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Chapter Text

Remus sighed as if he was releasing his dying breath as he laid his head down. In the things tome for Ancient Runes, careful of the drying ink just bedside it. Not for the first time the Gryffindor found himself wishing that Pince would let them smoke in the library, because he would just about kill for one just about then.

The library was stock full with students due to just how close OWLs and NEWTs were, the numbers only increasing more so as the usual finals reared their ugly heads as well. So every table was full of quietly mummering students, and heavily bored ones weighed down by equally heavy books lining their arms. Normally this was something that Remus could find it in himself to tolerate, enjoy even as silence was something that typically set the boy’s nerves on edge after never having it before, but so close to the moon sound was like some kind of personal offense to the lion. The other students seemed to realize it too as his was the only table that anyone in the entirety of the library had to themselves.

That was why it had come at so much of a surprise and yet none at all when Regulus Black of all people had stopped before him, books in hand with two familiar boys and one fair haired girl behind him.

“Mind if we sit, Lupin?” The younger black had asked in that posh accent of his that all of the purebloods seemed to hold. The one that always served to remind the Gryffindor of the Cockney accent that he had come to Hogwarts with first year, and had been systematically killing every year since. The only time that the teen used it was during the summer holidays, but it was always best not to think of those during the school year. “Everywhere else is full.”

Remus eyed the four younger students carefully, wondering if this was some angle that the younger Black was playing. The war had been on everyone's minds this year, and it was no secret where all but one notable expectation of the Black family stood with it. But though the wood within him begged for a good fight, the part of him that had been trying so hard this year to be kinder thought better of it.

“You’re taking Ancient Runes, right?” Remus asked instead of properly answering the question outright as he knew that he should. 

The older boy watched with a twinge of satisfaction as confusion pooled on that of the Slytherin boy’s face, the younger Black’s face morphing into an expression so like his brother’s that Remus almost had to remind himself that the boy before him was not. Eventually the other boy nodded primly and Remus did as well.

“You Slytherins like deals, right? Help me with this problem and you’ll hear no complaints from me,” the older boy said, pointing to the questions that they had been assigned easier in class that day.

“Why? The studious Gryffindor can’t figure it out himself?” One of the other Slytherins, Barth Crouch Jr., had asked with more than a heavy level of annoyance and scorn, only to be hit on the shoulder by the last boy- Evan Rosier.

Remus glared up at the boy, more amused by the title that he had been given then offended by the rude accusation attached to it. It was always strange to hear how others thought of him outside of the Marauders who knew that Remus was the one that was the brains behind most of the group’s bigger pranks throughout their years at Hogwarts. No one ever thought that it was him.

“Can’t remember one of the theorems from last year,” the older boy said, shrugging as he kept a cool head- something that he had become very good at during his time as prefect. “And I don't want to have to bloody well fight my way to the tower and back for the notes on one measly problem, now do I?” Remus remarked firmly.

He watched as the younger boy seemed to eye him consideringly- as if he was seeing something that he hadn’t before- but shifted his gaze away when the younger Black brother moved to stand beside him at the table, looking down at the paper with that too familiar pinch in the younger boy’s brows. Remus had seen it on Sirius more times than he could count when the four of them were drawing out the lines for the map. He’d always had to look away from the older Black when he did that and found himself instinctively doing the same with the younger.

“You’re going to need to out the Algiz before the Dagaz rune,” the younger boy decided after a moment, “simce with this Theron you can use literal translations.”

“So it will be ‘shielding from change’, that way the painting will remain unabated by time” Remus remembered quickly before grabbing his quil to do just that, only stopping to gesture to the three Slytherin boys and the one Ravenclaw girl to take their seats as they had agreed to before.

For the next few hours the odd group sat at the table in a comfortable silence that was soon filled with the quiet complaints at the work and questions being exchanged with one another. 

Remus found that the Ravenclaw girl was named Pandora Lestrange and was a particularly gifted witch in just about everything that she tried, and was often prone to experimenting with spells- even right before finals it seemed as none of her mountain of books were about anything that they were currently studying, but her current fascination instead.

