.

Remus opened his mouth to speak. And then he closed it.

“Did you sleep well?” asked Sirius, into the silence.

Remus nodded.

“Are you hungry?”

“I’m not… starving,” murmured Remus, thinking, really, that he’d rather like to continue whatever
was going on, for it made the thoughts stop. But, alas, his stomach betrayed him.

A slow, goofy grin grew on Sirius’ face.

“Okay, fine, I’m hungry.”

“Come downstairs when you’re ready,” Sirius whispered. “I’ll take care of it.”

Unsaid: I’ll take care of you.

Sirius left. Remus proceeded to flop back onto the bed and stare at the cream-coloured ceiling for
another ten minutes, yearning for something he could not taste, and preparing for something he
could not articulate.

The next arc. The next right thing. The next right thing.

Eventually, he got up.

***

Pushing open the door to the hallway on that first (proper) morning led him eye to eye with Lily,
who was peeking out, her door open a fraction with her hand curled around so far Remus could
only just see the golden trickling up through her veins.

But he was preoccupied by the green in her eyes.

The green that looked upon him, blinked, and then shut the door and disappeared into the darkness.

This sort of… set the precedent for the next six days.

It was not as if he and Lily weren’t speaking. Or as if they hated each other. It wasn’t even as if
they hadn’t apologised; it had been the first thing they’d done, actually, later that first night at the
table for dinner. Sirius had taken Pandora’s food up to her for she was still bedridden—though
getting better, from what it looked like, which relieved them immensely—and he and Lily had been
left, sitting opposite and one seat diagonal to each other, spooning up pasta in silence. She’d
initiated it.

“I’m sorry,” she’d said, quietly, dropping her fork onto the plate. The clink rattled throughout the
room. “For what I said. I was harsh.”

“I’m sorry, too,” said Remus, looking up at her. She tucked her hair behind her ears. It was slightly
tousled—she hadn’t brushed it. It was down to her collarbones, now.

She’d nodded. Given him a small smile. And that had been that.

But it was still tense.

Perhaps it was on both of their sides. He held the grudge of a hunter, and she had the heart of a
healer. She also had the stubbornity of one, too. Lily was the type to continue CPR on a cold,
already announced body. And they were both too proud to kneel. They both had too much belief in
what they did being right, and both had lost too much to be able to let go of that piece of them, the
piece they were clinging to, that piece of sanity and that peace of mind. So they walked in circles.
Ran in waves. They loved in the same way and that was exactly what split them apart so
aggressively, right down the middle. Their grief was shared. He and her were so alike in all of the
most painful ways.
It didn’t help that Lily was gone a lot, to be fair—it exacerbated the length, if anything. Gone
being upstairs tending to Pandora but also gone gone. For two or three of the days he rarely saw
her. Lily was the most inconspicuous of the four—of course, she was still not completely averse to
being recognised and tracked, but where Sirius would be a flashing beacon of red light if he
stepped out of the house (which was why Remus was worried when he said he went to the hospital
for blood) Lily was less so. Pandora had been affiliated with dark forces in the Black coven. Who
knows who knew her face. And Remus had… well. He had killed Dumbledore. Granted, he hadn’t
looked like himself, but he’d been out way more than Lily had, seen way more than her.

Thus, she was altogether the best option to go out and run around doing god-knows-what to help
their mission, picking up essentials in her blonde wig and a small illusion spell on her face that
Pandora could cast. Following potential leads. Not that there really were any. But if there were,
Lily was pursuing them. And if there weren’t, she’d go out, she’d come back, she’d drop off what
she got and she’d hole herself up into her room (Mary’s room) and not come out again until the
next morning.

She was finding it hard, to be apart from everyone. To be isolated. She’d never really been isolated
in her life. Of course, they’d travelled around as a child, her and her mother and her sister, but
they’d always found community where they went. Community was how things kept going, and this
—well, it wasn’t enough for her. It wasn’t exactly enough for Remus, either. But where he often
thrived on his own—had been doing it for years, on cases and hunts, not seeing his mother for
years on end to protect her from the chip on his shoulder—she didn’t. Mary’s appearance had been
a breath of fresh air for him that had carried him like a wisp on the wind. Mary’s appearance, for
her, had been a split-second breath of fresh air before her head was plunged back underwater, held
there by a rotten hand. Drowning once is terrible, drowning twice is worse. And she didn’t even
have her powers to fight back.

Speaking of that front, it was… well, it was going.

Perhaps it was day three? Sometime past nine, for the sun had set and it was dark outside and they
were sitting in the sombre light of the small lamp in the corner of the living room. The fireplace
was on the other side. Lily was sitting with Sirius on the sofa. Remus had a cup of tea on the
armchair; he’d woken to a bad day and this was his first forage downstairs. He was still in his
pyjamas. It had taken him two hours to get out of bed.

“Do it again,” Lily murmured. They were facing each other, and her hoodie sleeve was pushed up,
her forearm out and palm-up on her knee. Sirius looked at her, looked down, and took a breath in.

He reached out, fingers splayed, and gently hovered them over her wrist. Brushed his middle three
fingers against her skin, so softly. Trailed them down her forearm.

The dull golden of her veins grew brighter, more twinkly over where he made contact. Remus
leaned forward, mouth falling open as it shadowed them in a gentle light—so gentle, but so there.
Simmering. As what looked like fire running through her veins sparked up, like lighter fluid
thrown onto already-burning flames with Sirius’ every touch. He could trace his fingers up and
down and the flames would follow, like a magnet.

He pulled away, and she licked her lips. Unfolded her fisted hands, and summoned a flame at least
twice the size of any that she had summoned through all of their time in Luleå.

“Shit,” murmured Remus, getting up and shuffling over to see.

Lily got him to try it, to almost exactly the same results; a bit more tame, a bit less glow-y. But
responsive nonetheless. Like a magnet. Remus traced his index finger and the golden danced
underneath him. She then ran upstairs to get Pandora to try.

Walking through the arch again, she shook her head.

“It didn’t work for her?” asked Sirius, as she took her previous place next to him on the sofa.

“No,” she said, letting out a sigh as she flopped down. Remus, who had moved back to his
armchair, pulled his knees up to his chest to curl up, leaning his elbow on the arm.

Lily summoned another flame again. It was smaller. She sighed, obviously disappointed.

“Why?” he said, leaning back. “Why us?”

“Well, I know why you.”

“Yes,” muttered Sirius, waving his hand. “Obviously. It’s always been you and me. But why does
it work on Remus but not Pandora?”

Lily bit her lip. She looked at Remus and contemplated this for a moment.

“Well, I’m more familiar with Remus than I am Pandora, I guess,” she said. “Since we’ve been
friends longer. But…”

She trailed off. Sirius raised his eyebrows.

“But?”

“Oh. I’ve just remembered something.”

“What?”

She sighed. “When Mary was here. She… touched my arm. And I felt—I didn’t mention it,
because I thought it was just…” she scoffed and hid her face in her hands, here, “I don’t know, just,
feelings, but I, erm, think it might’ve worked with her. Only a little bit. Not at all like you two,
though.”

“It’s different for us?” Remus asked. Lily looked over to him as if she’d forgotten he was there.

“Yes,” she said.

“But…” he continued, slowly. “Mary is…”

“Yes,” she said.

This was left as it was.

So, they rattled off on a bit of back and forth and a lot of phoenix confusion. Lily and Mary’s
connection was… well, they all knew of it. It was unlike how she connected to Sirius, or to Remus.
In a different way, perhaps, she was the flame to Lily’s pit of fire. But they couldn’t figure out the
link. They couldn’t figure out where it began, and where it ended. How her powers worked.

Eventually, Sirius piped up, after a minute of Lily flicking her flame on and off like a literal lighter;
hand open, hand closed, hand open, hand closed.

“Our connection,” he said, rolling his head against the back of the sofa to look at her. “It’s based
on… the basilisk venom inside of me.”
“Power matches power,” Lily murmured. “We cancelled each other out.”

“Yes, yes, but…” he trailed off. “Remember the phoenix lore, and all of that stuff about your divine
purpose? What was that, again?”

“To summon Fiendfyre,” she said. The research or widely known knowledge on phoenixism was
severely lacking, as they were so rare. One or two of the sources they had found had mentioned
this. That a phoenix’s purpose was to summon pure cursed fire from the depths of their soul. Or,
whatever, because, as Lily continued: “Which I’ve done, by the way. Multiple times. So it’s bull.”

“Mm-hm,” murmured Sirius.

He sat up, shuffled closer to her. Reached a hand up and pressed it to her chest.

“Fiendfyre,” he said, slowly, palm on her sternum. Removing it, he turned it around and placed it
on his. “Basilisk.”

Slowly, but surely, he turned around to look at Remus, who was frowning in the armchair. Lily
followed his gaze.

“Horcrux,” Remus whispered. Realising.

“I—” Lily started. She looked back at Sirius. “You think we three are, like… connected?”

“They’re always together,” he said. “There are two things on this planet that can destroy one of
them. Basilisk, fiendfyre. Horcrux. They all match, don’t they? Power matches power.”

“Well, it obviously doesn’t,” said Remus, mouth dry. “Because I’m the one that gets destroyed.”

Sirius’ face flickered. He bit his bottom lip, shaking his head.

“That’s not what I mean, Remus,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Remus asked. “Enlighten me.”

He regretted the snappiness as soon as he’d done it—he didn’t know where it came from
sometimes. Thankfully Sirius was not in the mood to fight back, and so Remus just shrank into his
chair and tried to be someone else.

“It’s a separate being,” he continued, quickly. He swallowed, and then turned and looked at Lily.
“Listen. I know we’ve been saying that you need to stop seeing the phoenix as something separate
to you. That it’s what’s harming you. Your perception of yourself. But what if that’s exactly what it
is?”

“It is,” she said. She laughed and shook her head. “I know it is. I’ve always known it is. I don’t
know how to… to explain it. But when I’m her, I’m not me, but I am. And when I’m me, I’m not
her, but I am. They coexist.”

“On some level, she’s her own person,” Sirius said. “She’s what connects us. Because our power
matches each other. And you drew on Remus at Boardwalk, after the fête, to help put up the wards.
Remember? In the exact same way you use me.”

Lily and Remus both stared at him.

“So—what are you saying?” she said, squinting in confusion. “Go slowly.”
“I’m saying,” he started, “that what if your powers come from that bridge between you both? The
things that both you and the phoenix care about? You were able to use your fire in the cave
because we were going to die, and that was important to you both. You could fusion with James,
with Mary before you discovered your connection with me. But you couldn’t at Boardwalk after
the fête, could you? You could only use me. And then you discovered you could use Remus. You
could do it before with James because you loved James and the phoenix enjoyed the power. You
both got something out of it. But as soon as she found a source of power that outranked James—
i.e., me—she didn’t get anything out of him anymore. So she gave up her end of the deal.”

“So it’s conditional,” she whispered, sort of forlorn. She slumped back. “She cares about what she
cares about. Damn how I feel in my own fucking body, huh?”

“How would she get her to care about James again, then?” asked Remus. “Surely there’s a way to
cooperate.”

“We do exactly that,” she said, eyes flickering up to look at Remus. “Cooperate.”

She shrugged.

“But I can’t,” she whispered, bitterly. She frowned, looking down at her hand, picking at her nails.
“I hate her, and this is exactly why. She doesn’t care about you,” waving a hand at Sirius, “she only
cares about the power she can get from you.”

Sirius caught her waving arm by the wrist. Lily’s head snapped towards him and her veins burned
bright golden, rushing to the epicentre where he held her.

“But you care about me,” he whispered.

“Yes,” said Lily, instantly. Without thinking about it. “Yes, I do.”

He dropped her hand gently onto the sofa cushion. Took a deep breath in, swallowed, his palms on
his knees in thought.

“James and Mary are teaching my brother how to love,” he said, eventually. Slowly. “That feels
trivial, doesn’t it? He’s one of—” he cut off. Shook his head, slight smile attacking his senseless
features. “He’s the strongest creature alive. But there is so much he doesn’t understand. So much
he has to learn to assimilate. So much that the people around him have withheld. Some, probably,
out of malice, but some… well, they didn’t know any better either.”

The two of them waited with bated breath as he paused. Trying to decipher the point.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever thanked you for that,” he said, looking at Lily. “For… taking care of
him. You, and Mary, and James. As much as I was pissed at James for Italy, I wouldn’t change it
for the world, nor would I change him knowing Mary, nor would I change him meeting you.” He
looked away as he got vulnerable, glancing to his lap. “Because you guys found him and found a
way to love him even despite the terrible things he’s done. And—you need that, when you’re like
us. When your too-much overwhelms you. You need something trivial. You need people who will
let you try, fail and then help you try again.”

Lily was watching him. Wide-eyed. They were almost glossy.

“What I’m saying is,” said Sirius, gently, “there will never come a time where anyone is strong
enough to do it all on their own. Anyone, any time, can be taught how to love, Lily.”

Lily exhaled sharply. She didn’t seem to realise she was crying until she blinked, reaching a hand
up to swipe at her face, surprised at the wetness she found there. Making an odd little noise she
shuffled forward to rest her head on Sirius’ shoulder, and he moved to accommodate her, wrapping
an arm around her shoulders and pulling her in, tight.

“I adore you,” she mumbled. “Thank you.”

Sirius only hummed in response.

They stayed there, still, for so very long that Remus almost closed his eyes, curling up and resting
his head on his arm, propped up on the side of the armchair. And then Sirius shifted, rolled his
head around so he could look at Remus. And reached out his arm.

Their fingers only just met. But they curled around each other nonetheless.

All three of them fell asleep there. But in just the few moments before he succumbed, before
darkness found him, thoughts lit up at Remus head.

Horcrux, Basilisk, Fiendfyre. Okay. She gets something out of that.

But… why Mary?

Remus fell asleep before he figured it out.

***

On day 8, the four of them sat at the table and had dinner for the first time since Luleå.

Albeit, it was brief. But it happened.

It began with Sirius and Remus, who were sitting beside each other, eating mince and pasta and
chargrilled courgette—Sirius had cooked it out of what was left in the fridge, as it was to restock
tomorrow. He’d used garlic, crushed it and chopped it up and thrown it in. Remus had made a
stupid vampire joke and Sirius had laughed a stupid vampire laugh.

It was hard. Adjusting was hard. Pretending was hard. Not thinking was hard. Sometimes, Remus
thought he’d really lost himself—like Mary had said, his truth, his agency—when… well. He
couldn’t even really pinpoint it. Had it been when Dorcas had died? Or in the two week catatonic
state? Or after. When things had hit him, again, and again, and again. Knocked him down again
and again. Had one of those hits gone too far? Had it knocked the heart right out of him along with
the wind? He’d thought so. At one point he thought he would die with the weight of it all. Crushed
there underneath the rubble.

And yet, there he was. Enduring and enduring. Out of bed and leaning against the counter and
laughing while Sirius poked at his mince with a wooden spoon, while he crushed the garlic cloves,
watching him through his own eyes and not from afar. Feeling his stomach grumble, feeling his
feet on the floor. Enough to make a joke or stupid comment or slap him on the ass with a tea towel,
and enough to feel the warmth seep into him when Sirius smiled at him, pausing his stirring just to
look, and for Remus just to look back.

Something about it made him feel proud. Slightly. On some days, he almost felt okay.

Regardless, they’d dished out their portions and left the rest under a pan lid to keep it warm while
Lily was out procuring something for a potion Pandora was trying to brew. They were in the midst
of a conversation when they heard the staircase creak.
And Pandora hobbled around the corner, leaning on the arch of the doorway, letting a breath out.

Sirius was beside her in an instant.

“Hey, get off,” she scoffed, swatting at him as he tried to support her. He leaned back, blinking in
surprise and also amusement.

“You’re not supposed to be out of—”

She swatted at him again.

“Ow,” he said, pointedly, as Pandora walked slowly into the room.

“I am fine,” she said, firmly. She had a loose hoodie on, covering her injury. She might not have
even been injured—well, if she wasn’t limping.

“Dora—”

“I am fine,” she snapped, glaring at him.

Sirius raised his two hands in surrender.

“What do you need, Dora, love?” asked Remus, leaning on his chin. He was in a weirdly good
mood. He didn’t feel like he deserved it, but he felt it, so he wasn’t going to try and make it run
away. And her presence, up and about, made him feel even happier. He’d forgotten how easy
smiling could be.

“I desperately and carnally want some cereal,” she murmured, plodding into the kitchen. “What do
we have? Cheerios?”

Sirius and Remus locked eyes. He had to thin his lips to stop from laughing.

“Yeah,” said Sirius, plodding after her and pointing to the cabinet. “We have Cheerios. And
Frosties. And Crunchy Nut Cornflakes.”

Pandora gasped. “Crunchy Nut?”

“The crunchiest nut there is,” said Sirius.

This time, Remus really did laugh.

Five minutes later, the three of them were sitting; Sirius and Remus beside each other, Pandora
opposite Remus. She was stirring and eating her cereal slowly, but she was eating it. There had
been a bit of colour in her cheeks but it had since drained. Remus had originally thought it was a
sign of her getting better but maybe it was just the exertion of walking down the stairs. Regardless,
the fact she was sitting there in front of them was just as good of a sign as any; and she’d
proclaimed three times that she would fuck this bowl of cereal, so she was definitely as herself as
she could ever be.

She and Remus were helping each other out with the crossword in a newspaper he’d found from,
like, a year ago. Pandora had just got thirteen down—‘Pavlov’, the hint being ‘drooling dog’—
when the door opened.

Remus’ hand immediately went to his pocket—he held a dagger in there at all times, now, and had
one under his pillow when he slept—but Sirius reached out and stilled him.
“Just Lilith,” he whispered, and sure enough, in came Lily five seconds later, swinging her wig off
her head and throwing it across the room. She had a plastic bag in her hand.

“You know, I can dye your hair under the illusion, too,” drawled Pandora; it was this that made
Lily realise she was even there.

“Oh, my God!” Lily gasped. “What are you doing h—”

“I’m fine,” said Pandora.

“She’s fine,” said both Sirius and Remus.

Lily looked at them, eyes flickering between both parties.

“Bloody hell, okay,” she muttered, moving to put her bag on the table. She sounded obscenely
British for a second; she was spending way too much time with Sirius.

“You get the stuff?”

“Yeah. Here we go—dried Rosemary,” she said, pulling a small tub out, “veal escalope from the
butchers,” pulling a packaged piece of meat out, “and fourteen live crickets from the pet store,” she
said, pulling out another opaque tub and cringing as she put it down. “I had to pretend I had a pet
tarantula for that one. Witches are so weird.”

And with this, she leaned down to kiss Pandora’s head.

“Thank you so much,” Pandora said. “Put the veal on the windowsill, will you? It has to be a bit
warmer than room temp.”

Lily raised an eyebrow as Pandora turned back to her cereal.

“Okay,” she said, picking up the meat. As she went, she locked eyes with Sirius, and mouthed, “so
weird.”

“What’s this even for, Dora?” Remus asked, pressing the end of his pen to his lips and looking
back down at the crossword.

Sirius leaned over, squinting at the hints list.

“Er—” she said, flickering her eyes up as if she hadn’t expected that question. She then proceeded
to… shovel cereal in her mouth. At an unholy rate. “Ohm—Ith—not impo’an—”

Remus raised his eyebrows. “It’s not important?”

“Mm… Hea—wing—”

“Healing,” Lily chimed in, helpfully. Remus gave her a grateful nod.

“Well, what’s the potion, maybe one of us can help—”

“Antipodes,” Sirius gasped, pulling the newspaper out from under Remus’ elbow. It jerked him a
little bit and he jumped, turning as Sirius traced his finger across the amount of squares on one of
the legs of the crossword.

“What?”
“Look!” he said, “seven across. Yeah. Seventeenth century play by Richard Brome. Antipodes.”

Sirius nabbed the pen from him and filled it in, while Remus stared at him in awe.

“I love you,” he said. Sirius scoffed.

“Oh shut up. Look, eleven down is ‘Welsh boat.’ Begins with C and has an L in it. That’s for you.”

“Sirius, do I look like I go out on boats?” was his immediate, snappy response, and then; “Oh. Oh,
wait, I do know that.”

“This is why this group is together,” Pandora announced, having swallowed her cereal. “Not to
make use of all of our separate areas of knowledge for the scary cave challenge, but to defeat a
crossword. Our final boss, if you will.”

“Well, let me get in there, then,” Lily muttered, frowning and drawing the chair out from beside
Pandora. “I want to try.”

And so the four of them sat there, poring over this stupid crossword for the next… probably half
an hour. Lily got “bell-bottoms” and “weasel”. Sirius got “blasphemy” (checks out) and “duality”.
Pandora got “saviour” and “poodle”. Remus got “candle” and “tunnel.”

Eventually, after the end of the crossword, things quietened. Lily reached over past Pandora to grab
the radio and bring it close to her.

Lily had become quite attached to the radio. It was a facet of her loneliness. Listening to the one
channel, or even just flicking through them—flicking through the others and listening to the static
—made her feel a little bit less alone. Remus understood that. She flicked on the news channel.

For ten minutes or so all was fine; the radio was playing a song, and then the song stopped and the
presenters had a little chat before the next one played. Lily went and got her portion of dinner,
finally, while also getting Pandora another bowl of Crunchy Nut. Remus and Sirius were in a little
bubble, he would suppose. Sirius was trying to pinch Remus’ last piece of courgette. Remus kept
slapping his hand away and Sirius just kept slithering it back, trying to nip his sides with his other
hand, the both of them laughing. Pandora brought her bowl up with shaky hands to drink the last of
the milk when she finished her cereal.

Just about as the bowl clinked on the table, the channel switched to the brief news interlude.

They began talking about Luleå.

It got very tense very quickly. Lily stopped with her fork halfway up to her mouth, and then slowly
put it down and back on the table, looking intently at the radio. And Remus sort of zoned out.

He heard what they were saying, of course. He found out that they had destroyed the cup in such
close proximity to sunrise that the impact had broken the ice spell halfway through, for they had
felt the force of a full tsunami as well as the pileup of ice on the shore. He found out through the
gentle conversation between the radio presenters that this, combined with the epidemic in New
York that seemed to show no sign of letting up but, according to scientists, a 6.3% chance of
spreading (Riddle was spreading his forces into NJ and up to CT) had the internet crawling with
end-of-the-world truthers. He found out that the death toll had reached and stayed stagnant at 193.
He wondered if Esmeralda and Henrik had survived. Realised very quickly that they most likely
hadn’t.

The second coming. Natural disasters before the sun explodes. The landslide of the island and the
resulting tsunami in Luleå had been so sudden, so completely out of the blue that people were
arguing the end was nigh. They ended the segment with directions towards relief funds for
Sweden. They ended it by asking the world to think of them. Pray for them.

And then a song started playing.

Lily got up.

“Lily,” said Sirius.

“I’m going to take a nap,” she said, pushing her chair back in. “Thanks for the food, Sirius.”

“Lil.”

She was already gone, flying up the stairs.

Pandora left not shortly after; Remus moved to escort her upstairs, which she swatted him for but
reluctantly acquiesced to the help as going up the stairs happened to be a much more difficult feat
than going down.

When he got back into the room, Sirius was clearing the plates.

“Hey, no,” he said softly. “You cooked. I’ll wash the plates.”

“No, it’s fine,” Sirius replied. Having scraped them already he made his way around the kitchen
island to the sink, and Remus followed him. Turned on the tap. “I enjoy washing plates,” he said,
primly.

The tap ran. It sounded like static. There was a song that sounded distinctly eighties playing gently
in the background from the radio; Remus couldn’t place what song it was.

“You enjoy washing plates?” said Remus, blankly. Sirius grinned, running one of them under the
water.

“Yeah,” he shrugged. “It’s mindless. I enjoy…” he rinsed off the plate, shaking it off and placing it
on the drying rack, “not thinking.”

Remus hummed. Sirius picked up another plate, rinsed it, grabbed the sponge. His hair fell in his
face as he leant forward, and Remus, standing facing outwards against the countertop beside him,
reached out to push it behind his ear.

Sirius’ hands stilled. His eyes flickered up to look at Remus, and he smiled.

And then he continued.

“Dorcas liked doing the dishes,” Remus said, gently.

Sirius’ hands stilled again. Only for a moment.

And then, again, he continued.

“Did she?” he murmured. Remus nodded.

“Yeah,” he said, and then; “well. Maybe not. She just was always the one to do them. Mary
couldn’t focus on one thing long enough to do all the dishes she’d use in one and when I got into
one of my depressive funks… well. Mm. And Dorcas was kind of a clean freak about the kitchen.
Not her room though. There were clothes on her bedroom floor, always,” he laughed here, gently,
breathily, “and on mine, for some reason, and on Mary’s. We had an en-suite flat in our second
year and twice I found one of her hairs in my shower.”

“In your shower?” Sirius said, smiling and placing a plate in the drying rack.

“Yeah,” Remus chuckled. Once he started he couldn’t seem to stop. “And by the fourth year half
of her clothes were in Mary’s wardrobe because she didn’t have any room left in hers. By the time
we graduated we had a tally on a whiteboard of how many people thought we were couples. I
believe it went me and Dorcas first place, Dorcas and Mary second, me and Mary third. And when
the tally got close Dorcas would fuck around and be extra flirty with the both of us to throw people
off.”

Sirius laughed, flipping a plate over to rinse the underside. Remus leaned back on the countertop
and laughed with him.

“She’s a fool,” said Sirius.

“She is,” whispered Remus. He sighed, gently. A happy sigh. Lolled his head around on his
shoulder to look at Sirius. “She loved you, you know.”

Sirius’ breath hitched. He sighed, placing the last plate on the drying rack and rinsing out
Pandora’s bowl. It was a long ten seconds, perhaps, of silence.

“I know,” he said, nodding gently. Smiling but it looked pained. His hair fell again. Remus pushed
it back.

Remus knew that he loved her too.

Somewhere behind them, a song started playing; a song Remus recognised. His head snapped
around almost instantly to look at the radio as Sirius rinsed the bowl.

“Is this The Cure?”

“Hm?” asked Sirius, pushing the tap off and shaking off Pandora’s bowl before placing it on the
drying rack.

“This is The Cure.”

Sirius looked up. “Yeah,” he said, shaking his hands out. He turned, looking for a tea towel,
replying very distractedly. “Lovesong, from, er, Disintegration, right? They had Kate Bush on
earlier. Think it’s an 80s night. Brilliant decade, my favourite, actually—where the hell are the tea
towels?”

“That’s—” Remus started, and then grinned so widely his face hurt, laughing. “Dorcas loved this
song. This album.”

Sirius turned to him. “She did?”

“Yeah.” He smiled. “One of her favourites. She’d always play it.”

Sirius smiled back at him.

And then he took his hand.

“Oh my God—your hands are still wet—” Remus groaned, cringing, but Sirius dragged him out of
the kitchen anyway, out past the dining table and in the little space behind it. Turned the radio to
face them and wiped his hands on Remus’ shirt, purposefully.

“Whenever I’m alone with you,” Sirius sang, shaking his hands out, “you make me feel like I am
young again.”

“Oh my God,” muttered Remus, but he was laughing.

“You do.”

“Shut up.”

“Never,” he hissed, mockingly, taking Remus’ hand and twirling him, holding onto his hand like
they had in the waltz except there were no synchronised movements, no regal twirls or switches or
important positions. He grabbed Remus’ waist and swayed him, singing along, and Remus could
do nothing but laugh and go with him.

As the chorus began, Sirius swayed them to the beat and held onto both of Remus’ hands, jiving
them up and down. They danced stupidly, in time with the beat and also not, pressed together with
hands interlinked between their chests—Sirius pushed him out, brought him back in again, Remus
turned them around. He knew most of the words, too, but even if he hadn’t, the refrain was easy to
pick up on.

However far away, I will always love you.

However long I stay, I will always love you.

Sirius danced them around—he knew all the words, and sang along to the guitar sounds, because of
course he did; making himself quite the spectacle just to make Remus smile. He smiled wider as he
did, pulling him back into that waltz position, one hand out, up and down and bouncing to the beat.
Trying to spin Remus he threw him a little too far and pulled him with a little bit too much force
and Remus went tumbling into his chest, laughing, full-body laughing at the stupidity into the
second verse, gripping Sirius by the neck and swaying with him, forehead against forehead. Sirius
sung him the lyrics. And there they stayed.

Whatever words I say, I will always love you.

I will always love you.

The song ended. They continued swaying. Sirius’ hands reached to curl around his wrist; he
smiled, as the radio presenters began talking over a backing track, the intro to Hungry Like the
Wolf by Duran Duran.

Sirius, of course, knew the lyrics to this one, too.

It was only halfway through the song that Remus actually listened to the words.

Mouth is alive

With juices like wine

And I’m hungry like the wolf

They seemed to catch the irony of the lyrics at about the same time. And they fell to bits laughing.

As the chorus kicked in again, Remus pressed his face into Sirius’ neck, Sirius’ arms around his
neck and Remus’ around his waist. They danced around a little bit, went in circles. Around an
orbit, against closed curtains and a world to forget them, this was something to remember.

Somehow, they ended up face to face again. Nose slotted against nose, it was hard to tell who
pushed in first. But Sirius’ tongue was in his mouth more viciously than his teeth had ever been in
his skin and Remus was tugging on his hair instead of pushing it back, still laughing into the kiss,
still laughing, laughing, laughing.

After a minute, Sirius pulled back.

“Yeah?” he murmured.

Remus exhaled, his smile fading into something more soft.

“Yeah,” he whispered back. And he leaned back in again.

Sirius pushed back, taking his hands and trailing them from his cheeks down his body, over his
sides—it made Remus shiver—and over his hips. He held him by the pelvis as Remus cupped his
face, his neck, drew his hair away from his face, through the crevices of shaking fingers, and Sirius
snogged him ostensibly to death and vice versa to life again.

Going upstairs was at a cheetah pace with regard to an impatient vampire, hand in hand as he led
the way, walking swiftly into their room and turning to push the door closed over Sirius’ shoulder
and kiss him with two hands on his neck. It was against the wall, and then slowly walking over to
the bed and then Sirius sat and Remus crawled over him—it was slow, but it was fast, it was all,
and it was not—Remus pressed him down and dragged his hands over to splay on his stomach,
long fingers edging down and under, and then Sirius gasped and pushed him gently so Remus was
on his back—his hands still where his hands belonged—and Sirius’ forehead was pressed against
his, his mouth open and his eyes closed as Remus touched him everywhere he could. His own knee
and upper thigh pressed firm enough into Remus’ crotch that the friction was making him gasp,
indelibly grinding circles on him as Sirius lowered himself down and kissed down his jawline,
kissed down his neck, kissed up a line on his throat.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured; as Remus moved his hand slowly, Sirius pushed them closer
together. “You’re so beautiful.”

“Mmm,” Remus hummed, and Sirius pushed himself back far away enough that Remus had to pull
his hand back—it came to rest above his head—and breathe. Sirius simply admired him for a
moment. Mouth open. And then he bit his bottom lip and let it go in succession, leaning down to
unbutton his trousers, zip the fly open.

“Hips up,” he murmured, “thank you.”

“Not even a please?” Remus teased, helping Sirius pull them off; he turned and grinned at his
cheek.

“Shut up,” he muttered, laughing and crawling back up; pushing Remus’ shirt upwards he kissed
the hem of his boxers and up his happy trail to his bellybutton, going back and licking a stripe,
pushing his shirt far enough up and above his nipples that he could toy with one. Remus, after a
moment of this, huffed impatiently and just took off the entire shirt. Sirius smiled.

“I want to take care of you,” he murmured, just as Remus was about to say something arsey about
his own clothes. As Sirius pushed himself up to level with him, face-to-face, he reached a hand
down and trailed it up his stomach, not even searching for anything, just wanting to feel every cell
on his body. Sirius kissed him, and spoke, deliriously, “I want to look after you. Wanna make you
feel so good.”

Remus could say nothing, he only breathed. Sirius kissed him again. His hands travelled, over the
hemispheres, up to Sirius to wrap around his neck and to cup his cheeks as he pulled back, lips
slick.

“Can I fuck you, darling?” he whispered.

Remus full-body shivered.

“Yes,” he replied, nodding. Sirius smiled, and Remus found himself smiling with him.

They had never done it like this before. It had always been the other way round. But Remus had,
with Fabian. He was exhilarated, he was drunk on him. He’d happily let Sirius do anything for
him. Anything to him. And right now, he thought that was what he quite needed. For someone to
just do something to him. For him to let go. For a minute. Just a little second.

Sirius took his own clothes off in record time, throwing them over and onto the floor and crawling
down Remus’ body again, requesting assistance—this time with a please—as he pulled off his
underwear.

Remus pushed himself up to lean on his forearms, legs bent slightly, completely naked. Sirius,
kneeling in front of him, simply stared.

“I love what I do to you,” he murmured, in a breath.

“What do you do to me,” Remus whispered.

Sirius reached over, swiped a thumb against his dewy bottom lip. Thumbed his chin, but not in a
domineering way. It was gentle. Admiring.

“You look so beautiful when you give yourself over,” he said, eventually. Remus pushed himself
up fully to kneel in front of him, face-to-face; Sirius cocked his head. Cupped his face. Ran his
fingers through his hair and brought them back, two thumbs drawing down his bottom lip, pulling
it back and letting it flick right back into place.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he said, again, and Remus kissed him, again, and again, and again.

He ended up manoeuvring him, turning him around so he was facing the right side of the room and
positioning himself behind Remus, kneeling, kissing his jaw and his cheek and nipping at his ear
and pulling him off gently around the front. It took a minute of this, of moving in a rhythm, Remus’
eyes closed and his head lolled onto Sirius’ shoulder before he realised why he was in the position
he was in, and why Sirius had shifted them, when he made direct eye contact with himself in the
stand-up full-length mirror opposite him.

“Oh,” he whispered, still moving, eyes fluttering.

Sirius, with his other hand, splayed his hands over his jaw and nodded. Remus could feel the
movement against the back of his head.

“I want you to see yourself like I see you,” he murmured, and Remus nodded, moaning, moving to
feel the outline of him, moving to feel the heart.

As Sirius touched him he turned his head on instinct, craving the taste of his skin to blot out every
single one of his senses, but Sirius’ hand slid upwards from his neck and gripped into his jaw,
forcefully moving his head back around to the mirror.

“No,” he murmured, gently, stroking with one hand and gripping with the other. Remus’ head
stayed in place, this time. Locking eyes with himself. “That’s it. Good boy.”

Sirius eventually dropped his force, but Remus didn’t look away. He couldn’t. Not from the way
Sirius’ pretty hand around him looked, the way his body curved, the way it moved. To the way
one hand was up and around his head, holding onto Sirius’ hair, and the other yearned for him;
sought after him. Sirius found his free hand and interlocked them, moving him, without even
realising, to hold him by the hip, to hold him by the side of his ribs. To the way he grazed his
hands over the blemished skin, the skin that burnt in the cold, the scar on his rib that would never
dissipate and the one on his heart that might. Two hands, the warmth of him, he was warm from
Lily and it made all the difference when he traced his fingertips over the scar, when he gripped his
chin, rolled it between his fingers. Cupped his belly and the hair resting there and thumbed his
nipple. Grinded up against his back and breathed heavily in his ear, shaking thighs holding them
up, human and given over and all-encompassed in here and now.

So when he got Remus to lean over and grip onto the edge of the mattress, the warmth made all the
difference; that tinge, on his shuddering skin, the jolt of electricity when Sirius tugged on his hair
and pulled his head up to watch himself shake in the mirror. He locked eyes with himself and
became one with it. Memorised every flutter of Sirius’ eyelash and every movement of his
muscles. Every inch of his skin and every lap taken. He flexed and his collarbones stuck out and
Remus wanted to drink each and everything he ever drank out of them, would do it, except his
cheek was pressed to the edge of a mattress and he felt everything and everything and everything.

“Stay there,” Sirius whispered in his ear, after fucking him with his fingers and kissing up from the
low of his back. Remus stayed and soon enough Sirius came back with a pillow and they
positioned it underneath him for comfortability, until Remus was leaning forward, hips up, at the
end of the bed. Face just at the mattress. Gripping onto the metal bars.

With his head turned right he could see himself perfectly. See Sirius too, behind him. Touching
him like he’s just been taught how to be gentle and he can’t get enough of it.

Hands everywhere. His hands were everywhere. Sirius positioned himself.

“I want you to look,” he said.

“I’m looking,” Remus gasped. He’d never longed for anything more in his entire life. He made eye
contact with Sirius in the mirror; he licked his lips, smiling from above him. “I’m—Fuck.”

A hand traced circles on his hip. It made Remus shiver. Ache. Anticipation.

“Good,” Sirius murmured. “Beautiful,” Sirius murmured.

“Please,” Remus, who was not heralded for patience, breathed, “can you—please—”

Sirius shushed him.

“You don’t have to ask,” he whispered. “Anything, baby.”

He pushed himself in and—

Fuck, it was. Yeah. He was putty in Sirius’ hands, really, always had been. But this was something
else. Face-to-pillow, gripping, feeling, hands gripping hips in the most unique way to cause
damage, singe-marks that would never heal, he watched himself. Watched them in the mirror. And
if he stopped looking, if he closed his eyes for a little bit too long or turned his face a different
way, Sirius would stop, and he couldn’t let Sirius stop. So he stayed there, stayed looking, eyes
tracing over everything he couldn’t usually see, all of Sirius as he fucked him and all of Remus as
he was being fucked. Just watching it happen struck a cord. Something about being lain out, bare,
strewn across the floor and the bed like the reverb blood of a gunshot to the head. Messy.
Beautiful. So much of it. So real. He’d never felt more real in his life. He’d never felt more alive.

God, he was born to be touched. Made to love him like this. Made to love him like all the cards
were burnt, all of the shots fired into the air until the gun is obsolete. Bullets come raining down
eventually but when they do there’s no one there for them to hit. They run, and they run, and they
run. And they love, and they love, and Remus let himself go to the rhythm and to the feeling of
being bloody and harrowed and being loved not despite it but for it, for it anyway. A hallowed
harrowing. Dirty not made clean but Sirius looked after him. He held him like he was something
precious and framed him, kept him in a bottle, kissed him like a relic to keep him that way.
Brushed off the fumes and the lingering ash and bathed him in golden, gold gold gold he could
give it all and it would not be enough and they are sick and dying and dead and gone and Remus
would live a million more years if it felt like this if it felt like this and this and this and gold gold
gold. He would take it all. Not even do it all but have it be done. Watch over it like a father, like a
mourner, like a lover. Lover lover lover. What the fuck else are they pretending for—

No. Not here, and not now. Not now when he’s so wound up in who he is and how beautiful they
are. Lovers, that’s what they are, Hasanlu lovers, Valdaro lovers. Bone to bone to bone. In an
eternal embrace and an eternal kiss. They need that, it beats the same rhythm and the same pull at
the same time when they want to touch at every possible point, and it’s something. It’s nothing. It’s
everything.

They can’t stay apart from each other that long. Their skin has to meet at every possible point.
They have to become one another. Merge. Consumption is the only way.

Maneuvring, moaning into each other’s mouths, mimicking their words and their speech and the
way they sound when they fall apart. Remus ended up on his knees in front of Sirius, chest-to-back
and thighs to thighs and Sirius kissed him, turning his head. Teeth clashing. Remus threw his head
back, a knot in his lower stomach, his lungs in tatters and his head in pieces, pressing his lips to any
point of Sirius he could reach. Still making eye contact with him in the mirror. Watching himself
be fucked stupid. Staring, and staring, and staring, and he needed—he needed it. Needed more. It
all. Or something.

“Bite me,” he choked, as Sirius thrust into him, gasping for air. “Bite me, bite me, please, please,
please.”

He felt Sirius breathe into his ear, felt his hands roaming his body.

And then he leaned forward, reached up to splay his hands over his jaw, tilting Remus’ head
aggressively, even more aggressive than before. Carnal. And he bit.

Remus let out a sound that was so unholy it could have exorcised someone and grasped onto him,
arching, feeling it, feeling everything, feeling feeling feeling feeling. He pushed himself back as
Sirius pushed him forward and he took the hint, speeding his other hand, thumbing over him and
up and down until Remus let go, coming obscenely, in tatters, almost choking on where Sirius’
hand was choking his throat as he bit into him. Almost choking on the tears that, oddly enough,
prickled at his eyes as he came. He’d never felt as loved before. He’d never felt as alive. As much.

“Keep going,” he managed to breathe, going limp slightly against Sirius as he rode out, detaching
himself from Remus’ neck. He wrapped his arm around Sirius’ neck from behind, leaning his head
back into his shoulder so their cheeks were pressed together, and looked at them in the mirror. He
was slick, his mouth open; blood trickling down his chest as Sirius gripped onto his hips with both
hands and fucked him harder and harder until he came himself, gasping into a messy, bloody kiss
that Remus pulled him into. His fangs were still out. Remus swirled his tongue over them and
pushed himself back and felt each tremor happily, trembling up his belly and smearing like the
blood on his skin.

He pulled back and watched Sirius’ face in the mirror as he came. That gorgeous thing. He bit
down on Remus’ shoulder, fangless; it was going to leave a mark. Remus hoped it did.

He watched his own blood drip out of his mouth from where they’d kissed. Licked it out of the
corners of his lips and held Sirius’ face by the chin, pulling it up, helpless and feeble and riding it
out until his breathing shuddered in time with his thrusts and his thighs gave out, Remus going with
him; he fell back, pulling out, Remus going with him.

They breathed. They breathed. They breathed.

Remus was crying.

He turned to the side, covering his face but Sirius caught it. Rolling over and palming at his chest,
rubbing a thumb on the side of his arm.

“Hey,” he breathed. “Hey.”

“This is so stupid,” Remus gasped, sniffing. Sirius rubbed his thumb around harder.

“It’s not. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Remus said, and in the same breath, “everything.”

“Yeah,” said Sirius. He said nothing else. They’d been darting around conversations like sentient
moths. Knowing you’re going to get hurt makes it all the more painful to follow the inevitable. To
follow nature. But now was not the time.

…Would it ever be the time?

Remus was crying. He had the odd, insensible urge to burst out laughing at himself. How skewed
he is. Yet Sirius kept that rhythm to his arrhythmia, a thumb, drawing circles, tracing stardust,
following the heart. The one that beat for two.

Remus turned, and Sirius held him, and he cried.

And then he took care of him. Got up to go to the bathroom and came back to clean them off;
popped downstairs, came back with water. Remus downed it in one and then curled back up beside
him, head on his chest, Sirius running his hand through his hair.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Sirius asked, after three minutes or so of lying there like that, when
he’d calmed down. He was still slightly breathless.

Remus, utterly on autopilot, scoffed a laugh.

“What is there to talk about?”

A beat.
“Remus.”

“I know,” he whispered, sucking in his bottom lip. “I know. I don’t know where to start.”

He pushed himself away from him and lay on his back, staring up at the cream ceiling. Sirius
turned to face him.

“Why don’t we start easy? How do you feel right now?”

“Guilty.”

He paused for a moment.

“Why?”

Remus stared blankly at the ceiling, considering this.

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “Everything. There’s too much on my hands. I feel—I shouldn’t be
enjoying this. You. I—I’m happy,” he smiled, tearfully. He hadn’t realised the words were true
until he’d said them. He hadn’t really realised he’d been healing until the wounds burst open again.
“You make me happy and I feel horrible about it. When they’re—they’re all dead.”

“By ‘they all’, do you mean… Sweden?”

“No,” said Remus, instantly, and then his face screwed up. “Yes. No. I can’t—feel it. Sweden feels
like a different me. I feel like it wasn’t me. I wasn’t there. None of that happened to me. It was
someone else's hands and someone else’s feet and then when we, when we apparated to Hampshire
they got shoved on over mine like I’m one of those—fucking figurines you can pull apart and now
—I have to deal with someone else’s wreckage. And I have to come to terms with the fact that it’s
mine.”

Sirius was quiet for a moment.

“It makes no sense,” whispered Remus.

“It makes sense.”

“Why is it all on my hands,” he breathed, shaking his head, closing his eyes. “Why do I have to
heal from something that someone else did to me? Why do I have to care for myself twice over
because he didn’t care about me? Why is his wreckage mine? I never wanted—any of this.”

He closed his eyes, breathed once, breathed twice. Sirius did not pull him in, move him. He let him
breathe on his own. He was not a walking ventilator but he was a smoke signal, rubbing a circle on
his arm. Hovering in the background. Scaffolding.

The both of them knew they were no longer talking about Sweden.

“This is about your dad,” said Sirius, slowly.

Saying it so dumbly might have, in another life, been tactless, but here it was necessary. Remus had
never been able to order his words. He’d never been able to articulate what made him feel what.
He was stumbling in darkness.

“Everything is,” whispered Remus in response, rubbing at his eyes again. Silent tears were falling.
He smirked, something bitter. “Isn’t it? I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. I wouldn’t be a
hunter. I wouldn’t be a werewolf. I wouldn’t be a Horcrux. I wouldn’t have all of this—weight on
me. I hate him.” Remus gasped, his breath shuddering. He was barely taking them; running on
nothing. Air and smoke. “I hate him. I can’t forgive him. I can’t.”

“You don’t have to forgive him.”

“But isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?” he whispered. His voice was so small. “To move on.
That’s how it stops hurting.”

Sirius sighed.

“Look at me,” he said, cupping his face. Rolling on his side to face him, Remus did. He took a
deep breath in. “Honey, it is never going to stop hurting. Okay? The cards you were dealt will
never be fair, and having to lug along someone else’s wreckage will never be alright. But your
grief doesn’t fit into a box. And you don't have to forgive shit to move on. Right? You don’t have
to forgive shit. The rhetoric that someone who hurt you should be forgiven for you to find peace is
utter bullshit. Take it from me, someone who is very well versed in hating their parental figures—”

Remus let out a little laugh, here, and Sirius smiled.

“—you don’t have to forgive them to find peace. I have never forgiven my mother. But the
resentment I hold for her is mine and mine alone. And I find strength in the fact that I’ve found
people that I love more than I hate her.”

He smiled. Everything about him was assured. Remus had never seen him lay himself out so
aggressively. There was not a flinch. Sirius gave him his heart and he did not flinch about it.

“So,” he continued, with a finite tone, “take forgiveness as a choice that you get to make, yeah?
Instead of letting the fact that you feel like you should make you feel out of place, let the fact that
you can and you won’t ground you. Your choices…”

He faltered.

The finishing flourish of the sentence was a make or break. A sharp inhale, because they’d had this
conversation. They had had this fight.

And here was his hypocrisy. Sirius Black, the lifelong hypocrite. The birds can fly but only when
he chooses to set them free. On a leash. So they come back.

He is selfish.

He has never, not once, claimed not to be.

“Are mine,” Remus finished. So, so quietly. “They’re mine, Sirius.”

An aching moment of silence.

“That’s that, then,” muttered Sirius, gruffly, taking his hands away from Remus’ cheeks and sitting
up on his forearm. “Right. Okay. What, was that just a big ploy to get me to admit what you want
to hear? To hear me say it?”

Remus blinked.

“No,” he said, feeling a flare light up in his chest. Sirius was already up, swinging his legs over the
edge of the bed. Remus sat up himself.

He sighed, and then got up, fishing for his clothes on the floor, pulling on his shirt. Remus
clambered to the edge of the bed and watched him, duvet pulled up sparingly. He had been naked
in front of Sirius before. But here he felt exposed.

Sirius sighed with his back to the bed. He rubbed both hands over his face and turned around.

“You want to hear me say it?” he asked, spreading his arms out wide. He was very obviously trying
not to raise his voice. “Fine. Yes, your choices are yours. But that doesn’t mean that I have to be
okay with them.”

“Are you serious? We’re really doing this right now?”

“We’re not doing anything,” Sirius said. “I’m just telling you.”

“No, you’re picking a fight.”

“I’m not.”

“A stupid fight, as well, because you know very well that I never asked you to be okay with them,”
said Remus. “There are plenty of things we have done that the other wasn’t okay with.”

Sirius stared at him, scoffing. “Well, I think there’s a pretty big difference between moralistic
disputes between a vampire and a hunter and willingly killing yourself without even searching for
another option, Remus.” He stopped. Thinned his lips. “Hm. Never mind. Apparently we are doing
this then.”

Remus made a strangled noise. He was so frustrating.

“We are searching!”

“We are,” whispered Sirius, shaking his head. “Not you. You don’t care. And I can’t tell if you’re
repressing it or if you’re just that fucking suicidal that you don’t care, but I do. I do. It’s selfish.”

It was amazing how quickly Sirius could make him snap.

“Selfish?” Remus hissed, face contorting. Tears dry. He moved off the bed and went to find his
own trousers, pulling them on, continuing; “Selfish? Everything I do—”

“Oh, bullshit!” Sirius snapped. “Don’t you feed me that crap, Remus. Nothing about this is
selfless. It might have been, once upon a time, yeah. You’ve always had a saviour complex and
I’ve never fucking minded but this is not that. This is you wanting Tom Riddle to suffer. This is
you wanting vengeance.”

“And what if I do?” Remus asked, whirling around. “What if I want him to suffer? What if I want
to look him in the eyes and fucking destroy the last chance he has at winning? No, no, better yet—
what if I’m considering taking him up on his offer? Joining him? What if I’m considering joining
him and circumventing him and taking all of his power, slaughtering all of your fucking cousins
and all of their progeny and everybody they have ever met,” he gasped for breath, could not
breathe, he was fury; “What if I want the upper hand? God, Sirius, what if I want the upper
hand!?!”

“You don’t have to get it like this!” Sirius yelled, splaying both of his hands over his head in
frustration. “This is my point, Remus! You’re spinning it around on power dynamics but that’s not
what’s at stake here—”

“It is!”
“It’s not,” he hissed, “You can’t see the bigger picture because you’re so enraptured in the fact that
Dorcas is dead and you wish you’d died with her—no, better yet, in your eyes you did, yeah?”

“I can’t see the bigger picture?”

“You can’t see the fact that you exist on a planet with other fucking people—”

“That’s—” Remus cut off, losing his breath at the anger in his chest, actually letting out a dry
laugh. “What the fuck. What the fuck.”

“That you’re hurting, Remus—”

“Oh my God. How can you possibly still think that my decision revolves around you?” Remus said,
hands on his head in disbelief. “How can you possibly be that selfish—”

“And there it is, you calling me selfish again,” Sirius muttered.

“You literally just—” Remus snapped, eyes wide in disbelief. “I—What else am I supposed to do?!
My choice is to save everyone, Sirius, and you’re thinking about yourself? About how you’re
hurting?”

“Your choice is a revenge fantasy!” Sirius shouted. “You’re so far removed from the fucking
universe you’re convinced you’re doing everything for the greater good but you killed two hundred
people in Sweden, Remus!”

Remus felt the breath leave him like he’d been struck in the gut.

“You don’t care anymore!” Sirius continued, voice hoarse. “All you want is a show. And you treat
me like I’m a character in some fucked-up Gothic tragedy that I never had any say in being a part
of! And—fuck, I’m not even asking for much, Remus. All I want is for you to treat me with an
ounce of respect and at least accept the real reason why you gave up trying. Because Dorcas is
dead, and you wish you’d gone with her. That’s cowardice. No one is any fucking better off.
You’re not a martyr, but you stopped fighting as if to hail yourself as one, and I’m not going to go
down with your ship. You can stop fighting for me but I’m never going to stop fighting for you
and so we go round, and round, and round—”

“I can’t—” Remus shook his head, taking a step back. “You’re obviously never going to listen.”

“I’m never going to listen,” Sirius whispered, covering his eyes with his hand. “I’m never—Jesus
fucking Christ.”

“You’re obviously—” Remus cut off, swallowing down the lump in his throat. “There’s no way I
can make you come round to my choice but you’re not going to change my mind, Sirius. And I
hope one day you fucking realise how much of a hypocrite you are—”

“Oh my God,” Sirius groaned, actually flailing at this, turning and then turning back. He dropped
his hands, and his eyes were crazy. “Oh, my God, I can’t keep having this same fight, Remus!”

“I’m not asking you to!”

“Over, and over again—” Sirius choked, banging his palm against his temple, “I feel like I’m going
fucking crazy—”

“All I want is for you to understand—”

“I will never understand.”

“Then why are we even having this fight?!”

“I DON’T KNOW!” Sirius’ voice broke. He exhaled, shudderingly, letting his hands fall limp to his
sides. “I don’t know.”

There was a moment of horrible silence.

They were so close, and yet so far.

“I don’t see how my reasoning makes any difference,” Remus said, breaking it, after at least twenty
seconds. “When every road leads to the same end. Him, dead.”

“He’s not worth it.”

Remus stared.

“What?”

“He is not worth it,” said Sirius. “He’s not worth your life because you can’t move past your
vengeance.”

“You have a lot of nerve saying that to me.”

“He is not worth your life,” repeated Sirius, emphasis on each word, “because you cannot move
past your vengeance. I’m a hypocrite, I’m selfish, fine, fine fucking fine but the only reason we are
right back where we started is because you are still pretending to be selfless when you’re a martyr
on fucking death row.”

The bomb ticked, ticked, ticked.

“And I can’t stand it,” Sirius hissed, scrunching his nose up, “my God, I can’t stand it, Remus, it’s
—it’s so insulting. Do you realise how insulting it is? The way you wrap it all up with a pretty little
bow and market it as a pity party, the boy who never had a choice finally making the right one—”

Remus exhaled in disbelief.

“And you use people like they’re characters in your cloudy fuckin’ reality—”

“Are you talking about the fucking list again?”

Sirius paused for a moment.

“No.”

“Yes, you are,” Remus said, quite literally laughing hysterically, sinking his hands into his hair and
gripping. “Ha—Oh, my God. I can’t cope. There is no way. You’re—this is the hill you’re going to
die on?”

“It’s not about the list,” Sirius groaned. “It’s just a precursor for all of the shit you’ve been doing
—”

“And I’m the pity party, yeah?” Remus snapped back, lip curling upwards.

“Oh—” Sirius covered his eyes with his hand. “Dear God. I can’t do this anymore.”
“You want to talk about the list?” Remus asked, flaming. “Alright. Fine. We can talk about the
fucking list. The truth is that you are a monster, Sirius. You’re capable of the worst things man can
offer. You’re disgusting. Brutal. You’re selfishly in love with me and you hate me so much you
can’t fucking breathe so is it that far of a stretch to assume that you would rain hell after I’m gone?
Maybe I did use you, fine, but to be quite frank I don’t think I give a fuck. I know I can get what I
want out of you and I know it’ll be for the better. Are you forgetting about our differences?” Sirius
stared. He took a step forward. “Look at me. Look at me, Sirius. What the fuck am I? No, I’m
serious, answer the fucking question.”

“What the hell am I supposed to say?”

“Mortal!” Remus near-screamed. “I’m mortal, for fuck’s sake! I know I treat you like you’re
human and you treat me like I’m—everything, but we’re not. We’re not equals.”

“Who the fuck ever said we were?”

“You’re acting like it!”

“No, I’m—”

“And you know, you’ve been acting like it ever since this—” Remus gestured between the two of
them, “happened, so maybe it shouldn’t have. Love made you soft, and maybe it shouldn’t have. If
you’d kept your vulnerability to your fucking self it would’ve saved us a hell of a lot of trouble.”

A pause.

“Wow.” It came out a whisper. Sirius was staring at him, lips curled sort of bitterly. He cleared his
throat and turned away, chuckling, hollow. “Wow. Okay.”

Remus knew he didn’t mean a single word. And yet somehow he didn’t regret the fact he’d said it.
He wanted Sirius to hurt. He wanted blood.

“Ha—so. Okay.” Sirius turned back. “Fine. Walk me through this, then. This is about power
dynamics, then?”

“This is about what you and I can offer each other.”

“No,” said Sirius, scoffing, “this is about what you can offer yourself and how I can contribute.
This is about me and you and the fact that I know you’re right, the fact that I knew you were right
back then. But I did it anyway. You did it anyway. Trust me, if I could do anything right now, it’d
be to go back, but I can’t. So what the fuck do we do now? Where do you want the love I have for
you to go, Remus?!”

“I never asked for you to love me!”

“You didn’t have to ask!” Sirius screamed. “Fuck, Remus, what aren’t you grasping about this?!”

“What aren’t you grasping about the fact that that’s not my problem?!”

“Not your—” Sirius stopped, eyes wide as saucers, pressing his fingers to his forehead and then
clapping them together; “It sure as hell was your problem five fucking minutes ago when you were
calling me a monster?!”

“FUCK,” Remus screamed, drowned, choking on a hand suddenly down his throat. He was
breathing so heavily with anger his chest was heaving and his eyes were prickling for some reason.
He sort of paced in a circle, on the verge of keeling over and entirely unaware of what he was
doing, and then he was manically grabbing a pillow and flinging it at Sirius—he caught it—taking
a book from the bedside table and flinging it at him again—he dodged. It hit the door with a
haunting bang and fell to the floor, as he melted, shouting through sobs, as he threw what he could
find, empty glass, book, lamp, pillow; “You—ruined—everything! You ruined everything!”

Sirius caught the glass. But the lamp hit the wall and smashed.

As the shards hit the floor, clattering into tiny pieces, Remus simmered. His hands were shaking.
And Sirius just stared at him, eyes glassy.

He placed the glass he’d caught on the dresser beside him, pillows at his feet. The spine of the
books had broken. Remus’ notebook was one, jagged edges on the inside from where the lists had
been ripped out. They lay like settled dust on the floor; carnage all around Sirius, the more ruinous
of them all. Sinking onto the bed and curling into himself, Remus pressed a hand to his mouth,
sobbing, squeezing his eyes shut and clinging to the sheets. Untethered, nothing, nonexistent; the
same words playing in a loop in his head.

We’ll ruin each other. We’ll ruin everything.

Maybe everything deserves to be ruined.

They’d swapped. Pessimistic. I learned from the best. Dull ache. You made me worse. You made
me better. Symbiotic. Breathing in time. One perpetual heartbeat. Doomed from the beginning.
Going to ruin me. Going to let him. At the end. Not you. Not you. Not you.

Here and now. Sirius looked at him. Regret me, Remus thought. Regret me, regret me, regret me.

“You did this,” he choked, eventually, calming down but still aflame. He stared at the corner of the
room. He couldn’t meet Sirius’ eye. “You brought me here. There’s—there’s nothing you can do
about it. There’s nothing you can fix. This is it.” His eyes flickered to the shards on the floor. “This
is me.”

Am I too much? Am I finally too much?

A long, long minute or so passed, where neither of them said anything, and Remus thought he’d
leave.

And then;

“There is something I can do,” Sirius offered.

Remus’ eyes snapped to him instantly. No hesitation.

“No,” he said. Soft. And then, harder, shaking his head slowly: “N—no. You wouldn’t.”

“I think you underestimate just how selfish I am, Remus,” Sirius spat.

“Oh my God,” Remus whispered, in one breath. He exhaled sharply, turning away and holding his
head in his hands. “Oh—oh my God.”

“Because your choice isn’t destroying the Horcrux, it is destroying yourself,” Sirius said,
unperturbed, as if he was trying to reason, “so if I turned you, you’d hate me. Right?”

He whirled around, flailing to stand up on shaky legs and walk to him.

“Forever,” Remus hissed, pulling at his shirt. “I’d hate you forever.”

“But you’d be alive.”

“And I’d kill you,” he whispered. “Like I should’ve. Eight years ago.” Sirius laughed.

“You think I wouldn’t let you run me through with a smile on my face, sweetheart?”

“I’d kill myself.”

“Well, you’d’ve already done that. Same trick twice gets a bit old, no?”

“You cunt,” Remus whispered, letting go of him and walking backwards until he hit the mirror.
“You. You fucking prick.”

“Oh, don’t. Don’t act like this wasn’t inevitable.” Sirius gestured to himself, up and down. “I’m a
monster. I’m disgusting. Brutal. I’m in love with you. You can’t pick and choose what you can get
out of me. I’d kill him for you, but I’d turn you for me.”

Remus stared. In amongst the chaos, he sorted through his billowing chest to see that the issue
didn’t lie within the turning. The love of his life was a vampire. His best friends were vampires. He
knew vampires. He hated them. He loved them. Humanity had never done much for him, he didn’t
love it. Didn’t even like it that much anymore. Not that he’d even ever been human, but that’s a
different thread.

The issue lay within the circumstance. The issue lay within what bathes in the small space between
the two of them, the words whispered. Circumstantial. The issue lay there, it lay here;

“You’d take away my choice,” Remus whispered.

Sirius did not flinch.

“I’m not ashamed of it.”

“After everything I told you.”

“After everything I told you,” Sirius shot back, walking forward. They were close. “I guess we’re
both regretting our vulnerability now, aren’t we?”

Regret me, regret me, regret me.

Remus covered his face with both hands and groaned again, viscerally. He felt like he was on
fucking fire. He can’t. He can’t, he can’t, he can’t.

“What do you want?” he spat, eventually, dropping them. “What do you want, Sirius?!”

“You.”

“No,” Remus replied, “what do you want from me? How do we move past this?”

“We can’t,” Sirius laughed, hoarsely. “We can’t, don’t you understand? And that’s your doing.”

“Just—” Remus said, feeling like he was being stabbed through the same wound, over and over
and over again, “please, please, tell me what to say. Tell me what you want to hear. Tell me what I
need to say to make this stop.”
“I want to hear the truth.”

“What truth?!”

“The truth,” Sirius said. “What all of this is really for. Who you really are.”

I see right through you, pretty boy.

Remus gave it one breath. Two, three, four.

“Fine,” he spat. He was furious. His voice was still shaky. “Fine. You want to hear me say it? You
really want to hear me fucking say it?”

“Say it,” Sirius hissed. “Tell me what you truly feel.”

“You want the truth, Sirius? The truth is that you’re right. I don’t care. I don’t care about the
people anymore. I don’t care about the tsunami in Luleå; you’re right, I don’t care that two
hundred people are dead. Maybe I killed them, maybe they would’ve died anyway because of our
stupid fucking plan, but it makes no difference to me either way. I’d kill them again, I don’t care. I
don’t care about the people in New York dying from the dementors, I don’t care about the people
Riddle is turning and the vampires he’s killing, and I don’t care about the world because,
evidently, the world doesn’t fucking care about me!” Here, hysterically, he laughed. He laughed in
fury. “And I—oh, hah, I am done, Sirius. I’m done with putting everyone else first. I’m done with
unity and I’m done with hunting and I am done with the greater fucking good.”

“Right,” said Sirius, “so you’re just—”

“Don’t interrupt me,” he snapped.

Sirius went quiet.

“Not now. You don’t get a say, here. You don’t get a say. Because, fine, maybe that makes me
selfish. Maybe I’m selfish and I’m fucking suicidal. Maybe it was always going to be this way.
Maybe that werewolf that bit me knew what they were doing, maybe it was in my genes to fight
and then to run, maybe I am my father’s son. Maybe I fell in love with a warzone and it has ruined
me but we were going to do that to each other from the very beginning.” He walked forward, in his
face. “Everything lies here, between the two of us. You fucking know that. You knew it. So don’t
you dare stand there and blame me for any of this when you sought me out.”

He gasped, choking on something red and hot, something burning at the back of his throat. Sirius
watched him. He was motionless. Remus might have been crying, that figurine hand, the one with
all the blood, it pressed its index finger into Sirius’ chest and burnt a hole there, welded them
together.

“Don’t you dare blame me for what I am,” he whispered, through his teeth. “When all I am is
you.”

“I will never blame you for wanting to hurt him,” whispered Sirius. “I’ll never blame you for
changing your morals, Remus. For how badly the world has treated you I’d want to burn it down
too. I want to burn it down for you. I would do that, for you.”

“Burn down the one that it all comes down to, then,” Remus whispered, pleading, now; both hands
gripping desperately onto Sirius’ shoulders. “Just—Sirius. Sirius. Look at me. Sweetheart. Look at
me, please.”
He gasped, clinging to him. His cheeks and the sides of his neck and the strands of his hair. He
leaned forward, forehead to forehead; letting go, his hands clung onto the fabric of his shirt and
Sirius looked at him, brought his own hands to cover them, interlocking them between their two
bodies, their two chest cavities. Holding on for dear life. Nose to nose.

“Just let me—” Remus choked, “—burn him.”

Sirius sat with this for a moment, clinging onto Remus’ hands. His lips contorted as he staved off a
sob but ultimately his face calmed and he let out a breath, cascading between them like smoke.

“No.”

So simple. One syllable.

Two stray tears fell onto Remus’ face. He let go, took a step back, away from him. Exhaled
sharply, like the word was a punch to the gut. He wasn’t sure why. He knew this is what it would
always come down to. But the villainisation of his thirst for vengeance felt poorly received upon
the lips of he who started the fire. Burned it as the world turned specifically for Riddle. He who
ripped him to shreds. He who, he who, he who said, once upon a time, that—

“You said, once,” Remus whispered, antagonisingly low, “that this was bigger than me and you.”

Sirius’ response was instantaneous. “I take it back.”

Another sucker punch.

“How,” Remus breathed, with all that he had. “After everything he has done to you. After all of
those decades. How can you take it back?”

And there it was. Sirius’ tears fell.

They fell, and they fell, and they fell.

“It’s really quite simple, actually,” said Sirius, as they crowded at the tip of his chin. He shrugged.
“I love you more than I hate him.”

It felt like Remus had been stabbed.

A moment, of blinking, blinking back tears and pain and loss, all of that hurt. Everything that
kindled here. Every road that had led them here.

Every dead-end street.

Because, in the end, it’s—

“I’m sorry,” Remus whispered. He shook his head. “It’s just not enough.”

Sirius’ bottom lip seemed to fight him for a moment, and then his face gave way. He looked down,
letting out a weak, wet noise. Pressed one hand to his mouth and then the other. Sobbing silently.

Remus’ tears fell graciously, his face staying entirely motionless. But Sirius—oh. He’d never seen
Sirius cry like this; he didn’t know what to do.

“Sirius…”

“Don’t,” he gasped, heaving it out. Pressing the back of his hand to his mouth desperately. “Oh
God, don’t.”

He turned away, seeming to be breaking by the moment, hands over his face. Hiding himself from
the light, cowering from the sun. He pressed a hand up against the wall and kept the other over his
mouth, sobbing desperately into it.

Remus watched him, motionless, for a moment, and then Sirius dropped his hands and let out a
shaky breath.

“Fuck, Remus,” he said, choked up. “Oh. You make me so fucking sad.”

Remus felt like the wind had been entirely knocked out of him.

“I don’t understand,” he mumbled. Sirius scoffed.

“Of course you don’t,” he snapped, shakily, trying to wipe at his face and failing. “You’ve never
been in love with you. It’s harrowing.”

Remus felt his eyes well up. Dry lips parted, he watched as Sirius sniffed, turning back to the wall
trying to compose himself and failing miserably. After a moment he gasped and turned around.

“This hurts,” he wept, chest stuttering. “Remus, it hurts. And I don’t know how– I don’t know
what to do to—t–to make you understand,” he cut off, choking a shallow breath in, “I don’t know
what to do. Please, please tell me what to do. Because I can’t live like this anymore. I can’t have
this fight again. I can’t love a ghost anymore. I can’t—I can’t, I can’t,” he wept again, this time
viscerally, audibly.

He was clutching onto the drawers and looking like his knees were about to collapse in on
themselves. Looking on the verge of disintegrating, breaking down.

“Sirius,” Remus murmured, again, cocking his head. Trying to make his way to him.

“I said don’t,” Sirius hissed, shrugging him off viciously. Gasping for air, hand at his throat,
rolling the skin there over and over.

He looked like he was about to say something else, but stopped, abruptly, at the look on Remus’
face.

He didn’t even have to ask. He saw through Remus like he was a two-way fucking mirror.

“You’re shocked,” he whispered, thick with emotion. His face crumbling with devastation, wet and
puffy on his cheeks. “What? That I’m upset?”

Remus opened his mouth. No sound came out.

“You’re shocked that you made me cry, is that it?” Sirius spat, voice turning firmer, more
heartbreakingly aggressive. And then he let out a sharp breath that teetered on the edges of a bitter
fucking laugh. “Ha. Oh, you’re being faced with the consequences of your actions, right? What,
Remus, did you think you would just fucking die and we would all hold hands and dance under
rainbows? Is that what you fucking thought?”

“No,” said Remus. His voice didn’t sound like his.

“Is this it?” Sirius asked, wiping his face with the back of two hands. “I have to break down in tears
for you to realise that people actually fucking love you? What, have I not shown it enough? Have I
not given you,” he opened his arms wide, laughing bitterly, “everything, to show you that?! Is that
not enough for—for Achilles reborn, Remus fucking Lupin?”

“No,” repeated Remus, harsher, shaking his head. “No, that’s not—I’m—”

“You’re unbelievable,” Sirius muttered. “You’re—you—” He shook his head, took a step back. “I
can’t. I can’t even fucking be around you right now. It hurts too much.”

Remus inhaled sharply at this. It made Sirius look up.

“That it?” he muttered. “Is that what stings?” And then, mockingly: “Have I struck a nerve?”

“Sirius, please,” Remus whispered.

“No,” he hissed, bottom lip still trembling. “No. I don’t care anymore. I don’t care how dissociated
you are from your emotions or how selfish you think what I’m about to say is. You need to
understand that people love you and that you are fucking killing them, Remus. You need to—” his
voice broke. He swallowed, viscerally. “You need to understand that this hurts. Losing you hurts.
And if you’re not going to give me the generosity of going with grace, at least let me grieve you
properly. At least let me feel the hurt.”

A moment, and then, muttered;

“It’s more of you than I’ve felt in a long time.”

They looked at each other for a minute. And then Sirius sighed, turning to straighten his shirt on
and grabbing his jacket from the peg on the back of the door, opening it in the process.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know. Away. I can’t be here right now.”

“Someone will see you.”

“Well, if they do,” Sirius replied, strained as he shrugged on his jacket in the hall. He turned and
smiled. “At least you won’t have to worry about me standing in the way of your martyrdom
anymore.”

Remus sighed. “Sirius,” he said, taking three wide steps forward and grabbing him by the arm.
Sirius turned supernaturally fast. Looked at Remus, face-to-face, barely a hands-length away, and
then looked down. Remus became acutely aware, all of a sudden, of the fact that he was bleeding.
That there was blood on his chest. The bite had blotted, but the stream lingered, drying over him.
Marking him, incessantly, dirtily.

Sirius took a step back, yanking his arm out of Remus’ grasp. He turned to look into the abyss of
the hallway, but stopped there.

“I just need to know one thing,” he whispered, eventually.

“What?”

“If our roles were reversed,” he murmured, turning his head just enough so that he could see
Remus out of the corner of his eye. The bust of his face and the curve of his nose, the way it
pointed up at the end, silhouetted in the darkness. “Would you let me die?”

Remus opened his mouth. But he could not answer.

Sirius let him ruminate for a minute, and then nodded.

“That’s what I thought,” he muttered.

He took a step, and Remus, instinctively, leapt forward and grabbed onto his arm for a second time.
Sirius turned, yet again. But this time his eyes were cold.

“I love you, Remus,” he said, pronouncing every word with purpose. “But you’re going to have to
let me go.”

Remus, dazed, did.

“Make up with Lily,” Sirius said, reaching the top of the stairs. He turned to him, one hand on the
railing. “While you still can.”

“I love you,” said Remus.

He was not sure where it came from. Only that it was there, now. Only that he desperately needed
to know that Sirius had heard it. Only that he didn’t know where he would be without him. Only
that it was there, and it was all of the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth. His truth. His
truth, his truth, his truth.

Sirius looked at him. He scoffed.

“Yeah, okay,” he whispered.

And then he walked away, and all that was left was air and the echoing of a closing door.

***

There was a desk in Mary’s room. Once upon a time, it had been used for work; for hunting. Now,
Lily sat at the chair, resting her cheek against her forearm flat on the table, and fiddling with the
radio with her other.

It went from static, to static, to static, to music. Remus opened the door and it was static.

She heard it creak and sat up, turning herself around just as quickly as she turned the radio off.

It had been three hours. He’d showered, in that time. Sirius hadn’t come back. He’d cried. Crawled
into bed and slept. Woken up. Sirius hadn’t come back. Lied there. Got up. Sat there. Stared at the
wall. Sirius hadn’t come back.

He stood there a moment, trying to figure out what to say. But in the end, he needn’t have had to.

“I heard,” said Lily, softly, emotionally; she stood up, darted her way across the room and wrapped
her arms around him.

She was smaller than him by a rather hefty amount, but her hugs were just as brazen as those miles
bigger than her.

“You heard all of it?”

“No,” she admitted, head against his chest. “But I heard enough. And I heard him leave.”

Remus sighed. They were quiet for a moment.

“Was it about—”

“I don’t want—” Remus interrupted her, and then paused. His mind interrupted himself. All he had
gotten from sticking his head in the sand was naught. I don’t want to talk about it. There comes a
point where you must.

He sighed again.

“He was never going to be okay with it,” he murmured. “But I don’t—it’s all I have—”

“No,” she said.

He leaned back, and she pulled her head away from his chest. She kept close, though.

“I know what Mary said to you,” she said. “Since she’s not here, I’m standing in. What you are
isn’t all you have. You have us. You have me.”

A long, long moment.

“Remus, I’m so sorry—”

“I’m sorry for—”

They cut each other off. She raised her eyebrows and smiled, gently. Her features tugged in such a
way it made Remus realise just how tired she looked; yet her smile was vibrant. He exhaled, lips
quirking at the corners.

“You first,” he said.

“I’m sorry for what I said,” she continued. “It was out of line, comparing you to him. Getting up
your ass about… about Sweden. And bringing Dorcas into it. That was terrible. I understand why
you did what you did, and I had no right to act all holier-than-thou about it. I have no right to
dictate how you handle… well, how you handle. And you’re… you were right, in the end.
Apparating to the shore to try and help would have been useless; I couldn’t help, and Pandora was
injured. We would’ve been drowned and everything would’ve been for nothing. I’m sorry.”

Remus took this in. He smiled, thinning his lips.

“I’m sorry, too,” he said. “I don’t—I can’t apologise for what I did. I can’t apologise for who I am
now, Lily. I don’t really know who I am now.”

“I know,” she murmured. “I know that better than anyone.”

“We shouldn’t—be each other's enemy,” he continued. “Not now. I’m sorry for bringing your
powers into it. That was really shitty.”

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “You were right.”

“It was still really shitty.”

“It was,” she said, shrugging. “But, arguably, I was shittier.”

Remus smiled, looking to the floor. “Well, if you say so—”

Lily cocked her head, and laughed like music.

“No, but seriously,” she said, clearing her throat, “I just—I don’t know. I just don’t like hurting
people. And I think I’m touchy about it all, especially with—with the phoenix and how little she
seems to care. I feel like I have this evil side inside of me, this dark part made of light that doesn’t
—doesn’t care to save anyone. And so when you took the opportunity to save them away from me
—”

She struggled with her words for a bit, before cutting off, shaking her head.

“I don’t know. I don’t know how to phrase it. I just want to save the world.”

Remus sighed. It was here, laid out before them, that he realised in truth that they might be the only
two people to understand the other. To not become something but to have something awakened. To
discover you aren’t what you are; to discover that there is a dark part of you, a side that grips all
autonomy of your consciousness, a side that can hurt, a side that can kill. A side that hungers for
power. He and Lily were the only two people who could understand each other's qualms, each
other's identities, each other's disillusionment. But she strives to run away from the darkness. And
Remus lets it swallow him whole. Maybe he is ruled by his emotions, too. Or maybe he simply
lacks the strength.

Or maybe they have been dealt the same cards, and they chose what to do with them.

Maybe they’re both in the right.

For Lily wants to save the world, in retribution against the side of her that doesn’t. And Remus—
well. He’s just like Sirius, now, isn’t he? Remus will burn the world, himself included, for what it
has done to him.

My choices are mine. Our choices are ours.

They choose what to do with the life they have been given.

(They choose, they choose, they choose.)

They ended up sitting on Lily’s bed. They talked about Dorcas, a little bit. Remus initiated the
conversation. It made him feel like he was on fucking fire, but he still did it. Anecdotes, moments,
feelings. Remus often forgot that he wasn’t the only one that loved her. It was nice to hear how
Lily adored her, too. Nice to hear that she was loved. Hoping she knew of it all.

They talked about Sirius. As much as Remus knew and understood he could not run from his fate
forever, he tried his best not to talk about the fabric of their fight. Lily wanted to save the world.
Remus… well, he wasn’t exactly there. But he couldn’t deal with it, with anything tonight,
especially with Sirius gone—irresponsible, Lily had said, seething, insane and ridiculous, he’s
fucking ridiculous, going off when we’re being hunted like this—his mind was jumbled and she
couldn’t untangle it. But she did make him see through his daze and justify that, yes, it was fucking
irresponsible. And the pit of anxiety about Sirius’ wellbeing formed in his gut and did not seem to
be wanting to leave anytime soon.

He’d left. He’d actually… left.

The two of them, in a bid to avoid Sirius or to avoid death sentences or to avoid remembering
feeling broken in their own skin and feeling like a stranger to themselves in the mirror, ended up
lying on their backs on Lily’s bed, looking up to the ceiling. Lily got up to see if Pandora was
about but she was sound asleep, apparently, the rosy cheeks marking her health returning flickering
in the low light from the window as she slept peacefully. So when Lily got back she clambered on
and they talked. About a lot of things.

Lily talked about her father. She’d been five years old when he’d burned their house down with
him inside. Summoning fiendfyre. From deep inside him. The phoenix’s father, the flaming
daughter. They talked about how that worked; divine purpose, as James had put it, the weight of
summoning Fiendfyre from your soul… Lily had done it already. She wondered every day how her
father did it to the point that it killed him. Why? For who? Did it even kill him at all? For she
talked about how she sometimes got the feeling that he was out there, somewhere. A tickle on the
back of her neck, or a familiar scent in the street. A pull. A flightless bird. Remus understood the
feeling; he had felt it in Hampshire.

The pull to where you fit. Where you’re supposed to fit. They were puppets, being dragged every
which way. But he does not align his father as his father, and he does not align himself as a
werewolf. He doesn’t know who the fuck he is so the marionette strings snap in his presence. He
couldn’t bring himself to tell Lily the fine details, but he did tell her that his father was a hunter,
and she tactfully swerved the conversation towards his disillusionment with it all. He sugar-coated
it, but told her some of what he’d told Sirius. He didn’t care. And she listened.

Eventually, after a minute or so of silence, the conversation fizzling out, Lily pushed herself up on
her elbows.

“Wanna listen to the radio for a bit?” she said. Remus nodded. She got up and plodded across her
room to flick it on.

It flicked on to static.

“Oh—” she said, scoffing, as Remus sat himself up, legs crossed, watching her. “I always fiddle
with it and lose the channel. Where the hell am I…”

“You’re on the first,” he said, craning his neck to look, “it’s Channel six.”

“I’m on the first,” she murmured. “Of course I am. One sec—”

She began to flick the dial.

Static.

Static.

Static.

“—if anyone—”

Static.

The radio presenters began talking, but Remus’ ears were ringing.

“Lily,” said Remus, shuffling over to the end of the bed, eyes on the radio. “Switch that back.”

“I—” she blinked, evidently having heard it too. “Which one was it?”

“Four. Switch back to four.”

“Okay, I—”

Static.
There was a crinkling of a signal breaking, and then, a male voice:

“—there, again, I repeat, if anyone is out there, identify yourself. I have been isolated and am in
need of hunting assistance—”

Lily, eyes wide and mouth open, turned to him. Remus was quite sure he looked about the same.

“Who is that?” she asked. Remus opened his mouth to answer.

And the signal started up again.

“I repeat, this is Peter Pettigew, trained under Dorcas Meadowes for HI2 intelligence. I have been
isolated and am in need of hunting assistance. If anyone is out there, identify yourself. I repeat, if
anyone is out there, identify yourself.”

***

“What do we do?” asked Lily, panicking. “What do we do? What do we do?”

Remus simply sat, stunned, staring at the radio.

“Remus!”

He looked up at her.

“He’s supposed to be dead,” he said, pointing to the radio. “Peter Pettigrew is dead. I was falsely
accused and labelled Undesirable Number One for his murder at HI2—” he checked himself, “of
course, Dumbledore is fucking crazy, so him lying about him being dead checks out—” he exhaled
sharply, letting his head fall into his hands. Trying to sort through it.

Trying, trying, trying.

After a minute of static, the radio clicked in again, and Peter began his tirade.

“This is Peter Pettigrew—”

“If he’s from HI2 why was he not with Dumbledore’s army at Whittaker?” asked Lily, gesturing.
“Or—was he? Do we know?”

“We don’t,” Remus murmured. “I mean, no one reported seeing him, but we don’t know for
certain.”

“Why would Dumbledore lie about him being dead?”

Remus sat up, and bit his lip.

“To put me in the shitter, I’d guess. He was trying to find me for my link to Riddle because he
wanted another Horcrux, didn’t he? Pettigrew’s a loose end. He’s the reason I’m here, you know.
He had the case in New York, all those months ago, before we knew the true nature of it—before
Sirius even came to me in Austin. Then Riddle’s minions mauled him almost to death, and the case
got given to me. Pettigrew was in a hospice in Germany last I heard before they told me he died, so
he would’ve been an easy scapegoat to accuse me of murdering.”

“So you think he’s actually isolated?” asked Lily. “Dumbledore used him as a scapegoat then
forgot about him when he recovered?”
“It would make sense as to why he’s reaching out on this network,” Remus muttered. “If he knew
about everything and knew that Dumbledore was dead he wouldn’t be attempting to use them.
He’d know that the intelligence fell with him; or with the bombing of HI1, more like.”

“So we think he’s clueless,” she said. “That he genuinely needs help.”

Remus took a moment to ruminate on this.

“I don’t… know,” he said, eventually. “I don’t think we should assume he’s clueless. He’s actually
a really good hunter. People constantly underestimated him ‘cause he’s a bit awkward. Always
says the wrong thing, you know. But he was Dorcas’ pupil, for one. And he’s smart. He’s really
smart, and good with monsters, especially the intangible ones—I mean, he got an array of these
awards for demonic exorcisms, they had them all at——”

Remus trailed off.

“Oh, fuck,” he said.

“What?”

He looked up at her.

“Oh,” he whispered. “Oh, the cup. Lily, the cup.”

“What about the cup?”

He stood up. Covered his face with his hands to try and close his open jaw, but it hung there
anyway. He began to pace.

“Wait, wait, wait—”

“What about the cup?” she repeated with more emphasis. He turned around so quickly it startled
her.

“Pettigrew won an award in his third year,” he said, quickly. “For—excommunicating a string of
demons, or something, I don’t know, it’s not important. That cup was not our cup, but it was in the
trophy room with the Horcrux at HI1. Remember how the Horcrux was hiding in plain sight before
they bombed it and Bellatrix stole and re-hid it?”

Following along, she nodded, albeit warily.

He began to pace. Tying things together in his head.

“See,” he started, “Dorcas told me that Moody told her that Hestia Jones came to HI1 the week
before it was bombed.”

“Who?”

“American hunter.”

“Oh.”

“Also Peter’s girlfriend.”

“Ooh.”
Lily’s eyebrows raised at this.

“Yeah, this was after he was ‘dead’; she came to collect Pettigrew’s things, take them back to
Germany. But she couldn’t get access to the trophy room to get that exorcism award, because all of
the trophies were being cleaned. And she had a fucking meltdown. Refused to leave until the
trophy room was done.”

“Yeah,” said Lily, squeezing her eyes shut in confusion; “yeah, you told me all this. We hashed all
this when we found out about the cup.”

He looked at her. “Keep going.”

Lily opened her mouth, closed it. Opened it again. “The bombing was a ruse. We established that,
it was so they could take the Horcrux back and re-hide it. Didn’t we decide this Hestia woman was
compromised? That she planted the bombs, or, like, gave them a way in to plant them themselves.”

“Yes,” Remus said, nodding.

She stared at him, evidently not putting it together.

“Lily, think about it,” he said, slowly. “If Hestia Jones was compromised… while at HI1, trying to
get to the Horcrux on Peter’s behalf… as Peter’s girlfriend… ”

He watched the moment it hit her. Her eyebrows raised.

“Then who’s to say they didn’t get to him, too,” Lily finished.

“All of that and now he's here, on a hunters signal that nobody uses anymore, when Riddle knows
we're in the U.K and is looking for me—of course they got to him too,” said Remus, pacing again,
agitated. With everything laid out, it seemed so obvious. “I thought he was dead, so I didn’t think
anything of it when Dorcas told me, because Jones died in the explosion—God, I’m so fucking
stupid, how did I not put that together?”

“Okay,” said Lily, cautiously, “but how do we know that Hestia Jones wasn’t compromised by the
other side? Maybe Dumbledore caught onto the cup being at HI1 and sent her over to retrieve it.”

“No,” said Remus, shaking his head. He turned to her. “No, see, it can’t have been, because Snape
didn’t know who she was. He didn’t know who Hestia was. Snape was his confidante, but by the
end he never actually wanted Dumbledore to succeed. Nor Riddle. He was a snake; playing both
sides to make sure he’d have survivability depending on who prevailed.” He swallowed, gesturing
avidly with his hands. “So Snape would’ve known the cup at HI1 was a Horcrux, but he wouldn’t
have told Dumbledore that. He hated the man for killing his mother. But Dumbledore knew that
Bella was hiding one, which means Snape did tell him but only once she was in possession of it;
because he knew she’d outrun him. And she did, didn’t she? He didn’t know the cup was there
until it was gone, meaning Hestia can’t have been Dumbledore’s doing.”

There was a moment of truth. All of the cards fell into place. Lily looked at him, and Remus
looked back, and they both understood.

“He’s working for Riddle,” said Lily.

The radio clicked, and Peter’s voice rang through the room once more.

“—this is Peter Pettigrew, trained under Dorcas Meadowes for HI2 intelligence. I have been
isolated and am in need of hunting assistance…”
Lily looked at the radio. And then her lips quirked upwards. She scoffed.

“And that’s why he’s on this channel,” she said, so quietly, in realisation. “He’s not isolated, or
clueless. He’s looking for…”

“Me,” finished Remus. “He’s looking for me.”