Bart Crouch and Evan Rosier seemed to share one mind as the pair filled the table with scathing remarks that Remus somehow found himself adding to when familiar names came up. Somehow plans for an exorcism were brought up for Professor Binns, and Moaning Myrtle before long. The only problem that the group found was how to make sure that it was limited to just the two ghosts and cover their tracks enough that it would look like a natural passing.

Regulus Black had been the most surprising of the odd group, the quiet boy that seemed the best behaved if the lot holding more than his fair share of his brother’s talent for trouble as Remus caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a modified duplication spell created just for alcohol so that it wouldn’t modify the taste or strength of the original or the copy. The younger Black brother had only smiled when he saw what Remus was looking at and the pair had adjusted one or two things together, ‘the exact opposite of what a prefect should be doing,’ as the Slytherin boy had felt the need to point out.

Remus hadn’t known it then, but that simple decision to allow the group close had changed everything.

—-

Pain was the first thing that Remus had known when he woke up the morning after the last full moon of fifth year. It was the mind recking sort of agony that the boy hadn’t endured in so many months that the Gryffindor had almost forgotten just what it felt like. Confusion swept up on the boy quickly because he knew that this pain wasn’t right, it wasn’t supposed to be his just then.

And yet it was happening.

Blood spilled down Remus’s chest as he pushed off of the dirty floor and to the equally appalling bed, alone in a room that should have held three others. The wolf’s frustration curled in his chest as Remus pulled the blanket over himself and his mind ran away with him, filling itself with all of the things that could have led to him being without the other Marauders; terrible phantom images of the other three bloodied somewhere at his doing. Because nothing short of something absolutely horrible could have kept them apart on the night of their last hurrah.

A miserable feeling curled in the boy’s stomach as he wished for Madam Pomfrey. It didn’t die once the witch finally did come.

The poor school nurse had a nervous  air about her when she walked into the room, one so strong that Remus could smell it from a good deal down the hall before he even saw the unusually pale looking witch. Saw the sad gaze that the older woman held so openly.

“Oh, you poor thing,” Madam Pomfrey said with hints of pity that the werewolf would only ever accept from the older witch. She’d been caring for him since he was eleven, and she’d held him in her arms as he had asked her to let him die, and had kissed him on the forehead with the tenderness of a mother that the boy had never known before then. “It’s been a bad night all around, hasn’t it?”

“What do you mean ‘all around’?” The boy asked, trying to sound more curious of the complications of spells gone wrong than anxious of the sort of damage that could never be undone.

But the medi witch only brushed Remus off and continued to heal the boy before taking him to the hospital wing. There, under the school nurse’s watchful eyes, Remus drank down all of the sleeping draught that he had been given. He didn’t fight her on it like he normally might have, the Gryffindor wasn’t feeling as brave in that moment as the house might suggest.

When Remus woke again sometime later, he wasn’t alone this time. Later he would find himself wishing that he was.

“Prongs?!” The boy croaked quietly at the disembodied head of his friend, only to be immediately shushed by the boy in question.

“Are you okay?” The other boy asked earnestly, but there was a look in James’s eyes that the werewolf recognized too much from his own every time that he looked in the mirror. Everytime that he thought of Sirius in a certain way, or came back from a twig to the library with a certain group of fourth years that the other Marauders didn’t know a thing about.

Shame.

Guilt.

“I’m really sorry, Moony,” James said before Remus could even answer the boy’s question or properly think of his own. He could hear the pain there in the other boy’s voice and desperately wanted to know just what had placed it there.

“What happened?” Remus asked for the second time that day, his voice hardening from the softness that it had taken on that year.

“Look, don’t be angry with him,” James began to stammer hurriedly. “He’s an idiot, but I don’t think that he realized. I did. Think that he meant to…”

But Remus wasn’t listening to the other boy’s excuses, not when he knew that there was only one person that he would give them for with such desperation.

“What did Sirius do?” Thenboy asked, his voice growing harder still as the panic grew in James’s.

Remus felt an all too famIliar anger rise up within him as the other boy spoke, as James dulled and bent the truth as much as he could so that it wouldn’t just yet break. So that Suriusi came out looking less tarnished than he should have. Only it didn’t work at all because unlike James two had grown up around unconditional love and truth, Rmeus had grown up around liars and could hear them as easily as breathing. Even white lies.

“He fuckign told Snape,” Remus summarized bluntly, his voice coming out in much more of a growl then either of the boys wanted to hear, but - for the first time - Remus didn’t bite it back.

“Not… not exactly,” James said carefully, still trying to play the peacemaker. “He told him how the willow worked, and Snape…” Remus almost found it amusing how difficult it was for the boy before him to say just what the other two boys had done. Almost. “No one was hurt,” James hurriedly continued, “but Snape he…”

“He saw me,” Remus said, not needing the other boy’s confirmation to know that it was true. Not wanting it either. “James, please leave.”

“Remus-”

But the scarred boy wasn’t having it, not when he knew that once the shock and betrayal of all of this had properly worn off that James would be right back at Sirius’s side as if none of it had happened at all.

If it even took that long, Remus thought darkly.

“James, get out,” the boy said coldly, making the other boy look at him with a panicked expression.

“But Moony…”

“Please.”

“Okay… okay, but I’ll be back.”

Remus didn’t answer him, he only closed his eyes and waited for the other boy to leave. Eventually he fell back asleep once more.

—-

The next time that Remus Lupin opened his eyes he wasn’t alone, nor did his visitors do much to make it seem as if he was.

Gathered around his bed were the figures of three Slytherin boys and one Ravenclaw girl, each in varying stages of consciousness as Pandora and Regulus quietly talked about the book between them, and Evan and Barry silently slept on theirs. Despite everything Remus found himself looking on fondly at the scene before him, or maybe it was because of everything.

“Anyone going to wake the dunderheads?”  The Gryffindor asked as he pushed himself up on the bed.

Regulus looked mildly alarmed for a moment at the new voice, flinching from the suddenness in a way that caused Pandora and Remus pain to see, but quickly covered the reaction with a pleased nod that Remus easily returned. 

The Lestrange girl was a different story, as he stood up from her chair - passing the book fully to Regikus in the process - and climbed up onto the cot next to Remus, laying herself fully at his side in a way that shook have made Remus blush had he been any other boy. But instead it was like resting with a little sister.

“Hello to you too, Dora,” the Gryffindor said weakly, his voice much too raspy for his liking.

“Evening, Remus,” the Ravenclaw girl whispered somewhat quietly as the younger Black brother leaned forward and grabbed the glass of water on the bedside table, handing it to Remus without having to be asked to do so.

The fifth gratefully accepted it and took a greedy sip of the liquid before deeming it enough and leaning forwards with a smirk playing across the boy’s lips that he saw Regulus mirroring. With a quick move, the rest of the water found itself on the frames in the two sleeping boys.

“Fucking shit!”

“Bloody Hell!”

The other three snickered as the other two boys cursed, but the violence in their eyes was lost once the pair’s eyes fell on the Gryffindor.

“Lupin,” Evan said excitedly before his eyes fell on the now empty glass in the Gryffindor’s hands. “Lupin,” the Slytherin said in a much different tone than before.

But Remus only smiled. “Careful, Rosier,” the boy taunted. “Pomfrey’s a right terror if you get on her bad side, especially for attacking an injured student.”

“Sometimes I wonder why you’re not a Slytherin when you say things like that,” Barth said before shaking the water out of his hair like a dog, moving to the displeasure of everyone else there that got hit by the water.

“So Remus darling,” Pandora started once the boys had calmed down enough to listen, or at least to be still, “what landed you in here this time?”

No one missed the way that the boy’s face shifted into something stony, or how the four could almost feel the older boy's anger as it rised, as if it was something tangible that they could physically hold if they wanted to. When Remus’s gaze fell on Regulus, somehow they could all tell that the anger wasn’t directed at the Slytherin boy, but rather someone that shared his resemblance.