He looked back up at Lily.

“Riddle may not know my name,” he said, “but the one thing he does know is that I’m a hunter.”

Lily took this in. Bit her lip, let it go. Staring intently at him.

“This is a trap,” she said. “A trap for you.”

“This is a lead,” Remus said.

Her face fell.

“Remus, you can’t be serious—”

“I am so serious,” he replied. There was a bit of static, and then Peter began his mantra once again.
Remus tuned it out. “If we get to Peter then maybe—maybe we could get to his other men. Or
maybe Peter knows something. Maybe we can find something that will give us a—a hint, lead us
in the right direction!”

“Remus,” Lily said, raising her eyebrows, “if he’s on this channel specifically looking for you,
under Riddle’s leadership, he’s going to have a plan. He’s going to have a trap set up. It’s going to
be like walking into a snake pit.”

“I’ve been walking into snake pits my whole life.”

“This will be different. This is someone working for Riddle himself. What if he summons him?
Boom, you’re dead. It’s a trap.”

“And that’s our advantage,” said Remus. “Walking into a trap knowing it’s a trap is a whole
different ballpark to walking into a trap being clueless. We can work with that.” A small smile
twitched at his lips. “Peter can’t double-cross us if we double-cross him first.”

Lily sighed, exasperated. But evidently seeing his point.

“And besides,” he continued, as blithe as possible. “Riddle wouldn’t kill me. Would he?”

She looked up at him. She seemed to clock the idea at the exact same time it appeared in his head.

“No.”

“Lil—”

“The fact that we’re considering going in general is crazy,” she gasped, gesturing wildly, “never
mind going alone?! You have to be out of your fucking mind.”

“On the contrary, I think I’m thinking rather logically.”

“You’re not,” said Lily, plainly.

“Yes I am,” he replied. “At the end of the day, it comes down to this: you, Pandora, Sirius, you’re
all targets. You burnt down half of Riddle’s army at Whittaker single-handedly, Lily. If he sees
you, if one of them comes across you, it’s shoot on-sight. You’re dead.” He took a breath in,
splayed a hand against his chest. “I’m not.”

“Remus.”

“If Peter’s mission is to track me down, he’ll know not to kill,” he murmured, more to himself
now. Autopilot. Hunter brain. “He won’t have been told what I am—no, no way in hell—but he’ll
know not to kill me, yes—he’ll summon reinforcements.”

“Remus.”

“Take me alive. If I get the upper hand quick enough to apprehend him… find out what he
knows… it probably won’t be much but he might know someone who knows someone who knows
more and then—”

“Remus!”

He turned, looked back at Lily. Cocked his head.

“And then we find the last one. And we get to go home.”

Lily’s eyebrows pinched in the middle, almost of their own accord.

“The last one,” she whispered.

They had known, of course, that there had only been one left. One in the wild, at least; the snake
would, likely, be wherever Riddle was, and then. Well. Where Remus goes, the ghost of Riddle
follows. But even just reminding themselves that there was but one for them to find; but one battle
for them to survive themselves, as a trio, before getting to go back to those of which they called
home… it was dirty to play on it to get Lily to go along with him. But it worked. And now she felt
how he felt.

One step closer. How could she not understand they had to follow this lead? See where it went?

Perhaps Remus was just fatally thirsty for knowledge, for truth—for adrenaline. Because, if she
wasn’t here, he would have already radio-ed Peter back.

Perhaps he is suicidal.

Perhaps he does only want vengeance.

Perhaps none of this matters. And all they have to do is the next thing. The next step.

Lily sighed.

“If I really can’t stop you, then I’m going with you,” she said, and he opened his mouth to protest
but she held a hand up. “No. You don’t get to protest this. I’ll stay away if I must. If he’s in a
house, I’ll hide around the corner or in the bushes or something. But I’m going to be there.”

He bit down on his lip, but nodded. It was fair.

“And,” she said, more hesitantly, “we need to figure out what we’re doing about Sirius first.”

“He’s a big boy,” muttered Remus, brushing himself off and fiddling with the radio to get a clearer
 signal. “He can take care of himself.”

“I know he can,” she said, “but…”

He paused, and turned.

“What?”

“Aren’t you supposed to make these decisions together?” Lily asked. “As partners.”

Remus looked at her for a moment.

“We made decisions together back when this was his war,” he said, slowly. “But now, it’s mine.
And I’m going to choose to fight it the way I like.”

There was a lingering tinge of animosity in his tone, and Lily noticed it.

“He’s going to be angry.”

“Do you care?”

“No,” she replied, instantly.

“Good. Me neither.”

“This is insane.”

“Are you with me, Evans?” he asked, stepping closer to her. “Seriously. We don’t know how long
he’ll stay on this channel. I need to know that you’re with me.”

Lily sighed. Looked up to him, her head tilted to the side, blood red hair dripping down past her
shoulder like a waterfall.

“I think you’re batshit insane for even considering this, but I’m with you,” she said, with finality.
And then, a small smile. “I’m always with you, Lupin.”

He smiled back.

And then grabbed the radio, and clicked the mic on.

***

“This is Remus Lupin, trained under Alastor Moody for HI1 intelligence, responding to a distress
signal. Peter, can you confirm your whereabouts?”

A moment's silence.

“Holy shit, Remus.”

Chapter End Notes

okay that was. a lot. i feel like i should say some things about the fight but honestly my
brain is so frazzled by it, it was. A Lot.
soo let me just refer right to the end – peter! I know and knew writing it that a lot of
people would have forgotten about him/everything remus refers to, so I'm gonna put it
here to jog your memories a bit

chapter 1 - remus mentions that dorcas trains new hunters in the US, one of which
being peter, and mentions that he's stationed in new york rn.
chapter 3 - peter gets attacked by the vampires in new york, and it's described as one of
the worst attacks in a while. hestia jones is crying on the skype call. remus gets offered
the case, and he takes it.
chapter 7 - dorcas is in NYC because she is peter's emergency contact, and he
mentions that he's still in hospital/still not awake.
after this he is not mentioned for a while, and when dorcas comes to boardwalk she
gets held essentially hostage if you remember
chapter 11 - dorcas mentions that they sent peter back to germany to recover (he is
german ftr)
chapter 15 - remus asks dorcas how peter is and she tells him she tried to chase it up
and got blanked by HI2, so she doesn't know
chapter 17 - remus (on the mission w regulus) meets the group of runaway hunters,
and bill weasley tells him that after the basilisk venom heist in chapter 10 dumbledore
has labelled him as undesireable number one and is telling everyone that he murdered
peter. this is when remus finds out that peter is dead
chapter 19 - while trying to figure out the reasoning behind hi1 being bombed, dorcas
talks to remus about how she talked to both moody and molly and was told that hestia
jones visited hi1 the week before it was bombed, trying to get to the trophy room... etc
etc. remus explains all of it to lily. they deduce, at the end of the chapter (when remus
puts together merope gaunt's cup and the trophy room to figure out that the horcrux
was at hi1) that hestia had been compromised (by her erratic behaviour and the fact
she refused to leave until she got to the trophy room it seems she was compelled by a
pureblood) (aka bellatrix) to get to it.

sorry for the long as hell recap. i just know the lore gets real confusing and thought it
might be helpful :)

also literally every time i would edit the fight i got mad at a different one of them, so
do let me know your thoughts on that bc! i'm so torn! there are no sides, really, but you
know i love hearing everyones personal little opinions so lmk what you think of these
two idiots! it's fantastic for me!!!!!

OH AND. I FORGOT TO MENTION!!!!

because I’m a bit ahead on my writing, and since we’re so close to the end of book 3,
and also for reasons that i think means they fit like this I’ve decided to post 29 + 30
very close together.

so, i’ll be posting chapter 30 on february 1st!!!

there we go, that is all. loveee xxxx

 thirty
Chapter Summary

they're inseparable, my lord.

Chapter Notes

hello :-) this is a big one. strap in xx

CW's:
– major character death
- pretty heavy dissociation at points from the POV character – he's generally just very
out of it. it sort of just gets worse as you go on; you'll understand why

that's pretty much it, those are the only things i wanted to warn for. it's also a pretty
violent chapter, there's a battle, but like. yall know that, it's in the tags lmao

i'll spoil who dies in the end notes if you would like to see that first before reading!

anyway... enjoy! J xxx

See the end of the chapter for more notes

9:12PM

Lily and Remus ended up on the tube.

The Northern line was gross and stuffy, but thankfully not too packed at 9pm, as most of the
commuters rushed through at 4-5:30. They got two seats, side by side; a backpack sat gently in
between Remus’s legs, filled with weapons, but they were the spares, really. The important stuff
was the stuff he had on him. The stuff he was wearing layer upon layer to hide from the public as
they railed through London, towards Greenwich. Pistol, dagger, pistol, dagger. Lily’s leg had been
jiggling for ten minutes.

“Calm down,” Remus muttered to her.

“Try it again,” she said, turning her body to face him. He sighed, but fished into his pocket and
pulled the comms device out anyway.

These were small radio-like devices that the bureau had manufactured for hunters to communicate
with each other on cases that were separated. Remus and Mary had been using them for years, so
Remus had assumed—correctly—that she would have a few spare in her dusty drawers. This
particular brand was a newer make of the comms device that he and her had used in Cornwall,
when they burnt Sirius’ coven to the ground. Remus hadn’t thought about that in a long, long time,
but even now, against the hiss and the screech of the train plummeting through the underground
tracks he could hear the hiss and the screech of her comms device, when she had pressed the SOS
button, and Remus had simultaneously smelled the smoke.

He could feel Sirius pulling away from him. Disappearing down the hallway of the warehouse.
And he could see himself following.

Sitting on a train pulling further and further away, he pulled the device out, and pressed the pairing
button.

The little red button underneath the small speaker lit up on both of them simultaneously. Like
Bluetooth. All Remus had to do was press a button, and then press another, and Lily would be able
to hear everything that was going on, wherever he was.

She sighed.

“Okay,” she said, shaking her hands out.

“Calm down,” he whispered, again. “It’ll be fine.”

He wasn’t sure if he believed that.

His anxiety tugged and gripped at a sore spot just behind his navel. He swallowed it down and it
came back up but would never reach the surface. For there was a blockage. Right there in his
throat, where skin meets skin and collarbone meets collarbone, there was a blockage. Adrenaline.
Or excitement. He was excited.

He was ready.

The train rumbled on. Lily’s knee continued to jiggle, even when the world shook itself. All around
her.

Remus closed his eyes, and tuned out again.

***

Around the corner from the house, approximately fifty minutes later, Lily stopped him.

“You keep this on,” she said, blazing and orderly. Shoving the comms device into his chest.

“I will.”

“If it turns off, I’m coming in. I’ll blow the windows out to bypass your stupid hunter regimes.
You know I can.”

“I know you can.”

“I can,” she repeated. Perhaps more of an affirmation to herself. “She’ll do it. If it’s you.”

She took his hand. He felt it. Warm. And warm, and warm.

Remus turned to look at the house, and then back to her.

“I’ll be in and out,” he said. “I’ll get what I can from him, get what I can from my surroundings,
and go.”
He heard the delusion. She did too if her face was anything to go by.

“You know he won’t let you go,” she said.

“I’ll make him,” replied Remus.

Lily frowned. She looked, quite frankly, like she would rather be doing anything else.

“I hate you,” she said, pulling him in for a hug.

He sighed into the touch. Held her back. Closed his eyes.

“One second of silence, I promise, I’m coming in there.”

“I know, I know.”

Eventually they pulled apart.

Or—they must have, because suddenly Remus was down the street. And his legs were moving up
the stairs. They weren’t his. But it was, oddly enough, not a bad thing. He knows bad things. This,
as he hopped up the last step, underneath the porch of the house, felt good. Nice to not be in
control. To be back in autopilot; hunting autopilot. Felt good, to be doing something, to feel like he
had a grip on something; ironic that it was manifested in the complete opposite, in losing that grip
on himself, but he’d always been a myriad of contradictions. He wasn’t thinking about anything if
he was thinking about this. He wasn’t anything if he wasn’t anything. He wasn’t in control if his
body was for him and that taste—that taste, of being taken care of—he wanted it back. He wanted
something. He wanted everything.

Remus knew that he was going into the snakepit.

He smiled as he rang the doorbell, and heard the hiss in response.

The building was not a house of personal use, like Mary’s; it was a hunter house, under HI1
authority, so it had pretty similar regimes that the office in DC did, all that time ago when they
broke in.

There was a few steps of authentication. One of them should have been his ID, but they had all
been disabled after the fall of HI1. Remus had been unsure of how he would bypass that, but
apparently Peter—or someone—had disabled the regime, for he just walked on through the first set
of doors.

The second had a welcome mat that he recognised all too well.

As he stepped onto it, he instantly felt the warmth as the magic noted that somebody was present,
and a robotic voice sounded, seemingly out of nowhere.

“Identify yourself.”

A voice activation. He took a deep breath.

“Remus Lupin.”

The mat glowed gold around the edges, recognising that he’d been accepted, and then the next door
opened.

Instead of a typical entrance, here was the little metal tubing that they’d had at DC, and in London,
and in general every house built for conference-type use. The safe houses, meanwhile, were
protected by magic, with a contract enlisting one hunter to each house for a specific amount of
time. It made sense why Peter was hiding out here. He couldn’t enter any of the safe houses; none
of them were his to enter.

Remus took a deep breath, and walked through the warding.

Here’s where it differed. For in DC, a holy water spritz and the magical sensor was enough, but
here, Remus was led through a procedure that included both of those alongside a prick of his
finger.

He watched the droplets of water lie in bubbles on his wrist, not burning. He watched the blood
from the prick of his finger bubble up.

Eventually, the second door opened, and he took a step out of the restrictive tube and felt the gloss
of the warding go through him once more.

The door shut behind him.

The entrance hall wasn’t huge, but bigger than expected. This house in particular he believed had
hosted the Department of Aquatic Creatures, who were the hunters specialised in hunting the
monsters of the sea—such as the Kappa that Benjy and Dorcas had hunted and beaten with
cucumber from a tuna sandwich. Those sorts of monsters were more often than not found in
countries surrounding East Asia; the Aquatic department often were in coalition with hunter
regimes in China and the Philippines, and thus meetings between the two regarding the future of
monster-hunting at sea had all taken place here.

Remus could tell, because he could almost immediately see a set of plaques on the far wall
regarding some extinction of some Aquatic monster or other in the UK. He could also tell,
however, that the house had been in disuse for a while, for no one had polished the plaque. It was
dull against the dullness of the room.

He took a step forward, taking it in; stone flooring, papered walls, a side-staircase and a table and a
few chairs lined against walls with doors leading in different directions; as his foot hit the ground, a
door to his left clicked open, gently.

He had a dagger in his hand in record timing. He turned on autopilot. One moment he was staring
at the dull, dull plaque, the next he had a weight in his hand and he was staring into the face of
Peter Pettigrew.

He looked nothing like Remus remembered him.

Granted, he had not seen Peter in a long time; he was Dorcas’ friend, Dorcas’ trainee. While he and
Remus were friends they were never all that close, really. Peter was a few years younger than him
—he must be twenty-four, now, maybe on the shy side of twenty-five. His hair was blond, but
dirty; his face haggard, miles from the bright-faced boy Remus had met the few times he’d hopped
over to Dorcas’ small recruitment centre in the U.S. He’d always outshone everybody there,
though, that is what Remus remembered about him most. Peter had had life. Sure, yes, he was
gawky and sort of annoying, but he had had a bright smile and he had been alright with a gun,
better with a knife, and Remus had respected that he genuinely, genuinely wanted to be there. Even
if his faults were sort of overbearing to his pros, even if his skillset wasn’t the best or the most
impressive, it was that drive that made you like the guy. And it was that drive that made him
bright, bright-faced, excited, young, youthful. Anticipatory for the rest of his life.
Standing here, opposite him, is a man who is anticipatory for his imminent death. And Remus
knows how that feels.

The enemy, his brain tells him, and he knows it. He knows that Peter will sell him out. Knows it
almost as certain as he knows this dagger in his hand, as the shrouds of dissociation fall off him
like the shedding of an old skin and the centre of his world is grounded here, in violence. He
knows here that he will be violent, and he will cut the smile right back into Peter’s face if he has to.
He’ll do it all to get to him. To get to Riddle.

But a small, unchanging part of him feels pity. Identifies with him. They’re two sides of a coin,
almost. Remus is tired.

Peter drops his gun.

“Remus,” he said, voice croaky. His mouth was sort of open as if he didn’t really believe that
Remus would come to him. At the side, his lips curled upwards. He reached out. “My old friend.”

Remus closed his eyes, and slowly felt the side of his hip for the comms device.

Took a breath.

Put on a smile.

“Peter,” he said, and Peter smiled, and Peter picked up his gun, and Peter opened the door and
bustled him into the next room.

Remus let go of his hip.

And walked into the snakepit.

10:01PM

Peter poured tea.

Remus did not drink it.

He had learned from his mistakes.

The air hung and tasted stale and oppressive around him as he sat down in a cushioned chair, pulled
up to a small round table. Peter was bustling over with his tray, nattering away at something or
other that Remus was not processing. Unfocused on his current target—though not without a beady
sixth sense ready to avoid being caught off guard—he was surveying the room.

Well lit, nice furniture. The summer sun had only set less than an hour ago, so the twilight was still
nautical; rays of sun still fighting their way across the sky, evidencing that the window faced west.
Wall hangings. Plaques and paintings. No phones, no personal belongings, no visible weapons.

One window, to the side. They were sitting at a small chair and table but to the right side there
were sofas and armchairs, glass coffee tables, a coffee machine and a water dispenser. There were
wall hangings. Plaques and paintings. The room was nice, well lit; it was almost cosy, but
something about it felt stale. Perhaps it was the wall colour. Perhaps it was the white light. Perhaps
it was the imminence of what was to come.

He went over and over and over it all. Trying to keep a grasp on himself and on control and on
Peter and on the room. Had he noticed the wall hangings? Had he noticed everything he could take
advantage of, everything—

Peter sat down.

He said something. And then spoke again. After a few seconds Remus felt everything come
storming back. His ears popped. Blood came rushing to his head. He turned his head so hard his
neck cracked, and—

“Sorry, what?” he asked.

Peter raised an eyebrow. “Are you okay? You were out of it.”

“I’m fine,” said Remus. Out of it is my default state, thought Remus, but knowing his predicament
revealing any sort of weakness was not ideal. He already hated himself for this one.

Peter was staring him down. He cleared his throat, and continued, trying to make light
conversation.

“Just admiring the room. I’ve never been in this building. I had no cause to.”

“I came here on an internship course as a trainee,” said Peter, looking around. His hands were
fidgety, his demeanour off—sort of airy, as if he was going to float away at any given moment, the
surprise just being the matter of when. “Two weeks of pouring coffee from that machine,” his eyes
darted across the room, “bringing it to conference rooms upstairs. Listening in on presentations
about Leviathans and emergency meetings about this week’s forlorn Siren.” He clicked his tongue,
and then laughed, almost hilariously awkwardly. “You know there was one in Boston a few years
back?”

“I know,” said Remus. “I worked that case.”

A terse moment. Peter blinked, and then he laughed again. It was grating.

“Ha, yes, of course…” he trailed off, eyes going blank. “Of course you did.”

Remus cleared his throat, cutting to the chase. He wanted to know what this bastard’s story was.

“What happened to you?” he asked. Peter looked up at him. He bit the inside of his top lip, brows
furrowing slightly. “How did you end up here? Why does everyone think you’re dead? The last I
heard from you, you were…”

“Dying?” asked Peter. And then he reached his arm up—Remus flinched, going immediately and
discreetly for his gun—and pulled up his long-sleeved shirt sleeve to reveal his pale forearms.

They were covered in new, agitated scars. Utterly covered.

Remus was no stranger to scars, but these were menacing. A shudder ran down his spine before he
even registered it appear at the top.
“You should see the rest of my body,” said Peter, gruffly, but with that same awkward laugh.
Remus looked up to him, and they locked eyes for a second, but only that—Peter broke it. His eyes
darted around the room as if looking for something. As if waiting for something.

Remus let his hand complete its intended route, and laid it discreetly over his pistol.

“I almost did die,” Peter continued, fumbling with his fingers. “On that case in New York. They
left me alive on purpose as a message to the hunters. The vampires, I mean. Did you know that?”

Remus blinked.

“I did not know that,” he said, quietly. “But I was the one to take over your case while you were in
Hospital.”

“I know,” said Peter, instantly. With a gentle nod. “Mmm. Hospital. I was at Mount Sinai, did you
know?”

There was a gentle silence.

“I didn’t,” said Remus, again, quietly.

Peter nodded, as if he knew that this was the answer.

“And then I was taken back home,” he continued, as if nothing had happened, “when I was well
enough to travel. A month, that took. A bit over, actually. I counted each day. Every single day.” A
pause. “Dumbledore came to visit, a few times, in Germany. He’d pop in every now and then, in
the beginning. A few people did. Friends, family, hunters. Hestia came to visit. It’s not like it’s
exactly hard, right? We’re surrounded by magic; they apparated, portkeyed. But eventually, as I
recovered, people stopped coming. Now I know that it is because they all thought I was dead.” He
smiled. “And they thought you were the murderer.”

Remus thinned his lips.

“They did,” he said, nodding.

“An unfortunate situation,” said Peter. Remus could register the stalling. But his hand stayed
resolutely on his gun. Unmoving. Tether. “And then the bureau burned down, and everything just
—stopped. I had been trying to get in contact with a lot of people—I didn’t know about the
explosion until weeks after it happened.”

“It was national news,” said Remus, monotonously.

“We were very secluded in Germany,” Peter replied, almost too quick.

“I see.”

“Mmm.” Peter took a sip of his tea. “I wanted to stay, but then I couldn’t get back into contact with
Dumbledore, with anyone, and I began to get worried.”

“All the lines went down,” said Remus. “You must have been on that radio signal alone for a long
time.”

“Yes,” Peter murmured, nodding. “Yes. It’s been torture. But how have you been? Where have you
been?”

“Where have I been?” Remus asked. “You know where I’ve been.”
“Mm,” Peter hummed, almost choking on another sip of his tea. His eyes darted around the room
again; west. “New York. Of course. On the case,” an awkward chuckle, “...have you been having
fun?”

Remus blinked at this.

“Fun.”

“Fun,” he said, jovially. All of it was fake. Remus registered, all of a sudden, the proficient bags
under Peter’s eyes. “Isn’t it the best source of enjoyment, hunting? That’s what Dorcas always used
to say.”

“Sometimes Dorcas is wrong,” said Remus, quietly.

“True,” said Peter. “She could never admit it, though.”

For some odd reason, this filled Remus with rage.

“Yeah,” he said, dismissively, finding awful interest in his nails all of a sudden and willing himself
to see through the black spots. “Never.”

“How is she?”

Remus flickered his eyes back to Peter. He was sitting, with a small smile on his face. Looking up
at him like a puppy seeking guidance. Even despite his weariness, he looked quintessentially
innocent. But Remus knew very well how the guilty feign. He’d hunted guilty feining innocence
for over a decade.

“She’s good,” said Remus, hoarsely, feeling the words slice his throat as they came up. “Mm.
Great. I’ve—erm, left her in New York. Holding up the fort.”

“Really?” Peter said, inquisitively. He sipped at his tea, fidgeted in his seat. “And—and why did
you come back to London?”

“Just to pick up some supplies,” said Remus, instantly. He could feel the conversation heating up.
“It’s a brief visit. I’ll be on my way back shortly.”

And then, without giving Peter even a second to breathe:

“Why did you come back to London, if you wanted to stay in Germany?”

“Hestia’s funeral,” said Peter, quickly, as if trying to rattle out his answers with the same
confidence Remus had.

“When was that?”

“March 22nd.”

Remus paused, for a second.

“March 22nd?” he asked. “Wasn’t HI1 bombed on the fifteenth?”

Peter’s eyes widened ever so slightly as he realised his blunder.

“You said you didn’t know for weeks—”

“Did I say March?” he asked, letting out that awful, awkward laugh again. “Oh—sorry, I meant
May.”

Remus raised his eyebrows.

“May 22nd?” he asked, and then he shrugged. “Seems an awfully long time to wait to have a
funeral.”

“Her family had hope,” Peter’s voice gave out, all hoarse, and so he cleared his throat and downed
his teacup until it was empty. “Hope,” he repeated, “that she had made it out. They clung on for as
long as they could.”

Remus nodded, once, looking out the window at the darkening sky, head on autopilot, on
adrenaline.

“Weird to have hope when it was so obviously her who planted the bombs,” said Remus, as blithe
as he could imagine.

Peter’s face did not flicker, though he had not looked very confident before, and he did not look
very confident now.

“Please don’t say that to me,” he said, suddenly choking up—or at least sounding choked up. He
looked away, and Remus, in the absence of his eyes, had to force a massive grin away at the
fakeries. Oddly enough, trying to catch Peter out was the most fun he’d had in a while. Remus was
utterly exhilarated. “She was innocent.”

“Okay,” Remus replied, nonchalantly. “Okay, yeah. Sorry.”

Peter sniffed, and shook his head.

“Thank you. It’s okay.”

“So, you haven’t been in contact with any other hunters?”

His hands, oddly, felt agitated; he had to fight the urge to pull out a dagger and twirl it, or stab it
between his fingers. Peter took a deep breath in.

“No,” he said, but he didn’t sound self-assured. “I was heartbroken to hear about Arthur, though.”

It took Remus a moment to place.

“Oh, God, yeah,” he said, nodding. “I’ve been in contact with Molly. Of course, they’re all
devastated.”

“You’ve been in contact with the Weasley’s?”

Remus nodded.

“Who else?”

He hummed. “Dumbledore, Benjy, the Prewett’s, erm—Dearborn. Minerva.”

“Minerva,” Peter gasped. “How is she?”

It seemed to be the first genuine thing he had asked.

“She’s good,” said Remus, smiling. “Very good. Still as bossy and stoic as ever. But she never
believed I killed you, so, there’s that.”

“Oh, I’m glad,” said Peter, letting out a little giggle. Minerva being hunter-widely loved was
universal. He sighed. “It must be hard for her, having everything collapse.”

“It is, yes,” said Remus, playing up to Peter’s comfortability. “Especially at her age. And with how
close she was to Dumbledore…”

He looked up, trailing off.

“Yeah,” said Peter, frowning in sympathy. “His death must have been hard on her.”

He clicked his tongue, evidently waiting for the conversation to continue on. But Remus went
silent.

He watched as Peter’s demeanour froze again. Almost stiffening up in front of his eyes.

“His death?” asked Remus, slowly.

Peter gulped. Remus watched his eyes flicker around again. He straightened up, and Remus
straightened up right there opposite him.

“Disappearance,” Peter stammered, attempting to brush it off. “I mean—losing him and the
building—when HI1 went down—”

“You said his death.”

“HI2 went with it, no?” he continued. He looked, briefly, at the window. “It went on lockdown and
they all disappeared and—”

“You shouldn’t know that, Peter.” Remus tutted. Patronising. “And you were doing so well.”

Peter blinked at him, brows furrowed in a deep V above his nose.

Remus smiled.

“Gets a bit confusing, playing both sides, doesn’t it?”

“Lupin—”

“It was hard for me, too. Working with the vampires and playing off that I wasn’t to the hunters.
Of course, the only way they got it out of me was through a truth potion… this, I’m afraid to say,
was just purely messy, Pettigrew—”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Peter.

“Honestly,” Remus murmured, shaking his head. “I thought Dorcas taught you to lie better.”

Peter took a shuddering breath in.

“I really don’t know what—”

Three seconds. Remus was up, his chair screeching as the legs dragged across the floor; Peter got
up, too, just as quick but in movement Remus was quicker, his pistol in his hand as Peter fished for
a dagger, but he could never outrun him. Remus was faster. He grabbed him by the wrist with his
free arm, wrenched the dagger out of his fumbling hand and turned to lob it behind him. Absently,
he heard the blade embed itself into the far wall as he twisted Peter’s arm away from where,
evidently, he was reaching for another weapon.

Remus pressed the barrel of the gun underneath his chin.

“Stop bullshitting me, Pettigrew,” he hissed, as Peter squirmed. “I know you’re working for
Riddle. You can drop the fucking act.”

“I’m no—”

“Drop,” Remus snapped, pushing the gun further into his skin. Peter gagged on it. “The fucking
act.”

Another three seconds. Maybe four, maybe fifty. He struggled—he struggled—he fought, he
pleaded. Remus, please. Remus, I—I—I—

But, slowly, Peter’s movements became less frenzied. His breaths came slower. His eyes drooped,
as he looked up to Remus, blinking profusely as if coming out of a trance. And his face relaxed.

A big, wide smile plastered itself onto his lips.

“You got me,” he said. He let out a giggle, let his body droop under Remus’ hold. It was almost
scary. “I’m a liar. I’m a big old liar.”

“Where’s Riddle?” Remus demanded, through his teeth. “I know you’ve called someone.”

“And a traitor,” Peter continued, breathing heavily through his mouth. “Big old traitor. But I think
that’s something we have in common, isn’t it, Remus?”

“Where,” said Remus, “is he.”

“You betrayed us,” Peter whispered. “Didn’t you? Fell in love with one of ‘em, didn’t you?
Betrayed the bureau. Betrayed me. Betrayed Dorcas.”

Remus pressed the gun in deeper. Twisted Peter’s wrist around his back further. Felt his chest
constrict.

“Shut up,” he spat.

Peter laughed once more, though it was incredibly strained.

“You’re a traitor,” he choked, “just like me. And you’re a liar,” he grinned, “just like me. Aren’t
you?”

Remus clenched his teeth, let the implication wash over him. Peter’s eyes flickered to the window
behind him. Remus closed his eyes, briefly, swallowed down the rushing in his throat.

“Dorcas is back in New York, yeah?” choked Peter. “Holding up the fort. Alive and well. That’s
what you said.”

“Shut up.”

“You’re a liar,” Peter hissed, pushing forward. “Because she’s dead. Isn’t she?” He exhaled a
laugh, eyes flickering, here there and everywhere and back to Remus. “I’m not supposed to know
that either, but I do. He killed her. She died because of you. And you left her body in that burning
building. You left her to burn alive, to turn to ash. You’re the liar. You’re the traitor. You betrayed
everyone for Sirius Black,” a slap around the face, Remus can’t breathe, “and now Dorcas is dead.
Isn’t she?”

Remus didn’t reply. His gun-hand was shaking.

“Isn’t she?!” Peter screeched, small but thunderous, and then a lot of things happened in a very
short amount of time.

Remus couldn’t pinpoint exactly where he was hit or the exact moment that Peter’s hands escaped
his grasp or the exact moment that something escaped his hand and made its way into another or
the exact moment the moment the moment—but it all—happened. It must have happened, for he
was in his face, breathing his air one second, and then it was black and everything seemed to hurt
and he couldn’t seem to breathe but he was alone; not alone; he was stumbling, backwards,
coughing at the impact of something somewhere and Peter was gaining on him, pistol in hand.
Where is Lily? Aimed at his head. Lily—Lily.

Gaining on him, unwavering, tall. But even despite all of the brawn Peter’s chin still quivered in
that same, childlike way it used to when Dorcas would mentor him in target practice and he’d get
the knife just off-centre.

Remus grabbed onto the table, staring at the floor. There was a moment of silence.

Slowly, he raised his head.

“You’re not going to shoot me,” he said, hoarsely.

His voice was gritty. He could taste blood in his mouth. As he fell back into his body he regained
his nerve endings; yes, there it was. A punch to the jaw. A punch to the gut. A knife that had been
there for a very long time. Twisted around and around until he was a mangled carcass, and there
was Peter, holding the gun.

But no one would release him from this.

It was a blessing and a curse.

“No,” said Peter, whipping his hair out of his face. For someone who was menacing in the pocket
of air they’d shared, from this angle he looked small, insignificant, and nervous. His hands were
steady in their aim, but there was a gentle tremor to them. That chin quiver. He inhaled and it
shuddered. “No, I am not.”

“You can’t.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Because I’m his,” said Remus, the Horcrux, a wicked smile forming on his face. It was all so
fucked up. “I’m his,” he was laughing, “so none of you,” he was crying, “none of you can kill me!”

Peter jutted out his chin. The gun stayed pointed. Remus was cackling.

“But I wouldn’t care if you did,” he continued, calming all of a sudden. The words were coming
out of his mouth without any forethought. So was the blood. “I’d help you do it. I deserve it. I
deserve it all.”

Peter took a breath in.

He took a step forward.

“Do it, Peter,” said Remus, low and newly controlled. “I may be one of his, but you’re not. Do the
right thing.”

Peter laughed. It was harrowing.

“You’re asking me to—” he cut off. “To what? Pull a triple cross?”

The corners of Remus’ lips quirked up.

“Severus Snape did it.”

“Severus Snape is a coward,” Peter hissed.

His voice shook, as did his hands. Remus took another step forward.

“He is a coward,” continued Peter, “and I am not him. I don’t betray the ones that care about me.”

Remus raised his eyebrows. “Riddle doesn’t care about you, Peter—”

“He cares more than you do!” Peter screamed—full, unrelentless shouting, now, trigger finger
pressed to the latch, hands stable as his voice spiralled away. “He cares more than you, or Dorcas!
You didn’t come to visit me! You didn’t even know what hospital I was in!”

Remus swallowed, thickly, but ultimately said nothing. Peter kept going.

“Two people,” he cried, “in over a month. Two. Hestia, and Dorcas. Dorcas came for a week. And
then she disappeared and I was alone. And then nothing.” He adjusted his stance, adjusted his
hands. “You took her away from me! You did that!”

The words reverberated around the dark room like bullets ricocheting.

“You took the case with ease and you came to New York and you went behind everybody’s backs
to shack it up with Sirius Black,” said Peter, voice thick with emotion, “and the worst part—the
worst part is you did it under the pretence of caring. Caring about the people that they hurt. But
they hurt me!” A tear rolled down his cheek. “They hurt me, Remus!

Remus, taking all of this in, licked his lips. He had stopped moving. He was frozen.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“You’re sorry?” Peter choked, eyebrows furrowing. He paused. “You’re—you’re telling me you’re
sorry? Sorry means nothing to me, Remus. I don’t care that you’re sorry.” He adjusted his grip on
the gun again. “I got my revenge, didn’t I? I found the people who care—the real people who care.
Dumbledore didn’t come to visit me in Germany. I made that up. It was Riddle. He came to me
when I needed him most. And I—I’m useful to him.” He smiled, maniacally. “You hear that? I’m
useful to him. I’m not just a stepping stone to fucking a vampire and martyring yourself like some
sick, self-absorbed, annoying whiny bastard.”

He was breathing heavily. His face was red. Remus, standing down the face of a gun, felt both
scared and peaceful and remorseful and completely and utterly unregretful. Completely and utterly.

Peter smiled once more, but this one was gentle.

“And I did the most useful thing of them all,” he breathed. “I got you here. I got you here, and I got
you to feel a fraction of the hurt I did. I got you suicidal. You all always underestimated me, but
look here. I listen. I knew exactly how unstable you were. I knew exactly what buttons to push to
throw you off the deep end; I fed it to him like wine. And here—here you are.” He laughed. “Here
you are. And I don’t regret it. I don’t regret what I did. She’s dead and I don’t regret a single
second of it.”

Everything sort of stopped.

“Because you’re here,” whispered Peter. “And I am the one he cares about.”

Everything sort of stopped.

Everything… stopped. As Remus realised. As it hit him. Like the gunshot wound he craved as
tenderly as a mother’s touch. It all stopped.

“You killed her,” Remus whispered. Peter grinned as if it was a fucking trophy.

“I killed her,” he confirmed, a mad glint to his eye. “We gave him everything, Hestia and I. She
found out from Dumbledore that you were fucking Black. Fed it to the Dark Lord. She was given
the most noble sacrifice of them all in return; to destroy HI1. Plant the bombs and destroy the place
and all of the people that had wronged us so he could relocate the cup. She died honourably, and
I—” he swallowed, “I gave him the information he needed. The boy and the girl, the hunters, oh.
They’re inseparable, my Lord. They’ll fight and die for each other, over, and over. But save him, I
said. Don’t let him die. He’s the unstable one. She’s the threat. He’ll fall off the deep end without
her, I said, and look,” a cackle, “look at you now! You don’t know what's up from down! And I—I
win!”

Remus couldn’t seem to move.

“I win,” he repeated.

“I’m going to kill you,” said Remus.

Peter’s eyes flickered to the window.

And then he looked back. And he smiled.

“No, you’re not,” he said, slowly. “In a few seconds, the only person you’re going to want to be
killing is yourself.”

Before Remus could even process his words, Peter cocked his gun once more, aimed it briefly at
Remus and then threw his aim to the side, and shot a bullet directly through the window, shattering
it instantly.

The room immediately began to fill with black smoke.

And all of the happiness seeped out of him like a draining bathtub.

“Dementors,” Remus gasped, turning, as they began to circle him from the feet, the ankle, the calf.
“But they—”

“Are in America?” Peter called, over the whistling of the wind. “Didn’t you hear? They’ve been
travelling across the Atlantic for days, now, Remus.” He pouted, mockingly. “It was national
news.”
“Evans,” Remus gasped, fumbling with his comms device. He pressed the button. Once, twice,
three times. She should be here—she should— “Lily. Lily.”

“Lily?” called Peter. “Your Phoenix has a name, then? Is this the same Phoenix that you left
outside, on the street, defenceless?”

Remus blinked.

The smoke was catching up to him, and he couldn’t seem to catch his breath.

“You got sloppy, Lupin,” Peter spat. The darkness was rushing past him, blowing his hair in his
face. Like a reckoning. “You came here with no plan, no forethought. Threw your friend into the
pits. Man, you used to be a good hunter. What the hell happened to you?”

Remus looked up at him, choking on his own breath.

“Oh wait!” Peter laughed. “I did.”

“Lily,” Remus gasped, one last time. And then, desperately, eternally his last stop: “Sirius.”

Peter probably had a snide remark to that, but Remus didn’t hear it.

For they got him.

10:19P.M.

Something burns.

Something

Something

It’s burning, and it feels like a million knives stabbing into one wound, at his throat, at his chest,
his legs and his arms and his face, he can’t feel them. But he can feel pain.

Something

Something

He can’t see

He can’t

see
He understands the sun.

He understands why they mourn it.

He wants it to stop.

stop

stop

He’ll never feel happy again.

He wants it to end.

He wants to die.

But they won’t let him.

But they won’t let him.

But they won’t let him

No one will let him.

Someone is screaming. Remus is acutely aware that it’s him, and that he’s choking on darkness;
the part of him excluded from the press conference that is the enlightenment of his nerve system,
the dousing in gasoline and setting alight of his organs and the severing of his sound mind to his
body, he’s acutely aware, somewhere where he floats in the sky and somewhere where he sits,
sadly beside his writhing body, that it’s him, and that it’s always been him, and that it will always
be him; that he’s always been the one screaming, and that nobody can hear him, and that nobody
has ever wanted to hear him, and maybe that is okay. Maybe that is peace.

It’s cold in the room,

the room where life begins again,

she cries, “welcome back”.

it’s quiet…

??:??P.M.
Remus wakes up, and he’s on the floor, and he’s choking.

And there’s nothing around him.

He’s in the hall at Whittaker. The ballroom that she died in. Except it’s entirely empty. There is no
guard. The throne is there but there is no king to sit on it. He’s smack bang in the middle of this
empty hall, scrambling to sit up, hand to his throat as he chokes down the bile and the blood and
manages to come to terms with the spotting in his vision and the racing of his heart, and he looks
upwards and notices there is nothing outside the windows. It’s all white.

Looks down and notices there is a bloodstain on the floor.

It’s been there for a while.

This isn’t real, he repeats in his head. This isn’t real, this can’t be real. Because Whittaker burned
down. None of this exists anymore.

This isn’t real.

“You’re right,” calls a voice. It echoes through the hall, and Remus turns, almost faceplanting on
the floor before scrambling up to his feet. Staggering. “This isn’t real.”

He turns, and there is Tom.

Walking towards him in a fine pressed suit with his hands behind his back. A swoop of dark hair
covers his forehead and his lip is quirked upwards, like someone has shoved a sewing needle
through it and tugged.

He claps, pleased about something.

“Ah,” he grins. “That wretch of a hunter boy succeeded, then. I almost thought he wouldn’t.”

Remus instinctively reaches for his weapons. But he has none.

“Mmm. Won’t find any of those here,” Tom says, shrugging.

Remus looks up. Slowly.

“You’re not supposed to be able to get into my head anymore,” he whispers.

He knows how fragile and weak he sounds. He knows that he should put on a front. But he can’t.
He can’t seem to do it. He’s a crumbling fragment of a little boy and he’s floating somewhere,
half-alive, and he wants to go home. He wants to go home to his Mum. He wants to go home to
Sirius.

“Technically, we’re not in your head,” says Tom. “We’re in the limbo between our souls. It all
seems to come back,” he gestures, does a little spin, “here. This, hunter, is where we meet in the
middle.”

Remus swallows, thickly.

“How am I here,” he says, through his teeth.

“Your heart has stopped again, silly,” Tom says, with a laugh. He feels too personable. He feels too
real to be something caught in between souls, between lives. And yet, Remus’ stomach drops. “But
don’t worry. It’ll start up again. I haven’t brought you here to kill you. Quite the opposite,
actually.”

He takes a step forward. Remus takes a step back.

“What have you brought me here to do?” asks Remus, knowing he has to provoke him to get an
answer. Feeling so, so small.

Tom smiles.

“I’ve brought you here to convince you to live,” he says, almost jovially.

He clears his throat, walks again with his hands behind his back.

“My previous offer has, evidently, not done anything to sway your mind. But perhaps this one will.
You see, hunter,” Remus notes the lack of the use of his name, watches him as he paces, “I’ve been
doing a lot of… you might say, soul-searching.” His lips quirk up at the pun. “The part of me that
is you, and you that is me, of course existed in Albus until merely a month or so ago. It existed in
him for the better part of ten years, and I… had no idea.”

He pauses, perhaps for effect. Remus stays stoic.

“I have Nagini, of course,” he says, and then he stops and his eyes flicker up to look at Remus,
bright and searching; “yes… I’m not going to continue with pretences. I know you know of her. I
know you saw her, back when I didn’t understand this connection; didn’t understand what you
could see, or know, or feel. How far I could push. Regardless, I have Nagini, but she does not work
with me in the same way. She is animal. I am…” another sick smile, “human. Humanoid, at least.”

“You’re a monster,” mutters Remus.

“Oh, I quite think that the monster is you,” he replies, smiling again. It’s the most Remus has ever
seen him smile. The most amiable Remus has ever seen him be. It terrifies him. “And I know that
you have embarked on your own level of soul-searching. I can’t find you like I could that first time.
It’s clever magic. I applaud the witch that pulled that off. But just because I can’t find you doesn’t
mean that I’m not with you.”

He stops. Takes a step towards Remus.

“Just because I don’t know you doesn’t mean that I don’t know you,” he whispers.

And around him, like wax trickling down the side of a candle, the scene melts.

Remus turns; as he spins, he watches the walls peel and fade into darkness. As he spins, he watches
them build back up again.

He’s in his childhood home. The same living room that he stood in to watch his father talk to his
two year old self, with blood on his hands, blood on his face. But there is no blood here. It looks a
little bit more reserved than it did last time. There are boxes in the corner of the room. Out of the
kitchen door, running, comes his mother.

She’s laughing. She walks backwards, hunched over with her hands spread out. Backs into the
space between the sofa and the fireplace, on the ridiculous red rug. After her comes a stumbling
little boy. Remus and Tom watch from the corner.
Oh, good boy! Hope laughs, making grabby hands as she kneels on the edge of the carpet. Her
voice sounds far away but simultaneously so close; it echoes around the pair of them as she speaks.

The baby has collapsed, sitting up and laughing at her. He has four teeth and a mop of thin baby
hair. He’s cackling at absolutely nothing.

Come on, she prompts, drumming on the carpet. The baby laughs again, but makes no attempt to
move. Come on, you lazy bum, I know you can do it!

Out of the door swoops his father.

Lazy bum, he says, attacking the baby from behind and making him burst into another bout of
choked giggles as he tickles his little belly. Lazy bum, lazy bum, lazy bum.

He stands him up, holds him under the armpits.

Oh Lyall, he won’t learn how to stand up himself if you keep doing it for him!

He’ll learn, his father says, laughing, and he lets the baby go, and the baby walks right across the
carpet and falls into his mothers arms. He’ll learn.

Remus turns to Tom, and everything melts.

He has to step around him to watch the next scene. It is himself at seventeen. He’s sitting cross-
legged on a sofa beside Mary, opposite Dorcas, and there are two pizza boxes on the table in
between them. It is the first day they met.

I’m Dorcas, says Dorcas, jovially, half a slice of margherita dangling from her mouth. I’m an only
child from Bristol and I’m here because I decapitated a shapeshifter in a Subway.

I’m Mary, says Mary, with a smile. I’m a witch and I’m from Trinidad. When I was fourteen my
parents were killed by vampires. I’m here because I accidentally burned them alive.

I’m Remus, says Remus. He blinks, once or twice. Erm. I’m not sure why I’m here. But if we’re
sharing skills, I can make a really good cheese toastie.

Mary and Dorcas look at each other.

Slowly, they smile.

Remus feels a hand on his shoulder, and the scene changes. And it changes, and it changes, and it
changes.

Him and Hope when he came home for the first time after going to train, at eighteen. Sitting in the
living room with tea and talking for hours upon end. His first love.

Him and Dorcas lying in her bed, at nineteen, when a poltergeist infested his room. Laughing about
something stupid and kicking each other under the covers. His second.

Him and Mary and Dorcas in Portugal, at twenty, drunk and skiving and cackling and watching the
world’s biggest omelette be made while McGonagall scours the city for them.

Him and Moody at twenty-one. He got the highest honour on an examination and Moody patted
him on the back and told the rest of the class that they could learn a thing or two from this lad.
He’s brainless except out on the field, he’d said. Out on the field… he’s a bloody marvel.
Him and Fabian at twenty-three, the first time they slept together. They had a weekend in
Amsterdam and Fab got him high for the first time and Remus laughed so hard at something he
said on a bench beside the canal that he almost threw up.

Him and Lily at twenty-five, the first time they met, staying in a motel while he tried to fight the
monsters haunting her house and finding that they had more in common than either of them
expected and might have more in common forever.

Him and Dorcas.

Lily, Mary, Moody. James handing him a sneaky bottle of wine from under a cupboard and
Marlene holding his hand with a sleeping Lily beside her and Dorcas lying on his bed on the eve of
his birthday telling him that he’ll have her til they’re frail and old.

Benjy, Percy, Gideon. Regulus playing Go Fish with him in a car and Astoria giving him her prized
possession and Draco sitting in silence beside him in his tree and Jul handing him a fag to share
and Pandora hugging him and promising him she’ll do everything she can, everything she can,
everything she can.

A group of people around a kitchen table. Five basilisk blades spread out.

James’s glasses fogging up, getting too close to Dorcas.

A moment of silence, and then laughter. Laughter, laughter, long live infinity. Someone leaning on
his shoulder. Someone cosying in. Someone’s lips on his palm, someone’s hand on his chest,
someone’s breath in his lungs.

Someone’s heart in his chest.

Someone’s heart in his chest.

Remus closes his eyes, and when he opens them, all that he can see is Sirius.

“Cat got your tongue, pretty boy?”

“No one bites you here.”

“You did not sleep with David Bowie.”

“Make it yours.” Make me yours.

“It’s different now. Everything’s different.”

“Hate me forever, as long as we have this.”

“My lungs only carry you.”

“Because I’m in love with you, you fucking prick!”

“I’m still just as crazy about you. So, so much that I don’t know what to do except push you away
and then desperately, chronically want you back when you leave.”

“We can talk about that later. Let me love you right now.”

“Go to your fucking meetings, Sirius.”

“Kiss me. Just kiss me.”

“How in God’s name could you not be on the receiving end of my love when it was built for you
and you alone?”

“Like a lung. You’ve ruined me.”

“I can’t lose you too. Oh God, not you.”

Not you, not you, not you, not you.

Not you not you not you not you.

Sirius dissolves, but the imprint of him stays. And Remus can’t fucking breathe. He’s projected
through him, everything that makes them them, he’s choking on it, he’s panicking, it’s all too
much. Flashes of light and darkness—he sees a tree in Hampshire, a dark library. A hospital
hallway, a living room fire. He feels a hand up his shirt and a hand on his cheek and the rumble of
laughter and the breeze of a full moon and the love under a midnight sun. He feels everything and
nothing, hate and love, and then it stops and the words “I love you more than I hate him” echo
around them, echo around him, echo echo echo.

Remus is dizzy.

He’s spinning and he’s spinning. It’s Sirius and it’s Sirius.

And then all of the memories fall flat… to one.

The picture forms and he’s standing, alone now. Tom is nowhere to be seen. He’s in the doorframe
of Mary’s kitchen, soapy water in the sink and clean dishes on the drying rack, and he and Sirius
are dancing to Lovesong by The Cure.

Remus watches them. He watches the way Sirius holds him, the way he sings along, stupid and
extravagant. Grabbing Remus by the shoulders and shaking him, all silly and loose. He laughs. He
closes his eyes, and he laughs, and he wraps his arms around Sirius’s neck and holds him.

They’re in a box in the sky, and they’re at the core of the earth. These two figures. They feel so
close and yet so fucking far away. Remus takes another silent step in the room, hand stabilising
himself on the door frame, and he watches the two figures dance with a smile on his face against
tears in his eyes and he feels happy. For the first time in a long time, he feels truly, unequivocally
happy.

And he realises that he wants to live.

He’s hit with it so aggressively that it takes his breath away. And the scene immediately begins to
shatter.

“Get out,” Remus breathes, unable to take it. Sirius spins him and the radio crackles a little bit and
Remus steps on his toe, lets out a breath of laughter that is silenced as Sirius kisses him, nuzzles
their foreheads together. It’s a bit distorted. It’s static, like the signal is breaking. An aerial in a
thunderstorm. Their voices begin to dissipate, their laughter becomes grating. “Get out. Get out, get
out, get out.”

“Get out?”

It’s booming. The words echo all around him. Tom isn’t beside him. Tom is everywhere.
“Get out,” Remus chokes, and then he yells, screams, closing his eyes and pressing his palms
against his ears, “Get OUT!”, and the radio crackles into disarray. Everything is cold. He has no
senses. The world feels like it’s exploding.

And in the collision… he sees something. It’s just a flash. A stuttering flipbook. It’s there just as
quickly as it’s not.

Fire. Fire is all he sees– except—except there’s—

It comes in a flash. A woman. Silver. Blue gemstone.

And then it’s gone, it’s passed, and… everything is quiet. The dust falls like sand on the beach.
After a moment Remus drops his hands, with a quivering chest, and opens his eyes.

He’s back in the hall. Except it’s night. And Tom Riddle stands six feet in front of him, like a
ghost, head cocked.

“You want to live,” he whispers.

Remus shakes his head. His bottom lip is trembling. He can’t feel his fingers or his pulse; he might
be dead already.

“You want to live so desperately it hurts,” Riddle continues, taking a step forward.

Remus takes a step back. He shakes his head again.

“No,” Remus whimpers.

He takes another step forward.

“You’re scared to die.”

“No.”

Another step.

Remus backs into a wall that wasn’t there three seconds ago, and Tom is right in front of him.

He has nowhere to go.

“You’re scared of a lot of things,” he says, and all smiles are dropped. All pretences shattered.
Remus is lain bare on the ballroom floor, standing on the bloodstains of his best friend, and he’s
crying and he’s not scared of anything and he’s never been more fucking terrified. In the darkness,
all he can see is Riddle.

He turns his face and squeezes his eyes shut, trying to get away. But Riddle stays there. Remus can
feel his breath on his face.

“You’re scared of yourself,” mutters Riddle, “of who you have become. Of who you’ve always
been, and of who you want to be. You’re scared of the part of yourself that is so willing to die, even
more scared of the part that doesn’t want to die at all. You’re scared of the part of you that doesn’t
care anymore. The part that broke when I killed her.”

Remus chokes on a sob.

“When I ripped her heart out.”

“Stop it,” Remus gasps. “Stop it, please, stop—”

“I killed her because you were too slow to kill yourself,” Riddle hisses. “But you died that day too,
didn’t you? And now you are lost,” he curls a hand around Remus’ chin, “lost in the darkness. And
you’re scared of the fact that you don’t mind it. Scared of the fact that my offer…” he takes a long
pause, as Remus shudders, pressing his wet cheek to the brick wall, “is tempting you.”

Remus shakes his head. His bottom lip is trembling.

“But most of all, you’re scared of your selfishness,” whispers Riddle. “You’re scared of who you’ll
leave in the lurch if you die and scared of who you’ll leave in the lurch if you don’t. But I know
you. I am you. I can spare all of those people. Everyone you have just seen can live.”

He says it with a smile on his face, as if he’s offering an act of grace. To him, it is.

Oddly enough, to Remus it is, too.

He looks at him.

“If you join me,” whispers Riddle. “You can live, too. And I will leave all of your friends alone.”

“Fuck you,” Remus spits back, face wet. Trembling all over. Riddle laughs.

“I am not lying,” he says, and somehow, somehow Remus knows that it is true. I am you. “What
have I to lose? You are my most valuable asset. You are my prize. Beautiful boy. You have the
power, I will admit it. You could ruin me at any moment. So what have I to lose but to offer you
anything less than the truth? What am I doing but telling you,” he tilts his chin up, “what you
already know, so deeply. So strongly.”

Remus can’t breathe.

“Live,” whispers Riddle. “And think about my offer. Think about what we have learned here
tonight. And know that I can’t find you, but you can always find me.” He looks up, all around
them. At the hall. The bloodstains and the brawn. “Here. In the ballroom.”

Remus can’t breathe.

“I will be seeing you,” says Riddle, “very soon.”

Remus can’t breathe.

He closes his eyes, and the hand on his chin disappears. But he can still feel the touch. Like it’s
singed into his skin.

10:20P.M.

It all came back to him in a head rush, and Remus woke up choking.
It took him a moment of flailing, jerking and choking on the thick air before he could see, see the
light against his eyelids that he was squinting at and the darkness on the floor, cowering away from
him. A moment before he could feel and register someone leaning over him, saying something to
him. (Everybody talks. Remus never hears.)

His ears popped.

“—fuck,” Sirius was gasping, hair falling down in a curtain around his face as he looked down at
Remus, “fuck, fuck, fuck—”

“Sirius,” Remus gasped.

“Hi,” choked Sirius, grabbing at every part of him desperately. He was hallowed by a fight, fire in
a halo around his head; in all of the chaos, he actually smiled. “Hi. Oh—my God. Oh, your—” it
was here that Remus registered simultaneously that there were tears in his eyes, tracking down his
face, and that he was palming, clawing at Remus’ chest, feeling for his heartbeat. “Your—heart—
stopped. Oh—Remus, Remus, your heart—”

“Sirius,” gasped Remus, again, and he reached up and wrapped his arms around him.

Everything around them sort of went in slow motion. Remus could feel fire; could hear it, too.
There were black holes swirling in the distance, and there were people—vampires, witches who
had evidently travelled through the dementors, in that same spell—Remus could feel Tom, feel
him on his chin and on his hands and in his bones. But none of that mattered. Remus was gasping,
building up one thing and then another. Alright, Remus, you’re awake. Now open your eyes. Now
take a breath. Now sit up. What can you see, what can you hear? What can you feel?

(everything)

“Sirius,” Remus wept, into his ear. Clinging to him desperately with trembling hands. “I don’t want
to die. Sirius, I don’t want to die. Sirius. Sirius.”

Sirius exhaled massively, and held him closer.

“I know,” he whispered. One hand held him by the back of the neck, one fell to his sternum, over
his heart. Remus held onto him and sobbed, quietly, like a child.

“I don’t want to die,” he whimpered, shaking his head, crying onto his shoulder. They could barely
hear anything over the roar of flames. But Sirius nodded.

“I know, sweetheart, I know.”

“I’m scared,” he let out a shuddering breath, “Sirius, I’m so scared, I’m so scared.”

“I know,” he said, pulling back to look at him, raising their linked hands. “I’ve got you. Hey, here,
I have you now. Alright? Listen. You’re not going to die. Pandora has a way.”

“I don’t—” he choked on an inhale, shaking his head. “I don’t—”

“You’re not going to die,” he whispered, “Pandora has figured it out.”

“Pando–” Remus started, blinking in confusion.

“Come on. Later. We need to go.”

He let Remus go with a kiss to the forehead, and then got up. Reaching his hand out to help pull
him from the floor, Remus took a look around and managed to garner exactly what was going on.

As always, it was Lily.

Standing just behind them, one foot in front of the other and her back arched, she was exhuming
fire. But it was different. It was almost protective. It formed a thick barrier on the high ceiling, just
a few feet or so from the very top, and Remus could see a plethora of dark spirits flailing around
each other like rabid fish. Ash falling from the sky, with one hand and most of her strength she was
upholding this barrier and with the other she had one in a circle around them, where there were at
least ten vampires and Peter, some cowering, some standing tall and fighting to break through.

And then there was Pandora, back to back with her. Still weakened, yes, but standing tall beside
Lily, white dress billowing in a powerful stance Remus had not seen her take for weeks. Covering
her for the vampires that did break through, she was fiercely whipping her wrists and sending pale
golden stunning spells and aggressive bombs of light flying around the place, hitting and keeping
back the vampires on the ground while Lily focused on keeping them safe from the monsters in the
air. She was grunting, yelling with every spell fired. She was like a cannonball. Fire herself, blonde
to red.

Remus gathered all this in a second and then almost collapsed.

“Hey,” Sirius whispered, catching him. “Hey. It’s okay, it’s okay.”

“Lily—”

“Unimportant,” he gasped, staggering towards the door. “We need to go.”

“Sirius!” yelled Lily.

Remus got dizzy. He almost fell again. Everything was short and snappy. Like they were all be
controlled. Hand on joysticks. This spell and that spell. Foot forward. Other foot forward. He
couldn’t focus on one, two, three things at a time; all he had to ground himself to was Sirius’ hand
on his back and that voice—

“It’s okay, I’ve got you, come on. Come on. Come on.”

The fire dissipated as they barged through the door into the entrance hall, slamming it on the
adjacent wall; Sirius first, one arm around Remus, holding him up, and then Lily, and then, running
backwards and sending one last blue jet of light, Pandora. With a grunt and a formidable wave of
her arm the latter shut the door with a bang behind her but it opened almost directly afterwards.

Remus stumbled and Sirius almost went with him, catching him at the last minute, and, standing in
the lobby of the building they turned to face the door, the two of them behind clinging to each
other, Pandora slouched with a hand over her stomach in front of them and Lily just a little bit in
front of her, standing tall. Hair wavering even though there was no breeze.

Peter stood in front. A plethora of vampires standing behind him.

Lily’s hands instantly lit up.

“Oh,” she whispered, looking down at them and then back up. She cocked her head, and her next
words were said through a grin. “She doesn’t like you.”

She lit up again, and Peter dodged. Catching one of the vampires he lit up almost immediately, and
caught onto a wooden end table, which caught too and began to burn as the vampire screeched until
he was more ash than person and had nothing left to scream with.

Remus, disoriented and confused, still hurting somewhere—everywhere—with dry tears on his
face and a racing heart to make up for the time he lost (only one minute. All of that happened in the
span of a minute.) ended up sitting back, deposited by Sirius who turned and hissed absolutely
ferally and proceeded to tackle two of them at once. Lily, bending fire as if she hadn’t been out of
practice for two months, held up her own at the other side of the room. They went from nine to
eight to seven. But Lily had to hold up another barrier on the ceiling to stop the dementors, and she
couldn’t uphold both. It was too much.

Amongst all of the chaos, nobody saw Pandora fall.

Remus did. He watched as she fell, sort of staggering, one hand on the floor to steady herself and
the other clutched at her stomach. He watched as she removed her hand, and the crisp white of her
dress was stained pearl red with blood. He watched as her hand shook; as she looked at it, as
though she didn’t even recognise it.

There was a moment, in which the world sort of stop, and she glanced at him. Briefly. And she
looked—oh. Remus didn’t even recognise her. Pale lips, and bags under her eyes; she looked like
she was falling apart.

Remus tried to make his way to her, but she had other plans. The spell must thave been seamless,
or innate, or maybe Remus was out of it again. But the red on her white dress was suddenly white
again. Her hair softened back into sunny ripples, her lips brightened in colour. Lucy Westenra,
blood transfusion. Magic hovel. A breath, and she became the Pandora he knew again. For a
second he almost thought none of it had even happened.

She glanced at him again, standing up. Her brows twitched with an emotion he could not taste.

And then she was gone.

Running to rejoin the fight, Remus watched her go. His brain could not keep up. He was so
confused.

He was so confused, his head was foggy. He felt like he’d lived five years in five minutes, but he
didn’t felt like he’d lived one in one. His hands were twitching, he could feel smoke down his
throat as the dementors strived to get back to him, back to their target. The newfound happiness
was so sweet to drain. Hope is the most dangerous drug, he knew, he knew. He knew and he knew
and he knew.

He staggered back, watching Pandora help Sirius out with the tag-team they’d formed on him, and
thus didn’t even register the opponent until he was entirely too close.

A vampire was making his way towards Remus.

Movements slow and clunky, he fumbled at his side for a weapon—for anything. He found a knife
and threw it but only got him in the shoulder, only stopped him for about a second. Scrambling
back, he reached for something—anything—to stand up with. But there was nothing. He was in a
corner, and the rest of them were occupied, and he was going to be taken.

He would not die. They weren’t allowed to kill him. But he’d be taken. Taken to his master. He
understood, as the vampire gained on him, exactly what his intentions were.

Before he got the chance to process this and how, exactly, he felt about it, the door frame lit up.
It glowed golden out of the corner of his eye and, once again, nobody noticed it except Remus.

Lily was burning, and Sirius was fighting four at once and Pandora was sending spells flying back
and forth and Peter was shooting bullets that rattled inside Remus’ chest like a key in a safe.

And the door frame grew lighter, and lighter, until it finally opened.

A figure flew into the room so fast Remus could not determine who it was.

She darted her way around the room so gracefully, you’d think she would have done it forever.
Rabidly biting the neck of a vampire that Sirius was fighting, she ripped his heart out, leaving him
free to fight the three remaining as only he could; across from him, she grabbed the vampire
Pandora was going up against by the head and flung him to the ground, leaving him open for her to
hurl a spell that would blow his brains out.

To the other side of the room, she sunk her teeth into the vampire Lily was fending off, only just
avoiding the flames by flinging his carcass across to the other side of the room and relieving Lily
with both hands to be able to block off the flailing dementors. Across to Remus’ left, she grabbed
Peter by the throat, flung him across the floor until he banged his head on the far wall and fell
unconscious; across to Remus, she grabbed onto the vampire gaining on him, and sunk her teeth
into his neck.

Blood spurted from his throat, but he had basically no time to feel it, because she almost
immediately, with one hand, snapped his neck.

And then plunged her hand into his back and ripped his heart out.

The vampire fell to his knees, and then to the floor in front of her like a curtain dropping. And
Dorcas dropped the human heart, wiped the blood dripping out of her mouth and sped to Remus’
side.

He stared at her.

He stared at her.

He stared at her.

He stared at her.

He—

“Hi,” she whispered, voice thick and full of love. Blood spilling out of her mouth like spit.

There was commotion all around them. The flashing of spells and the flickering of light. Lily
screaming in strenuity. But Remus couldn’t look away. He couldn’t stop… looking at her.

She gazed over him, hands hovering. Stutter. Stutter, stutter, a stutter of a tell-tale heart.
Everything was happening and nothing was happening. Her voice was so soft and her face was so
different. Licking at her lips, she simply smeared more blood all over her mouth and her chin; her
fangs were still out. They hadn’t retracted. Those weren’t hers. That’s not her. That’s her. That’s
—stutter. Stutter, stutter, stutter.

Is this a light? Is this a light which I see before me, or is it a dagger?

She looked him over once, and then placed her shaking hands on his knees, his chest, his arm.
Lurched forward and linked her hand with his, pressing gently into it. Squeezing, and looking at
him, imploring.

Handle toward my hand. Handle toward his.

He was entirely unresponsive.

“Remus,” she said, as quickly as she could, laughing a little bit against the tears in her eyes. And
it’s suddenly the east. And she’s suddenly the sun. “I know—I know it’s been a while. But it’s me.
I promise. This is real. Remus, Remus. This is real. I need you to know that this is real.”

“I’m hallucinating,” said Remus, monotonously.

“You’re not,” she said. She squeezed his hand harder. “I’ll explain everything once we get out of
here—look, we just have to—”

“This isn’t—” Remus started, choking up. “Oh God. This is him again, isn’t it?”

Her face twitched. “Him? Who? Remus—”

“No,” he gasped, shuddering, taking his hand back. He scrambled back, and she followed; taking
deep, gulping breaths, he squeezed his eyes shut to make her go away and pressed his palms to his
ears like a child. “No. You—no. Get out.”

“Remus–”

“Get out, get out, get out,” he repeated, bottom lip trembling. His breath was quickening; Haven’t
you done enough? he wanted to scream. Haven’t I given enough? Get OUT, get OUT—

He felt the rush of momentum as someone deposited themselves by his other side, and knew
immediately from the touch that it was Sirius.

“I thought I told you to wait outside,” he growled, and Remus paused.

“I’m not going to wait outside when I can hear you getting your fucking arse kicked—”

“I was not getting my arse kicked. I was doing fine.”

“Absolute bollocks, I literally—”

“We agreed that it would be best if Riddle didn’t see you—”

“—saw that guy about to rugby tackle you as if you’re not a goddamn Pureblood—”

“—because he doesn’t know that you’re alive and we can use that to our advantage—”

“Right, well, where the fuck is he? I don’t see him, Sirius!”

Remus dropped his hands, and opened his eyes. Slowly, against their bickering, he raised his head.

This felt… Oh.

“He could show up at any moment!” Sirius yelled. “He will show up, it’s Remus he’s after, I
fucking told you that—”

“Oh, my God, you’re infuriating.”

“Maybe if you’d just waited outsi—”

“You know all of this time you’re spending bickering with me you could be killing people so we
can fucking leave—”

“Though I suppose you’ve always done whatever the fuck you wanted, don’t know why I thought
being my sire would make it any different.”

“Oh, you’re—one hour. One hour it took you to pull the sire card—”

“You know what, Dorcas—”

“You can see her too?” asked Remus, looking at Sirius.

Feeling something dreadful crop up in his chest. Something. The most dangerous drug.

Kill the envious moon. Sick and pale with grief. Handle toward my hand. Handle toward…

Sirius paused, lips parted.

“Yes,” he said, gently, nodding. “Yes, sweetheart. I can see her.”

Remus gawked for a moment. His mouth was dry. So dry. Behind them, explosions of light and fire
hit bannisters, portraits, bullets ricocheting off the edge of doorframes. Remus didn’t care about
any of it.

He licked his lips, and found the courage to turn back to her.

“You’re real,” he whispered.

Sirius glanced between the both of them, and then, with a gentle nod, disappeared.

“Yes,” she said, slowly. “I’m real, Remus.”

She raised a hand.

Remus looked at it, as if it was something foreign, something alien to him. Her hand. Dorcas’
hand. Attached to Dorcas’ arm, leading to Dorcas’ body. Her hair. Her nose, her lips. Her eyes. The
hair that came from her head. She had her braids in again. She had those beads in again.

Mahogany brown. Beige. Mellow gold.

Dorcas.

Dorcas, Dorcas, Dorcas, Dorcas, DorcasDorcasDorcasDorcasDorcasDorcasDorcasDorcas—

No. No she—it can’t—touch, Remus. Feeling. Real. Ghost? This is a case. Figure it the fuck out.
(This isn’t a case. This is Dorcas.) He found himself wanting to go for her hand; place his palm
against hers, make sure it didn’t slide right through—at fault of either her or him—but, after
catching his eye on those beads, the way they flickered in colour against the light, his hand moved
of its own accord. He caught one of her braids in his hand. Corporeal. (This isn’t a case. This is
Dorcas.) Took the beads in between his thumb and forefinger. Got another. Felt the vibrations
when they clanged together. Felt them twist as he ran his thumb over them. (This is Dorcas.)

They stared, completely still, not breathing. Bloody bruised mess, heart stopping, hearts starting.
His eyes flickered back to her, and the rest of the room didn’t exist. It all sort of just… stopped.
Nothing existed because she existed. This was real because she was real. This—

“I’m real,” she whispered, nodding. She smiled. “I’m here.”

Remus, in an upheaval of a sob, a harrowing, gut-wrenching sound he hadn’t made since she’d
died, lurched forward and wrapped his arms around her so tight they might become one organism.

With the comfortability of his initiated affection she immediately reciprocated, wrapping her own
arms around the low of his back, squeezing him with everything she had, laughter thick with tears
in his ear. He found himself sobbing, unwillingly, clinging to her, unable to believe she’s real and
yet holding her, supple and sharp-boned and real, different—cold—but the same Dorcas. The same
one. She was here, in his arms. Her hair between his fingers. Her skin under his palm.

Real real real real this is real this is real this is real—

Remus gasped into her shoulder, digging his face in, clapping his hands all over her body, feeling
her all over—as if she were a jenga tower with pieces missing that he had to slot back in to
convince himself that she was one real whole person and not some fake entity put together with
clay. He cried freely, choking on sobs as he inhaled and smelled her. Held the back of her head and
cried like a fucking baby.

But he was also laughing.

Dorcas Dorcas Dorcas Dorcas she’s here she’s here she’s here she’s here—

She pulled back rather suddenly, making him lose grip on her and therefore himself and fall
forward a bit, but as always, she caught him. Sniffing, she pressed her hand to her mouth,
underneath her nose, and turned her head to take a breath in.

It took him a moment to realise.

“Oh—” he choked, swallowing down the lump in his throat and still sort of shaking. “Oh, fu—
fuck, I’m sorry—”

“No, it’s okay,” she said, exhaling through her mouth. “You’re not bleeding, so it’s okay. I can—”
she closed her eyes and swallowed, thickly, turning her head gently to gesture to the wall behind
her, where Peter was lying unconscious with a bleeding head wound. “I can smell him, though.
Mm.” She shook her head, shuddered. Exhaled once more. Through her teeth.

Remus watched, and he waited.

“I’m okay,” she said. “I just—literally just—erm. So I should be okay for half an hour or so.”

Remus blinked, wary.

“I’m okay,” she said, smiling. “Promise.”

His eyes filled with tears again. For a moment, they just stared at each other.

“Hi,” he whispered.

Dorcas let out something that might have been a laugh and might have been a sob.

“Hi,” she said, grinning.

And then they were both laughing, through tears.

“Hi,” he choked again.

A body slammed against the floor a few feet away from them with such an intensity it shuddered
the floorboards, and then in a second and a rush of momentum Sirius was there, kneeling between
them, hand on each of their shoulders. He had blood in his hair, underneath his nails, all over his
mouth and chin.

“I love you both,” Sirius said, quickly and breathlessly and entirely unamused. “So much. But can
we please get Lily and Dora and get the fuck out of here already?”

Dorcas exhaled sharply, and then nodded, bracing herself with two hands on her knees. The three
of them turned, the heat from the flames at their faces, to watch Lily uphold the fort. One last
vampire was crawling across the floor, hissing maniacally, trying to get to her. Lily hadn’t noticed.

“I thought I killed him,” Sirius muttered.

“Did you not rip his heart out?” asked Dorcas. “Kills anyone.”

Sirius laughed. “Yeah, you’d know, wouldn’t you?”

Her jaw dropped wide open.

“Now you know damn well that’s too soon, Black—” she yelled as he pushed her to go. But she
was laughing through every word.

Remus, watching her go, barely even registered Sirius placing his arm around him and helping him
up to stand. He felt horribly disconnected from himself and it took a moment to sink in that Sirius
was touching him and another to sink in that he was supposed to react to that. He closed his eyes
briefly, took a breath in. Let himself be touched. Let himself be real.

He opened them as Dorcas caught up to the vampire, just as he’d stood and begun to stagger
towards Lily, and snap his neck.

Lily gasped, looked at her.

And immediately all the fire dropped.

“Dorcas?!” she choked, in shock.

Dorcas raised one hand and gave a little wave.

“This is why you were supposed to wait outside,” Sirius hissed through his teeth, as he and Remus
staggered their way up to her, appearing from behind. Lily was still staring.

“I thought it was because you didn’t want Riddle to see me,” Dorcas replied, raising an eyebrow.
“Hm. I like the other one; insinuates you care about me.”

Sirius scoffed. Lily was still staring.

“How are you—?” Lily asked, gaping. “What are you—? When did you—?”

“Yeah, um,” said Sirius, looking up at the dementors who were slowly making their way down,
only hindered by the flickering flames on the walls and the railings that were slowly dying. Lily
continued to stutter. “All good questions, Lilith, no time for them now, we have to go. OI, DORA!”
With a flick of her hair Pandora whirled around, her hands pirouetting like ballerinas in front of her,
curdling a golden light that she hurled at a vampire without even looking at him.

She swallowed, thickly, and nodded once.

A dementor swooped entirely too close for comfort, and they all flinched, which pulled Lily out of
her stupor. Within seconds she had her hands up above her head, roaring flames filling the air and
making them cower once more.

“Fuck,” Sirius spat, flicking his hair out of his face. Lily gritted her teeth, arms glistening with
golden veins.

“Where are we going?” Lily asked, strenuously, having to raise her voice over the flames. “No
—how are we going? Dora can’t apparate us all even if she is healed—”

Dorcas winced, and Lily clocked it instantly.

“What?” she asked, blowing her hair out of her face. Remus felt dizzy. “What does that mean?
What—gah—”

She flinched, her back arching slightly as she held up such a tight fort. With a wave of her arm she
reached out to her side to corner a Dementor that had tried to sneak around and hit them from the
side.

“We’re going somewhere safe,” Sirius interjected, “okay, we’re going somewhere safe to—to
figure out the next step—we just need—”

As if on cue;

“Guys!” Pandora called, bending the wind, making the vampires fall at her mercy, groaning
through it. “I need help!”

Obviously, everyone dropped everything to help her.

And they lit up, like a moth to a barbarous flame, transient and legendary breathing on life focused
around the fire. Lily, in the middle, commanded the flames, setting the entire hall on fire; her small
flame bringing it down like she was raising hell, hellfire out of one palm, cradling the ceiling in
which the dementors swam, desperate to penetrate but, in the end, a wisp to be put out. The residue
when you blow out a candle. That’s what they were, up there, as Lily held them with one hand and
shot fire with the other at whoever she may need to; the others circled her, like planets on an orbit.

They were like a group of feral lions prancing, ready to attack. Pandora, her long curls billowing
with the force of her magic; to her side, Sirius, teeth as sharp as his eyes were shiny. At his side,
eternal extension, Remus, blinking away the fog in place of autopilot and survival, that shiny new
toy he’d grasped his hands on to ward away the feeling of darkness spreading through his body like
a ravaging disease, and to his side, Dorcas, the dead thing inside of her, that living strife in every
hiss, every pounce. The crossover between a dagger and a fang, she lay on the crossroads with her
hands spread out wide. They were up against the world and they kept it cradled in the space
between their cold-hot bodies. Choreographed. Moving like ballerinas.

They circled. A vampire came at Remus and he dodged it, twirled his dagger and caught him by
the arm, stabbed him underneath the chin through the head and tossed it to the side where Dorcas
caught him and flung him against the wall, out of sight, before proceeding to run and rip into the
neck of another. Flipping him over so he was flat on the floor and bleeding out she then held him
up by the collar, so seamlessly, presenting him like a prize to be won for Remus to whip out his
gun in record time and shoot him, head shot. Bang bang.

The blood splattered over her face and she bared her teeth, the sharp knives, and licked it off her
lips. As she flipped her hair over her head another came running at her from behind; Remus pulled
back and lobbed a knife at him, which embedded in his throat, and as he choked Dorcas was there
and then she was not, then she was behind him, kicking his knees out. As she looked up she
glanced at Remus, and then to his side; a smile tugged at her lips, and before Remus could even
turn to see who she was looking at there was Sirius, appearing at his other side, and Dorcas had
one arm and he had the other and they pulled him apart like he was a doll and then Sirius, to
hammer the message in, ripped his heart out. Threw it in Dorcas’ general direction with a playful
sneer, and she hopped around to dodge it. Laughing and laughing.

Remus watched her laugh, and his heart skipped a beat.

But he could not get in touch with emotions; they would not come to him right now. He could just
fight. More and more of them seemed to be apparating in, coming out of nowhere, appearing out of
thin air. There was no time for anything else. They were trying to figure out a window to make an
escape, but it kept on going, and going, and going.

Sirius and Dorcas ended up the other side of Lily while Remus found Pandora fending off three at
once and killed one to make her job easier, and then the next, when she snapped his neck with a
smile on her face and sent him hurtling into Remus’ arms (at which point he killed him properly).

Eventually, the vampires slowed. Just for a few minutes. There were bodies all over the floor.
Sirius and Dorcas were still fighting together, throwing the corpses in the air for Lily to solder, but
the group that they were fighting seemed to be all that was left. Remus didn’t doubt that this lapse
would not last long and so he knew that they should take it, take the chance. He was about to turn
around to commandeer when he stopped.

Out of nowhere, his vision hazed. He began to feel dizzy in the smoke, dizzy in the room. An
instinctual sort of dizziness. Sixth sense. His ears, if he had them the way he might have on every
full moon in a different universe, perked up.

He could smell death.

Of course he could smell death, is the thing. He was surrounded by it. There were bodies of
vampires that he was tripping on and bloodshed that he was slipping on but this was a different
kind of scent. He could smell it like a rotting carcass in his nostrils, like something hooking into
his chest and summoning him, an instinct to protect and an equally as strong instinct to kill. He
could smell it. It tingled at the tips of his fingers.

He looked over to Pandora, building an aggressive blue light in her hand, and he watched as she
sent it flying and as the tips of her fingers paled, the reds of her cheeks softened. He watched her
take a stuttering breath, and then another. He watched, slowly, the whites of her eyes bleed red, the
slow deterioration of something… something on the tip of his tongue… he licked his lips, and he
could feel—

She looked at him.

A jolt of fire came soaring between them, from Lily, hitting an approaching vampire not too far
away (who had broken away from the group to try and sneak up on them) and setting him alight
instantly. As his cries lit up the room, along with a cackle from somewhere that could only be
Sirius, they locked eyes. The room lit her in a warm glow that almost detracted from the rot he
could feel.
She was smiling, but he couldn’t bring himself to smile back at her.

All he could see behind his eyelids was the way she had looked before. The pooling blood staining
her dress.

And all that he could smell was—

“Pandora,” he said, shakily, grabbing onto her arms. He had no idea how he’d taken the three
paces forward, but suddenly she was there. The world spun around them, but he clung onto her. A
sister. It spun, it spun, it spun. “Pandora.”

“Remus,” she gasped.

“You’re—”

And a crack of a deafening gunshot echoed all around the room. Red bloomed against white.

Pandora gasped, and it echoed. Everything seemed to go in slow-motion. Remus held onto her, by
the arms, and felt them grow cold.

Watched the red bloom from where the bullet had hit her in the chest from the front and had gone
straight through and out the other side, barely skimming him. He held onto her, watched the way
her face paled; the bags in her eyes practically appeared out of nowhere, her lips draining of colour
and chapping before his eyes. The illusion finally dropping.

That was it. That was what had been on the tip of his tongue. It was an illusion. She had cast an
illusion, and she had been holding it up.

She had cast an illusion, and she had not been getting better.

She had been casting an illusion. And she had been slowly dying.

Sirius caught Pandora as she fell out of Remus’ arms. His hands followed her, but their touch
severed, and that’s when he saw it. Cowered in a corner sat Peter Pettigrew, blood pouring over his
face from where he’d hit his head. One shaky hand outstretched and holding a smoky, smoky gun.

It felt like an eternity before he collapsed onto his knees next to her.

“Dora,” Remus whispered, jolting forward, falling.

The fire entirely disappeared from all around him and suddenly Lily was there, too. Sirius was just
to the right, screaming expletives as he fought off the vampires that had seen the weakness and
come to take advantage of it. Now, with no fire, it was oddly quiet. Terrifyingly cold.

“I can heal her—”

“Dora,” Remus gasped, pressing his hands to her chest, trying to stem the blood-flow. She blinked,
once or twice, opening her mouth to speak. Looking at Remus. Her eyes were wild and wide, and
Lily was begging—

“I can—” she choked, and suddenly Dorcas was there, and Sirius was a wonder, the brightest light
all around them. There was not enough peace for this. There was never enough peace for a
goodbye. “Remus, get my—I left—

Her bag was at Mary’s.

“Keep pressure on it,” Dorcas whispered. “Keep—”

Dorcas inhaled, and that was a mistake. Hand over her mouth, her head jerked to the side, and then
she was up, and she was gone. A flash, in a split-second.

“Remus,” Pandora whispered.

“I’m here,” he breathed, keeping pressure as Lily gasped, beginning to cry. Her hands were aflame.
And her bag was at Mary’s. And the fog was settling in.

“Let me—”

“Remus—”

“Lily, can you heal her?”

“Remus—”

“I’m—”

“Remus—” Pandora gasped, again, wheezing. There was blood in her mouth. The air was cold. It
was getting darker. She was choking, gripping onto the hand pressed against her chest desperately.
As if trying to get his attention; as if trying to tell him something.

“I’m here, Dora, what—”

And then Dorcas began to scream.

It was her first, and in the beat it took her to fall to the floor, Sirius. To turn his head, Remus. He
jolted back, hands pulled away from Pandora, who began to convulse; the harmonisation of
screaming would haunt his dreams for months, but the Dementors were merciless. They take,
everywhere and everywhere and everywhere. They kissed all four of them. He was numb to the
pain.

But to the screams, he heard, they ran him through. Please make it stop, he thought, please please
please—not her—not Pandora—she was bleeding through, all over his hands—please, not again,
not him—Dorcas was whimpering for mercy—please not her—Sirius was eight hundred years old
and he was in a heap—please please please—Lily was standing up—

With an upheaval of a sob-turned-scream, she lit up, throwing her hands to the sky and pushing
them all the way up to the ceiling yet again.

Remus took a deep, heaving breath in, and he’d never felt anything more relieving in his life.

His ears were ringing. His arms twitched, vision blurry, blinking to see fire and only fire up ahead.
Rolling over, he coughed—he gagged. He reached out for Pandora again. His hand grasped onto
her arm, her stomach, and he could feel her trembling.

There was blood everywhere. His hands couldn’t stop shaking. Pandora was twitching under
Remus’ hands, and Sirius was attempting to stand; his arms gave in on his first attempt, but his
second succeeded, and then he was beside Dorcas, coughing, choking and pulling at her.

“Get—up—” Sirius gasped, gagging. “Get up.”

“Remus,” Pandora gasped, again.

“Dorcas, get up!”

Lily let out another sob, looking to Pandora from much too far away as she held up the fire, held up
the fort. And as she and Remus made eye contact he realised with a very swift punch to the gut that
Pandora was going to die underneath his hands.

And yet:

“Dora,” he choked, like a mantra, as Sirius staggered and yet beheaded a vampire going for Remus
and Pandora in one fell swoop. He was screaming viciously—in agony, anger, frustration, grief,
maybe all four—the centrepoint to his murder being the billowing white dress and the way she
splayed across the floor, bloody hands to open wounds. He killed and he killed and he killed.
Remus gasped as she gripped his wrist. “Dora, look at me. You’re gonna be fine.”

“‘M—dying…”

She was still twitching.

“You’re fine.” Remus’ voice broke. He was thinking about Malfoy Manor. He was thinking about
flowers at Boardwalk. He couldn’t feel anything but her blood on his hands. “You’re fine, Pandora,
hey, come—l-look at m—”

“Remus,” she hissed. She’d said his name so many times. He blinked, and he blinked again, and
her chest stuttered, breath coming in wheezes. “You have—t– you have—you—”

“What,” Remus whispered. He leaned in closer, choking on a sob. “What is it?”

Dorcas was crawling across the floor, weeping, trying to get to Pandora, trying to get to her.

And Lily and Sirius were back to back, howling through the violence. The dementors were fighting
back more than ever and yet Lily threw all of her weight on one hand, the other reaching out to her
right, outstretched fingertips.

Her face was turned towards Pandora, one hand, completely simmered, stretched out desperately.
Healing tears streaming down her face, curling at her chin, hitting the floor and disappearing. She
was just three feet too far.

A body hit the floor with a thud and a splatter of blood to his side as violently as Lily’s tears fell
and didn’t fall at fucking all.

“You—u—you have to—”

“Anything…anything…”

Sirius was fighting his way through a jungle and yet he was still not by his side when Pandora
gripped onto Remus’ wrist, gargled on her own blood, and whispered, “You have to trigger it.”

His entire body went cold.

“What, what do you—” Remus swallowed, Dorcas was on her back, ripping a vampire’s jaw open,
Sirius was fighting his way through and cowering at the fire Lily was summoning, all of it to
protect them, all of it to protect this moment, let her go peacefully, let her watch the flickering of
the flames, but, “what—I–I don’t—” Remus frowned, shook his head, and she squeezed his wrist,
and she squeezed his wrist, and she squeezed his wrist. “Pandora.”
“Trigger it.”

“I don’t understand—”

“It’s—the only—” she choked, blood trickling out of her mouth.

“Pandora. Pandora.”

She would not finish this sentence.

Sirius got there just a second too late. Falling to his knees, he blinked, harshly, hands hovering over
her. Saying her name over and over. But it was useless. She was already dead.

Three seconds.

Pandora, outside Hotel Transylvania. Small and powerful. A car ride, an instant character. A
genius if Remus has ever met one.

Not your witch, she had said. Not your hunter.

Two.

She was blood-soaked, punch-drunk, dislocated like a rag-tag doll pulled apart and sewn back
together. If you knew her, you might presume she’d done the sewing. She hadn’t. But she would
have liked to get there first.

She’s how they’re here. She did this. She did this, and this, and this. Remus sees her talking about
her potion and he listens to her, arm in arm, as she talks about magical surgery while he has a cast
on his wrist he has to wear for six days, not six weeks, and she might just be the cord attached to
his spine that has pulled him up, time and time again. Ploughing forward like the glint of a blade.

One.

And it’s fallible, their lives are, sickly sweet like a toffee apple, falling off the pyre like a head on a
stick. They come as easily as they go but sometimes they stay. It is this, and she is this, and she is
this and this and this. So she’ll stay. She’ll stay, as she goes. She stays as the fire hits the ground.
But she’s dead.

Remus tasted her death. And so did Lily.

The room grew hotter as her eyes fell dead, and Lily Evans fell to her knees.

From a few feet across the room with a hounding scream the room crackled like lightning, and it
was brief, but it was there. They were all brief and they were all there. Lily’s agony lasted for just
as long as it took Sirius’ voice to falter out his last desperate attempt to say Pandora’s name.

Just it took for her hand to slip from Remus’ and land in a bloodstain on the cold laminate floor.

Everything fell. All of the dust and the fire and the gore. It almost slapped him in the face as Lily
burnt out, and staggered her way over; Remus only registered this because she almost tripped over
a corpse that Dorcas had exhumed. Sirius caught her, Sirius caught her as she fell and held her from
behind as she kneeled there, even still just that little bit too fucking far, fingers only able to grip
onto the fabric of her bloodstained white dress. Still not able to reach Pandora. Her bag was still at
Mary’s.

Sirius held her back as she reached, as her breath shuddered, and then she wailed. She wailed. Holy
Mary. Bereaved and righteous. The sound was damning, utterly reprehensible.

Remus, turning away from the sound, the decibels hitting his back and pushing him on,
sidestepped, left it all as Sirius and Lily wrestled, falling to the floor. He watched blank-faced as
her head pressed against his chest by his hand as he looked up to the Dementors crawling down the
walls and two tears fell out of his eyes, then two more. He watched as she looked down at Pandora,
her eyes wide open. Glazed over.

He—

He walked—

He was going—

He—

10:39P.M.

Peter saw Remus coming before Remus saw Remus coming. His gun was still in his hand.

He was kneeling against the wall, hunched over with how injured he was, choking and sputtering
on his own blood as it poured from the gash on his forehead over his nose, to his lips. Remus did
not hesitate, not for a second, when he pressed the barrel of a gun to his forehead.

“I told you,” he whispered coldly. “That I was going to kill you.”

Gun to a gun.

Traitor to traitor.

A life for a life for a fucking life.

“I told you.” Remus’ voice shook.

Lily’s cries behind him haunted the room.

“I told you.”

Peter looked up at him, eyelashes fluttering. One of his eyes was entirely bloodshot, and his teeth
were coated in red.

“Remus,” he whispered.

“I told you,” Remus breathed, choking on the words. He cocked the gun. “I told you I would.”

Peter choked on a sob, blood oozing out of his mouth. Another one, and then another.

“You—already did,” he moaned, garbled through his injuries. “I just—I just wanted t–to be
remembered.”
Why do you get last words? Remus thought. Why do you get a goodbye?

“Stop talking,” Remus breathed. “Stop talking. Stop it. Stop it.”

Peter was weeping. Remus’ hand shook against the gun, and Peter was weeping.

“He made me feel remembered,” he cried. “He made me feel wanted.”

“Stop talking,” Remus said, though it came out incomprehensible.

“He made me feel loved. I just wanted to be loved,” Peter sobbed.

“Stop—st—ah—”

“I’m sorry. I’m s–sorry—”

“Remus…” called Sirius, warningly, from across the room. “Remus.”

“I told you,” Remus breathed, again, but it was barely comprehensible now. “I told you—I—”

“Remus!”

“I’m sorry,” Peter whispered, looking up at him from behind the barrel of the gun.

Remus’ hands shook. His finger edged onto the trigger.

Pandora’s blood smeared all over it.

Dorcas’ smeared all over Peter’s.

Peter’s smeared all over Remus’.

It just goes round, and round, and round. And round, and round, and round, and round.

So as the fog began to settle, as Peter finally stopped fucking talking… Remus let out one final
breath.

“Sorry means nothing to me,” he whispered, and maybe he would regret it, and maybe he already
did, and maybe he was cruel, and maybe he was wretched, and maybe this was a mistake, and
maybe he was a mistake, and maybe he wouldn’t pull the trigger. Maybe he wouldn’t pull the
trigger. He might not even pull the trigger.

The amount of blood coated on his hands made it slippery when he pulled the trigger.

Peter’s body fell.

And Remus—

Oh.

??:?? | ??/??/1998
He is something that he is not, but he is. He is something that has been woven, lungs to hips, it cuts
off his breath for a moment and he’s choking on his blood and Pandora’s blood and the blood of
the man who bit him on the side, and the bite is burning. The bite is burning.

Remus drops the gun, falling to his knees, pressing both hands to his side and clawing at his shirt.
He hears Dorcas scream again and Lily wail, sees the golden reflection of flames light up Peter’s
dead expression as he gasps, trembling, pulling the fabric of his shirt up to see an open wound, bite
marks, up and down his ribcage. His chest convulses slightly and he falls backwards, suddenly
feeling like he is everything—everything in the godforsaken world, every single thing, the air and
the trees and the pounding at a chest cavity. The world falls silent, for he is all of it, and then the
burning thrums everywhere, all over his body for maybe three seconds, but it hurts.

It hurts enough for him to scream, and for the rest of the world to hear it, too. For Sirius to hear, as
he caught him, as he would and always had.

The fire dissipates.

1:15A.M.

The rest of it comes as a blur. One second he’s here the next he’s there. He could not see much but
he could smell—oh, smoke slowly fading into grass and hearty pine. Patchouli. Gardenia. Magic.
Pandora’s death. Chewy flesh.

It was cold, wherever they were. Hauntingly quiet, too.

At some point he ended up in the backseat of a car. Two figures sat in front of him for a timeframe
that he will not know, but was over an hour, in almost-silent mourning. The key in the ignition. Not
turned on. He wouldn’t know this, at least not for certain, but as soon as they got time to breathe
Sirius put Remus, Lily and Dorcas in the car, and then got out, stumbled into the clearing and
screamed until the birds flocked away and his knees gave out.

He kicked a tree so hard he broke it in half and there it lay, to the right of the car, as they sat in
silence. Painful silence.

“I could have saved her,” Lily whispered, into the deep, dark silence. “I should have saved her.”

“You couldn’t have saved her.”

Sirius’ voice was gritty and hoarse. Her head whipped around to him, and her retribute came out
spitting.
“Why?”

“She was dying, Lily. She was never healing. The sword, in Sweden, it was cursed.”

“No.”

“She was.” Sirius cleared his throat. “I saw it. When we went back to the house, after you two had
already left to throw yourselves into that snake pit. She’d not wanted us to fuss. She’d been so close
to figuring it out and she was determined to get it before she went.”

“What? Figured what out?”

“How to save him, Lily.”

There was a long, long silence.

“I don’t—I—I—”

Lily’s voice broke off, in shards. She shook her head vehemently.

“She’s dead, Sirius.”

“I know.”

“I don’t care. I don’t—I don’t give a fuck about saving him. She’s dead.”

“I know.”

“She’s dead, she’s dead—fuck, Sirius—I don’t care, she’s dead—she’s dead—she—”

She trailed off, quietly crying into her hand. If Sirius was aware that Remus was awake he had not
said anything. After about ten minutes maybe, Lily sniffed, and turned her head.

“There’s a…” she muttered, voice thick. “Is there really a—a way to save him?”

Silence, for a moment.

“Pandora believed so,” Sirius whispered. “I don’t know the finer details yet. I’ve got the portkey to
her office, and the password. It’s all there.”

Lily made a choking sound. It was honestly quite harrowing.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know, Lily.”

“I shouldn’t—I just—I’m sorry—”

Silence.

“I do care about saving him. I want—I don’t want him to die. I don’t.”

Silence, again.

“Yeah,” Sirius whispered. He reached out to place a hand on her knee, and in return she sort of fell
over, leaning her head onto his shoulder and crying against him. “I know.”
“But I thought she was getting better,” Lily wept. Broken. “I thought she was—I thought—”

“I did too,” whispered Sirius. “Me too, Lil. Hey, me too.”

He held her hand. They silently glowed, burning bright.

Remus tapped out here. He fell asleep, maybe, and he might’ve then woken up to voices. How
many hours has it been? Definitely multiple. It was all a great perhaps.

“Hey,” Sirius whispered—did he?—opening the backseat car door and shuffling over.

The doors were closed but the window was open on Sirius’ side, Remus could feel the breeze.
They were somewhere else; the tree was gone, Lily was in the drivers seat. And Dorcas, mouth
now wiped clean but with remnants of dry blood on her chin, was out there, nothing between them
but air and the threat of glass, watching intently.

Sirius wrapped an arm around him and took him in, resting his head on his shoulder.

“Will he be okay?” he heard Dorcas ask. Sirius turned his head slightly around to her.

“He will be.”

“Why is he so weak?”

“Why, I don’t know, Dorcas. He’s bleeding through his shirt out of twenty-three year old scars and
was tortured so intently his heart stopped. You fucking tell me.”

Remus wasn’t looking, but he could imagine Dorcas’ frostiness.

“You don’t need to be such a cock all the time, you know.”

“Maybe if you didn’t ask stupid fucking questions.”

“I can’t—I can’t even deal with you—”

Footsteps. Away, crunching on the grass, and then back. Dorcas could never leave well enough
alone.

“You know, you’re not the only one who loves him. You’re not the only one who loses shit when
you lose shit. You’re not the only person in the world, Sirius.”

“This isn’t the time,” from Lily, but her voice was so broken it barely even formed the words.

“What are you—what is this even—” Sirius stammered. “Are you serious? You’re—you’re picking
a fight with me right now? Pandora is dead.”

“And I loved her too!”

Dorcas’ voice, wavering with emotion, broke. There was a pause. Remus felt Sirius lean his head
back, and felt his breathing slow, to the beat of a pulse.

He opened his eyes, briefly. To try and look at her—try, he wanted to look. He wanted too look at
her. He wanted to look at her her more than he’d ever wanted anything. But he couldn’t keep them
open for very long.

After a second, Sirius turned again.

“Just—go. Please.”

“But—”

“Get in the bed of the truck, Dorcas. He’s fine. You’re gonna get hungry soon.”

At these words, she almost instinctively hissed. Remus opened his eyes again to see her baring her
teeth, fangs on display. Sirius clicked his tongue.

“Yeah,” he said. “Exactly. Go on.”

Dorcas, sighing, took one last look at Remus.

“I’m not going anywhere, Remus,” she whispered. “I’m just going to be back here. I’ll just be back
here.”

She gave it a few seconds, and when he didn’t respond, she nodded and disappeared. He felt the
shift of her jumping into the cargo bed of the truck barely a few seconds later.

His eyes closed.

“Okay,” said Lily. Her voice was thick with something new. Still hazy, though. Wrecked. “Can we
go now?”

“Yes.”

A moment of her fiddling with gears, and then the car slowly began to move.

“And where, exactly, are we going?”

“I don’t know,” Sirius replied, exhaling slowly and moving his free hand to cup the back of
Remus’ neck, who was so near unconsciousness he felt like he was floating. “Just—just drive, for
now. Please.”

“Okay,” said Lily. And they trundled on.

Three minutes of silence and bumpy roads went by before anyone spoke again.

“Why wasn’t he there,” Sirius breathed.

Silence.

“Hm?”

“Why wasn’t he there, Lily?” he repeated, quietly. Evidently believing Remus to be asleep.
“Riddle. He wants Remus. He threw himself right into a trap. It was almost prewritten.”

“His vampires were there.”

“But—where was he?”

A pause.

“I don’t know.”

“Lily, where is he?”

 “I don’t know.”

“What the fuck is he doing? What was this all for if he didn’t even show up?”

“He did,” said Remus, quietly.

Sirius stiffened. There was a moment of silence. He turned his head to try and look at him.

“What?”

“He did show up.”

“Where?”

Remus took a deep breath in, released it as a half-conscious sigh, and raised his hand. With all the
clunkiness in the world, he pressed his index finger to his temple.

“In here,” he murmured. “He’s always… in here.”

He felt Sirius’ head turn to glance at Lily.

And then there was nothing.

The bumpy dirt road became smooth tarmac, and, silent and fundamentally changed, the four of
them drove into the night.

END OF BOOK THREE

Chapter End Notes

pandora dies

you find out in this chapter that the sword she got stabbed with in sweden was cursed,
and she has not actually been healing over the past week, she's just been casting
illusions to feign strength. she gets shot, and then tortured by a dementor because lily
lets the fire down. because she's already so weak, and then with the attempted
dementors kiss added on, she dies fairly quickly.

so.... haha.... happy end of book 3!!! we made it!!! how are we doing

all i want to say here thank you for sticking with me this long. we've still got a way to
go yet, but we're 3/4ths through, which i think means we all deserve a pat on the back.
i adore you all and every comment and thought and angry yell incessantly, thank you
<3

see you soon xx

 thirty one
Chapter Summary

the girl who lived

Chapter Notes

hello!

book 4!!! ahh!!! I have a few things to say here!

first of all, this chapter is 28k, which is on the longer side for me. sorry it's such a long
one but i literally couldn't condense it.

second of all: this is the dorcas chapter! this entire chapter is her POV, spanning from
the battle of whittaker (chapter 23, when she wakes up as a vampire) to just before
chapter 30 & her reunion with remus and following what she did in the time you didn't
see her. (within the narrative this is june 4 – july 24, 2021). so, yes, there are basically
no other characters you know apart from various throwaway OC's and two very
important OC's – one you've met before, one that you're being introduced to :)

thirdly, this chapter is split into four parts, which might make it easier to split up
reading x

finally, there isn't exactly a comprehensive CW list, but dorcas goes through a LOT
this chapter. a lot of it is really awful for her – namely, there's one moment where she
almost gives up and lets herself die. aside from that there's a lot of the usual death and
violence etc.

i really hope you enjoy it <3 jude x

See the end of the chapter for more notes

I. WHITTAKER HOUSE. JUNE 4, 2021

Burning.

That was the first thing that Dorcas felt as she woke.

Inhaling through her mouth something felt foreign, like an obstruction in her throat. Something
being forced down her oesophagus. Something on fire. She took a breath upon waking up,
instinctively, but there was no relief to the gasp, no fresh alertness tied to waking up. She hadn’t
been asleep. This is fact. She had not been asleep.

Dorcas’ brain usually works very fast. But she had no time to put things together, for her throat was
burning, the world was burning; her consciousness and her spatial awareness was singed, on fire
inside her body. The only thing that she could register was the physicality of what she felt inside.
Her body was on fire, inside and out. The heat tickled her skin. She saw red above her. Smoke was
layered everywhere. The roof was coming down. Fact, fact, fact.

She sat up.

Gasping, still, not understanding quite yet that it was useless, she frantically looked around,
pushing herself a few paces back. Reaching her hand up to her throat, her sternum, down to her
chest. In and out. In and out. Everything around her was moving but oddly enough her body felt
frozen in time.

Pulling back her hand from her chest, she looked down in horror to see blood.

It was like a domino effect. Blood, coating her clothes. Blood, dripping from her fingertips. It is
here she registered she was in a dress, and it is two seconds after this that she registered that her
dress was the colour of the blood soaking it, and that amongst the chaos and the hot flickering of
the flames to her left, to her right, behind her ears and above her head, she blended in.

She saw red. She could feel it.

Her teeth began to ache.

“What—wh—” she gasped, looking around frantically. Breath quickening with panic at the fact
she could not feel the panic. There were people fighting all around her; blood being spilled and
spells being launched. But nobody paid attention to her.

Shuffling one more pace back, her hand landed on what could only be the pudgy forearm of a very
cold corpse.

“Oh—” she choked, whirling around and shuffling herself back the way she came from. Her dress
ripped as she went on shards of glass. She could barely see from the black spots in her vision, but
maybe that was the smoke, or maybe something else created of fog. “Oh, no—”

People.

People.

Screaming.

Blood.

Fire.

Blood.

Knives.

Blood.

Blood.

Blood.

Dorcas cut the palm of her hand on a shard of glass, feeling hot tears threaten her cold, cold eyes as
she looked upon the corpse of the mangled vampire she had just almost trampled on. With a hiss of
pain, she almost fell backwards, swinging her hand around herself to have a look at it.

The blood-red gash lingered for perhaps the better part of a second. And then, slowly, her skin
stitched itself back together. Pulling the droplets of blood back into her system.

Frozen in time. Nothing more, nothing less.

Holding her hand, she stared at the healing wound in horror. And suddenly the burning made
sense. “Oh,” she choked. In, out, and then, tragically: “Oh.”

She could not or perhaps would not produce any more sound, but the room was not in lack. A
wooden beam fell with a resonating bang a few feet to her right and crushed a few of the dwindling
fighters, sending ash and dust flying and blood splattering across the floor. A limp arm fell over an
already brutalised corpse, and a woman screamed. Being pulled away by someone else, wary of the
roofing and pleading with her to leave, the woman kept screaming, she kept screaming the name of
a person that Dorcas did not know and never would.

“Remus…” Dorcas whispered, looking around frantically.

Her throat felt like it was being slashed and her chest was twitching almost of its own accord, a
feeling she’d never encountered, one she did not understand how to satiate. Remus lingered
somewhere in the spot between a rock and a hard place, banging on the walls to be let out. He hit
her like bricks. The name she’d scream.

Dorcas gasped and got up as the rock chipped, and spun in an almost complete circle, her dress
twirling around her like it should be set on fire from the momentum. She was dizzy. She was hot.
Stumbling a few paces across the corpses and the dying her nostrils felt charred and bunged up
from the ash. She inhaled and she coughed and so she stopped inhaling. Simple as that. She just
stopped.

She looked up, gasping, as ash rained upon her and the roof began to splinter.

“Remus?” she yelled, up to the sky, the burning, burning sky. “Remus!”

Another wooden beam fell to her side, causing her to flinch viciously as the fire swarmed like a
tornado and caught on its surroundings. And then shattered debris fell behind her, and behind her
again, and she was moving. She was moving for dear life.

Move, move, move, was all she could think: her dress bunched up in her two shaking slit hands so
she would not trod on it, the hem of the fabric brushing the noses of corpses lying face-up that she
stumbled through. Near the end of the ballroom, where a throne she had once laid eyes upon was
now lying broken on the side (alongside a rotten, blackened old hand lying limp on the stairs,
attached to a body she couldn’t bring herself to look at) there was an unobstructed window. Each
and every other exit seemed to have people lined up, people clambering out, people fighting or
people impaled on the broken glass through the chest. Move, move, move, she had no other
instinct, her body still burned and her hands were still bunched and she almost tripped up on a gun,
and then another weapon, and then another, until she realised they were all strewn across the floor
like they had been projected forth and—

Tunnel vision. Glinting beside a burning wooden beam, cracking by the second, lying abandoned
in the fight, was her basilisk blade. Dorcas staggered towards it. Fell to her knees.

With shaky hands, she picked it up.

The fire raged on.

Out here, she registered, as she tumbled onto the hardened concrete of the bloody courtyard, was
both ashy and clear. The sky was vacated. All of the dementors had hidden behind the moon. She
had not prepared to be faced with so much ash but it was all she could see in the courtyard; ash on
the floor, ash on the fountain, ash coating her throat when she breathed in. It was fucking
everywhere. Flakes of it and lumps of it. Charred rocks and preserved poses. A sizzling pile of
burnt metal beside a significant pile of ash, big enough for there to have been two. Pure through-
and-through cremation, charred and thorough enough for it to have only been Lily.

People were running across the courtyard. Their feet crunched underneath the ash like the feeling
of leaves in the autumn.

Dorcas inhaled, and she could smell burning, but she could feel it too.

For the first time, as she stood, catching the scent of pine and burning flesh and feeling the taste of
fresh air unclog the damages that the smoke had done to her, she felt it. She truly, truly felt it.

She was hungry.

Oh, it was not a hunger she had ever experienced before. The blackout was not like anything she
had ever experienced before. It would be terrifying if she had room to think about anything else. It
was like a switch had been flipped as her sinuses cleared; one moment, she was thinking of Lily,
and the next, nothing. She felt something bubble inside her throat as if she was boiling a pan of
water, sending it scorching into her stomach. Something to ease the burn or something to make it
worse. Perhaps they are one in the same; she couldn’t weigh it up. All she could think was satiate.
Satiate. Satiate. Satiate.

“Dorcas—”

Satiate.

“Dorcas?”

She whirled around, pulled her lip back, and felt herself let out a fierce snarl against the gentle ache
of teeth she had not had two hours ago.

She was looking at Oliver Wood.

Her lips were trembling. She could not stop it, despite the fact that her brain was screaming for
relief. Like a poor child trapped in solitary confinement. This is recollection. This is familiar.
Wood, Wood, you know me, the innocent inside of her said, weeping, screaming. You know me. Tell
me this is not what I am. Tell me this is not what I am.

Oliver Wood stared at Dorcas, his face falling as fast as the crumbling rooftops of Whittaker
House.

And despite the screaming child, Dorcas didn’t say anything. She hissed once more. Feral.

Oliver’s lips parted.

“You’re a—” he started, but did not finish.

For there was suddenly a bullet hole in the front of his head, and blood spilling through it like a
smooth waterfall. And he saw nothing else.

Dorcas’ face immediately calmed. She gasped, and she took a step forward as he took a step
forward and then down. A noise rattled through the air, something hallucinogenic and harrowing
and it took Dorcas a moment to realise that was her, hyperventilating if her lungs would move.
Oliver’s body hit the ground with a dull thud and she let it out again, a noise that can only be
described as a wail. Or maybe the screech of a feral animal, lost to the night. Lost to her senses.

Her eyes cleared up. Overwhelmed with emotion she almost felt like herself again. Like this had all
been some lucid dream and Wood would get up any second now and chortle like he had just pulled
off a sick practical joke. She felt it in the concave of her chest. She felt the emotion and she clung
to it. But she had slippery fingers. She had slippery fingers, coated in her own blood, and she
couldn’t keep hold of anything, not even herself.

As Wood’s body went down, it revealed a man standing behind her. A hunter Dorcas did not know
with a wicked half-smile and a smoky revolver to match. There was blood smeared over a light
wound on his neck. There was blood trickling down the sides of his temple.

The roof to the ballroom of Whittaker House caved in.

It let out a sickening crack that would be heard for miles out.

And the screams from the people on the inside drowned out the scream that the hunter let out,
revolver falling to the floor, as Dorcas sunk her teeth into his neck.

BOOK FOUR: The Ballroom

When Dorcas came to, it was dark, and it was quiet.

The first thing that she registered was the smell of pine, moss and grass; overwhelming scents
wafting through the air as time carried on and the wind continued to blow the scents of the forest
around and around and around.

She blinked, took a moment, and sat up. Her head spun as she elevated herself. Everything seemed
to be coming at her just a little too fast for reality. As if she had been put on 1.5x speed, but the rest
of the world was carrying on their gentle trudge forth.

The dull ache in her throat, stomach, chest had abated enough to not be all-encompassing, but
nagging. She could think about other things, but the pain was default if she didn’t keep her mind
busy. If she let herself rest for even a moment, her mind would clear, and it would be there. It
would be all she could think about. The pain. The hunger. Like the spongy matter of her brain had
been replaced by a wall of sharp knives, and if she stopped thinking and let herself fly too close to
the sun she’d get scratched.

Darting her eyes around, desperately trying to latch onto anything to keep her thought process
going, she tried to take it all in. So, in true Remus fashion, she began to list things.

To see, to hear, to feel. Trees. Sky. Grass. Rocks. Bark, peeling from the birch. Dirt. Blood soaked
fabric. Rips of it against holly bushes. Ants crawling up trees, burrowing into the holes behind the
cracks of bark. The pitter-patter of their feet as they moved.

The wind. The way it howled and the way it sung. The energy from the moon. The glittering of the
stars. The edges of her vision that blackened with soot and corpse ash. The roaring of fire, however
many miles away, running after her like the slow-rolling poisonous fog in her peripheral vision.

The dementors.

She could… feel them. She could feel them looking for her. She heard them in the rolling of the
wind, as it passed secrets from leaf to leaf, bouncing off of them like trampolines. It wasn’t quite a
screech, the noise they made, but not not a screech either. Frequencies she shouldn’t be able to hear
and yet she could. She cowered, instinctively, at the idea of perception and then looked up to the
sky and cowered a little bit more upon noticing the light tickling the edge of the horizon.

And it was here that her consciousness betrayed her. For her thoughts circled right back to the ache
in her chest. The reflex in her throat, up and up and up.

Her nature.

She closed her eyes, and tried to block it out. Tried to conceptualise it like Remus would. Listing
didn’t work, couldn’t work. Everything was too fast. But it’s lain bare underneath the waning moon
and she can’t avoid it any longer; what are you, what are you, Meadowes? What am I, what am I,
what am I?

I am a vampire, Dorcas thought, against the darkness of the back of her own eyelids. I have been
turned into a vampire.

The ache in her throat seared like an uncontained flame.

Go on, egged the voice in the back of her mind. What else are you? What else do you have left?

I am a vampire, she thought, once more, before pushing herself to dig deeper, blood on her
fingertips; My name is Dorcas Meadowes. I am a hunter, I am a vampire. I was—I was at—

She pressed her hands to her forehead and felt the rolling of crumbling blood underneath the
callousness of her fingertips.

I was at Whittaker House. I was in the ballroom. We were betrayed by Andromeda and captured. I
had to kill Remus. I couldn’t kill Remus. I refused to kill Remus. I couldn’t kill Remus and so Riddle
killed me.

She choked on cold air that she wasn’t inhaling, so much as cohabitating with. There might have
been tears on her cheeks, but it also might have been blood.

He killed me, once more, the facts, get all the facts Dorcas you are a fucking hunter list the
FACTS: I am dead. He killed me and I was turned. He killed me and somebody turned me. He
killed me and now I am dead and I am turned and I am ruined and I am ravenous and I killed
someone and I want to do it again.

The ache seared again. Pale hands slamming against unbroken glass. The child was howling but
she would not listen.

I want to do it again.

Dorcas swallowed down the acid lingering in her throat and let her shaking hands drop, reached her
fingers up to her mouth. Pulling back her top lip, she felt around. She pressed her fingers to her
front teeth, her central incisors and her lateral incisors. Felt her way across like she was stumbling
blind, gagging on acid, until she pressed her two index fingers to her two canines and found teeth
that she had not had before and an ache she had never experienced.

She pricked her finger on her tooth. Under the moonlight, she watched the blood bubble up and
disappear almost as quickly as it had appeared. Under the moonlight, she watched her own blood
disappear and registered that while her inside was cleansed and frozen in time the wind continued
to blow and the world continued to trudge onwards, and there was blood on her hands that would
not dissipate, not ever. It would stay on her hands for eternity. There would be no waking up in a
burning ballroom for them.

The wind howled.

And then Dorcas was obsessively rubbing at her hands, red raw, feeling her chest concave and
shatter through her panicked, overwhelming sobbing as the blood crumbled. She couldn’t fathom
how long it had been. But it had been long enough for his blood to dry up, it had been long enough
for it to scratch her skin as she scrubbed it dry off her hands and her face.

Blood, blood, blood, blood.

Hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt.

The grass grew lighter. Looking up, the sky began to pale, the gentle oncoming of dawn blanketing
a cruel, callous, burning world—a silent world, the burning of Whittaker nowhere to be heard—
and all of her self-sustainability went hurtling out the window. And Dorcas went back to her nature.
Went back to her instincts.

I am a vampire, she thought, and I am going to burn alive if I don’t find shelter.

Soon enough, she was running.

***

Fortunately, Dorcas did not have to run far, for about ten minutes through an endless array of trees
led her to a small hut in a clearing, at the end of a dirt road that was evidently very rarely used, but
used nonetheless.

The door was unlocked, proving just how little this area was populated, and so she strolled right in.
It was a very small cottage. The door opened directly into the living room, a little place with two
sofas breaking at the seams and a little wooden log fireplace in the middle of the room. She
switched on the light and walked into the homely place; took a minute to explore. The kitchen was
tucked away but not separated off from the living room. The whole place was open and, while dust
was coating the surfaces of the dressers and the coffee table, there were also obvious indications
that someone had been here recently. Dirty knife in the sink. Crumbs on a plate left on the bedside
table. Tangible and the intangible. Dorcas could taste the person’s scent.

She wouldn’t have been able to describe it if asked. It felt like something she had known her entire
life. Like how as a child you find yourself knowing the smell of home, of your mother, the smell of
grass and the smell of your favourite meal on the stove and the smell of rain, pitter-pattering on the
concrete outside. If you were to sit a ten year old down and give them any of these scents,
swatched onto a piece of paper, they’d be able to tell you what it was. But they’d never be able to
tell you when they learnt what it was. Just that it was; it always had been. Grass smells like grass.
Roses smell like roses. Mother smells like mother, you know her like the inside of your own skull,
just as Dorcas knew the scent of lingering blood and the presence of a human, passed through
about two days ago.

It is as it always has been. Except it hasn’t. This is the perpetual paradox of the vampire. You are
turned and the innate becomes your innate, like a brick lodged into a hole in the wall that feels like
it’s been there forever to cohabitate with the length of forever that you shall live. It is a false sense
of security. You are tricked into thinking you know everything already, and this is why newly-
turned vampires are so dangerous. They think they have all the power in the world. But they are
the most easily killable and the most self-destructive. It’s a brutal cycle.

Dorcas knew all of this, and yet, walking around with her blood-soaked dress trailing behind her,
couldn’t seem to access it. Taking a breath in and latching onto the scent of prey something in her
chest lurched. To her horror it seemed to be excitement. Thrill. Half an hour ago she’d been
sobbing scrubbing the dried blood off her hands in the middle of a forest she didn’t know where,
now the searing in her throat was both paining her and calming her. Here is opportunity. Here is
food. That, all of that, of vampires and hunters and knives and brass knuckles, that was then. Here
is now. Here is hunger, hunger, hunger.

Dorcas could not pinpoint how long it had been when she came back to her sensibilities. But she’d
clock it at about half an hour that she’d simply lost—or not lost. She could remember stumbling
around, tracking each follicle of hair lost and each step whichever human had been in here had
taken. But none of it was her. None of it felt like her.

She only jumped back into herself, for a figure of speech, when she accidentally swung her hand a
little too far and close to the crack in the curtains facing the east side.

The burning was worse than the fire. It was worse than the hunger in her throat.

“Shit,” she gasped, pulling her hand back, and then all of a sudden she was banging into the fridge.
A gush of momentum sent a paper or two from a side table flying, wafting the human scent around
like a spritz of perfume, and a glass tub filled with some indiscernible spice fell from a shelf to
Dorcas’ left, smashing on the corner of the counter and sending shards and spice everywhere. She
flinched as the glass rattled against the linoleum floor.

Taking a breath in, and then another, she whipped her head around. It was all so fast. Darting
around, she saw the spice; the glass; the paper. The way it settled on the floor and the sound it
made. And then she moved her gaze down to her arm, where she had caught herself on the bottom
of her palm and the inside of her wrist. Brutal dark blisters and burn marks bubbled there, tearing
her skin to pieces. It was sizzling.

She opened her mouth but no sound came out in her pain; this one did not heal like the cuts did.
Albeit, it didn’t take long; perhaps ten seconds of pain before the skin started to fold in on itself,
clearing up and knitting together her usual smooth dark brown skin, no burn scars or blemishes to
be seen.

It took her another minute of clear thinking—her sinuses blocked up by the spices—to trail her eyes
upwards, to her upper arm, in which there was an established perhaps five-year-old scar from a
knife wielded by a sneaky vampire on a hunting trip gone awry. The scar was still there.

And then her hand smacked against her neck so quickly and instinctively that she shocked herself.

Sirius’ bite. On the side of her neck. It was entirely and completely healed.

And everything… made sense.

“Oh,” she breathed out, shakily. This is why. This is why I’m here. This is why I lived.

Her brain went fifty miles an hour.

Sirius had turned her. But he had not done it on purpose. Dorcas would have known; she would
have felt it. She’d felt venom in her system before, from vampires on hunts who were a little too
cocky, who thought they were hilarious. Turn the hunter, ha ha ha. Look at her now. All of those
three day quarantines after being bit meant nothing. Here she was, bitten in the ass. Bitten on the
neck. Turned by a Pureblood.

At this thought, she let out a dry laugh. Clasped her hand over her mouth; let out another. She had
not even met a Pureblood before February of this year. It is June, and Dorcas is dead.

Her laughing slowly turned to sobs.

She found herself sliding down to the floor, sitting beside the pile of paprika—that’s what it was—
and the shards of glass scattered across the kitchen floor, trying to rub the blood off her hands once
more. Eventually she gained coherent thought and pulled herself up, cutting her hand on a loose
shard on the countertop and barely even flinching. Dragging her feet and her dress and her bones
out of the room as the cut on her hand healed up, just as the bite on her neck had, just as the cuts on
her arms from when she and Remus had fought had. But not the established scars. Not the evidence
of her life before. They lingered on her skin.

Dorcas washed the blood off her hands, her face, her body. She stripped down to nothing in the
bathroom and left her gown peeled off and crumpled on the floor, cupping water from the sink and
letting it trickle down her body. Her hair was still red. Her face wasn’t hers; she’d almost forgotten
and it was jarring to look in the mirror. But it wasn’t not hers. Avni’s magic had started to ease up.
It was still too disorienting for her to look too hard, so once she had washed the blood off of her
face as much as she could, going with it the remnants of the blood red lipstick that had not been
smudged and the smears of makeup left on her cheeks, she turned away, purposefully not looking
at herself as she tried to clean everything up.

Eventually she accepted that the ash was too thick and she was too dirty, and so she showered.

She was halfway dressed with no shoes on and an unbuttoned flannel taken from the sparse
drawers of the owner of the house, who was very obviously a man, when her… figurative ears
perked up.

She froze. All movement.

Down the road—too far down the road for anyone else to hear—a car rumbled on. Dorcas paused,
not taking a breath, and listened. Felt. It was the feeling, really.

She felt herself tingle, almost all over. That all encompassing searing. That all encompassing
hunger.

No, she thought, buttoning up her flannel, no, no, no, I don’t want to do this again. I don’t want to
do this again. I don’t.

Her fangs filled out.

Gasping for breath, trying to desperately stimulate some sort of familiarity, some sort of life
through breathing in, and out, and in, and out, she immediately felt overwhelmed. None of it went
past her sternum. None of it brought her relief. Her eyes darted around, trying to latch onto
something, anything to make this stop, to make this stop, but the car drew closer and the scent
drew stronger and Dorcas ran out into the living room in her panic so quickly that she caught her
arm on the same crack in the curtains that she had before because she had not had the forethought
to avoid it in her panic.

She was choking, gasping in pain and clutching her arm when the car stopped.

By the time the door opened, the burns had healed back up, her body was free of contusions or any
feeling stronger than the burn in her throat. The hands behind the glass, screaming no, no, no, were
gagging on the acid reflux. But Dorcas simply stood, frozen. Tears tracking down her face like
diamonds. Eyes dead.

The man walked through the door, wearing a thick suede jacket and a cap, on backwards, and it hit
her all at once.

She snarled unwittingly. He didn’t even get a word out before she was kicking the door shut,
plunging them back into the safe darkness, and his blood was splattering against the wooden walls.

***

Dorcas killed eight more people on her journey from Sleepy Hollow back to Boardwalk. She killed
them in the span of two days. Two on the first, six on the second.

Killing the man in the cabin dead left her with an indeterminate amount of too much time to sit
with his cooling corpse as she waited for the sun to set. With her hunger being mildly satiated, she
was able to think coherently. She needed to get home. She needed to get back to Remus and Mary.
Sirius. Marlene. She had to let them know that she was alive.

It took her about three hours to remember the fact that she’d picked up her basilisk blade. In all the
hubbub of waking up undead and the burning house, she’d completely forgotten. It felt nice to have
in her hand. Weird—it felt heavier, and somehow simultaneously less powerful and more for a
reason she couldn’t discern—but nice. She felt protected. She spun it around her fingers for a few
times before realising the dangers, and immediately hiding it, wrapping the blade firmly around
some linen she found in a cupboard in the kitchen so it was protected, and she was too.

His blood had dried completely and the corpse had only just begun to smell when the sun went
down. She reached her hand tentatively into the light spewed out from the little crack in the
curtains, almost flinching back as her hand fell into the light only to realise it was the product of an
early nautical twilight and no longer the murderous sun. She went out almost immediately to start a
fire, in which she burned her dress. And then she gave it half an hour for the world to darken up a
little bit so she would be more inconspicuous in her travels before setting off, finally looking like
herself again, clad in a baggy pair of cargo pants and an entirely unflattering flannel.

Wrapped up basilisk blade shoved in one huge loose pocket. Smoke signal to the cabin in the
woods, she ran.

She killed the first man five hours into her nine hour night-time grace period, at a foggy-but-
dementorless 3am, in an alley outside the Hospital, of all places.

Coming to her senses after a blank period in which all she was was hunger, locking eyes with the
exsanguinated man, gaping at her through a burst windpipe, she cried.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, tears bubbling in her eyes, his blood gargling in her mouth. “I’m so
sorry, I’m so sorry.”

He died.
“I’m sorry,” she choked one last time, wiping the back of her mouth obsessively, becoming keenly
aware of people and noises and then in her panic she was climbing the fire escape of a building just
as someone came walking down the alley. Her escape was instinctual as well.

Dorcas is a hunter. She is logical. She pushed her feelings down, because she had three hours left
of night left before she had to find shelter again and sit idly for fifteen hours, trying not to burn to
death. So she ran. She ran as fast as she could, towards the city, towards Manhattan, towards home.

This did not work out.

It turned out that the closer one got to civilisation in New York, the closer one got to the
Dementors. Of course, they were up there. They were in the sky in Sleepy Hollow—Lily had
fought them away, but by the time Dorcas escaped the cabin the residual fog had encompassed the
sky yet again. As far as she knew, the professed ‘deadly zone’ spawned from the heart of the city,
extended up halfway through Connecticut and down about halfway through New Jersey. The
residual fog, not deadly but menacing, was rolling through every single bordering state.

From the last thing she knew, the U.S. Government was so enraptured with panicked evacuation
movements they wouldn’t have even noticed the explosion at Whittaker House. Aside from a thin
strand of remaining police forces and state officials intent on a) continuing to do their jobs and b)
pretending that the world isn’t on the brink of ending, there are only really stragglers left in the
city. Stragglers who are… well, stupid, in her opinion, and also under curfew to compensate the
fact that they refuse to leave. Point is, there aren’t enough of them around to notice. One less after
the man she just killed.

Running and running into the smog of the city, trying to avoid populated areas, she ended up
sneaking into Pelham Bay Park. Which she thought was a fantastic idea until she came across a
night ranger and killed her without a second thought.

It’s not grandiose. It’s not show-stopping. The fact of the matter is is that this is her life, now, these
are her instincts, there, and the woman was bleeding through her uniform badge before Dorcas
could even acknowledge what she’d done.

This is how she ended up stowed away in an empty building on City Island, hearing sirens bleed
through the air in the distance as the sun came up.

Against all of the odds, covered in blood, she slept.

***

On night two, she kills six people, and she kills four of them all at once, and this is how it goes:

The stretch of water from the very end of City Island to the tip of the peninsula of King’s Point
spans about a mile, a mile and a half. Dorcas waited until it was dead silent—wasting two of her
hours, to her dismay—and then ran, jumped, swam.

Not having to breathe proved to be fucking jarring when she ended up twenty feet underneath the
water with absolutely no need to come up for air. As much as there were no boats, especially in the
climate (foggy skies, foggy skies, nobody can save you on a boat you fool) she still stayed a solid
level underneath the water as she swam. It took her about an hour, maybe an hour and fifteen to
swim the entire way, mainly because the current was rather aggressive and she also kept getting
lost.

She clambered up onto the point, spat out the salt water that had pooled in her mouth. She wrung
her clothes out, her hair out. Looking up, faced with Queens, she began to walk.

This was around 2am, and her night was already shitty. It only got worse.

See, Dorcas had not fed since last night, which only meant that her lips were twitching and her
brain was foggy and she was not thinking straight; perhaps she was not thinking at all. She was
back to that mantra. Satiate. Satiate. Satiate. She could smell people, she could smell blood, blood,
blood, blood. And it smelled appealing. She wanted it, and she wanted it now.

The guilt, the regret, oh it was still there. But every time she drank from someone, every time she
killed someone, it got a little bit weaker.

She found increasingly that the fog was getting worse and increasingly that it was in her favour.
Having such low levels of visibility left her honing in on her senses more. Her gait was bouncy and
her fangs piercing on the inside of her bottom lip, salivating the inside of her mouth as she could
smell, but not see, a person coming closer. It was like a game. She had an immense amount of fun.
When he came into view she darted out, killed him in a corner. Yanked him, disappeared, snapped
his neck to shut him up. Still hungry, and frustrated, the body was thrown into the bushes, and she
continued on, hoping to at least make it fifteen miles, maybe, of the ninety-odd she still had to do.

She made it five.

Crossing quietly onto a main, ghost-town of a road, she felt the movement before she saw it
happen. Sweeping overhead. A large, majestic dementor.

She could feel it. She wasn’t sure if that was a vampire thing or a they’re-getting-closer thing. But
she could feel it; not only the seeping loneliness and sorrow, though she could feel that too, but
something else. Something that could only be described as a presence, like a weighing on the both
of her shoulders. She could feel them, she could hear them, almost. But it wasn’t as if they were
making noise. That screeching that wasn’t a screeching; as if their mere presence was noise. She
could hear them, like Sirius could hear them, like Lily could. She knew they were coming.

And so when one of them got a little bit too close, she dashed away to find shelter. She cowered
underneath the porch of one of the suburban houses, finding a door to a conservatory and thinking
that the four walls may make a better hiding spot, feeling the triumph spread inside of her when
the door was unlocked and in fact open only to be hit by a sort of barrier and pushed away as she
tried to walk in.

She was not fucking invited in.

Grumbling and making her way back to cower on the porch as the Dementors passed, she sighed.
Sirius never has this problem, she thought, bitterly, and then amended her thoughts: Sirius never
has this problem because he makes a point to never go to owned residences, Dorcas.

Rule one of being a vampire, she would suppose. She has a lot to learn.

The Dementors swept back up into the sky, and as the buzzing in her ears ceased she tapped into
another noise she could hear down the road.

It seemed to be three scents. Three—no, there was a fourth just there, four voices. Four men. She
could tell by their sloppy footsteps and their slurring voices that they were drunk, and she could tell
by the way her fangs had filled out that this had the potential to end very, very badly.

Due to the fact she’d eaten, despite how ravenous she still was, she had some sort of semblance of
clarity left. So she had the willpower here to try to drown them out, to focus, disconnect. She took a
deep breath, closed her eyes. Please, please, please.

She disconnected so intently, apparently, that she miscaught just how close the voices were, and
upon walking down away from the porch onto the path she faced herself with the understanding
that they were fifteen feet away. Fifteen feet. They could not see her through the fog yet. If she
would only move, they could continue not to see her. If she would only move, she could get as far
as she wanted to go by sunrise and be at Boardwalk by tomorrow. If she could only move they
would not be walking down the safety net; fourteen feet, thirteen, twelve. Eleven.

At around about ten feet she was still standing there. And, of course, as the fog wavered, they saw
her.

“Oh,” said one of them, stopping in his tracks. Now being able to see them Dorcas could discern
faces; brown hair, grey hair, long nose, thin lips, old, young, American and drunk. The first one,
the only one who’d noticed her, smiled.

She must have looked terrified, because they took a step forward instead of taking a step back.

“You’re not supposed to be out at night, honey,” said one of them, with an endearing pet name that
was not endearing at all out of his mouth. They all looked to be around their thirties. Dorcas was
twenty-nine in September and she would never reach that age. “7pm curfew, remember?”

They all laughed gently, presumably at the irony.

“The CDC isn’t going to be happyyyy,” one of them drawled. He stumbled a little bit. Dorcas bit
into her bottom lip and did not dare breathe. Her silence evidently was not what they wanted.

“Do you want to come out with us?” one of the men said, taking a step forward. Dorcas
instinctively leaned back. The man grinned, sleazily. “We can protect you from the shadows.”

They laughed. Up in the sky, the fog seemed to thicken.

Dorcas swallowed, and it felt like razors down her throat.

The first man took another step, closer to her. He had a bag over his shoulder. He had a smile on
his face. Her head snapped around to him.

“You don’t want to do that,” she said, being careful to not take a breath. Her feet were glued to the
floor; something wouldn’t let her leave. She knew exactly what that something was and she knew
exactly how this was going to go.

“And why not?” he asked, a little too loudly. The sky stirred again.

“Please,” Dorcas whispered. “Please, this is for your own good. Turn around and walk away.”

He turned to his friends, who sniggered at her a little.

“Is she threatening us?”

“Walk away or you’re going to die,” she said, and he grinned.

“Why, yes, she is.” Taking a step forward, he clicked his tongue. “And who, exactly, is going to
kill us, beautiful?”

“If not me,” she whispered, and then her eyes flickered up to the sky, “them.”
Two of the men's gazes followed hers. The third’s face fell. They all looked slightly horrified, but
the man at the front simply smirked.

“Them?” he asked. He looked up to the sky, spreading his arms out wide, then looked back at her.
“Them?”

“Chad… maybe we should go—”

“No,” he spat, turning to him and then back. “This little girl doesn’t scare me. She’s—wha’s that
word. Fear-mongering.” He sneered at her, as if he had made a point. “Them. They’re going to kill
us, Kyle, them, in the fucking sky. Like those bastards on the street with signs saying that fucking
Jesus is coming. Well, I’m an atheist, sweetheart. You can’t scare me. You don’t.”

Dorcas, who had run out of breath and did not dare open her mouth to take another one, stayed
quiet. He laughed.

“See?” he hollered, turning to his friends. One of them was still glued to the sky while the other
two looked increasingly worried. One was backing away. “She’s all talk, no bite. Aren’t you,
darling?”

He took a step towards her.

And then another one.

“I said,” he whispered, “aren’t you, darling?”

He reached out. His hand seemed to move in slow-motion as it made its way through the thick air
towards her, where it landed on her shoulder.

The touch ignited something in Dorcas. Something electric, something carnal.

She opened her mouth and took a deep, deep breath in.

Half a second later his arm was snapped clean, as she’d brought hers up to wrench him off her. He
barely had time to cry out before she threw him backwards and then was on him at lightning speed,
yanking him by the head and sinking her teeth into his neck.

She drank from him for a second or two with him screaming and writhing in her arms; he was taller
than her, but made so small from the way he was cowering at her mercy. She pulled back, blood
trickling down the sides of her mouth and smearing onto her chin, and the horrified man made eye
contact with her.

“Devil,” he gasped, as blood bubbled from his neck. “You’re the devil.”

“I thought you were a fuckin’ atheist,” Dorcas sneered.

She didn’t even let him respond. He continued to scream as she drank from him and she let him
until it was unbearable, at which point she reached a hand up to snap his neck, feeling the crack
reverberate into her mouth, still latched onto him.

When she was done she let the body fall. It hit the ground with a thud and the granite fizzled as his
blood poured onto it.

All three of the men were running away, which was wise, and the fog was obscuring them from
Dorcas’ view, which was advantageous for them in any other situation, but not, perhaps,
advantageous in this one, for Dorcas did not rely on sight. Like any blind animal, a blinded Basilisk
on the shores of Greece, she was reliant on her sense of smell. On the way she could hear three sets
of footsteps and the way she could pinpoint where they were without thinking. The fog did
wonders, until it didn’t, for humans fall short to shoddy senses, and Dorcas took a breath in and
tasted the fear and let it lead her to her prey, fifteen, twenty feet away. The man who had tried to
intervene; she had him by the back of the neck and flung him to the ground in seconds.

“Please,” he whimpered, “please, mercy.”

“No,” said Dorcas, plainly, in a voice she didn’t recognise.

She ripped open his neck and the blood spurted over her face like a prize.

The third one she cut off from the front. He barely had time to open his mouth before she had him,
by the throat, one hand over his mouth to shut him up.

The fourth was a bit more of a challenge. In that halfway through her feast on the third, his muffled
cries were joined with another’s cries. Except those were the cries of utter, absolute agony.

Her opponent. Her rival. The Dementors had gotten to the fourth one first, and she could not get
near.

Dorcas, in a haze of almost… lust, removed herself from the third man’s neck and sped towards an
alley, in which she crouched with the dying man behind a corner and cowered at the thickening
sky. The buzzing.

The man was still screaming. Instead of feeling remorse, Dorcas felt exhilaration. Instead of feeling
pity, Dorcas felt agitation. Instead of wanting to help him, Dorcas wanted him.

She wanted him. He was her prey.

Dorcas slumped the man, who was now crying, against the wall, and patted him down. He had his
hand shakily covering his neck and he squirmed as she patted him but ultimately had too little
strength to do anything. Eventually, she found what she wanted. A lighter, in his pocket.

She smiled.

“I’m going to put you out of your misery,” she whispered, to the man, “because you have helped
me today.”

He groaned, blood spilling out of his mouth. His breath began to quicken as she moved towards
him, and then, as she pressed her hands to his head, he closed his eyes.

A snap, a minute and an all clear as the Dementors swarmed around the one remaining, screaming
man, Dorcas ran on light feet out of the alleyway, as fast as she could to get to the first man she
killed. She arrived skidding on her knees beside him, having given herself too much momentum; it
was no hassle, though, and she, upon rolling him over, yanked his bag from his shoulder and
opened it, rummaging inside.

There were a lot of things in it. Keys and a notebook and such. But the most important and the one
she’d known would have been in here, as she had been able to smell it, was a half-drunk bottle of
very hard liquor.

The sequence of events to follow felt like something out of a dream. Dorcas hadn’t even been one
hundred percent aware of what she was doing and why she was doing it until she was, quite
literally, doing it. Dragging the body as far as she could towards the swarming Dementors that she
could barely see through the fog, she stopped as soon as the sorrow in her body told her it was the
danger zone. She felt, briefly, like she might never experience happiness again. And then she
realised that she didn’t need happiness, so long as she had satiation.

Dropping the man to the floor, the wind picking up and billowing the screams all around, she
flicked the cap of the bottle off and, tipping it over, doused him in it. It came out glugging, taking a
good few seconds to pour out, of which she made sure to cover him and douse his clothes, splatter
his face. Then she tossed the bottle to the side and looked up into the unrest of the fog.

Taking a deep, deep breath, she flicked the cap of the lighter. And she dropped it.

The corpse was set alight instantly. The flame began mellow but picked up almost within a few
seconds, as it caught onto all of the alcohol and then his cotton shirt, his acrylic jacket. He burnt
bright, relentlessly; he lit Dorcas up in a golden glow, almost hallowed, like Hercules on the wrong
side of life.

The Dementors fled almost immediately. They didn’t go far. It was normal fire, not fiendfyre, so it
couldn’t necessarily hurt them. The flame wasn’t even that big, but it was enough to drive them
away. The light shone through their darkness, shone through the cracks, enough that they cowered;
enough that they stopped sucking the life out of the fourth man. Enough so that Dorcas could dart
through the darkness, seize him, and suck the life out of him herself.

She took him back to the alleyway, and drained him there. He was limp. Iron tickled her nostrils
and smoke banged on their doors, but Dorcas didn’t care. She didn’t care. Satiate, satiate, satiate.

It was only upon finishing up on the fourth man, feeling the blood smeared all over her face and
trickling down her neck, that she heard the screeches. Heard the calls of the Dementors. The
harrowing, wretched screams of souls yet to pass, yet to halt.

In the time that she stood up, they got louder. She took a few steps out of the alleyway and looked
up into the sky.

It was stirring. But not like before. It was a commotion.

It was a… signal.

She took a step forward, listening. Listening to that of which she should not be able to hear. It
sounded like a creaky door; it sounded like a dying cat. A dying child. Death. And then it changed.
Oddly enough, their default sounded like death but hurt was something entirely different. One of
them screeched, as if hurt, or seized. The fog thickened. It thickened, it thickened.

A gust of wind blew towards her, and the scents didn’t hit Dorcas until the smoke and fog around
them that they had been harnessing had dissipated and the figures, four or five of them, stood up
straight. And began to walk towards her. Vampires.

Dorcas ran.

She turned around and she ran, she ran. Disappearing through the streets, she felt the cold follow
her, the fog surround her. She could hear them chasing her. She wasn’t intently not focusing on
anything. She had it all, all her senses, on overdrive, and they were chasing after her. They were
chasing after her, whoever they were.

She was the pariah, the Dementors were the devil. They were whatever lies underneath.
One of them caught her.

He pushed her, tripped her up; they went flying, in vamp-speed across the street and he pushed her
up against the wall, bashing her head in on the brick. She hissed at him and spun, punching him
round the face and pouncing on him; they spun around and around, fighting like two vampires do.
But Dorcas had been something else before she had been a vampire. Dorcas was something else.
Dorcas was everything.

She managed to get the upper hand. It was a window of perhaps half a second, but it was all she
needed. As quickly as a hunter she unsheathed her Basilisk blade, twirled it in her hands, and
stabbed it upwards through his jaw into his brain.

There was a period of silence, for two or three seconds, as the vampire sunk to the ground. Silence
in which it was just Dorcas and her bloody, bloody dagger. And then hell rained down upon her,
and she was ambushed.

Just before they knocked her out, she screamed, incomprehensibly until it is comprehensible.

And the world shuddered at his name.

***

“She said Sirius.”

Dorcas woke, slowly. She regained each sense one by one; touch, knees to the floor, cold chains,
hands on her, hands all over her. Smell, damp, stale, metal. Vampires. Only vampires.

Sight; she opened her eyes, slowly, and had to blink a few times to adjust. Licking her lips and
feeling blood crumble off of them she looked around. She was in an average sized room. It was
dingy, and quiet, only lit up by lightbulbs and torches; no natural light. No windows, except one; or
where one should be. It was boarded up.

There was an armchair in the corner, a table with papers and potions lining them to her left. Just out
of her easy eyesight, but visible if she strained, seemed to be a desk. She could smell fire, and wax,
and magic. She could also smell paper. A bookshelf, perhaps.

“She said Sirius. I’m telling you.”

“I don’t know. What if she didn’t? Mavi’ll be pissed if we bring her and it ended up she said somet
else.”

“What else would she have said?”

“I dunno? Shit. Serious. Phineas. Silly bus.”

“Why the fuck would she have said silly bus?”

“Why the fuck would she have said Sirius?!”

The floor was concrete and the room was cold, in temperature and in visage. She took it in for a
few moments, and then, on instinct, began to thrash against the hands holding her back.

“Woah,” said one of the men. He had gritty, deep voice, and seemed to be on her right side,
holding her arms behind her neck. “Calm it, feisty.”

She hissed.
“Aw, look at her. Wittle fangies.”

“Shut up, Conrad.”

Dorcas thrashed again, but her arms stayed in place. She tried to get up and they pushed her down.
Someone held her by both sides of her head. While it was frustrating that she couldn’t move, she
could at least hear the two men—it was two—grunting, proving she had some fight left in her.

“My God, these new turns are always so irritating—”

“Oi, get the thing.”

“The what?”

“The thing—my thing, the fucking—”

“Your thing? How come you get it?”

There was a shuffling behind her, as they seemingly tried to lean over to the desk without letting
Dorcas go.

“I found it.”

“You did fucking not. Merle found it when she stuck him through the ‘ead with it.”

“I found it, Conrad—”

Dorcas, seeing her chance, yanked and thrashed again. It was strenuous and it was, ultimately, no
use, for she was almost immediately pinned with the Basilisk blade pressed to her neck.

She froze. Completely froze.

“Oooh,” trilled one of them, high-pitched. “Got the power now ‘av we?”

He pressed it in a big further, and Dorcas inhaled sharply, fear seeping into her chest.

“Stop it, George. We don’t know what that thing does.”

“No, we don’t,” George whispered. He had a Cockney accent; Conrad was Irish. “But I like it, I
do.”

A moment of silence.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, leave it alone—”

The knife slipped away.

The two men bickered for a while. Dorcas sat still. There was no point to resistance; there was
nowhere she could go, and they had the ultimate weapon to kill her mercilessly. So she sat, and,
doing the only thing she could do, she listened.

The conversation circled back eventually. George, Dorcas would learn after he spoke, left Conrad
to hold her from behind and came to crouch in front of her, just out of reach of her bite. He had a
smile on his face.

“So,” he started. “You know Sirius Black, ey?”

Dorcas took a deep breath in. And then she spat on him.

Conrad burst out laughing.

“I like this one,” he chortled, as George wiped his face. His eyes were thunderous.

“Shut up, Conrad.”

He turned his attention back to Dorcas. Squinting, he looked over her, once, twice.

“You think she’s actually the one?” he murmured, directed at his partner. It was silent for a
moment.

“Don’t know. Could be.”

“How else would she know ‘im, right?” he muttered, taking Dorcas’ chin in one hand. She jerked it
away, but he held it tighter, forcing her to look at him. “He’s not exactly the easiest person t’ find.”

“Yeah, well. Neither’s Mavi fucking Dolohov, apparently. You called for her right?”

“Only four hours ago.”

It struck Dorcas with an air of disorientation that she may have been unconscious for a lot longer
than she thought.

A moment of silence.

“Should we snap her neck again?”

“Nah,” said George, quickly, letting her go. He fell back on his heels. “Maybe we can just do it
ourselves. Who fucking needs Mavi.”

There was another uncomfortable silence.

“What do you mean…”

“What if we just take it higher?” George asked, standing up and walking out of Dorcas’ eyesight.
“Take it to Hüsniye. She’s supposed to be the director, here. The only reason we’re taking it to
Mavi is ‘cos—”

“‘Cause she’s got a vendetta against Sirius,” said Conrad, quickly. “‘Cause she asked all potential
suspects go through her before they go to Mummy dearest. ‘Cause she has the power to reward us
just as Hüsniye does, with a bit less of the, I don’t know, George—murder?”

“Conrad.”

“Merle is dead. We’re already risking our lives bringing her to Mavi as it is, and she’s the tame
one. But you know she’s been pissed off recently—if this bitch has no connection to Sirius, it’s
your arse on the line.”

A moment.

“Why mine?”

“I— well–”
“Why mine, Conrad?”

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

“I am in Mavi’s… favour, as of late.”

Silence.

“Tell me she didn’t fuck you.”

“She did.”

“Oh, Dark Lord save us, she did not. As if there was anythin’ that could make you more
insufferable—”

The pair of them cut off, instantly, at the sound of a harsh unlocking of bolts. Footsteps. Coming
closer, and closer.

The metal door in the corner of the room swung open, and in, shadowed by two guards, walked
one of the most beautiful women Dorcas had ever seen.

She had olive skin, and very dark brown—nearing black, but not quite—hair, slicked down, falling
completely and artificially straight over a simple, sweeping, long-sleeved black dress. Her eyes
were brown, a deep, soft colour on harsh features; she was an array of juxtapositions, a sharp
cupids bow with a soft jawline, a full bottom lip and a full, tall nose. There was hair dusting her
forearms. She blinked once and then twice at the boys before stepping into the room, and the two
guards stepped in behind her.

“Leave us,” she said, upon seeing the boys.

The guards looked at each other, and then they silently left. The door shut and it glimmered with
what Dorcas knew to be an automatic silencing charm.

She looked at Dorcas, briefly. And then she looked at what was presumably the two men, above
her, and pursed her lips.

“George,” she said, by way of greeting; and then, more feebly: “Conrad.”

“Evening, ma’am.”

Darting her eyes down to Dorcas, her lip quirked upwards. “My favourite, and yet somehow least
competent snatchers. What have I been summoned for today, might I ask?”

There was a moment of silence. Dorcas felt a movement and then felt herself be let go. Conrad and
George stood by either side of her, showing her off, as if she were a trophy.

“New-turn,” said Conrad, mechanically. “Dementors alerted us of her last night. Found her on the
scene of a 4-person slaughter. We’ve been tracking her movements, and—and we think we can
track her to some of the unrest up in Orange, coming from Sleepy Hollow.”

Mavi cleared her throat.

“And?”

“And,” George butted in. His voice wavered. “We, therefore, believe that she may have been
present at the ball. As you were the one present—”

“I do not recognise her,” said Mavi, coldly. “Is that all?”

“No!” Conrad squeaked, desperately. “She said Sirius! She said—Sirius.”

Mavi froze. She looked at him, up and down. Time seemed to stretch endlessly.

“Explain.”

“When we were capturing her,” George said. “She was thrashing, in her mania, and as we managed
to detain her, she screamed for Sirius. In a very familiar way. As if she hoped ‘e would come save
her. And,” he said it quickly, and moved quicker, making sure to not let any time lapse between
pauses for Mavi to question them, “we found this, on her person. Neither of us have ever seen
anything like it. But smell the magic, ma’am; does this not seem like the weapon produced by a
tyrannical resistance group? A weapon of needless destruction?”

With this, he presented the basilisk blade to her, wrapped in a soft linen. Mavi unwrapped it
carefully, with manicured, gentle fingers, and held it in one hand. It glimmered against the
lightbulb almost directly overhead. She traced the blade from the hilt all the way to the tip with
one finger. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath in, let it out.

When her eyes opened, it was with recollection. Her eyes flickered to Dorcas and then almost
immediately away.

“So,” she said, slowly, wrapping the blade back in the linen as fast as she could. “You think she
came from the ball, and you think she has direct connections to Sirius Black and their obscene
group of agitators.”

“Yes.”

“To be clear, you are therefore implying that she is the missing hunter.”

“Yes.”

“You are implying that, upon the Dark Lord killing her, she was turned.”

“Yes.”

“You understand that, in the instance of her living past the merciful death the Dark Lord granted
her, she is a symbol of resistance to the Dark Lord’s sovereignty and must be executed
immediately?”

“Yes.”

“And you understand,” said Mavi, “that, if she is who you hypothesise her to be, you will be hailed
heroes among our community. Saviours, even.”

A more excited: “Yes.”

Mavi looked at them, for a second. And then she moved fluidly, with grace, and knelt down in
front of Dorcas. When she cupped her chin with one hand, Dorcas didn’t pull away. She simply
stared her down. Glared daggers at her.
Mavi scanned her face, slowly, up and down, left and right. She touched Dorcas’ shoulders, down
her arms. Her face. Dorcas, obviously, had not looked as she looked now at the ball. Mavi couldn’t
recognise her by face. But Dorcas knew there were other ways to recognise people.

She looked at Dorcas deeply. And Dorcas looked at her.

A moment passed.

And then Mavi was standing up, brushing herself off, and looking severely at the two vampires
standing each side of her.

“Who else knows about this?”

“Nobody,” said George, firmly. “Nobody at all. We were the only ones to respond to the
Dementor’s call, and we came straight here, ma’am. Did not hesitate for a second.”

Mavi’s eyes shifted.

“It’s true,” Conrad affirmed.

Her eyes shifted again.

“You have done well, boys,” she said, with a smile. “It is her. You were right.”

Dorcas felt the sharpness of the intake of breath from her left, and a chortle of laughter from the
right.

“I knew it,” said Conrad. “Knew she said Sirius. Knew it the whole time.”

“Yes,” replied Mavi, nodding, slowly. “Yes. And you made a wise choice bringing her to me first.
You have done everything correct. You should be proud of yourselves. You are good snatchers.”

There was a moment, in which Dorcas could feel the pride emanating off the vampires by her
sides.

And then Mavi cleared her throat, and continued:

“It really is a shame that I have to kill you now.”

There wasn’t even a moment to process.

One moment she was there. The next moment she was gone, and then she was back, and there was
blood soaking one of her hands. Blood splattered against the wall and the desk to Dorcas’ right.

And two bodies, thumping on either side of her, simultaneously.

Dorcas had flinched. Looking up, her mouth was wide open. A moment passed.

“I apologise for the shock,” said Mavi. Her voice was, oddly, softer now. She moved to the desk
and pulled a tissue out of a blood-stained box, wiping her hand with it. “But, fie, it was necessary.”

“What,” Dorcas gasped, catching the breath she didn’t need. She swallowed and her throat felt like
razors. She was thirsty. She was always thirsty. She couldn’t form coherent sentences and so she
repeated the same word she was clinging to: “What?”

Mavi kneeled in front of her. The pool of blood was seeping dangerously close.
“I need you to listen to me very carefully, Dorcas,” Mavi murmured, stern and unshakeable.
“They’re looking for you.”

Dorcas blinked, three, four times.

“What?”

“They’re looking for you,” she repeated. “The vampires. The rebels. The Dark Lord. He wanted to
make a show of your corpse and it wasn’t there. Thankfully it wasn’t one of his that spotted you.
The rebels have been shoved underground and Anastasia can’t do much right now but one of her
men saw you flee the scene, so she reached out to me.”

“You,” whispered Dorcas. “But you’re a Pureblood.”

“By nature,” Mavi said, “not by name.”

Dorcas stared at her, processing this.

By nature, not by name. Anastasia. Ana.

She’s on our side?

“My friends,” Dorcas said. She wanted it to come out stern but it manifested as not much more than
a mumble. “My family. Remus—if they’re looking, I need to go back. I need to go back to
Boardwalk. They must be looking everywhere—I need to tell them that—that I’m okay—”

Mavi’s expression twitched. Dorcas felt a trickle down her spine instantly.

“What,” she said, gravely. “What is it?”

“I’m sorry.”

“What?” Dorcas spat, her breathing quickening. Mavi swallowed and raised her head.

“There is no Boardwalk anymore,” Mavi said, carefully. “It’s gone.”

A moment passed.

“What do you mean it’s—” Dorcas said, her brows knitting together. “No, it’s—it’s right there, up
at the end of the—”

“It’s gone,” said Mavi. “Nobody has been able to find it since the battle ended. Nobody has been
able to get into contact with anyone from your end. And nobody has been able to find Sirius
Black.”

“No, it can’t have just disappeared,” Dorcas insisted, shaking her head. “Huge buildings and tens
of people can’t just evaporate. Take me there.”

“Nobody can find it, Dorcas.”

“Take me there. I can find it—it’s my home. They’re my home—”

“There won’t be anything to find,” Mavi said, her voice strained. While still stern, she seemed
empathetic. “The last signal Anastasia received was about an explosion.”

Dorcas’ heart stopped.

“An explosion,” she repeated, emotionlessly.

Mavi opened her mouth. Closed it again.

“I’m sorry,” she said, eventually. Dorcas stared into space.

She couldn’t feel anything.

She couldn’t feel.

She couldn’t—

No.

“No,” she said, quietly, shaking her head. “They’re alive. They’re still there.”

Mavi stared at her for a second.

“Well, if they are,” she said, “it’ll be up to you to find them. Which is why I need you to listen to
me very, very carefully.”

Dorcas blinked herself back into existence. The walls loomed over her like a suffocating dome. She
wishes she could be blinked out but the more she closed her eyes the more she continued to exist
and exist, and make it harder for herself by getting dirt in her eyes.

“Okay,” she whispered.

“We don’t have very long. An extended absence of mine will make them suspicious. I need you to
do exactly as I say, and not protest. Can you do that?”

“Okay.”

Mavi took one breath in.

“I’m going to take you to a cell.”

“No.”

“I told you to shut up,” she hissed, shutting Dorcas up immediately. Her face cleared. One strand
of her hair was out of place and she suddenly looked like the most harried woman on the East
Coast. “I was not present at the audience in the ballroom but I know exactly how you got yourself
killed, Dorcas, and running your mouth won’t fly here. I’m going to take you to a cell, and you are
going to blend in. You are going to shut up. You won’t say a word. You’ll be just another rogue
vampire, there will be nothing special about you. That way you might actually live.”

Dorcas swallowed, and felt it run down her throat like daggers.

“What do you mean a cell?” she asked, licking her dry lips. “Where even—” she looked around
again, “where are we?”

“Ah.” Mavi’s face cleared. “I’m sorry. How rude of me. This is Dolohov prison.”

She gaped. “Prison?”

“One of a quartet,” she said, nodding. “Built for the first war. Used for the second. It is where we
imprison defectors, rebels, people who defy the Dark Lord’s divine cause.” She must have seen a
look pass across Dorcas’ face, because she wrinkled her nose. “Yeah. I know.”

“You imprison people who fight against Riddle here?” Dorcas asked, sceptically.

“I don’t want to. But I have to keep up the facade. I defected in the fifties, and have been an
informant from the inside to Anastasia for over a decade. As far as I’m aware, I’m the only one. I
can’t compromise my position until entirely necessary.” She swallows, looks over Dorcas; her
ripped shirt, the dried blood on her mouth, her messed-up hair. She must look an utter wreck, but
Mavi Dolohov looked at her like she was a million dollar prize. “This is it. You are it. This is
entirely necessary. I’ve been waiting a long time for you, Dorcas Meadowes, but to do this we have
to do this right. To do this right you have to do as I say.”

Dorcas hesitated. She was cold, and she was hungry; it was gnawing, from the inside out, like she
was being butchered. She was frightened. She wanted Remus, Mary, Sirius, Marlene. She wanted
home.

Mavi bit her lip. “I know that I haven’t given you any reason to trust me. But—please. I can protect
you, Dorcas. I can get you to Anastasia and from there we can try to find your friends.”

A moment passed. Dorcas, for a moment, thought she could feel her own heart beating in her chest.
Placebo. She took a deep breath.

“How long?”

“As long as it takes,” Mavi replied, with an air of relief that she obviously tried to hide. “The fact
of the matter is that you’re safer in here than you are out there, looking for your friends. I meant
what I said earlier. You existing past the death that the Dark Lord granted you is an act of
resistance. It’s an act of power. If he finds out he will not take it kindly.”

Dorcas exhaled, sharply, feeling herself well up with tears.

“I didn’t want to,” she said, thickly, shaking her head. “I was supposed to die.”

“And yet you live,” Mavi hissed. “That means something, Dorcas.”

Mavi stood, just before the pooling blood reached the bottom of her dress.

She held out a hand to Dorcas.

“What do I have to do?” Dorcas asked, as Mavi helped her up. The corpses by her side were, all of
a sudden, illuminating. She couldn’t stop looking at Conrad.

“Sit down,” said Mavi, brushing herself off. “Shut up.”

“I can do more—”

“No, you can’t,” she cut her off, looking her in the eye. “I can do more. Things are fragile right
now. We’re going to take advantage of that. We’re going to break you out as soon as we can, we
just have to do it carefully.”

Mavi turned, indicating that Dorcas should follow her. She got two steps to the door before turning
back. Her face was pensive, laden with some thick emotion Dorcas had not the knowledge nor the
energy to decipher.

“I have no doubt in my mind that your friends are alive and out there somewhere, Dorcas,” Mavi
murmured, quietly. “But right now the only hope that we have is you.”

A single tear rolled down Dorcas’ cheek. Mavi stared at her, solemnly, for a very long moment,
and then she cleared her throat once again.

“So. I’m going to arrange an audience with you at least once every three days, under the guise of
personal interrogation of your weapon. If anybody speaks to you,” she said, and Dorcas noticed a
strange quiver in her voice that had not been there before, “you do not speak back. You hear any
unrest, you stay uninvolved. And you see me at any point—unlikely, but possible—you act like
you don’t know me. You wait for my word. Do you understand?”

Dorcas gulped. She wanted to know more. She wanted to know so much, but knew it wasn’t the
time to ask.

“I understand.”

“Alright,” Mavi replied, nodding once. “Good. It goes without saying that if you speak a word of
this arrangement to anyone, I will kill you myself.”

“Naturally,” said Dorcas.

Mavi’s lips twitched.

“Naturally,” she repeated, and then she moved.

Stepping over the corpses, she moved to Dorcas’ back, and after a moment the handcuffs and the
chains around her arms fell loose. With a hand, Dorcas got up; stretched her legs, and surveyed the
mess around them. Mavi tutted.

“Stupid boys,” she murmured, taking one look at George and perhaps a longer look at Conrad. And
then she turned to look at Dorcas, and her smile grew.

She shook out her hands. Oddly enough, the hand that had just brutally murdered two vampires in
front of her look exactly like what it was: a hand. Not a weapon. She shook them out, and smiled,
and when she let out a breath it shuddered, it wavered with nerves and possibility and it was about
here that Dorcas was hit, finally, with the realisation that whatever prize Mavi was going to give to
her, Dorcas was somehow going to give it back. She just had no idea what that was.

But the woman was excited. Better yet… the woman might have even been exhilarated.

She took Dorcas rather harshly by the arm and began moving them towards the door.

“Who is left?” Dorcas asked, unable to stop herself. “By Anastasia you do mean Ana, right? Is
Sebastian alive? Does she still have her vampires?”

“I don’t know, yes, yes, stop asking questions.”

“Wait, one more—” Dorcas said; Mavi stopped, irritated now. “How long will this take?”

“As long as we need,” she replied, turning again. “We can risk nothing.”

“You’ve just killed two of your men without explanation,” said Dorcas, plainly, trailing after her.
“Does that not raise a few risks in itself?”

Stopping by the door, Mavi turned to her. Her face was unreadable, and for a moment Dorcas
thought she might give up on whatever one-sided plan she was cooking up and leave her, or kill
her.

Instead, she smiled.

“I think I’m going to like you,” she said, and then she opened the door, and, upon ordering the two
guards to dispose of the bodies and spread a rumour that Conrad and George ran off to Rome
together, away they went.

II. THE CELL

The first two of her audiences with Mavi went strikingly, if only because she presented her with
food after three days of near-starvation.

It was awful in there. The long cell block was dingy, damp. It was not all that old and yet it smelled
of mildew, like a medieval prison might. It felt just as dehumanising as one.

Dorcas could not describe, could not convey how she felt in there. Only that she slept for twelve
hours on the floor and stayed awake from twelve hours, sitting in the corner, in bloody clothes that
she could not wash, blood in her braids she could not scratch out. She got half a cup a day. Around
the six hour mark. The guards patrolled at 1, then at half past 3, then at five, then at half past
seven. There was a slit in the window, and at around ten it began to get dark. And Dorcas closed
her eyes.

Twelve hours later, she woke up and did the exact same thing.

And then after three days would come a guard, to summon her, and she’d walk, and she’d walk,
through darkness, escorted into that same room where Mavi would be waiting.

She’d say nothing as Dorcas drained the three enchanted humans that would be waiting for her.
Dorcas would say nothing in return. She let herself fall unconscious to those urges, so as not to face
the true reality of her nature. And when the bodies fell, she’d never look down.

She wanted to know who this woman was, why she could trust her, and Mavi answered every
question with gilded ease.

She was five hundred and twenty-three years old, a Pureblood, born to Antonin and Hüsniye in
Ankara, Turkey, and she was… renowned. While being tame compared to her mother and her
aunts, she was no pushover, and had made enough of a name for herself that she had a hold of
every single string present in the institution, the visible and the invisible. She’d been a silent rebel,
a defector, since the First War in 1959. Her story avidly reminded Dorcas of Regulus, for her and
her family had gone into hiding, and she’d been watched over like a hawk for decades. When they
caught the first stirring of Riddle coming out of dormancy, and therefore the first stirrings of unrest
since the war, she went to New York under the guise of helping manage the prison, where she met
Ana. She’d been working very closely on the inside, biding her time, for a decade and a half. But
things were different now. Things were fatal.

Mavi was clean and often jaded. Temperamental, but not to an unreasonable degree. She seemed to
be detached from humanity, again, very alike to how Regulus was when Dorcas first met him. But
there was a glint in her eye every now and then that put her aside from Regulus, for she valued
passion. She just chose her battles and fought them well. A Trojan, at the very least. A Pureblood
at the most.
Dorcas had become a target almost as soon as she’d escaped. One of Ana’s vampires had seen her
kill the hunter that killed Wood; recognised her, spread the world. Mavi, upon learning this, had
sent out a call for all of her Snatchers, under the guise of hatred for Sirius Black. She tried to
monitor everyone who came in, but oftentimes missed them; if it weren’t for Dorcas’ desperate cry
of Sirius’ name she could be in that cell with nothing, no one.

Every meeting was preceded with the most important piece of information: none. No information.
No signal from Boardwalk, no sighting of Sirius. It was what Dorcas longed for every time; what
she clung to, in the depths of that cave. Mavi’s audiences and… attention to her due to her
‘importance’, were worth everything after three days of quite literally nothing. But the more time
she had to settle with the nothingness inside of her, the liminal state she was caught in, the more
she longed for her family like a small child, impoverished and loved.

So, “Any news?” would always be the first word out of Dorcas’ lips. But she could always garner
from the look on Mavi’s face what the answer would be.

The days went slowly. And on day twelve, for her third meeting with Mavi, nobody came to get
her.

On day thirteen, nobody came to get her. On day fourteen, nobody came to get her.

The problem, here, was not the loneliness. The problem was the thirst.

That first day was okay, and then the second came along, and then the third. By the fourth it was
unbearable; nay, by the second, really. But on the fourth day she was gagging in her cell, choking
on instinct; unable to exist without feeling the searing burn in her throat, in her chest. A knot
caught on her two lungs leaving her exposed, bloody, bloodthirsty, broken. They cast a silencing
spell on her because she was disturbing the rest of the cell block and she heard vampires muttering
about the cheek of newly-turns against the horrifyingly dead silence as she gagged, until they got
silenced, too, and then more, and then more.

By day five, she was unable to move. She sat in her cell, and she did not move.

If she pretended she didn’t exist then the cravings might not exist, too. If she pretended she didn’t
exist then the hunger didn’t exist then the war didn’t exist then the people she had killed didn’t
exist then the ones she wanted to kill, the way she yearned for it like something long-lost, an ache
in her chest like a lover gone awry. None of that existed.

She sat in her cell, entirely, completely, utterly silent. Still.

She let her thoughts stray.

An all-encompassing burn in her mind, a vicious, venomous snake of a bite in her body, ringing
through all of her bones catered herself towards Tom Riddle like a compass seeking true North.
The most identifiable of her emotions was grief. Grief for herself, for everyone that they'd lost and
the people they were before that they'd never be again. It churned through her, an indelicate
reception. She had never felt so angry and so determined at the same time. In the beginning, her
thoughts were of Riddle. How he was going to suffer. Her vengeance, growing inside of her like a
sapling fed sun and water—every droplet of blood made Dorcas grow, up and up and up, a spindly
working of thorns digging in, slowly, slowly, slowly. Poison seeping in through the skin. A
malediction of the heart.

She wanted him dead. She wanted vengeance, for everything around her but mostly for herself. She
wanted him to feel it. She wanted to kill him like he had killed her, but she would not fail like he
had. Hers would take. She would make sure of it.

It felt as if the cell could be on fire and she wouldn't notice, her thoughts were so rampantly red. At
first, with all of the strength she had left, all of the violence still living in her bones, taught and
learned and loved and lost, she thought of all the ways she could kill him. Revelled in it. The lack
of her basilisk blade felt like an ache; she felt her palm warm, as if craving to hold it. Her veins
bubbled as if craving to recreate it with the way she spat and hissed.

Vengeance. The ultimate motivator. It kept her going until she broke down, smoke becoming less
powerful and more like suffocation. Eventually she had no more energy to think about things that
would keep her moving. She just had to stay sane.

Staying sane meant letting her thoughts stray to that eternal comfort.

Remus.

She had a lot of time to think, you see, in this liminal, statue state. A lot of time to think about their
last moments. Her, in his lap. Knife pressed to his heart. Self-sacrificial, all love. She didn’t like to
think of those moments, the way she’d lost control and the way it had been taken from her. She
couldn’t approach it, because it would unravel. All of this control she has lost, he who she has
killed and, further, who she has enjoyed to kill; it would all unravel. She’d move. She’d scream.
She was screaming, wailing, heart-wrenching gasps of despair inside. All of it against a wicked eye
and simmering coals rubbing up and down her throat, every follicle on her body, every particle of
her being. It was all on fire for reason enough. So she couldn’t let herself dwell on the things that
would just douse her in gasoline. Explosions mean movement. Oh, the pain.

She had her thoughts. This was her only weapon. She used it the only way she knew how, by
embracing one state, and using another to cope. Hunter, human. Loss, gain. Death, faith. Vampire;
Remus.

She wondered what he was doing. If he was okay. If he’d gotten out. She thought about his face;
not the last time. Not that face. His happy face. The way he’d snort when he laughed really hard.
The way he had perpetual smile lines. The way his eyes hardened when he was mad, the way they
hardened but his eyebrows were soft when he was jokingly mad, the difference she had written in
stone. The things about him she loved. His optimism. The things about him she hated. His naivete.
She thought about—about days with him. Dinner and lunch and breakfast and brunch. She thought
of Remus at seventeen, herself beside him. She thought of him at twenty-eight in a New York
backdrop. Gentle summer. His gentle heart. Bleeding little brother, she thought of him, she thought
and she thought and she thought.

Her thoughts drew, of course, over to Mary. Little sister. Blood of God. Her Caribbean sayings and
the way she smiled at everything. The way she had a blanket for every mood and how she’d
always appear when you needed her most. How easily she fell in love. How easily she’d get hurt.
Dorcas still had that residual love for her, the romantic kind; she might always. Mary was loveable,
yes, but Mary was also love. The formidable hunter. Poor and rich and weak and strong. A product
of her mother and her father and the fire they’d bestowed on her. Dorcas thought of Mary. She
thought and she thought and she thought.

Sirius. Oh how—how she cared for him. James, stabbing him through the hand, those banterous
moments around the kitchen table; even Regulus. Pandora. Lily, red Lily, Lily, Lily. She went
through all of these people. She climbed her way to the top.

Marlene was standing like the formidable truth on the top of a mountain, her heel pressed to the
neck of men lesser than her, and there were seas crashing against the cliff in time with her guiding
hand, one two, one two. Dorcas thrashing in the waves.

She loved her. She knew she did.

There was something so beautiful and so tragic about the way that they had found each other. The
night after the club burned scars into Dorcas’ psyche every time she thought about it, and so she
tried not to, because she had many, many more nights with Marlene to think about. At first it had
been just… an attachment. She’d taken to Marlene in a way she hadn’t taken to anyone else, for she
was kind, and she was funny, and she was highly-strung and had a certain regiment and way of
doing things that left her unbearably hard to work with in the day and unbearably attractive in the
night.

It was no surprise to Dorcas, not in the slightest, when Marlene had taken over Sirius’ roles after
Malfoy Manor, and it was no surprise when she stuck with that role after Sirius woke up. She had
the mind of a genius and nobody to trod on her toes, until Dorcas came along, and began to be
comfortable enough to actually put in her two cents. The pair of them were a push and pull. If
Marlene had a dollar Dorcas had one dollar fifty. She threw the change at her daily like she threw
her clothes at her out the door, every time they fought. She collected the pieces of Dorcas, the cents
and coins and pennies that she’d throw at her and… well, it was entirely to Marlene’s chagrin that
Dorcas was a good leader and had the balls to show it, because Marlene McKinnon wanted to do
one thing and that was to boss people about and love them thereafter.

Like she bossed Dorcas about, folding up her clothes once more after retrieving them from the
hallway floor. Find the matching bra to these knickers or they’re not going in my fucking
wardrobe, Meadowes, she’d said, and Dorcas had thought back, I’m in love with you, and then
gotten immediately socked with a pink lacy thong to the face.

They had never really been together. But they had. They’d never really broken up. But Dorcas had
died. They were just… here, and now. What they were in the midst of war; what can you be? You
can be Sirius and Remus, Dorcas thought, but they’re an anomaly. They’re something else entirely.

They were just now; Dorcas had no idea what their future was.

Would she ever hold a candle to Emmeline?

Marlene very rarely talked about Emmeline, but when she did, it was with fondness. She told
Dorcas the story… well, she didn’t know the full story. She knew that she’d loved her. She knew
that Emmeline had died in the first war, in 1959, the exact same way that Dorcas had in 2021. But
she didn’t need to know everything, nor want, because Marlene wasn’t supposed to be a long-term
endeavour for her. They were not stupid to indulge in a serious relationship in the midst of a war.
Not stupid like Sirius and Remus and not inevitable like James and Regulus and not clueless like
Lily and Mary. Dorcas Meadowes and Marlene McKinnon were very rational people, thank you
very much. It was only sex. It was letting go in the times you got to breathe, Dorcas’ head between
her legs and the sounds Marlene made as she let go. She was tight—in the muscle-sense, heathens
—and at no point would she ever relax until Dorcas kissed her neck, thigh, clit; ran a hand up her
soft pudgy stomach and even, in the end, gave her a massage. When she wouldn’t drink enough
blood her body would get all achy. When Sirius doesn’t drink enough blood he gets all existential
and moody. When Dorcas doesn’t drink enough blood she, apparently, thinks of intimacy to fill the
starving flame-filled hole in her throat; she imagines Marlene’s tongue swiping around the edges,
cold and wet, and the fire goes out. At least, she can pretend it does.

Marlene was never anything serious for Dorcas, until she was.

And now she sat in her cell, all of the creature Marlene McKinnon is with half the power and none
of the reprieve, and she thought, she thought, she thought. About Marlene’s heart. It didn’t beat but
sometimes, crazily enough, in her kindest and her gentlest and her most nurturing moments, it felt
like it did.

That was a ridiculous metaphor, Dorcas knew. Marlene did not have a beating heart and Dorcas’,
through their time together, was hers and hers alone. But just a little bit of her heart had been
eroded open over the years, and Marlene had snuck in; made her bed there.

Now she had no beating heart. Now she was frozen in time. But her body was still her body, if not
her mind still her mind. No matter the blood stains on her hands and arms and neck that she could
not get out, it was still hospitable enough for Marlene to curl up there, evicted when her heart
stopped beating but finding safe passage merely across the road. And now the thought of her lies
underneath Dorcas’ skin, in her bones, in the pressure points under her jaw and behind her ears and
on the innermost corner of her thighs. And she could pretend that she was still human, but it feels
so much better now… so why would she want to?

The pain continues to throb, through Remus and through Sirius and through Marlene. She thought
and she thought and she thought. She missed the other half of her lung and she missed the way it
felt to be touched in both violence and in nurture. She missed the days in which there was no pain.
Thinking about them didn’t get rid of it.