“Your brother happened,” the Gryffindor said bluntly, his voice gruff.

No one missed the way that the younger Black brother flicked back at the older boy’s words, but Pandora was quick to grab onto the dark haired boy's hand and held it tight, just as she held Remus’s as well.

“He did this to you?” Regulus rasped, his vice coming out strangely at the mention of the boy that had always stood in front of him during their mother’s rage doing such a thing to another. But Regulus knew that cruelty ran in their family as thick as the blood in their veins. 

“Not directly,” the Gryffindor replied quickly upon seeing the other boy’s pale skin and haunted eyes, “but it was his actions that caused it, his plan. This,” Remus said bitterly, gesturing to himself laid out in the bed, to the bandages peeking out from beneath his clothes, “was the best outcome.”

And wasn’t that shocking for the other four to hear? None of them wanted to know what the other outcomes could have been that a boy getting married and hospitalized was the good end of the deal. But nothing was more surprising than what the angered Gryffindor said next:

“Your mother would be so proud.”

Pandora held fast to both boys' hands as both were in varying states of falling apart. This wasn’t how she had wanted to spend today, not when the sun was shining as it was and until a few hours ago she’d had three participants to try a new spell on and had thought that she would have had a Gryffindor boy to help as well.

“So how are we getting the bastard back?” Barry was thrumming his fingers across the book like a beating heart, like running feet. There was a cold look on the boy’s face, but Remus thought that he quite liked it right then. “We are getting back at him, aren’t we?”

“Of course we are,” Evan said surely, his knee knocking the other boy’s as he leaned forward and ideas started to spill from his lips.

That was the moon that everything changed.

—-

Madam Pomfrey let Remus go a little ways into dinner, which was given by the Gryffindor boy who had long grown restless once more, shifting in the bed as if his skin didn’t fit right over his bones. Remus supposed that it truly didn’t.

Eyes were on the Gryffindor boy from the moment that he walked into the Great Hall. Mary, Lily, and Marlene all had small smiles on their faces at seeing the boy back from his latest stint in the hospital wing, as concerned glances were exchanged between two of the remaining Marauders, and apologies sprung to the lips of the last one. But none of them got to speak to the boy at all because he never walked over to the Gryffindor table.

More and more eyes drew to the scene as Remus, the supposed tamest of the Marauders, walked in the opposite direction of his house table, not slowing down in his stride as Pandora Lestrange left her own table and walked at his side. It was a pairing that no one had ever seen before, raising more than one mummer from the lions watching the seven unfold with rapt attention, watching as they walked together straight to the Slytherin table as if they were meant to be there.

Barry Crouch and Evan Rosier could be seen smiling like madmen as they saw that the older boy was truly doing it. Regulus was almost inclined to agree but he’d known that the other boy would do it the entire time, he was too hurt not to. They both were.

Whispers broke out across the hall as the Gryffindor boy sat down at the Slytherin table and was welcomed with an arm slung across his shoulder by Rosier and a raised glass from Crouch. Sirius made a move to go after the other Marauder, but was stopped by a hand on his wrist pulling him back down.

“But James,” the boy protested, watching as the last of their little group sat surrounded by snakes. As Remus sat in front of his little brother saying something that made the dark haired boy smirk.

“No,” the boy snapped back with enough force to draw a few eyes to the pair as well. “You’ve already done enough,” James said with a voice that was much colder than Sirius had ever heard it directed at him, remembering the look in their friend's when Remus had learned of what Sirius had done. It was the first time that he had ever been afraid of the other Gryffindor boy. 

Too busy watching the scene unfold, no one saw the hard look in Dumbledore’s normally kind eyes.

—-

The group at the Slytherin table rose as one when they were done, heading straight for the door with satisfied smirks on their faces. This time James wasn’t fast enough to stop Sirius from going after the other boy, but was quick to follow the other boy, Peter right behind him as well. The strange group was barely down the hall when Sirius caught up to them.