On day five, and six, and seven, Dorcas did not drink her fill. She got delivered a cup of blood at
her usual delivery time. She left it there.

And she did it again the next day. And she did it again the next day.

On day 7, without food for three days, Dorcas was immoveable. Physically immoveable. All three
of her supplements were in the corner and her body was made of stone, crumbling, the pain so deep
inside of her it felt like it was all she had ever known. She could not remember the before. She’d
begun to lose touch with who she was; she thought and she thought and she thought and it wasn’t
like it was before. She couldn’t place Marlene’s face anymore. And he—he—Re—

There was a gentle clatter to her right side. A rock had fallen from the crumbling window up above
her.

And then there was a repetitive clunk. Over, and over, and over.

It took her five, long minutes to find the strength to turn her head, and when she did, she saw–

“Hey there,” murmured Remus, sitting cross-legged beside her. Throwing the pebble in the air and
catching it. Throwing it and catching it again.

The tears that simmered in Dorcas’ eyes felt white hot, and made her entire face tingle. Tearing
apart her dry lips felt like ripping open an old wound.

“Remus,” she whispered. Her voice was barely there.

He stopped throwing the pebble, and turned to her. His hair was so soft. His face so real. He smiled
at her.

“Hi,” he whispered, his smile growing.

“Hi,” she choked back. Tears fell onto her cheeks.

He looked around, scrunching his nose up.

“You’ve gotten yourself into a bit of a shit situation here, haven’t you, Dorcas?” he mumbled. If
she could have laughed, she would have, but she got the sense that he knew that.

He turned back to her, smiling.

“You’re not doing well, Cas.”

“Remus.”

“No,” he said, sadly. He shook his head. “Yes,” he said, “but no.”

Dorcas blinked at him. She felt like cracking stone.

“Why aren’t you drinking, Dorcas?” he murmured, going back to throwing the rock in the air and
catching it. Her eyes followed it as it went, up and down.

It was three minutes of this before she spoke.

“Trying to save up strength,” she mumbled. Remus stopped. Twirled the rock between two fingers
like he would a knife. It comforted her.

“No,” he said, again. “Why aren’t you drinking, Dorcas?”

She looked at him.

Up and down. Up and down.

“I don’t want,” she whispered. She had to stop for a minute and recollect her strength. Her throat
felt like sandpaper and, oddly enough, her eyes were sleepy.

Remus shuffled closer to her. Her eyes opened to take him in.

“I don’t want to drink,” she said, her voice breaking, tears pooling in her eyes. “What I have hurt.”

He looked at her, here, with pity. Empathy.

And yet he still repeated; “No,” almost frantically, now, rock abandoned on the floor, “Why aren’t
you drinking, Dorcas?”

She closed her eyes. Her mouth shot fire at her where her face crumpled, and each sob pushed the
dagger in her chest in further.

“I want to die,” she choked, opening her eyes. Remus was still there, gazing at her. Just gazing. “I
want to die.”

He was quiet for a long moment.

“How long have you got?” he asked, eventually.

“You know,” said Dorcas, because he was her, she was him. He knew.

“Four hours,” he said, instantaneously, glancing at the setting sun through the tiny slit of a
window. “Seven minutes.”

A minute went by.

“Six,” she said.

A minute went by.

“Five.” Remus.

After a few more of these, she heard shuffling. Opening her eyes her vision blurred; everything was
in black and white. The room unsteady. The only thing she could see in her head was Remus and
blood and the textbook from second year. New turns. How long they can last without blood; the
correlation of age to resistance. Dorcas had studied this for her exams. Passed with an A.

It was only now, only now after nine years, that she thought about exactly how the hunters had
obtained that information. Thought about the vampire that would have been just like her, in a cell
underneath some sort of ancient base for the society before HI1 and 2 existed. Starving to death.
Crumbling to stone. Disintegrating to ash. Just like she was. Just like her.

She felt sick to her stomach.

Four hours, three minutes.

“Dorcas, you have to drink,” whispered hallucination-Remus. He came up in front of her and rested
his hand on her knee, and she sobbed. It hurt so badly. It hurt so bad, but she could feel it, and it
was more than enough.

“I can’t.”

“You have to,” he said, firmer now. “You know you do. You know you can’t leave me out there.
You can’t leave me never knowing.”

“Remus,” she choked.

“You can’t leave me,” he said, and she knew as soon as the words came out of his mouth that he
was right, for they were her words, but they were his mouth. And that made all the difference.
Seeing him. Seeing him, in her head, seeing him. “You can’t leave Mary. You can’t leave Marlene,
not again. You have to come back to us.”

Dorcas was crying.

“I can’t.”

“You can,” he said. His words came out shaky. Faded. “You can.”

Dorcas’ eyes fluttered shut.

“Get up.”

Her hand twitched.

“Dorcas, get up.”

Her eyes opened.

“Get up!”

Remus was yelling at her now. She turned her head away but he did not stop. Get up, get up, get
up, he was shouting, and it echoed through the rooms, it echoed through the world; everything
hinged on here and now and Dorcas. And Dorcas. Dorcas was getting up.
Her hand felt broken. Her body felt snapped. She could hear the creaking of bones in her neck as
they grinded against each other, feel the way they clattered around inside of her as she reached out
her arm, her hands shaking like nothing else. Her fingers fell onto the harsh, gritty floor. It cut into
her palm. Grit and dirt. Her skin ripped apart, trying desperately to sew itself together, but she was
so weak it was breaking even more in the process.

Groaning, gasping in pain, letting out strangled sobs and feeling fire at the back of her throat that
was not hers, she moved to the beat of Remus’ cries, of his voice, so real in her head, so present.
She sobbed as she dragged her limp body across the floor, the few feet to the front of the cell. She
gasped at the way her joints cracked; she was quite sure her arm had broken, actually, unable to
hold her weight; opening her mouth, opening that festering wound once again, she managed to grab
one of the cups with shaking, shaking hands, and brought it to her lips.

The warmth flooded her as soon as the blood passed her lips. It simmered in her like she’d just
been flung into the sun, burnt on the inside, but the outside is warm; she gagged on it, but was
unable to stop. Her hands were shaking so violently that the blood spilled over the sides, down to
her chin and her neck. When she’d finished the cup she heaved, desperately wiping her face and
licking her hand to savour every last drop. She went for the second. The third. Wiping it all over
her face, licking the rim of the cup, the inside, her hands, wiping it from her chest, fingers in her
mouth, hands shaking, shaking, shaking. Remus was quiet.

She took a deep breath in, and out. It still felt like piercing daggers. But her vision was not blurry.

She wanted more.

She turned to Remus, who was back where he was originally, throwing the rock up, and down.
Upon noticing her gaze, he smiled.

“Dorcas, I—” he started, but he would not finish this sentence, for there was a large banging
against the cell bars that made them both jolt and look away from each other.

It was one of the guards. He was right up against the bars, banging on them with a metal pole.

“Shut the fuck up talking to yourself, fledgling,” he hissed. Dorcas blinked at him.

She turned to her right.

Remus was gone.

Entirely gone, the floor where he was sitting cold. The pebble he was throwing on the floor,
exactly where it had dropped from the slit window.

Oh… oh, the rage she felt.

“You made him go,” she whispered. The vampire squinted.

“What?”

She turned to look at him, slowly, so slowly.

And then, without missing a beat, powered on by the curdling fury and the spontaneous and
sudden burst of strength, she flew up, sped all the way over and shoved her hand through the bars,
ignoring the way it burnt and revelling in how it felt to watch the vampire fall forward, his open
eyeball colliding with the holy water bars and sizzling, and how it felt to witness him scream and
then witness him stop screaming as she dug her hand into his chest and ripped his heart out.
***

“One rule,” Mavi snapped. “I gave you one rule.”

Dorcas gasped, dragging herself away from the cooling body that she had her claws dug into. There
were three corpses on the floor. She had exsanguinated all of them, the fourth on the way.

“You left me in there for a week,” she growled, before going back in, puncturing the woman in a
different place. There was blood all over her face. She could not get enough.

“I had important business—”

“One cup,” she hissed, licking desperately at the woman’s neck. She trailed her lips down to bite
on her arm. “A day. I was turned three weeks ago.”

“Well,” said Mavi, primly, “I didn’t know it was that dire—”

“Of course you didn’t,” Dorcas growled, finally accepting defeat on the last human and letting her
body fall to the floor. “You were never fucking turned. You’ve never been starved. Tortured. You
don’t know what this shit is like.”

Mavi sighed.

“I can’t do it again,” Dorcas said, her hands still trembling slightly. “I need to know what is going
on, now. I can’t live in that cell alone again. I can’t do it. I refuse to do it.”

“Dorcas—”

“You’re going to have to find another fucking hope or whatever it is you called me if you’re going
to shove me in that cell again because I won’t do it.” The truth was she was terrified of how deeply
she’d given up. The blood was running through, her body buzzing with the energy. She was
frightened of herself and just how lost she’d been.

“I know,” said Mavi, “okay, I know. I don’t—” She took a deep breath in, and pressed the back of
her hand to her forehead. “You are right. I’ve never been in that situation. You have my sincerest
apologies. But you are going to have to go back in the cell.”

Dorcas’ face darkened instantly, her lip curling back to hiss at her. She registered, dimly, that this
must be quite pathetic from the perspective of a five hundred year old Pureblood, but she didn’t
care. Mavi, of course, didn’t flinch.

“For five days,” Mavi said, quickly, sensing her agitation. “Only five more. The date is set,
Dorcas.”

Dorcas froze. “Five days,” she whispered.

“Five days,” Mavi echoed. “I have gotten into contact with Anastasia. We’re confident that we’ll
be able to have the means to break you out, and everybody in your cell block, as well as the block
to the West of yours. That’s at least one hundred and fifty vampires.”

Dorcas felt her heart flutter.

“And then?”

“And then we’ll get you out,” said Mavi. “Get you safe from the people who are looking for you.
Ana has a bunker deep underground. We can kick this fight back into motion and try and find your
friends.” A pause, and then, “Anastasia’s aim is to hit each one of these prisons. To save as many
of ours as we can, and show them that we’re not backing down, even though our city is besieged by
shadows. Build up our army. He killed a lot of them at Whittaker. Morale is dangerously low but
Anastasia is certain that this is the best route to go.”

“Hit the prisons,” Dorcas murmured. “Restore… morale?”

“Yes. I don’t know how much you know about the slums of the city, Dorcas, but vampires know
vampires around here. Half of the people in this prison have friends, family, a coven; people who
love them and want them back. And half of the people on Ana’s side have been petitioning for
breakouts anyway. Everything is about union. That’s what the Dark Lord doesn’t understand.”

Dorcas thought, very carefully here, about Sirius. She found he’d been crossing her mind a lot as of
late. Perhaps it was his venom running through her veins, or the revere that she’d been so
stubbornly pushing away from him. Oddly enough he was one of the people she wished to see
again the most. See, he loved his own, too. It’s where the majority of his sorrow came from. Fight
after fight, loss after loss. There’s a certain kinship in the undead that Dorcas is beginning to pick
up on.

But is it union, or is it love? Is it the fact that they have the seemingly impossible ability to love,
love, love even in death? Are these the things that the hunters bypassed? That Riddle turns away
from? Is this our weapon?

“We care about our own,” Mavi said, and it was thick. Full of something. “And so Anastasia is
hoping that freeing the vampires will boost morale, that the act of rebellion will be enough to re-
integrate our leg into this fight, and that… that you will be able to give people hope.”

Dorcas exhaled. It caught on something, a lump in her throat, and she licked her lips—drying blood
disintegrating on her tongue—shaking her head in a cross between bitterness and disbelief.

“Hope,” she breathed. “How can I—I just almost starved to death in a cell. Mavi I don’t know how
to do this. I need someone to teach me how to do this. You want me to—what—lead?”

“No, Dorcas.”

“I don’t know how to do any of this!” she choked, spreading her arms out. Gesturing to herself and
the corpses on the floor. “I just want—I need—”

For all of the people in her life that she needed, there he was again. The venom running in her
veins. Sirius.

Dorcas looked solemnly to the floor. Mavi didn’t offer comfort, or words of affirmation. An
offering to help her of any sort. Dorcas was happy for it. She didn’t want pity, or fake comforts.
From what she could gather Mavi was a straightforward woman. Standing in her uncreased black
dress, her hair pinned to the back of her head, any comfort would’ve been a fakery. She missed her
comforts.

“It’s an impossible feat,” Mavi said, eventually. Quieter, this time. Dorcas looked at her. “To break
into all of the prisons. I agree with Ana’s idea, the weight behind it, but—physically, Dorcas, it’s
impossible. They have so many people and so much power. This one, obviously,” she gestured
around her, “is achievable, because of me, but I’m the only one. We can’t hit all four.”

Dorcas stared at her. She was smaller than Dorcas was. Her energy and confidence made her seem
so much taller but saying it out loud, explicitly, made her see the woman across from her for who
she truly seemed to be. Standing alone in a dark room, corpses at her feet.

“If we found Boardwalk…” she whispered. Mavi sighed.

“Dorcas, Boardwalk is—”

“The place might be gone,” she snapped, “but the people are not. I know. I know Sirius is out there.
I don’t know where the hell he is but he’s not dead, Dolohov, I know he’s not.” A pause. “He
turned me. It was an accident, I’m pretty sure. But it was him. He’s not dead. He can’t be. I feel
him too viscerally for him to be dead.”

Mavi licked her lips, processing. Dorcas stood straighter.

“If we found them—Sirius, Regulus, Marlene McKinnon, all of the remaining of our Order—and
reunited the forces, would we have a better chance?”

“Regulus Black would be a good asset,” Mavi murmured. “For connections. Leverage. He and I
could fill each others strengths and weaknesses. And your people have power—much more than
what I can muster…”

Dorcas began to feel a thrum of exhilaration. She and Mavi shared a scheming face; she felt, for the
first time since she’d turned, like a hunter. “How many prisons are there? Who runs them?”

“Four,” replied Mavi. “Dolohov, of course. Avery Garden, Peverell, and Whittaker House. The
Avery’s are brutal. Peverell less so, but it’s the biggest and so the most heavily protected. I believe
the prison sector of Whittaker is being run by the Crouch’s, who we’ll never get past—”

It caught up to her as a rush.

“Whittaker House,” Dorcas whispered. Mavi nodded, and she took a moment to process this.

Beyond the dungeons. Deep, down below. To think about the fact that below the exact point that
she had died had been vampires, fighting against prison cells, hearing the commotion up above.
Dying as she had been. According to Mavi about three quarters of Whittaker had burned, but what
simmers on the surface doesn’t burn through stone and soil. Corpses on the surface and corpses
underground.

Without realising what she was doing, Dorcas took a step back. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve.
It came back red and vicious.

“You help me find my home,” she said, “I’ll help you take down the prisons.”

“Three lots of forces reunited,” Mavi murmured. “You’d be the bridge.”

“I am the bridge,” she said. I am the fire that is burning it down. I am the water rushing
underneath it. I may be made of Sirius Black but vengeance is my true father.

“He’ll never trust me,” said Mavi. “I’ll do whatever you want, Meadowes, but Black will never
trust me.”

“You give me a reason to trust you and I’ll give him one.”

“You have a lot of faith in his trust in you.”

“It’s not misplaced,” Dorcas said. “So don’t misplace yours with me. Prove it, Dolohov.”
A long moment of silence passed between them after these words. Blood pooled out onto the floor.

“Okay,” Mavi said. “But your cooperation breeds my cooperation. This is a two way street.”

“Your trust breeds my trust, we’re walking on it,” Dorcas countered. She almost wanted to smile.
“I’ll go back to my cell. I’ll wait five more days. And as long as you help me with all you have to
try and find my friends again, I’ll tell them that you’re to be trusted.”

“That would be incredibly kind of you, Dorcas.”

“It is not a kindness,” she said. “It is war.”

Mavi’s face twitched.

“That it is,” she replied. “Now, let me walk you through the plan.”

***

Mavi snuck Dorcas an extra cup a day for the next five days. She delivered the first one with a note
which had said, simply, “;)”, which made Dorcas want to smack her.

And so she got two, and then two more, and so on until the fifth day in which she didn’t get any
for, as planned, at 8pm sharp, the blaring alarm began to go off. And every cell door in the block
unlocked.

There were gasps throughout the block. Someone yelled, and then there was clinking metal, the
shifting of something heavy across a stone floor. The hubbub had only just started to get louder
when the whole building rattled, the floor shook with the repercussions of an explosion. And
everyone froze. There were gasps, and shouts, but Dorcas froze; she had been told to wait in her
cell and so was doing as much, but was not told to expect an explosion. She was rather rattled, thus,
upon the faces of two masked guards coming to escort her away. The explosion ended up working
in their favour, however, as everybody was too shaken and excited at the prospect of escaping to
notice the person who was actually escaping. They took her seamlessly; she disappeared like a
shadow into the night. From behind her, cries:

“It’s Sirius!” someone yelled. “It’s Sirius Black!”

Their muffled exclamations fell into nothing as Dorcas turned a corner, and ended up face-to-face
with Mavi Dolohov.

“Go help Vincey,” she said to the guards, and then with absolutely no hesitation and grabbed
Dorcas and vamped away.

Everything had to happen exactly as they’d planned. There was no time for delays. Away from the
commotion, they stopped in front of a door. Mavi yanked it open and stalking in behind her Dorcas
traced her eyes and found it was a control room, filled with computers and buttons. A strange
warmth overcame her as she walked in that could only be the doing of a cloaking spell. There were
two witches with snapped necks slumped in a chair, kicked to the back of the room. Dorcas glanced
once over her and then had to look away. If not for the barely-curbed cravings, for the guilt. The
utter shame.

If her heart could beat, it would be beating a mile a minute. Perhaps to make up for that her body
gave her a gnawing feeling in her stomach. It was something crossing exhilaration and debilitating
anxiety and it made her woozy. But there was no time for that. Everything had to happen exactly as
planned. Mavi was moving, move after her, move, move, move.
Mavi fiddled with some buttons and typed some things in, and then hovered her hand over a
button, turning to Dorcas.

“Cover your ears,” she said, and so Dorcas did.

She pressed the button. It was instantaneous. The entire room—hell, the entire block—rumbled
with the soundwaves of another explosion, somewhere in the distance. This one was closer than all
of the others and it shook through her like a gunshot.

Dorcas dropped her hands. She went to say something regarding the explosion, but, so caught up in
the shock of it all her mind was somewhere else.

“Who’s Vincey?” Dorcas asked.

“Anastasia.”

“Wh—well, why did you call her Vincey?”

Mavi turned to her purposefully to make a face.

“It’s her last name, idiot,” she snapped, turning back and typing something Dorcas couldn’t make
out. “Any other stupid questions?”

Dorcas barked a nervous laugh, watching as Mavi tucked her hair behind her ears and frowned at
the screen.

“You’re mean on a mission,” Dorcas muttered. Mavi let out a sigh as big as Everest.

“You would be too if you had just set off a bomb to draw groups of people you’ve known for half a
millennia to the South Tower,” she said, “and then set off another two minutes later to kill them
all.”

“Hm. Maybe. Hey, what are you doing now?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be a hunter?” Mavi quipped, switching CCTV cameras and watching for
something. “Figure it out.” She paused, and then: “Speaking of, I have something—”

Pulling out a package wrapped in linen from her pocket, she handed it off to Dorcas. Her blade.

“Yes, I am,” said Dorcas, unwrapping the Basilisk blade and cradling it. Familiarity. It felt warm in
her hand, like a limb, and the gnawing feeling in her stomach subsided; she leaned forward. “That’s
why I’m asking. Walk me through it, come on. Minute by minute, remember?”

Mavi tutted, and pointed to the widescreen camera, in which Dorcas could see an empty base room.
There was a large, sealed metal door on the left, and, on the control board, Mavi had her other hand
hovering over a button.

“North Base,” she whispered, and then, flicking a switch to change the fullscreen view to a dimly
lit corridor, “C25 corridor. Vincey and her guys will have gotten in through the North Tower and
will be making their way down this corridor now, whereas my vampires are escorting the prisoners
in the East and West Block out, connecting via North Base,” switching it, running her finger along
the corridor to display the route, “in which, once I get both signals, they will have exactly four
minutes…”

She trailed off, for, in the corner of the North Base camera, appeared a figure, who raised a hand.
“Well, that’s one,” murmured Dorcas.

And then, as Mavi maximised the corridor camera, out of nowhere appeared another figure, who
also held up a hand. Ana. Dorcas felt her breath stutter looking at her. Someone she knew.

“And that’s the other,” Mavi said.

Without hesitation, she pressed the button.

The doors opened and the pair of them watched on the CCTV for the next minute, or so, as Ana
and her army came piling in and the rogue, imprisoned vampires were ushered out. It was
exhilarating to watch, although most people were vamp-speeding, so Dorcas couldn’t actually see
much. It just looked like a trickle coming from one end, a waterfall from the other. The imprisoned
vampires running down the corridor to safety. And then there were the rocks, still and guiding
people to where they had to go. Ana, small, in the corner.

After one minute almost exactly Ana raised a hand to the camera again, and Mavi pulled a lever.

The warm wash of cloaking magic fell off Dorcas’ body like water droplets, and almost
immediately Ana was disappearing out of the frame and appearing in the room behind them, a
witch on her arm.

“Oh my God, Dorcas,” she gasped, and before Dorcas could even process it Ana was engulfing her
in a hug. Her braids were piled up on the top of her head and she had a big beaded necklace on, an
accessory to plain black clothing and cargo pants. She pressed Dorcas to her chest so viciously the
necklace might imprint itself into her skin, but she found she actually didn’t really care.

Close up, she looked nothing like the Ana Dorcas had known previously. It was almost haunting
how much a few weeks and being on the losing side of a battle could change a person. But she felt
and smelled the same, and Dorcas was comforted to no end by a familiar face.

“Are you okay? Are you alright?” she asked, pulling back and cupping her face. “Oh, honey. Oh,
God, am I glad to see you.”

Dorcas smiled. “I’m okay,” she insisted, “where’s Sebastian?”

“North Base,” Ana answered. Mavi, who had watched their reunion briefly, was now leaning over
the desk and typing frantically, brows knitted together. “Come on, Blue, we have to—”

“Wait,” Mavi said, gently. She minimised the tab for North Base and maximised the tab for what
was described in the little corner as “A26 corridor”, and what looked to be like a whirl of very
many, very quick people moving towards their epicentre.

“Are they supposed to—”

“No,” said Mavi. “Not ours.”

“Something must have gone wrong,” Ana said, walking forward to look herself. “They came from
the East?”

“Yes.”

“What?” Dorcas asked. “What does that mean?”

“It means our window to escape has just got a lot smaller,” Mavi said, steeling herself, exchanging
a glance and a nod with Ana. “And it means you better know how to use that dagger, hunter.”

Dorcas braced herself. Blade warm in her hand.

***

Their window did get cataclysmically smaller. The fight was inbound as soon as they apparated in.

North Base was one very large, stone room, sort of like the centerpoint of a sewer, corridors
attached and streaming off of it like branches of a tree. The stream of prisoners from the East had
stopped, but not all of them had made it to the opposite side to escape down C25. They’d been
intercepted by the guards who’d gone rogue, and as Dorcas straightened herself she clocked a
massive group of them fending off guards who were trying to push them back down the East
corridor, and an even larger group in the middle, fighting off the enemies and trying to get across
the swarm to safety before the doors closed.

It was the Odyssey. One shore to another. Dorcas took a deep breath, spun her blade around her
hand. She shouldn’t have, but she felt remarkable comfortable. The chaos and the insanity soothed
her cool blood. Boiled it hot again. This was where she was meant to be, this was what she was
trained for, and she proved it ceaselessly when she killed two people with the blade within five
seconds. The eye socket of the second grew black and rotten as she pulled the Basilisk blade out.
She took a deep breath in and felt it within her, the blood, the gore. She wanted more. She went for
more.

It was not a long fight, but it was a rough one. Everybody was shouting, people falling left right
and centre, spinning past her as wisps of the wind. Ana was screaming something. Someone yelled
at Dorcas to duck and she did just in time to not be catapulted alongside the body, as a vampire
behind her kicked someone across the room and they smacked against the wall like a fucking fly.
Dorcas tried to keep tabs on those she knew was her own, but her focus was too preoccupied with
her own fate and the fate of the prisoners trying to escape, for amongst the high skilled guardsmen
there were also Purebloods in this room, and bodies were falling to the floor like flower petals.

Mavi was a whirlwind, though of course she was—her dress stayed kempt and her countenance
lavish even despite the blood smeared across her mouth as she fought the guardsmen, really just
trying to make way for Dorcas who felt on one hand affronted and on the other touched. Ana led
the way, screaming “This way! This way!” and those who didn’t get slaughtered by the phantoms
of no name and no face, too quick to see either, followed her, as they always did and always
should.

Caught up in the river, almost to the C25 and safety, Dorcas found herself falling into battle with a
small blond vampire guard who was more might than he was chest. She managed to fend him off,
pushing him to about three feet away, but he was feisty and she could see he would be a problem
so she wasted no time raising her arm and lobbing the Basilisk blade at his head.

Except it never hit.

It stopped in mid air, suspended by the fight of a nearby witch, and twirled.

Went straight back the other way, and embedded itself into Dorcas’ abdomen.

Everything stopped, for about half a second. The impact of the hit pushed her back and she
staggered, gasping and looking at it protruding from her. Her hands shook as she cupped them
around it, just for a moment. She saw white. She saw black.
And then the rushing in her ears came to a head, and popped, and she pulled it out.

Her mouth dry, she pulled the fabric of her shirt up just in time to catch the wound stitching itself
up. The black poison, the venom that should have been deadly and should have had her on the
floor within seconds simply purged itself from her skin. Or maybe sunk it’s way in deeper. She
took a moment to acknowledge this, and then filed it away for another time when she wasn’t about
to be decapitated.

Making their way to the door, Ana grabbed her by the arm, physically dragging her away from the
fight. There was a clear path to the door, and the room was dwindling; corpses were lying on the
floor. They were running out of time.

“Shit,” Mavi choked, staggering and reaching her arms out to stop the two of them behind her mid-
run as a figure stood in their way, caught between imprisonment and freedom.

Dorcas could tell who it was immediately. Hüsniye Dolohov was the spitting image of her
daughter. Or the other way around. Face-wise, at least, they both had the same quirks, the same
nose bump and the same tanned skin. Hüsniye’s hair was curlier. Her eyes were deader. And,
oddly enough, she looked younger. Baby-faced.

“Mavi,” said Hüsniye from in front of the door, eyes flickering from her to Ana and Dorcas. The
chaos raged behind her, but here, everything was quiet. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Mother,” Mavi whispered, taking a step forward. “I need you to move out of the way.”

Her words were weak. There was none of that determinism left. She was a fraud and she was a
daughter.

Hüsniye took a step forward.

“What,” she started, “is the meaning of this?”

“Anne, please,” Mavi choked. Her voice was shaking. “I really need you to move out of our way.”

Hüsniye took another step forward.

And something in her face twitched.

“You,” she whispered, her accent thick, looking at her daughter. “It was you? You… let them in?”

“Please,” Mavi whispered. She glanced briefly to Dorcas, and then back. “Anne.”

“But you…” Hüsniye started, brow twitching together.

She didn’t get to finish her sentence. Dorcas didn’t even see it happen. One moment Mavi was right
beside her. The next she was three feet away, with her arm embedded into her mother’s chest.

Hüsniye made a horrible sound, choking, her back arched in horror like she was being exorcised or
something of the sort. And Mavi was crying. It was horrible. Like seeing a parent cry.

“Üzgünüm,” she choked, as her mother looked her in the eyes with utter betrayal. “Anne. I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.”

“Mavi…”

“Anne,” she cried, in an outpour of emotion. “Üzgünüm. Yapmak zorunda olduğum şey bu. I’m
sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

She pulled her hand out, heart along with it. And her mother fell to the floor with a hauntingly
underwhelming thud.

III. THE BUNKER

Dorcas had no idea where Ana had found a military bunker fit to hold up to two hundred vampires,
but alas, the Godly woman, she somehow had.

The place was overwhelming the instant Dorcas tumbled into it. It was the inner workings of a
war. She made her way through wide tunnels and eventually found her way to a huge hall with an
open floor plan, the roof as high as can be (though still not massive) and the walls circular around
them, open on each floor like a huge library, except instead of books it was witches, instead of
readers it was vampires. On the ground floor Dorcas was ushered in, led by Ana, and floods of
witches came to heal the vampires who had been injured beyond natural repair.

“Shit,” Mavi gasped, as they were pulled out of the chaos to a quiet corner. Dorcas’ brows
twitched.

“Mavi, I’m sor—”

“Don’t,” she snapped. And then she turned and walked away.

Standing there, alone, Dorcas had never felt so small. Blade clutched in her hand, coated in blood.
Her blood. Vampires were dying all around her, and she felt them all go like a chip off her
shoulder. Everything was chaos, everything was confusing, but this blade in her hand. This blade.

She looked down, traced her finger along the blood on the blade. Ever so slightly pressed a little bit
of pressure until she sliced through the pad of her index finger.

Just like during the battle, it healed up instantly. The cut went black and then it disappeared. As if
it had never been there.

“Fuck,” Dorcas whispered. And then, turning around, she sheathed the blade and threw herself
back into the chaos, determined to help every injured person she possibly could.

***

This room was not a cell, but it looked like a cell. She’d suppose that there were too many people
for everyone to have lavish, large rooms, but it still felt cold. Surrounded by people, in a ‘safe’
environment, with access to blood in any form she desired (blood bags for her, thank you), Dorcas
felt incredibly alone. Hauntingly removed.

That was, until Ana knocked on her door and slid her way in.

Dorcas was up, hurtling towards her within the second. Ana hugged her back, able to do it properly
this time, with reverence and without a time limit. It had been a whole day and Dorcas had not seen
Mavi since the prison. She’d seen Ana only in brief increments, but she was entirely too busy
wrangling her new war. Dorcas had been spending most of her time with Sebastian, Ana’s lovely
boyfriend who seemed to kind of just do everything she said without question. He’d been teaching
her words in Yoruba to pass the time.

Dorcas hated to say it, because this place was incredible, but she was antsy at not having to do
anything important. Things were on the rocks, the future of this cause unsteady, Ana working her
ass off to try and stabilise it. She’d said she’d come when she could. She’d said she’d give Dorcas
time, but Dorcas knew that eventually they’d need her. They’d need her soon.

All Dorcas wanted was to see Remus again.

“I’m so fucking glad you’re okay,” Ana whispered. “I heard about what happened in the ballroom.
It broke my heart when I thought you were dead, I’m so fucking lucky it was one of mine that saw
you—I’m so fucking lucky you’re okay, I just—” she pulled back, hands on Dorcas’ shoulders.
“Sirius turned you?”

“I’m almost certain,” Dorcas replied. “But what happened—”

“How did he—”

“—at the battle,” Dorcas finished; they smiled a little bit at interrupting each other. “We have a lot
to talk about.”

“So much,” Ana said, “but first, I have to tell you. I’ve arranged a speech a few days from now.
It’s been utter fucking hell trying to wrangle all of these new vampires, but I—well, I think I got it.
I’m trying to establish authority to the new ones. I’m gonna give a little speech and I’d like for you
to join me; you don’t have to say anything, you just have to stand there. Just be present. A lot of
them will recognise you, or at least recognise your,” she gestured up and down to Dorcas,
“presence. And the ones that don’t will be introduced to you.”

“As the one who was supposed to die but didn’t?” Dorcas muttered.

“If you were supposed to die you would be dead, Dorcas.”

“Are you sure this will work?” she asked, quietly, sinking down onto her bed, Ana following. “Are
you sure it’ll even matter?”

“Baby,” Ana said. She had a terribly soothing voice. Dorcas felt a stranger sensation and realised,
with a shock, that it was the feeling of being a little sister. She’d only ever been the older one. “It’ll
matter. It’ll matter because they’ll make it matter. I don’t think you—heh,” she cleared her throat.
“Things have been… bad around here. Really bad. They’ll take anything they can get. And you
were turned by Sirius. A lot of these people are still grieving, Dorcas; grieving the people they lost
last month. At the hands of Riddle. Sirius killed him once, they’re latching onto the fact that he can
kill him again.”

“They need him.”

“Not necessarily. All they need is a bit of hope.”

This sparked something inside of her; she wanted to scream. “People keep saying that,” said
Dorcas, frustrated, “but I don’t feel it. People keep saying I’m hope but I don’t know what that
means. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

Ana thinned her lips. She brushed her hands up to cup Dorcas’ face, brushed her grown-out
mismatched red locs from her face.

“Live,” Ana murmured. “Fight to find your family again. And let me fix your hair, Jesus Christ,
look at this mess.”

Dorcas let out a startled wet laugh.

“Try to see yourself the way other people see you, Dorcas,” Ana said.

“How do they see me?”

“As somebody to be remembered.” Ana brushed her thumb in circles over Dorcas’ cheek. “Do you
remember the first time we met? You put a gun to Sebastian’s head.”

Dorcas laughed, closing her eyes. Ana grinned alongside her.

“And it was the first time I’d seen Sirius since the hotel burned,” she said. Dorcas had forgotten,
momentarily, that Ana had lived at the hotel. It had been her home, too. “He didn’t know about us.
Me, Seb, our network and these… all of these vampires, in the depths of the city, that somewhere
along the way came to look to me as a leader. Fuck, Dorcas, I’m just as lost as you are, you know.
But I acted the part; I told him, then, that we’re fighting his fight. That the world would remember
his name. And baby it will. But it’ll remember yours, too. Of course it’s going to be heavy,
overwhelming. Tell me, Dorcas, how many times have you seen Sirius freak out? How many times
has leadership and the weight of who he is and what he’s going to do with it broken him down?”

She thought, at first, that it was a trick question. Multitudes, was the first word that came to her
head; so many times.

“About a billion, I’d presume,” Ana smiled, elbowing her. “I saw him when the Hotel burned. The
only person who reared him back was that little hunter of his. The truth is we’re all stumbling
through life. We don’t know what the fuck we’re doing. I doubt your Marlene does, despite how
well she seems to wrangle your lot—which, honestly, kudos to her, I’ve had to stop fifteen fights,
today. Fifteen, Dorcas.” This made her laugh, which seemed to please Ana. “Anyway. My point
is… sometimes even just existing and continuing to exist despite it all can give people hope. I’ve
been a vampire for about two hundred years. It takes a long time for it to get easier. But I love our
kind. And I think, eventually, you’ll grow to love them also.” She cocked her head, smiling softly.
“You’re not alone. Not anymore. We’ll figure it out.”

Dorcas stared at her. She’d been hanging onto every single word like a child to a role model. Ana,
with her kind brown eyes, her soft hands cupping Dorcas’ face; a woman she could look at and see
herself in. A woman with about the same skin tone as her, a woman comfortable in her skin, her
vampirism, who she was and what she was there to do. A woman comfortable in the fact that she
didn’t know what she was doing either, but she was trying. Sitting there, with Ana smiling at her,
Dorcas felt like a child again; her favourite aunty comforting her when she grazed her knee, her
mother loving her aggressively, all heart and sweet honey, tugging at her scalp as she did her hair
beside the fire, washing the dirt from under her nails.

Dorcas hadn’t spoken to her mother for about ten years. They’d fallen out over her career path,
over the route that she had taken. She tried not to think about her, because if she did it hurt. If she
did it only opened her up to the fact that her mother was right, as she always was. Dorcas was a
stupid child. Seventeen years old and cosigning herself over to an organisation that would
eventually kill her. And now here she was, dead, having to come to terms with the world on her
shoulders. But she didn’t think she’d felt the kind of peace she’d felt looking at Ana in a very long
time. An older, wiser being for her to lean on. A mother. A father. A sister. A vampire.

She leaned her cheek into Ana’s hand, and fluttered her eyes shut. She nodded. Ana pulled her into
another hug, head to her chest. It was more like a swaddle. It was everything that Dorcas needed
and more.

"I'm going to kill him," Dorcas whispered. "Riddle. Hope or not. For me. For everyone." She licked
her lips. "I may be a vampire but I'm still a hunter. I don't know how to do much, but I know how
to kill. And I'm going to kill him."

"Tell them that," said Ana, simply. "That's all they need."

They sat with this for a moment.

The room was cold against Dorcas' burning heart, handprint still sooty and singed, curled around it.

“Alright,” Ana said, pulling back, and then she tugged at one of Dorcas’ locs and she really felt
like her mother. “First of all, seriously, babe, let me fix this. I’ve got everything in my room. You
want me to re-do it for you in any way?”

“I think I’m going to wear it natural for a bit, actually,” Dorcas replied. Her hair had been in these
same faux-red loc extensions since Whittaker, and she looked… well. Having not been able to take
care of them or do anything to them for a month had left her looking an utter travesty. As much as
the focus of the past month had been not being killed and not starving to death, by fuck was she
happy to finally be getting these things off of her head. Let her scalp breathe for a bit.

Besides, Mary had her beads. Mary always did her hair. Not braiding her hair was a promise that
she’d find her again; at least that’s how it went in Dorcas’ brain.

“Come on, then,” Ana said. “Come to mine. I’ll tell you everything you need to know, everything
you missed, and you can fill me in on everything that Blue has probably omitted.”

“Blue?”

“Oh, Mavi means blue in turkish. Called her it once, she hated it so I kept saying it and then it
became, like. A habit.”

“Is that why she pretty much solely calls you Anastasia?”

“No. Has she been calling me that the whole time? Oh, this woman, I swear to God.”

They left the room laughing, Ana’s arm around Dorcas’ shoulder.

IV. LONDON

1.

Mavi and Dorcas set off for London the day after Ana’s speech. July trickled in like cinnamon, a
headrush of excitement for Dorcas, after an almost-week of getting to grips with the vampires
hiding under the foundations. Recovering from the Dolohov breakout and mingling (to her horror)
with everyone left her feeling… a lot more confident, to be quite honest. The vampires begun to get
to grips with their new setting and began to tame. A lot of them thanked her for getting them out.
One of them tried to kiss her feet. It’s safe to say that she was very happy and feeling quite positive
about the future of their war effort, however… well. She was quite glad to leave, as well, if for the
prospect of seeing her family again.

The lead to London came from the Dementors. Apparently, according to Mavi, they got antsy after
the breakout. New York became a ghost town pretty swiftly —not even the sleazy drunks that
refused to leave and called the fog above them a hoax were spared. The entire world went into
some kind of a lockdown. All because Riddle got mad and decided, in Mavi’s words, to “ice them
out”. Dorcas found it unfortunate that it was working. With the lack of humankind comes the lack
of human blood. They had a supply but with how in demand it was it was being drained very
quickly. Dorcas almost stayed, concerned and wanting to help, but Ana insisted they go. Because
of what happened after the end of June.

For after their two or three day murder rampage, the Dementors pulled back. They’re still up there,
but not nearly as many. The coast was still thick with fog but the quiet felt deadly, the silence felt
menacing, and reports began popping up of fog curdling in various cities around Europe. Across the
Atlantic, like a travelling storm cloud.

They never do anything without a reason, Mavi had said. She believed that there was something in
Europe that they were looking for. Or, someone.

The meeting in which all of this was decided ceased with Ana’s word, ordering portkeys to be
made and organising their set-off times and designating herself to help them decide when and
where to check. As they left, Dorcas caught Mavi’s arm, and her attention for the first time in a few
days.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hi.”

“How have you been?”

“I’ve been fine.”

The words she really wanted to say lay on her tongue, and she decided to just be out with it.
They’re all dead, anyway.

“I’m sorry about your mother,” she said, softly.

“Please don’t.” Mavi’s eyes hardened, or perhaps it was her jaw. Something in her froze over like a
wintry ocean. “Just—please don’t, Dorcas.”

“Okay,” she said, thinning her lips. “That’s fine. I won’t. I just. Thank you?”

Mavi quirked an eyebrow. “For?”

“Getting me out?” Dorcas said, laughing slightly. “Coming with me to help find them. Sticking to
your word.”

“Of course,” she said. She looked awfully out of place without her black dress or general fancy
Pureblood attire (she was in pants and a loose shirt—the absolute horror of comfortable, non-
pretentious clothing, Ana had joked at dinner, and Mavi’s lips had quirked just a little bit). But her
face still stood stiff. She nodded, courteous. “Cooperation breeds cooperation, remember?”

“Trust breeds trust,” Dorcas said. “Just—yeah. Just thank you.”

“She wasn’t supposed to be there,” said Mavi. “But we lose people in war. It happens. I came to
terms with it a long time ago.”

“Coming to terms with it is different from experiencing it, Mavi,” Dorcas murmured. Whatever
Mavi thought to this, her face was imperceptible. But she straightened, nodded, and turned and
immediately walked away, without even a goodbye.

Watching her walk away, Dorcas couldn’t pin who she was reminded of. It was only a few hours
later that she realised it was Regulus. Robo-Black and Robo-Blue. Funnily enough, she suspected
they’d get along.

The next day they travelled, and the first place they went was, of course, Mary’s. On Dorcas’
request. She held her hand to a doorknob and felt it blister like she was human again. The fact that
the door still opened for her meant more to her than she might ever know.

She made Mavi stay outside. For some reason, it felt too sacred to bring her inside. So she entered
and she knew, instantly, that there was no one here. The hall was dark, and dusty, the rooms once
bursting with the laughter of hunters three now empty, and hollow, and cold. It hit Dorcas with a
strangling intensity that they were no longer hunters. They were witch, and vampire, and…

Her train of thought ceased, for she traipsed her way into the big bedroom. She and Remus used to
alternate this one and the spare. It was all very stupid, really, looking back. The spare bedroom was
a completely acceptable room to stay in, but this one was just… it just felt more homely. It was
bigger, for one. And Remus and Dorcas are children at heart, really, so they’d row every time the
pair of them were staying at Mary’s house until Mary would grab them by the ears like children
and fling one into one room and one into the other of her own choosing.

She opened the door, and knew instantly the last person who had stayed here was Remus. A long,
long time ago, before all of this. But it had been Remus.

She had no idea how she knew his scent was him. She’d never smelled it before. She’d never been
taught any of this before; while Ana had showed her the basics, like how to feed properly, she
hadn’t really… told her much else. She hadn’t told her that she could pick up scents like they were
ingrained into her head. She hadn’t told her how to vamp-run. She hadn’t told her that her best
friend lives in her bones and in this room and on these sheets.

Oh, she yearned for him. She missed him like a lung and something gone rotten. She’d been trying
not to think about it, because all it brought her was futile sadness and aching pain, but here he was,
a jacket beside hers on a double peg, and here she was, smelling it. This she had smelled before. In
the end, vampirism is only just a bit more of what you already were. Instead of him being in this
jacket he’s everywhere. Dorcas isn’t sure if she loves it or despises it.

Finding it in herself to move on, she rummaged in the middle drawer of the bedside chest, finding
her old emergency stash of weapons. Theirs. Most of it was hers but some of the guns were
Remus’. She cleared the lot out and swung the drawer closed, turning before it closed to leave as
soon as she could—swiping one of the two radios on the way, for posterity—and left swiftly.

“Anything?” Mavi asked, as she closed the door. The enchantment repaired itself as it closed.

“No,” said Dorcas. She didn’t elaborate.

She wanted Mavi out of this place, but most of all she wanted herself out of this place. It was
sacred, a time when they were still what they were and not what they are now. And what Dorcas is
now is something unrecognisable. Something murderous. Something raw and ugly.
She doesn’t fit, anymore. She wants to be taught how to fit again. She misses her heart. She misses
her people. She misses Remus.

2.

On July 10, a small island on the coast of Luleå went down, completely caving into itself, and the
city was ravaged by a tsunami.

Mavi was convinced that it was them. Dorcas was less so, if not simply because of the brutality the
Dementors have begun ravishing across Europe. Five dead in Lisbon. Twenty-six in Paris. Two
hundred, now, in Sweden.

Their efforts to search London increased as the fog did in the sky, but at the end of the day
Pureblood and Vampire or not they are just two very small people against a very big world. And
when everybody is being suffocated, how do you differentiate?

Dorcas sat, at night, head on her arm, and listened to the static of the radio. The silence comforted
her.

3.

The static stopped twice, two days in a row, as if someone was trying to grasp onto the signal but
couldn’t quite reach it.

After days of nothing, it was the only thing that made Dorcas’ ears perk up.

4.

Hopping place to place, cowering under the fog that apparently only she could hear and see, the
only solace Dorcas got was when she slept. She often dreamed about Remus.

She dreamed that he was there, with her, and that she was burning under the sun. And then he
reached out and put the sun out, and in the dark, the night creatures come to play, and she found
something to sink her teeth into and then he sunk his teeth in right beside hers, in the darkness, in
the fog, no light. And they learned to live with it.

She wonders what it means.

5.
London is very big, and Dorcas is very small. She knows better, but at times like this it almost feels
like the biggest place in the world for a vampire with a knot in her neck and a hole in her heart.

6.

Eventually, Mavi proposed that they try Grimmauld Place. Dorcas agreed, because she had nothing
to make her say no. They had both been entirely convinced that the house would not let them in,
but sure enough, when Dorcas tried the door something in the magic clicked, and it opened
happily.

The entrance hallway felt like a ballroom. It was narrow, but had the flourishing, the colour and the
regal energy of one. The rugs felt like they could’ve been ripped right out of Buckingham Palace,
and the walls were a magnificent cream, lined with carved stone poles with magnificent abacus at
the top and bottom. The house, while magnificent, was empty. Dorcas could catch the scents of
various people—it was hard to tap into, hard to get a grasp on. But it was almost like 50 unbearable
colognes were sprayed all at once all around you, and then dissipated into the air. Muted, but there.
Empty, but present.

Once affirming that there was a) nobody currently present and b) no lingering scents of any of the
people that they were looking for, the pair of them went, for lack of a better word, exploring.
Dorcas made her way upstairs. It was a lot darker up here, a lot gloomier. There were bedrooms,
but even Dorcas could tell they were rarely used—cobwebs and dust piling up in every corner.
What she was most interested in came around the corner on the second floor, in a wide hallway that
seemed to be more like a gallery than anything.

It was filled with portraits. Huge, Elizabethan-era portraits, Romantic style portraits. A family
through the ages. Most of the people Dorcas didn’t recognise; some of them she did. Bellatrix’s
face sent a visceral shudder and a curdling of hatred down her spine. She had her own portrait, and
she had one with her sisters. Dorcas had met the eldest two, but she had never met Narcissa. She
was beautiful. Her eyes were brutal but kind.

Everybody else's eyes were not. Dorcas found that these portraits had a heart-wrenching energy
about them. The colours of their faces flickering in the candlelight made her feel like she could feel
these people, to the tips of her toes and through her bones; some of them watched you. There was a
portrait of a woman, no older than 25, of course, with long, silky brown hair and oval eyes. She
was beautiful in the objective way but Dorcas could see the ugliness. How her eyebrow quirked
upwards at the ends, how her mouth was in a dead-set frown. The coldness of her eyes. Hers
followed Dorcas the most—there must have been some sort of enchantment on them—and it made
her increasingly uncomfortable. But a part of it comforted her, because this woman looked
strikingly and harrowingly like her son (or, perhaps, the other way around.) This woman looked
like Sirius.

It was not as striking as the resemblance between Andromeda and Bellatrix Black, for example, but
it was there. Sirius had undeniably gotten his face from Walburga. His lips, the way his face set.
But while his features sat comfortably hers sat a little bit awkwardly. As if she had too many
edges, and all of her features were slipping and falling off of them.

There was not a portrait of Sirius, obviously, but there was a portrait of Regulus.

He looked… well, no younger. But perhaps less world-weary. From the period-type clothing and
the sombreness of the colours and the brush strokes, it was a Romantic era piece. He had a large
collar, in clothes of all black. His hair was shorter than it is now, curling just above his ears. He
had a knife-wielding look about him. He had Narcissa’s eyes.

Dorcas had to correct herself; it was not kindness. It was cunningness found in beauty. Master
manipulators, unapologetic absinthe, pouring down the tunnels of your throat like spirits poured
into thine ear. That’s Regulus Black, alright.

His eyes followed her, too, but she wasn’t too fussed about that.

That night, Dorcas sat in the massive living room, by the flickering fire. She was curled up into a
red armchair and had the radio going beside her. She’d switched from static to the news and was
listening to a report about the reparations going on in Sweden.

Every report ended with the nationwide recommendation for how to keep yourself safe from the
deadly fog. Dorcas wished she could tell them the truth: you don’t. You never can.

She was thinking of Lily, here, and wiping her mouth after finishing a blood bag when Mavi
walked in. She sat down on the long loveseat and they coexisted in silence for a long time until the
radio show ended. Dorcas flicked the switch, returning to the static.

“Did you find anything?” Mavi asked. She knew the answer, but she always asked anyway.

“No,” said Dorcas. It was a solemn thing.

As much as she’d been comforted, it was very easy to lose morale. Perhaps she had had too high
hopes, exhilarated with finally being free and having all of this power and also support from Ana
and even Mavi, to an extent. She felt very sad. Having so much free time and having exhausted her
thoughts about her loved ones in the cell (a lie, she could never) had left her with room to think
about what she had become, what she had done. The fact that she had died. It was all very negative,
a black mass inside of her head. She just wanted to go home. Her brain hadn’t even processed that
there was no home to go back to anymore.

But Mavi was here, and Dorcas was always one to put on a show. So when Mavi smiled and asked
if she’d seen the portraits, she turned, and she said yes, and she raised an eyebrow which curiosity
that was not genuine—not that anything about her was anymore, but.

And then Mavi said, “I used to have quite a thing for Regulus Black,” and Dorcas almost actually
laughed.

“You know, I fucking knew it.”

“What?” Mavi looked at her with the most expression Dorcas had ever seen on her face.

“Not—not that,” she said, “but the fact that you’d known each other. You keep reminding me of
him. It’s very odd.”

“I remind you of him? In what manner?”

“The fact that you say the phrase ‘in what manner’,” Dorcas said, deadpan.

Mavi scoffed, brushing her off. And then she pursed her lips, her interest obviously piqued.

“So,” she said, slowly, “he’s… still the same, then?”

Here, Dorcas did laugh.

“Really? Regulus?”

“Oh, no,” Mavi snapped, “be serious. It’s been four hundred years. I’m just curious. But—if I was
interested, what’s wrong with Regulus?”

“Well, he’s…” Dorcas shrugged, looking back at the radio. “And, yknow… you’re…”

Mavi looked at her. She had a black blouse on with a pin skirt. She looked very proper, and not
very menacing at all. And then Dorcas thought about how she had killed those two snatchers
without a second thought. The fighting in North Base. The brutality. Her mother…

She sighed. Her train of thought lay sorrow and undisturbed, but Mavi had let out something of a
dry laugh and was now looking at her, drawing her back to reality.

“I’m what?”

“I don’t know,” Dorcas said. “I just presumed your standards would be higher.”

“Oh, but in the seventeenth century, Regulus Black was the highest of them all,” she said, shuffling
over, somewhat dreamily. “He was a heartthrob, you know.”

“No,” Dorcas said, her mouth falling open.

“Oh, yes. Everyone wanted to be with him. I’m not sure how far he lived up to expectations,
because I never… well, we didn’t end up working. My parents disapproved of him, actually; of
course, the Black family were still rebuilding their reputation at the time, after the utter mutiny
when Sirius left. They were stains, back then. Of course that was when they were allowed to be;
when there were enough of us out there to uphold the unstained. They disappeared for a decade or
two, and when they came back, it was all about Regulus. Every event, he’d be with someone new.
But he never seemed to… care much, for any of them. He never seemed to care much in general.”
Mavi pursed her lips, in thought. “Whenever you saw him he looked like he’d rather be anywhere
else; if he had a woman on his arm, with anyone else. I always wondered… if it was just a facade,
you know, or if he actually didn’t want to be what they’d made him. I tried to bring it up to my
grandmother, once; my aunts too; but they looked at me as if I was ridiculous. Apparently
Purebloods aren’t supposed to sympathise that way. Not supposed to look deeper. Well, that was
news to me.”

Dorcas felt a pang in her chest, here, engrossed in Mavi’s story with doe eyes.

“He cares, now,” she said. “And he’s in love, I think.”

Mavi smiled. “I’m very glad that he finally found someone,” she said, quietly, looking down to her
lap.

Dorcas let the words linger in the air for a moment.

“Have you ever…” she said, quietly. The fire crackled. Mavi was still for a long moment and then
looked up, tucking her hair behind her ears.

“Ah, yes,” she said, dismissively. “Nothing exciting. I fell in love with a man who wanted different
things. Happens to the best of us.”

“How could anyone not want you?” Dorcas scoffed. Mavi looked at her, and a smile tugged at her
lips. “You’re gorgeous.”

“You would be surprised,” replied Mavi, a resigned, bubbling tone lathered in her voice.
Something bitter still lingered there. Dorcas could taste it.

“Sirius is in love, too,” said Dorcas, rolling her head back around to stare into the flames. “Isn’t it
strange?”

“What’s strange?”

“How everybody is in love but nothing ever changes.”

Mavi made no response.

“It feels like it should change everything,” Dorcas whispered. “But it doesn’t. People still die,
people still grieve. It changes nothing.”

“It does change something,” said Mavi, quietly.

Dorcas turned to her.

“What does it change?”

“What you have to lose,” she replied simply.

Dorcas swallowed, feeling it coming up her throat. The loss, the dirt from the grave she was buried
in. But she thought about home and her windpipe cleared. The scent of those brothers Black wafted
through the air and Dorcas had never felt the loss of it more. The loss of their lovers. The loss of
her own.

“You speak like a woman who knows,” Mavi said, gently.

Dorcas turned to look at her. Mavi wiggled her eyebrows, which made her laugh.

“Shut up.”

“Hey,” Mavi said, chuckling herself. “I saw love, I said love. Tell me about them.”

Dorcas sighed.

“It’s complicated,” she said. Mavi laughed throatily. “It’s complicated… being with her.”

“‘But it feels so simple.’”

“We can’t be together.”

“But you could so easily,” Mavi finished, bird-like, singing the words like lyrics of a song. “Listen.
I’ve done it all. I’ve felt it all. All of the little things that Pureblood’s aren't supposed to feel. Do
you want my advice, Dorcas?”

“Yes.”

“Do it,” she said. “Do it all. Don’t let recklessness, drunkenness and blindness get in the way of
something so fleeting because you are rational. Don’t think about the present as a place you can
mould. Think about it as a place you’re being granted the privilege of living in.” She paid, and
then said; “Living is an absolute. Love is how you make your own choices. And besides,” a smile
tugged at her lips, “you could be dead tomorrow.”

“Is that a threat?” Dorcas asked, but she was smiling too.

Mavi shrugged.

“Very poetic,” Dorcas commented, as Mavi hauled herself up from the sofa.

“I’ve had five hundred years of practice, my dear,” was her dry response. “I’m going hunting. Do
you want anything?”

“Blood bag.”

“Type?”

Dorcas craned her neck to look over the back of the chair at her. “I liked that A+ you brought me.”

Mavi nodded, once. And then she was gone. And the static resumed.

7.

An hour and thirteen minutes later, exactly, the door slammed.

Dorcas, who was still sitting in her seat, listening intently as the static jumped as if someone was
trying to reach the channel, didn’t bother to check who it was, or take a deep breath to catch her
companion’s perfume-like scent as it wafted down the hall. She twisted the dial, frowning, as the
static from the radio sort of crackled into an almost-but-not-quite-intelligible garb.

“Mavi,” she called, vaguely hearing her walk down the hall. “Mavi, come listen to this. I know you
don’t know shit about radios but doesn’t this sound like…”

She trailed off, as her ears perked up, and she realised the person in the doorway to the living room
wasn’t, in fact, Mavi at all.

She knew exactly who it was. Without even looking, she knew exactly who it was.

And yet, the feeling in her chest, the explosion of the feeling that she got, breaking loose from their
rusty holy-water cages, when she sat up, turning the radio all the way down and peered her head
over the top of her armchair to see Sirius Black in the flesh, as she dies and bleeds, was completely,
completely unmatchable. To anything.

He was simply standing there. Face dropped, mouth open. He looked pathetic, somehow. He
looked so real. Oh, he was so real. She took a breath in, scrambling up to her feet, mouth watering
with the longing and he was there; his hair. His eyes, wide, wide eyes. His brows twitched for a
second and his head cocked an inch or so, as if trying to make… sense of it. Make sense of
everything. But he inhaled and he knew and she inhaled and she knew. She took a step forward.
Mine, she thought. Family.

“Dorcas?” he whispered.

She teared up immediately at his voice. Trying to push them away, and failing, she pursed her lips
and nodded as fiercely as she could.

“Hi, Sirius,” she choked, smiling.

He blinked. There was a moment. A moment when he didn’t move, and Dorcas stared at him, and
the silence paved the way for longing and they’d never been so fucking far.

And then, slowly, like a crane, he reached his arms out. Reached out towards her.

Dorcas let out a breath that might have been a laugh. She let out another. And then she sprinted
towards him, as fast as she could, and jumped right into his arms.

He responded immediately, grabbing her and smacking his arms onto her back, holding onto her
with so much vigour they could crush each other. She let it all go, wide smile, laughing through
her flowing tears as he staggered, holding onto her back and her waist and her neck and her head as
if trying to place that she was actually real. It took a few seconds, her clinging onto him, and then
she began to feel the vibrations of his throaty laugh against her. He squeezed her tighter and dug
his face into her neck, holding her by the back of it. Laughing. Laughing, and laughing, through
tears and tears and tears.

“Oh, my God,” Sirius gasped, into her hair, the side of her head. “Dorcas. Dorcas.”

She laughed, some more, and he swayed them, gently putting her down after who knows how long.

“Dorcas,” he breathed, leaning back just far enough to look at her, both of his hands on the sides of
her face. There were tears in his eyes, down his cheeks, and she was exactly the same. He couldn’t
stop saying her name. “Dorcas. Fuck, Dorcas.”

“Hi,” she choked, laughing.

“You—” he cut off, swallowing, running his hands over her head, her cheeks, letting them land
cupping the back of her neck. “How are you—what? Ha—you’re alive, you’re—” Sirius laughed,
heartily, here, shaking his head. Looking up and down and all over. He sniffed, tears falling freely,
and she laughed at his emotional response and he sure as hell fucking laughed at hers. She cocked
her head as he asked his questions. You know, it said, and he did.

“Who turned you?” he asked. She cocked her head again, and watched it hit him. His jaw dropped.
“You’re—” he started, eyes wide, “you’re mine?”

“You’re the only person who bit me,” she said, gently.

“But… I didn’t—”

“Sirius, the venom,” she continued, persistent, “the Basilisk. I know you didn’t mean to but it must
have enhanced it. It’s the only explanation.”

“What if somebody, when you were unconscious—”

“No,” she said, “no, listen to me. I know it’s you because I can do things that other people can’t do.
I can hear the dementors, Sirius. Hear them like you and Lily can.”

He stared at her. Stunned.

“And…”

“And?” he pressed on.

“I got stabbed with the Basilisk blade,” she said. His face fell. “And—no, Sirius, I took it out, and
it healed. Like any other stab wound. It didn’t do anything. I tried again, later. It doesn’t do
anything to me.”

Sirius’ face twitched. It seemed to be here that he registered all of the questions he had to ask, all of
the things that had to be said. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again.

“Where have—” he started. “Who’s—how did you even—”

“Wait, wait,” she said, stepping forward. “I’ll tell you everything, but you tell me what I need to
know first.”

He knew exactly what she’d say. But he let her say it.

“Remus.”

“Not here, but safe,” he replied, and she felt her entire countenance droop with relief. “Safe for
now.” And it froze up again.

“What the fuck do you mean for now?”

Sirius’ face fell. Into something horribly, horribly sad. She felt her dead heart speed up.

“Sirius, what do you mean for now.”

“I—” he said, world-weary. “I don’t—he will want to tell you.”

“Sirius–”

“I mean it, Dorcas,” he said, sternly. She blinked, and positioned herself, feathers ruffled but
recognising defeat.

“Okay,” she said, “well, where is he? I want to see him, I want to see him now, I—why are you
even here without him? Why aren’t you with him?”

Sirius scrunched up his face, rubbing his eyes with both hands. “We had a fight.”

“You had a what?”

“You heard,” he muttered, dropping his hands. He looked utterly exhausted, if it was possible for
someone like Sirius to look as such.

“You cunt. Did you hurt him?”

“No,” Sirius hissed. “He hurt me.”

“I highly doubt you’re blameless.”

“I am,” Sirius spat. And then she glared at him, and so he sighed. “No, I’m not. I don’t know.”

“I’m going to, quite literally, snap your neck. I can do that now, Black.”

Sirius looked at her, aghast. And then, against the weariness of his eyes, he began to laugh.

This, predictably, ruffled her feathers even more.

“Shut up!”

“I’m sorry, it’s just—”

“What?”

“You’ve been back from the dead two minutes and have already called me a cunt and threatened to
kill me,” he said, grinning. And then his smile simmered into something more gentle, and he
whispered, “I really missed you.”

This ruffled Dorcas’ feathers the entire opposite way.

“Stop it,” she hissed, willing the tears away frantically. “Stop it, stop it. I—I want to see Remus, I
want—and what about the others? Mary, where’s Mary?”

“Back home, and fine,” he said. She sighed. “I saw her last week.”

“And…” Dorcas swallowed. Terrified of this one. “Marlene?”

“Back home, also fine,” he said, and Dorcas felt weights rolling off her shoulders.

“Home? Mavi said that Boardwalk was gone,” Dorcas said, shaking her head in confusion. “That
you were– bombed, and nobody has been able to get into contact. Ana has been looking…”

“It’s not,” Sirius said, “Well, it was… they rebuilt, but we had to fall completely off the map and
when we lost Boardwalk we lost all contact, and I—” he stopped, abruptly. “Who the fuck is
Mavi?”

Dorcas gasped. “Oh! Yeah, she’s—”

“Tell me you don’t mean Dolohov.”

Dorcas thinned her lips. “Listen, we knew you wouldn’t be happy, but she’s on our side—”

As if like poetry, the door opened, and it slammed shut.

“They only had AB,” came Mavi’s singsong voice down the hallway. Dorcas cringed. “Sorry, but I
think that this one is good too. Tastes like olives.”

Sirius turned to the sound, and then turned back to Dorcas.

“I’m going to kill you, Meadowes,” he hissed, and then vamped off.

“Wait!” Dorcas called, and then, for the first time ever, vamped off after him.

She bumped into a bust, clumsy and still wonky at this whole vampire thing, to find Sirius holding
Mavi against the wall, forearm pressed against her throat. He was snarling at her.

“Little—help here, Dorca–as—” she choked, frowning at her. Dorcas rolled her eyes and grabbed
onto Sirius’ shoulder, trying to pull him back.

Without letting go of Mavi he turned around to Dorcas and hissed at her, now, fangs on full
display. Dorcas, who had, to be quite honest, had enough of his theatrics (oh how she’d missed him
and would never ever ever get enough) hissed right back at him, which made him cock his head,
and then she slapped him round the face.

It cleared, instantly.

He turned his head back from where she’d smacked it, jaw wide open.
“Erm. Ow?”

“Let her go,” Dorcas pleaded, “I swear, she’s fine.”

“She’s a Dolohov,” Sirius whined. “You don’t know them, Dorcas.”

“I don’t,” she said, “but I’ve gotten to know her, and she’s cooperated and Ana trusts her and I
watched her kill her mother to break me and two hundred vampires out of a Pureblood prison to
help fight the war on our side, so you need to let her go.”

Sirius stared at her. And then he let her go. Mavi fell, coughing uproariously.

“Hüsniye’s dead?” he asked, looking at her. She stared daggers up at him from where she was on
the floor.

“Yes.”

“Hm,” he said. “Thank fuck, she was a horror.”

“Aw come on, now you’re just provoking her,” Dorcas sighed, defeated. Neither of them listened.

In a second, Mavi vamped and had Sirius exactly where she’d been. Same position. Forearm-to-
throat.

“Don’t talk about my mother,” she hissed. “She was a lot of things but she was never more of a
horror than your pathetic excuse for a little brother.”

Dorcas, who had listened to Mavi talk about Regulus earlier, frowned.

“Okay, well now you’re just fully lying.”

A flurry of movement, a snapping of a bone (Dorcas would find out it was, in fact, a tibia) and a
cry in pain led them swapped, once again.

“Say another word against my brother and you’ll be dead before you can even blink,” Sirius
snarled, cocking his head to match her.

Jesus fucking Christ. Right. Dorcas had had enough.

She forced her way in between them, pressing the palm of her hand to Sirius’ face and the palm of
her other to Mavi’s sternum to stop her moving. Sirius staggered back, swiping at her and throwing
his head around as if he were a sneezing cat. When she dropped her hand, he was glaring at her.

“Dorcas, I mean it—”

“She’s fine,” said Dorcas. “She helped me, Sirius. She’s spent the past month and a half and
sacrificed everything to help me, help us. Do you want to get back into contact with Ana and her
fleet? She can do that for us. For fuck’s sake, cease and desist, you idiot.”

Sirius sighed.

“She’s a Dolohov,” he complained.

“And you’re a Black,” said Dorcas, which shut him up promptly. He wrinkled his nose.

“Okay, two completely different situations—”

 “They’re not and you know it.”

“—I’m not bringing her to us, she’s not going—”

“I didn’t ask you to bring her to you, I asked you to not rip her heart out in the fucking hallway—”

“—to Remus, I don’t care—”

“Hey, stop it,” muttered Mavi, looking wistfully down the hallway.

“—and the only person going to Remus— yeah, when the fuck are you gonna finally take me—”

“Just—I just need to know where you’ve been—”

“I’ll tell you, Sirius, but I want to see my fucking friends who, if you’ve forgotten, think I’m
dead—”

“Shut up,” Mavi boomed. The pair of them went silent. “...Can you hear that?”

All three heads turned. Down that dark, dark hallway.

In the living room, the fire was still crackling. The low hum was coming from the radio, gentle
from where Dorcas had turned the volume low, but not to zero. With the three of them crouched
around it, she slowly, slowly turned the knob.

“This is Peter Pettigrew, trained under Dorcas Meadowes for HI2 intelligence. I have been
isolated and am in need of hunting assistance. If anyone is out there, identify yourself. I repeat, if
anyone is out there, identify yourself.”

They waited a moment.

The signal went choppy.

And then, like a fucking hallowed moon, the reckoning come at long last through the soundwaves
of a gritty, beat up radio. The voice. The one and only.

“This is Remus Lupin, trained under Alastor Moody for HI1 intelligence, responding to a distress
signal. Peter, can you confirm your whereabouts?”

Sirius and Dorcas looked at each other.

“Holy shit, Remus,” Peter said, through the signal, in relief.

“Holy shit, Remus,” both Sirius and Dorcas said, to each other, in exasperation.

Chapter End Notes

she means absolutely everything to me. writing this (specifically the conversation with
ana) was the first time i realised that dstg dorcas absolutely suffers from eldest
daughter syndrome, despite being an only child. like she's the oldest, born in
september she's the oldest both in her academic year and also within the hunters trio
(mary is february, remus is march) and like. she's always been the Manager, the one
who puts everyone together. remus runs on heart but she runs on logic. but now she
has no one and she's lost and alone and studying vampires is nothing compared to
BEING one, and... fuck, she Needed that conversation with ana. my girlll i'm so proud
of her

& the hallucination scene with remus made me CRY while writing it. like they're
seriously everything to each other. they've saved each other over and over and they
don't even realise it.

ALSOOO on a lighter note lets talk abt sirius and dorcas having their bonnie and
damon moment. it was too perfect, i had to!! (also cried writing that lmfao. literally
sobbed once while writing it and then again while editing it bye)

anywayy this chapter means a lot to me so i'd love to hear what you think if you made
it this far xxx
 thirty two
Chapter Summary

pause the game

Chapter Notes

hi :)

hello! nice to see u! welcome back!

just as a bit of context, this chapter goes back to the main timeline POV, aka
continuing directly from the events of chapter 30. there are no specific CW's i want to
note, however if you remember what happened in chapter 30 you can kind of assume
it'll be a bit of a sad one. grief and mourning in particular, and pretty bad dissociative
episodes from remus. THOUGH there are still happy moments! one of my favourite
scenes is in this chapter. :)

also, this is the first split POV chapter we have – you get both remus and lily in this
one. there'll be quite a few more chapters like this one in book 4, split between remus,
dorcas and lily (obviously remus is still the primarily storyteller but we get the two
girls a lot too)

last, this isn't something i usually do (mainly because 99% of the time i don't write/edit
with music, can't focus properly) but! i wanted to say that if you haven't heard the song
"mum" by luke hemmings, you should absolutely go listen to that for this chapter, or
after this chapter, or during, whatever you wanna do. it's VERY disintegration remus
and very applicable to this chapter in particular.

AND! i haven't actually mentioned this on here before, but I made a disintegration lily
playlist that i thought some of you might like! i was also listening to that a bit while
editing! and if you go to my spotify account you'll also find my D+R playlist
(dorcas+remus) which i believe i linked at the end of chapter 23, but again, it's
applicable here. basically go crazy if you want lmao. but i would definitely
recommend mum in particular. it genuinely guts me whenever i listen to it and think
about him

that's all i think! i hope everyone is having a lovely spring – lighter nights and happier
days are coming. lots of love xxx

J <3

See the end of the chapter for more notes

REMUS
It was still dark when Remus woke.

The sky was lighter; not lit but a dark grey with the throes of an incoming sun on the opposite side
of setting, as opposed to velvety black. Regardless, when he looked around, out of the window he
saw nothing but an abyss of trees, lit up briefly by the headlights of the truck Lily was driving and
then plunged back into darkness.

The time, lit up in orange on the dash, said 2:03AM.

Remus, hearing thumping behind him, swivelled his body and clung onto the headrest to peer out
of the foggy window. Two figures were out in the bed of the truck.

They were both standing, Sirius seamlessly, as always. Dorcas was wobbly, with her arms out to
keep balance. Sirius was saying something to her that Remus couldn’t hear, and then he held out
his hand, and Dorcas took it.

He pulled her in, spun her around. Under the moonlight, slowly, hair dashing through the wind,
they began to dance.

When he next came to, the number on the dash said 2:49AM, and there were two figures in the two
front seats, no more commotion in the back. The car was still going, more bumpily now, and the
two figures were whispering back and forth at each other.

“He won’t be able to handle it,” Lily hissed, hands tightening on the wheel. “He’ll fall apart going
back there.”

“I don’t know what you want me to do about that, Lily. It’s not my plan, it’s hers. This is what she
left us with.”

“The only thing I want you to do with it is understand. You weren’t there, after.”

“Yes I—”

“No, Sirius. Not in the same way I was. You were in the wine cellar for two weeks. It’s not—” her
fingers sparked, “oh, calm down, it’s not a slight. I’m just saying, the immediate aftermath? I fed
him. Watered him. Moved him like a doll. He was a shell, Sirius. He can’t.”

“You’re saying this to me as if I want him to?”

“I know damn well you do. I heard your fight.”

“Not this. Not like this. And it’s—” he sighed, scratching his head. “You didn’t hear him, Lily.
When you got rid of the Dementors, after his heart stopped. He was so… he was so scared.”

Sirius’ voice broke.

“Sirius.”

“I’m not ashamed of the fact that it’s selfish,” Sirius said, gravely. “That I’d do anything to keep
him even if he doesn’t want to stay. You can snub me in your morally-arseholed mind all you want,
Evans, but I don’t regret what I said in that fight. However, things have changed. And he does want
to stay. He told me that he does and so I’m going to raise heaven and hell and set fire to the ground
we walk on, if I must, to make that happen for him, Lily.”

A tentative silence.

“So he’s going to have to handle it. He’s going to just have to find a way to fucking handle it.”

Another silence.

“Did you say his heart stopped?” Lily asked, quietly.

Sirius didn’t answer for a moment, though he turned to look at her.

“Yes.”

“Do you remember what happened the last time his heart stopped?”

Remus closed his eyes.

The world fizzled away once more.

When he woke up the third time the car was still.

It took him a few moments to gather his bearings. He was alone in the backseat. It was still dark,
but lightening rapidly, now, and the window to his left was rolled down just a little bit. He’d had a
strange dream—cold, silver jewellery and a wicked eye that left him unsettled. Coming down from
it, his heart slowly, he could hear three voices.

“He’s not going to be happy about this.” Sirius.

“What choice do we have?” Lily.

“It’s not—he’s going to—to throw a fit.”

“I should be the one to wake him.” A different voice.

“I think that’s the last thing he needs. I’ll do it.”

“Sirius, I’m his best friend—”

“Who has just come back from the dead after almost two months,” he hissed, back. “Dorcas, you
need to just—give him time. You don’t know how bad it was. You don’t know how bad it was
when you went.”

A moment, and then:

“I’ll do it. I—”

“I’d appreciate it if you would stop talking about me like I’m not here,” said Remus, without even
registering that he had begun to speak.

His throat burned with residual smoke and he could feel a draft on his face from the small slit in
the window. The voices fell silent.

The door slammed behind him as he got out of the car. Lily, Sirius and Dorcas were standing in a
semi-circle, facing each other, looking at him.
“We thought you were asleep,” said Dorcas, quietly. Remus looked at her. He looked through her.

He turned to Sirius.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Sirius said. “How are you feeling?”

Remus reached a hand up to cup the back of his neck, and then felt a sharp pain on the side of his
ribs. “Achy.”

“Well, that makes sense—”

“I have to go back to Whittaker, don’t I?” he asked, beating around the bush. And stunning Sirius
into silence.

It took a moment, and then, strangely, he huffed a laugh.

“You heard that?”

“I heard enough.”

Silence.

“What’s the plan, then,” he mumbled blankly. “Lay it on me.”

Sirius and Lily exchanged a look.

“We don’t know, yet,” Lily started, taking a step forward. The grass crunched underneath her feet.
“Dora has left us with a portkey that goes to this… remote office she has. All of the details are
there, apparently.”

“All we know right now is what she rattled off to me and Dorcas in a haze, when we went to
Mary’s house before coming to find you and Lily,” said Sirius. “Which was that you needed to
trigger your curse, and that… it all comes back to Whittaker.”

It all comes back to Whittaker.

It all comes back to that ballroom.

As Remus took these words in, Lily took a deep breath in. “We’re going to get somewhere to let
the dust settle and then—then find out what the plan is, but I just want to say, you don’t have to go
through with anything—”

“Why would I not go through with it?” Remus asked, sort of in more of a mumble.

Lily gaped for a moment.

“Just—just know you have options, just because you—”

“She’s dead,” he said, “and we killed her. Why would I not go through with it?”

Silence.

“Remus… we didn't kill her,” Lily said, softly.

“She was there because of us, wasn’t she?” Remus asked, tilting his head. His voice sounded
robotic. Lily’s face twitched with hurt that disappeared almost as quickly as it came. “Because of
me.”

Lily, again, opened her mouth to speak and then closed it. She looked weary, sort of washed out
under the dim lighting. With a crook in his neck, Remus looked up to the gentle, dusky sky; a very
fat, almost-full moon hung precariously over them, and for the first time in his life, he felt a jolt of
fear strike through him at the sight.

“Sirius,” he said, trying to keep his voice as steady as he could. Staring at the moon. “What’s the
date today?”

When Sirius’ voice came back to him, it was hoarse. “July 25th,” he said, and then, almost
humorously; “Full moon was yesterday.”

Oh, Remus could fucking cackle. He could cry.

“Okay.” He nodded. He breathed. A month. You have a month. “Okay. Okay, I—”

His eyes flickered down to the treeline. It was only here that he registered they were on the side of
a road.

There was a road sign, down the street. It was dark, but a lit-up streetlamp guided his way a little,
and he blinked as he read the word “Haverfordwest”.

It took him a moment to process this.

“Why… why are we in Wales?” he asked, numbly, feeling his eyebrows quirk up in the middle. He
looked at Sirius, who had taken a step forward. “Sirius, why are we in Wales?”

“Okay, sweetheart, listen to me,” Sirius said, cautiously. “All of the hunter buildings are
compromised now. There are dementors swarming London. Our portkey took us as far as
Hampshire and then we had to go by car and—we had to get somewhere before the sun came up,
and there was only one place in reach that was warded well enough not by hunting associates—”

Mary warded her house.

“No,” he said, quietly, shaking his head. “No. You didn’t.”

“Remus, listen—”

“No,” he whispered, and then he turned on Dorcas. “You.”

“Remus…”

“You, why would you—why would you bring us here? Why would you do that?”

“Remus, your mum’s house is the safest place in the U.K. right now,” Dorcas said, quietly.
“There’s no way anything or anyone could penetrate it.”

“He’s in my head, Dorcas!” Remus cried, banging the heel of his palm against his temple. “He’s
in my fucking head! He’s everywhere and I’m—and now I’m—” he looked up to the moon again,
dimly registering that the body he was watching couldn’t breathe, “and I’m—”

“Right,” said Sirius, kicking into action, walking towards him and taking him by the hand. “Come
on. In the car.”

In the backseat of the car he rolled up the window, flicked the overhead light off so they were in
dimly lit darkness, and turned to him, keeping that same grip on his hand.

He was speaking and Remus was watching as an outside observer, gripping onto the hand that
wasn’t his—the words were muffled, distorted as if he was listening through water, and the feeling
on his hand felt like a burning sensation like the one on his ribs. But the fact that his lungs were
filling with water and his hand was burning felt nothing but mildly uncomfortable because he
wasn’t really there. He wasn’t real. He couldn’t be, not now. Not here.

He was the particles in the air, the seat he was sitting on, the floor that his feet were planted on and
the hand that he was holding. It all melted into one. He couldn’t—differentiate. Waves of panic
blustered through him as he tried to grasp onto anything, but there was nothing to grasp onto.

Sirius sat there, and breathed with him. Held onto his not-hand and spoke to an entity so far away it
was haunting.

“I’m so confused,” Remus gasped, at one point. Keeling over into himself, he kept that shaky grip
on Sirius’ fingers.

“Hey,” Sirius whispered, leaning forward. “Look at me. Look at me, sweetheart. I’m real, and I’m
holding onto you, so you must be real too.”

“Don’t let go,” Remus whispered, and this must have been the catalyst, because then he was in
Sirius’ arms.

“I’m never going to,” Sirius whispered, into his hair. “Never, never, never.”

Eventually he calmed down. But everything was foggy. He asked for a minute, which Sirius
granted him, climbing out of the door and closing it softly behind him, and in this minute he closed
his eyes, tried to blot out his senses, and did as he always did.

He made a list.

1. My name is Remus Lupin.

There’s a start.

2. I am a Horcrux, a Hunter, and now I am a Werewolf.

3. I wanted to die.

He mentally crossed that one out, and amended:

4. I never wanted to die.

5. Pandora is dead.
6. Pandora was already dying.
7. Dorcas was dead.
8. Dorcas is not dead anymore.
9. My father is dead.
10. I killed him.

He mentally crossed that one out, too, and amended:

11. I might have killed him.

12. He almost killed my mother.
13. I am in Haverfordwest, and my mother is here.
Here, he reached a block.

Thirteen was an ugly number. This was not what he had been taught. This is not what is important.
Concise, concise, concise.

“My name is Remus,” he whispered to himself, “I am in a car in Wales. I am a werewolf and the
full moon is in a month. I am my father’s son and my enemy’s object.”

He swallowed, thickly. What else, Remus?

“Pandora was alive and now she is dead,” he whispered, voice breaking. “Dorcas was dead and
now she is alive. I—I—”

What else, Remus?

He pressed his hands to his face, and breathed through frustrated tears.

For once in his life, he wants someone else to make the goddamn list.

***

Pulling up to where the house was, Remus and Sirius in the backseat, Lily and Dorcas in the front,
he realised just how anxious he was.

He had fought back. He was still unsure about the whole thing. But they weren’t wrong. They
needed somewhere—if only for one day, while they caught their bearings in the wake of Pandora’s
death, and tried to get into contact with their friends on the other side of the pond. Or if only just to
sleep. To rest. His heart was beating like a drum and his mouth was dry and there was still blood
on his face and his clothes.

He had been listening to Sirius and Dorcas’ conversations, albeit a little water-logged, but he’d
caught Ana’s name and a name that sounded like ‘Mavi’ or something of the sort. There was a lot
to go over. There was a lot to catch up on. There was a lot to… process.

A lot of change.

He had barely looked at her. Dorcas. It wasn’t… it just didn’t feel, it didn’t feel right. He just
couldn’t seem to compute that she was sitting there and Pandora wasn’t. It had all fallen out and
back into place so quickly his head hadn’t caught up, and instead had spun him around until he was
dizzy and stumbling. He was now and he was also two, three, six weeks ago, he was Whittaker and
he was also Sweden and most of all he was grief. He still had the letter he wrote her, somewhere.
Just lingering. She was dead, now she was not. That was a thing. It happened.

Regardless, they needed somewhere for the day, if for anything for the fact that in about half an
hour if Dorcas did not get into shade she would burn to a crisp. He was finding it hard to
conceptualise the things he was seeing, yes, but there were some things that he knew for fact. This
was a vampire. He could see that, in front of him, this was a vampire. It was just when he
combined the ‘this’ with the ‘Dorcas’, and combined the ‘Dorcas’ with the ‘my best friend’, and
the ‘my best friend’ with the image of the woman being killed in front of his eyes that had played
every time he’d closed them for the past month and a half… that was when it got tricky.

But this was a vampire. Fact. So they needed to find shelter. Safety. Sleep.

“Wait,” he said, recognising a certain tree and a certain road and the nostalgia that came along with
it. This house was not his childhood childhood home—they’d moved around a lot, especially in the
early days. But by the time he was twelve or thirteen the dust had sort of settled on… well, what
Remus now knew to be Lyall, and so they got comfortable here and didn’t move again.

This was the same house that Hope had been abducted out of in 2015, when the werewolves came
back for her. The werewolves that Remus had killed, one by one, on his own; the pack he now
knew to be his father’s, but might never know was his father. Even after the trauma of that event
and Remus’ begging she had refused to move after that, claiming that she’d found a home and she
refused to let it go. This had infuriated Remus at the time but actually soothed his mind a little bit,
now, for since she had refused to move they’d had to add extra on top of extra protection to the
house.

He’d said to himself that if he felt one small thing wrong, or if the magic seemed even just a tiny
bit weak, he would turn around and leave immediately. But, upon exiting the car and walking up
the path towards the bit of presently empty land that he knew his house stood on, he was hit with a
waft of energy, a force-field, and a taste of individual magic on the back of his tongue that he knew
like the back of his hand.

“Mary,” whispered a voice from behind him. He heard the car door slam, and three sets of
footsteps on the dewey morning grass. The sun was beginning to rise; they still had twenty, maybe
thirty minutes left, but.

“Mary,” Remus whispered back. Oh, he’d missed that taste. Her magic.

He walked, the three of them following like ducklings. He was the only person keyed in to these
wards, and it was automatic, so as soon as he crossed the magical threshold the house should just
appear to him. He was out of touch, though, having not been here for six years, so it took about
twenty seconds of walking, fumbling his way around—he’d forgotten where it started—before he
felt the warmth wash over him and a gentle ringing in his ears. He blinked.

The house wasn’t there. And then it suddenly was.

It looked exactly the same. Almost. The door had been painted a different colour. And there was a
new car in the driveway, one Remus didn’t recognise. The garden patch to the side of the house
was bigger, much bigger, fresh with summer fruits. And there was an outdoor light on, lighting up
the doorstep and calling attention to the light on upstairs. A lived-in house. A life being lived.

Remus inhaled, sharply.

“Did you find it, yet?” Lily asked gently; it made him jump, and swivel around, upon which he
remembered they, although being in the threshold, were not keyed in and therefore couldn’t see it.

But Remus was quite sure… he was quite sure, as the only person keyed in, he had all control. He
was quite sure he could just…

“Look,” he said, turning and pointing.

It took a second, and then he heard Lily’s soft gasp.

Remus found his legs going numb with every step closer that he took. His heart was pounding and
he felt incredibly sick; it wasn’t until he’d seen the house that he’d realised all of the ways this
could have gone wrong. What if she hated him? What if she shunned him? He hadn’t come to visit
her in six years, hadn’t replied to her emails or had any contact in almost six months. He just
hadn’t… he couldn’t. What if she resented him for that? And what if she resented everyone he was
with because of that?
What if she resented what he was, now?

Taking an unsteady breath in, he turned, and he ran bodily right into Sirius.

“Hey,” Sirius said, holding him by the side of his arms. “You okay?”

“I can’t,” he breathed, shaking his head. “I can’t put her in danger again. I can’t—it’s been so long,
Sirius, so much has changed—”

“Don’t you think you need to talk to her even more because of that?”

“But it’s so—what if he somehow gets in my head?”

“Remus,” Sirius said, softly.

“What if—”

“Remus,” he said, again, inclining his head.

Remus turned to see the door open, and Hope, in her pyjamas, house shoes and an overcoat, with a
watering can in her hands.

From across the grass he watched her, her hair messy and tied up, as she plodded out of the door
and round to her potted plants, watering them. She rubbed at her eyes, evidently still half-asleep,
and it was only when she went to fill the watering can back up in the outdoor tap that she turned
around. Remus realised all at once that he’d walked three paces forward. And the water spilled all
over the tarmac as Hope looked at him, and dropped the can in shock.

He realised, belatedly, that it was still night. That he was standing under a streetlight, probably still
with a bit of dried blood on his face and underneath his fingernails like a stain he could not ever get
out, a pouch at his hip, hair messy and unkempt. New scars. World weariness. He looked the
picture of a man drowned, grief wracking his entire body. But Hope took a step forward as the
water began to leak across the concrete and seep into her shoes and she covered her mouth with her
hand, eyes filling with tears, and she saw none of that.

She didn’t see the wretchedness, the Horcrux, or the wolf. She saw her son.

“Remus?” she called, softly, letting her hand drop.

Her voice made his chest stutter. Something broke loose, like he’d been on strings for years. Only
now were they cut. Only now did he feel relief.

“Mum,” he whispered, and then his strings were being pulled and his hands were reaching out in
front of him. And she began to run.

Her slippers were going to get dirty.

They met with a bang, Remus staggering in a fast-walk as she sprinted at him, engulfing him into
her warm frame with everything she seemed to have. It had been six years. It had been six minutes.
It felt like an eternity, but it also felt like yesterday, this hug, how it fit like a puzzle piece; he
melted into it. He didn’t realise he was sobbing, until she grabbed him by the back of the head and
dug her fingers into his curls like she used to do. Scratched his scalp.

He clung to her back blades like he was scratching for the scars of angel wings. She had a scar, on
her neck, from the wolves; it lingered like the touch of a man, wronged, on something that was not
his to wrong. But it was pressed so beautifully against Remus it almost felt like something she had
passed to him than something he had passed to her. In this moment scar-to-scar he couldn’t tell the
difference. People are their children's makers, and children are their parents' makers. Hope is a
person and she is a mother and she is holding her son and their scars match, and their common
predecessor is not a thought in their mind.

He is his father’s son but he is his mother’s child. Another fact.

“Remus,” she gasped, pulling back and cupping his face. She was crying, also, tears rolling free
down her face. “My baby. Oh, my baby, my—Remus, what—I thought you—” she brushed her
fingers over his hair, cupped a palm over his cheek. Brushed off his shoulders, bits of lint and
probable damage and destruction; smoothed his collar. Roughened it again. “What—why—”

“Mum,” Remus simply sobbed, falling back into her like the child that he was. She seemed to
recognise the time to ask questions and the time to stay quiet. She always had; it was odd that now
he knew why.

So she just held onto him, rubbed his back. Whispered, “I’m here now, baby, I’m here. We’re here.
I love you so much. I love you so much. I love you so much. I love you so much.”

And as a disconsolate child does to their mother, he cried, clinging to her.

When they’d both sort of cried it out (they would never cry it out) he pulled back, wiping his face
on his sleeve. Her hands never left him; she never let go, as if afraid he would fade into the
darkness like a will-o-the-wisp, the nightly foggy fantasy she’d probably dreamed for six years of
her son returning home. Here he is. She turned to the group of them behind him and then turned to
Remus, expectant, and he cleared his throat. It hurt.

“Mum,” he said, turning to Sirius, who stepped up first, “this is, erm. Sirius Black.”

She looked at Sirius, and then at him.

“My partner,” he finished, looking at Sirius, who smiled. “This is Sirius, my partner.”

“It’s lovely to meet you, Hope,” he said, as charmingly as he possibly could, holding out his hand.

Hope eyed his hand, squinting. Side-eyed Remus. It took him a moment to realise why.

“It’s fine, Mum,” he said, hushed, understanding all of a sudden that it’s because she knew he was
a vampire. “No, it’s fine, don’t worry.”

She took a moment to deliberate on this and then nodded gently and turned to shake his hand.

“Cold hands,” Hope muttered as they let go.

“Well, I don’t exactly get much circulation, so,” Sirius replied, smiling.

It took about half a second for the panic to seep into Sirius’ frozen face. And about five seconds
more for Hope to break out into a massive grin.

“Not much circulation,” she muttered, chuckling. “Classic.”

With this, she turned and moved on to Lily.

“Does that mean she likes me?” Sirius asked under his breath, blinking.
Remus simply thinned his lips and clapped his partner on the back.

After a lovely introduction from Lily, still gracious despite the stained blood that blended into her
hair and the ash underneath her jaw, Remus watched Hope catch the eye of someone slinking back
in the waning dark.

She blinked, once or twice, and then called; “...Dorcas?”

Dorcas came out from the shadows, nervously. Timidly. She had her hands linked together at her
front and her head low. As if she could shy away from it. But Hope had clocked Sirius and she’d
never met the man before; of course she’d know. Of course.

She turned to look at Remus. He couldn’t bring himself to shift his emotions; he had too much
weariness clinging to his face. But he nodded his head. Avoiding looking at the shadowed Dorcas,
he nodded, a gentle cling to rationality.

Hope turned, and she exhaled sharply.

“Oh, honey,” she whispered. Dorcas looked at her. “Will you come here?”

You could see the moment Dorcas broke in half. With a sob, she nodded, and walked forward right
into Hope’s arms. She held her like a mother to a child.

***

Half an hour later as the sun finally rose they sat, the four of them, inside at the kitchen table. It
was a small, quaint little place; forest green themed. She’d redone it at some point in the past six
years. The wood of the kitchen table was peeling, the legs twisted and divine and the flourishes to
the countertops delicate and homely. The room smelled of eggs and bacon and various other things
as Hope made them breakfast.

The green kettle was on boil, wheezing through the air, and breaking the silence that sat between
the four of them.

None of them had said a word, aside from responses to Hope’s rare comments or questions. Lily,
whom Remus was sitting opposite, felt like a robot that powered up whenever spoken to and then
powered down in the times she was not needed. Staring, blankly, somewhere over Remus’
shoulder. Only caught alive by the steady in and out of her breathing. Four mourners, two sets of
breaths. Sirius was twitchy, tapping his index finger to the kitchen table, and Dorcas was entirely
still; she looked dead again.

Remus had barely looked at her. All she had done was look at him. But he couldn’t comprehend; he
was so caught up in the events of last night. Backtracking made him feel like he was losing his
mind. Pandora had only died seven hours ago, Peter summoning them only ten. Sirius and Remus
had had their fight eleven hours ago. They had had sex twelve hours ago. The memory of that love
song that had made Remus stay was just before that.

He closed his eyes.

Breaking the floodgates to that moment had everything pouring back in: Riddle. His anger. Remus’
fear. The entire thing was a blur, but he knew at the very least that fear wasn’t the only thing that
made him decide to stay. His autonomy in the matter was disputed but what was not disputed is
this: he is loved and he loves in return. It’s vicious and fallible. Humanity is unwillingly fallible.
Like Lily said; none of us are human, he’d told her.
Oh, but we so desperately are.

Fallibility and feelings, he felt it. He felt it all. He felt remorse, regret, guilt. He felt horror and
gore. He felt out of touch with his own body. He felt his grip slipping on reality. He closed his eyes
and it was Pandora in front of him instead of Dorcas; he opened them and it was witch and not
vampire. He felt the weight of one life and he felt the weight of a million and he felt it crawling up
his back and he felt it trickling down his spine like a hand trying to snap it, so he would simply
snap into himself, curl into a ball. Die.

And, see, he’d welcomed the hand before. The one caressing the ridges of his canine spine. Now
he spat at it with the passion for hellfire. He felt everything, all of the guilt for his actions and all of
the pain and loss and persevering love he had, not only for those he’d lost or unintentionally
murdered but for himself, who he had murdered too. The himself that cowers in the shadow of the
underside of his ribcage, the himself jumping from each ribbed bone to make sure he’s not
lingering on the one that is plucked from his chest when he makes the eternal sacrifice. He holds
the love for him. He holds the love for Remus who used to love. He slaps the suicidal hand away
like an intruder. His body is someone else's but his body is his own. His body is someone else’s but
his body is his own.

Inside of him there is a wolf, and a nightmare. There is a saint and a little boy. They dance in
circles around the ballroom, but there is a sniper waiting for them behind the double doors, and
she’s ready to pounce.

Remus has come to the conclusion that it all depends on who is fast enough.

And he has decided—oh, he has decided.

He’s decided he has too much to lose to be outran by lesser men.

He’s decided he has too much to hold onto let go of the part of himself that wants to hold on.

And he’s decided, for himself, that he owes it to himself to be himself. Whoever the fuck that
might be. Whichever one he is.

Maybe he is all four. Maybe he’s everything.

All he knows is he is small, he is sitting at his mother’s kitchen table, and he’s frightened. And he
is not human but he oh so woefully is and that fright is the most real thing he’s felt in a long time,
and he wants to feel it again.

He closed his eyes. He tried to sort through.

There was too much and not enough time so he breathed his way through it. A second: Take your
life as a list, Remus. I know you didn’t want to have to do it all by yourself but you always have and
you always will and you know what is coming next better than any false excuse of a writer sitting
behind a keyboard does. What’s next?

One: Open your eyes.

Remus opened his eyes to Dorcas, staring at him. She looked like a ghost and he looked at her and
he knew. He knew that somewhere, somewhere deep underneath the rubble, he loved her.

His emotions rush to try and find a connecting thread, the one that makes him love her again. But
he’s not connected to anything at the minute. The issue is it is not her. The issue is it is the hand
that bit back seven hours ago; it is the teeth that sunk in almost twenty-four years ago. The issue is
that Remus is so dissociated from his own existence he feels like he is walking on a leyline. Take it
second by second but a second is a minute, a minute is an hour; he doesn't exist by the laws of time.
He’s not even on this kitchen table, sitting on this chair. He’s somewhere in the wind whistling
through the chimney in the living room; he’s swirling in the white-hot steam the kettle churns out.

He’s trying. But the world—there is no saturation to it. He sees Dorcas and there is no colour. It is
just gloom. Smog and thunder.

He closed his eyes.

Open your eyes. Try a-fucking-gain.

He opened his eyes. Hope placed a plate in front of him. Eggs and bacon. Prepared the way he used
to love as a child. He got another glimpse, as she put it down, of a ring on her left hand. He hadn’t
been able to bring himself to bring it up.

She offered Lily the same, to which she emerged from her roboticness to nod and say “that would
be lovely, thank you”. And now she was eating slowly, chewing at a snail pace, and Remus
couldn’t bring himself to stomach his food. Hope cleared her throat, looking between Sirius and
Dorcas.

“I can—” she started, and then stopped, frowning. “I don’t have any—”

She cut off, again, sort of helpless.

“I can eat food, too,” Sirius rattled, nodding comfortingly, in a mantra he’d likely said millions of
times before. And then he caught himself, blinking and clearing his throat and correcting: “We can
eat food, too.”

Dorcas stared at the table, resiliently.

And then it was ten minutes later, and Remus had still not eaten his food, although Lily had, and
Sirius had, and even Dorcas had had a nibble. They’d been sitting in mostly silence, broken only by
Hope’s gentle conversation with Sirius, who was the only one of the four who seemed capable
enough to uphold one of those things.

Underneath the table, Sirius squeezed his hand.

“Hey,” he whispered. Remus turned to him, and he nodded towards the food.

And so he tried, for Sirius, but he genuinely couldn’t stomach it. Three bites in and it tasted like
rubber, felt like it being squeezed down his throat.

Some time passed, though Remus was unsure of where it went.

Next thing he knew he was sitting on the sofa beside Sirius. He was still holding his hand.

Remus squeezed it, gently, and Sirius perked up. Blinking and looking around the room he could
hear the shower going upstairs, could see Lily’s small bag on the floor and Dorcas’ jacket on the
armchair opposite. But neither were in the room, nor was his mother.

“Hey,” whispered Sirius, again. “You went somewhere, there.”

Remus’ brows twitched. “Where did I go?”

Sirius shrugged, rubbing at his hand with a gentle thumb. “I don’t know. But I was here the whole
time, and you never let go of my hand.”

Remus blinked, taking a deep breath in and letting the world unravel before him again.

“Was it…” Sirius started, raising an eyebrow. “I have to ask. Was it him?”

Remus turned to him, shook his head.

“No,” he said. “No, not—no. I just… zoned out or something. It was quiet.”

These words settled between them for a moment. The shower shut off upstairs.

“We have to talk about that,” Remus breathed, as a statement. “The fact I can see him. He can see
me.”

“We have to talk about a lot of things, Remus,” Sirius whispered, gently. “But all of them can wait
until we are both—well, all—in a fit enough state to discuss it.”

“No,” Remus replied, just as low, turning to him. “We have to—”

“Remus, stop it,” said Sirius. “Just stop.”

And then he shuffled forward and pulled him into a hug, and they were hugging, and Remus felt
safe. He exhaled, slowly, holding onto Sirius. He closed his eyes.

“There’s one thing—”

“No.”

“I meant it,” Remus whispered, frantically, the words spilling out of him like the rays of a
collapsing sun. “All I want to say is that I meant it. I’m scared and I don’t want to die. I want to
live. I meant it.”

Sirius held him tighter.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything—”

“None of that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Shhh, baby.”

“I want to live.”

“And you’re going to,” Sirius said, leaning back and looking him in the eyes. As if he’d move hell
and earth for the words to ring true. “Okay?”

Remus nodded. They sat on this for a while. Silent.

“Where is everyone?”

“Lily went to shower,” Sirius replied, softly, “but she’s out now. I think Dorcas is in there. And
your mum was making your bed but now she’s in the kitchen.”

“I still have a bed?” Remus murmured.

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Remus inhaled, slowly, nodding just as slow. Trying to formulate a list of things to do in
his head. “Okay. I…”

“Go talk to your mum,” said Sirius, gently. “Tell her as much or as little as you’d like. I will wait
upstairs, and when you’re done we’re going to shower, and then we’re going to sleep. Come
afternoon hopefully you’ll feel better and you can have a proper chat with her, and then we can
figure out the next steps. But none of us are going to get anything done as we are. And right now I
think you just need your mother to hug you.”

Remus stared at him. Feeling warmth seep into his chest. He is the list-maker, he is the
predeterminer of his own forlorn destiny. He still has to do it by himself. But there are people in
his life who will pave his way for his journey to be smooth because they care and that’s. That’s
something.

“I love you,” said Remus, genuinely, wholly, unbearably.

“I know,” Sirius whispered back, and there was nothing cold about it. He kissed him.

***

Remus talked to his mother. He didn’t remember much, but he remembered the way she smelled,
eucalyptus, and the way she felt, soft, as she held him. Protective. Like an oath of tightening arms.
He didn’t know much but he knew that when his mother hugged him, he knew that the thoughts
stopped, and that he felt safe. He hadn’t felt that in… oh, when had he ever?

Pulling back, she cupped his face, and he felt the cold of the ring singe his cheek like lightning.

“What’s this?” he murmured, unable to stop himself. She pulled her hand back to look at what he
meant, as if it wasn’t the only ring on her left hand, as if she didn’t know it was there.

“Oh,” she murmured, and then she smiled. “Three months ago, in Sicily.”

“...Still Keith?”

“Still Keith,” Hope said, nodding. She hummed, fondly. “Yeah. Coming up on eight years, now,
me and him.”

Remus felt his breath hitch, but he swallowed it down.

See, it was very much a pre-talk. Elusive mother and estranged son letting silence linger around
them until it got to know them comfortably once more. It was brief enough, and she knew enough
of him to know the state he was in, so she didn’t press. Not that she knew this state, of course.
More so that she knew the rib-hopping Remus. But he doesn’t exist anymore except in the confines
between his mother’s two arms and under her hot gaze, on a day in which it is not 5am and his
hands had not killed his own but seven hours ago. Not today.

She knew this. And yet breaking the silence she cupped Remus' face, lightly on her left hand so he
didn’t feel the ring, and whispered: “Oh, honey. What have they done to you? What did they do?”

To which Remus replied: “I know about Dad.”

Perhaps there were better ways to bring this up. But this is here and this is now and Pandora’s
blood is still on his fucking claws. Still staining his teeth.
“I know about me,” he continued. “I know about everything. Moody showed me. All of my
memories.”

“You couldn’t remember,” Hope whispered.

“I know,” Remus whispered. “I couldn’t. I was five and broken already and he ripped open my
head and took the last shred of preservation I had. Anything they did to me he did to me.”

He bit his lip. It wobbled. He couldn’t make sense of the emotions but he knew that he felt them.
He knew that it hurt. Oh, God, this hurt. He’d been so alienated from his alienation for so long he
forgot how much the fact he’d been bent that way by force killed him inside, and how much the
one person who was supposed to keep him safe letting him go hurt even more.

He sees her, in the distance. As a five year old he grasped onto those shreds of preservation, by
repressing his memories; perhaps it makes sense that at twenty-eight he floats so far above
everyone else, because he has nothing down there to cling to anymore. Moody stole it. His
childhood memories, that preservation, all of the bad but also the good. Maybe if it was still there,
in his subconscious; under that floorboard he’d so ruthlessly pried open; he’d have something.
He’d have something. Even the unconscious is better than a complete lack, that is what Remus has
learnt. But he lacks. So he floats.

“Dad did to me,” he whispered, crying, “you did to me.”

Hope’s face crumpled instantly.

“Mum,” Remus choked, feeling like a child and his own father and his mother’s conscience and the
way it thumped to the beating of his heart all in one. “Mum.”

She pulled him back in. She hugged him.

“How long are you here?”

“I don’t know,” he gasped, “Mum, it’s bad. It’s so bad. Why did you let me go?”

“Will you be here tonight?”

Remus swallowed, and nodded.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Can we talk about this then?”

He nodded once more.

“Alright, darling,” she said, cupping his face. And then, as if nothing had happened: “You need to
sleep. Your eyebags are horrible.”

Remus stared at her for a moment. And then he smiled.

“There’s dried blood on my hands,” he said, “and you’re worried about my eyebags?”

Hope shrugged. “I’m a mother, not a hunter,” she whispered back. “What else am I supposed to
do?”

Silently, she smoothed out his collar. He let her.

***
The 7am sun had begun to peek through the closed curtains by the time they were showered and in
bed.

Lily had taken the sofa, Dorcas had taken Hope’s bed. She’d scavenged for changes of clothes for
them all the best she could, for they’d left everything at Mary’s and now could not go back. Remus
was shirtless and bare. Sirius had spent ten minutes silently rubbing the remnants of an aloe vera
pot that they’d found in Lily’s one tiny bag over the open bite marks on his side. They were healing
already. Remus couldn’t look at them. He felt them enough as it was.

The issue is that Remus, though bodily exhausted to the point that his eyelids ached, couldn’t sleep.
He felt slick with nausea and though his hands were clean he felt dirty, and every time he closed
his eyes he either began to fall from the heavens or watch the masses burn in the throes of hell, so
7am became 8am, and 8am became 9.

He was lying on Sirius’ chest, his arm tight around him, protective and warm. The slit in the
curtain shone one tiny ray of light across the room; his bedroom faced the East so the morning
caressed him so. It danced with dust, lighting up the air in an otherwise dark and disorienting room
and landed on Sirius’ chest, lighting up his collarbones, and the curve of his jaw. It didn’t reach
Remus.

He was in reach of it though. It felt strange to dip his finger into the light. Wrong. Oddly enough,
the light falling on Sirius reminded him of a moment a million miles away, on the wrong side of
Tennessee and the right side of paradise. He’s the most wretched thing in Wales, curdled in the
blood of lesser men; his finger passing through Sirius’ light and invading the gloriousness of the
East is almost hauntingly beautiful, treacherously dangerous. He lies on Sirius’ chest and they are
the same. Despondent and lonesome. Wearily in love.

He was dipping his finger into the flora when Sirius cleared his throat.

“And why has your breathing not slowed once in the past two hours?” he murmured, turning his
head around. The way Sirius slept was strange, for it was just as anybody else could. But he was a
predator and it was in his blood to be alert.

He might just win the award for world’s lightest sleeper, and also the world’s drowsiest. His eyes,
upon cracking open, were sleepy and gentle. He looked nothing less than beautiful. Nowhere near
dangerous.

“I can’t sleep,” Remus whispered. Sirius sniffed, and then moved; they shifted quite fluidly onto
their pillows, lying on their sides as a mimic, facing each other.

“Is there anything that I can do?” Sirius murmured, looking at him, deeply. Now that he’d turned
the light fell onto his back. It didn’t reach either of them.

Remus shrugged.

“I feel,” he started, his voice gravelly, “redundant.”

Sirius paused.

“Because you’re not going to die anymore?”

“Because I—” he started, and then paused. Realised there was no ending to that sentence. “Yes. I
suppose so.”

“You haven’t known much else for a long time. And so much has… changed.”
Remus let out a shuddering breath, and closed his eyes. He could not think about Pandora right
now. He still had her blood on his hands, and it won’t come off, won’t come off, won’t.

He opened them again.

“I just,” he breathed. The epitome of vulnerable. “I don’t know where my life begins and where the
chaos ends. I can’t compute the fact that—they swapped. Or what the fuck happened last night. I
can’t—think about the future, or what the next step is, because all I’m thinking about is the fact
that Pandora is dead and Dorcas is alive when I spent two months trying to come to terms with the
opposite, and it’s frustrating me so much, I—”

Sirius squeezed his hand.

“I can’t comprehend the fact that that’s her. That that’s the Dorcas I know. It’s her. I look at her
and I know that I’m looking at Dorcas, but that’s not my best friend Dorcas. So I don’t feel
anything, not really. Because I look at her and I understand that I’m looking at Dorcas and I also
understand that I’m looking at a vampire but I can’t comprehend that the vampire in front of me
is… Dorcas.” He swallowed, and then scoffed. “It sounds stupid.”

“It’s not.”

“I feel so—” he said. “I don’t know where my feelings have gone.”

“They’re here,” Sirius murmured, kissing his hand. “You’re just lost in the violence.”

“I want to be found again.”

“I’ll find you,” Sirius whispered, and then brought his hand to his mouth again, kissing his
knuckles before staring at said hand he had just kissed in faux-shock. “Oh! Here you are.”

It was so stupid, and yet it made Remus smile. And that was important.

And then the smile faded.

“You need to stop thinking,” murmured Sirius, running a hand through his hair. Remus frowned.

“What the fuck do you mean stop thinking?”

“Stop thinking about what’s next,” Sirius replied. “I’m certain we have had this conversation about
ten times. Your brain is just go, go, go. You never let yourself rest, honey. You’re all or nothing.”

Remus clicked his tongue. “All or nothing. It’s not just me. I think we’re both a little bit all or
nothing.”

Sirius saw right through him, as always.

“You are so cute,” he murmured, and Remus swotted his hand away.

“I mean it,” Remus replied, “how can you tell me to stop thinking when there’s so much to think
about?”

“Like this: stop thinking.”

“Sirius.”

“Okay,” he whispered, shuffling a little so he was resting his head on his arm. “How about this?
We can think, but let’s think of something else. Something completely unrelated to war and loss
and best friends coming back from the dead and…” (evidently not wanting to remind Remus about
all of the rest, lest he start the dreaded thinking again) “all the other stuff. Let’s think about
something happy.”

Remus frowned, conflicted. He looked away, tugging on a thread on the duvet.

“I can’t,” he whispered, shaking his head.

“Mmm. Why?”

“Because she’s dead.”

“And… it would feel like a disservice to let your life live on?” Sirius murmured, curling his hair
around his finger. “It feels like you have to let it swallow you whole to give her the sendoff you
think she deserves? Do you think she would want that for you, Remus?”

At this, Remus finally looked at him. Sirius bit down on his lip.

“Remus, I loved Pandora too,” he whispered, looking at him. “So much. But I—if I’ve learnt
anything over eight hundred years it is that life, unfortunately, goes on. Especially when you think
it shouldn’t.”

Remus simply stared at him, breathing.

“People can’t run on this much sorrow,” Sirius whispered, tapping an index finger against Remus’
sternum. “You can’t exist like this, sweetheart. It’ll kill you. And you finally don’t want that.”
Remus scoffed, and Sirius continued; “And maybe that is selfish to say, maybe it is too soon. We
should be lamenting for days on end. We should be thinking of her perpetually. Not letting
ourselves do anything else. But we are not in a position to do that right now and she, of all people,
would know that. You know she’d know that.”

“I—killed her,” Remus choked.

“Alright, no,” said Sirius. “Seriously. We’re not doing that. You didn’t.”

“I—”

“You did not kill her,” Sirius said, and it was genuinely stern. “Her ending up there was of her own
volition. You didn’t drag her there by the hair. You’re not the one who shot her. You didn’t stab
her with the sword that was slowly poisoning her. Do you think anyone’s ever made Pandora do
anything she didn’t want to do? She was there because she wanted to tell you that she’d figured it
out. She was there because we are a team. That’s not your fault and if you keep saying that I’m
going to fucking—shake you until you get it through your head. Okay?”

Remus was quiet. He felt sort of scolded. Sirius sighed and tucked a piece of his hair behind his
ear.

“Now is not the time to talk about it,” he whispered. “You need to give yourself a moment to
breathe, darling, because you’re drowning. You’ve been lying beside me for three hours and you
have been drowning. So just give me something. Anything. Anything happy.”

His voice broke. At this point, the throes of weakness slipped through, and Remus realised that not
only was Sirius pleading for his sake, he was pleading for his own, too.
And that. Oh, that. See, they would do what they won’t do for themselves for each other, and it’s
over, and over again. Time after time. Hypocrisy at it’s finest, but with these two, what do you
expect?

Remus cleared his throat.

“My mum is getting married,” he whispered.

Sirius raised his eyebrows.

“She is?”

“To Keith,” said Remus, nodding gently. “He’s nice. They’ve been together coming up on eight
years, now.”

“A wedding,” Sirius breathed, smiling gently. “How lovely. I’ve always loved weddings.”

“I’ve never been to one,” said Remus. “Didn’t have many family friends growing up and hunters
aren’t exactly the most committed kinds of people.”

“They’re beautiful,” Sirius said. “Perhaps I’m a hopeless romantic but I always loved a wedding.
Considering the fact that I was practically groomed as a show horse put on display for the
Purebloods to ogle at for three and a half centuries, it is strange that I’m so fond of them. Of the
love.” He shrugged. “But when it’s genuine. You can tell. The room gets… warmer.”

Remus, enraptured, found himself smiling weakly.

“I didn’t take you to be the wedding type.”

“Really?”

“No.”

“Maybe not the public romance part, I’ll give you that,” Sirius nodded, “but weddings? Places
where you can dress up as fancy as you want and get uproariously drunk and everyone’s fine with
it?”

Remus pursed his lips, contemplating.

“Okay,” he said, nodding. “Yeah, fair enough. I see it.”

“Of course you do,” Sirius grinned. “They’re brilliant. One time I went to one that lasted three
days. I ended up doing a best man speech; I’d known the groom two weeks.”

“You’re kidding?”

“No,” he laughed, “that was in the twenties. I think my blood actually became alcohol for a day or
two.”

Remus laughed, snuggling to get himself more comfortable, pulling the duvet up to his chin.

“Have you ever…” he started, after a moments silence. “You know.”

Sirius blinked at him.

“I’m not following.”

“You know,” Remus said, looking away. “You’ve been around eight centuries, and I know you’ve
had long-term partners before me… it makes sense that you might have been… married? No?”

When he finally looked back, Sirius had a slight smile on his face.

“What?”

“Both very true statements,” Sirius said, finally, “but no, I haven’t been married. I’ve courted, been
courted and have been multiple times engaged—all against my own will, obviously. But never
married. I always managed to sneak away somehow.”

Remus pursed his lips. Clicked his tongue.

“...What?”

“Nothing.”

“What?” Sirius pressed, obviously holding in a laugh. “What about that was wrong? What
shouldn’t I have said?”

“Nothing!” Remus said, “It’s fine.”

“Was it the engagements?”

“No.”

“The courtships?”

“No.”

“The long-term partners?”

“Oh, drop it, Sirius.”

He spluttered for a moment in disbelief.

“You—you said that,” Sirius choked, sitting up to lean on his elbow. “That wasn’t even me, that
was you!”

Remus clicked his tongue against his teeth.

“Well, you didn’t have to confirm it with so much enthusiasm,” he muttered, turning his head into
the pillow.

There was a moment in which Sirius was silent, simply lying there, propped up on his elbow,
looking at him. When Remus finally racked up the courage to turn his head a little bit so he could
look tentatively up at him he had a growing smile on his face, that turned into a laugh of disbelief,
a hand smacking against his mouth and another laugh that escaped it.

Remus bristled. “Stop laughing—”

“Oh, my God,” Sirius muttered, dropping himself onto the mattress with a bounce and practically
mauling Remus, scooping him up entirely and holding him so tight he could barely breathe. “You
are so cute. Oh my God.”

“Stop it!”
He rolled him on top of him and then back over, dropping him, legs entangled under the duvet.
With a flick as he blew his hair out of his face Sirius propped himself up over Remus who, now,
lay dishevelled in the middle of Sirius’ pillow.

“I love you so much,” Sirius said, “you stupid little fool. I didn’t marry any of them because I
didn’t want to marry any of them. Yes, I’ve loved. I have loved before you but I won’t ever love
after you. That’s the difference. I’d marry you tomorrow if you wanted it.”

A pause.

Sirius, eyes searching.

“Do you want it?” he whispered, and everything suddenly felt very… real. Remus, breathless,
could do nothing but let his lips part.

“Oh,” he breathed.

“Yeah?” Sirius murmured. “Good ‘oh’? Bad ‘oh’?”

“Just—oh.”

Sirius licked his lips. “You’re gonna have to give me something here, babe.”

“Did you just propose?” Remus asked. “Is that what’s happening? Did you just propose to me?”

“Erm,” said Sirius, thinning his lips. “No? And also kind of yes?”

Remus’ jaw dropped further.

“No,” said Sirius, quickly, “in the sense that, I did not prepare it, and there’s no—no ring, or any
sort of plan here. But yes in the sense that I wholeheartedly mean it when I say I would marry you
tomorrow in your mother’s pumpkin garden wearing your soon-to-be stepfather’s dungarees if you
so wanted it.”

Remus stared. Stunned.

“And it doesn’t scare me,” Sirius whispered. “Not in the slightest. Because it’s you. Nothing does
when you’re there.”

“Yes,” said Remus.

And it was Sirius’ turn to stare.

“Yes—yes to…”

“Not the pumpkin garden,” Remus said, “and not Keith’s dungarees. But one day, if you were to do
it properly. I would say yes.”

“This is me doing it properly,” Sirius said.

“Then this is me saying yes,” Remus replied.

Sirius stared at him, opened his mouth to say something and closed it, like, twice. Remus watched
him with an emboldening smile on his face that grew as Sirius’ did, until they were grinning at
each other like a pair of idiots.
And then suddenly he was mauling him once more, this time kissing his neck and his face and
touching him everywhere, palm to skin, his cheeks and his chest and his neck and his hair and and
and—

“I’m obsessed with you,” Sirius gasped, biting his earlobe. Remus honest-to-God giggled and
swotted him away, trying to gain the power and bite his earlobe, but Sirius kept coming back, like
a gnat, or a flea. “I want to spend the rest of my life and then some with you.”

“I know,” Remus breathed.

“I’m fucking obsessed with you. You’re all I want.”

“I know,” Remus said, breathless, through laughter, “I know. I know.”

“Forever and ever and ever and—”

“We can do that now,” Remus said, dragging his face up with one hand gripping his cheeks. Sirius
kissed him. “We can do that.” He kissed him again.

“We can do that?”

“I’m going to live,” said Remus, biting down on his lip as he pulled back. “We can do anything.”

Sirius stared at him for a second or two.

“Anything,” he whispered. “We can get that apartment in Brooklyn. A dog. Live in the city.”

“Or we could live in London,” Remus replied. “A city we share.”

“Or somewhere quaint,” Sirius shot back, “up in Scotland, or in the Moors.”

“Like Wuthering Heights?”

Sirius pursed his lips. “Decidedly less tragic.”

“No, I’d argue we’re more,” Remus whispered.

Sirius laughed, and rocked forward, forehead to forehead. Fingers pressing into his face.

“But we’re—we’re going to make it out in the end,” Remus said. “Right?”

“Right.”

“Because Pandora had a plan, right?”

“Pandora had a plan,” Sirius said, nodding. “It’s going to be a good plan. It’s—”

He paused.

“Remus, this could be our future,” he whispered, after a moment. “It really could.”

At some point, whatever point it was, they had begun to float somewhere far away from the
grittiness of the 9am sun and reality. Remus hadn’t realised until this moment, until now; the word
‘future’ flung him back into himself, into what they were doing, into everything around them. Into
reality. Guilt rushed in like a broken dam. He began to shake his head.

“Remus—”
“Isn’t this too fast?” he whispered, shaking his head. “Isn’t this too much? What—what are we
even doing? How can we do this now, Sirius?”

Sirius leaned forward, kissed him on the forehead. Remus’ eyes fluttered closed instinctively, and
he felt Sirius nod against him.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “It is fast. Everything is so fast. Do you realise that the tsunami in Luleå
was only two weeks ago today?” Remus blinked, leaning back to frown at him. “Yeah. When me
and Lily were driving this morning a news report cropped up on the radio. They’ve barely even
begun to recover. It’s only been two weeks.”

He chewed on this. Sweden felt like a lifetime ago.

“Do you see?” He exhaled heavily, before finishing; “do you see what I mean when I say we don’t
have the luxury to lament?”

Remus bit the inside of his lip, fighting the tears that had come out of nowhere. He just—felt like
he wasn’t allowed to be this happy. Happy at all, really. And then he thought: well, does Pandora’s
death take away from the fact that Dorcas is alive? Was I not happy about that? Would I not be, if
I could feel anything? Would she be happy about this if she could feel anything, too?

“We don’t,” he whispered. “And Pandora would know that.”

“She did know that.”

“She died telling me to live.”

“She did,” Sirius whispered. A stray tear fell from the corner of his eye. “She was a good person.
A really good person. She loved you a lot.”

“She loved you too,” Remus replied, his voice thick. “She never—well I don’t know. I don’t know
if she ever got to say it. But she did. She was your witch.”

Sirius smiled. “I know.”

Remus’ face twitched. “But she was more than that, too. More than what she could do.”

“I know.”

“...Do you think she knew? Did she know? Did we ever tell her that?”

Remus closed his eyes, as Sirius reached out to hug him.

“She knew,” he said, softly. “Remus. I promise. She knew.”

Remus nodded against his chest. He felt like he was holding on for dear life.

“You’re going to feel like this for a long time,” Sirius whispered, “and it’s going to be okay that
you’re feeling it every single time. Alright?”

Remus nodded again. It was quiet.

Lying there, pressed against his chest, tears falling silently, he began thinking about what Sirius
had said. About the fact it had only been two weeks since Sweden. That meant it had still been less
than three weeks since their big fight over the list. Fourteen days since Pandora was poisoned by
the sword. Fourteen days since he’d seen Mary.
It felt like a million years.

Though even yesterday felt like light-years away. It was almost ironic, the depth of the fight they’d
had yesterday, the shit they’d said to each other. Things you can’t take back. Things that make or
break. And here they were, twelve or so hours later, lying skin to skin underneath a duvet in
Remus’ childhood bedroom, talking about their future, talking about marriage, a cottage and a dog.
Here they were, technically—ridiculously—guiltily—engaged.

Remus knew that this was yet another thing they had to sort through when they were more
rational-minded and sane to have a genuine conversation, but upon thinking about it, he couldn’t
stop the words from slipping from his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, lips pressed against Sirius’ chest. “For what I said.”

“Remus—”

“I know,” he said quickly, sniffing, “I know. Not now. We don’t—we can’t talk about it now, but I
just—just the one thing…”

He sighed, pushing himself up. He propped himself up on his elbow, now, a mirror of he and Sirius
from earlier; Sirius who looked up at him, fluttering his eyelashes.

“You’re not a monster,” he said.

“No, I am,” Sirius replied, instantly. He was nodding. “I am a monster.”

He pushed himself up so he could see Remus at eye-level, and tilted his head, as if to admire him.

“But so are you,” he said, a small smile tugging at his lips. He shrugged. “We match.”

Remus smiled.

Remus kissed him.

Remus, at some point, fell asleep.

LILY

Lily woke up, and everything hurt.

It was immediate. Physical. Her hands hurt. They were raw, actually raw, red and pained from
where she had used all of her energy and everything she had been holding back. The gold rush
veins in her arms were itchy and undeterrable from where they coursed through the paleness of her
skin, wrecking it with cracks and so much translucent terror it warmed up the rooms she walked
into.

Usually they were fine. But today they were itchy and she wanted to get rid of them. She knew the
resentment at the back of her throat a bit more familiarly than she used to, however. A bit more
fondly.

Waking up felt like she had bruises all over her body. Fingertips and fangs and spells. It felt like
she’d been beaten bloody and on the third day of being left to heal with no help. It felt like grief. It
felt like loss, on her body. A tangible, violent reminder of the physical ache. The lines blur.

Lily cried herself to sleep last night, thinking about Pandora. She could feel it bubbling in her
throat three seconds after waking up—three seconds, that’s all it took—and she covered her eyes
with her hands, tried to breathe.

She hadn’t known. She hadn’t known anything. She had been tending to Pandora for those nine—
ten—eleven? Was it eleven?—days that she had been injured, the small pocket of time between
Luleå (yet another thing she had been shoving away) and Peter. Everything was happening so fast.
Lily, being a nurse, being the firework she was growing up even though she didn’t know it, had
always thought she’d adjusted to a fast-pace environment. Had always thought she was pretty good
at keeping up. But here she was lagging behind—she’s fallen. She’s running on limp legs and
limbs that swing out of her control as she runs, an out-of-socket experience, and a head that is
screwed on just a little bit too tight. A head that burns.

Her hands grew warm as she pressed them to her face. It soothed her. She could feel her hair
sizzling—it was a weird sensation, it almost feels like bugs are crawling all over her scalp—but she
had gotten used to it. Like a sparkler, she breathed, and her surroundings grew warmer, the noise
got louder. A crackle and a pop.

And then the sparkler fizzled out and her heart grew steady. She dropped her hands and she was
numb.

She hadn’t known. Slow it down. She hadn’t known anything, even after tending to Pandora for
the fourteen days that it actually was. She didn’t really know now, in all honesty. Sirius had told
her bits and pieces of what he knew of Pandora’s plan last night. But it—it was all jumbled. Lily
was so exhausted last night she couldn’t even remember most of it now.

It’s all fun to say “she hadn’t known” as if there’s a then and a now, when really it’s all just a
sometime and Lily is the same. Never knowing. She doesn’t even know herself.

But she’s working on that.

She got up, tiptoeing to the bathroom, her thoughts becoming jumbled once more; when her hands
ran under the cold tap water is when she thought of it again. Slow it down. She hadn’t known
anything. And she still didn’t. Pandora was sick, all that time. She was dying. She knew she was
dying. She hid it from Lily.

She hid it from them all. And then she triumphed.

And then she died.

What had she been waiting for? Surely, if Pandora knew the extent of whatever poisoning it had
been on that sword that impaled her, the poisoning that ended up killing her, she’d know how to at
least prolong it. She didn’t prolong it. She disguised it. So that led Lily to believe that she knew
she’d have enough time.

Fourteen days is not enough time for anything. Unless you’re on the brink of something.

Lily’s fingers went numb under the cold tap as she realised that Pandora must have been on the
brink of something for a long, long time.

It was no use. She’d never be able to piece it together. She could try and she could try and she
would never be able to piece it together any better than she was able to piece herself together. And
she could barely do that. Had barely done it.

…Well, perhaps there had been some teamwork involved. Which Lily couldn’t believe she was
saying.

She looked in the mirror, at herself. Her tousled hair and her run down features. Her eye bags. The
dry patch of skin on her chin she’d been picking at. Her chapped lips. She had nothing to hold
herself up anymore. But here she was, looking herself in the eyes. Not looking away. Refusing to
look away.

She blinked once, twice. Flutters of her lashes. And then she squeezed her eyes shut, once, twice.
And she opened them to red.

Those red eyes looked back at her in the mirror, and she smiled.

“Good morning,” she whispered. And looking at herself, feeling that this was really, really herself,
the water running over her numb, numb fingers began to warm up.

She looked down. There was soot on the hot tap. She wiped it off with her thumb on one hand,
leaving the other underneath the now-progressing-to-scalding hot water.

It was messy. It always would be. But that was a Good morning to you, too.

***

See, Remus had been right in the caves. But he’d also been horrendously wrong.

Lily and the Phoenix were the same person. They inhabited the same body. They ran the same
circles, bled the same blood, burned the same smoke, out of her ears and out of her wings.

But they were also not. They were inextricably two different entities within one body, and
somehow these two things coexist.

Lily couldn’t… explain it to anyone. She could try. But the relationship she had with the Phoenix
was so personal it felt like they could speak to each other in a language only they understand. Like
the garbled nothingness of languages that children make up to try and communicate outside of their
parents knowledge. Baby talk. Languages created in high fantasy novels. They run a frequency
only the two of them can hear, and the signal is off, sometimes; one of the wires is snapped.

The instability comes here. With that severed wire. That jump of electricity from one end to
another, the power that so desperately wants to jump across the abyss, and the cataclysmia when it
attempts to do just that.

What it has come down to, Lily has come to realise, is this: the Phoenix is the manifestation of all
of the bad in her solemnly good shattered mirror frame.

But the bad is not bad.

She can’t—make it make sense. In terms of black and white. Good and evil. There’s no right or
wrong, here. The Phoenix craves power, always has. That’s why she is so unhinged; that’s why
she’s so fucking powerful. The fusion, Lily and James—she’d never tasted that kind of power
before. Lily and Sirius was even better. In the beginning, it was black and white, in terms of: the
Phoenix liked who gave her the most power, and Mary came along and it was fire, and James came
along and it was power, and Regulus came along and it was heightened. And then there was Sirius.
And he was the best.
As much as Lily can’t make herself make sense, she can’t make herself and Sirius make sense
tenfold.

This was where… the leap came, perhaps. The leap of electricity; the collision, over the top of the
abyss, like two flailing bodies hitting each other and being sucked back into the opposite vortex.
The Phoenix found Sirius, and she was found. It felt like a completion. She’d awoken to him and
she’d spent weeks hungrily searching for the drug that she’d ingested. While Lily had awoken to a
new life and had spent weeks missing Sirius, as a person. As Sirius.

Something in that merged together.

That’s what it’s been, really. That’s what it’ll continue to be. A slow merging. Lily realises that
now. Because it’s not just about her accepting the Phoenix and learning to love herself and her
body and getting back in touch with who she is, and what she wants, and the agency that comes
with having the most power in the world above people who have been alive ten times her lifetime
at the age of twenty-fucking-seven. It’s about the Phoenix accepting her and learning to love
herself and who she is, and what she wants. The agency that comes with having the most power in
the world above people who have been alive ten times her lifetime when she was only awoken five
months ago.

They bridge on fear. Fear is the strongest motivator. Alongside guilt. Sometimes they’re one in the
same.

So this abyss. This hole. This tomb that just won’t close.

They fill it.

They fill it with want. They fill it with need. They fill it with what they unapologetically want,
which is power, and love. And, with the things that they both want the gap bridges… well, Lily
can’t bring herself to say who bridges the gap. Because if she says who bridges the gap, that makes
it real.

But the Phoenix is mourning Pandora. Lily can feel it.

And Lily enjoyed the power she wielded last night. She smiled at the flames. They flickered
higher. She knows that the Phoenix can feel it.

A merging. Those veins are itchy and undeterrable but… they’re not going to go away. Lily knows
that, now. She’s come to terms with it. And while the gap is bridged by the one who must not be
named for fear of everything being so suddenly real… it is also bridged by the ones who must be
named, who are named everywhere.

The Phoenix loves Sirius and Remus as much as Lily craves them. Or— no, wait—

Perhaps it’s interchangeable.

Lily loves Sirius and Remus as much as the Phoenix craves them, and they’re the same kind of
longing, the same kind of need. And yes, maybe it came down to the fundamentals at first; maybe
it came down to the drug that they are, the three-way connection that they have. Phoenix, Basilisk,
Horcrux. Three peas in a pod.

But the Phoenix is mourning Pandora. And that’s… that’s something. That’s something personal.
That’s something fundamentally Lily. Personable, and human. Lovely.

So when the dust settled and the water ran cold again and blocked out the sound of Lily breaking
down, sitting on the toilet seat with one hand gripping the rim of the sink and the other pressed to
her mouth to restrain her sobs, her hair crackled and flew out around her, transforming entirely in
fire of it’s own volition. Warm and gentle. Like a caress.

Over everything, Lily was just happy that she didn’t have to be alone anymore. She’d been alone
for so fucking long.

***

Hope Lupin was a wonderfully kind woman. But Lily couldn’t help feeling a pang of longing for
her lovely Regulus as she deposited a coffee in front of her and Lily had to ask for her two sugars.

The house was nice. Quaint. And quiet. She should be thankful that there weren’t hordes of people
to take care of, but she was actually just quite… forlorn. It felt suffocating, being there with no
guidance. But it was so relieving to be there with an actual mother. She missed being a mother
more than she knew, but she missed having a mother even more.

Lily had been crying on and off. She didn’t want Sirius to know. She could feel an ache in the back
of her chest that was hers and an ache a little bit closer to the forefront that was his. Breaking down
meant breaking two sets of bodies and she still hadn’t been able to scrape the feeling of Sirius’
loss, lying outside Boardwalk with Remus, off of her tongue. It has been almost two months. The
bitter feeling just simmers there.

So, of course, Sirius walked straight in when she had two tears tracking down her face, gazing
numbly out of the window, eyes unfocused.

They only refocused when he swung the curtains shut.

“Woah—” Lily breathed, sniffing and wiping at her eyes. She was ruminating on her coffee. Two
sips and she was thinking of Regulus. A lot of things make her think of Regulus, nowadays.

Sirius strode around the room, closing all of the curtains and blinds that were letting potential light
in. He flicked on the big light and spent a moment trying to garner how far the light went from
places that didn’t have curtains or let light in unavoidably.

Stupidly, it didn’t occur to Lily what the fuck he was doing until quite literally the last second. And
then Dorcas was walking in the room.

“Oh, my God,” Lily gasped, projecting herself upwards without a second's hesitation and running
into her arms.

Dorcas felt the same, but also different. That’s the only way that Lily could describe her. She was
tenser. She smelled a little bit different. But she still held Lily the same way, and she let herself
melt into it, still comfortable, still Dorcas. Just a little bit different.

Lily was crying.

“Oh—” she murmured, pulling back, sniffing and wiping at her face. Dorcas also had tears in her
eyes; a gentle smile on her face. She wasn’t breathing. “Oh, fuck. I missed you.”

This was what got Dorcas. She took a shallow, quick breath in, and her lip wobbled. But she, still,
smiled.

“I missed you too,” she said, and it was her, and she was speaking, and—
Lily hugged her again. Dorcas didn’t breathe the entire time, and she had to leave for ten minutes
afterwards to compose herself and her thirst. But, still she held Lily back.

When she got back, it was Lily, Dorcas, and an empty stained coffee cup. The kitchen table felt
hopelessly fucking bare. It was almost a pathetic mock-up of last time, in Canada, all of them
around the table. A family meeting. Lily looking around at all the empty seats and was hit with a
wave of homesickness; a longing for a bear hug from James, the most comfortable of them all. To
hear Regulus’ dulcet tones and see the small quirk of his lip when she made him laugh. Marlene to
be the voice of reason, telling them what to do. Mary. Ah, Mary.

She wanted to cry again, but didn’t, so while waiting she let her mind wander to Boardwalk. Being
splashed by water from the lake. Warm spring and early summers outside on the grass, bending
fire, three targets. Movie nights with Mary and James, introducing Regulus to all of the best films.
The people she loved the most, the way they smelled, how their voices sounded. Home.

The door opened with a creak, after a minute or two of comfortable silence, and Sirius slipped
through the door. Clicking it shut, he looked at the two of them. From Lily, to Dorcas, and back
again.

And he shook his head.

Lily, for some reason, squawked a laugh at this. It was probably very rude. As Sirius moved to sit
down beside her, opposite Dorcas, she laughed, bitterly. Pressing a hand to her mouth. It was
unintelligible.

“What?” Dorcas asked.

Lily shook her head, pressing her lips together as her laugh subsided. She felt so many things and
did not have a word to describe any one of them.

“Just like last time,” she muttered, looking at Sirius. His face did not ebb. “Right?”

He pursed his lips, and then looked down to the table. The Mary of last time. He’s not coming,
she’d told them.

Sirius sighed. “He needs time,” he whispered. “He’s not—entirely there.”

Lily softened. She wasn’t bitter, not really. She just… felt the irony of the situation. Of the three of
them sitting in a kitchen table in a strangers house, after the death of a dear friend, ready to talk
about the next steps of Remus’ situation. Without Remus.

But: “I know,” Lily whispered, nodding once. She would have said “you have no idea how much I
know” but that would have been a lie. Because she can be bitter at him all she wants for going
reclusive after Whittaker but bitterness will get her nowhere.

Her hands sparked, gently, and she curled them into fists. As if instinctual, Sirius reached across
and placed his palm over one of her fists, covering it entirely and squeezing. The sparking was
instantly soothed.

Dorcas was looking between the two of them, brow slightly tweaked. But she said nothing.

“Where do we start, then?” Lily asked. The silence in the room was tangible.

“The beginning, I suppose,” said Sirius, eyes flickering upwards to the other side of the table.
Dorcas. “Whittaker. June. When you woke up.”
Dorcas bit down on her lip. And she took a deep breath in.

So, Lily was subsequently told the tale. The tale of the ghost of Whittaker House. The tale of the
bloodstains on the ballroom floor. The tale of the prisoner, the heist, the leap. Dorcas told her how
she had been turned. At least… well. There was only one culprit, and he was in the room with
them. Sirius had turned her. But he had not done it on purpose.

Poppy had said to him, all those months ago when Lily and Sirius had been checked out together,
that his venom was possibly more potent. Nobody had listened. So when he’d bitten her, he’d
turned her accidentally.

James had told Lily, directly after Whittaker, that he’d never, not once heard of a case where a
vampire turned someone from biting to drink. From the simple bite to break the skin. From the
simple cross contamination of one bite. Yet here Dorcas was. In front of her. Not breathing, but…
existing. Extant.

She continued on.

And Lily found out about Mavi, about the prison, about the army. She found out about Ana, about
the severing of connection—well, no, she knew that part. Boardwalk had become a recluse after
the battle and after Mary overrode the wards, as they rebuilt. Nobody had been able to find them.
But for some reason, Lily hadn’t thought about the outside fight. Lily hadn’t thought about
everybody else. She’d only thought about them, their little hub. Knowing now how lost they’d all
been… she felt fucking horrible about it.

Regardless, she was given the whole spiel. It took her a while to notice how intently Sirius was
listening, too, and how he very obviously didn’t have the full picture either. It made sense, in the
end, when Dorcas got to the events of just last night; how she and Sirius had reunited and almost
immediately had to go save them. No time to fill each other in.

“So,” said Lily, at the end, “where’s Mavi, now?”

“Gone back to New York,” Dorcas replied. “She can’t get into contact with Boardwalk until we go
back, but for now they at least have the knowledge that we’re alive—that Sirius is alive. That the
war isn’t over. That we’re coming back. When we go back we’ve made arrangements to reach out
and unite the two war fronts officially.”

Lily blinked. She turned to Sirius, taking all of this in. His expression was indecipherable.
Somewhat uncomfortable.

“Right,” said Lily, still trying to fit all the pieces together. She licked her lips, feeling daggers
lining the sides of them trying to stop the next part from coming out. But it had to. It had to. “Now
that we’re up to speed.” A pause. “Pandora.”

Sirius took a deep breath in.

“We heard Pettigrew’s call,” he said, “and we immediately set off. Immediately. I took her back as
fast as I could, but by the time we got there, you two were already gone. So I went into Pandora’s
room expecting to find her recovering in bed and instead—instead she’s bloody ecstatic. Flying off
the walls. I looked at her and—” he licked his lips. “She was like a mad woman. Talking about
how she had beat the ultimate challenge. I managed to subdue her enough to find out what was
going on and she told us—she told us that she’d done it.”

Lily nodded. She remembered this from the brief, broken fragments of the plan that Sirius had told
her last night in the car. But he was going to have to explain it to her in full.

She braced herself for impact.

“And by done it,” she said, for full clarification, “you mean… figured out a way to separate Remus
from the Horcrux.”

Sirius nodded. “A way to save his life.”

They sat with this for a long, long time. A life for a life and a life for a life. Lily remembered this
from last night. She’s dead, Sirius, she’d said, I don’t give a fuck about saving him. Even now, the
hurt was too encompassing. All she could think about was Pandora’s face as the Dementors sucked
the last little bit of life out of her.

“Does he know?” was what came out of her mouth, eventually.

“Yeah,” Sirius murmured. “She told him last night. As she was dying. What to do.”

“To trigger it.”

“Yeah. That.”

She turned to look at the curtains, craving for the window to stare out of. Craving for Pandora to
just be here again, so Lily could ask her questions, so Lily could piece her all back together, so Lily
could—could make this right. Give her life again. Make sure it was never taken in the first place.

“She hid it from us,” said Sirius. Lily snapped back to him. “The fact that she was dying. The
sword was cursed, with a slow-reacting venom. She’d’ve been dead within another two weeks. But
she’s—” Sirius cut off to scoff a laugh, “well, her illusion magic is some of the best I’ve ever seen,
let's say. Nobody knew. She made sure none of us knew. But she knew exactly how long she had,
and she knew exactly how close she was. This is verbatim. She knew she’d get it if she just waited
a little bit longer, put her entire self into figuring it out. So she did. And she did.”

Ah. So. Lily was right, then. Of course she was right.

Pandora’s entire life was tackling challenges. Creating. Becoming. Science, and magic. Of course
she’d throw herself into one great big bang to go out with when faced with a death sentence. Of
course she wouldn’t tell anyone. She probably didn’t want to worry them. She probably wanted to
do one more great thing. Ensure she left a legacy.

You did, Lily thought, you did, you did, you did.

The pieces fit together, slowly.

“So that’s why she died so quickly last night,” Lily whispered, brows twitching. “She was already
so weak…”

Sirius licked his lips. “Yeah. It wasn’t supposed to happen last night,” Sirius said. His voice was
thick with repressed emotion. “She was—ahem. She was intending on living out her natural
lifespan until the brink of death, and then having what happened happen peacefully. She was
intending on going… well, going back home one last time. Letting us all, erm. Say goodbye.” He
looked down, and wiped his hand over his face, taking a breath. It was evidently hard for him to
get the words out.

“But she was shot,” said Lily.

“But she was shot,” he repeated, nodding once. “Peter shot her.”

“And so Remus…” said Lily, confused, looked between the two of them. Her eyes were dark,
bloodshot and teary. She felt like a little child and probably looked like one, too. “...How did he do
it?”

Sirius took another deep breath in.

“Do you remember when Harry said that to trigger a dormant werewolf child’s gene, you have to
kill a remorseful man?” Sirius asked.

And—ah. Oh.

Of course.

“Oh,” Lily whispered.

“Yeah,” Dorcas, who hadn’t even known her best friend was a werewolf until yesterday, whispered
back. “Oh.”

“He killed Peter.”

“Yeah,” Sirius, blood on his hands from where he’d massaged the wounds that had burst open,
whispered back. “He killed Peter.”

There was a long pause. The room felt so, so fucking hollow.

“Did you go to the office?” Lily asked. “Did you look at the plan?”

“I did,” Sirius replied.

“Where’s the portkey?”

Sirius licked his lips. “Upstairs, in Remus’ room. I’m keeping it close to me. I hope you don’t
mind.”

Lily didn’t. She shook her head.

“Does Hope know?” Dorcas asked.

“Know what?”

“About—” she paused. “Well, kind of everything. But about what’s going on, mainly. The portkey,
the Horcruxes, the plan, the war.”

“No,” said Sirius.

“Well…” said Lily. Sirius turned to her.

“What?”

“I didn’t tell her anything important,” she said, tapping her fingers nervously on the table. “She just
saw us cradling that thing all morning yesterday and—earlier she asked me what it was. I told her it
was a portkey, she knew what a portkey was already, that was about the most of it.”

“Did you tell her the password?” Sirius asked.

“No,” Lily said, at the exact same time as Dorcas said: “What password?”

“It’s an indefinite portkey,” said Sirius. “You can use it as many times as you want, you just have
to say the password and it’ll take you to and from.”

“What is it?”

“Luna,” Sirius and Lily said simultaneously. Dorcas frowned.

“Who’s Luna?”

Sirius and Lily looked at each other.

“I don’t know,” Lily said.

“No idea,” said Sirius, “but Marlene might know. She has the only other one.”

Dorcas’ head snapped around to him. “She—she does? Marlene?”

Sirius’ face softened. “Yeah. Pandora told me. She gave it to her when we left for Sweden as a
just-in-case.”

“So we can go,” Dorcas replied, “somewhere—somewhere she can go?”

“Yeah. But I don’t know how often she goes there, if ever.”

“I want to go,” Dorcas said.

“You can,” said Lily, “but—after. Sirius, I think we’ve gone through enough. I want to know the
plan.”

He looked at her. Drumming his fingertips on the table, he swallowed, viscerally, and took a breath
in.

“Okay,” he said.

“Alright,” said Lily. “Go.”

“There’s an arch,” said Sirius, jumping right into it. “In a room at Whittaker. Well, it’s less of an
arch and more of a tunnel. On one end the magic is white and wispy, like a reverie. On the other
it’s void black, and it merges in the middle. It’s supposed to be—those two binaries of light and
dark magic. Or, well, two sources that are the complete opposite of each other, with all of the same
strength.”

Lily nodded, listening intently. Trying to commit it all to memory, though she knew she’d never be
able to.

“It’s a concept that’s existed in magical theory for a long time,” Sirius said, clearly rattling off
exactly what Pandora has told him. “The Tunnel of Two Souls is what it’s called. The concept is…
it’s built upon two sources of magic that are so compatible they can’t defeat each other.”

Lily blinked. She sat back, to look at him; look over him properly.

“Like Dumbledore and Riddle,” she whispered.

“Like Dumbledore and Riddle,” Sirius repeated. “It tends to appear at the source of a fight that
can’t be won. Snape said, once, that Dumbledore had known Riddle since the 1920s. They’d go
round and round. Could never kill each other.” He shrugged. “...I s’pose our fight at Whittaker
wasn’t the first one.”

Lily’s mouth was dry. Somewhere, deep inside of her, she found it funny how objectively small of
a character Dumbledore was in her life and yet how much of an impact he has only after he’s dead.

So… two sources of magic that can’t defeat each other. A personable battle. And in the end, they
hadn’t, had they? Because Remus defeated Dumbledore. And… dot, dot, dot.

“That’s the reason these two veils, or these two realms, are merged together,” Sirius continued,
snapping her out of her thoughts. “It’s a constant push and pull. They’re constantly trying to eat at
each other. But if they’re not tampered with they can coexist quite nicely. Half of the tunnel is
made of wispy light. Half is dead black.” A pause, and then: “Me and Remus went into that room
at Whittaker, before we got captured. It’s where Andromeda was hiding with the sword, before
she…”

He looked at Dorcas. She worked her jaw, and avoided eye contact with him.

“To cut a long story short, she was hiding in the tunnel. In the dark side,” he explained, “and it
stripped her of all of the magical tampering. You remember Avni? It undid all of that.”

“Yeah,” said Lily. “Okay. What’s—what’s the point of this?”

“The point is that the dark side of the tunnel of two souls strips you back to the base of who you
are,” said Sirius. “The very instinctual, carnal forces. Stay in there long enough and all you are is
what you are without encroachments. Take you and I for example. You were born a Phoenix, I was
born a vampire. If I were to go in it would strip me back to what I was when I was born, so—in my
case—it’d un-calcify all of that pesky Basilisk venom that sits all pretty inside of me, and I would
die. That’s why it didn’t kill Andromeda, because she is what she was born as. But Dorcas, for
example,” he gestured to her. “If you were to go in there—it would strip you back to what you were
before alterations were made to you. I.E., it’d take your vampirism, make it a separate entity. You
would be vampire and Dorcas, two separate things. And because of that separation you would die.
Are we following?”

Dorcas nodded, slowly. “I think we are…”

“So Remus,” Sirius said, leaning forward, with his hands clasped. Lily’s brows twitched.

“Remus wasn’t born anything,” she said, “if he was split into what he is, it would be…”

“He’d be in thirds. Remus. Werewolf,” Sirius said, blankly, looking at her. “And Horcrux.”

It hit Lily with the weight of a freight train.

“So Pandora thinks the tunnel can split the souls,” she breathed.

“Pandora thinks the tunnel can split the souls,” Sirius repeated.

Lily’s eyes darted all around as she came to terms with this.

“Oh shit,” she murmured.

“Shit indeed,” said Sirius.

“So,” Lily said, her brain going a million miles a minute, “so. So, she thinks that—that the tunnel
can separate their souls. But he wasn’t born a werewolf? Wouldn’t it separate that from him, too?”

“How does Remus cling onto the wolf?” Dorcas asked. “How would he know to trap the Horcrux
in there?”

“And—how is it destroyed?” Lily added. “Surely if the magic seeks to strip you back to what you
are, the Horcrux would live there quite comfortably? A soul in the Tunnel of Two Souls?”

“The answer to your collective question is,” Sirius said, “she wants him to turn in there. For the
first time.”

Lily felt the breath punched out of her.

“Oh my God,” Dorcas muttered. “She wants him to turn…”

“Mhm. Remus needed to trigger his gene, that was her only dying instruction to him, remember?
Really it was an insane stroke of luck that we’ve got a full month to plan before the first time he
turns—because she was very stern that it has to be the first time. She said—she said he has to turn
for the first time inside of the tunnel,” he was saying it mechanically, sort of blank-faced, as if
trying to recall study material, “so that the wolf’s first outward experience is nothing but darkness
and magic, something—something about sensory deprivation… which will make it easier to make
a clean cut between the wolf and the Horcrux, and because he’s turned…”

“He’s automatically keeping that one with him,” finished Lily. “Oh.”

“I still need to go over it again, there might be some things that I missed in her writings, but—”
Sirius cleared his throat, “she also says that… that magic lingers. It grows stronger as time goes on,
right? That’s why I can go into the sun no issue and poor Dorcas here would become a piece of
burnt toast if she tried to.”

“Fuck you,” said Dorcas.

“She says that—Remus has been a dormant werewolf for twenty-three years,” Sirius said, ignoring
her again. “That magic has stayed there this whole time. She said she doesn’t doubt that the wolf
would stay with him, because that’s all it’s ever known, and it’s also all his body has ever known
for—fuck, 80% of it’s life. Turning in there, however, kind of… capitalises on that power? I
believe Dora used the phrase ‘tag team’,” his lip quirked, here, “as her reasoning for why he has to
turn. Two against one, you know. Remus and the wolf turning in there… for the first time… I
mean, you can see how it makes sense. It’s all to ensure that there is a clean cut. That there’s no
chance of the Horcrux clinging.” Sirius looked down to the table, taking a deep breath in. “From
what I can gather, Pandora truly believed that this would work.”

Lily exhaled, shudderingly. There were so many components. There was so much to think about.

And yet. Tag team. That phrasing. It made Lily want to smile, thinking about Pandora writing that.
Thinking about the work that she put in; how brilliant she was, is, always will be. Pandora truly
believed that this would work settled deep in her chest. If Pandora believed that it would work then
Lily believes that it will work. As convoluted and crazy as it is. As difficult as it’s going to be to
get back to Whittaker. She believes that it will work.

She is also, as someone very unfamiliar with magical theory, going to have to do a lot of fucking
reading. Or maybe she could bribe Mary into explaining it all for her. Hm.

Coming to terms with all of this, letting it ruminate, she tried to figure out what to say. Herself and
Dorcas and Sirius were all quiet, sitting around this table, letting it settle. Letting the dust fall. For
Lily, against the millions of thoughts she had, there was only one thought that came out of her
mouth.

“Why would the light try to destroy Andromeda?” she murmured, thinking it through. “I thought
the light side was supposed to be good.”

“It’s Dumbledore,” Dorcas drawled. Lily nodded; she’d almost forgotten.

“Exactly,” Sirius said. “He was supposed to be good, wasn’t he? But he wasn’t.” He took a
moment, paused to think about it. “I mean, why is—the dark magic the saviour that we’re resting
Remus’ life upon? The tunnel consists of the worst parts of goodness and the best parts of evil. In
the end, we all have light and dark inside of us, don’t we? What matters is how we choose to use
it.”

Lily looked at him. Somewhere in between the lines was the acknowledgment that none of them
wanted to face. Tom Riddle was the enemy, the terrible, the evil. Yet.

Yet his magic is Remus’ saviour. In a way, it’s completely fucked up. Knowing Sirius as well as
she did, she knew that this must be killing him. Being able to attribute Riddle to any victory was a
slap in the face. And yet he loved Remus more. He’d take anything.

Lily sighed, looking into his eyes. Soft. Capable. She felt an overwhelming fondness for him, her
Sirius, that red string of fate tied onto their two spinal cords from the moment she saved his life in
the clearing outside Malfoy Manor. They got each other. They got the world.

Because he was right, and she knew that. Morality is not black and white. What matter is how we
choose to use it.

Dumbledore was the light, and he was tyrannical. Unmerciful. Power-craziness was his hamartia,
and his downfall. When one takes on the label of goodness it does not exempt them from
corruption.

Remus is an example of that.

Sirius is an example of that.

Lily and Dorcas are examples of that.

They are all examples of that.

So evil, really, comes as a state of mind. They’re not real concepts, good and evil. They are like
when you’ve looked at a word for too long and it doesn’t look like a real word. Black magic is only
evil depending on where you stand. And goodness is only enlightening depending on if you’re
privileged enough to be shone on.

They’re hailed as ‘the good side’. But they’re ambivalent. Lily has killed and she will kill again.
Remus’ darkness is a part of him and he embraces it and cares for it and nurtures it. Dorcas has
become the herald of evil that she has been fighting against and yet she is still Dorcas. Sirius has
always been the herald of evil that he has been fighting against and he’s unashamed of being so.
Morals are above them, now.

If anyone was going to hail themselves a grey area between goodness and evil, light and dark… it
was Pandora. Pandora who spent her life creating and experimenting. Pandora who spent her life
walking the line between witches. Pandora who dedicated herself to expression, to the furthering of
the magical sphere of knowledge. If you ban every book with a bad word in it you’re banning half
of the world.

As they sat and they continued to talk about the logistics of her last big hurrah, Lily thought that
Pandora would be looking down on them with a smile on her face.

She taught them well. That’s for sure. And oh, how Lily is going to miss her.

***

The evening came, as it always did.

All of the curtains were open now, but no light was shining through. Just darkness. The nearest
streetlamp sent a feeble haze towards them, but they were on a mound just far away enough from
civilisation to be secluded, so it was, for the most part, quiet. And dark. Painfully dark.

There were two lamps on in this room. And Lily had her head resting on her arm on the side of the
sofa, a gentle controlled ball of fire lit up in her other hand. She was just watching it burn. Feeling
the heat like a caress.

Hope had just left about fifteen minutes ago, God bless her soul. She was doing the best she could.
But she didn’t understand. She couldn’t. And nobody could really tell her; she wasn’t theirs to tell.
But Remus was tapped out, upstairs, and. And. Time continues, ceaselessly.

Lily was sitting on one sofa. Dorcas on the armchair opposite. They had been sitting in a
comfortable silence for a while. Lily was just happy that she was there. She was happy enough just
getting to look at Dorcas, just getting her brain to come to terms with the fact that that was Dorcas,
there. She got giddy about it. And then she felt guilty that she got giddy. But she’d missed her.
How she’d missed her.

The door opened, breaking their silence; Dorcas’ eyes flickered over to it with a quickness that was
supernatural. It was just Sirius, coming in alone. Clicking it shut behind him.

He slumped down beside Lily with a groan, closing his eyes and letting his head rest on the back of
the sofa.

Lily swallowed her flame.

“You talk to Hope?” she asked, casually.

“Mm. As much as I could. She’s happy for us to stay as long as we need, but… well, she’s
distressed. Obviously.”

Lily nodded.

“And Remus?”

Sirius opened his eyes, and turned his head to look at her.

“Ghostly,” he whispered.

Across the room, Dorcas closed her eyes.

Lily couldn’t blame him. She can’t. Never has been able to. It’s how he copes; and by God, does he
have a lot to cope with. Shutting it off; tapping out; dissociating to the point that he misses time,
hours of his life. Days. Nobody could ever blame him.
But Dorcas. Oh, poor Dorcas. It’s like they miss each other every time. He’s gone and she’s lost
him just when they got each other back; and she doesn’t understand. She couldn’t, because… well.
He’d always been prone to it. Lily knows that. But it got so much worse in the after-Dorcas.

Sirius and Lily are the only ones who really saw it. The after. They’re the only ones that know.

If he’s gone, he needs to go. But Lily can’t uphold the narrative by herself.

“I keep forgetting that we still have one more Horcrux to find.”

Sirius exhaled, looking at her.

“One to find,” he murmured. “Then Remus. Then the snake.”

“I don’t know if I feel like we’re incredibly close or so incredibly far,” Lily admitted. It came
across a little forlorn. Sirius licked his teeth and thought about this.

“A bit of both,” he said, eventually.

“You have any idea where the next one might be?”

“Nope,” Sirius said.

“Do you think Remus might have a clue?”

Sirius bit down on his lip.

“I mean—you remember what I said in the car?” Lily asked. “The last time his heart stopped. Has
he…”

“No,” said Sirius. “He hasn’t talked to me about it. I don’t know what happened. But his outburst
when he found out that we were coming here—”

“It’s likely, isn’t it?” she murmured. “That he saw him again? Do you think he saw anything
important?”

Sirius shrugged. “He’ll tell us when he tells us.” Lily felt quite affronted by this, but managed to
swallow her pride and bitterness. She sighed.

Sirius looked at Dorcas. She’d been very quiet, not just today but in general since they’d gotten
back. She said that it was because she was spending prolonged time with humans, but Lily was
quite certain that alongside that there was something deeper. A disconnect. She missed him.

He then turned to look at Lily.

“Alright, fine,” she said. He didn’t even have to voice what the look was for. Somehow she just
knew. “I’ll be optimistic. We’re close,” she breathed. “Closer than we ever thought we’d be.”

He smiled at her. “Thank you, Lilith.”

They were quiet for a moment. Sirius sighed, shifting agitatedly, leaning his head back on the sofa.
He was jiggling his knee, and Lily knew what that meant.

“Hey. Have you eaten?” she asked, nudging him. She knew that he’d been taking Dorcas out
hunting at night—they were actually due to go soon—but she knew him, she didn’t doubt he’d be
skipping out for the sake of letting her feed. He stopped, turning again to look down on her.
“Have you?”

…Touché. (Again, Lily thought of Regulus. A soft pain bloomed in her chest.)

“Come here,” she muttered, brushing it away and tugging at his sleeve. He raised an eyebrow. “I
can feel how tense you are from over here. If you’re not going to eat, let me fix it.”

“By doing what?”

“Turn around.”

With a little bit of forceful manoeuvring, she managed to get him into an apt position. And then
she rubbed her hands together, heating them up, and began to massage his shoulders.

Sirius honest-to-god moaned.

“Get a room,” Dorcas muttered from her armchair.

Lily scoffed a laugh; a raw, rare kind of thing. She felt guilty about it immediately.

“Vampires need massages, too,” she murmured, and Dorcas grinned. She felt Sirius laugh, too.

Something about the entire situation was bittersweet. But she didn’t want to acknowledge it, so she
just kept massaging. Hoping that she can relieve some of his pain and relieve some of hers in turn.

They’ve got a long way to go. But they’ve also got so very far, and that’s got to count for
something, right? Someone out there must be proud of them, right?

***

Lily brushed her teeth in front of the mirror. Molten veins in front of her. Holding her hair back to
spit, she ran the tap, thumbed a bit more of the sootiness off of the metal, and took a deep breath
in.

She closed her eyes. Opened them again. Repeated it, just the once, this time, before they came out
that familiar stark red.

Having her close felt relieving, somehow.

“Goodnight,” she whispered, into the mirror. There was no response this time. But an inordinate
peace overcame her lungs, as if smoke had just been purged from it; or maybe breathed right in.

Back in the living room, with the curtains shut, she clambered onto her little sofa-bed. It was too
dark for her liking so she lit a little non-flammable flame on the two fingers of her right hand.
Watched them dance for a little bit. Admired the beauty.

She let her mind wander. She let it wander far. To trees and to fire and to witches and to home.

In a haze, the flames were subdued, and then they were double the size, flickering incessantly.
Lily, coming back to herself, blinked and curled her fingers back in, snuffing it immediately.

She sighed. Closed her eyes, and exhaled, slowly. Ever so slowly.

The thing is that the Phoenix and Lily run a very tight ship nowadays. It’s nowhere near perfect.
The abyss is filling and the severing of the electrical cord is still rampant, those sparks flying
incessantly, day in, day out. They exchange feelings like it’s pass the parcel. The Phoenix mourns
loss. Lily chokes on power. There’s a bridge, and she didn’t want to say it, because if she said it
then it was real, but. But.

God, it’s real regardless. It’s real in the way the fire glows. It’s real in the way the power ebbs, the
push-and-pull ceases. Two pairs of consciousnesses, falling limp to one.

Because Mary is what bridges the gap. Mary has always been what bridges the gap. From mixing
fire, to library nights, to laughter and cooking and flames and ash. It’s Mary. It’s always Mary.

The reality is that the Phoenix is in love with Mary.

And Lily is pretty sure that she is, too.

REMUS

Hunting with Dorcas. Be back soon.

Hunting with Dorcas. Be back soon.

Hunting, Dorcas, back before you wake.

Hunting. Eat something, sweetheart. Be back soon.

Hunting with Dorcas. She’s doing well. Be back soon.

Hunting with Dorcas. She misses you. Be back soon.

Hunting with Dorcas. I miss you. Be back soon.

Hunting with Dorcas. Lily made stir fry. There’s leftovers in the fridge if you wake up hungry. Be
back soon.

***

Things were hazy. For a few days. Remus slept, the night after—well, everything—and he just
didn’t wake up. He did. But he didn’t.

How many days, he was unsure; less than a week, more than a couple. Time sort of became a
construct for Remus after Pandora’s death. He’d always lost time, never felt quite on the same
wavelength as it, but now he was losing hours. Lying and feeling weightless, avoiding everyone.
He’d emerge at night, bare feet cold against the kitchen floor, intent to avoid everyone, eat enough
to exist and go back to bed.

This evening it was late. Later than usual. Or, well, early. He didn’t know what time it was but the
sky was beginning to lighten, and he’d been awoken by a strange dream. He couldn’t remember
much of it now. Flashes of sapphire, polished metal. He’d had this dream twice, now; Remus rarely
dreamed, so every time he did there was a question attached. He was wondering what it meant.
Though that’s a perpetual question, for him, he’d suppose: what does anything mean? He never
knew. It was a question that would never be answered though he’d be searching for it forever;
however, it wasn’t one he was entertaining tonight. Tonight was the nuances of a dream falling flat
to colours and what he was almost certain was a piece of jewellery. He was quite positive that he
saw it in the cave, amongst the riches, beside the cup. But he had no clue why he was thinking
about it now.

Two times in a row is a bit strange, but he’d not told anybody because—well, for one, it seemed
sort of inconsequential. Of course he was having unsettling dreams about the cave; it was a
haunting experience. He’s not the first to have trauma dreams. But he hadn’t told anyone mainly
because there’d been nobody to tell, for he’d slept when everyone was awake and woken when
everyone was asleep. He’d sort of become nocturnal. Not by choice. He just… in these detached
states, found it easier to come to terms with the world and his position within it when it was dark
and silent.

He found it easier to exist, as a ghost, floating down the corridors and around and around and
around, in the dark. With Sirius and Dorcas gone hunting every night, sometimes twice a night,
Lily asleep, his mum asleep. He’d rarely seen anyone in the past few days and he preferred it that
way. Morbid and pitiful, maybe, but he quite thought that… well, the longer he exists in this
liminal, unreal pocket of time, between 1, 2, 3am and 4, the longer he doesn’t have to exist at all.

If a tree falls in the middle of a forest and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?

If Remus exists and no one is around to witness it… does he exist at all?

He wasn’t sure. But. He was real enough to feel hunger, so he stood in front of the microwave,
heating up leftover stir-fry, and he waited.

When it was done he padded over to the kitchen table, pulling what he needed from the cutlery
drawer. He sat and ate in silence. It really was late; a glance at the clock, finally, read that it was
near-approaching 5am, which meant the sun would be rising soon. He felt like he should hate the
fact that it was rising because he’d slept longer than usual so his night of solitude would be over
too quickly. But tonight he was indifferent. Over everything, he felt a strange longing to stare
directly at the sun when it rose and challenge it the way its orbit challenged him, over and over.
Perhaps he could regain some control that way. If he had any control left to regain.

But, well, the sun would not be rising for another half an hour, so he grasped onto the control in the
only way he knew how. Routine. So, he ate. He got up. Turned. Walked to the sink. Put his plate
down. Put the fork alongside it. Turned on the tap. Rinsed it out. Turned off the tap. Watched as
the droplets slowed to nothing. Turned. Moved to grab a tea towel to dry his plate.

Stopped.
A plate on the side caught his eye. Wrecked his routine.

See, it caught his eye because his mother does not leave plates on the side. She’d always been like
this: her kitchen is clean before she goes to bed and it’ll be clean when she wakes up, god forbid.
So this plate must exist somewhere in the pocket of time in between those events. The liminal
space of 1, 2, 3am and 4. It wasn’t there by nightfall and it should be gone by morning.

He looked at the plate. It still had food on it. It was strewn on the side, on the countertop closest to
the sink but far enough away that it seems to have been used and placed there in a haste, to come
back to.

There was a fried egg sandwich on the plate.

It was half eaten, staring up at him. The runny yolk had pooled onto the white ceramic, swirled
with ketchup that had obviously been shoved in there as well. It was cold, now, having probably
been out for a few hours. But it was there. Come to think of it, now that Remus looked, he could
see the salt on the countertop as well. He could see the frying pan in the sink. Right next to his
bowl; he couldn’t tell you how he didn’t see it before. But he did now.

He saw it, so it was real.

So, the puzzle pieces must fit together, right? Right? The progression of life; the progression of
this thing that he’s staring at’s existence. Routine. A routine that goes like this: this pan created this
egg that sits on this plate. The pan had water pooled in the bottom from where Remus haphazardly
rinsed out his bowl. So, so, this pan must exist, because he interacted with it. He’d stood just
adjacent to the salt while standing in front of the microwave. He’d sat in a seat facing the plate on
the side. It had all been there as he had been there; it hadn’t just materialised as a figment of his
imagination. This was real.

He was attached to it, so it was real.

In his deliriousness, the tiredness that seemed to have just hit him, he found himself reaching out.
He smoothed his thumb over the edge of the cold plate, gripping with a thumb and forefinger onto
the ceramic. Pulling it a little bit. It slid across the countertop, making a grating sound that rung his
ears. If a plate grates across a countertop and no one is around to hear it, did it grate at all?
Remus wouldn’t know, because he heard it. He did.

He heard it, so it was real. And he only knew one person who ate these kinds of sandwiches.

Remus was never a fried-egg person, see. He’d indulge in them but, honestly, he was always a soft-
boiled, eggs-and-soldiers kid. Mary found him abhorrent when they first met, because she doesn’t
like egg yolk. She’s a fan of a good omelette. Or a scrambled egg. When they lived together
sometimes he’d make them breakfast. In his best mental health states he slept mildly, in his worst
never; the concept of him being a ghost before the sun rises was not something born in this house
—well, it was, but not right now—so on days when they had the same schedules and he was up
first since he hadn’t slept anyway he’d cook breakfast. Scrambled for Mary. Boiled for him. For
Dorcas, he’d fry the egg, salt and pepper it in the pan. He’d put a lid on the pan so that a thin layer
cooked over the top of the yolk, so Dorcas could cut it with a knife. He found it satisfying. And she
always told him that you can do that better when you do them poached, but he’d never gotten the
hang of it. He just fried them. She liked them fried, so he fried them.

He let go of the plate.

And he’s seventeen, and he’s frying a fucking egg, and he’s twenty-three and frying a fucking egg,
and he’s twenty-seven and frying a fucking egg, and there’s yolk on the sheets. She cleans it up
with her finger. He’s gripping onto the ceramic. The world unravels before his eyes. Dorcas eats
fried egg sandwiches.

My best friend Dorcas, he’d say, perhaps five years from now or however long it would take to be
able to reminisce about her to a stranger frying a foreign egg in a foreign plate in a foreign land; she
used to eat fried-egg sandwiches.

It’s not—it’s—

It’s a fucking egg. It’s hilarious. It’s ridiculous. Remus has a hand over his both, he has both hands
over his mouth, and he can’t tell if he’s going to break down hysterically laughing or hysterically
crying, because it’s a fucking egg, but it’s her.

That’s her.

That’s her.

It’s her. It’s really… it’s—it’s her.

(If a choking sob is released from the throat of a world-weary man standing in front of a fried-egg
sandwich that is suddenly so close to him he could reach out and touch it (he can) does it really
happen at all?)

It was all so real, all of a sudden, that Remus had to go sit down.

And then as the room began to get lighter, his heart began to beat faster. When the rumble of
voices and gentle laughter came from outside he was at the window in a flash, watching Dorcas
and Sirius walk down the road back towards the house. Dorcas had her arms spread out and she
was twirling, jovially, head thrown back, shirt fluttering in every which way along with the 5am
wind picking up. Sirius was laughing at her, walking backwards, wiping the back of his mouth with
his hand.

He said something to her, and she stopped, coming to an unsteady halt as she twirled. And then she
huffed and practically folded in half, collapsing down to sit on the floor and then lie back, splayed
out like a starfish on the road. Sirius threw his head back and laughed, proclaiming something like
“That’s not what I meant”, and Dorcas laughed, throwing her head back as well and arching her
body, hands pulled to her chest in silent laughter. She held up a hand when they’d calmed,
presumably for Sirius to help her up, and then she double-crossed him and pulled him right back
down with her.

He tumbled over with a yelp and then they were both there, lying on the road, underneath a
streetlight; they looked like two drunkards on top of the world. Remus was watching through
blurry eyes.

That’s his—that’s his—no, you see, that’s… that’s—

“Dorcas,” he called, now at the door, open wide, stepping out onto the welcome mat. Barefoot. The
both of them looked up at lightning speed, and then scrambled to their feet; Dorcas blinking
harshly, looking at him; a silhouette against the rapid colouring of the clouds with the rising sun,
oranges and pinks. The hue of it shimmered on her skin as she parted her lips, looking to Sirius
briefly and then back to him.

“Dorcas,” he said, walking forward, his hands outstretched like a child. “Dor—Dorcas.”
She said his name. A songbird’s chirp.

Oh, that’s—that’s—

And then his feet were touching the soft marsh of the grass, and then she was closer, and then she
was in front of him and he was reaching out to touch her face, gripping his nails into her skin.

“Hi,” she whispered, curling her hands around his wrists.

Remus let out a teary laugh. “Hi,” he choked, and then he practically jumped on her.

It was hysterical, and warm, and wonderful. He sent the pair of them staggering backwards and
almost falling; Dorcas had to regain her balance, holding onto him as she was her, wrapping her
arms around his neck and pushing forward as he gripped onto her back, her hair, her waist. He
touched her so she was real. He felt her and that was real. He heard her so she was real. It was all
real.

He was crying, and so was she; but he was also laughing. And so was she.

It was a second reunion. But here, under the waning stars, there was no threat. It was the reunion
they deserved, just him and her, staggering as they tried to keep hold of each other. Desperately
trying to outmatch the other’s force. They were two lighters, flames that burnt higher when they
joined together. Joined at the hip, in the place where the gun sits. Trigger fingers digging into each
other’s back blades.

His best friend, Dorcas. The one he fought beside.

The one he lived beside. The one he’d die beside.

The one who died beside him.

He pulled back, letting out the ugliest most ridiculous sob, laughing through it, both at himself and
at her and at the world. He looked her dead in the eyes. They were bit brighter. A bit different. But
still the same. She was the same, these were her eyes, her hands cupping his face. Not the vampire
Dorcas’. Not the hunter Dorcas’. His Dorcas’.

He gripped onto her hands, lacing their fingers together. Gripped her cheeks, her neck. Every part
of her he could reach; they were almost dancing, a push-and-pull on the grass. Always on the brink
of falling and always pulling each other back into balance from the edge.

“Oh, fuck,” he choked, balancing on his tightrope. “Fuck. It’s you.”

“It’s me,” she breathed, crying as well.

“It’s really you.”

“It’s really me.”

“You’re alive,” Remus whispered, twisting one of the beads in her hair, his bead. He exhaled
everything he had, feeling it shudder down his body. Rested his forehead against hers. She held
onto him by the neck, her thumbs pushing at his jawline. “You’re really—you’re really alive?”

“I’m alive.”

“You weren’t—where were—”

“I’ll tell you everything,” she choked, harshly, pulling back to look at him. She sniffed and nodded.
“I’ll tell you everything.”

They rocked. The world could unravel at their feet at it wouldn't even matter, because—

“I’ve got you,” Dorcas whispered, over and over. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I’ve got you. I’ve got
you.”

***

He woke to the sun.

Straining at the light he squeezed his eyes shut, but all it did was colour the red behind his eyes
darker. It was just a strip, through a gap in the blinds, layered over his face like a velvet rope. Upon
opening them he noticed three things; one, he was lying on top of the quilt. Two, he was in the
same clothes as yesterday. And three, Dorcas was lying next to him.

Slotted in the shade, the strip of light lying just over Remus, and pouring in between them. Her eyes
were open, and bright. She looked so like herself and so unlike herself at the same time.

“Hi,” Remus whispered.

Her features moved so… jerkily. It seemed like she was made of stone and had to manoeuvre all of
the rocks to make changes. But the smile, when her lips were tugged upwards by the strings of
whatever brought her back, the smile was real.

“Hi,” she whispered back.

Remus hesitated. He looked at her. Dorcas. It was Dorcas sitting in front of him. She felt so close
and yet so far, but not in the way she’d been far before. Just… far. Like he was seeing and hearing
her through water, but he was getting closer and closer to the surface.

“How are you?” he whispered.

She took a moment to respond.

“I’m good,” she said. But her voice sounded achy. She seemed to notice this, amending:
“Surviving.”

There was a pause.

“How are you?” she whispered back.

“I’m—” Remus started, and then he choked on his voice. How was he, really? What was he?

He was– well. Who knew. He felt like he was being suffocated, is how Remus was. Nothing
seemed to be able to pull him out—every rope frayed, every shovel broke at the seams.

He was… untethered. That was probably the best word for it. And maybe three months ago he
would’ve said just that to her. But three months ago is not now. Three months ago Dorcas was
human and Remus was human and now they’re vampire and werewolf and a little bit of something
else, sort of coming apart at the stitches like an old dress passed down generations until it simply
disintegrated.

And he’s. He’s. He’s. He’s. He’s. He’s.

“I’m good,” Remus said. “Surviving.”

Lie.

“Okay,” said Dorcas, softly.

“Okay,” he said, back.

He breathed. He breathed again.

“I don’t know…” Remus started, finding his voice rusty and thick with something he couldn’t
seem to conceptualise, “how—”

To do this now. To speak to you now. To love you alive again. To exist beside you anymore.

“I know,” she said. “It’s okay. Me neither.”

They looked at each other. They were completely different people. Remus’ life had been split into
Before Dorcas and After Dorcas and her being here was mixing it all up, blurring the lines, it was
so wrong, it felt so—

But. There she was.

That’s her, by the way. It really is. She’s actually there. And seeing her so close, seeing her in a
way that is attached and not detached, real and tangible and bodily and wild… it made Remus feel
something that he hadn’t felt in a really, really long time.

He felt. Dare he say it.

He looked at her and he could feel hope.

So maybe, maybe it’s going to be okay? Remus had no doubt about the fact that he will love her as
she is now. Well—he already does. He never stopped loving her, not for a second. He just stopped
knowing her. And now he loves someone he does not know. His soulmate is a stranger. And he’s
quite sure, of everything that’s happened since her death, of all of the change and all of the grit and
gore that he’s been through… well, he’s probably a stranger to her too.

But he felt hope. Remus could feel hope, like a tiny flame, persevering like love in the face of war.
So maybe it’ll be okay. Maybe the lines will come into focus again, but for now…

“Can you just…” he whispered. Vulnerable. “Stay? For a bit.”

Dorcas nodded, immediately.

“Yeah,” she said, her head sinking into the pillow. She looked down at the gentle sunlight shining
in between them, and placed her hand just on the edge of the shade. “Yeah. Always, Remus.”

Remus put his own hand directly onto the strip of light. Their pinky fingers touched.

***

The next conscious thought that Remus lets us into is the next night, and it is not so much a
thought as a dream.

It’s odd. It’s strange that this keeps happening. He knows his pain and we know it too; his
restlessness is silent, and that’s what makes it ache the most. But, here, he was dreaming. He is
dreaming and he is dreaming and he dreams.

How are you?

He’s—He’s. He’s. He’s.

Well, he dreamt that he was in London. But he had no gun on his hip. He had no blood on his
hands, no vice and all virtue. He was his old self, and Dorcas was hers. And Mary was hers. There
was no corruption. He had a father who put him first, he had a mother who gripped him tight. He
had a life. The life he longed for.

A normal existence. Painless. Where your grief is a natural cycle of life and not losing love time
after time after time to evil. Where you don’t have a death sentence on your back.

He was unashamed about the person he’d become and Christ did he miss the person he used to be.
But Remus could not remember feeling so deep and so tragic a longing for something that he’d
never even had.

He was happy during this dream. It was everything that he wanted and this longing didn’t hit until
he woke up. It was warm and it was cosy and during this dream, he wasn’t thinking about Pandora.
So he was happy.

When he woke up, eventually, and rolled over he found the other side of the bed to be empty. He
felt a jolting sense of panic rush through him before finding a note folded and placed gently on
Sirius’ pillow. But it was not from Sirius.

In less-cursive, more scrawly handwriting, it read: “Taken Sirius hunting – be back soon. X”

Hilariously, this got a laugh out of him.

So, twenty seconds later, the kitchen tiles roped him back in from any fogginess he might be
encountering through the way they froze his feet as he pushed open the door. The light was already
on, which made him squint; after rubbing his eyes and coming to grips with the sudden glow he
dropped his hands and realised that he was looking at his mother.

She was standing in front of the kettle, with a mug in one hand, a teaspoon in the other.

“Hi, honey,” she whispered. Welsh twang in her voice.

Remus sniffed, and closed the door.

“Can’t sleep?” she said, gently, placing the mug and teaspoon on the countertop with a gentle
clang.

“Too—” Remus started, but his throat was clogged and gritty; he cleared it and tried again. “Too
much sleep.”

Hope smiled.

“Cup of tea?” she offered, nodding towards the kettle. “It’s boiled for two.”

Remus eyed it for a moment, and then nodded.

“I take it—”

“Dollop of milk, two sugars,” Hope finished, pulling a mug out of the cupboard. She turned to go
fish another teabag out of the tin and smiled at him. “I know. Go sit on the sofa, I’ll bring it
through to you when it’s done.”

And so Remus did.

She came through with two mugs in each hand, both steaming. Setting one on the coaster beside
where Remus had perched on the sofa, she circled around to sit on the cushion beside him.

They sipped.

For a long, long few moments, against the low lamplight, they sipped.

“Moody’s dead,” said Remus, lowering his mug. He wasn’t sure what came over him. Just that the
words weren’t there before, and now they’re there now.

He heard Hope swallow, and turn to place her mug on the coffee table. When she turned back,
Remus looked at her. Her eyes were sad.

“How?”

“Infection,” Remus murmured, taking another sip. “Last month, now. Or—no, fuck, is it August
yet?”

“Yeah. The second, now.”

Remus exhaled, slowly. “Mm. June, then. Spread… it spread everywhere. They did everything
they could.”

“They?” Hope asked.

He turned to her.

“The building went down,” she said, by way of explanation. Remus instantly recalled emailing her
not long after HI1 had burned, to let her know that he was safe and hadn’t been involved in the
explosion. He could not recall if he had emailed her again after that. Malfoy Manor had taken
everything from him and he’d spent six weeks watching himself burn.

“Not a lot of them escaped,” he said, “but some of them did. I don’t know if you’d know anyone—
Weasley, maybe?”

Hope nodded. They were a legacy hunting family, so it made sense she’d have heard their names,
all of those years ago.

“A few of them. Moody. Minerva. Some hunters a few years under me. But when I say they…
there’s more. There’s—well—”

“Vampires,” Hope said, raising an eyebrow.

Remus took another sip. He thinned his lips, and avoided her eye, feeling weirdly… embarrassed?
Hope chuckled, softly.

“He’s charming,” she commented. “Your boy. Smooth as butter. Nothing that I ever thought a
vampire could be.”

Remus actually smiled a little bit at this. Because he’d been there.
“I know,” he said, placing his mug down. He cleared his throat. “He’s… changed my life.”

“They do that,” Hope murmured. “A vampire changed mine, too.”

Remus looked at her.

“What?” he whispered, and then: How?”

“It’s how I met your father,” she said, softly. “He saved me from a vampire. I was twenty-six, he
was twenty-eight. I got caught in the woods on my way home from work. It was barely past sunset,
but I suppose this one was hungry. He bit me and your father came out of nowhere, like some sort
of hero. Staked him in the back.”

Remus listened, enraptured. His mouth parted a little bit.

“He got rid of the body, and then he walked me home,” she said, smiling. “I must have asked
him… oh, a hundred questions in that 30 minute walk? He was exasperated, and yet he answered
every single one. He was kind like that. Wanted to reassure me. He kissed me on the hand as he
dropped me home, and then came to my house the next week with a bunch of lilies.”

“You hate lilies,” said Remus, his mouth dry.

“I know,” she replied, smiling. “I made him throw them in the bush and then forced him to walk
through my front door to make sure he wasn’t a vampire. As soon as he was inside I shut the door.”
She shrugged. “And it stayed shut.”

Remus thinned his lips, feeling tears prickle at his eyes. He managed to stave them away but had to
let out an exhale so harsh he couldn’t breathe, placing his head into his hands.

Hope let him compose himself for a minute. And then:

“I’m sorry.”

Remus looked up, dead-eyed.

“What are you sorry for?”

“Bringing him up,” she said, simply. “I just don’t get to talk about him much. There’s nobody left
to remember.”

“I remember,” said Remus. “Now.”

Hope sighed, forming and shedding tears so instantly it could have been record-breaking. She
cupped his face, exhaling harshly, and shook her head.

“Oh baby, I wish you didn’t,” she whispered.

Remus scrunched his face up, looking down, away from her. But her hand stayed firmly on his
cheek.

“I saw it all,” he whispered. “Like it was a movie. I saw him through Moody’s eyes. I heard him
speak, Mum, it was real.”

Hope blinked, furiously.

“He looks like me,” Remus said, eventually, looking up at her. “He acts like me. He fights like
me.”

“You’re not him. You’re nothing like him.”

“Don’t lie, Mum,” Remus said, shaking his head, with a sombre smile. “I am.”

Hope simply. Looked at him. Kept her hands on his face, like she was trying to keep him together,
trying to stop him from falling apart. But the fact of the matter is he’d had to learn how to stay
together without her a long, long time ago. Because she’d let him go.

He moved away from her. Her hands dropped to the sofa, lifelessly, and she simply stared. Waited.

Remus rubbed his eyes and, not making eye contact, whispered: “Why did you do it?”

She didn’t say anything for a moment. But he knew, and she knew, exactly what he meant.

“Mum, we have to have this conversation,” he continued, so, so quiet. “I can’t live without
knowing. I can’t live anymore without understanding why you let me go.”

She faltered, looking down to her lap, where her hands were lying, useless. She pursed her lips in
an attempt to thwart the tears. Remus, desperate, shuffled closer and tugged on her sleeve like a
child.

“Mum. Mum.” He gasped, and there it was. There were the tears. “Please. Please, I—it’s so bad.
Mum, it’s so bad. It’s war and I’m at the centre of it and I—I don’t know what to do. I don’t know
what to do, please—please,” he choked on a sob, clinging onto her, trying to get her to look at him.
“Please look at me. Mum. Please, look at me. Look at me.”

She looked at him.

His throat constricted, and he tried to breathe out, but it came out in stutters. Like the waves of his
tears. The hand around his neck.

“Why?” he wept, tunnelling his fingers up her sleeve, clinging onto the skin of her wrist that you
aren’t able to see, the hidden Mother, tears falling and staining the sofa cushions. “Why did you let
me go?”

Hope’s face crumpled. She took a deep breath in.

“Because I didn’t know what else to do,” she whispered.

Time stopped. It felt like Remus’ entire world had come crashing down.

Because it wasn’t supposed to be like this. There was supposed to be a reason.

There was supposed to be a reason that she’d left him, a reason that he had been bleeding child and
she had been sanctified mother. She was supposed to have done everything right. She was
supposed to be his law, his sanctuary. But that’s just it, isn’t it? She wasn’t sanctified mother. She
was just… mother.

Mothers are supposed to do everything right, but that’s just not realistic, is it? She had been
Remus’ saviour. His hope, as a child. Growing up it had only been him and her and he’d gotten to a
point where he’d convinced himself all that she said was go, everything paused upon her words,
because she was Mother, Mother, Mother, when all Mother is is a title for a person who, at their
best, is simply trying their best.
At their worst she is a falsification. And perhaps that’s what hurts more. Because Hope hadn’t
been a falsification. She hadn’t been a bad excuse of a mother. She’d loved him and she’d nurtured
him until she’d let him go and then she’d loved him after that. She loved him now. He could feel
it. She was not false, she was just real.

They sit, mother to child. They sit, human to human, as Hope tells her son that she failed him. And
at twenty-eight years old Remus realises that his mother is as much of a person as he is.

Of everything… of everything, this is what breaks him clean in two.

“I was twenty-six when I found out that the supernatural existed,” Hope began, voice breaking. “I
was thirty-two when it all ended. I was so young. It was all so sudden. I fell in love and it ruined
me, but I got you, and you were the most precious thing in the world to me—you still are, you still
are, my baby,” she cupped his cheek again, and Remus cried harder, “and all I wanted to do was
keep you safe. When they bit you, I kept you safe. When he was turned, too, I kept you safe. I went
with everything they told me to do. We moved as far away as possible to get away from them. But
you were a dormant werewolf child, and they knew nothing. Would tell me nothing. The
information they had on children like you, miracles like you, was so scarce, I—”

She cut off, licking her lips. Remus felt like his chest was collapsing.

“Were you scared of me?” he whispered.

“No,” she answered, immediately. “You’re my boy. You’re mine. I made you, I made this,” she ran
her hands through his hair, tugged at his curls; “there is nothing you could do to scare me. Because
I care more about your life than my own.” She took a moment, and then: “I was scared for you,
Remus. I was scared you would turn one day and I wouldn’t be there. I was scared you would
accidentally hurt someone and you would have to live with that. You already had to live with so
much. You already had to fight so much.”

Remus gasped, choking on his tears, now. He shook his head.

“I have to live with more, now,” he said. “It’s not fair.”

“I know,” she said. “And that’s where I failed you. If I knew then what I know now I would have
kept you safe with me forever, but—but they told me they’d keep you safe. And I didn’t know
what to do. So I let you go, to the people that I thought—that I thought could do a better job than I
could.”

“But you knew,” Remus said, shaking his head. “You knew what hunting had done to me. To Dad.
You knew what I would become.”

Hope, looking genuinely devastated, sighed. Her shoulders slumped.

“You knew what I was and you knew what had happened to me and you—you knew that I didn’t
know anything and you were supposed to be the one to stop it, Mum, that was you,” he said,
shaking his head. “You were supposed to keep me safe. You were supposed to tell me about the
dangers of the world. You were supposed to protect me.”

Two tears fell onto her pale cheeks.

“And you didn’t,” Remus cried, letting go of her; making her let go of him. “You didn’t. You left
me to do it all on my own. I was seventeen.”

“Remus…”
“I was seventeen!” Hope flinched, face twitching, but she did not look away from him. She stayed
stoic. His stubbornness, oh; that was all her, wasn’t it? “I was a child!”

His voice broke.

“I was innocent,” he whispered, “and you let them put their hands on me.”

“I’m sorry,” Hope said. It was all she said. The truth is that he is his father’s son and he is his
mother’s boy. He doesn’t fuck around and neither shall she. Sorry is all she can offer and so she
offers it.

Remus shook his head.

“It’s not enough.”

Sorry is all she can offer and so she offers it even though she knows it’s not enough.

“I know.”

Sorry is all she can offer and so she offers it even though she knows it’s not enough and nothing
can change the past and her son is sitting ruined in front of her and you follow the leylines back to
the start and it is her hand that fed and her hand that ruined.

“I know,” she breathed, again, and then she pulled him in, and he collapsed into her, crying,
holding onto her so tight as if to make reparations. As if to mimic how he should have clung eleven
years ago.

He holds her, and they’re both human. But they’re human mother, human son. They fall to pieces
together and her hand is the one that instinctively picks them up. She just doesn’t put them back
together completely right, sometimes.

The worst part is that she didn’t mean it.

It might have hurt less if she’d have meant it.

***

It goes dark for you. The next conscious thought that Remus walks into is the most familiar room
of the house.

The cream ceiling looks like a demon. He feels like he can reach up and dip his finger into it and
have it be the consistency of wax, have it burn like wax, too. He want to swim through the air and
fall into it and fall out of the other end covered.

How are you?

He’s tethered and untethered and tethered and untethered like a fucking faulty phone charger. He’s
cold and he’s warm and he’s sad and he’s happy but these aren’t what he’s looking for, oh God,
he’s looking.

Dorcas is downstairs. He knows this because he heard her go. She lay beside him for eight hours
last night until the sun rose and then after she was gone Remus opened the curtain and stared
directly at the sun to both wash her off and also maybe brand her into his skin further.

His mother is in the room adjacent to him. He knows this because he can hear her humming. He
can’t forgive her. He’s going to forgive her. He can’t. He’s going to. He won’t. He will. He won’t.
He will.

The wolf is antsy. He knows this because he feels him clawing at his ribcage like it’s a battered
kennel door. The moon gets thicker by the day.

Riddle is somewhere North. He knows this because, while Riddle can’t get into his head when he
sleeps anymore and Remus vice-versa can’t get into his, he feels cold and hollow most of the time
when he wakes. And he knows what it is. Instinctively. He hasn’t told Sirius this. He hasn’t told
anyone. Sometimes he thinks that Riddle has burrowed a piece of himself into Remus’ body so
deep even if he died it still wouldn’t get rid of it. It’s cold, where he is, and Remus wants to warm
him. Is that the Horcrux? Or is that just him?

There’s a lot. A lot to process. But also none of that matters.

None of it matters.

What does matter is Dorcas’s question.

How are you?

It rings in his ears like static. How are you? How are you? Having no answer to that question was
haunting, barely tolerable. But everything that has happened in the past indeterminate amount of
time had led him to a door and on the other side of the door is a mirror and he has to stare into it
and he finds that his reflection is closer than he thought. He’s sorry and sore and he’s there and
he’s here and he’s before and he’s after but he’s him. Getting Dorcas back—the real Dorcas, his
best friend Dorcas—humanised him horribly for someone who has become inhuman. But talking to
his mother last night was what really sealed the deal.

Nothing felt quite as real as his mother’s beating heart in his hands. Perhaps genetics is all it ever
comes down to. Or perhaps it’s simply choice.

How are you?

He’s. He’s.

He’s fucking angry.

Oh God, he feels it like electrocution, like nobody has ever felt anything before. He feels himself
like he can tune into the way his bones rub up against his skin. He feels desire like it’s been built
out of scraps and dropped on his doorstep like a child. He feels his anger like it is his friend and he
brushes her hair until it glows, sickly white, tarnished red. He feels the cold of the northern
hemisphere like it’s a string and he’s strangling someone with it.

He is so fucking angry.

So Remus got up. He took his anger and got up. He walked. He continued. He lugged all of these
things behind him in a sack and he trailed downstairs, thumping with each step. The house was
eerily quiet, and Remus was making noise. He was going to make so much noise. He was going to
be the loudest thing on the fucking planet.

The door opened to Lily on one side sitting around the table, Sirius and Dorcas on the other. The
conversation faltered. They all looked over to him.

“I want to get back in the game,” he said.

 A moment passed. And then, slowly, Lily reached her arm over and dragged out the chair beside
her.

“Sit,” she said.

The door swung shut.

Chapter End Notes

okay so. gaaaaahhhh a LOT happens in this one. i dont actually have much to say
down here but i did want to note that obviously you get quite a bit of the plotty stuff,
as The Plan™ unfolds, and if anyone has any questions about that you can go ahead
and ask! framing it as sirius explaining to lily and dorcas was a way to try and make it
easy to follow but. well disintegration is quite hard to follow at the best of times, i
know lol, so! i hope everything makes sense!

also how ridiculous is the fucking egg thing. GOD i love it so much. if you're
wondering, the fried egg sandwich is a callback to chapter NINE (about 1/4 of the way
through, remus makes one for her and she spills a bit of the yolk on her bedsheets bc
she refuses to go downstairs and eat breakfast with the vampires) (oh how the turns
have tabled) and chapter 24 (lily makes remus one and it makes him think of dorcas
and i believe he has a panic attack). i thought, like. idk when i was writing it it sort of
felt inevitable to me that remus would need some time before he could actually
PROPERLY reconcile with her/that he wouldn't be able to process it after everything
he went through. I think it was important that it be something as mundane and human
as a fried egg sandwich that sort of pulls him back to reality and helps him realise that
it's ACTUALLY her. like they're so different now, but that's something that hasn't
changed. she ate them when they lived together at 17, she ate them at boardwalk at 28
before everything changed, and she's a vampire now and yet she still eats them. you
get my gist? idk it's hilarious that it's a fried egg but at the same time i think it's very
sweet :-(

and. remus and his mother. god their conversation made me cry like three times over.
it's just so bittersweet, you know, that realisation that your parent isn't infallible and
that they're just as human as you are..... :/ i've seen some people shitting on hope and
honestly i think this is one of those situations where everyone is entitled to a different
opinion. obviously since i wrote it i see it more from remus' eyes and have a fondness
for her and both anger but underlying sympathy, but i do get the people who have
come to me and said that letting him go was unforgivable. i liked that she didn't have
an excuse. i think she's a very human character and.... AH. yeah, painful.

and finally okay lily. im not gonna say much because i've already rambled (zar
seriously has infected me guys wtf!!!!!!) but i did want to comment that the scene
where she's crying in the bathroom and her hair flames up and almost caresses her is
SOOOOO :'( to me. like the phoenix is comforting her. oh it makes me weep. anyway
that's that..... ;))

thank you so much for reading i hope you enjoyed <33333

(oh also. psst. if you have seen that the final chapter count is gone dooont even talk
about iiiitt shhhhhhhh..) (i really think it'll be 45 but im just not even gonna put one
until im certain lmfao)

FUCK I ALMOST FORGOT. THEYRE GETTING MARRIED!!!!!! THEYRE

ENGAGED!!!!! LIKE. WEIRDLY BUT THEYRE ENGAAAGEEDDDD
all i will say is. the wedding chapter is written. i love them soooo much stupid
impulsive fucks
 thirty three
Chapter Summary

FATHER OF MURDER

Chapter Notes

...hiiiiii <3

been a while, huh? how've you been? what're the updates? me personally wellll i
finished uni!!!! and watched succession!!!! i think those are probably the most
defining moments of the past few months of my life. how fun!! it's been rough but we
get throuuugh and now we're here, and i'm dropping nearly 28k of. um. insanity.

brief CW's:
- tiny little bit of absolutely depraved smut (the smut itself is not depraved but it's the
Circumstances of the smut... yeah you'll see)
- lot of blood and gore and fighting. soooo much blood. oodles of it

i honestly think thats it lmao, it's an insane wild ride of a chapter. i only edited it the
once because i have nowhere near enough energy to do this twice so if you see any
spelling mistakes feel free to let me know.

lots of love! i hope you enjoy

jude xxx

See the end of the chapter for more notes

By the time the door swung open again, Remus was entirely informed, up-to-date, and also…
squirmy.

The date today was August 4th and Sirius had, upon briefing everyone (everyone being Remus)
and getting everyone updated (everyone being Remus), announced that Pandora had left them an
emergency portkey home, and the date to return to Boardwalk had been set for August 6th, if
everyone was okay with that (everyone, once again, being Remus.)

And he was… well. He wasn’t okay with it.

The issue was that he couldn’t figure out why. There was nothing that was coming to the forefront
of his mind that was telling him why he should be affronted at the idea of leaving. If anything, he
should want to go home. Well—he did want to go home, he yearned for it. He wanted so badly to
see Mary, James, Marlene, and Regulus again. And he missed Astoria and Draco so much it ached.
He was sort of avoiding his mother and he was in a place he’d lost touch with alongside a best
friend he’d also lost touch with; a best friend who had died. The ghost of her at eighteen coming to
visit Remus over Summer and staying in this exact house lingered in every single room he walked
into, and it was reacting negatively with the ghost of her at twenty-eight. Dead on a ballroom floor.
Blood soaked into the marble.

Yes, he felt a lot of both himself and her coming back to him, slowly. He felt himself a little bit
more grounded; he’d noticed upon waking up that everything felt a lot closer today, so much so
that he kept literally bumping into things. But he still felt… a distance. There was a distance and it
tasted bitter because this house had not known either of them as the corruption they had hit at
nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. But Boardwalk had.

He should want to go home. Be with Dorcas in a place they’d both called home and get to know
who she was now better. Be with Sirius back in their room. Light the hopeful flame a little bit more
as they prepared for the first moon, on August 22nd, and the mission that might—might just save
his life. The life he desperately wanted to reclaim. He should want to do that.

But something was just… off. Something felt wrong about going home now.

Typically, Remus did not voice this at first.

He didn’t voice it because there was no reason for him to feel this way except his baser instincts.
And sometimes his mind lies to him.

Holding two souls and two consciousnesses within it has taught him that very, very well. But he
also knew that sometimes… sometimes his instincts are correct.

So, battling with this, his brain put him in this awkward position where he felt damned if he did
and damned if he didn’t. Without a pressing pull to make either decision he sufficed with
continuing through the motions of the day. Spoke four, five words to his mother, and spoke only
about double that to Dorcas, attempting desperately to get past the hurdle of “How are you?” /
“Good. Surviving.” and really not making it very far. Let himself exist in a space he had, over the
past week, removed himself from; daytime.

It was going to be a task, to relearn who he was in the light. It wasn’t like it was a one week
impact. It was two months of darkness. He had spent almost three weeks in consistent light in
Sweden, and yet he didn’t recognise himself when the sun fell upon him.

Regardless, he felt a bit better now, with a date and a time and a goal in mind. If he were braver
he’d say optimistic, but he is not, so he will say ‘better’. He had a plan. A list. It made him feel a
bit more human, having something to hook himself onto, something that going through the
motions of the day would lead to. Remus ran on end goals, always had.

This just wasn’t the end goal that he wanted.

So he felt squirmy. Wrong. Like he was waiting for the wrong bus. Getting on it knowing he was
getting on the wrong bus and riding the wrong bus and being dropped off at the wrong destination
and then, there and only there, as the wrong bus drove away, feeling a flare of irritation that he was
at the wrong destination. Shooting himself in the foot.

He tried to sleep these squirmy thoughts away but… apparently he was not successful.

“Remus,” murmured Sirius, that afternoon, from the other side of the bed. Because Sirius was
taking Dorcas out hunting every single night he had taken to sleeping a few hours during the day as
well, like a real vampire. “Why are you so squirmy.”

Remus, facing the other way, pulled the duvet up to his chin and sighed.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled. He felt Sirius roll over and had to prepare himself for a moment
before rolling over to face him, too.

His eyes were soft and sleepy. A mirror echo of the last time, and all the times before that.
Tennessee and other natural disasters.

“What’s wrong?” Sirius whispered.

“Well…” Remus started, biting down on his chapped bottom lip. He contemplated lying but
brushed it away rather quickly. The truth was always better with Sirius. “I feel weird about going
home.”

“You feel weird about going home.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Sirius stared at him.

“Well,” he said. “That’s helpful.”

“I genuinely—” Remus said, pressing his hands to his face. “I don’t know. I just feel—like it’s the
wrong decision.”

Sirius stared at him again, as if trying to plan his next words very carefully.

“Do you think it’s the wrong decision,” he said, very, very slowly, “or does someone else?”

Remus took a long moment to comprehend these words. And then his brows knitted together.

“He’s not controlling me,” said Remus, huffily. Sirius shook his head.

“That’s not what I mean—”

“Well it’s what you implied.”

“Remus.”

He knew exactly where this had come from. This had been a topic of conversation around the
warmth of the kitchen table, in which Remus got back into the game. And by ‘getting back into the
game’ he kicked it into start mode again. And by ‘kicking it into start mode’ he’d had to… try and
explain the connection he had with Riddle, of which Sirius knew lots, Lily knew some and Dorcas
knew basically none. He’d gone from the beginning.

It was weird. His connection to Tom. It was a weird thing to try to explain because it was not alike
to anything else.

He couldn’t compare it to anything as a point of reference because there was nothing in the world
that was anything similar to Remus holding a shard of Tom’s shattered soul within him. Nothing
alike to the way that they called to each other, the way that whenever his heart stopped, his soul
took him to his other half.

The way that, upon Riddle learning that Remus was a Horcrux, he’d reached out and found him
and his completely virginal, unprotected mind. Clocked where they were in Hampshire.
The way that after Mary had placed those barriers in his mind he’d still found a way to call to him.
Stopping his heart. Deprecating his senses. Making it so that all that Remus had left was… him.
Him to run back to. Him to call to. Him to join, to keep alive, by keeping himself alive.

He knew Remus, in a way, better than anybody on the planet knew Remus. And he also didn’t
know Remus’ name.

Remus thought—and he’d mentioned this to them—that surely, surely he’d know his name now,
after climbing into his mind and flicking through his entire life like a slideshow. But he also quite
thought that Tom Riddle is without particular want for anything outside of what can give him
strength. And Remus is not a person to him. Remus is an object that keeps him unbreakable. So he
needn’t know Remus’s name; he was nothing more than an unworthy bloodstain on his ballroom
shoes. Even after all of their showdowns Remus knew that he still felt that; especially after the last
one.

Riddle felt that he had the upper hand.

And maybe he did. And maybe it made him unbreakable, but it also made him sloppy. Riddle
could not find him and Remus could not find him back, but he woke every morning feeling the
cold from Tom’s travels, feeling the power fizzle in the back of his throat like popping candy. Just
briefly.

In that liminal state between sleep and wake, Remus could call to him, silently. Silence is the major
killer; he was getting sloppy, and Remus was getting drunk.

So, yes, okay. He could stumble his way through a maze and push and pull on aspects of Tom
Riddle’s psyche, somewhere in the cold heart of the world. Yes, okay, if his heart stopped Tom
could slither his way in there. Yes, alright, they had a connection that—that nobody could
understand. That Remus himself couldn’t understand. All he knew was that he was present within
Remus at all times, and yes, sure, from an outsider's perspective that was sort of worrying. And
yes, sure, if you say that you have a weird feeling and want to make a decision that goes against the
natural progression of the party’s mission forward, a decision that will directly oppose the part that
lies in your psyche, then yes, sure, it would make sense for Sirius to ask the question that he has
just asked. But Remus is irrational at the best of times. And it pissed him off. Fucking sue him.

“I didn’t want to tell you about it because I knew you’d be like this,” Remus said, whipping the
cover off of him and going to sit up.

“Tell me about what?”

“Tell you about—feeling him,” Remus said, sort of flailing his hands.

“Oh, don’t start with me,” Sirius muttered, sitting up and swinging his legs off the bed as well.
Remus huffed.

“I’m going to start with you.”

“Don’t.”

“I’m going t—”

“Stop,” Sirius was suddenly there, with a whoosh of momentum, kneeling in front of him. Slipping
his hands into Remus’ own. “Being tetchy about it. You’re pissing me off. Think rationally,
Remus. You have a connection with him and we have to take that into account when you start
saying you have random instincts that are telling you to not go home, and therefore not carry out
Pandora’s plan…”

He trailed off, blinking. Remus knew his thought process before Sirius even opened his mouth to
speak it.

“Unless that’s not it at all,” said Sirius, quietly. “And you… your choice—”

“No,” Remus said, sighing. “No.”

He slid himself down off the bed to kneel in front of Sirius so they were eye-to-eye and he didn’t
have a level on him. So he could say this to him intimately.

“I haven’t gone back on it,” he said softly. “I’m not trying to get out of the plan to separate me
from the Horcrux. I want to live. I do.”

Sirius took a deep breath in. His features were sort of sagged, though he softened into Remus’
touch as he cupped his cheeks.

“I promise,” Remus whispered.

“I don’t know if I trust your promises,” Sirius whispered back.

Silence lathered itself upon them as the words poisoned Remus. It felt like a genuine stab to the
heart.

“Oh,” Remus breathed, letting his hands drop. The connection severed and he felt cold all over, a
pang at the bottom of his stomach from where his heart had splattered as it fell.

“Remus—”

“Right,” he said, moving to get up.

“Remus, you don’t understand how scary it was,” said Sirius, quickly standing up after him as
Remus turned away. “How suicidal you were. It was fucking terrifying. And I don’t—know how in
touch you were with it all, but it was so… real. You were going to kill yourself. Heaven and—and
fucking hell couldn’t stand in your way.”

Remus nodded, still not facing him. It wasn’t as if he was disputing Sirius’ feelings; he wasn’t. He
just had blurry vision and didn’t want Sirius to see how much it had hurt. Weakness, or something.

“You can’t expect someone as fucking far gone as you were to just tell me in a haze of glory that
you want to live, and then—and then have me believe it instantly. Okay?” He licked his lips, and
then: “You weren’t okay and it scared me. It fucking still does.”

Sirius’ voice was soft. But it was rough with pent up emotion. Remus was blinking furiously,
feeling pathetic in his own right, because he had been there and he had done it. He had tried to
manipulate Sirius into not loving him anymore, for fuck’s sake. He couldn’t dispute that fear. He’d
fucking caused it, he’d acted the way he acted and he most definitely had no right to feel upset
about those words, yet he still was. Upset at himself, maybe. Or the world around them that pushed
them into this tiny little box of uncertainty and malice.

Another pause. Remus still didn’t say anything.

“I don’t want to fight with you so please don’t fight with me about this. I don’t want to fight about
this.”
“I’m not going to fight you about this,” Remus whispered, turning. He pressed his hands to his
forehead. “Jesus. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m not going to fight you about it.”

Sirius, tortured eyes, was grinding his back teeth. You couldn’t hear it, but you could always tell by
the way his jaw moved.

For a moment, they said nothing.

And then Remus reached out his arms, gently, and then faltered. “Can I—touch you?”

“Oh, you don’t have to ask,” Sirius whispered.

Remus wrapped his arms around him, had Sirius sink into his chest, nose to his neck, the underside
of his earlobe. He placed a hand on the back of his head and breathed, and breathed, and breathed
once more.

“I know,” he whispered. “I understand. It just hurt to hear, is all.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologise. You—it’s not your fault. It’s mine. I did this.”

“No, that’s not—” Sirius huffed, out of gentle frustration. He pulled back so they could look at
each other and sighed. After a moment he said, very carefully: “I don’t blame you for anything that
you did.”

“You should.”

“I don’t,” Sirius said, a bit more forcefully. “Sweetheart, come on. I don’t blame you for wanting
to die. After Dorcas.”

Remus blinked once, three times. Swallowed thickly.

“I,” his voice came out hoarse. He cleared his throat. “No, I. Well. I–”

Deep breath. Deep breath. Sirius was endlessly patient.

He started again. “After Dorcas, I just wanted to kill Riddle. You have to understand that I—I
couldn’t see anything else. I didn’t want to die. I just wanted him dead.”

Sirius inhaled.

“Okay, you didn’t want to die,” he said, quietly. “But did you want to live?”

Remus had no response to this. Sirius’ face was very controlled, but for a second—just a second—
gentle hurt flickered across his face. It was swallowed in an instant; or maybe it wasn’t, but it was
hidden, at least, because Sirius leaned forward and dug his head back into Remus’ neck.

“You should hate me for some of the things I said,” Remus said, holding him by the lower back.
His voice was thick. And the response was instantaneous.

“I do,” murmured Sirius. A vibration against his throat. “I do hate you.”

He reached up, restless, digging his fingers into Remus’ hair as if trying to collect as much of him
as he could.
“But,” Sirius whispered again, eventually. It was a conjunction to a sentence but it didn’t sound
like he’d cut himself off. It sounded like that was the entire reply. But.

Remus sighed, and held him closer.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “But.”

But.

Between their chests lay a lethal, destitute love. Monstrous.

But.

Remus pulled back, holding Sirius by the face and gripping just a little bit too hard. Nose to nose,
their mouths were an inch’s press away. They breathed the same air. The same fuckery.

And this is it. It hits him like a train, mangles him the same way. This is it, and this will always be
it. He and I and our monstrosity. ‘I hate you, but.’

“I am just so scared of losing you I don’t know what to do with myself,” Sirius mumbled. Picture
of vulnerability now they weren’t making eye contact. “I almost wish I still wanted to kill you
because at least back then you were mine to kill, and nobody else’s.”

Remus said nothing. Just breathed.

“And I don’t even have to breathe but you make me feel like I can’t,” Sirius whispered. He shifted,
and they staggered just a tiny little pace. Sirius placed a kiss to his lips and caught onto his bottom
lip as if to drag him down with him. “You make me feel like the world is ending and it’s
simultaneously the most enticing and the most terrifying thing I’ve ever felt.”

Remus swallowed. He said nothing. Just breathed. Sirius had to get it out or it was going to come
up in blood.

“I’ve felt more in eight years with you than I’ve felt in lifetimes,” he murmured, kissing him once
more. Wrapping his elbows around his head as if to absorb him into his chest. “So—so you can’t.
Okay? You just can’t. I tried so hard not to be selfish before but I couldn’t and I can’t and I won’t. I
know you meant everything that you said, and I know that I meant everything that I said. And you
should hate me for that, too, and I think you do.” A pause. “But.”

“But,” Remus whispered. Because he’s right. He’s always right, there’s always a but.

They are not good people. They might not be good for each other. But they are for each other.

“You have to stay,” said Sirius. “You have to.”

Remus exhaled, slowly, digging his hands up the back of Sirius’ shirt and resting them on the taut
skin of his back. He couldn’t think of a single thing to say, so he didn’t. He just dug his head into
his neck and they held onto each other.

It’s not dead. Their curse. The cold that engulfs them, it’s alive and it’s all around them. Darkness
underneath light. The echo of the slamming door of their last fight, their most brutal; of Sweden
and choices and scratching pens on paper in lists. Of blood and blame and empty threats and damn
right full ones, too.

Remus is just, unfortunately, too obsessed to care at the moment.

When he suffocates he does it with joy. He smells Sirius and he feels him and he chokes on him,
too. And for a second it’s like nothing else will ever matter. Just he and I and our monstrosity. How
cleanly you could cut it with a knife. How it would smile.

It might come back to bite them in the ass. But sometimes problems can be sidelined in the name
of gore and love and the thick inbetween.

It felt like gore, knowing the space between them was toxic and they were breathing in the fumes
peacefully; Remus had a thing for kissing the life out of Sirius and kissing the death out of him too,
a thing for making him feel good and knowing he’s the only one that can. I don’t even have to
breathe but you make me feel like I can’t. To another person that might have been an insult; to
Remus it was a fucking power trip.

Remus likes it when Sirius gets breathy in his arms.

But: “We can’t,” he whispered, pulling back from where he’d been biting at his neck, hands
roaming to places dirty and dark. He may be sick with obsession but he still had a little bit of
rationality left. Fucking doesn’t fix everything (but it sure as hell fixes a lot).

“Why?” Sirius whined, going after him. His hair was mussed. “Why? Why?”

“Just not right now,” Remus said, gently.

So Sirius exhaled, gripping his collar, and then nodded.

Eventually, after an indeterminate amount of time, he sat down, on the bed, Sirius to his side. Took
a deep breath in, a deep breath out.

“I still want to stay,” said Remus. “And I’m still unsure of why.”

“Maybe it is him.”

His sharp inhale did not go unnoticed.

“I know. Look, I know.” Sirius placed his hand over Remus’. “I know you hate the idea of him
having any sort of control. But let’s look at it this way. What about Hampshire?”

Remus frowned at him.

“What about Hampshire?”

“Well,” said Sirius, “your magic overrode Pandora’s, and you accidentally took us to the last place
Riddle’s magical signature had been. Yes?”

This being the general theory behind what had happened settled fine for Remus. He nodded.
“Yeah?”

“And then,” he said, slowly, “do you remember how determined you were to go to Harry? Not
anywhere else. It wasn’t even a wish. You needed to go there. That was your instinct.”

“Are you saying that this is a wolf thing?” Remus asked.

Sirius shrugged. “It could be. But I was more going for the vein of… sometimes Riddle controls
you but he doesn’t control you. I think sometimes, since Whittaker, you’ve have instincts and
senses and underlying power that pulls you to places that you need to be without telling you why
you need to be there. You get a taste and you have to drink the whole smoothie. Your soul is
constantly trying to be whole. You have to follow things through.”

There was a pause. He didn’t feel done. And, as it turns out, he wasn’t.

“There’s one last Horcrux,” said Sirius, slowly. “And then it’s just you, and the snake.”

Remus leaned back a little bit.

“You think that I’m being drawn to the Horcrux?”

“I think it’s a possibility. There’s not many of you left, now. And we’re not outside of the realm of
the pieces of Riddle’s soul calling to one another. He calls to you all the time and he has just as
much of his soul as his instruments do, maybe even less. The only difference is that he’s sentient.”

“The snake is sentient,” Remus mumbled.

Sirius leaned forward. Nudged him with his shoulder.

“So are you,” he said.

They looked at each other. Remus’ eyebrows raised.

***

“How do you know that she won’t immediately go and tell her master when you call out to her?”
Lily asked, arms crossed.

Remus took a deep breath in.

“I don’t,” he said. “But even if it does, it’s not going to impact much. He can’t find me here—we
know that—and he already knows I’m looking for Horcruxes and that I can get into his head. And
he can get into the snake’s head, he told me himself. So it makes sense I would be able to, too.”

“Okay,” she said, brows furrowing.

A pause.

“How do you know for sure that he won’t be able to find you?”

“I just,” Remus said, “do. I can feel the blockade.”

It was true. He could. God knows that he wouldn’t be doing this at his mother’s house if he didn’t
know that Mary’s magic was secure; if he couldn’t feel the distance between them, like a long
distance phone call from a number with a VPN.

Lily still didn’t look convinced.

“How do you know that the snake will even know anything about the last one?”

“I don’t.”

“How do you know you can even find the snake?”

“I don’t.”

“You seem to not know a lot of things about this, Remus.”

“We don’t know anything, Lily,” he said. “Ever. But I just—I feel—I can feel something. And
when I feel something… it always turns out to be important.”

Lily sighed. But it was right. She knew it was.

“I know that there are enough blockades to stand in the way of putting me in danger, and there’s no
detrimental effect that this could have. He knows we’re hunting Horcruxes. He knows I can call to
them.”

“Does he?” she asked. “Do you know how to do it?”

Remus thinned his lips, very purposefully, and then:

“No,” he said.

He wasn’t, in fact, lying. And so, what ensued came on over the course of two days.

Two days of nothing, to be exact.

Nothing. Two days of absolutely bugger-fucking-all. He tried everything. He tried sleeping pills, he
tried tea, he tried meditation. He tried it all.

He knew there was a possibility that the fucking snake could have some sort of mental blockade
like Tom did, that there could be something preventing him from finding her, yes, but the feeling
he had to stay and to look and to wait and to find, find, find, fucking FIND was so strong he
couldn’t fathom that she didn’t feel the same way, if only even a little bit. It had made sense when
Sirius had verbalised it. It had to be a Horcrux thing. To find, find, find. Fucking find. He was the
found and he was putting himself on display and—nothing.

Fucking nothing.

He ended up, at one point, in his mum’s room. Out of desperation.

“I’m not going to pretend I know anything about what’s happening,” she said, gently, as he lay on
her bed and she sat up beside him.

Things weren’t just fine with them. They’d never just be fine, or at least, not for a long time. But
sometimes when you are a mother and a son you must get on with it. You simply must.

“But I definitely know a thing or two about getting you to sleep.”

Remus’ lip twitched.

“Really?”

“Didn’t sleep through the night ‘til you were two and a half. So yeah, really.”

Remus laughed. He couldn’t help it. Something about the reality of a life before all of this, of him
being a nightmare child filled him with something warm and fuzzy.

“Sorry.” And then: “What did you do? To put me to sleep.”

She sighed. Dropped her hand to run her fingers through her hair.

“I played you my favourite album,” she whispered, gently. Fingers tousling ruffling curls that they
had carved themselves.
Remus opened his eyes.

“What did you play?”

“Disintegration by The Cure,” she said, smiling. “Worked every time. Mind, you were also partial
to a bit of Duran Duran and Bon Jovi, but they were the most consistent.”

Remus found himself smiling. “That’s—” he said, before cutting himself off with an abrupt, soft
laugh.

“What?”

“Mm, nothing. Just keeps cropping up in all of the weirdest places recently.” He paused, and then
continued, “Dorcas loves that album, you know.”

Hope’s eyes glinted. “I know.”

She got up to hobble over to her little CD player, and Remus, staring up at the ceiling, listened to
the crackle opening and closing of jewel CD cases before, evidently, she found the right one, and
the opening notes of the album began.

He closed his eyes.

Nothing. Still nothing.

But drifting, with the music playing in the background, left him weirdly calm, and he had another
dream. He couldn’t remember it, as usual, but it left him restless and uneasy as he woke—beside
his mother, in her bed—and so he peeled himself out of bed at around 4am and hobbled downstairs,
feeling iffy and floaty and in desperate need of something to do with his hands.

Squirmy. Fuckin’ squirmy.

He was three bullshit lists down and halfway through a drawing when the door creaked open, and a
figure slid in.

“Hi,” Remus murmured, surprised, twirling the pen in his fingers like he would a dagger.

Dorcas paused for a moment, and then smiled.

“Hi,” she whispered.

She left him for a moment, and went into the kitchen. The room was filled, yet again, with the
sounds of a scratching pencil.

“What are you doing up?” she asked, walking back into the room with an opaque cup that she was
hungrily sipping from the straw. Remus looked up at her very briefly before looking down again.
He couldn’t get the ridge right and it was driving him mad.

“Weird dream.”

“You don’t usually dream.”

“I know, right?” he said, gruffly, looking up and, again, immediately back down.

In the armchair across from him, she sipped.

“...What was it about?”

“I, erm. I don’t really remember.”

Scratch, scratch, scratch. Sip, sip, sip. Neither of them spoke for a good few minutes.

“What are you doing?” Dorcas asked, eventually, placing her cup on the end table beside the
armchair. Remus glanced up, his pen ceasing.

“I—” he started.

And then:

“Come see,” he said, gently.

She was hesitant for a moment. He went back to scratching, and eventually she got up and glided
across the room, unbreathing. She sat down beside him; not too far, but not too close.

Tentatively, he showed her the drawing.

“It’s a tiara,” she said, cocking her head.

“Yeah,” he said. “It was in the cave, I think. I don’t know why I’ve been thinking about it
recently.”

Dorcas hummed. He continued to scratch on the page.

“Any reason why you’re drawing it?” she asked. “Is it important?” And then: “It’s a pretty good
drawing, actually. I’m impressed.”

He smiled. “Thank you. And—I don’t know. I just.” He breathed in. “Well, I woke up really
restless, and needed to do something with my hands. This was the only thing I could think of to
draw.”

“It looks like something a bride would wear at a wedding,” she commented.

Remus stopped, looking back at it. And then smiled.

“Well, it is blue,” he replied; “old, new, borrowed and blue, is it?”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. She shuffled a bit closer. “Where would the blue part?”

“Just here,” pointing with his pencil. “It was like a gem. And it had dangly crystals here,” pointing
again, “and two more gems,” again, “on either side.”

She hummed.

There was a gentle moment of silence.

“Do you remember my crown for my twenty-first?” she asked, looking at him. He turned around to
her amused face, and raised an eyebrow.

“No, but I do remember your veil.”

Dorcas laughed here, musically, and Remus found himself laughing alongside her.

“You wanted a tiara but we couldn’t find one in time,” he continued, “so Mary just straight-up
bought you a veil, right?”

“I wore it all day,” she said, grinning. “I swear I still have it. I think it’s somewhere in her house.”

“No it’s not,” he said, shaking his head. “She leant it to Jamie when she got married.”

“Jamie… Connolly?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“She got married?”

“Yeah.” Remus laughed. “Did you not know?”

“To who?”

Remus frowned, pursing his lips. “I don’t—someone Finnigan? Older hunter, way older than us.
Bit of a scandal actually. I was on office duty at the time, it was all everyone talked about in HI1
for, like, a month.” He stopped, and leant back to frown at her. “Where the fuck were you?”

“Where the fuck was I?” she asked, bewildered.

A pause.

“Was it the werewolf in Dunbar?”

“No, definitely not.”

“... The coven in Maine? That was a long case.”

“No, can’t have been.”

“Why not?”

“I was on that case with Jamie’s cousin.”

Remus smacked his lips. “Well, that makes sense. What about the Boston Siren case?”

A moment of silence.

“Remus, you were on that case with me.”

“Oh—” he choked, and then he went pffft very aggressively and burst into silent, breathy laughter,
leaning forward onto his notebook. Dorcas chuckled beside him, shuffling closer, pulling her shawl
tighter around her body as she laughed.

“No, no, I have it,” he said, snapping his fingers and turning to her; except, since she’d moved she
was much closer than he thought and he almost skimmed her nose with his fingernail.

Dorcas blinked. “Get your fingers out of my face?”

“It was the Kappa with Benjy,” he said, nodding. “I’m sure of it.”

“And your fingers are still in my face why?”

“It was—” he huffed, swiping back at her playfully as she smacked his hand away. She grinned. “It
was the Kappa. I know it.”
She frowned. Leaning back and crossing her arms, she seemed to zone out to think about it, and
then she sighed.

“Yeah, I think you’re right, actually,” she said. And then: “I didn’t even get invited. What a cunt.”

“Oh, neither did I, nor Mary,” Remus remarked, going back to his page with a smile on his face.
“And she wore your fucking veil.”

“The audacity.”

“That’s all hunters have,” Remus muttered, scribbling in the corners of the tiara.

“You would know.”

“Hey,” he said, warningly, but he was laughing.

He heard her exhale, still jovial, and then he heard her sigh. They fell into a silence that was alike
to the last few, but incredibly more comfortable, as Remus finished what he could be bothered to
do of this stupid drawing and put his pencil and the notebook down beside him. He shook out his
hands, still feeling stupidly uneasy, and Dorcas looked him up and down, biting on the bottom of
her lip.

“Snake-calling going well?”

Remus tutted. “Not at all. I’m starting to think that she has some sort of mental blockade up like
Tom does because I can’t—I don’t even know. I might just be doing it all wrong, to be fair. It was
probably a stupid idea.”

“I don’t think it’s a stupid idea at all.”

“I just feel like I need to do something, but I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to be a
Horcrux. Nobody ever taught me how.”

Dorcas hummed. This sat with them for a minute.

“Why do you call him Tom?” she asked, gently.

He turned to her.

“I—um.” Pause. “I don’t know. He’s just too familiar to me to call him Riddle. Feels too estranged.
When he’s… not.”

She hummed again.

“So you have that familiarity with him?”

“Mm. Yeah. I would… suppose.”

“What if what you need is a familiarity with the snake?”

He squinted at her.

“...What are you getting at, Meadowes?

She licked her lips, evidently contemplating something. And then she got up so quickly it startled
him.
“Wait here,” she said, and then she left the room swiftly. “Wait!”

He waited.

When she returned, she had something that glinted in the moonlight in her hand. It took Remus
entirely too long to figure out that she was holding her basilisk blade. The very last basilisk blade.

She sat down and picked up his notebook, flipping it to a different page. He, eyes fixated on the
blade, inhaled sharply.

“Dorcas, what–”

“Okay,” she said, swivelling her body so they were facing each other, empty page in her lap,
“listen. You are going to freak the fuck out when I do this, but I really need you—well, not to. Can
you do that?”

Remus looked from her, to the blade, back up to her.

“I really really really don’t like where this is going.”

“Please,” she said, quickly. “Please don’t freak out.”

“Dorcas–”

“Don’t freak out,” she said, “don’t freak out, don’t freak out, don’t freak–”

She pressed the blade to the palm of her hand and slowly wrapped more force around it until it
broke skin.

“–out,” she said, as Remus stared, horrified.

He felt like he was going to throw up. He was everywhere, fixated on that wound, moonlight
bleeding through the curtains as she glided the knife up through her palm and out.

His breathing quickened.

“Hey,” she hissed, holding her palm up in front of him. “Hey. I told you not to do that.”

“Wh—what?” he asked, blinking back into existence and looking at what was being shoved into
his face; a clean, healed palm.

The page below her was covered in blood laced with black venom, like two watercolours had been
mixed, but thicker.

“I’m fine,” Dorcas said, smiling. “Totally okay. No harm done.”

Remus blinked. Trying to slow his heart.

“But that’s—”

“I know,” she said.

“And you—”

“I know.”

It took a moment for it to settle, but when it did, his eyes cleared.
“You’re immune.”

She licked her lips, and shrugged.

“Perks of being turned by a vampilisk, I suppose,” she said, wryly. If anything snapped Remus out
of his panic it was that.

“God, please don’t make that name a thing. Don’t give James the satisfaction.”

She laughed, and it was harmony. And then she—very, very carefully—placed the notebook with
the staining blood on his lap.

He looked down at it.

“Okay,” he said. “Now… what was the point of this?”

“I think,” she said, with her signature confident hunter-hypothesis voice, “that you need a tether.
You told me about the snake. About what she looked like, how she acted. Burmese python or not,
she’s definitely not a normal snake. So I’m thinking, right, that she’s some sort of descendant of the
Basilisk.”

Remus looked down to the pool of blood, swirling with black threads of darkness.

“So the venom,” she said. “And then…”

“Your blood,” he murmured.

“Her master was the one that killed me,” she said, quietly. “Personally. I don’t know, maybe it’s a
shot in the dark. But there’s no—you have no material connection to this snake. You can’t get
through to something without at least having something that they find familiar. It’s basic witch
theory. And I know you’re not a witch but maybe… maybe this will still help.”

Remus looked down at the blood. Bit down on his bottom lip very fiercely. The venom was only
harmful when ingested, so it should be fine if it’s just on his skin. But he was still wary. He
probably always would be.

But it made sense. He did have no connection to the snake—besides their, obviously, shared
interest and the shared soul fragment inside of them, he didn’t know her at all. Usually, when
performing locator spells, witches need something that has a history with the person you’re trying
to find. Surely this would be no different. Magic is magic is magic.

He took a deep breath and, pressing his index and middle finger together on both hands, dipped
them into the blood. Swirled them around in circles until it coated the tips of the four fingers
touching it. The blood stained the paper, dry on wet. The venom made his skin tingle. He picked
up his hands, looking at them, blood-stained at the tips.

“This is insane,” Remus breathed, expressing a thought that had been on the tip of his tongue for
the past two days. “This is insane, isn’t it? This entire thing?”

“Yes,” said Dorcas. “And also no.”

Remus looked at her.

“No?”

“We trust you, Remus. We weren’t going home the minute you said you weren’t 100% for it.”
Here, she smiled. “You’re the better hunter. I’d follow you to the ends of the earth, you know
that.”

Dorcas slowly reached down and dipped her thumbs in her own blood, smeared Remus’ wrists with
it. Feeling her touch, he let out a noise that was something in between a laugh and a sob.

“Fuck. I missed you so much,” he whispered. She smiled, with tears in her eyes.

“Go on,” she said. “Go find her. That’s—” gesturing to his wrists “—usually how Mary does it. If
a bit messy. Sorry, it’s dripping.”

“I’m obviously the better artist,” he murmured. Dorcas flat-out laughed.

“Go,” she said. “Do your meditation-dissociation thing. You got this. I’ll be here when you come
back, I promise.”

With this, Remus circles his fingers against the paper once more. And then he closed his eyes.

***

He couldn’t tell you how long he sat there, with his fingers in Dorcas’ blood. But Remus was no
stranger to losing time, so the windows of daylight in front of him when he opened his eyes did not
take him off guard.

What did take him off guard was the view. Or, the lack of.

He turned around. He was standing up. He was standing up, in a corridor. He was standing in a
very bland corridor, in front of a very bland window. And the entirety of the outside was white.
Just—pure white.

He took a deep breath in. Okay.

He’d gotten somewhat used to this, this materialising in new places, by now. Of course, most of the
time he was at Whittaker, or a place he’d been before, so he’d sort of got his bearings. Here he was
untethered. But determined. His determination was a rabid dog and he was ready, walking slowly,
down what seemed like a never ending corridor. Searching. Searching, searching, searching.

He walked for perhaps two minutes, and then came to a door. Opened it with his blood-stained
hands and walked through to an identical corridor.

Well.

He walked for another minute, and another door. Same thing. Walked. Another door. Same thing.

This went on for maybe 5 minutes.

But eventually the doors began coming quicker—the corridors began to get shorter—whichever it
was. The last time he opened one of the doors to the same corridor the next door was only about
four strides away. This one was different; he clocked it immediately. Clocked the blood stain on
the doorknob from five feet away.

He took a deep breath, and then went for it. Without hesitation.

Opening the door, he walked right into the landing at the top of the stairs at Malfoy Manor.

Turning, he found himself in the middle of the room; the door had entirely disappeared behind him.
He looked around, disoriented. The room was clean. Pristine. Just as he remembered it; all gold-
plated windows, black curtains. The paintings on the ceilings. The flourishes of the cornerpieces.
The sanctuary-like eye window, and the divans, not an inch out of place.

This was the precise moment that it hit him.

They had met before.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, he’d met her. The snake. The snake.

He’d met her all those months ago, before… everything. Before he knew how many Horcruxes
there were. Before he’d met Draco. Before he’d even met Regulus. In the before, at Malfoy Manor,
he’d fucking met her, and held out his blade to her, and she had cowered.

The basilisk blade. She’d cowered at the basilisk blade.

Of course. Of course.

His breath quickened with this revelation, and it… well, upon remembering, he knew exactly
where to go. He bypassed the entire room and the first door he’d entered all that time ago in favour
of the second, the room with the desk, sofa, all of the paperwork and all of the apothecary-like
potions in the glass cabinet. The burning Fiendfyre. It was all exactly as it was—exactly as it was,
nothing different. All of it, including the clothes Remus was now wearing, the weaponry he was
holding.

And the snake curled up in the corner.

She didn’t pounce this time. She simply rustled her way out of the coil she’d been in, and slowly,
ever so slowly slithered her way towards him. Remus, in the dim lighting of the room, probably
wouldn’t have even been able to see her had he not already known she’d be there.

She paused in front of him.

It was here that he realised that he was holding a basilisk blade.

It was not Dorcas’. It was not the one that she had just cut herself with, because that was back
there, and this was here. This was a memory, and he was frozen in stasis. This was his basilisk
blade. The very first one, one of five in existence. His own. Untainted, undamaged.

He lowered his hand.

Making eye contact with her, she hissed, hovering in the air in a sort of… liminal position. Remus,
slowly, so as not to spook her, knelt down onto one knee, and reached his hand out. Placed the
blade gently on the floor equally in between the two of them. Lowered the threat and dropped his
defences.

The clatter of the hilt against the laminate floor reverberated throughout the room.

And then the snake moved closer to him. Slithered up to him, so that her face was directly in front
of his. She moved like water; her twelve-foot body followed her as she surveyed him, head
bobbing as she moved. Circling him, until her body met up with itself and he was trapped within
the confines of her circle. But it didn’t entirely feel threatening. Weirdly enough, Remus felt calm.
Not unsettled in the slightest.

There was a small pinprick of fear though. There always would be. And she could smell it; she
could feel it, through the way he was still, the way his shallow breath was shuddering as he inhaled
and exhaled in rhythm.

When she got back around to his front, she stopped. Looked at him.

Remus tilted his chin up.

“You know why I’m here,” he murmured. She did not react to this, staying still. Observing. Up,
and down. “Where is the other one of us?”

She did not move.

For a long moment, it was just two of the same, staring at each other.

“It’s calling to me,” he said. “Can you hear it too?”

She did not move.

For a long moment, it was just two of the same, staring at each other once more.

And then, slowly, the snake’s head raised. Up, and down. Nodding.

“I knew you could,” he whispered, “where is it? What is it?”

She hissed, pulling her body back towards herself. The end of her grazed against Remus’ ankle as
he looked her dead in the eyes. He was still down on one knee.

“Tell me,” he said, “please.”

She turned, all of a sudden, slithering away. Remus felt the need to go after her but couldn’t bring
himself to move from this position. Regardless, she didn’t go far; she disappeared briefly behind
the desk, but appeared quickly in turn, messing up all of the papers as she went. She circled again,
and the paper went flying; an odd gust of wind appeared out of nowhere and sent all of them to the
floor, all of them in front of Remus.

He leaned forward and scrambled to pick them up, make sense of what was written on them, but
everything was blank. They definitely hadn’t been in the original Manor, but in this memory,
everything was blank. He’d never gotten to see what was on them so it was all simply blank, lined
paper. He scrunched it up in frustration and looked at her; she was curled up in front of him again,
staring.

“What does this mean?” he asked.

She did not move. They just stared at each other.

“What does it mean,” he said, “why this? What are you trying to tell me?”

She moved, all of a sudden; slicing through the paper like a darting wraith, towards him so quickly
that he flinched and fell backwards, on his backside. And they were hunter and snake. Just like
they were at Malfoy Manor all that time ago. He was on one knee no longer.

She got up in his face, slithering up to him. He held his breath, heart thumping, as she surveyed
him again; as she hissed at him, but not of malice. As she grazed her body along his leg, getting as
close to him as she could. Two sides of the same coin. Two souls of the same body.

She knocked her mouth against his temple. Once, twice. So gently.
And then she leant back. Retreated, not far, but just enough to look at him. To bob her head, as if
saying, take this. As if telling him something that he didn’t know. But he couldn’t decipher it.

He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, she pulled away. Terrifyingly quickly she
shrank back, turning and curling herself up in the corner of the room, like she had been when he
entered. She hardened into the background.

The world unravelled. Slowly, surely, as it had always been: it was just him, his mind, and the
piece of paper scrunched in his hand.

***

“Remus. Remus.”

He gasped as he opened his eyes, and the notebook fell to the floor.

It was light outside. Bright light.

“Oh, shit,” Dorcas stammered, flinching back as he gasped and clung to the arm of the sofa. The
blood on the page and the blood on his wrist was dried. His heart was hammering, and he closed
his eyes to try to get it to regulate.

“What happened?” he asked, hoarsely.

Dorcas frowned, brow knitted in the middle. She swallowed, and winced as she did; it looked like it
pained her. It took Remus a minute to realise that she was breathing very intermittently.

“You were gone,” she said, “for a… really long time. And then—your fingers twitched. And then
you started speaking, maybe ten minutes ago?”

Remus blinked furiously.

“You were talking to her. You asked her where—what it is. Asked if it was calling to her too, and
said—”

“You heard it all?” he asked.

“Only what you said,” she replied, instantly, and then: “What happened?”

Dorcas opened her mouth to speak again, but Remus’ ears began to ring.

“–it sounded like—like she was going for you, your breath was… and then you said…… and
the…”

Her voice faded into the background.

Remus’ eyes unfocused, and he frowned, looking down to where he was sitting. Feeling an odd
weight that wasn’t there before.

Squeezing his fist, something pressed into the callused skin of his palm. He hissed in pain and
spread it open, suddenly, like a button had been pressed; there, in the middle of his palm, was a
small, curved, pointy tooth.

He raised his hand.

“Is that… hers?” Dorcas whispered. Remus couldn’t stop staring at it.
“I think so,” he replied.

“Why?”

Remus rolled the tooth down to his fingers, pinched it in his thumb and index. It was rough, jagged
in some places and smooth in others. Holding it up, it glinted against the rising sun.

“I don’t know,” Remus said. He dropped it back into his palm. Clutched it so hard it was almost as
if he was trying to break skin.

Faintly, ever so faintly, felt the pulse of her beating heart.

***

The date was set for tomorrow. Remus was irritated, but he couldn’t put it off any longer. He’d
already postponed it a day past their original intended date to go home and he’d not gotten
anywhere tangible. He had nothing to fight for now.

The entire house feel eerie, in the space inbetween. What they were in between, Remus didn’t
know; perhaps it wasn’t as big of a deal as he felt. Perhaps the others weren’t in between at all, it
was just him. God knows he’d been for a while.

It was approaching the end of the day, after the entire debacle of the vision in the very early hours
of today’s morning, and they’d… well, they’d talked. He could not dispute that they had talked.
They’d talked, and they’d talked, and they’d talked; he’d told them the vision time after time, and
all they’d gotten was… well, Remus had called out to the snake, and she’d let him in, and he had
left with one of her teeth.

Remus’ head was all jumbled. What the tooth meant, he didn’t know, but he also didn’t want to be
without it. It was in his pocket right now. He was going to turn it into a necklace. Something about
it felt intimate, like he needed to keep it close. Though he was going to have to relinquish it, even if
it was just for Mary to run a magic detection test on it. Sirius had raised the question of it being
cursed, but Remus didn’t think so. He’d know. He was certain that he’d know.

The mystery of the tooth, of the vision and the magic discrepancies that ghouled around them
hidden from the adjacent hot summer made Remus think about Pandora.

He hated thinking about her. He’d been trying not to. So hard. He couldn’t— bear it, really, to
think of her, for the overwhelming guilt that came alongside it was just too much. She’d been a
sister, a fighter. A friend. She’d spent so much fucking time trying to save his life.

So much of her life had she dedicated to doing what she could when she could. So much time
trying to figure things out.

But had she known? How loved she was outside of that? Had she felt it? Had Remus showed it to
her enough?

He genuinely couldn’t even touch the idea that he had potentially treated her like—like a fucking
commodity, or a prizemaker, or… the person who had to save his life. He felt so much regret in his
so deeply feeble form he felt like it would collapse him from the inside out if he let it touch him in
its entirety. He’d been certain that things would’ve been different very soon. Certain that she’d get
to run away and not have to hold them all up forever. He supposed that he’d thought they’d all have
more time.

Naively, he thought they’d all have more time after he’d gone. He was convinced that Pandora
would outlive him, so this reality he was living—it didn’t make sense.

He hadn’t planned for this. He hadn’t planned for any of this. He hadn’t planned to live this long.
It didn’t make fucking sense

And maybe it was selfish. Maybe it was selfish that he hadn’t planned to grieve. Not after Dorcas,
no less. To be quite honest, he had no idea how to feel about the way he’d acted, the way he’d felt.
The haze he’d been in, so wrecked, so… gone… he was compartmentalising everything and this
was no different. Pandora was in a box in his sky that he couldn’t deal with until he knew how to
deal with himself. And he had no idea how to do that. He had no idea how to handle his own
weight.

Lost, guilty, bitter. Over everything Remus was just fucking sad.

See, Pandora deserved his sadness. She did not deserve his rage. She did not deserve the
selfishness of him feeling affronted at having to grieve her. She did not deserve him living on to be
something wretched, walking in her name. And if the plan… if her plan worked, he would be
happy. That’s the worst thing. He’d feel happy that he could live, but how could he live happily
when she was dead?

He’d done it all wrong. He’d done it all so, so wrong. He’d spent his last months with her so
enraptured in his own rage and she’d spent all of her time focused on him and then she’d fucking
died and he couldn’t—how was he supposed to deal with that? How was he supposed to deal with
how he’d treated her, whether inadvertently or not? How was he supposed to deal with how he’d
treated everyone?

How was he supposed to deal with walking in her name? He couldn’t. He couldn’t deal with it.
This was the conclusion he’d come to. The whole entire truth was, to be able to function, to be able
to even exist, he couldn’t deal with it.

So, he didn’t. He focused on his end goal and shoved it to the side. He put Pandora in a box and he
tucked her away nicely and gently and he left her alone.

He took deep breaths. Letting the slate wash clean. He blinked, and found himself staring at the
cream ceiling; lying in his bed, duvet strewn lazily over his lower half.

Sirius was holding his hand.

Oh, how a wash of warmth and safety rushed over him, like a fucking waterfall. It was the first
sensation of feeling he encountered upon blinking out of his thought; it was perpetually the most
important one. He took a sharp breath in and turned to the side, and found Sirius looking at him,
lying on his side. Their joint hands were lying lazily on the pillow in between them.

“Hi,” Sirius whispered. The curtains were half-drawn and the sun was setting, so the light was
dimming, a glorious glow of orange and red lain over the curvature of his nose. “You were miles
away, there.”

Remus licked his lips. “I was thinking about Pandora.”

Sirius did not reply. He blinked, and adjusted his hold on Remus’ hand. He let the point of contact
burn him into the mattress happily.

“Do you think,” Remus started, voice thick and unstable, “she knew? That we loved her? Do you
think she knew?”
“She knew,” Sirius whispered. “She knew, Remus.”

A tear slipped out of his eye. Remus looked back up to the ceiling.

“Shall we sleep?” Sirius offered.

“I think so,” Remus whispered. “But first can you—can you just kiss me?”

Kiss me back to life, he thought. Kiss me until I can’t breathe and it burns enough to remind me
that I’m living.

Kiss me until I’m yours and I don’t have to be anything else.

Kiss me slowly. Kiss me viciously.

Sirius kissed him. It was neither of those things.

It was gentle. It was tender. In his obsessive haze, Remus let himself fall into it, into him; let
himself lose it all in the feeling of Sirius’ nails pressing into his knuckles and, eventually, his hand
cupping his pelvis bone, the ridge of his hip. He closed his eyes and felt the grit, felt it brush into
his skin like abrasions on his palms, where he cupped Sirius’ razor jawline. He kissed him and he
kissed him and he kissed him.

When Remus let up for breath they were gasping into each other’s mouths.

“This?” Sirius breathed. Legs intertwined. The tears on Remus’ face were dry.

“More.” He opened his mouth, and their tongues were pressed against each other. “More.”

“I don’t—” Sirius cut off, kissing him, “I don’t want to do this just because you’re upset.”

“We’re not doing this because I’m upset,” Remus huffed, gripping his face, fingernails threatening
to draw blood at his hairline. “We’re doing this because we want to do this.”

Sirius pressed the flat of his palm all over him, his sternum and ribs, the pudge of his tummy,
around to the soft skin of his back; he dug his hands in like the way fingers touch silk in those
marble sculptures. He was something art-like. A temple. Wretched and still standing. Touched and
whimpering his lover’s name.

Sirius breathed his in turn, as Remus gripped him by the throat, cupped the underside of his jawline
and pushed it up so hard Sirius’ neck clicked. He kissed down the line of his throat and then
brought himself back up, just wanting to look at him. Wanting to have him up there with him.

“I can’t wait to marry you,” Remus murmured, huffing against the rhythm they were moving in.
“Oh, I can’t wait to marry you.”

“You can’t?”

“I can’t,” he whispered. “You’re going to look so…”

“So?”

“Incredible. I know you. You’re not going to hold back.”

Sirius laughed, dryly.

“Full dress clothes,” he said, grinning against him. “Fuckin—royal jewellery. I’ve been waiting
eight hundred years on this, baby, I’m not holding back.”

“Pumpkin garden isn’t an option, then?” Remus pouted, exaggeratedly. “I thought you’d marry me
anywhere?”

“Hey? Don’t fucking set me up like that?”

Remus laughed. He leant back to cup his smiling face, smoothing his hair against his body. They
were still up above, legs intertwined. Getting off on each other’s closeness. Remus could feel him
hard against his leg; he shifted and Sirius inhaled, sharply, and closed his eyes. Remus kissed his
jaw.

“You’d look gorgeous in a suit,” he murmured, imagining it. “Or a dress.” Imagining it.

“I’d like to wear a dress,” Sirius whispered. “They’re roomy. And pretty.”

“Mmmhm.” Remus kissed further down his jaw, behind his ear. Suckled.

“Hope was showing me hers the other day. It’s in her closet, have you seen?”

“No, I haven’t,” Remus murmured.

“It’s gorgeous,” Sirius breathed, running his nails ever so lightly down the back of Remus’ neck.

“You’re gorgeous.”

“Smooth.”

“You’d look gorgeous,” Remus whispered, “oh—” his hands moved down to cup Sirius’ hips. His
pelvis. Imagining it. “That’s—that’s fucking. Oh. Ah.”

“What? You imagining me in a wedding dress?”

“Fucking obscene,” Remus whispered, laughing as Sirius did. He kissed him again, saying between
breaths: “You—you, with a bouquet…” imagining it, “a necklace I could rip off at the end of the
night…” imagining it, “a tiara to hold back your hair so I can kiss…”

Imagining it.

He stopped, leaning back. Biting down on his lip, he tucked Sirius’ hair behind his ears. Looked at
his hairline. The deep, dark black hair. The silk of the strands, the way it fell. Thought about him in
a crown. In a tiara.

Pulling his head back again, as far as it could go, he blinked. Cocked it to the side. Sirius whined in
frustration at the sudden lack of movement, but seemed to pick up on something being wrong
pretty quickly; when clarity came, he raised his eyebrows.

“What?” he whispered, but Remus shushed him. Imagining it.

Not only imagining Sirius in a tiara. Imagining Sirius in the tiara. He had seen this before.

He’d seen it before. He’d seen Sirius in this diadem. Except he hadn’t. He hadn’t seen Sirius in this
diadem, because Sirius had never worn it. Because he’d seen it in the cave amongst the wonders
and he’d been thinking about it recently and he didn’t know why and he’d been thinking about
Sirius in it for their wedding but here, lying in the dim, Black lighting and actually having it
presented in front of him… he got such a strong sense of deja-vu he felt dizzy.

He felt… oh.

Oh.

Because he’d seen this before.

He’d seen this before. This face. This hair. That diadem.

He’d seen this before. The darkness. The jawline. The way it worked as he grinded it.

A family quirk. A hereditary face. Long, black hair, and evil, evil eyes.

He had seen this before, in a flash. In the blink of an eye. In a memory.

In London, when his heart stopped; when Tom was excavating his subconscious. The world had
crackled, like the static of a radio, when he and Sirius were dancing; warped; he’d screamed, GET
OUT, and he’d seen this.

But it wasn’t Sirius.

It wasn’t… Sirius.

“Oh,” he gasped, breathing quickening, feeling nauseous. “Oh my God.”

“What?” Sirius asked. His voice was still hoarse. His lips were kissed red raw.

And Remus was thinking about his—

“Oh my God,” he moaned, almost flailing as he jumped out of the bed, flipping the duvet over. His
feet hit the floor and he stumbled, pacing around to the end of the bed. Head in his hands, Remus
blinked at the floor, trying to process. Breathing, and breathing, and—

Oh, shit.

“What?” Sirius asked, pushing himself to sit up against the headboard, now. “What, Remus?”

“Fuck. Fuck. Oh my God.”

“You’re scaring me,” Sirius said, breathless. “Remus. Remus.”

Remus turned.

“Your mother,” he murmured. Not even looking at Sirius. Eyes unfocused on a point on the wall.
“It’s buried with your mother.”

Sirius frowned. “What?”

“Oh my God,” he muttered. “Oh fuck, that’s what Nagini was trying to tell me. She was trying to
tell me that I already knew.”

“Remus.”

“Oh—I never saw it in the cave—I saw it in his fucking memories.” Remus turned, pacing. He
couldn’t breathe. “My brain just told me that to try and make it make sense. Oh my fucking God.
How could I be so—”
“Remus!” Sirius boomed. It was so forceful it got him to stop and turn. Sirius was now kneeling
on the bed, just about eye level with him. He shook his head, and, with only a tinge of hysteria:
“What the fuck is happening right now?!”

“I know where the Horcrux is,” said Remus, “and what it is, and I’ve known for days now, and the
snake was trying to tell me. When Tom got into my head after Peter he showed me all of my
memories and when I resisted I got a glimpse of his and I saw it.” He stopped to take a breath. His
throat was dry when he finished: “Sirius, it’s your mother. It’s a diadem and it’s buried with your
mother.”

Sirius opened his mouth. Closed it. Swallowed, blinking furiously. Trying to process this
information.

“Oh God,” he murmured.

“I know.”

“Oh, God,” Sirius repeated, and when Remus looked up at him he realised that instead of being
shocked he just looked… deeply disgusted. “You were thinking of her when we were—doing
that?!”

“I—” Remus started.

And then he…

“Ew,” Sirius was murmuring, face scrunched up, getting up and shaking his hands out, “ew, ew,
ew, ew—”

“Sirius.”

“Eugh, oh God, I don’t think I’ve ever had an erection die so quickly,” he hissed, turning to Remus
and shrieking, “my mother?! As if killing her wasn’t enough?”

Remus gaped. “I didn’t mean to—”

“You—” he shuddered, full-bodily. “Oh, I feel dirty.”

“It’s not my fault you look just like her!”

Sirius winced at this, covering his hands with his face. “Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it.”

“Sirius.”

“Jesus fuck. I can’t believe this woman continues to ruin my life from beyond the grave.”

“Hey,” said Remus, assertively. He walked up to him and grabbed his arms, brought them away
from his face. “Sirius. You’re not listening to me.”

Sirius exhaled, sharply, looking into his eyes.

“Listen to what I’m telling you,” he whispered. “The last one. It’s buried. With your mother.”

Quiet. He calmed. Letting his face soften in realisation.

“Sirius Black,” Remus said, eventually, lips curling up. His arm trailed down to grip onto Sirius’
limp hand, swing it a little bit. “Would you do me the absolute honour of coming with me to
desecrate, destroy, and thieve from your mother’s grave?”

Sirius blinked.

“Shit,” he said, breathlessly. “My erection is back.”

A bout of laughter overtook them: they couldn’t help it. Sirius grinned, and Remus grinned back,
and then he exhaled sharply, let it all settle within him. Latched himself onto the new end goal.

There was a path. All he had to do was take the first step.

“Right,” he said, clearing his throat. He took one more breath in and then started around the room,
fishing for a duffle bag to throw all of the shit he could find in. “Right, okay.”

Sirius turned as he did. “Wait, we’re—we’re going now?”

“Yes.”

“Right now?”

Remus turned to look at him. “Yes.”

“Without—without planning, or even thinking anything through?”

“Yes.”

Sirius stared at him for a moment. And then he shrugged.

“Okay,” he said, breathless yet again.

They grinned at each other like giddy schoolchildren, high on adrenaline. And then they packed.

***

Remus hadn’t even thought about the girls until they were literally about to leave; it was Sirius
who reminded him.

They very well could have gone without them, in all honesty, if only based on the amount of
adrenaline and stupidity clouding their rational thought. But there was only one portkey home. If
they were going to do this, it would be a case of going, getting it done, and dipping, and… well, to
get all four people home all four people kind of have to be present when you leave, and Remus had
no doubt in his mind that, even if this expedition appeared to be slightly easier than the rest (no
horrifying Pureblood ball to attend, and no underground system of life-threatening challenges to go
through), there would still be stakes, and there would still be a threat of vampires apparating in or,
worse, Riddle himself, when the Horcrux was moved from its resting place and they were
inevitably alerted.

But Remus was feeling oddly optimistic about the whole thing.

The diadem was buried with Walburga Black. Sirius had been quite certain that they’d have found
some way to rebuild her body after it had been burnt to ash (if anyone was going to have witches
who could pull that off, it would be the Blacks, especially for someone as old and important as
Walburga) and so it would probably be on her head. In her tomb. Her tomb was located, according
to Sirius, near the site of her death. He said it was cloaked but that they could figure that out when
they get there.
It couldn’t have been there for very long, Remus thought, because that memory in Riddle’s head
felt very fresh. And the snake knew where it was, which led Remus to presume that the snake was
there when the diadem was planted. If Tom took the snake with him when planting the diadem…
well, for one, he didn’t used to take her anywhere. That piqued Remus’ interest.

Following the thread: she was not present at Whittaker. Tom had intended for a battle. She was
hidden away at Malfoy Manor without her master: Remus had only the lead to believe it had been
deemed a place she would be safe. So Tom used to leave her where she was safe, and nowadays he
took her everywhere. If her safe place, now, is by her master’s side perpetually, even while
planting a Horcrux, then he must be scared. And it must be recent. He’d moved it.

Tom wasn’t scared of Remus after Whittaker. Didn’t even care about him. Peter had told him
Dorcas had been the one to worry about, so he had killed Dorcas, broken Remus in two and
revelled in killing two birds with one stone. It was only in the wake of his grief, weeks later, when
they called and they called and Remus fought and he fought that Tom must have realised the grave
mistake he’d made. At least, Remus hoped he realised he’d made a mistake now. If he hadn’t…
well, he was in for a surprise.

So, the diadem was with Walburga Black, in her tomb, in a crypt, and it had been placed there
recently. This was a good start. It was a good foundation for Remus to make a list, which he did,
along with a mind map, and a mental plan that started the moment he’d kissed his mother goodbye
(a tentative, cold and yet promising goodbye), and ended maybe an hour down the five hour car
journey.

He was interrupted in his brainstorming by Sirius, about an hour into the drive, rummaging
through the bag. Stopping. Rummaging again, a bit more frantically.

“Oh, God,” Remus murmured, as his brows furrowed. “What’d you forget?”

“Portkey,” Sirius said, as casually as anything. There was a beat and then Remus blinked.

“What?”

“You forgot the what now?” Lily asked from the front seat. When Remus looked up he could see
her hands very tight on the wheel.

“No—oh, no, not the—” and without saying any more he pulled out the portkey back home, to
Boardwalk, that manifested itself in a high-heeled boot that Remus was quite sure was one of
Mary’s. Threw it onto Remus’ lap. “Not the home one. The key to Pandora’s office. The one with
the ‘Luna’ password.”

“Oh,” Lily said. “Well, that’s okay. Marlene has another one, right?”

“Yeah,” Sirius said, uncertainly. “Not so much that and more so that Pandora has a lot of delicate
documents and a lot of dangerous grimoires and spellbooks in that office; the office whose key is
now just lying in a house in South Wales.”

“Well, nobody knows the password, right?” Remus said. Sirius looked at him.

“Your mum does,” he said, shrugging. Remus frowned. Before he could say anything, Sirius
continued: “No, well, it’s fine. It doesn’t matter, really. Just annoying that we left it. I think it’s
literally in Hope’s room.”

Remus laughed, attempting to brush off the uncertain anxiety that crept up his throat at this. “Well,
unless Keith is suddenly very interested in dangerous spellbooks then I don’t think we’ll have a
problem. Mum won’t dare use it. She hates all the teleportation stuff, gives her, and I quote, ‘the
heebie jeebies’.”

“Oh, like it does you?” Sirius asked, smiling a little bit. Remus cracked a smile, shoved him a little.
They moved on.

Two hours later Remus was curled up in the backseat scribbling in his beat-up notebook when
Dorcas slid through the window. They hadn’t formed a complete plan before leaving, just the brief
britches of one. But Remus had one cooking.

“What are you writing?” Dorcas asked him, though she already knew. She’d just been in the bed of
the truck with Sirius, and so her hair was pretty windswept, her eyes wide and frenzied. She’d
slipped through the window with the agility of a gymnast and Remus had to give her credit for it.

“A list,” said Remus. “I have a plan.”

“You have a plan? Can I hear it?”

And so he began.

1. Drive from Pembrokeshire down to Cornwall. (depart 21:15, ETA: 3AM. Sunrise: 5:28AM.)

“Okay,” she said, nodding. “That’s fair enough.”

2. Find shelter for Dorcas. Preferably close to the graveyard. Church?

“You’re going to put me in a church? Won’t I burst into flames?”

“That’s a myth,” Sirius shouted from behind them. Remus cracked a smile.

“Shut up,” Dorcas yelled back.

“No,” said Remus, scoffing. “And you need to be in… well, under some kind of shelter, because
we’re going to do this when the sun has risen. Preferably if they have a church or something
nearby that would be easier, because there's less space between us for when we have to make our
escape.”

“Okay. Alright, I’m with you so far.”

3. Wait until sunrise - Riddle’s vamps are all newly turned, so, in the case of an ambush, we
will hopefully be left with less opposition. Upon sunrise, head to the tomb. Leave Dorcas in
church.

“Rude.”

“Shut up.”

4. Lily to stand guard. Preferably, again, have an eye on Dorcas, just in case.

“Rude?”

“Shut up.”

5. Sirius + Remus to go into tomb, retrieve the Horcrux.

“Do you think it’ll be that easy?” Dorcas asked, gently. Remus tapped his pen against the page.
“No,” he said. “I don’t—” he lowered his voice; although he knew Sirius could hear, it was
instinctual. “I have no idea what’ll be waiting for us there. With his family—fuck, it could be
anything.”

“Yeah,” Dorcas whispered. “Okay. Well. What after that?”

6. Once the Horcrux is retrieved, reconvene with Lily.

“Seems easy enough.”

“She’ll be outside, so if there are any witches or… god forbid, wolves that come for us, she’ll be
the one to fend them off. We’ll be inside so likely, because it’s daytime, the vampires will
immediately apparate to us. It’s just a case of fighting our way through and back to each other.”

“We’re good at that,” Dorcas murmured.

“Yeah,” he replied. He looked at her, and his gaze softened. “Yeah, we are.”

7. Once reconvened with Lily, go to shelter and portkey back to NYC ASAP.

“Right,” said Dorcas. “Okay.”

“Okay,” said Remus.

“Okay.”

“I,” Remus started. He licked his lips. “A lot could go wrong. This is just the bare bones. I’m not
—I’m not naive enough to think that this is going to go without hitches.”

“When do our plans ever,” Dorcas drawled, and Remus looked at her, a wry grin appearing on his
face.

“I don’t think I could give you one example.”

“No,” Dorcas said, shaking her head, “no, we’ve made perfect plans before. There’s…”

She paused.

“There was… and… there’s definitely…”

She paused again.

And then she covered her hand with her mouth and leant back, looking at him.

“Damn,” she said, muffled behind her palm. Remus laughed.

“Not one. Not a single one, Cas.”

“There has to be one!”

“Think about it and get back to me,” he said, scoffing. She chuckled and shook her head as he
flicked back through his notebook.

It was quiet for a moment. Just the sound of the car rolling over empty dirtroads. There wasn’t
much light, except for the dim car lighting in the backseat, the warm light that blinked and went as
they drove past scarce streetlamps, and the moon.
“It’s nice to see that that hasn’t changed,” murmured Dorcas, quietly. He paused, looking up at her.

“What?”

She edged her chin towards his book. “The list-making. The organisation.”

He sniffed, thinning his lips and looking down to the book in his lap.

“Well, you’ve only been gone two months,” he muttered. “I’m not a completely new person.”

“I am,” she said.

He looked at her. Raised his eyebrows.

She shrugged. “I am. It’s as simple as that. It—it’s hard to even remember who I was, before. My
thought processes, and stuff. I think about things like… like, even up to the night of the fête. How I
used to be, think. Regarding life, the longevity of it. The preciousness.” She inhaled, deeply, into
frozen lungs, and looked wistfully out the window. “You don’t realise how… final death really is
until you experience it, Remus. It’s finite.”

Remus swallowed his emotions. Let his stomach settle.

“I think I am too,” he said, quietly. “But I don’t, at the same time. I’ve been thinking about it
recently. Because you…” he looked away, “you took a part of me, when you went. And I thought
for a long time that you took the whole thing. Or the—essence? Of the thing? I don’t know, it’s
stupid.”

“No, it’s not.”

“I thought for a long time that you and him, Tom, that you took what I used to be and left me with
the empty carcass. But now—I don’t think the carcass was really empty. He was just hidden.
Protecting himself. I don’t think the person I was before is gone forever, he just appears in
different ways.”

Dorcas nodded, gently. Listening to him like nobody else in the world had ever spoken ever.

“I want my childhood back,” he said, quietly, so quietly. “I want to be mothered. And I think that
right now the only person on the planet that can mother me is me. And so I send out smoke signals
to try and coax him out like he’s a feral cat, or something, and I hope that one day he’ll come back
to me.”

He flicked through the book, right to the first page. And he smiled.

“Like, do you want to know what the very first list in this book is?”

“What is it?”

He cleared his throat, and began to read.

“Eggs. Milk. Strawberries. Loo roll. Broccoli.”

A smile grew on Dorcas’ face as he continued listing them.

“A shopping list,” he said, scoffing. “Dated the 19th of November, 2020. Less than a month before
Texas.”
She laughed a little bit, nudging him with her shoulder as she did. He inhaled. Exhaled. The car
went quiet.

“I still fight with daggers,” said Dorcas, into the darkness.

Remus looked at her.

“I don’t have to,” she shrugged. “I know how to vampire fight. Hell, I was raised on it. But my
hand still just goes straight to my knife.”

“Do you remember when we had that conversation?” Remus asked, staring into space as he
recalled it. “Or—along the same lines. The one right before the fête; I think I asked you if it’s
possible to change so fundamentally that the person you were before is gone forever, and you said
no. And then I asked… what if you found out that the first person was a lie and you were always
what you were now and you told me—”

“I said that what you are doesn’t make you who you are,” she finished, quietly.

Remus looked at her. Raised his eyebrows.

Her lips curled upwards, ever so slowly. Because he’d just used her own words against her.

“It’s been a while since you’ve had a ‘gotcha’ moment with me,” she remarked. Remus laughed.

“I guess we really have changed.”

Still young. Still us. Still a far cry from home.

But back then they were human and human, and now they are Werewolf Horcrux and Hunter
Vampire.

And London isn’t the biggest place in the world, their own minds are. But they’ve been digging
and they’ve been digging and they’ve found the bottom and now it’s time to make it a home and
not a prison. Make lists of blood for the person who wrote the shopping lists. Twirl a knife against
undead fingers for the blood that used to run through those veins.

Remus swallowed, letting the air settle around them. They were human and they were not but most
importantly they were here. Isn’t that the be all and end all?

As the dust settled he knocked his head against the window to his right and closed his eyes.
Pretending he was everywhere and nowhere. Pretending he was sending smoke signals and
pretending that he was the smoke signal. There was no sign of Dorcas, for a moment, just the
rumble of the car on road and the in and out light over his eyes. And then he heard her sigh.

He felt the shift as he shuffled across the backseat to him, and he sort of just fell into her as she
wrapped her arms around him. One arm over his chest and the other wrapped around his back,
cradling his head to her chest. They sat like that for an indeterminable amount of time. She just
held him.

***

Remus could not have, in any sense of the word, prepared for what it would be like to pull up to the
warehouse that had wiped out the entire Black family coven seven years prior.

It was dark. Approaching sunrise, the sky had begun to lighten, but such a little amount that was
barely noticeable. The only light came from the moon in the sky, one lone streetlamp at the bottom
of the street, and the headlights on the truck that Lily kept running as they all stepped out of the
car, slamming the door as they did.

Remus heard Sirius climb out of the bed of the truck, his feet crunching as he hit the gravel. And
then he heard a long breath as he looked up at the same scene Remus was looking at.

There had been no reparations made. Nothing done, changed, or altered. It looked like the
warehouse had burned and they had doused it and then they had left it; all dark, charred
foundations, rickety long-burnt wooden frames and poles and small piles of debris. Black brick that
was once red, still glinting that way a little bit.

Weeds had grown through the remaining floorboards and up the wood. Ivy and wispy bushes, tall
grass. A flower or two. The place was haunting, a foundation to what once was: dark and gloomy
and, quite frankly, terrifying.

They’d parked on the side that Sirius and Remus had escaped from. There used to be a door here;
there wasn’t one anymore. But Remus could envision it as perfect as if he’d been lying on the
grass, choking up his smoke inhalation yesterday. Broken fingers. He’d had broken fingers.

He cracked his fingers absently.

“Okay,” Lily whispered. She lit up her hands to give them more light, and her hair went with her. It
crackled in the low breeze, and doused them all in a warm glow. Her eyes were red. Remus
couldn’t remember if they’d been green in the car or not.

“Okay,” murmured Sirius.

“What now?”

“Where’s the gravesite?” Dorcas asked, turning to him. “Did you ever go?”

“Once,” he said. “Only once. Looking for my brother. I know where it is. I think I’ll be able to find
it again.”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Lily said, turning and holding up a burning hand. “Did you just say you
think?”

Remus looked at him. Sirius looked sheepish all of a sudden.

“Look, I didn’t tell you this because I was, like, ninety-nine percent certain it’d be fine,” he said,
quietly. “But now it’s lowered to maybe… maybe ninety-five, so. So, okay. Well. It’s, erm,
warded. Like how your mum’s house is, Remus. The rules of the wards are that you can’t find it
until you’re in it and it lets you find it. Only if you’re Black family and adjacent.”

“But,” Remus started, “you can’t… you don’t work anymore. They don’t recognise you as one of
them anymore.”

“They don’t, yes,” said Sirius. He had begun to walk, and the three of them, torches and fire-hands
in tow, had begun to follow. Lily’s veins were pulsing, as if the flames were liquid running through
her body. “But, you see, the Memoriam Crypt and all of the magic surrounding it was spear-headed
by Bella.”

Sirius turned to Remus, dashing a pretty, knowing smile on his pretty knowing face.
Remus stopped walking. “Oh shit.”

“What?” Dorcas asked. They had—rudely—kept walking without Remus, so he had to jog to catch
up again. They were past the warehouse now, walking into the forest behind. “What? What are we
oh shit-ing about?”

“You remember what we told you about the cave?” Lily asked, explaining. “The first task, with the
bowl, and the blood. The reason that Andromeda… did what she did.”

It hung heavy in the air. Andromeda doing what she did was the reason that Dorcas died. Remus
would never forget that.

“Why she stole the sword,” Dorcas said, slowly. “It was linked to Bellatrix’s life.”

“Bellatrix’s hamartia was that she believed she was invincible,” Sirius said as he walked, using his
hands to explain. “She truly believed she was the best one of us and she craved for the power to
prove that. I have no doubt that she discovered how to draw on the magic of the sword and link it to
her life long ago, because that’s the kind of shit that she’d do.”

“You think?” Remus asked, quietly.

“Oh, absolutely. She would draw on a specific kind of black magic, through the sword, to form a
warding system that would not only do what she needed it to do—which is keep out anyone not of
Black loyalty—but also kill vampiric trespassers who tried to get in and let her feed directly on
their power. She would do that instead of doing it the traditional—and safer—way, because she’s
her. Because I don’t know her at all and I also know her better than most people left living. God, I
mean. She’s really very simple to figure out when it comes down to it. She takes opportunities, and
if she can’t find them, she’ll create them.” Sirius paused for a moment. Cleared his throat. “Took.
Took opportunities.”

“And Andromeda destroyed the sword,” said Dorcas slowly, figuring it all out. “Which is why you
could get through the first task. So. If Bellatrix used the same magic coding on the warding around
the crypt, then that means… any Pureblood can get in?”

Sirius turned around, so he was walking backwards, and smiled lazily.

“They may not recognise me as one of them anymore and I most definitely don’t recognise them as
any of mine,” he drawled, “but I was born and raised, and they’ll never be able to take that away
from me.”

“She’s been dead for almost two months, now,” Remus pointed out. “Do you think they’d have
checked in on it? Changed the warding for safety? I don’t like riding on a maybe.”

“Didn’t you say that they’d moved the diadem recently?” Lily pointed out. Her hair was still
glowing. “Riddle, I mean.”

“Yeah. At least, I’m pretty sure.”

“Was it before or after Bellatrix died?”

Remus thought about it. “I don’t know. I don’t really have a specific timeframe, more so—just a
feeling. It’s a new memory. But I think—I mean, she was tasked to hide the cup, remember? They
moved the cup too. I want to say they would’ve relocated both at the same time once they realised
we were onto their tracks, right?”
“So you’re thinking before she died.”

“I don’t know what I’m thinking,” Remus murmured. As he walked he stepped on a twig. It
echoed. “But if it’s before, we know he trusted her. Probably most out of everyone.”

Remus sighed, looking up to the sky. Stars littered the black mass. In the distance, clouds were
approaching.

“And he thinks he’s invincible, too,” Remus murmured. “If Riddle has no motive to make sure
then why would he bother, you know?”

“It takes a lot of effort to find a glitch in the system,” Sirius rattled off, following Remus’ thought
process. Trying to get into the other side’s heads. Perhaps Sirius and Remus were the best ones for
the job. “He trusted her. If she wasn’t dead yet he had no reason to believe that the warding had
broken and I think he has too much pride to come and check on his creations like—like what, a
doting father?”

“More prodigal son,” Remus said, softly. “He’ll only come back when the damage is done.”

“Can you two stop talking in riddles and just walk,” Dorcas huffed, pushing Remus by the
shoulderblades: he’d slowed down a little. “Jesus fucking Christ. Pair of fucking slam poets over
here.”

Lily laughed out loud at this, and it echoed. Walking four in a row, the trees kept coming. The only
sound was four counts of breathing out of time and grass, crunchy underfoot.

And then, five minutes down the trail, the air shifted. A gentle breeze overcame them, from the
front of them; Sirius, who was just a little bit in front, gasped. It ruffled his shirt and blew at his
hair. Holding up a hand of pause he turned to face them, looked up to the sky and breathed in.

“There they are,” he whispered, and he turned back. With Sirius in front and the three of them
behind, caught in a gentle wind of realisation, they looked up.

Above the line of the trees. In the distance. A huge spire of a church that had not been there mere
moments before.

“Well, shit,” Lily murmured. “We in the clear? No booby traps?”

“He’s been here recently,” Remus whispered. They all turned to look at him. “I don’t—I don’t
know how I know, but I do.”

“And yet? We’re in? Big fuckin’ oversight on the doting father’s part?”

“Well, it’s not like he’s very well-versed in being either of those things,” Remus muttered. It made
Lily smile.

“I don’t feel anything,” Dorcas said. “I think we’re okay.”

“We’re okay,” Sirius said, with confidence. “We’re alright. I told you I was ninety-five percent
certain. Come on,” and with that, they continued to walk.

***

It took about ten minutes of walking through the dark, marshy forest before they reached a
clearing, and then another, and then waning trees and broken cobblestones. Eventually they came
across a dirt road and an arch of red brick that, when they pushed through the metal gate, led to
stairs. The stone stairs led them up a rather steep hill and when they got to the top they were in a
cemetery.

It was the public cemetery, but Remus honestly could not be sure how often it was used. Most of
the graves were old, decades old: some of them had flowers, upon a closer look, and there were
definitely graves that were tended to. But for the most part the place was eerily quiet. A thick fog
lay at their feet as they walked up the stone slab pathway, winding through gravestones amongst
overgrown grass, weeds and sometimes daffodils growing on the beds of the graves. The trees were
thick in the heat of summer, and a few times a squirrel went running across the path in front of
them, or a bush rustled with the telltale signs of a nocturnal fox lurking around. Sirius led them
through the graveyard, around and up to what looked to be a well looked-after church; or, it was
well looked after in comparison to its counterpart.

Standing at the corner of the path, they were presented with a church. It was gorgeous; perhaps
sort of unremarkable in comparison to some sensational churches around the country, but it was a
church nonetheless, at least a few centuries old. There were flower bushes at the front and a cross
on the door.

And then, to their left, the path continued. It continued, winding a little bit, all the way out of the
cemetery and down a scenic path and a little bit uphill at the very end.

At the top of the hill stood a dark, gothic, ruined cathedral. The pillars were rotting and the arches
were crumbling and Remus was quite sure, in the distance, he could see torches lit on either side.

It looked like an abbey. It was far enough in the distance that it was slightly obscured by fog. But
he would be lying if he said it didn’t look menacing.

“The old church,” said Sirius, breaking the silence. The wind picked up and Remus shuddered. “I
think the locals have been told that it was knocked down. But it was just. Well. Converted.”

“An old gothic church,” Dorcas muttered. “How on-brand.”

“My family is nothing if not dying by the aesthetic. Have you seen Regulus?” Sirius replied, and
then he turned, and ushered them forward. “Come on. In the church. The normal one, I mean.”

The ‘normal’ church was lovely on the inside, and had a pungent wooden smell alongside some
sort of incense Remus couldn’t place. They ended up sitting in the pews—they had about two
hours to kill before sunrise, which was when their plan would be set into motion to avoid the
lackey (or ‘disposable’) of Riddle’s army who would just burn. Remus thought briefly of those
poor people and felt a pang of empathy at the vampires who had been brainwashed. It was like a
cult. But now wasn’t the time to think about those things.

The church was a perfect place for Dorcas to hide out during the sunrise. They had the portkey
with them—a high-heeled ankle boot that Remus was pretty sure was stolen from Mary’s—and it
was laid on the pew beside Lily, ready to go at the trigger word. The plan was pretty simple,
except that, with the nature of where the place was, Remus’ ideas had to be tweaked a little bit.
Namely—

“I’m not staying,” Lily said, aghast at the thought of such a thing when Sirius said it.

“You should stay with Dorcas,” Remus explained, reasonably. It was reasonable. Given that the
gravesite was so much further away than the church in which they’d be leaving from was, it was
simply too risky to split them up in their entirety. Honestly it was pretty risky to split them up at
all. But the party in two and two was better than a three and an unprotected one (and yes, Dorcas
could fight for herself, but anything could happen. Someone could break a window. Shove her
under the sun. Apparate away with her and have the rest of them be none the wiser).

Lily was very against this.

“But—no. No! I want to come and help,” she said, her hands sparking a curdled flame. “It’s a
Horcrux. There’ll be reinforcements. If he’s been here recently—like, after Sweden—he’s
probably put up even more shit you’ve gotta fight your way through. What if you’re up against
something you can’t handle?”

“Never happened,” said Sirius, “never will.”

Lily shot him a death glare.

“I don’t like it,” she said. “No. I don’t want to stay.”

“You have to.”

“What if you need me?” She placed her hands on her hips. “This is ridiculous. What if you get
ambushed? You’ll need me.”

“She raises a fair point,” Remus said to Sirius, grimacing.

“Thank you.”

“Well, we can’t leave Dorcas alone,” Sirius replied.

“How about we do what we did in London?” Remus offered. All three of them looked at him. “The
comms devices I picked up from Mary. I have them in my bag somewhere, wait…”

He fished around for a minute, Lily hot on his heel. When he found them he turned around and
gave her one, matching them up to each other. He set it to signal and watched as her little gadget
flickered, the tell-tale connection sound bleeping.

“Try it,” she said.

Remus pressed the button.

It took about half a second before Lily’s device was blaring, too. A high pitched, horribly grating
alarm signal that made Dorcas flinch.

“Good God,” Sirius groaned. “Make it stop.”

Remus smiled and turned it off, and the room was silent.

He raised his eyebrows.

“Okay?”

She tutted. “One more time.”

Sirius let out a string of curse words so vile Dorcas choked on her laughter.

“Okay,” Lily said, after the second signal had ceased.

“Alright?”

“Alright,” she said, but it was quiet. And when she sat down she cradled the device close to her
chest and didn’t let it go.

“And besides,” said Sirius, as Lily sat down. He craned his head to look at her. She tucked her hair
behind her ears and raised her eyebrows, as he continued; “if I need you, you’ll know. You’ll
come.”

Lily’s face softened. She nodded fiercely and seemed a lot more at ease, after that.

The two hours went by quickly. Soon enough, Sirius and Remus were at the door, still closed, as
the sun pressed up against the horizon and began to break the seal.

“Be safe,” Dorcas whispered, as she hugged Remus. He dug his face into her hair, holding her
back. Savouring the moment.

“I always am,” he murmured.

She leaned back, and sighed.

“If you don’t come back in an hour, I’m coming up there to get you,” Lily called, assertively. Sirius
grinned.

“See you in fifty-nine minutes, Evans,” he said, closing the church door behind him.

The air was nippy, and deeply crisp, as they began to walk.

It was, for the most part, quiet. Impending. Remus could tell that Sirius was nervous. He didn’t
blame him; who wouldn’t be? Even unassociated by the gravesite you’re walking up to, it would
be impressive to not be a little bit intimidated by the grandeur of the ruins, the torches on the walls.
The lonely path of stone slabs, and the eerie feeling, all around them.

Remus couldn’t see the dementors. All three of them, apparently, could feel them (Dorcas could
fucking feel dementors now, too? That’s an update) and had confirmed that they were getting
nothing from the area. He knew that they were, at least some of them were, in London, and
knowing they travelled slowly was comforting him a little bit. Hopefully they’d be in and out
before anyone even caught their wind.

“Can you feel it?” Sirius asked, quietly, as they walked. “The Horcrux?”

Remus took a deep breath in, and out.

“Yeah,” he said. It was true. “But very faintly. New.”

The wind whistled, in the distance, as they walked. Hand in hand.

“I think he’s getting scared,” said Remus, quietly. Squeezing Sirius’ hand. “I think he’s getting
scared, and when he gets scared he gets sloppy. He doesn’t think. He’s a piss-poor excuse for a
leader, only slightly better as a figurehead when he’s the face and everyone else is the brains. He’s
too up his own ass to think that anyone can get the better of him and even still, even still, now, he
makes mistakes.” A pause. “He underestimates me.”

“People don’t do well when they underestimate you,” Sirius murmured. “I learned that the hard
way.”
“Yes,” said Remus, looking up to the oncoming ruins, the arch of the cathedral, the trees
shadowing it, surrounding it and surrounding them like an army gone to war. “They don’t. Even
when in my head he was too arrogant to think that I would ever get into his, into his memories, and
yet I did. He was too trusting to think to check the warding on this place after planting a piece of
his soul in it, and we walked right in. He is too conceited to learn my name because he sees me as
nothing more than a stain on his. He thought I’d crumble at his feet—he still thinks that, I think.
And I like that he sees me that way.”

He took a deep breath in.

“I like it, because it means that when I ruin him, he’s not going to see it coming until the hunter
with no name is plunging a knife through his heart.”

The air felt dangerous. Sirius’ hand felt tight. They stopped in front of the doors of the broken-
down cathedral and, still watching him, Sirius’ expression turned wry, a smile oncoming.

“Let’s hit him where it hurts, then,” he murmured, and Remus grinned.

Upon walking through the doors it was hard to conceptualise just where, exactly they were
standing. Because the place was simultaneously so ruined and so real that if Remus turned one
way, it looked as if it could’ve been a hall; if he turned the other way, it looked like it could’ve
been a corridor. There were slabs missing and grass and weeds growing in the gaps, ivy growing up
what would have been a window frame. There were carvings that Remus couldn’t make out. It was
all ochre and slate, a granite texture that could slash his fingers open if he grabbed it too hard.
Swirls and patterns and broken marble. Crumbling white powder on the floor, once upon a time.

They walked through the place silently. There were parts of the cathedral that was entirely ruined,
with the windows blasted through and no roof, letting the sky wash above them, and there were
parts that were almost—almost—real, and tangible and still in use; hallways with candle-holders
on the windowsills and ceilings that were fully intact, darkness so intense that Remus had to put on
his torch. Eventually they’d make it to a new, open-top, ruined room, an altar and its pews in the
worship-ground or, god forbid, a ballroom if you squint, and then they’d continue, and darkness,
and darkness, and darkness.

They went round, and round, in circles for what felt like an eternity, but was really probably closer
to fifteen minutes. At one point they came across a room they knew they’d definitely been in
before, and as Sirius sighed, Remus noticed a flicker of light in the corner of his eye.

He turned.

There was a door. A door that had not been there before, with a tiny, tiny flame lit in a torch-holder
on top of it. The door was heavy, stone-set, with medieval-like carvings up and down the dark
material. He looked at it, cocking his head, and tugged on Sirius’ sleeve.

“Hey,” he whispered.

Sirius turned. They stared at the door for a long moment.

“That wasn’t there before,” he breathed. To anyone else his voice was collected, but Remus knew
him. He could hear the shakiness.

Remus walked forward, to trace his fingers over the carvings. The instant he made contact he could
feel magic.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “This is it.”

He exhaled. Feeling a presence, he turned, and Sirius was beside him. He took his hand.

Together, they pushed the door open.

The scene before them was majestic. It was a courtyard. Almost like the courtyard at Whittaker,
but with no fountain centrepiece and much more regal; surrounding them were walls of the
cathedral with huge window spaces but no windows, lined with marble decorative pieces, pillars
and abacus’ and large stone statement pieces that glimmered under the half moonlight. The grass
on the ground was short, and it was foggy; there were lights, torches up on the walls, one on each
and then on the ground, too.

It was horrifically eerie and terribly alluring. They closed the door behind them and then Remus
turned, and it was completely gone. It was just a stone wall that looked through into a hallway.
And he turned back.

The place was littered with stone tombs.

Some of them were fancier than others, but most of them were at least somewhat regal-looking.
There were at least eight, all around the wide space. Remus could see words inscribed on some of
them—he was too far to read them, but he got the gist nonetheless. Black. Black. Black. Black.

Sirius took a step forward.

Remus went with him, down the two steps into the courtyard’s lower level, and they walked. They
were looking for one name, and so they sort of naturally split up, looking on each side. Remus
came across names he recognised. Belvina. Phineas. Arcturus.

He circled around to Sirius and took a sharp breath in when he realised that he was standing very
still beside one of the tombs. Walking up to him, the fog seemed to move like water and Sirius was
standing very still, staring at the stone slab.

Remus slipped in beside him, and read the inscription.

REGULUS A. BLACK.

1225 – 2014

ABEL THE RIGHTEOUS

The silence lay thick and suffocating.

“Why would they make one for him?” Remus muttered, slicing through it. “There’s obviously no
body in there.”

Sirius cleared his throat, but his voice still came out gritty when he spoke anyway.

“He was dead to them the moment he left,” he said, staring at the stone. “It’s much more noble for
the son to die with his family. They were trying to prevent another mass suicide on their name,
after I jumped ship. But it didn’t work in the end because everyone was already dead. There was no
one to shame but shame itself.”

He took a deep breath in. And then he chuckled.

“Abel the righteous,” he muttered hoarsely. “I guess that makes me Cain?”

Remus looked at him.

“Cain killed Abel. Sounds about right.”

“He became the father of murder, didn’t he?”

“He originated evil,” Sirius replied, mildly. “We’re surrounded by it. Funny how backwards it all
is.”

A gentle pause. Sirius looked at the tomb again.

“Oh, Regulus is gonna have a laugh when I tell him that,” Sirius said, sort of breaking out of his
stupor and flicking his hair out of his face. “Come on. Let’s just find her. I hate this place.”

They turned, and they continued to search. Remus was the one who found her, in the end.

“Sirius,” he called. Walburga’s tomb was smack-bang in the middle. She was one of three on this
row, beside Orion and someone else that Remus didn’t recognise. Sirius slotted in next to him and
peered over his shoulder to read the inscription.

WALBURGA BLACK

718 – 2014

MOTHER OF MOTHERS

Remus heard a sharp intake of breath from his side.

Sirius, taking a gentle step forward with knitted eyebrows and so much complexity he oozed it,
reached out and traced a few fingers over the engraving. Ever so gently.

“I never knew how old she was,” he murmured. He traced his finger over the three numbers. 718.
“My whole life, I have always wondered how old she was.”

He let his hand fall. Remus, quite frankly, felt like this was an entirely Sirius-steered narrative, so
he stood and waited for his mark. He waited to see how Sirius would want to do this, so they could
do it the right way.

After a minute or so, he straightened up.

“Okay,” he said, shaking out his hands. “Help me get this slab off, then.”

Remus nodded, clearing his throat and skirting around to the top end, Sirius at the bottom. They
were prepared to lift the thing entirely off, but upon trying found it didn’t lift, but it slid. It took a
lot of brute force but eventually stone began to grind upon stone and it moved, all the way down,
with Remus pushing it and Sirius pulling, to about the bottom of her torso, which was more than
enough room to lean in.

She was revealed to Remus slowly as they pushed.

He saw the diadem first. The exact one he’d been seeing. Sapphire, opal and diamond, with dangly
chains on each side and a gorgeous, daintiness to it. So contrasting on a woman with such dark hair
and such a terrible aura to her. But he could not deny she was beautiful. She was incredibly
beautiful; her eyes set sweetly against arched eyebrows, her nose pointed upwards at the tip. Her
jawline was defined, just as her son’s were. Remus could almost see her grinding it the way they
did. Hereditary. She was stunning, her hair neatly falling down and over her chest looking like it
was made of silk.

With the technical physical age of her mid-20s, she looked like not much more than a girl. But
there was a weariness to her. Remus couldn’t be sure if it was just him, knowing the context of this
woman—what this woman had done, the horrors that had ensued because of her—or if it was
genuine. If the weight of her years, frozen in the same position, had caused a sort of decay. Not
even just in death. Of course, she had been dead for seven years, but in life, too. The ongoing evil.
The repetitive disgust, disavowment, the perpetual misery and melancholy. Something about it
sagged her.

She looked like a girl but she also looked like someone’s mother and she looked like a woman and
she looked like death. She looked like an angel and she looked like your worst nightmare. Even
underneath the weight of her years ageing her, Remus could see where Regulus got his baby face
from.

In death, she seemed to sleep peacefully. On the forefront she looked harmless; it was hard to
believe her hand had been waste to so many horrors. But she had. Here comes her horror now:

Sirius walked up to the top of the tomb slowly, every footstep echoing as he did. Remus could see
the exact moment that he came close enough to see her face. It was a twitch in the eyebrows. Just a
gentle little twitch; an: oh. A: mother. Oh, mother.

Settling in next to Remus at the side of the tomb, he did not take his eyes off of her.

“Are you okay?” Remus whispered, after a moment. Sirius nodded. He still didn’t take her eyes off
of her.

“I’d forgotten what she looked like,” he replied, quietly. An owl hooted in the distance. “I know
that sounds ridiculous, because I knew her for eight centuries and she only died seven years ago.
But I’d forgotten what she looked like.”

Remus nodded. Let this settle.

“I do look like her,” Sirius whispered. He cocked his head. “Do you… do you think she’s quite
beautiful?”

Sirius looked at his mother, and Remus looked at him. Oddly enough, he felt tears prickle at his
eyes.

“I think she’s stunning,” he said, looking at Sirius.

Sirius turned to him. His eyes were dry. But his face was contemplative. He took a breath in, and
then another, and then another. Turned to his mother.

Looked at the diadem.

“Let’s get it and get out,” Sirius whispered. Something had gone up again: a wall, perhaps. “As
much as I want to spit on her right now, I think we’d better not waste any time.”
Remus nodded. He turned to look at her again, and then around the courtyard. It was eerily quiet.

“Do you think we should just go for it?” he asked.

Sirius shrugged. “Might as well,” he said. “Nothing’s going to happen until we unsettle the
balance, right?”

They looked at each other. In the dim light, Sirius’ eyes were bright and daunting.

“Okay,” he whispered. Sirius, taking a breath in through his mouth, curled his hands over the ridge
of his mother’s tomb.

He looked at her for a moment. Her tranquillity. Her liminality.

And then he reached down, ever so slowly, to grasp the diadem between his fingers. And two
things happened as he made contact.

Firstly, the air grew inextricably cold.

And, secondly, Walburga Black’s eyes opened.

Sirius, as one does when their very dead mother opens her eyes, recoiled instantly.

“Fuck,” he gasped, looking at Remus but still gripping onto the ridge of her tomb.

“Sirius—”

“Oh, God,” he grimaced, keeling over, “should’ve seen that coming. How did I not see that
coming?”

“Sirius, she’s—”

Her body shifted within the tomb, and Sirius let go of the stone ridge with aggression, splaying an
arm across Remus’ chest to push him back behind him. From where they stood a few paces away,
staring on, it took a moment to see her movement but they could hear it clear as day. The haunting
sound of bones cracking. Snapping back together, like the clicking of knuckle joints, or the slow,
menacing tap of claws against stone. And then the top of her head, the diadem, her hair. Her skin.
Her head.

Her.

Remus almost jumped out of his bones when, sitting up, she swivelled her head towards them.
Facing their right, she was like an owl; eyes bright, sentient, movements clunky and amiss.

Sirius took a deep breath in, and then another, and then another.

Steeling himself up.

His back straightened.

Walburga climbed out of the tomb so quickly it was almost spider-like. Her black, flowy dress
ruffled in the breeze as her bare feet touched the marsh of the ground. Gasping, astounded by—the
sensation or something, she looked down and her hair fell forward. Dug her toes into the soil.

When she looked back up, through wiry curtains, she had a wry smile on her face.
“Sirius,” she breathed.

Sirius’ breath shuddered.

“Hello, mother,” he replied.

A gentle breeze blew over the three of them, as she surveyed him. Her eldest. She looked so real,
so painfully tangible; there seemed to be nothing amiss about her except the way she moved,
jerkily, as if being controlled by something. Almost unfamiliar with her limbs. Her eyes fell gentle:
they were just like Sirius’. Remus’ heart was beating out of his chest.

“You came,” she said, sweetly.

In a jerky movement she tilted her head to the side and cracked her neck. It echoed.

“I’m not here for you.”

“You came back,” she preened, eyes dreamy. Her voice was like honey but it had a sort of… growl
to it. Behind the sheen of beauty. Blinking, she followed up with, “You came back to be with us.”

Sirius inhaled. Exhaled.

“To be with your family.”

“I am not here for you,” Sirius repeated. Firmly. Walburga rolled her head around, and turned.
Traced the heel of her palm over the rough stone of her tomb.

“I know,” she said. Her voice was like a song. “I know why you are here, really.”

Sirius swallowed.

She turned.

“You are here for Regulus.”

Remus blinked. His eyebrows twitched and his gaze flickered over to where Regulus’ ‘grave’ was,
and then back.

“I’m here for Regulus,” Sirius repeated, dumbly.

“I know,” she hissed, tugging back her hand from the stone as if she’d touched fire. “You think I
do not but I know you didn’t come back for us. You came back for him.” She looked at him, and
smiled, the next words coming out softer: “You know, it is the most rewarding joy of a Mother to
see her children begin to bond. When you were eight you killed for the first time. Do you
remember? Do you remember who you killed, Sirius?”

“Sirius,” Remus whispered, as quietly as he could. “She thinks it’s 2014.”

Sirius’ face cleared; twitched. Walburga did not acknowledge Remus. She didn’t even seem to
notice him. She just kept her gaze on her eldest son, swaying a little. A re-embodiment of a seven
year lost conscience; a hauntingly zombie-like creature, only haunting in how little zombie-like she
was at all.

“Go along with it,” Remus continued. “See what happens.”

Sirius didn’t react to Remus. He stared down his mother, who raised her eyebrows, and snapped,
“Do you not remember, boy?”

“I remember,” he said. “Margaret Hambletone.”

“And why did you kill her?”

“She stole my flute,” Sirius muttered.

“And do you remember what happened afterwards?”

Sirius looked down, but Walburga would not have that.

“Look at me!”

He looked up.

“Regulus slaughtered the rest of her family,” he said, in one, great breath. “Four siblings, two
parents, a grandparent. I was eight. He was six.”

“His fangs hadn’t even grown in,” Walburga breathed, smiling. “He ripped their throats out with
his baby teeth.”

There was a gentle stalemate, in which they simply stared at each other.

And then there was a rush that fluttered Walburga’s dress behind her and she was suddenly in front
of Sirius, eye to eye, barely inches apart. He did not flinch but he did inhale, sharply, in the shock:
Remus, however, staggered backwards.

“I was so proud of you,” she whispered, fondly, her brows pinching in the middle. It was all quite
sickening actually. Sirius held his breath as she rubbed her hands up his arms, and Remus almost
intervened, but Sirius’ eyes flickered up to the diadem on top of her head—so close—and so he
didn’t. He waited.

“I am still so proud of you,” she said, dragging her hand up and around the back of his head and
pulling him in slowly but forcefully. He turned his head to Remus’ side as she hugged him with her
spindly, undead hands, still holding his breath but his chest stuttering. He looked like he was about
to throw up.

Remus flexed his hand over his knife, ready to abandon his previous hesitance simply because of
how horrified he looked. But Sirius shook his head as minutely as he could.

Walburga was sniffing his hair, arms wrapped around him very awkwardly. Sirius’ arms were
outstretched underneath hers, like a stiff doll; he bit his lip and Remus watched his arms move,
slowly, upwards.

He shifted, further into her chest, to try and get a better vantage point. He gripped one hand over
the back of her shoulder, and she adjusted her hold around him, and for a moment… it almost
looked like a real hug.

Sirius’ hand reached up. And up. To her hair. He got his fingers entangled in the silk and moved, to
grab the diadem, just a few inches away—

And then she was gone.

Flying backwards, Sirius staggered as the hold on him disappeared. Remus blinked and she was
back at her tomb, both hands spread outwards and braced on it behind her, and her face contorted
into a snarl, so horribly animalistic and deadly she didn’t even look like the same person. She
didn’t look like a person at all. The whites of her eyes were suddenly deeply bloodshot, and her
veins popped, up her neck and her stiff jawline and her suddenly greying lips. She finally looked
like a corpse.

She hissed at him again while Sirius grinned.

“There she is,” he said. “Hello, mother.”

“You dare try to steal from me?” she snarled, spitting as she did. Sirius laughed. His fangs had
popped. Like mother, like son. “You dare to disrespect me? Have you not disappointed me
enough?!”

Sirius hummed, nodding.

“Sick,” Walburga spat, taking a step forward. She cracked her neck again, and then her wrist.
“Worthless miscreant. Horrible boy. Stain of dishonour. How dearly I wish you’d never existed,
filthy disgusting sympathiser, blood-traitor, scum of my name! The depths are where you drown!
Bastard first-born! Oh, you ruin, you ruin all and everything you touch.”

Sirius breathed in and out, hissing almost inadvertently as she spoke. Top lip pulling back. Ready
for attack, but not there yet.

“Any more?” he asked.

Walburga’s face cleared as quickly as clouds being jerked from the sky.

“Poisonous influence,” she wept, clutching a hand to where her heart should be. “Infestation, rotten
to the core, poisoning my poor, poor boy—my poor child, my baby, my redemption, my Regulus,
warped and so tainted by your hand…”

Sirius’ eyes went blank. As they did often when it came to his little brother.

“I will save him,” she said, resolutely. It didn’t even feel like she was talking to Sirius anymore, but
herself. Chattering hysterically: “I will save my brightest boy from the darkness. I will, for my
Regulus. My Regulus, my angel, oh, my prize—!”

“You can’t save him,” Sirius spat, sort of frantically. In the horror, the showdown, neither of them
noticed when stone started to grind and dust. “You can’t.”

“WHY NOT?” she screamed, utterly hysterical, her face darkening again against the light of the
rising sun.

“Because you’re not REAL!” Sirius hissed, “you’re dead! And you have been dead for seven years
and you will be dead for the rest of eternity and you will not be remembered!”

Walburga screamed, high-pitched and grievous. Staggering back she gripped onto the ridge of the
stone like it was her only lifeline. Sirius’ breathing was coming in waves.

“You’re not real,” Sirius said, shaking his head. “You’re not real. You’re not real and you can’t
save him, only I can do that. I am everything you say I am and more, mother. I am all that you
made me. I’m your boy.”

His voice broke. Walburga screamed once more.

“You are a stain!” she spat.

“I’m your stain!” Sirius spat right back. Fire on fire. “And that’s why you were so ashamed of me.
You made me in your image and then you decided I was too hauntingly familiar. But I killed
Margarat Hambletone because you taught me how. I am poison because you injected me with
such. I am devastation because you devastated me. I am damnation because you damned me.”

They were like a car crash; Remus could barely look away. But he did. In time to see the slabs of
stone shift, and the first spindly fingers curl up and over the ridges of the tombs scattered around
the clearing.

“And Regulus killed that family for me,” Sirius whispered, “not for you. You’re not real.”

In a blink, Walburga was back. Except this time she had Sirius by the throat, holding his body up
several inches in the air.

“Is this real, Sirius?” she asked. “Does this feel real?”

Remus, without even hesitating, whipped out a holy-water stained push knife and lodged it directly
into Walburga’s arm. It hit her with so much force that she jolted and let go of Sirius, who
staggered back, keeling over, coughing and laughing hysterically.

Walburga’s mad eyes looked down at her bleeding arm, and then up at Remus. As if she was
seeing him for the very first time.

“Human,” she breathed. And then she looked at the wound once more, and back at him. He cocked
his gun, and she cocked her head. “Hunter.”

Sirius flipped his head up, hand on his throat, still grinning. But his smile faltered the second he
looked up; as Walburga turned around, arm still bleeding, at the scene before her.

Standing darted around the graveyard, steeped in fog from the ankles down, were six dark-haired,
hauntingly empty animations of Purebloods. Six tombs, cracked open. One of them Remus
recognised to be Sirius’ father. The rest of them were alien to him.

There was one tomb that was undisturbed. Regulus A. Black.

The rest of them started walking, slowly, towards them.

These incarnations of the dead Black’s were a lot less… refined than Walburga was. Remus could
tell that instantly. They were more zombie-like; slower, not that that made much of a difference as
they were all still centuries-old Purebloods, but they were washed out, their skin peeling in places,
white of their eyes blood-red and, for some of them, broken bones out of place. If this was a final
battle Walburga would be the big boss. They were just laymen. Six incredibly powerful laymen.

Sirius took a deep breath in. Staggered back another pace, to Remus’ side. And Walburga turned.
Her smile was flickering. Detrimental.

“Welcome home, Sirius,” she whispered.

And everything erupted.

Sirius went straight for his mother, of course. They were a flurry of bones and limbs and fangs; he
smashed her head against the ridge of her tomb, trying to grab the diadem from her, but she was
older, and she was stronger. And so she ripped into his forearm and flung him all the way across
the lot, slamming him into the stone wall. He fell about seven metres on the grass, with a thud that
echoed as he coughed. Within seconds his mother was there, ripping his head up by the hair, and
then three more, as they walked—some of them limped—hissing ferociously. Not even paying any
attention to Remus. Going for the baby Black.

This worked both for them and against them. It worked for them in the sense that their tunnel
vision on Sirius left a lot of them open for Remus to tackle to stop him from becoming
overwhelmed and mauled alive by seven thirsty dead-undead Pureblood’s. It worked against them
for Sirius was, in fact, becoming overwhelmed and eaten alive; he’d staggered up onto his feet but
for every bite and every snarl and every kickback there’d be someone else there to bite and snarl
and kick him harder. Remus ended up holding off three of them with one armed hand while
simultaneously trying to knock at the four attacking Sirius to give him a bit of leeway to hold his
own. He was entirely out of his depth. Pureblood upon Pureblood; Black upon Black.

Remus, within the span of three seconds, shot four times into the heads of the three vampires he
was fending off, and then twirled, doing the same to the vampires hitting Sirius, though he only
caught two of them. They did not die despite the headshots but Remus learned quickly that this
threw them off a lot longer, and so he thought strategically and, twirling his guns shoved them back
in their holders and whipped out his knives. Sirius screamed from behind him and so he lobbed
three of his daggers into the foreheads of the three Purebloods, sending them staggering and
occupied for a longer period—albeit, only giving them an extra five seconds, maybe—as they had
to remove the obstruction. And then he turned, and he descended.

He managed to fend off two of them, kicking one in the stomach to get him away from Sirius and
then lobbing daggers into his throat to send him further back, grabbing the other by the collar,
ripping it, squeezing at his throat with one hand and sending him to the ground as he pushed a stake
into his heart with the other. Up, gunshots at the three, as Walburga laughed, and Sirius hissed; he
turned, and Sirius was standing tall. He had blood on his face but so did his mother and so did all of
them. With the space, now, he managed to get the upper hand and grip onto his second opponent
by the throat and send him flying, all the way across the graveyard to the other side.

His mother attacked him and they tussled in a rush around the courtyard. Remus only caught them
in the split-second moments in which they’d stop, pushing the other against a wall and trying to
claw at their chest, hair, skin, and then they’d be off again. Sirius threw her to the floor and looked
to Remus; he tried to get to him but Walburga caught him in the last moment and dug her
fingernails into the skin underneath his throat, ripping it out completely. Sirius choked for a
moment as it healed over and she threw him to the ground. And it was about here that Remus
realised that he was fine, that none of them were attacking him.

Even though he’d attacked them. Even though he’d alerted them to his presence, like he had
Walburga. She was the only one who paid attention.

He was shoved by one of them, as he was in their way. They went straight for Sirius. They all went
straight for Sirius.

This worked both for and against them. Remus decided to utilise the ‘for’.

Steeling himself, he darted through the crowds of Purebloods—three of which had made it to
Sirius, two of which were fighting him, who was fending them off magnificently with one hand
whilst also fending off his mother with the other.

Remus, seeing Sirius on the verge of getting overwhelmed very quickly, made a very quick, very
impulsive decision. And he tackled Walburga Black.
Maybe it was a stupid decision. But he shot at her twice and then ran at her, punching her straight
around the face and pushing a dagger into her chest.

She went for his arm and he dodged—he knew better, he’d fought Narcissa—and then she hissed
and threw him back like he was a bug, which, granted, hurt, and would have been so much more
detrimental had he actually been flung to where she was intending to fling him (most likely into the
stone wall, which would have. Well. Cracked his head open, at the least.)

But instead of being flung into the wall, he was caught.

He didn’t know who he was caught by. But it wasn’t Sirius. He didn’t know any of these people
except for Sirius’ parents, and neither of them were this Pureblood, but he caught him regardless,
flinging him forward again—not as far, not back into Walburga, a little to the side actually—and
then snarling ferociously. Descending.

And then the Pureblood attacked Walburga.

Remus, coughing from where he’d been thrown to the floor, gasped in shock as he slammed her
into a wall and they began to fight. Sirius, who was currently in battle with about four people and
glowing like a flamethrower, did not see this. He didn’t see this, but another one of them did. And
then he descended upon her too.

Walburga screamed in frustration, and this was when Sirius registered.

She managed to fend them off, of course, easily, for she was over half a century older than her
descendants. They went flying, in two different directions; Sirius watched as she threw them off
and hissed at everyone and everything. And then, of course, he was ambushed once more. Remus
jumped in to help immediately.

“Sirius!” he called, plunging his knife into the back of the throat of one of them. She twisted, and
twisted, and twisted some more until her esophagus was physically coming out of her throat, and
then he pulled, and the woman went falling backwards, leaving room for Remus to dart in.
Continuing to fight, Remus and Sirius ended up back-to-back.

“What the fuck was that?” Sirius asked, before snarling and attacking the man in front of him,
crawling around and on his back like a spider and, with his elbows, twisting and breaking his neck
so aggressively it ended up turned the complete opposite way around, like an owl. Sirius forward-
rolled off of him as the man fell forward, and ended up writhing—not dead, recovering as his neck
healed, but disoriented. He got up as fast as he could and continued to fight, catching one of their
hands as she went to swipe down on him and snapping her arm in half, so that it was facing her
again.

“She attacked me,” Remus gasped, as they circled each other, still back to back. They worked
fluidly, blood and bone. Fighting beside Sirius was Remus’ favourite pastime. No two bodies
would ever work so magnetically. “And so they attacked her.”

Orion Black appeared on Remus’ right side, and scratched him down the arm. His shirt sleeve
ripped and he gasped in pain at the deep gashes that immediately began to gush blood.

Remus looked up at him, pissed the fuck off.

Orion swirled around to Remus’ left side as he plunged his longest knife through the underside of
his chin. The tip of it came out of the top of his head. He snarled, and Remus could see the blade
glinting in his mouth.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, and then kicked backwards, hitting Sirius’ calf to get his attention.

“Wh—” Sirius groaned, and Remus heard the hit. He heard a squelch, and a scream, and then
Sirius gasped. “What?”

“Parent incoming,” he replied, throwing Orion’s weakened form to his left. He did a sort of twirl
into Sirius’ periphery, and they circled to match him so that Sirius was facing his father head-on.

“Alright, Dad?” Sirius said, voice thick with adrenaline.

And then he kicked his father in the stomach so hard that he not only punted him across the
graveyard into the stone walls of the cathedral, but all the way through them.

The crack of the rubble echoed all around them. And Remus sighed.

“What?”

“I liked that knife,” he grunted, utilising his gun again to fend them off.

From behind him, he felt before he heard Sirius cackle.

“I love you, Remus!” he yelled.

And then he groaned in strife, and a severed arm went flinging behind him, landing on the grass a
few feet in front of Remus.

“Thanks for the arm,” he called in response.

Sirius dissolved back into laughter, and Remus followed.

As the fight went on it became painfully clear that the vampires that Remus was fighting weren’t
fighting him. They were fighting to get to Sirius. They barely even registered him until he
ambushed them, and even then when they fought back it was not to their true potential, for they
always had one eye on Sirius.

Behind them, Walburga was still being ambushed by two of her progeny. That fight was messy.
Brutal.

It hit Remus all in one.

“Oh my God,” he gasped, “Sirius, they’re protecting me!”

“What?”

Remus shot at the oncoming vampire, on his way to attack Sirius. Sirius. Attack Sirius.

He turned, shot at the two vampires Sirius was fighting to get them away for five seconds or so.
Turned to face him. Sirius was covered in blood, but his eyes were wild, exhilarated. There was a
suicidal curl to his mouth. He was enjoying himself.

“They’re protecting me,” Remus said. Pointing towards the three person fight, the tag-team on his
mother. “Because they see me as one of him. They’re protecting me in the same way that they’re
protecting the Horcrux—”

“Because you’re one of them—”

“Because I’m one of them—”

“And they can’t distinguish—”

“But your mother can,” Remus breathed. “She’s the one. They’re just mimics of what they used to
be, too dumb to see diversity. Your mother is the one they put the most work into. If they see her
attack me they’ll attack her.”

Sirius thought about this for one long second.

And then he grabbed Remus by the arm, and, inches away from being trampled on by three
bloodthirsty Purebloods, ran away.

Remus saw flickers of violence, of blood, of Black, and then the next he registered he was on the
other side of Walburga’s tomb, about ten feet from the rest of the vampires. And standing in a
triangle facing each other was him, Sirius, and Walburga herself.

She blinked, gathering her bearings. And then her face twisted into horror once more.

Remus looked to the dead-undead Purebloods, who had all traced their steps, and were making
their way like ducklings to a mother duck.

And, on a complete adrenaline rush, he launched forward and punched Walburga straight across
the face. Her head jerked to the side, and when she flung it back, she looked both furious and…
shocked.

He took a few steps back, and then, in the space of half a blink she was on him, throwing him
against her tomb, hand around his throat and squeezing. Remus couldn’t breathe.

But he reached out a hand, when Sirius moved. Told him to stop. Sirius wasn’t happy, but he did
stop.

The entourage were coming.

“Hunter,” she hissed, her voice sounding more demonic than woman, feral than vampiric, back to
her progeny. “You’re out of your depths.”

“No,” Remus choked. He heard the footsteps behind her. He couldn’t stop looking at her. Her eyes.
Sirius’ eyes. “I’m really—not.”

Her eyes flared. As carefully as he could, he manoeuvred a pointed stake out of his pouch, and
brought it up to stab directly through her wrist. She gasped, and let go. He breathed, and he
breathed again.

“We’ve killed you once,” Remus spat. He looked over her shoulder.

In a flash, Sirius was behind his mother, wrapping his arm around her throat.

“We can do it again,” he growled into her ear.

He glanced, once, at Remus. Jerked his head; Remus darted out of the way.

And then he dragged Walburga backwards, kicking and screaming, just to let her go. Threw her
onto the floor directly at the feet of the six snarling zombie-Purebloods—including her husband—
gaining on her. Malice in their eyes. Focus on another Black.
And they began to utterly rip her to pieces.

Remus couldn’t even see what was happening, they were crowding around her that much. But he
heard bones break, he saw blood, splattering on people’s arms and legs and clothes. And he heard
Walburga screaming. And screaming, and screaming.

Sirius took a step back, into the space beside Remus. He immediately reached out for Sirius’ arm,
grabbed onto it. Held him there.

The sun rose over the walls of the cathedral, into the courtyard, and shone golden embers on the
brutal second murder of Walburga Black.

Except—

“Stop,” Sirius gasped, after a minute or so of watching. “Stop.”

The zombie Purebloods listened.

They were protecting Remus. They were like the Inferi in the cave, trickable easily enough because
all they looked for was what they were programmed to look for. They were programmed to protect
the Horcrux. The Horcrux was on Walburga Black’s head. But it was also standing in front of
them, beside the Black who protected him the entire time, and they saw no difference. It is protect,
and protect. And they did; ripping apart the only person in the vicinity to attack Remus, they parted
like the Red Sea for Sirius, recognising him as an equal protector… and there the diadem was.
Slightly blood-stained, but completely intact on her head.

The same could not be said for her.

She was wrecked. Destroyed and desecrated. She was more blood than vampire, more bone than
woman. She was drooling it; her jaw was broken, one arm bent the wrong way and one clean off.
Her abdomen had been excavated and she was in a pile of her own guts. Blood seeping into the
grass. It made Remus feel sick, but Sirius didn’t flinch, not as he walked forward. Not as he
crouched in front of his kneeling mother.

He inhaled, and it was shaky.

Exhaled. Shakier.

Walburga only noticed him there at the last second. She opened her mouth, and for a long moment
no sound came out. Remus was surprised that she could still make sound at all.

When she did, blood bubbled and poured out of her mouth, so it was garbled. But it was coherent.

“Bastard firstborn,” she mumbled. Almost robotically. “Banished Cain.”

“Mother of mothers,” Sirius whispered back. Reaching out to tuck a stiff, bloody piece of her hair
behind her ear. Caressing the side of her face, or what was left of it.

And then she gasped, sickeningly, as Sirius plunged his hand into her chest. All the way down to
the wrist.

“Father of murder,” he finished, through his teeth. Looking into her eyes. Making her hear it.

With one jerk backwards, he pulled her heart right out of her chest. And like dominoes the
Purebloods all around him, including Orion, fell to the ground with a haunting finality.
Walburga didn’t. She choked, her eyes went glassy, and the blood spurted out of her like a fountain.
And then she just started to crumble. She started to disintegrate, from the jaw, the face, the head
down. Until there was nothing left of her but ash and the unbeaten heart clutched in Sirius’ blood-
coated hand. Nothing left but her real corpse, in the tomb she had died sitting up against. Remus,
from where he was standing, caught a glimpse of her lifeless, magicless body in the tomb, before,
like magic, it grinded its way shut. As did all of the others, except the one that had not opened.

The sunlight persisted. Glinting against the diadem in the ash.

Sirius dropped the heart. He reached out, with nimble fingers, and plucked it from the ground.
Walburga’s ashes seemed to fall off of it like water and Remus watched, from behind, as Sirius
held it: the delicate thing, he held it by the sides, with two blood stained fingers on blood stained
gems.

Slowly, he got up, and turned around. They walked to each other. They met in the middle.

Without regard for space, the only space between their bodies reserved for the diadem that they
were both admiring sitting between them, Sirius held it up. Remus watched as it glinted in the
sunlight. Admired it for what it was. Felt it, viscerally; so much magic flickering like flames inside
of him that he didn’t even know what to do. He didn’t know where to put it.

He let it tingle up his arms and up his fingertips as Sirius, wordlessly, with parted lips, reached up,
and placed the diadem on Remus’ head.

It fit perfectly. Sat comfortably atop the fluff of his hair. He closed his eyes, and he felt the magic
trickle down his spine like water.

Opened them.

And then he was reaching up, gripping onto Sirius’ blood-coated cheek, and kissing him.

It was dirty. It was holy. He kissed him ferociously, viciously, and Sirius kissed him back with just
as much longing, just as much violence. This is where they were born and bred. Amongst the
violence with blood on their hands and fire on their hearts. Tongue to tongue and heart to heart,
Sirius smeared Remus’ face with his mother’s blood as he gripped onto him, gasping into his
mouth, surrounded by corpses, unable to get enough.

Remus pushed him backwards. They didn’t let each other go. It was carnal. Carnal desire. One
might even say monstrous. There’s no place for them but this, that is the whole truth of it. There’s
no place for them except in blood, steeped in it; so much that it’s slippery on your fingers, rubber
and metallic on your tongues as you spit another’s blood into your other’s mouth and they take it,
and you become a part of them through the part of someone else you took. Because murder is
desire. And, oh, Remus could kill Sirius. He could fucking kill him. He could rip him to pieces and
glue them back together and he could bite down on every single crevice of his body until he’s
covered head to toe with bite marks and he could rip his flesh apart and he could maim him and he
could excavate him and he could be the wolf he truly is. Howl at the moon and the sun and the
stars. Eat him alive. He’s going to fucking eat him alive.

Remus got him pressed up against his mother’s tomb, and they were gasping, obscene; hands up
shirts, bloody fingertips on bloodier skin and Sirius can touch him like this and love him like that
and it’ll never, never get better than this. This is what their bodies were made for; don’t you see?
To find the one you belong fighting beside and fight him yourself. Fight him until you’re black and
blue. Until he is biting his fangs down on your bottom lip and drawing blood and you’re spitting it
back into his mouth. Until you can press him against his mother’s tomb and rip his shirt open and
lick his chest and fall to your knees, on blood-stained grass, next to ashes billowing in the wind.
Befriended by the corpses surrounding you.

More blood than person. They were more blood than person.

And Remus was blood, and blood was him, when the hand that had fed came down to grip his hair
so hard that it hurt. Smearing it everywhere. It got him high. Remus moaned around him and Sirius
leant back with one hand, gripping onto whatever he could find, smearing blood on the epitaph,
Mother of Mothers, while holding onto Remus’ hair with the other and fucking his mouth. Noises
and words slipped from his mouth, some incoherent, some not.

Remus hummed and moaned as he did. Gripping onto his hips and looking up at him, blinking as
he swirled his tongue a certain way. Pretty diadem on his head. Sirius looked down and made such
a filthy noise it might just have bounced right off the wall of ‘blasphemy’ and circled right back
around to religious.

Gasping, Sirius told him to look at him, so he did, and Sirius told him to take it, so he did, and
Sirius came down his throat and he gagged on it but he took it, blood and guts and all. And then
Remus grabbed the hem of Sirius’ shirt and told him to come down there, which he did, and on his
knees Remus got himself off as Sirius bit down on his neck, no fangs, just teeth, and when Remus
tapped him Sirius said “in my mouth” and he swiped all of his hair back into one hand in one
motion and dragged his tongue up and over the head as Remus came. Gargling his name at the
back of his throat along with the blood and the stars he saw, twitching in the morning sun.

With the most sought-after item on this side of the Atlantic on his head. Doom was impending
upon them: perhaps that’s what made it more exhilarating. God knows Remus and Sirius get off on
people watching them rip each other apart; what do you think the past eight years have been? What
the fuck do you think this is?

Done, they let their heart slow. Sirius pressed his bloody hands to Remus’ chest and knocked their
foreheads together. They breathed into each other’s mouths.

Sirius reached out his hand, and Remus took it.

And they ran for the hills.

Remus didn’t really register his laughter until he felt it, bubbling up at the back of his chest as they
pelted; they were hand-in-hand, running down the stairs on the outside of the cathedral. Hailed in
the morning star’s sunlight, they felt like Gods. At the bottom of the stairs Sirius yanked him and
Remus almost tripped, but he didn’t, and then they were running, as fast as they could down the
stone pathway. And Sirius was holding onto his hand and turning back as he ran to grin at him, hair
whipped every which way as he turned, and Remus was squeezing at his hand with one and
gripping onto the diadem on his head with his other to make sure it didn’t fall off, laughing out
loud, in tune with Sirius. A blood harmony.

Running, and running, and running. They became specks to the cathedral, shooting stars to the
rocks their feet were pelting on. Seen and heard in the sun. Each other’s enemy; each other’s thing.
And perhaps he was high on blood or sex or Sirius or perhaps he was just broken, but Remus didn’t
think he’d ever felt as euphoric as he did in that moment. As they ran and he ran and he ran.

Lily stood up in a flash as they tumbled through the church doors hand in hand.

“Where the fuck—” she started, shrill, and then her face fell and her jaw dropped in horror at the
bloody state of them. “What the fuck?!”
Dorcas got up, where she was in the shadows, her face coated in shock.

“No time,” Sirius gasped, slamming the doors behind them.

“Jesus,” Remus breathed, back pressed against the cathedral door as Sirius ran over to their (like,
three) bags and piled everything together. “Jesus.”

“Fucking hell,” Dorcas murmured, going to check on Remus and getting a good glimpse. “Is there
anyone after you?”

“No,” Sirius replied, as Lily moved to help him, “maybe. I don’t know. Fuck.”

Remus tried to make sure the door was locked and found his hands were too slippery with blood to
even lock it. Frowning, he turned to find a bowl of holy water at the door. He washed his hands in
the bowl, and ever so slyly made the cross over himself, chuckling at the irony.

With their bags piled in the middle of the altar, Lily fell to her knees, the three others following suit
very quickly afterwards.

“Right,” Lily said, placing the boot in the middle of the circle. All four of them were their knees
surrounding it, hiking up their bags on their shoulders. “We ready? On three?”

“On three,” murmured Dorcas. Remus nodded. Sirius simply looked at her.

“One,” she said. “Two,” she said.

They all placed one hand on different parts of it. The sun rose, and rose, and rose.

“Three,” Lily said, and then, without taking a breath, she closed her eyes and said the trigger word.

“Home.”

And it began again.

***

The world came to him spinning, and the first thing that Remus heard as he landed was the sound
of Regulus Black’s laughter.

His hand let go of the boot and gripped onto the grass and he felt Sirius’ blood-stained hand hold
onto his neck to stabilise him. The air was crisp and it was dark: five hours behind the timezone
they’d just been hurled out of it was around midnight and the only lighting was coming from inside
the house and the lights draped on the bushes.

This meant that, when Remus finally looked up, collapsed onto the floor with Sirius, Lily and
Dorcas all on their knees behind him, Regulus and James’ faces were glowing gently in the
warmth.

This means that he could see each wrinkle of their faces, each expression. Each follicle of Regulus
Black’s eyebrows as they raised, looking at his brother.

Nobody moved for a long, long second, and then the breakaway occurred. Sirius’ hand twitched.
He gasped and, coated in their mother’s undead blood, it moved from the back of Remus’ neck,
and reached out for his little brother.

Regulus was running.

Sirius got up, fumbling so much he almost tripped over himself; one yearning hand became two.
He was covered in blood but there might never have been a more fitting reunion for the two who
were bathed in it. For the elder who only knew love as war and the little brother who only knew
love as the elder. Little brother who killed for love. For the four year old who’d come home with
blood around his mouth and said look, look Sirius, look what I did! I killed them all for you.

He killed them all for elder, he would, for he who was mother and father and son, for he who ran,
or stumbled, down the path as Regulus pelted across the lawn. Everybody else was in slow motion
except for them, and blood met blood in the middle as they collided, tight as can be, as if no time
had passed and also as if the world had spun a million times without them touching and now they
were making up for lost time.

Regulus threw himself at his brother with such force that they almost fell, but they didn’t. They just
clung, Sirius laughing, Regulus holding on with gripping fingernails and wide eyes over Sirius’
shoulder. He was in shock, and Remus knew the exact feeling; like it was your very first and like it
was your very last. His hands moved up to card through Sirius’ hair, grip it, and they came back
bloody. The blood of their maker. One wash and she’s gone but they’re still here.

After a moment Regulus pulled back, his hands moving to firmly plant on Sirius’ shoulders. He
looked a wreck: he looked so little.

“France,” he gasped, as if he’d been waiting to say this for years, and years, and years.

“Reggie, Reggie—Reggie,” Sirius was saying, ragged breaths, “wh—France?”

“France,” Regulus heaved, “France. 1703. In 1703, I was in France. I don’t remember where but I
do remember watching a sunrise, for some reason, and I remember the feeling of longing even
though I didn’t know what it was all the time, and I remember there was a swarm of bees and I
thought they were the most fascinating thing and I wished that you were there to see them with
me.”

Sirius nodded. His lip was trembling.

“I saw you in all of the life that I saw,” said Regulus. Small songbird. “For five hundred years. I
saw you in all of it.”

His face was smeared with more blood as Sirius cupped his face with both of his hands and,
without a word, pulled him back in. This one was gentle; there was no room for violence in
between them both. Just the love that it breeds.

Over his shoulder, where Regulus couldn’t see him, Sirius’ face crumpled. Remus watched as he
squeezed his eyes shut, tears falling out of them, and pressed his hand to his mouth to suppress his
sobs with so much force his knuckles went white. After three seconds or so, he dropped his hand,
and, against a face that could be paper, his voice was smooth as steel. “I saw you too,” he breathed.
“I never stopped.”

Regulus’ shoulders bunched up.

As he watched Regulus and Sirius hugging, Remus’ eyes flitted to James, in shock and watching
Sirius, and then they flitted to James’ right. Where a little girl who’d come around the corner was
tugging on a blonde boy’s sleeve and taking one small step forward, and then another, and then
another.

“Draco,” she whispered. He couldn’t hear her but he could read her lips. “Draco, it’s Remus.”

“Remus?”

“Remus!”

Remus himself, laughing gruffly through tears, barely had the time to pull himself up straight on
his knees before the two of them were collapsing to theirs, skidding on the grass and plummeting
into him.

They hit him with an oomph and yet his chest was stuttering ferociously as he laughed, feeling hot
tears rush out of his eyes, rocking back with the force of their hug and holding the pair of them to
his body; Astoria on one side of his neck, Draco on the other.

“Hi, you two,” Remus whispered, thickly, grinning. Astoria looked up at him and laughed, biting
her lip. “Oh—hello. Hi.”

“You’re covered in blood,” Draco murmured. “Why are you always covered in blood?”

“Who gives a fuck?!” Astoria spat, which was so hilarious it made Remus burst out laughing and
cling to her even tighter. He fell on his heels, murmuring how he’d missed them, kissing Astoria’s
forehead firmly and digging his nose into Draco’s hair. Laughing and crying and laughing.

And then James looked their way, finally. His face twitched, eyebrows knitting themselves
together.

“…Dorcas?” he whispered, taking a step forward.

Dorcas, standing up, exhaled sharply in a laugh, tears in her eyes.

“Hi Jamie,” she gasped, pressing her hands to her mouth as her lip trembled.

“Dorcas,” he said. His tears broke through the line in record timing. “Dorcas—”

Behind Remus, Lily laughed through her own tears, pressing a hand to her mouth.

“Dorcas!” James yelped, and then he ran, continuing to yell “Dorcas—oh my God!”

She reached out, bursting into tears as he ran to her. He smacked into her like a concrete wall and
they went fucking flying.

“Oh my God!” James yelled, his eyes insanely wide, pulling back and cupping her face, squeezing
it. “Oh my God! Oh my fucking God! Dorcas! Dorcas!”

Dorcas laughed, sobbing, and nodded, holding his face right fucking back.

“It’s you,” he said, turning to Regulus—settled in beside Sirius who had his arm around his
shoulder—jaw entirely dropped. “It’s—what—it’s you!”

Regulus walked over to her, blankly, shocked. James did not let her go, keeping a hold on her arm
and refusing to let go, repeating his exclamations so aggressively the people who were lingering
outside had come to see what the commotion was; but she turned to Regulus and laughed, nodded,
and his lips curled up and when she hugged him it was ferocious and it was tender and it was kind.
“Get—get–” James snapped, waving his arm somewhere towards the house, at God knows who,
eyes still wide and irrefutably shocked and hand still gripped onto Dorcas’ wrist even when Sirius
walked over to him, grinning, and wrapped his arms around his neck to hug his head. “Fuck—get
the rest—”

Out of the corner of his eye, still holding onto the two children on the floor, all three looking up at
the scene and watching Dorcas cry and love and be so fucking loved Remus caught Lily walk out
from behind him; caught Regulus catching her too. Caught the smile that appeared on his face like
lightning—“Lily”—it was so bright it actually pushed at his eyes, made them squint, and he looked
like a child as he bounded to her and engulfed her in his arms, her hands around his back flaming as
she cried I missed you desperately into his shoulder. Regulus laughed, closing his eyes and swaying
her.

And then a flurry of blonde appeared in the door.

A crowd had gathered now, and people were muttering, laughing and gasping, as Dorcas stood tall.
Her clothes were clean and her eyes were bright as she soldiered on; she spun a little bit, seeing
people who saw her dead, people who felt it. People everywhere who knew her. The people who
knew her were everywhere, and they were everyone. But one

Marlene took a step forward.

It was almost like Romeo and Juliet. Lily, hands wrapped around Regulus’ neck as she turned to
watch, James stumbling backwards and bumping into her. He turned and immediately burst into
tears and as she jumped from one of her boys to the other they bypassed Remus’ vision, for Dorcas
took a step forward, and Marlene another.

Marlene opened her mouth, and out of it came a harrowing, shuddering, tragic, “No.”

Dorcas, her heart only betrayed by the light in her eyes when she looked up at Marlene and the
shakiness of her voice, gestured towards the tiny corner of remaining construction and said: “I see
you let this place fall to pieces without me, then? I’m disappointed, McKinnon.”

Marlene exhaled so sharply it could cut glass, in an action that was half a sob and half a scoff.

“No,” she said, simply. “No, there’s—there’s not—” her eyes flickered, from James and Lily,
Remus on the floor with the kids, Sirius and his brother. Life being kind to everyone else. But it
had never been to her.

“Come here,” Dorcas said, softly. She reached out one singular hand. Marlene looked at it like it
was an alien. “Come here, sweet girl.”

Five more seconds of Marlene simply staring. Blank-faced. Dorcas’ hand did not waver, she
looked at it, shaking her head as she began to walk.

And then she was running down the stairs, her hair flowing behind her like the reins of a horse
gone rogue as she shot her way through the air and directly into Dorcas’ chest, with an oomph from
the latter and a wail from the former, clinging onto the back of her head and the side of her
shoulders as if fearful that she’d fall apart in front of her at any given moment.

“Don’t you dare,” Marlene spat, as Dorcas held her, smelling her hair, rubbing her hands up her
back and crying as well, “ever go do something as fucking stupid as get yourself killed ever again.”

“Not planning on it,” Dorcas huffed, face deep in her neck, moving down to map every point of
skin she could find, nose to collarbone.
“Fuck you. I cannot believe you.” Marlene sniffed, bringing Dorcas’ face back to her. Eye to eye,
thumb trailing circles over her cheeks. “Idiot. You big, stupid idiot.” Dorcas grinned, and it was
thunder.

“I know. I love you.”

“God—” Marlene cut off, letting out another sob. Dorcas wiped her tears away. “I love you too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” said Dorcas, forcefully, leaning forward and resting her head against Marlene’s, “that’s the
first time we’ve said that. Say it again.”

Marlene choked on her tears again, leaning forward to hug her. “I love you.” Nose to nose.
Fingernails scratching scalps, drawing blood. “I love you. I love you I love you I love you I love
you.”

“I love you so much.”

“I c–can’t—” Marlene gasped, crying uglily, “I– you—you died, you—”

She dissolved into gut-wrenching sobs, yet again, and Dorcas kissed her temple. A kiss for each
breathless I love you that fell out of her mouth.

“I’m here,” Dorcas whispered, resting her nose on the top of Marlene’s head. Her shoulders shook
and Dorcas rubbed her hand up and down her back, soothingly, heel to bone. “I’m not going
anywhere.”

A bridge to a bridge. Black to white. Marlene was her map, her cartographer’s muse. That kind of
direction didn’t come often; following the same path to the same destination and getting off at the
same stop and going to sleep and dreaming the same dreams. Heart to heart. Hands splayed over
the left side of their backs so no one could ever intrude again.

“You’re real. Are you real?” Marlene sniffled into her shoulder.

“I’m real,” Dorcas nodded. “I promise.” She spun her a little, running her hands through her hair
like she was a child. Making brief eye contact with Remus, kissing the side of her head again. “I’m
here.”

The group of them crowded around; when Marlene finally was able to detach herself from Dorcas
she turned to find Sirius, grinning and scrunching up her nose as she pulled him in (only to be
plagued with jests making fun of her snotty crying).

And it seemed to only sort of hit James who, exactly, was in front of him when Sirius hugged
Marlene—perhaps he’d been seized by the shock of Dorcas—and then he was leaving Regulus and
Lily’s side and sprinting towards them to hug Sirius, really hug Sirius. They all sort of gravitated;
Remus was there and he was intermingled with the group, Draco and Astoria at his heel, and
Regulus was hugging him and laughing, smacking him on the back, and Marlene was hugging him
and gasping, turning to Lily and immediately crying again and Dorcas was saying, over and over
again, one more, we’re missing one—

“Fuck right off.”

All of their heads snapped up to the doorframe, in which instead of a flurry of blonde, it was pink;
pink pyjamas, black bonnet on her head. She was standing, arms limp by her side, and her
eyebrows were pinched in the middle, her mouth forming a perfect, gentle O.

Dorcas let out the most melodious, barking laugh and caught her tongue between her teeth, tears
immediately springing to her eyes.

“You lazy bitch,” she called, voice thick, “were you asleep?”

“It’s 1 in the morning,” Mary mumbled, rubbing at her eyes. “And you’re dead.”

“Well, one of those things is true.”

Remus pressed the back of his wrist to his mouth to stop himself from laughing. He couldn’t even
begin to express the mess bubbling in his chest, looking at Mary, looking at Dorcas. Looking back
at Mary, who was shaking her head.

“No,” she breathed. “No way. No, fuck off.”

“Mary.”

Her tears came so quickly it was lethal: pressing a hand to her mouth, Mary sobbed, “No.”

“Mary,” Remus called.

She turned to him, her mouth still ajar. Breathing so heavily her chest was going concave. Her
cheeks were wet and her eyes were wild. Remus loved her so fucking much.

Overcome with emotion, he nodded. “Yeah, Mary,” he whispered, unable to fight his sparking
smile. “Yeah.”

Mary’s mouth opened a little bit more, her eyebrows raising; she let out a noise that seemed
involuntary, high pitched and utterly raw, and then she was following the same path, yearning the
same, reaching the same two hands and clawing to the same body. Dead and not dead.

Colliding with noise to wake up a village and tears to flood a lake the three of them ended up on
the floor. Mary was wrecked. She just clung to Dorcas, around the neck, and cried into her
shoulder. Cried into Remus’. They were all three crying, and laughing, and laughing at the fact that
they were crying. The entire group had gravitated together—there was no one who wasn’t touching
another person, no one without tears in their eyes.

“Where’s Pandora?” Marlene asked a minute or so later. Thick with the amount of tears she’d shed
her voice was hoarse, her lips chapped.

Sirius froze up beside her. She was curled up into his chest, arm around his waist, so she felt the
frostiness first. Then she saw it as the rest of them did.

Marlene’s face fell. James pressed a hand to his mouth.

“Oh, no,” said Mary, looking between Dorcas and Remus. This one was less than emotional. It was
heartbreaking. “No.”

They’d ended up slumped on the floor, Dorcas in the middle with her arm around the both of them.
She hung her head and Remus looked solemnly at a blade of grass, unable to even look at anyone.

There was a gentle thrum of silence as the dust settled. No noise.

 And then a choking sound coming from the hollow of Lily’s throat broke the silence as, safe for
the first time in months cradled by both Regulus and James, she broke down in tears.

Chapter End Notes

i swear to god i wrote this chapter last october (genuinely) and when i came back to it
after not reading it for so long i was SCANDALISED by those two in the graveyard
like FUCKKK WHY ARE U FUCKING AND SUCKING RN??? i got so
embarrassed..... but i kept it in despite my urge to delete it because once upon a time i
wrote this utter depraved shit and knew at least one person would like it so. i hope
someone did. :')

also i found the scene in the graveyard – especially the scene w sirius and walburga -
sooo enjoyable. i think sirius needed to say that stuff he did, i don't think he knew he
did until he was saying it (hell knows i didn't until i was writing it) but. yeah, he did.
very cathartic for me also i just loved writing walburga she was so cunty in the
absolute worst way

also also. dorcas and remus bonding again <3 they're getting back to how it was before

OH AND FUCK THE WHOLE ENDING LMFAO yeah so like ive never cried so
much while writing this fic before i wrote that ending. it was literally HIT AFTER
HIT AFTER HIT like, i wrote it all in one sitting, but i had to write it in increments
because every reunion made me cry so much i had to take a breath. this is very special
for me and i waited a really long time for it (8 months) but you guys waited even
longer (a Whole Year) so. thank you for waiting <333 THEY'RE ALL
TOGETHER!!!!!!!!! FINALLYYYY

anyway i'll shut up now, i just wanted to say thank you to everyone who is so insanely
kind to me on this fic and others: i've said it before but writing has been quite difficult
for me for the past couple of months, maybe better part of half a year, so i really
appreciate it. lots of love <3333
 thirty four
Chapter Summary

home

Chapter Notes

hey... hi! surprise! felt silly and goofy and this chapter was surprisingly easy to edit so.
here i am!

this is all around a much lighter one, tbh. i think the only cw's would be, like, mild
smut and depictions of ptsd but that's just the fic in general lmao

enjoyyy
jude xxxx

See the end of the chapter for more notes

REMUS

The room was quiet. Achingly so.

Achingly different, too, for more reasons than one.

The most apparent was the appearance. Remus hadn’t been here since the day of the battle of
Whittaker; he hadn’t been inside of this house since he’d almost burned down with it. They’d done
a very good job of rebuilding after the destruction, that’s for certain. It was put together. It was
homely.

The curtains were different. The plastering was smoother. The scorch marks from where Lily had
set the doorframe on fire were gone. The marks on the kitchen table from various knives, thrown
and stabbed into the wood, were gone—well, it was a brand new table, obviously. Brand new
belongings. Old new people. The room was dimmer, somehow; bleak. But maybe that wasn’t
because of the rebuild. Maybe that was because it was 4am, and something akin to a dementor had
drained… everything.

The set up around the familiar unfamiliar table went, familiarly and unfamiliarly, like this.

Marlene was at the head on one side. She was sitting, as of current, beside Dorcas; she’d scooted
her chair around a bit so that she was more so on the corner to get maximum closeness. Their heads
had been dropped and there had been hushed words exchanged between the two of them for a little
bit, but that had long ceased in favour of two pairs of tightly grasped hands. Marlene was resting
her head on her hand, staring into space, while Dorcas sat, rigid. There was an empty cup in front
of her with a blood-stained straw—Mary had prepared it for her before she’d settled herself in on
Dorcas’ other side, which is where she was now. Holding onto her other hand, resting her head on
her shoulder. Mary’s eyes were closed. Her breathing was slow.

On Mary’s other side was James. He was sitting and staring into space almost directly opposite
Remus. Leaning back on his chair, his hand was resting on the table at a rather odd angle, as it had
not been him who had deposited it there but Lily, whos hand was clasped into his where it rested
beside two coffee cups. She was inclined gently towards Regulus, sitting beside her, who had also
been exchanging hushed words with her. His hand was rested gently atop James and Lily’s joint
hands. Neither of them had taken a sip of their coffee.

On the opposite side of the table, at the end, was Sirius. He’d been rigidly still with his eyes closed
for ten minutes or so and had not breathed once. Remus had, at some point, reached over
underneath the table to place his palm over Sirius’ knee, perhaps only to crave some kind of
movement. He’d gotten it; Sirius had rested his palm over Remus’, fingers through fingers. Sirius
was still on the surface but underneath the table he was was tracing circles on the back of Remus’
hand with his palm.

On Remus' other side there were two warm seats. To his immediate, Astoria, and to hers, Draco.
They’d been home the better part of three hours and with the exception of the forty-five minute
shower Remus had taken, they hadn’t left him alone.

He was tired. He could feel the exhaustion sting at his eyes. But he could also feel nothing at all
but the blood sucked out of this room like a gaping wound never to be healed again.

The head of the table, opposite Marlene, was empty. Pandora’s cauldron had survived the fire—so
far, it was the only recognisable object Remus had seen—and it had been placed on a side table in
the corner. Like a fucking decoration.

Remus looked at Dorcas.

Oh, how the world felt upside down. It was wrong and it was written all over her face. He could
see it so viscerally—he knew her, see. He knew her so well. He could see her loss as if it was
painted. Perhaps the reason that the room had stuttered, that it was aching, that Sirius had not
breathed and James had not averted his eyes and Lily and Regulus had not had the strength to even
swirl one drop of their coffee was because two lives were head to head and it had put the game on
pause.

A life for a life? A soul for a soul? What do you do with the grief of losing someone and the joy of
getting someone back? Where do you put it all?

Does it leave you incomplete, or does it, somewhat twistedly, complete you further? Are they not
two halves of a whole; to be lost and to be found? And oh, love, the beating heart of the even ten
sitting at this table. Pandora is dead and Dorcas is alive, but it’s not an equal exchange; it’s death.
No one knows how to navigate it. There’s nothing poetic about Remus taking forty-five minutes to
wash Pandora’s blood off of his shaking hands, all there is is hurt.

And death makes no exceptions. It takes and it takes and it gives and it gives. It’s ruthless, brutal—
it’s brutal, all of this is brutal. Remus has had his knees kicked in again, and again, and again, but
he’d turned the shower off eventually. He’d gotten out. He’d just had to take a little bit of time to
do it, but he did it. You endure and you endure.

The room is at a standstill, of shock, of the ripping away of that love like a vine from a wall. But
they haven’t cancelled each other out. Remus looked at Dorcas and felt overwhelmingly happy. He
looked at the empty space at the end of the table and felt achingly sad. They coexist.
Sirius’ eyes snapped open as soon as the handle on the door turned.

“Ana,” he breathed, jerking up and moving swiftly around the table to engulf her in a hug.

“Oh, Sirius,” she gasped as he wrapped his arms around her; she held him back, tight. They moved
fluidly in the hug, stepping a few paces away from the door as Minerva entered after her, and then
Benjy.

Remus hadn’t even realised he was standing until he was edging past Sirius and Ana, pulling apart
now to let a shaky James engulf her into a hug, and moving towards Benjy.

“Fuck am I glad that you’re okay,” Benjy muttered, patting Remus on the back as they hugged,
tight. He looked older since the last time Remus had seen him, wearier. He’d grown a beard. He’d
lost people. They all had.

Marlene got up to speak to Ana, whose huddle with Sirius and James had sort of migrated their way
down to the end of the table, and Remus let Benjy go. He turned.

Dorcas was standing. Eyebrows raised.

“Oh,” Benjy whispered. He gaped for a moment, staring at her. Took a step forward. “Oh,
Dorcas.”

And then Dorcas was sobbing into his shoulder, wrapped in a hug so tight it might’ve cut off the
circulation if she still had it.

Minerva and Benjy had been out on field in the city with the last of Lily’s fiendfyre, investigating
attacks on what Remus would come to learn were Pureblood prisons. Peverell, deep underground
and just an hour upstate, had been hit most recently by Ana’s vampires in another daring heist that
saved just over two hundred vampires, so about as much as Dolohov’s had. It was not the most
successful mission despite the comparison as Peverell is actually about double the size of Dolohov,
but they had still saved more than they had lost. Saved as many innocent vampires as they could.
They’d been summoned back by Marlene at the same time that Sirius had reached out to Ana (who
had been waiting very patiently since Mavi and Dorcas had left New York) and they had just
arrived at the same time.

Minerva said nothing. Just wordlessly hugged Remus, and then wordlessly hugged Dorcas.
Looking at her with all of the knowledge and none of the hesitation.

And then—just as Remus thought that was it, not knowing that Minerva and Benjy had had a third
companion—in walked Jul.

“Oh my God,” Remus gasped, rushing to engulf his little friend into a hug immediately. Jul yelped
at his aggression and then laughed against him—a cackle, really—holding him tight and smacking
him on the back.

Their hands shook with a tremor that Remus knew would never fully dissipate, and they had a cane
in one of their hands. Their hair had grown to hang just over their shoulders and it was mussed and
dirty. But they had all of the life in their eyes when they pulled back, and went to hug Lily, who
squealed when she saw them and then cried in their arms.

The next few minutes gave way to another, albeit miniature, reunion session. After Jul appeared
Isabela, who had been home and upstairs waiting for their return—Remus had already seen her
when they’d gotten back—and then after Bel appeared Percy. Remus had not seen him since before
Whittaker; despite living in the same house up in Canada as him for almost four weeks, he hadn’t
seen him once in the wake of Oliver’s death. He looked the same, of course, eternally unchanging
from that seventeen year old baby face, but there was a world weariness in his eyes that hadn’t
been there the last time Remus had seen him.

Sirius, when he turned away from Ana, saw Percy and almost deflated. He hugged him and it
lasted the better part of a minute. No words, just touch.

As the party migrated, some people taking seats, some not, another figure appeared at the door.
Remus didn’t know who she was, but it didn’t take long for him to figure it out.

“Dolohov?” Regulus blurted, going rigid almost immediately.

Ah, Mavi. Of course it was. Remus didn’t know he’d expected her to look like anything but
somehow she looked exactly like he had; silky hair was tied back in a ponytail, office-style black
dress on. Beautiful. She was incandescently so, caught between Pureblood radiance and Pureblood
rot. Sirius inhaled very sharply beside him, while Dorcas looked up and smiled, fondly.

“Baby Black,” Mavi said, “it’s been ever so long.”

Regulus stared at her for a moment. And then he let out a bark of a laugh.

“Christ,” he muttered. “Mavi Dolohov.”

“You know each other?” Ana asked, squinting at Mavi. “You never mentioned, Blue.”

“We have a—history,” Mavi replied blithely, waving her hand around.

Beside Regulus, James’ eyes narrowed. He sat up and shuffled closer—as close as his chair
positioning could allow—and if the movement of his arm was any sort of tell, laid his hand to rest
on Regulus’ thigh. Regulus softened almost instantly, glancing at him for half a second as if his
head had been turned that way against his will and then turning back. In this half a second, a grin
had grown on Mavi’s face.

“Ah,” she murmured, eyes flickering to Dorcas. “You were right, then.”

Dorcas scoffed. “I know I was right.”

“Didn’t think he had it in him.”

“Um,” said James, “excuse me?”

“Later, Jamie,” Dorcas said.

“And him?” Mavi said, turning to Sirius, who went rigid as she looked at him. “Which one is—”

Remus, standing behind Sirius, could not see but could hear him snarl as soon as she acknowledged
him. Instinctively he reached out to tame him, as he always did. He placed a gentle hand on his
shoulder and Sirius’ face cleared, though he was still grinding his teeth. Mavi was unperturbed.

“Right,” she murmured, smiling. “You’re his. Got it.”

She whirled around on her heel, looking at Dorcas, who made a face.

“And so you—“

“Don’t do it, Mavi.”

“Yours must be—”

“I’ll kill you.”

Mavi’s eyes flickered around the room. Landed on Marlene, a few spaces away. Landed, more
particularly, on the ridged frown caught between her eyebrows that could cut through stone.

“Ah. The uptight blonde,” Mavi said. “Checks out.”

Dorcas glanced at (the now grumpy) Marlene, looked back at Mavi and then scoffed a laugh, going
to hug her.

“Glad you’re alive, Meadowes,” Mavi murmured.

“How nice.”

“Surprised, as well.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

Sirius sighed, but ultimately said nothing. Remus held his hand until it untensed.

About fifteen minutes later, the table was full, and the door was closed. Marlene McKinnon cleared
her throat and, at the head of the table, opposite one empty chair that none of them could bear to
fill… she stood.

It was Marlene, Dorcas, then Mary. James and Lily had swapped seats so she was now beside
Mary and James was now beside Regulus. Next to Regulus was Ana, then Mavi, then Minerva,
then Benjy. Jul and Bel, side by side. Percy, Draco, Astoria, Remus, Sirius. Seventeen people.

Their inner circle had expanded in the outer circle’s demise. There was a lot of loss, a lot Remus
didn’t even know about. Most of the Weasley’s weren’t with them anymore, just Bill and Percy.
Charlie had died of his injuries a few weeks after Whittaker, and Molly had left, unable to cope
anymore. A lot of the witches had passed, too. Half of the vampires. Ted and Tonks had not been
heard of, not even a sliver. Fleur had taken to helping train some of the vampires and witches at
home who had not had much, if any, battle experience. The girl was lethal with a sword but
terrified to use it. The war had changed a lot of people.

There were more people here than before, and yet there were so little. Perhaps those they had lost
had cut as deep as a knife. Remus almost felt resentful. Resentful to the gap in their stitchings that
had let the water flow in. Pandora had been cut away and now they were floating aimlessly
somewhere out at sea. Remus was sitting next to a fifteen year old and a sixteen year old that, six
months ago, were barely even allowed to be in the house. Nowadays Astoria is more involved than
her father or her sister. In fact she’s the only one of them you’ll ever see. Ambrose mourns his wife
so deeply he’s barely existing, and Daphne is so ashamed to show her face that the only person that
sees it is the bark of the trees she runs through.

Marlene stood up. Cleared her throat.

“Let’s get into it, then,” she said.

The meeting took an hour and forty-five minutes. They talked about the future of the war. They
talked about the future of Boardwalk. They talked about their plans, the Horcruxes. They tracked
recent activities from Riddle, any crop-ups, any leads. They caught each other up on individual
escapades. The diadem sat, heavy and bloody, in the middle of the table. In this enduring room in
this enduring house in this enduring city under these enduring foggy skies, they endured.

Through it all, ceaselessly, the chair at the head of the table stayed empty.

Remus sat and listened as the war began again.

***

Two days settled in, worlds spilling through his fingers, Remus slipped through the door onto the
porch and shut it gently behind him.

Jul had a cigarette held out between their two fingers without even looking. They were too
preoccupied by looking very staunchly up at the sky. Remus took the cigarette and settled in beside
them on the porch.

“It’s getting bad again,” Jul murmured. Remus tilted his head, looking up to the murk.

They were right. It was. The sky was getting foggier, the air quality getting worse. Dementor
activity had spiked in New York, though it hadn’t decreased in London. He was making more. He
had to be.

They killed the Prime Minister yesterday. Lily had listened to two minutes of the radio, and then
turned it off, and it hadn’t been turned on since.

What had been turned on, however, were their radios. Lily’s was connected to the outside world,
the humans and their channels, but as of last week they had a new shiny comms room and shiny
new radios to interlink the boroughs of the city and all of the associations dotted around the state.
There were new direct and encrypted apparition points, connecting Boardwalk to the Bunker and
back again, and a whole web of connected phone lines and radio signals and magical post boxes
that knitted the movement up all nice, like a newly stitched scarf.

Connecting this side and that side. Connecting Marlene’s vampires and Ana’s vampires.
Connecting everyone who had the same two things in common: hatred for Tom Riddle, and faith in
Sirius Black.

People had been in and out; things had been moving, working, flowing. The depletion of people at
Boardwalk had not been replenished, as there were still a very miniscule number of people left
actually living there, but there were so many visitors and bonds being formed and alliances being
made and groups learning to work alongside each other that it felt like everyone could have just—
returned from the dead. Sometimes, as Remus walked through the grounds and weaved his way
through bodies and bodies, it felt like it had before. But there was a renewed sense of morbidity
echoing through the hallways and up towards the suffocating sky. Darkness, even.

So, yes, it felt like everyone should have returned from the dead, but in truth only one person had.
And that person had been… throwing herself into it, for lack of a better term.

Dorcas had been compensating. Remus knew this, because he knew her. She had spent the past
week and a half boiling herself bloody and sucking herself dry attempting to corroborate her
position in the war once more. Or, in an attempt to accommodate her overwhelming guilt.

She hadn’t had to try very hard, to be fair, with the corroboration at least. Even strangers from
Ana’s side knew her, or at least knew of her; she’d been stared at many a time in the past few days,
walking with Remus down the hallway, whispers of her name as she passed.

She was the raising of Lazarus, the crowned defiance. Tom Riddle had killed her and she had not
stayed dead and that was important.

So she was a force—she always had been, obviously. She’d been born to be great. Remus knew
that. He knew that when he met her, when she became the second person he’d ever called family.
He knew that when she stormed Hotel Transylvania and became the reason they were here. She
was the reason they got the Basilisk venom, figured out that the Horcruxes were Horcruxes. She
was the reason they were where they were now. Dorcas was putting her all into the effort but she
needn’t; she was the reason things had continued after Whittaker, and everybody knew that.

Remus’ world had stopped, that day. But his life had started.

It was hard to navigate sometimes, for he hadn’t wanted to start a new life. He hadn’t wanted his
old one to end. He’d grown quite fond of it, but of course fondness doesn’t equal protection. He’d
changed, intrinsically, and he wasn’t ashamed or upset about it anymore. The pieces had sort of
stuck together now—more so than when he’d been floating, in the immediate aftermath, collecting
shards soaring through time and space and letting them go when they cut him and swiped at him
with claws. All he’d clung onto, after Dorcas, was his anger and his death.

He can look back now… ah, she’d fucking hate this. But he can look back now and say with
solemnity that at least he got shit done. Because of her he destroyed two of them. Because of her—
everything was because of her. Dorcas was hope, she was hope to him.

Now see, there was a committee running this leg of the war, it was Sirius, Ana, Marlene and
Dorcas.

Sirius had settled in with a locked jaw and fire in his eyes, the history of a burning touch to his
veins, and he was dedicated. The thing about Sirius is, whether he wanted to be a leader or not (not)
he was in a very precarious position of being basically the manifestation of everyone’s only hope.
And that is what he wasn’t running away from, not anymore. No matter how much he wanted to.
Sirius and the girls, they made the decisions. For Ana had the loyalty on her half. Marlene had the
leadership on theirs. Sirius had the longevity, the shining symbolism, the name and the myth. And
Dorcas… well, she sort of had everything, now.

Remus watched Sirius, now, out in the gloom and enduring light. Sleeves rolled up. Fleur Delacour
and Lavender Brown were out by the lake, training up some witches with knives and hunters with
magical items respectively. And Sirius was… well, showing off his skills. Mingling with the
community. At the be all and end all he loved vampires and they loved him.

He locked eyes with Remus across the way, and his heart almost stopped beating. Almost.

They just looked. Just stared. An invisible string. Sirius looked away first, but it seemed painful.

“You’re out,” Jul said. Remus frowned and turned to them before realising that they meant his
cigarette had gone out. He hadn’t noticed. He was still looking at Sirius.

Jul reached over and pressed the butt of theirs to Remus’, re-lighting it.

“Sap,” they teased, and Remus scoffed.

“Shut up.”

They smoked in silence. Remus watched the witches hold knives like they were completely foreign
objects. The sky was gloomy but the air was not cold; it was rather humid as the August heat was
combining with the fog. A few of them had skirts on and short-sleeved tops. Sirius was in a dress.
“You’ve got two weeks now, right?” Jul asked quietly. Remus exhaled and cleared his throat.

“Yeah,” he replied, after a while. “Thirteen days.”

August 22. The next full moon.

“You sure I can’t come?”

“No,” Remus said, kicking their foot lightly. Jul kicked him back.

“I’d be an asset. I’m really good at sneaking around. And I love dogs.”

“I’m going to deck you in a minute,” Remus said, but he couldn’t stop the laugh from escaping
him. Jul chuckled too, taking a drag of their cigarette.

It had been his moment of calm, being out here with them. It had been this way since post-Malfoy
Manor. Remus was at peace for a moment, here; it comforted him, the fact that so much had
changed, but this had not. Sharing a cigarette with Jul on the porch had not. The first proper
conversation they’d had, post-emergency-meeting, after Remus had gotten approximately twelve
hours sleep and three more showers, Jul had said, “So you’re a werewolf, now?”, and Remus had
said yes, and they had tutted and said, “That’s rough, buddy.” and then started talking about their
hair. An hour later Remus was giving them a haircut. So much had changed but this had not.

It was almost startling, the moments that reminded him of his old life. In amongst the hubbub and
the chaos, the newness and the shininess of a Boardwalk that had been rebuilt, it wasn’t the same,
but it was. The kitchen table wasn’t the same but the bickering around it on a breakfast morning
was. The hallways were not the same but the echoes of lives lived, the reverberating memories,
they were. His and Sirius’ bedroom. It had been entirely burnt down. But, upon entering it for the
first time, the room felt so starkly familiar that Remus had lost his breath. So had Sirius, upon
noticing the bedside table; the picture frame that resided there. The only thing that had somehow
survived. A picture of James, Marlene and Sirius in the 90s. James smiling, bomber jacket and
glasses, leaning into Marlene’s shoulder. Sirius giving her an aggressive kiss on the cheek.
Marlene’s squirming, yet soft smile. Echoes of lives lived, gone with the wind.

In this first two days so far the taste of Pandora has lain everywhere that Remus went. She was in
the flowers on the vase on the side. She was in the ivory keys of the piano that Regulus played
away at night. She was in each and every room and each and every room held her close. Remus
walked with her arm-in-arm out of the infirmary. He saw her sitting at the head of the table so
vividly that if anyone else tried to sit there he wanted, briefly, to strangle them.

So, the world continued on, and they continued with the world. It was getting bad again. The sky
was getting darker. And the chaos and the crowds were increasing, operations running, bit by bit as
if machinery cut from the sharpest of metals, the most venomous of tongues.

As each hour passed, Remus felt himself gearing up. Whether inherently or not inherently,
intentionally or unintentionally, he was. He didn’t want to, but his Survivor’s guilt does not
discriminate against a wolfish body preparing for war. Each twinge of his senses, each expansion
of his lungs as they prepare to howl, howl, howl, make him feel like a fucking stranger. A fucking
murderer. He’s intimately aware of his hands, nowadays. They’re his, utterly his. They’re too
much of his. As if it’s a punishment. As if the world saw he found a coping mechanism and knew
damn well that he didn’t deserve one.

You did this, he thinks at them, at his bony knuckles and his bruised fingertips. And then he brings
his hand up to his mouth and he takes another drag from his cigarette.
Maybe if he shrivels up his lungs they won’t be able to howl and betray him.

Or maybe the smoke will wash out the taste of Pandora’s blood in his mouth.

***

Pandora left the plan in a mass of spidery tatters, but when they were all joined together, it was
rather simple.

To put things simply: Remus had to turn inside of the veil.

His body had to be compartmentalised and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it, but Pandora left a
clear plan, and her death left him in three clear parts. Boy, Wolf, Tom. Remus as Remus, Remus as
a werewolf, Remus as a Horcrux. Three clear parts.

The Tunnel of Two Souls is a concept that has existed in theory for centuries. It is the
manifestation of two sources of power that are too compatible to beat each other. Equally as great.
Equally as strong. So they just go around, and around, and around. They fight, and they fight, and
they fight, and no one ever wins until someone intervenes.

Dumbledore and Riddle. That’s where this one comes from. At least, they were pretty positive,
because it’s the only thing that would make sense. In Pandora’s writing, she was riding off of the
idea that the black magic came from Tom, because that would make it easier to assimilate soul to
soul.

Remus found the idea of a piece of Dumbledore and a piece of Riddle just… coexisting, almost
hilarious. A hunter and a Horcrux. Where had he heard that one before?

The idea is that the magic used to create the tunnel is the purest and most stripped back form of
being one can muster. It’s why, when Andromeda went in to hide with the sword after being
physically altered by Avni, she came out looking entirely like herself again. This was what sparked
Pandora’s interest. If Andromeda had gone in and come out entirely cleansed, back to the version
of herself she had been before the alterations that had been made to her… well. Who’s to say it
couldn’t cleanse other things?

Who’s to say it wouldn’t separate Horcruxes?

It’s a solid theory. It makes sense. The issue that Remus had trouble wrapping his head around was
why he had to go in while he was turning for the first time—why couldn’t he just suck it up and go
now? Why couldn’t he crawl in as a human and simply pull the Horcrux out of him like an
invisible string? Well, Pandora says, in her jaunty writing, it’s not going to go that easily, is it,
Remus?

He could laugh. No, no it’s not.

The theory goes, in the simplest of terms, like this: if he is Remus, and Wolf, and Horcrux, Remus
and Wolf are intertwined. They don’t call it a “gene” for nothing. It’s not a curse, it’s an inherent
part of him. His body and his mind have been simmering on a locked compartment door since he
was five years old. He hasn’t even been a Horcrux for five months.

Lingering magic grows stronger as it lingers, Pandora wrote. Take vampires as an example. The
longer they live with the magic they have, the better they know how to use it. The better they can
tolerate it. The more it becomes them. If Remus is a dormant werewolf it means that his body has
been preparing to finally erupt for twenty-three years. It means that the magic has become
tolerated. It was built to linger.
Magic grows stronger as it lingers. Horcruxes are not built to linger. They are built to destroy.

It’ll be like ejecting a foreign object out of your body, Pandora wrote. As easy as cutting off an
entirely rotten, unusable limb.

So… the plan seems simple enough. Plausible. He must turn inside of the tunnel to affirm that
Remus and Wolf is the truest self that the arch is trying to achieve… and the Horcrux should
separate itself. The Horcrux should simply strip itself away. It does not belong. It has never
belonged, but this is a way to strip it clean.

It’s a tag team, you see. Two against one.

And then there’s the matter of holding it. The Tunnel would not destroy the Horcrux; it would
simply contain it. Destroying it? Well, that’s a whole other issue. Cursed fire to destroy it from the
inside out was Pandora’s proposition.

The issue lies in the link to the full moon. Much like how the cyclicality of the water was
connected to the cyclicality of the lunar phases in Sweden, Remus turning to eject it meant that the
mutability of the Horcrux would link itself to the full moon, so they’d have to wait a month for the
next one to actually destroy it. It would have to simply live there, untouched, and they… hadn’t
really figured out a way around that yet.

The theoretical side of it wasn’t simple, and would never be. Not when it came to him. But, once
he wrapped his head around all of the magicky foundations, it made sense. Bully the Horcrux out
of him. Oh, if June Remus could see him now.

The practicality of it, however? It was getting a little bit difficult.

Sirius Black and Mavi Dolohov were, to put things simply, at war. With each other. Sirius wanted
to do it this way, Mavi wanted to do it a different way. Regulus would try and get in between and
they’d both snap at him and he’d retreat like a scared little bunny. The fact of the matter was that
Mavi knew Whittaker, and the state of current affairs there, the best. She knew how to get them in
and out. But Sirius didn’t like that. (Of course he didn’t.)

Whittaker House, Remus learned during these planning periods—to his absolute shock—was
actually a prison. Like, another underground Pureblood prison, further than the surface-level cells
that they had been held in back then. Apparently Dorcas already knew this, but it shocked Remus.
A prison. There had been people underneath them the whole time. Smelling the smoke as it seeped
through the floorboards.

Granted, it was the smallest, with only a capacity of about eighty, maybe even less. But despite the
house being burnt and barren it was still acting as a prison. There were still prison guards.
According to Mavi, it was not high security—not like the other prisons. The only place that would
be high security would be the room that the tunnel was.

So, the game plan? Well. They were going to fight their way through, of course. Always. How
else?

The war was in full steam, and things were happening all around him. They continued, they
plundered on. Remus, as the subject, had of course a major say in the planning and the theorising
and the fate of his own fucking life, but at the same time he ended up becoming sort of impartial to
the voices of the people he knew loved him who were much more knowledgeable. He was dragged
into this room and that room and this meeting with this person and to oversee this class with this
person and to meet witches and vampires and new people and old. The moon was impending,
growing fuller by the day. Panic was sparking in the slums. Plans were being crafted in locked
rooms.

Oh, and things were coming to light. Being spoken—no, not spoken about. Being thought out
rationally—no, not that either.

Being rehashed. Mmm. Yeah. Rehashed.

***

Yeah, so, Remus lied before. Apparently you can’t rehash something that was never hashed to
begin with.

He couldn’t even tell you how it started.

But: “Fuck you,” he was snarling, throwing his jacket onto the bed and exhaling sharply in time
with Sirius slamming the door.

“We’re doing this now? Really?”

“You would’ve turned me?” Remus hissed, whirling around. Sirius’ relaxed, and then he closed
his eyes. As if this conversation was utterly mind-numbing to him.

“Well, good to know you’re back to yourself,” he muttered.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“For God’s sake, Remus—”

“No,” he snapped, “what does that mean?”

“If I must explain it to you like you’re a fucking child,” said Sirius, “it means that you weren’t
exactly in the best mindset to have this conversation before. And now, evidently, you are. There.
So go on.” He sat down at the end of the bed and gestured, vaguely. “Have at it, then. Get it out.”

Remus stared at him.

“You’re not gonna…?” he started, unsure of where his sentence was going to end.

“Gonna do what, baby?” Sirius said, raising his eyebrows. “Defend myself for something I stand
by doing? Fight you back? Is that what you want, you want a fight? Been too long without one?”

“Don’t do that,” Remus breathed.

“I’m sorry,” Sirius said, through a laugh, “but that’s how it’s been, isn’t it? You spent two months
trying to make me love you less. To no avail, might I add. Forgive me if I’m a bit fuckin’ tired of
it.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I did. I did do that, and I told you you can hate me for it.”

“But I don’t,” Sirius replied. “God knows why.”

“So if you’re gonna say you don’t care and then continue to be fucking bitter for the rest of our
lives without talking to me about it then I don’t see that there’s even a point—”

“As if you’re not bitter, too?”

“That’s what I’m trying to fucking say!” Remus groaned. “How did we even—stop changing the
subject! Can you stop being a whiny cunt for two seconds and just let me yell at you?”

Sirius shrugged. It was infuriating. “Yell,” he said, simply gesturing with his hand.

Remus took a breath to calm himself down.

“You threatened to turn me and use your mind control on me and I’m not happy about it,” he said.
They stared at each other.

And then Sirius’ lip quirked upwards. Just a smidge.

“Oh my God, what the fuck are you laughing at?!”

“I don’t know—” Sirius said, clapping a hand over his mouth, “I don’t know. I’m sorry. I don’t
know.”

“If this is just a fucking joke to you then I—”

“It’s not, Remus,” Sirius groaned, smile genuinely dropped. “I just don’t know how to do this.”

“Tell me the truth.”

Sirius blinked. “You know the truth. You just said the truth.”

Remus exhaled sharply.

“Don’t even fuck around with me and say you were hoping for something else. Fucking hell, you
know—I am so sick of people pretending that the things that I say aren’t the things that I mean,”
Sirius snapped.

“Forgive me for thinking that maybe my partner wouldn’t do the one thing to me—the one
betrayal,” Remus seethed. Sirius groaned.

“See! Exactly! Why are you trying to—what, you’re trying to find some silver lining to the shitty
things I do, some reason why they can be morally okay or secretly good? I am a cunt and I would
do it and I wouldn’t regret it. Don’t try to pretend I’m something I’m not.”

“You’d really do it,” Remus breathed, cracking his knuckles to his chest and closing his eyes to
determine what he was—going to do with that information. How he actually felt about it.

“Yes,” said Sirius. He stood up from the end of the bed. “Yeah, I would. I am a vampire and you
are mortal. We were in a position in which you had to die. The only clause was death. You know
what happens when you bite a mortal and then they die?” He explained as if to a dumb child and
spread his hands out as if it was a gotcha moment. Remus was not smiling.

“So you’d just,” Remus said, shaking his head, “do it. Unapologetically.”

Sirius raised his eyebrows. “Yeah.”

“Without consulting me?”

“Well preferably I would consult you, but I knew you’d throw a fit over it, so.”

Remus blinked. “How long have you been planning this?”

“I was never planning anything,” Sirius hissed, “it was just… if you died, I would save you. It’s
black and white. Are you telling me you wouldn’t do anything and everything to try and save me?”

“It’s different.”

“It’s not.”

“It is,” Remus spat, “and you know it. I’ve hunted them my whole entire life.”

“Woah—” Sirius said, holding up a hand in shock. “Them?”

Remus’ eyebrows twitched. “You know what I mean.”

Sirius scoffed. “You can take the boy out of the fight but you can’t take the fight out of the boy,
eh,” he muttered.

“You know—” Remus was saying, simultaneously, “you’ve listened to—Sirius,” he pleaded, as
Sirius finished what he was saying and glared at him, “you’ve listened to me, for months, you
know exactly how I feel about my life being mine and you’d just—take it? Make it yours? What if
I just wanted to be at peace?”

“I wouldn’t let you,” Sirius said, simply. “Your peace is me. I simply wouldn’t let you.”

Remus covered his hands with his face and groaned.

“I don’t know what the fuck you want,” Sirius said, laughing dryly, “you’re looking for a deeper
meaning and there is none. Anything you have I can rebuke. Because I know that I would do it. I’m
not ashamed of it, Remus, I told you. I don’t care. I’m not gonna fucking stand here and say shit
that I don’t mean to make you feel better. I won’t.” He paused. “You love me like this. I’m not any
other way.”

“After the truth serum,” Remus whispered. “You saw what that did to me.”

“I’d still do it.”

“My dad,” he continued. “The wolves.”

“I’d still do it.”

“Everything. After everything I did to try to cling onto something that I could control. You’d take it
away from me. You’d take that choice away from me.”

“Yes,” said Sirius.

Simply.

Resolutely.

No deeper meaning. He’d just… do it.

“Why does this even matter?” Sirius asked, throwing his hands up in the air. “We don’t have to do
that anymore. The moon is in less than two weeks and we have a plan—”

“It might not work.”

“Don’t.”
“Sirius,” Remus choked, eyes shut, “just think about it.”

“Why?” Sirius paced, turned around and narrowed his eyes. “Why should I? Why does your life
have to constantly be on the line? What the fuck is it with you and your aversion to hope?”

Remus opened his eyes. Just looked at him.

“I don’t mean to,” he murmured, through numb lips. Everything is just bleak. All of the time.

And I don’t deserve any of it when it’s the reason she’s not here.

“Please,” Sirius whispered, walking forward. “You run on misery. I run on you. Remus, I—I’m so
tired.” He gripped onto Remus’ collar and closed his eyes. He still can’t do eye contact. Hm. “For
me. Just let it happen.”

“Mmm,” Remus nodded. Of course, he thought. Anything for you, he thought. Fuck you, he
thought. I hate you, he thought.

Sirius held onto him. Dropped his head, and let go.

“I told you from the beginning,” he said, “I would give you everything. None of this was a secret.
You house me. This is what you house. My devotion is too much to your not enough and this is
what is has come to. So I would. I’m not sorry.”

“Don’t—”

“Don’t what?” Sirius asked.

Remus looked at him. God, he felt alive. He felt sick. He felt entangled. He felt everything, all at
once, forever with Sirius. It was forever and it was never at all. It was here and it was there,
everything and nothing. Nothing could encompass his devotion. Nothing could convey it.

He exhaled. For fuck’s sake. Look at the situation. Look at the facts. You’re violated and you’re
old and new, control issues embodied. He would take you from death and bring you back again but
hasn’t that always been the fucking case? The two kindred souls immune to the fire. Their one
heart, his metronome. Losing the heartbeat is tolerable as long as you do not decompose the heart.
It’s not about becoming a vampire. Remus could care less about that. It’s about his choice.

But haven’t you been rotten in his hands from the start?

Does he care? He does. Fuck, God, he really does. But that devotion—that sickening desire—

He’d be lying if he said he couldn’t understand Sirius’ doubt towards his devotion; mainly because
he’d laid it out, flat and bare. It’s not enough. Except the issue was that it was more than enough. It
being more than enough was why they broke apart. Remus couldn’t bear—couldn’t bear the fact
that it would be Sirius to bring him back from the edge. He made a home there. Wanted to stay a
bit longer. He couldn’t be loved—he still feels like he can’t, somewhere deep inside, for his
wrongdoings, for his wreckage. But before it was because he couldn’t bear the fact that people
would miss him. And Sirius had no intention of missing him. Ever.

Is that a threat?

That’s a promise.

Oh. Oh, the end was always here. The end was always everything being thrown aside for this. For
you. For us. Remus became acutely aware all of a sudden of the fact that they could survive quite
literally anything because they were so sickeningly obsessed with each other. He wants Sirius’
blood in his mouth and he wants it now. Suddenly everything is both bleak and turned up to eleven.
He looked at him and he was so fucking angry it could kill him then and there; he wished it would.

“Do you want to know what happened to me the night that Pandora died?” he said.

Sirius looked at him. His face twitched.

“I saw my entire life,” he said. “I saw everyone. I saw my mother, and I saw Mary, and Dorcas.
Moody. Fabian. James, Marlene, Lily, Dora. I saw moments here, moments from home, moments
on cases. All of my happiest. He got into my head,” he enunciated every word, “and he showed me
every single happy memory that he could squeeze out of me to try to get me to live. So I could
continue being his Horcrux. So I could continue being Moody’s pet project. Continue being the
hunter. Do you want to know what it was, what broke me—” his voice broke. Ironic. “Ask me,
Sirius. Ask me what the fuck it was. I need you to ask me what made me live again.”

“What was it?”

“You.”

Sirius blinked a few times.

“He showed me you,” said Remus, “all of you, every you. Eight years and more. All of these
moments—every time you made me live. Every day. And it was—it was at Mary’s. I guess
because it was recent. Or maybe I was just healing. I don’t know what the fuck that’s supposed to
be like, but it was in Mary’s kitchen, dancing to Lovesong by The Cure. That was what made me
decide to live again. I saw my entire fucking life, Sirius, and yet it was right here and right now
that I cared about.”

Sirius inhaled. It was sharp. For some reason Remus had tears in his eyes.

“And I hate you,” he hissed, with such vigour his teeth ground together. “So much. I would hate
you if you did that. I hate that you’re selfish. I hate that you don’t care about what I want. But I
also think if you died I’d kill myself alongside you, so we’re on whatever fine line that is. My
devotion never faltered, not after Whittaker, not in Sweden, not ever. I just wanted it to because I
knew it would be you that I would live for. And look at the fucking facts. It came back to you,
didn’t it? It always will. It always—fucking will, it always—”

“Come here,” Sirius breathed. “Come here.”

Sirius reached out to him, and Remus fell like water.

Not a kiss; just their faces. Close together. Trying to fall into each other, absorb like osmosis. Sirius
pressed his nose roughly against Remus’ cheek and bit the corner of his bottom lip and clawed nail
marks into his chest from where he had a handful of his shirt. Remus’ hands went to his hips.
Welded themselves in there.

“You’re so fucking terrible,” Remus whispered.

“You’re even worse.”

Remus nodded, aggressively, and kissed him. Things got hazy after that.

“You see,” Sirius gasped into his mouth, over and over again. “You see, like that, you want me.
You want me. Just like I want you. You’re mine. Let yourself be mine. Just let yourself. Let
yourself, baby.”

Remus ripped him apart. To fucking shreds with that knife.

Let yourself. Let yourself. Just let yourself, baby.

***

The first time Marlene McKinnon fell apart, Remus was the only one of them there to witness it.

He’d been sitting beside the lake with Astoria on a solitary, gloomy evening. Sirius was out with
Ana in the bunker and Marlene had been on a mission for two days, tracking down some vampire
who knew a vampire who turned a vampire who had information about Whittaker. Formulating a
plan to take down the house from the inside turned out to be a multiple-people job; there were two
vampires gagged and bled dry in the rooms upstairs at that very moment. The same room that
Severus Snape had been held in; the same room that had been Dorcas’, once upon a time.

The woman in question, Dorcas, was in the city on a relief call sent by a coven that had been
targeted and razed. This was where the problem began.

Marlene was covered in blood and her fangs had popped and seemed to be reluctant to go back in
when she caught Remus and Astoria up at the lake’s bay.

“Marlene!” Remus exclaimed, as she approached. She didn’t smile.

She brought the back of her hand up to wipe firmly at her mouth and then said, in her leader voice,
“Where’s Dorcas?”

“Are you okay? You’re covered in—”

“Remus,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I need you to answer me. Where’s Dorcas?”

This, obviously, sent Remus into a slight spiral.

“She went out with Benjy on a relief call,” he said, his hands beginning to tingle. “Why?”

“Oh—” Marlene choked. Remus’ stomach lurched.

Something awful has happened. She’s dead. The coven they were trying to help turned against
them. They were targeted and killed. Lily’s fiendfyre somehow went out and the Dementors got to
them. Tom got her. Tom got her.

“Why isn’t she here?” Marlene whispered, “she should be here, why isn’t she here, where did she
go—”

“Marlene—”

“Why isn’t she here…”

Remus took a step forward. Marlene snarled at him, and Astoria pushed him back.

“What—” Remus gasped—all of this happened within about two seconds—as Astoria stepped in
front of him, reaching out to Marlene.

“She hasn’t eaten,” Astoria said, reaching out to touch Marlene tentatively by the forearms. She
was comically small compared to Marlene’s huge presence, but when she breathed in and out and
guided Marlene to follow it puffed her up. “Dorcas is okay. She’s okay.”

“Why isn’t she here—”

“I—I don’t know, but she’s due to come back in maybe—six hours,” Astoria glanced back at
Remus for reassurance, and he nodded. “Barely any time at all.”

“She needs to be here, now she—she needs to be—I need to watch her—”

“Marlene,” Remus pleaded. He knew very well the anxieties that come alongside a starved
vampire, though he felt that this outburst was… a lot more than that. Still, it couldn’t be helping.
“You need to feed.”

“I need Dorcas.”

“She’s okay,” said Astoria, sweetly. Stepping forward. “Just breathe.” With this, she reached out
and placed a few fingers gently on Marlene’s forearm.

This was a mistake.

The “Don’t touch me—” had barely spat its way out of Marlene’s mouth before there was a flurry
of movement and Astoria was staggering back, blood blooming out of a three-fingernail gash on
her cheek from where Marlene had, seemingly instinctively, swiped at her.

She jumped backwards, pressing two shaking hands over her mouth. Remus was going to kill her.

He was a second away from punching her right in the face before there was a flurry of motion and
suddenly there was a dishevelled James Potter, standing in between them both, hand to Remus’
chest.

“What’s going on?” he asked, wide eyes flickering between Remus, Astoria (who was cupping her
face in shock, cuts healed but blood remaining smeared upon her cheek) and Marlene, who looked
on the verge of falling to bits. “Hey, stop it—”

Remus was still tussling. He didn’t even realise he was doing it until James had to physically shove
him to stop him from getting to Marlene; he blinked, and his eyes cleared.

“Astoria I’m sorry,” Marlene said, shakily. “I’m really sorry.”

A few people had crowded around. Bill and Percy stopped throwing knives at the trunk of the big
oak. Ana and Mavi were standing on the porch surveying. Fleur, holding a class by the treeline,
had halted her demonstration.

Remus was breathing heavily, detached. James had to say his name three times.

“Take her hunting,” Remus said, quietly. “Get her something to eat.”

James blinked in confusion. He’d evidently asked something else but Remus had not been
listening. “What?”

Breathe in. Breathe in. Breathe in.

“Just—”

Astoria touched his arm.

***

“That water isn’t clean,” Astoria complained, sitting cross-legged beside the lake as Remus came
back up, plopping himself down, with a wet hand.

“You’re a vampire,” he said, reaching up to wipe the dried blood off of her cheek with his thumb.
She screwed her face up, thinning her lips. “It’s not like you’re going to get cholera.”

“It’s still gross.”

Remus clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Grow up.”

She frowned, eyes still closed as he wiped the blood away, smearing it over her skin.

“You grow up.”

“Hm—”

Her face was as clean as possible at this point—with nowhere to wipe his hand, he ended up just
succumbing to his jeans (they needed a wash anyway). His ring finger was still wet from the water
but he hadn’t used it to wipe at her face. So he proceeded, of course, to shove it in her ear.

“—no, I don’t think I will.”

“EUGH—” Astoria gasped, swotting him away. He burst out laughing as she squirmed, flailing her
hand frantically beside her ear and then covering her face with both of them, trying to wipe it on
her shoulder. Remus cackled and leaned back, digging his hands into the grass, as she stuck her
middle finger up at him.

“Hey. Rude.”

“You deserve it.”

“Maybe.”

“You do. That was awful.”

He looked at her. “You never had a wet willy before?”

“A—” she cut off, staring at him. “A what?”

Cue the laughter again. “That’s what it’s called, Toria,” he said, through giggles.

“Why? Why?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t name it.”

“Awful.” She tutted, picking at the grass and wiping the wet residue from her face with her sleeve.
“Awful.”

They sat in silence for a minute. Slowly, Astoria’s face went from a disgusted frown to a wry
smile.

“I’m going to do it to Draco.”

“That—” Remus started, and then she looked at him, and he laughed. “I should tell you no. I really
should tell you no.”

“You just did it to me?! Don’t pull the responsible adult thing now.”

“That’s different,” he said, “because you just got all melodramatic and complained. Draco will kill
you. He will actually kill you dead.”

“I’d like to see him try,” Astoria muttered. “You know I can lift more than he can? We tested it a
few weeks ago. I’m actually stronger. Which means I’m better than him.”

He cocked his head at her.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said, chuckling. “Nothing.”

“Well? Tell me it’s cool that I’m stronger than him, then.”

“It’s cool that you’re stronger than him,” Remus said. “Just funny that yesterday he was bragging
to me all about how he’s faster than you, and that you tested it a few weeks ago. Said he was better
than you.”

Astoria fell silent.

“We don’t need to talk about that,” she replied, very pointedly, which made Remus laugh all over
again.

“You two are something else,” he muttered, after calming down. He dug into the grass and tugged
at it. He couldn’t tell whether he’d picked up on that habit because of her or if she’d picked up on it
because of him. But they sat in silence for a moment or two, just enjoying the water. The darkening
tree line, the outdoor light posts lining the bay of the lake.

“Can I ask?” Astoria said, breaking the silence.

Remus let this sit for a moment.

“Ask what?”

“Why that happened. Marlene.”

Remus took a deep breath in.

“You don’t have to say—”

“No, I…”

He trailed off. Bit down on his bottom lip. Astoria gave him room to breathe. She was one of very
little who knew exactly how much space to give him. She’d been his primary company after
Malfoy Manor. They’d exchanged time and space there, and here she was, sitting in it. Not too
close and not too far. She waited, listening.

“Marlene had a partner,” he said, eventually. “A wife, during the first war. I don’t know how much
you know about it.”

She thinned her lips. “Not much.”

“Well. She had a wife. Name was Emmeline. And, during the final fight—you’ll know that one
from the stories, when Sirius sent Riddle into dormancy—she died. Tom killed her. It was, erm—
indirectly Sirius’ fault, or at least Marlene saw it that way. But at the same time Marlene didn’t
have her eye on Emmeline either. She was standing right next to her, and still.” He shrugged.
“Riddle killed her. It was his last kill before Sirius got him.”

Astoria sat, nodding along as she listened.

“And then… in June…”

Remus trailed off. He found it so, so hard to talk about, but he had to. He had to figure out how to
talk about it or it was going to begin to eat him alive.

“When Dorcas died,” those words, those words, “Marlene didn’t have her eye on her either. Riddle
killed her personally. Exact same way, too. Sirius was there, and Sirius didn’t—couldn’t—save her.
And… she’s back, but it doesn’t fix everything. I think to a certain extent it’s made things for
Marlene worse. Because she went through this—this hell, twice, the only two times she’s let
herself… fall. And then she got a second chance. And I don’t think she’s handling it all that well.”

He was staring out into the water, watching it ripple. Timing his breaths to some force he didn’t
understand. Astoria was sitting beside him, and that’s all that mattered.

Of all of the people he’d left, all of the people he’d bypassed in his cloud of grief back in June,
Astoria (and Draco) were probably the ones he regretted the most. Mary, too—the way he’d treated
her made him feel sick if he thought about it too long—but at least she got a goodbye, if a subpar
one. He didn’t see them at all. Not one time. Dorcas died, and Miyuki died, and Remus grieved,
and Astoria grieved. Remus was there when Astoria’s mother died. They’d never talked about it,
and he got the sense that they never would.

She was coping. They both had. But he felt somewhat like he’d failed them by running off with no
word. He’d done that to a lot of people. Left when they’d needed him the most. But see, the issue
is that Remus had never wanted to be needed. He didn’t know how to handle it, and then she died
and his world melted, and he needed nothing, and as far as he was concerned nothing needed him.
It had been an abyss he was still clambering out of. There were cuts and bruises on his palms and
up his forearms. Molten gold. Substances all over him everywhere. He clambers to try and get to a
point where he will be cleansed, because he thinks that’s what they all needed. But here he is,
dirty, beside his girl who sits and needs him just like this.

Needs him to wet his hand and wipe dried blood off of her cheek. A child. He regretted leaving and
maybe that regret would fuel him. He had a new lease on life, and he had to… unlearn the things
he’d internalised. The idea that nobody would mourn, nobody would care; the idea that this Remus
isn’t that Remus. They’re two different people and they’re one in the same, because he knew that
that Remus would have sat here and licked his thumb to wipe off a little speck of remaining blood
on Astoria’s cheek just as he did, now.

“Get off,” she gasped, swatting him away with a smile on her face. “Did you just lick your lakey
thumb? That’s so gross.”

“Oh, don’t start.”

“It’s disgusting. Fish pee in that water, you know. And poop.”

“I’ve literally seen you swim in there.”

“That’s before Poppy gave me those biology lessons and educated me on the grossness.”

“May I remind you, yet again, that you are a vampire—”

In one, swift motion, Astoria popped her finger into her mouth and shoved it into Remus’ ear.

“Shit—” Remus gasped, flinching and—as much as he hates to admit it—flailing and wiping at his
ear, cringing at the feeling. He looked up and Astoria was grinning, laughing with her chest, and all
he could think was I’ve made a mistake, teaching you that.

“You’ve made a mistake teaching me that,” she laughed.

“I’m going to literally put you down,” he said, a wry smile growing on his face. He moved barely
an inch and Astoria was up and running.

“Draco! Remus is threatening to kill me!”

He watched her run and hide behind a tree trunk, and here all he could think was I love you, oh,
I’m never leaving you again.

He chased after her.

***

Dorcas got back before Marlene did. Apparently there's a shortage on blood-bag supply, and the
people Marlene was with needed to feed more than she did which is why she starved, so James
took her hunting. Not far, and not deeply into the city. While the residue of the fog lingers it’s
easier to avoid the dementors when you know where they are, and there’s a pinboard in the living
room that is magically updated with each and every attack, so they’re marginally in control of the
issue.

So James and Marlene went hunting. And the people who needed the blood-bags more got them,
like Dorcas, who came into her bedroom post-shower wrapped in a towel and sucking on one.

She usually liked to put it in a cup and drink it out of a straw, so Remus knew she must be hungry.
He’d shot a scent-blocker like vodka before coming up here to make it a bit easier for her. It was
something he did, and he hadn’t talked about it, and she hadn’t brought it up. But he found that she
breathed a bit more around him when he didn’t smell like him. Ironic, that.

She stopped dead in the doorway, mouth around the tube. He watched the blood seep backwards
and back into the bag as she eyed him lying on her bed.

“I’m naked,” she said.

“I’ve seen your tits before,” he replied, casually.

Dorcas scoffed and kicked the door closed with her foot.

“Hold,” she said, striding over to him and holding out the blood-bag.

He took it.

“Hold,” she said, adjusting her towel with her now free hand and holding out her other to give him
her hair pick.

He took that, too.

“Be careful with that,” she said, nodding towards the blood. “It’s A+.”

“You know that means nothing to me.”

“It means be careful with it or I’ll string you up.”

He thinned his lips and nodded. “Yes ma’am.”

She tried to hide her smile by turning, but he caught it.

Dorcas got dressed, and Remus closed his eyes. He only opened them when she nabbed the pick
out of his hand; she was in a bra and shorts, and swotted him—I didn’t tell you you could look,
idiot—but it was all just a joke. She ran the pick through her hair, brushing it out, and decided very
swiftly that she wanted to wear a baggy shirt instead of a bra to sleep in, so on went the shirt,
through and out of the arm hole went the bra. Straight into Remus’ face when she threw it at him,
which made him yell and her cackle.

And then she was clambering onto her bed beside him, cross-legged, hands fluffing at her hair. It
was her hair wash day and she had only just gotten it all done when they’d gotten the relief call, so
she’d wrapped it in a panic. The silk red head wrap was sitting on the top of her chest of drawers;
squinting at it, Remus was actually pretty sure that it was Mary’s. But then there had always been
blurred lines between the three of them on who owned what. The shirt she was wearing was
Remus’, actually, that she’d had for about six years now. He’d accidentally shrunk it in the wash
and so she’d nabbed it. That was how it went.

“I’m thinking of dying my hair red again,” she said, craning her neck to look in the mirror across
the room. “What do you think?”

“Would you bleach it like last time?”

“Mmm. No, don’t think so. I’m thinking of going for, like, a blood red. Dark, not vibrant.”

Remus raised an eyebrow.

“What?”

“A blood red?” he asked. And then he brought his arm around to hand her the blood-bag he was
still holding. “Bit on the nose, no?”

She scoffed, and then threw the pick at his chest, taking the bag.

“Ow?”

“Shut up,” she snapped, taking a long sip from the bag. She inhaled, closed her eyes, exhaled again
and swallowed. Licking her lips, she relaxed a bit, moving to lie next to him propped up by her
elbow. “I looked good with it.”

“You did, but last time you did it was vibrant.”

“No,” she said, quietly. “Not then. When Avni did it. I looked good with it then.”

It took Remus a moment to process what she was talking about—Whittaker. How she looked the
night that she died. Her hair had been in red locs. They’d matched the colour of her dress, and the
colour of the blood that had stained it. Her blood.

Remus swallowed, thickly. She picked up on his heart speeding.

“I’m just thinking about it,” Dorcas said, gently. “My hair. At Whittaker. I had that hair for the
entire time, you know? Until we broke out and went to the bunker. The spell didn’t loc my hair, it
was extensions—which were were red—so when the spell wore off it just stayed. It was horrible.”
She sighed. “I just think I’d like to do it properly, you know? My way. As me.”

She took another sip, and then looked at him. She was hunched over and it made her look small. So
human and so not.

As me, she’d said. Who she was now. Dorcas the vampire. Remus could not say a thing, wouldn’t,
because her autonomy and what she chooses to reclaim from her traumatic experience is her own.
But as far as he was letting himself, letting himself, just letting himself, he—that. That would. Hm.

No. The blood continued seeping up the tube as she sucked on it. And there’s an angel of optimism
on Remus’ shoulder. Maybe it’s from Astoria. Maybe it’s from Sirius. Maybe it’s just his. But it
might be nice to make the fake the real. To do things your way, properly, as you. There’s no doubt
about the fact that the before and after of Remus’ life hinges on June 4, 2021, at Whittaker House.
Dorcas’ too. They’d gone in as themselves masquerading as different people and, when Avni’s
disguises had melted away, had left as different people masquerading as themselves. Maybe it
would be nice to see Dorcas’ red hair and not see the red stain on her chest from where her heart
had been ripped out. To make it their own. Make Whittaker their own.

Remus smiled, slowly.

“I think that sounds like a really good idea,” he said. She smiled, relaxing. “Should I dye my hair
darker, too?”

His hair had been a chocolate brown on that night as opposed to his usually light tawniness.

“Yes,” said Dorcas, and then she gasped and sat up. “Oh, fuck. Wait. Yes! Can I do it? We can dye
each other's hair!”

“Do you want to?”

“I want to.”

“Okay,” he said, “okay, then we will.”

There was a moment of silence. Dorcas sipped, and she sipped.

“So,” she said, breaking it, after about thirty seconds. “You wanna do it now?”

“Oh yeah,” Remus said, moving to get up immediately. He turned and threw her discarded bra at
her. “Get dressed.”

She grinned. He grinned right back.

An hour, an unsanctioned trip out to the nearest (abandoned) CVS in black caps and hoodies, and a
gentle and then not-so-gentle knock later, Mary Macdonald was opening her bedroom door, bleary-
eyed in a robe and her bonnet. Smiling sheepishly, they held up the boxes of hair dye.

“Wanna help me and Remus dye our hair?” Dorcas asked, rattling the little box enticingly.

Mary blinked, brought two hands up to rub at her eyes, and then blinked again.

“What time is it?” she mumbled. Remus checked his watch.

“Ten past three.”

Mary blinked yet again. Took this in. Looked at the hair dye, and then the pair of them.

“Yeah, alright,” she mumbled, opening her door.

And they plodded on in.

***

By 4am, Remus had dye all over his face, and Mary was about to wring Dorcas’ neck.

“If you don’t sit still I swear to God I’m going to shove the bottle down your throat,” she hissed,
trying to get to Dorcas’ roots and failing because she kept moving her neck. Remus, sitting on the
edge of the bathtub, laughed, sipping on a beer while Dorcas tried to sip out a cup (she’d finally
found a chance to transfer it).

“Okay, grouchy,” Dorcas said, holding up two hands in surrender. The plastic gloves Mary was
wearing scrunched as she moved, squeezing the dye in the bottle on and running it through Dorcas’
hair.

“Do you blame me?” Mary said. “You woke me up at 3am to dye your hair.”

“You let us in to do it,” Remus countered.

“I’m never not going to let you in,” Mary muttered, bitterly. “You know that. You use it against
me.”

“We do not!”

“You do, you foul little people, you abuse my love—”

“Drink your smoothie, baby, shhh,” Dorcas said, reaching over (while trying to keep as still as she
could) to retrieve the strawberry smoothie that Mary had almost woke the whole house up to make
and hold it up behind her. Mary frowned, but opened her mouth and took a sip anyway. Dorcas
misdirected the straw and it went up her nose. Remus laughed for three whole minutes.

Ten minutes later, the dye was sitting entirely on Dorcas’ head, and the timer on Remus’ phone for
his own was due to go off in another five. Remus sipped his beer, Mary sipped her smoothie,
Dorcas sipped her blood.

The latter swallowed, licked her lips and looked over at him.

“Remus?”

“Mm?”

“...Why did we go and buy shitty hair dye when our best friend is a witch?”

He sat on this for a moment. The room was very, very quiet. Mary stared into space. Remus looked
at Dorcas. She thinned her lips, and that was it.

In that tiny bathroom at 4am, Remus, Mary and Dorcas laughed so hard that they cried.

And for a moment, things were good. They might even have been okay. Remus clung onto that.
DORCAS

It was safe to say that Marlene liked the red hair.

Lying naked in her bed, curtains drawn with only a low, warm-toned lamp lighting up the room,
tinting her skin the same golden as her hair, Marlene was kissing her like she intended to swallow
her whole and spit her back out again.

And, listen, there were a lot of drawbacks to vampirism. Dorcas had a lot of gripes with… well, a
lot of things. She battled. A lot. Tended to hide it, make sure nobody saw, because that was the
kind of person that she was. What vampirism tussled with Dorcas fought full force away. And, to
be quite honest… she was pretty good at it. Being. All things considered, Dorcas was quite good at
being, at existing, at living like this. Though she’d had a very rocky start, things had fallen in tune.
Some things. At least half of the things.

The half that were out of tune, a grating old piano found in an abandoned warehouse—well, that
half didn’t matter right now. What mattered right now was the half of Dorcas that felt,
inexplicably, alive in her undeadness. What mattered was how everything felt so much better as a
vampire. So much more intense. What mattered utterly came down to Marlene McKinnon’s tongue
down her throat and Marlene McKinnon’s fingers inside of her.

“Oh—” Dorcas gasped, her breath coming in stutters. Breaking away from the kiss left Marlene
with an opportunity, apparently; she moved down, almost shoving Dorcas’ chin up with her head
as she sucked on her neck, hands moving along with the alien roll of Dorcas’ hips, a movement she
was doing on autopilot, hazy, out of her mind with the way it felt. So intense. So much more,
everywhere; the tingle on her body, every piece of it touched by Marlene felt like it was burnt right
through, like she had made a home underneath Dorcas’ skin and put up—fucking, bells and tinsel
and lights inside of her. Marlene lit her up. Marlene was so much. She was so much that so many
people didn’t see, and Dorcas liked that, she liked it so much.

It was no secret that they were the most private couple. It was a competition, keeping up with
James and Regulus, but even they got a bit carried away every now and then, and Marlene had
lived in tents adjacent to them for the past two months. It wasn’t like nobody knew they were—
well, whatever they were. It’s more that the intimacy of it was for their eyes and their eyes only.
Every kiss in front of people had been a part of their soul bared, yes, but they had no idea what
went on behind closed doors. This. This went on behind closed doors.

Dorcas, biting down on her lip as Marlene went down on her.

It made it special. To know exactly how much of you is the other person’s and knowing that
nobody else knows it. Knowing that to the world you are A and B, a pair, a head and a heart, but in
reality you’re more like some kind of gory mesh-up of bones and skin and cartilage and blood and
body. Dorcas and Marlene, before all of this—before they put themselves on top of a hill of
tumbling bodies, before they were people to look up to—they were, for lack of a better term, a
mess. That mess carries over. Dorcas is a vampire now, and in trying to keep herself together she
longs for that mess now more than ever.

Her legs hitched up, and Marlene’s tongue flat over her clit could possibly be enough to drive her
genuinely insane. She substituted it for fingers momentarily as she trailed upwards, to the side to
lick Dorcas’ inner thigh. She bit into the soft skin. It healed instantly but the blood that oozed was
something so real. So messy. Marlene’s fingers on her hip gripped so tightly they left crescent
moon indentations in the shape of her bloody, dirty nails. She had gone hunting and had been in the
shower but sometimes the mark of cruelty lends itself too deep for you to reach. She scratched the
dirt into Dorcas’ skin and they shared that mark. Always have. Since their very first time.

Dorcas thought about that first time a lot. The night of the club. How little she knew, back then, of
how important that night would be. For her and for Remus. She’d made out with a hot blonde and
Remus had been cornered in a bathroom by people who would undoubtedly change their life.
Dorcas wondered, sometimes, did I know? Did I know back then that you’d be it? Did I know that
your tongue was my tongue, your heart was my heart? Your cold hands would be my cold hands
and they’d intertwine like snowflakes dancing as they fall to their ruin? Unfortunately Dorcas was
so drunk that night she couldn’t even tell that Marlene was a vampire, so no, she’d say, she
definitely didn’t know. But that’s the beauty of living, isn’t it? Sometimes you sleep with a girl and
then it becomes more. It’s that simple.

And so, here, here they are, and Marlene. Oh, Marlene. She was digging into Dorcas’ skin like she
wanted to reach bone, break it in half and wear it around her neck like a necklace. Rutting against
the bed, she hummed against Dorcas’ skin, ran her tongue in circles and worked her fingers in a
way that was heavenly, kept right there when Dorcas gasped “like that, like that,”, scratched down
her hip and drew blood to let Dorcas buck her hips and fist Marlene’s hair and it was messy, messy,
messy, so so real, so so real. Dorcas’ eyes rolled back into her head as Marlene rode her out. It was
so good with her. When she came up for air, her hair was parted in every which way, and Dorcas’
hands were shaking, and Marlene licked up her hip to catch the blood lingering from the scratch
marks that had since healed. When she kissed Dorcas she could taste every part of herself. Feel it,
in Marlene.

“You like the hair, then,” Dorcas breathed, and Marlene laughed, catching her lip between fanged
teeth. Both of their fangs had popped; Dorcas’ was unintentionally. She found that that happened
quite often when she got horny… she thought it was being a new turn thing but, no, apparently that
just happened. When you relinquish all control you become what you are at heart: primal. But
Dorcas was primal before she was a vampire. She’s quite sure she has had fangs all of her life, or at
least for as long as she’s known Marlene. They were born to be equals, which is exactly why
Marlene ended up gasping into her mouth, shuffling up and gripping to the headboard as she sat on
Dorcas’ face. She’d protested but at the end of the day the be all and end all of Dorcas’ life is
making Marlene feel good. At least, it feels like that at this moment. And her moans were so
deliciously raw Dorcas could swallow them; wished she was; could do this, again, and again, and
again, and again.

And again, and again, and again.

Marlene’s hands fisted the red in desperation. Dorcas did not let up. The only downside to this
position was that Dorcas was out of reach of Marlene’s nipples, which was truly a tragedy—and
also one of Marlene’s favourite things to be done to her, making it all the more tragic—but they
worked around it, aka Dorcas got to witness Marlene touching herself up on top of her. Her
desperate thumbing of her nipple with one hand while the other clung to the headboard for dear life
was so… oh, Dorcas would never get it out of her head. Marlene all come undone. Her primal
state. Returning to the beginning.

The rest of the house and the entirety of the Order had Marlene McKinnon, war general. But
Dorcas had her like this. Quivering.

It could get her off all over again, just knowing that.
It didn’t.

But there they were, here we are. Marlene curled up next to her, one leg lazily hitched up over her
lap, hands cupping Dorcas’ face. Looking up at her. Her eyes were wide, and lovely. Hazy with
pleasure. Sick with—what they were now naming as such—love. Hot, thick, tumultuous love.

Dorcas would suppose that they’re together together now. What else can you be in a war but stuck
to one another? When you’re the leaders; when you’re the hope?

But that was irrelevant. They’re not that when they’re here. They don’t fucking have to be. They’re
just two women, sick for each other. Gagging for it. Nothing less than the taste of blood and mouth
when Marlene kissed her, the stickiness of her now chapped lips, kissed raw. How she sort of
missed. Caught Dorcas’ bottom lip, her chin. The wet lingers there. It’ll dry in a minute.

Marlene took a deep, deep breath in.

“I hurt Astoria today,” she murmured.

One thing about Marlene: she’ll talk to you.

“Accidentally.”

“Why did you do that?” Dorcas asked, running a hand through her messy hair.

“I was—” she cleared her throat. “Hm. I got home, and you weren’t here.”

Dorcas took this in.

“Why did you go on that stupid relief call,” Marlene whispered, tracing her jawline with her index
finger. “You’re not supposed to go on those.”

“I think I can do what I like,” replied Dorcas.

“You can.” Marlene sighed, tracing the same route. “I just—”

“You just.”

Dorcas knew, of course. She knew. She knew most of Marlene. All of her feelings, her gripes, her
fears. She knew, even upon dying, even just when she was soaring through New York in the wake
of Whittaker—she knew she had to get back to Marlene. She knew Marlene could never recover.
Not her. After Emmeline, after all of those years. Not her. Not again.

Of course, she hadn’t gotten back to Marlene. With everything in her she wished that she had. She
wished that those two months didn’t exist. Not just for Marlene, for everyone, but here, now, it was
for Marlene. She wished… well. Would it be too on the nose to wish that she hadn’t died?

And yet, she didn’t. Well… she goes back and forth. It’s hard, grappling with this new existence. It
feels like it happened yesterday and it also feels like Dorcas has been a vampire for a hundred
years. The bloodlust is one thing. The heightened senses are another. The unaccounted for
strength, the getting used to the way your body moved, changed, the prospect of not feeling the sun
on your skin for centuries is all a third thing. The loss is a whole other ballpark. The most recent
thing has been her period. The other day, Marlene went down on her, and she bit into her inner
thigh, and Dorcas almost came right then and there. So she did it again, because Dorcas liked it,
and she did it again, and again. Licked up all of her blood. It went everywhere. The sheets, her
hips, Marlene’s face. Dorcas’. Marlene looked up, as the light flickered, and for a moment Dorcas
was in her early twenties again, Dorcas was human again. Having period sex. Except she wasn’t.
The blood between her legs was from abrasions that healed over in seconds, in place of a bodily
movement that she might never heal from. Dorcas didn’t even want to bear children. But in
becoming undead it took away the possibility that she could. You don’t think about the nuances of
vampirism until you become one, and you realise that in gaining immortal life you lose so much of
everything that makes life life in the first place. Like a period. A monthly cycle. She’s frozen
forever, now. Her moon is always full.

Dorcas had been a vampire for two months, and she already felt that loss. She had understood the
stories she’d heard, before, of ennui. But she got it now.

And yet, of course, she had a spark. A fire in the night. Her Marlene, who she’d left for two
months; Marlene, who had had four lives. Her first life ended that fateful night when Sirius turned
her. It ended again when she lost Emmeline. It ended for a third time when she lost Dorcas. So
much hinged on June 4, 2021 that it felt like the scales were going to tip over. When Dorcas died,
Marlene was one thing. She came back and she was the same and yet she was other.

They were all… other.

But Marlene was more… hysterical, these days. Maybe that’s not the right word to use. But
cautious definitely isn’t. Protective. Panicked. Dorcas picked up on it very quickly and has been
simmering on it for a while. But she couldn’t exactly blame her. The war in 1959 ended when
Riddle threatened Regulus, and Sirius hesitated. The war ended when he killed Emmeline. His last
kill, and yet his first, because that kill sparked the war to end all wars. It sparked twenty years of
silence, forty years of guilt. It sparked this. It sparked now. Sirius was fighting this war for Regulus
—nobody was stupid enough to not know that by now. But underneath his skin, and bared bloody
on Marlene’s, it was for that loss. The loss that represented all losses. The war to end the war.

Marlene put everything on her shoulders, and she lost. And then put everything on her shoulders,
and she lost again. And then, with everything still on her shoulders, she got back the thing that she
lost. And now.

Dorcas kissed her.

She kissed her, and she kissed her, and she kissed her, and she kissed her, and she kissed her, and
she kissed her, and she kissed her, and she kissed her.

Marlene explained the situation a little bit more. Dorcas listened. She’ll always listen.

“It’s me,” Dorcas whispered, eventually, against her pining lips, “and it’s you. Yeah?”

“Mm.”

“And I know. I know, my love, I get it. But I’m alive. I’m still alive.”

“Mhm.”

“And because I’m alive,” Dorcas whispered, “I have to live. I get to live. I want to live. I can’t be
here forever, Marlene. You can’t protect me forever.”

“Mhm.”

“But,” Dorcas continued, lacing their fingers together. “I’ll tell you. Okay? I’ll make sure to tell
you if I need to go somewhere, or do something. We’ll work through it.”
“We can live together,” Marlene whispered. So quietly.

“We can,” Dorcas said. “We do. We will.”

“We will?”

“We will,” she affirmed.

“I just…”

“I know.”

“You know?”

“I know.”

Dorcas used to wonder if she would ever hold a candle to Emmeline. But all the past week has
proven to her is that her lingering ghost doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Because the only reason the
ghost of her lingers in the first place is because of how gigantic Marlene’s capacity for love is.
And that’s all for Dorcas.

So she kissed her. She kissed her. She kissed her. She kissed her. She kissed her.

Twenty minutes later, Marlene was sipping gently from a blood-bag while Dorcas was lighting up.
A fag, that is; she’d stolen a pack of cigarettes from Remus, who had taken up the habit again
swiftly in the past year after quitting for a while. Dorcas had quit with him, all that time ago, but
now. Well. It doesn’t exactly do her any damage anymore, so she smokes. Now she can. She lay
with one leg curved and one straight under the soft white sheets, topless, her boobs out. She’d
always wanted to get nipple piercings, but the healing process would be too much of a hindrance
for the profession she was in. And again… now she can. She could have her nipples pierced and
have it be healed instantly. She brought this up to Marlene and—well, she kind of got ravaged.

“Again?” Dorcas breathed, laughing as Marlene nuzzled into her neck, snarling and biting and
giggling and kissing, one hand rubbing a thumb in circles around Dorcas’ hard nipple. She’d be
lying if she said it wasn’t turning her on very viciously.

“Why not?”

“We literally just—” Marlene’s hand moved further down. “Ah, fuck—”

She rolled her hips. Her half-smoked cigarette was going to go out.

“I like sex,” said Marlene. “And I like you. And I like having sex with you.”

Marlene was practically on top of her, hand disappearing under the sheets while Dorcas moaned.
Face-to-face, barely inches apart, Dorcas brought her hand back from where it was hanging gently
over her head, and pressed her cigarette to Marlene’s lips.

She took a drag, inhaled, and then breathed it out in the air between them. Taking her bottom lip in
between her teeth, she didn’t break that maddening eye contact with Dorcas as she leaned over to
retrieve the blood-bag she was drinking from. Eyes low and hungry, she wrapped her lips around
the tube, and sucked. Her fingers excavating Dorcas like a tomb. She whimpered, grinding on
them, fucking herself desperately on Marlene’s fingers as she sucked the blood up, leaned over, and
spat it into Dorcas’ mouth.
Some of it missed her. Splattered over her lips, her chin. She gasped, licking her lips, hungry and
wanting and so horny she could lose her goddamnmind, and then Marlene left, and then she came
back, with a box of things they’d… let’s say, put to very good use.

Dorcas was utterly wasted.

***

“I like it,” said Sirius, over the neck of some poor girl he was draining. His mouth was full of blood
and it seeped out of his mouth as he spoke, drooling onto her shoulder. “I really do like it.”

Dorcas gasped, pulling herself away from her boy’s neck. The man was limp in her arms, but
Dorcas had been getting the hang of attuning herself to the pulse, the weight, to how much she had
drunk. She’d been trying to keep a strict eating (snacking) schedule so that when she went out to
actually hunt she could control herself better, feel closer to these senses. Sirius said she was one of
the best new turns he’d ever seen, but he might just be sucking up, like he is right now.

She swallowed, and grinned.

“Thank you,” she said. Sometimes she’ll take his suck-ups.

“Literally a perfect blood-red. How did you do that?” He rocked gently with the girl in his arms;
she whimpered, and his eyes flitted down to her. Lit up only by a vague streetlight and the
fiendfyre lantern lying on the floor between them, his skin was warm against their coldness. He
frowned. “Oh, no, sh-sh-sh. It’s okay. It’s okay, just a bit… just…”

He snarled, and went back in, piercing the other side of her neck. Moaning in ecstasy. Dorcas rolled
her eyes.

“Sirius. Sirius, you're going to kill her.”

“‘M not.”

“Sirius.”

The girl slipped out of his arms and fell to the floor. Dead.

Sirius stared dumbly at her, as if she’d just been deposited in front of him and he wasn’t covered—
entire bottom half of his face and collar—in her blood.

“Oh,” he said. Dorcas rolled her eyes again.

Sirius ended up waiting, leaning against the wall and then sliding down it, licking his fingers as she
finished up. Once she’d gotten to the furthest point she could get she pulled back—with enormous
restraint, oh God, it hurt to pull away—Sirius also gave her a little clap which made her want to
throttle him—and then she lifted his head up, squinted into his drooping eyes.

“Oh, you’ll be fine,” she murmured. She tried to dig into her pocket for the little blood-
replenishing vial but—well, the man sort of slumped against her.

Sirius laughed.

“A little help, here?”

Sirius groaned.
A minute later, Sirius was holding the man by the back of the head while Dorcas poured the purple
vial down his throat. She coaxed him to swallow and not choke on it—the moment it went down
his throat he physically relaxed. It would not heal him so far as wounds but it would replenish
enough blood to ensure he would not bleed out on the way home. He’d just be a bit woozy for a
day or two.

“Okay,” she said. “Do it.”

“I don’t want to do it. I’m tired.”

“We don’t know where he’ll go otherwise! We need to erase any trace that we were here. Don’t be
an idiot.”

Sirius scowled at her.

“You extort me for my labour,” he muttered.

“Grow up,” Dorcas shot back.

But Sirius still did it.

“You’re gonna go home,” he said, looking into the man’s eyes. A clear wash fell over them as he
was compelled to Sirius’ will. “You’re gonna put a little plaster or bandage or whatever you need
to do on that wound, and you’re gonna forget that this happened to you. You’re gonna stay home
for at least 3 days. For the love of God, don’t you know there’s a pandemic?”

Dorcas scoffed a laugh. They’d evacuated about 95% of the residents of New York from the city,
simply as it was the epicentre of Dementor activity and at this point the air quality made it
practically unlivable, but far down on the island a lot of people had stayed. People walked about as
if nothing was awry. It was good for them, because they got to hunt, but—Christ, they’re a bit
stupid, aren’t they?

The man nodded, and almost immediately as Sirius dropped the connection he turned around and
he walked away.

“Idiot,” Sirius muttered.

“Mmm.”

And they started the walk home.

“You’re messy tonight,” Dorcas commented, linking her arm into Sirius’ and wiping at her mouth
with the back of her hand. She was messy, too—there was blood staining her shirt, which was
annoying because it was one of her favourites—but she was new to this, she had an excuse. Sirius
huffed.

“Well,” he murmured, “I was hungry.”

“Why?”

“Busy. Didn’t get much chance to eat today,” he said. “Never mind the blood shortage, but that’s
not the issue.”

“We’re planning to go heist out some of the hospitals upstate on Monday.”

Translation: all of the hospitals in the city have been bled bone-dry, and all of the people have been
driven out. It’s risky, to go that far and show themselves just to heist out a blood drive, but they
can’t not eat. And they can’t simply kneel to Riddle’s attempt to lock them in, to dry them out.
They refuse. But there was a blood shortage. Dorcas hated the fact that it was working, that he had
the power; holding onto the Fiendfyre lantern, she walked with purpose. Refusal, even against the
gnawing hunger.

Well, not right now. Right now she’s quite averagely full.

“I know,” Sirius replied. “You spearheading that?”

“Ana.”

“Ah.”

“Hopefully things will get a little bit easier around here when we do,” she said, clicking her tongue
against her teeth. “It’s been a bit… rough, lately.”

“Yeah. People are going mad. Fighting, feeding, spontaneously dying their hair…”

Dorcas scoffed, and smacked him on the arm.

“You just said you liked it!”

“And I do,” he retorted, “on both of you. Why do you think I was busy all day today?”

Dorcas looked at him. It hit her like a ton of bricks.

“Oh, fucking hell.”

“Mm-hm.”

“He gonna have bite marks when I get back?”

Sirius smiled. “Mmm-hmm.”

“I hate you. He tells me everything. I’m gonna have to hear about it.”

“I know,” Sirius sing-songed.

Remus spent more time with her nowadays than he did without. Dorcas wasn’t complaining.
Christ, how she’d missed him; missed him like nothing else. A specific breed of yearning lay
between Dorcas and Remus. Her world lay in his palms; she’d do anything for him. Had and would
continue to. She could, however, do without the details of their sex life; though in hindsight she’d
definitely done the same to him about herself and Marlene, and what are best friends for if you’re
not uncomfortably past the threshold of ‘TMI’?

He’d also been telling her… other things. She’d been unpicking the knot of the past two months
she’d missed slowly, and she was quite sure she’d gotten at least the general gist by this point. By
flitting between Remus and Sirius (and sometimes Lily) it felt pretty rounded by now. Two points
of views; two sides of a fight. It made her heart burn, how far Remus had gone, how deep into
that… dissociation he had fallen into. Unpicking the past few months had been a big step in the
two of them getting to know each other a bit more, falling back into their old Dorcas-and-
Remusroutine. She was quite sure he felt the same for her. As much as Marlene had changed, as
much as Remus had changed—hell, even as much as Sirius had changed—Dorcas understood that
she had come back a stranger, too. But they have, as a collective, a capacity for welcoming the
new, she would say. Lily had been the most eager and the most comfortable upon welcoming her
again. Dorcas knew exactly why that was.

But, see, the issue with the whole ‘best friend’ thing is that Dorcas will always be on Remus’ side.
Her ball will always be in his court. Even if he does bad things; even if he is, arguably, the bad
person in a situation. To her he is simply not. She’ll defend him to kingdom come, even if he’s not
defending himself—lord knows there’s been a lot of that, too.

This also, however, means that when Sirius does something objectively shitty… she latches onto it.
Not because she wants to be malicious to him. He’s one of her closest friends, she can’t stand the
man, etc; you know, she feels the general way one tends to feel about Sirius. But because that’s
Remus. She’ll fight for him when she won’t even fight for himself.

Needless to say, Dorcas had been picking a fight with Sirius for the past two days about the
‘turning Remus’ incident.

Remus didn’t even seem to care as much as she did. It pissed her off. Remus had told her about it,
and he’d seemed almost undecided on how he should feel. She’d asked him if he wanted to be a
vampire, he’d said no, but that’s not exactly the issue. She’d asked him if it was about the choice,
about it being against his will; he’d said yes, but that’s also not the issue. She’d asked what the
issue was, and he’d told her that the issue was that there was an issue but at the same time there
was no issue.

Yeah, it’s safe to say she was confused. After trying for a while to unpick whatever mess he felt
about it, she’d sort of come to the conclusion that… he was upset about it, but he loved Sirius
anyway. He was upset about it but it wasn’t relationship-ending. And it should be, but it wasn’t,
which was the issue. The issue was that there was no issue.

He should hate it, but he doesn’t. He should hate Sirius—and that he does. But he loves him as
well. That’s the issue, but that’s also not the issue. Because it’s not an issue. But it is. But it isn’t.

All of Remus’ morals, everything he held close—it all simply evaporated when it came to Sirius.
Detrimental adoration. Obsession. Love.

Mmm. Dorcas… well, she hadn’t pressed it. It seemed like everything that Remus did, bent to, all
the things he thought or held was with potential to be twisted and marred when Sirius came into the
picture. She supposed it made sense, considering… well, everything. How they began. How
they’re ending. Sirius came into both of their lives, actually, and completely turned them upside
down. And now she is walking down a deserted, foggy street with blood in her mouth holding a
lantern with cursed fire manifested by a Phoenix, arm-in-arm with the second oldest Pureblood
alive (only second to his Uncle Cygnus, these days), and she’s… happy. She will pick another fight
with him in due course, obviously. But she’s happy.

Vampirism has its pros and its cons. Right now, Dorcas is on top of the world.

“You were good today,” murmured Sirius, dragging her out of her thoughts. Dorcas looked at him.

“Are you complimenting me?”

Sirius scoffed. “Pfffft. No. Just stating a fact.”

“Well. I think anyone would be considered good alongside…” she looked him up and down,
covered in drying blood from his messy eating, “that.”

“Shut up and take the compliment.”

“Oh, I’m taking the compliment.”

“You were good,” he said. “You’re… I don’t know if this is something you’d like to hear, I don’t
know exactly how you feel about it, but you’re good at this. At being a vampire.” He cleared his
throat, looked to the ground as they walked. “Trust me, I’ve seen enough to know.”

Dorcas, oddly, felt a lump in her throat.

“Thank you,” she said as calmly as she could. “It is something I’d like to hear.” She inhaled.
Exhaled, slowly, out of her mouth. Lantern crackling and fending off the gloom by her side. “There
are days that I battle with it and days that I’m content with it. Things that I like better, things that
are just… a million times worse. But there’s nothing I can do about it, you know? I think it should
feel like something I should be suffering and—lamenting about or whatever, brooding like you do
—”

“Hey.”

“—but,” she continued, completely ignoring him and the way he yanked on her arm in protest,
“I’m… not? I’m just. Getting on with it. Can’t change it. Can’t undo it. Can’t go back in time and,
you know, not die.”

Sirius stifled a laugh and turned away to hide it.

“No, no, you can laugh, it’s funny. I fucking died.”

He whirled his head back around, and grinned at her. They looked eyes and let out identical
chuckles; Dorcas ducked her head to smile at the ground, while Sirius laughed into the silence all
around them.

“Christ,” he chuckled, “what’s that like? Never done it myself, you know.”

“Mmm.” Dorcas nodded. “Kind of hurts, I won’t lie.”

And they were laughing again.

“I didn’t take you as the… optimistic type,” Sirius commented, after a minute or so.

“You didn’t?”

Dorcas couldn’t blame him. She wasn’t, exactly, the optimistic type. But she wasn’t not the
optimistic type. She was the type to just get the fuck on with it, she’d say, which is exactly what
she was doing here. Of course it was a little bit different. After her entire life, after all of her hatred
of vampires (and she was by far the one of the three of them who hated them the most), you’d
expect her to be a little bit more bitter. Angry at the world. She’s not.

Dorcas was not the optimistic type; that would go to Remus. In the wake of everything going on
and… well, the hellish past few months for him, that’s almost ridiculous to say. Trust her, she
knows. But the thing with Remus is that he is all or nothing. When he finds hope he clings to it. So
desperately, because he’s clung to Hope his entire life. It’s all he’s ever known.

When he’s optimistic he is optimistic. When he’s depressed he’s depressed. Remus had never been
one to be able to regulate his emotions; that always went to Dorcas. Perhaps it is why he’s less
angry about the whole turning fiasco than Dorcas is. Perhaps that’s why he hasn’t talked about
Pandora. Because if he does he’ll lose that spark of hope. And maybe he’s allowed to be selfish for
once. Cling onto it. Lord knows—God fucking knows he needs it.
And as for Dorcas? Yeah, no, maybe not optimistic. She’s gruelling. Maybe it all comes down to
who can handle change. Remus can’t handle change. Dorcas can.

(She thought, briefly, about the fact that the paradigm of her perception of her emotions boils down
to him. The paradigm of his boils down to her, too. They’re just two halves of a whole, he and her.
They make themselves easily digestible by diluting themselves with the other, to the point that the
lines blur between the half and the whole, and Remus is Dorcas, and Dorcas is Remus.)

(He’s laced in every thought she has, every word she speaks. She loves him to the tip of her toes
and the very longest frazzled blood-red hair on her head.)

“No,” Sirius said, gently.

“Well, I guess I’m not,” she offered. “I just get on with it. I know how to endure. And then
sometimes enduring becomes something good and you don’t have to endure it anymore, so.”

Sirius nodded, once. They continued walking for a moment.

“And sometimes,” he piped up, pulling her closer by the arm, “you endure it by spontaneously
dying your hair at 3am because you’re mentally unstable.”

“We were not—”

Sirius burst out laughing as she hissed at him. He hissed right back.

“We were not,” she continued, a little bit muffled as her fangs stayed out, “mentally unstable, okay,
we were just. I don’t even know.”

“Why did you do it?”

“It’s stupid.”

“It probably is, yeah, but I still want to know.”

Dorcas scowled at him.

“I wanted to dye my hair red,” she said. “Because, on the night that I died, at Whittaker, I had those
red locs—you remember? Avni dyed my natural hair that deep blood red and I got them done. And
I looked really good with red hair. And then—then I was killed,” she keeps saying it, can’t skirt
around it, it’s real and it happened, “I died, and, I died with red hair, and then eventually when
Avni’s couturiering wore off my hair was natural again but I still had those red locs in, and I
couldn’t take them out for… a month. It was awful. My hair is really important to me, and so that
really, really fucking sucked.”

Sirius nodded along, listening.

“It was an awful experience and I guess I wanted to—I don’t know,” she continued, just getting it
out. “Make it my own? Especially now I’m a vampire, I just… I don’t know, wanted to have this
thing that I had that I loved from before, even though it turned into a terrible experience and even
though that terrible experience was directly linked to becoming a vampire, I just thought maybe if I
do it—if I just do it I can make a new experience. I can enjoy red hair and not have the matching
ball gown and bloodstains to go with it, you know?”

Sirius bit down on his bottom lip. His face was solemn, but he was nodding.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I get it. It’s a very fair reason.”

“So I brought it up with Remus,” she said, “told him that reasoning. And we thought—well, he
thought he could do the same thing. Dye his hair the colour it was that night too. Reclaim his own
change. Take back Whittaker.”

“Take back Whittaker,” Sirius murmured.

“Yeah. If only we could go back in time and do that.”

“It’s not as if Remus doesn’t try,” Sirius commented. “Has he told you? Where he almost
exclusively… sees Riddle, when he has his visions?”

Dorcas bit on the inside of her lip.

“In the ballroom,” he said, “where you died. It’s just the two of them, in that massive empty room,
and your blood stains the floor. Almost every time. I guess it’s because that’s where he became a
Horcrux, so that’s where the connection is the strongest. Where their consciousnesses—their
souls—meet, or whatever.”

He had not told her that. She had not known. She blinked, processing this.

“Have you spoken to him any more about going back?”

“No,” Sirius said. “Have you?”

“No. I don’t think he’s letting himself think about it.”

A pause.

“I worry,” said Sirius.

“I know,” said Dorcas.

It wasn’t as if Dorcas and Remus were the only pair to have secret conversations about Sirius.
Dorcas and Sirius’ hunting trips, especially back in Wales… well. It was almost like a Remus
check-up. Dorcas is pretty sure Remus doesn’t realise just how many people look after him, love
him; even now, even when he’ll let himself (albeit rarely, as he unlearns) understand that he is
loved. He doesn’t truly let it be. Let it simmer. So they have these conversations, out of sight and
mind of him. He won’t be able to handle it, Lily had said in the car. It rings true. They worry.

(And here he is again. The paradigm. Remus Lupin.)

(It’s almost as if the narrative revolves around him, or something.)

When it hit Dorcas she quite literally felt like she might’ve just been struck by lightning, and had to
look up to check.

“Take back Whittaker,” she said, looking up into the gloomy skies. The fog was thick here.
Opaque and choking. “Oh, shit.”

“What?”

“Why don’t we?” She looked at Sirius. They’d stopped walking. “Take back Whittaker.”

Sirius stared at her for a second. “...Elaborate.”

“Seizing it. Taking it back. It’s not like it’s as high-security a prison as Peverell or Dolohov were,
since it was first for presence, second for imprisonment. And we broke into those two, got a good
chunk of ours out.”

“And wouldn’t it make a statement,” Sirius breathed, his eyes lighting up. “To take back the site of
the fête. Invade it, kick them out, have it be a rebel site. Depending on how bad the ruins are more
of us could stay there, so Ana wouldn’t be drowning in the bunkers. And that far out of the city
there’s more prey, more to hunt.”

“We could break into the prison, let the vampires out, have them help us…”

“Have Mary put up the warding…”

“We still have the floor plans from Andromeda…”

“If you lead the mission—” Sirius turned to her, now, dropping her arm completely. They felt on
the cusp of something magnificent. “Dorcas, the statement that would make. For you to lead the
mission to take back the house in which you defied Riddle’s word. Riddle’s choice. Death.”

Dorcas could remember the day that Mavi said those words to her like it was yesterday. The day
she realised her life, the fact that it still existed, was special.

You existing past the death that the Dark Lord granted you is an act of resistance. It’s an act of
power.

I was supposed to die.

And yet you live. That means something, Dorcas.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” said Sirius. Echoing her last thought. His mouth curled up in the
corners, as she scanned his face, unbeating heart pounding in her chest. “What a way it would be to
let him know that you’re not.”

They looked at each other, for a moment. Just a moment.

And then:

“Bet you I can get home and tell Marlene and Ana first,” Sirius chanted, and then, with a snap of
the wind, he was gone.

“Little fucking bastard,” Dorcas muttered, and then—just like that—she was gone too.

A few loose papers and leaves on the ground swirled up in circles at the rush of momentum. And
then it was quiet.

***

“You want to do what?” said Mavi, her entire demeanour falling.

Dorcas thinned her lips. She and Sirius shared a glance.

“We want to take it back,” said Sirius. “Instead of just slipping in and out and heisting what we
need, take it back. Make it a spectacle. Build up an army—enlist the vampires that have been
liberated from the prisons already. Breaking out the vampires at Whittaker will be enough
incentive for them, right?”
“And we can have Mary pair the warding up with her warding here,” Dorcas continued. “Lily for
the dementors. You and Regulus know the place best, but even then we have the floor plans from
Andromeda. It’ll give us full-time access to the Tunnel of Two Souls after the Horcrux is
separated, which solves our biggest problem. A leg-up in terms of distribution—Whittaker is just
outside of the city, with Mary’s matching warding we’ll have a direct encrypted line back and
forth. More space to hunt, so they would be drying us out any longer. More connections to
communities on that side of the city. Never mind the fact that it’s Whittaker.”

“That’s exactly it,” Regulus commented, from the other side of the table.

Surrounding a round table in a sound-proof room was him, Lily, Mary, Marlene, James; Sirius and
Dorcas, Ana and Mavi. And Remus. Every one of those heads turned to him as he spoke.

“It’s Whittaker. I understand your sentiment, but it’s—it’s old. Established. As a prison and a
Pureblood mating ground. They used to hold the fêtes there as far back as the thirties. You don’t
think, especially with the prison breaks you pulled on Peverell and Dolohov, that they’ll have
armour up? Defences? They’ll be waiting for us.”

“But—hang on, explain something to me. Whittaker was burnt down,” said Lily. “How do we even
know they’re still using it the way they used to use it?”

“They’re not.” Marlene. “It’s still a functional prison because most of the operations are
underground, but on the surface—well, it’s in ruins after the fire, though it’s not as bad as we were.
But they also haven’t placed it on the priority list to be rebuilt, as far as I know. It’s rough.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s where I’ve been going,” she replied. “Where I was the past few days. We’ve been trying to
find out information on the inner functions to establish a game plan on what to expect so I’ve been
slinking around the place, swiping people. But that’s all I’ve got. Regulus is right; it’s only logical
that they’d have increased security, enchantments, armour. The whole lot.”

“But it would be a statement,” Ana said, wistfully. She was staring into space, deep in thought.
“And it would probably get Riddle out of hiding. Get us closer to that snake.”

“Nagini,” Remus interjected.

He’s not exactly been in hiding, Dorcas thought, looking at Remus. But she didn’t say it.

“I’m thinking,” said Sirius, leaning forward onto the table. “Dorcas leads the mission.”

Marlene: “No.”

Dorcas: “Marlene.”

She looked at her. Dorcas blinked, once or twice, giving her a very heavy look.

“Sorry.” Marlene coughed and looked away. “Ignore me. Continue.”

Ana looked suspiciously between the two of them.

“Dorcas leads the mission,” Sirius continued. “To our knowledge, Riddle doesn’t know she’s alive.
Nor do many—if any—of the Purebloods that watched him kill her. Not only was her defiance in
regard to—well, living, making her a beacon of hope for the vampires in the prison and the
vampires on our side that would follow her probably just as easily as they would follow me, but.
Come on. Imagine the first time that she shows her face being to lead a revolt that besieges one of
the most significant Pureblood estates. Not only would it boost morale for us but it would make
him look like a fucking fool to his own people.”

A Dark Lord who cannot even kill properly.

A Dark Lord whose kills come back to haunt him.

Mavi looked at Dorcas. Her lips quirked up at the sides.

“So,” said Ana, “you’re asking me to rally my army. Prepare them for yet another prison-break.”

“Yes.”

“And we’ll lead ours,” Marlene looked at Dorcas, “make it a collective. Show explicit unity with
Ana’s vampires by taking the most significant place they have. Establish that we’re one side and
they’re one side.”

“Break the vampires out of the prison,” Sirius continued, “seize the estate. Can the witches cut off
the apparition lines?”

“Easily.” Mary, instantly.

“And,” Sirius, to Lily, “can you have the Dementors accounted for?”

“If you help me,” she replied. Sirius smiled.

“We get Remus to the tunnel, night of the full moon,” Dorcas led on. “Put most of our men at that
post. Have you two,” looking at Sirius and Mavi, “there with him. The rest of us will show our
faces. He’ll hear our names. It’ll be a final threat.”

“It’s declaring war,” murmured Lily.

“We declared war at Malfoy Manor.”

“It’s declaring an active fight,” she amended. “Real, actual war. Mary can link the warding so that
we can blow Whittaker off the map, yeah, but if you’re going to make a statement out of it we’re
going to have to be prepared for retaliation.”

“We will be.”

“Riddle might even show up. What do we do if he shows up?”

“He won’t,” said Remus.

The entire room went quiet. Remus leaned forward, slightly, hands clasped on the table in front of
him. He’d been remarkably quiet, so every ear pricked up to hear what he had to say.

Lily blinked. “He won’t?”

Remus eyes flickered up, from where they were focused on the table to the rest of the hungry
hunters.

“Get me to the ballroom,” he said, “while you’re taking the place back. I can get to him. Distract
him. When we reach out for each other it suspends us both in the real world, completely inanimate,
so I’ll be able to hold him for a while. Once the place is ours, I’ll let him go. And I’ll turn. As long
as we’ve got the warding up he can’t touch us. But it’ll give you enough time to show your faces,
to make the statement. To begin the inevitable end.”

His eyes flickered away, and he clicked his tongue against his teeth, as if wistful in his thoughts.
“I’ve gotten to know him quite well, I think, over these past months,” he murmured. They flickered
back up. Landed, out of everyone, on Dorcas. “I can do it. I know I can.”

The room was quiet for a while.

A long, long moment.

And then Marlene stood up. Leaning over, resting on her hands on the table.

“This will be declaring war,” she said, quietly. “Lily and Remus are right. This will be the
beginning of the end. We’re going to have to go way underground; we just have no idea the lengths
he will go to retaliate. This means we knock down every outer communication that isn’t the two
way Bunker-Boardwalk line. The amount of people sanctioned to apparate in are cut
catastrophically. Nobody that’s not in this room. And we’re going to have to stock up on blood and
ration. Start a blood-donating system. There will be no going back if we do this.” She looked at
everyone. Very, very sternly.

And the question. To shift a lifetime.

“Are we going to do this?”

Sirius leaned back, taking a breath in.

“I’m for it,” he said.

“Me too,” murmured Dorcas.

Lily and Mary looked at each other.

“We’re in,” Mary said, turning back to the table. Lily kept her eyes carefully trained on her.

“I’m in.” James.

“Me too.” Remus.

Ana took a deep, long breath in. And then she nodded. “Me too. Something’s gotta give. And,
honestly, my vampires are getting kind of tetchy. It’ll be good to pick a fight. We can’t progress in
a stalemate. So, I’m in.”

The room went quiet. Just two more.

Mavi Dolohov had her eyes imperviously trained on Regulus Black.

“What do you think?” he murmured. Of everyone at this table, the two of them understood
Whittaker House the most. Understood Purebloods. Understood what they’d be up against.

Mavi exhaled. “I think the sentiment is true. And it would be a hell of a heist to pull off.” Her lip
quirked upwards. “But there’s just one problem.”

“The control.” Regulus clicked his tongue. “We don’t have it.”

“Risky game to play in a Pureblood War, Black.”

“You think they have—”

“I know they have,” she interjected. “I practically ran Dolohov, which was much more high-
security than Whittaker, need I remind you. There are going to be hurdles. Enchantments. Things
that go bump in the night.”

“Disguises… no,” Regulus said, answering his own question. “After the stunt we pulled at the fête
they’re going to be extra cautious.”

“No way to be quiet about it either,” Mavi said. “There’ll be alarm bells in every direction. It’s all
good storming an estate with an overwhelming army and breaking our way in but we need leverage
on the inside to stay on the inside. I don’t know how we’re meant to get that.”

“Is Whittaker still oversought by the Carrows?”

“No. Alecto gave it up when Amycus died in ‘59.”

“Ah—” he sat up. “Of course. To the Parkinson’s.”

“Yes, but only up until the past ten years.”

“Why?”

Mavi raised her eyebrows. “Heard much from Perseus recently?”

“No. He’s a bit of a loose cannon, no? Lost it when Pansy died, you know that.”

“I know,” she said. “Lost his estate, too. All of his land. Terrible scandal in 2014—of course, your
entire family being wiped out two months later sort of overshadowed the poor man. Don’t suppose
the news made its way overseas, hm?”

“It didn’t,” Regulus replied, his eyebrows twitching in interest. “Who owns it now?”

“As far as I know it went to a Crouch.”

Regulus jolted as if he had been struck by lightning. His mouth fell slack and, leaning forward, he
had a mad sort of glint to his eye.

“Crouch?” he asked. “Did you just say Crouch?”

“Yes, I did,” Mavi replied. She tilted her head, asking the question that everyone seemed to be
thinking.

“Oh,” Regulus exhaled sharply, and then a grin spread itself out on his face. He covered his mouth
to withhold the laugh but it didn’t stick.

Dorcas had to give it to him, his laugh was contagious. She could feel the corner of her own lips
threaten to curl as he cleared his throat, wry smile on his face, looking around the table with a
madness to his eyes that you only ever really saw in Regulus Black when he was about to do
something very, very violent.

“I can get us leverage,” he announced. “Oh. Shit. I know exactly what to do.”

He stood up, abruptly, and brushed himself off. Looking over the group, his lip sort of quivered as
he tried to hold back the excited smile plaguing his face. And then he looked directly to one.
 “Mary, would you be a dear and fashion me a portkey to Rosier Manor, please?”

Chapter End Notes

;) and the plot thickens...

all i have to say is that ana is my favourite OC in dstg (well. maybe on par with jul,
who both got their moments this chapter lmao) and i really love the little marlene ana
dorcas and sirius team like. of course they're running the war. obviously.
jkdfshfkgjrsgfks

i actually found writing that wolfstar fight ("fight" lmao) really hard cause like. there's
literally not anything that can keep them away from each other. like i kept wanting
them to actually hash it out and then realised it's never going to happen because theyre
so obsessively enthralled with each other nothing can actually keep them mad at e/o
it's so fucked up and delicious to me (i think the way its explained from dorcas' pov
makes a bit more sense)

also ive missed the hunter trio/D+R so fucking much i almost cried writing the
moments of them being cute and dumb and dying each others hair :'((( waaaah

also it was really nice to write a bit of dorlene! as we know the only like Main
relationship is wolfstar, really, and then platonically its D+R, so dorcas' povs are
obviously more weighted with exploring herself as a person/new vampire, her
relationship with remus (and honestly sirius too) and (mainly) her position in the
war/plot as obviously a Very important figure. but! thats not to say i cant find room for
a bit of dorlene bc i sooo can. i love them

i hope u enjoyed <3 sry for rambling i tried to stop lmfao

Please drop by the archive and comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!