“Moony!” The boy called desperately, causing the group to still as James and Peter caught up. “Moony, I’m sorry! Whatever this is please-”

But Sirius never got to finish his sentence because the next thing that anyone knew the boy was sprawled out on the ground, blood flowing freely from what looked to be a broken nose, as Remus looked down at him as if he was nothing more than another boy from the care home, and Sirius hazard up at the boy that he had known for years as if he was seeing a stranger.

“Don’t call me that,” the taller boy growled before spinning on his heel and walking away with the others closing ranks around their friend. “You lost that right last night,” was the last that the Marauders heard from the lion among snakes and eagles.

Only Regulus stayed behind as James and Peter pulled the fallen boy to his feet, a bored look in the Slytherin’s face, but Sirius could see the anger in his eyes.

“Regulus, I don’t know what game you all are playing with Remus, but this needs to stop.”

But Regulus Black was paying no mind to the demands of the boy that had stolen his brother from him all those years ago. He only had eyes for the ones that mirrored his own. 

“Remus won’t tell us what happened,” the Slytherin said, feeling sick at the relief that shone so bright in the older boy’s eyes at his words, “but he did tell us that our mother would be proud. Guess it only took sixteen years.”

As Regulus walked away, his brother fell apart.

Good .

Chapter Text

The last two weeks of the school year passes in a haze of weed nicked for the Hufflepuffs by the greenhouses, and expensive booze from the Slytherins. The strange group stayed with one another as much as they could as the summer drew close.

Barty, Remus had found out, liked his father about as much as Regulus did; which was a pretty way of saying not at all. The Gryffindor understood then just what held the two snakes together as they tried so desperately to be the perfect sons for people that they all knew would never care. As they each slowly stopped caring as well.

Evan came from a house much like that of the Blacks, but he didn’t fit with their views as much as he should have, not when the boy had asked Remus about motorcycles, and had already tried to enlist the Gryffindor’s help in stealing one. He had already successfully gotten Pandora’s help in figuring out the runes that would be necessary to let it fly similarly to that of the way that a broom does, something that the lion was sure was at the least three kinds of illegal- and was just as sure that he would be helping in. Remus had no doubt in his mind that his already extensive criminal record - both muggle and magical - would be expanding sooner or later, but he couldn’t find it in himself to truly mind. Not when he and Regulus were already researching charms to replicate a muggle bike, and were going to ask Dora to help them modify the spell so that it wouldn’t break down as fast as most products of spells like the Gemini curse tended to do.

Pandora was probably the tamest of them all in her reasons for the dislike of summer, simply not wanting to be without the others if she could help it. But Remus pitied anyone that had Bellatrix as an in - law, even though the girl said that they never saw much of her or Dora’s brother since the wedding. Even less since the pure blood families started having more and more political meetings. Since the war.

Regulus didn’t want to go back for the most obvious reasons of them all and Remus couldn’t fault him for that, not when Sirius had fled during the Christmas holidays as he did. Not since the Gryffindor boy was sure that Regious had helped Sirius run, leaning the flu powder by the fireplace, though the older Black brother was too full of himself to realize such a thing.

Remus found himself holding onto the others just as tightly as the promise of returning to St. Edmund’s loomed over the boy’s head. Though the Gryffindor was now one of the oldest boys in the home, summer still meant two months of no magic and being locked away in a room with silver bars on the windows and door as the moon came. It meant two months of breaking into places and stealing smokes, or fighting with the boys that still thought that he was a decent target, and being someone tray he knew James would never be able to look in the eyes if he were to meet him.

So they stayed close to one another.

You could never find one of them without at least one of the others, much to the dismay of the Gryffindors who so clearly did not approve of the unlikely inter house friendship, and the fear of the other Slytherins.

After leaving the Gryffindors outside of the Great Hall, the group made their way down to the dungeons, somewhere that Remus had never liked going to before but liked it then. He liked the music that he could hear coming from the other side of the Slytherin common room door, and liked that as dinner ended the snakes made their way down to the posh room as well and moved the tables out of the way. Alcohol and juice for the younger years were brought out, and Remus watched as the beginnings of a Slytherin party came about.

At the beginning, the lion thought that it would be like the Gryffindor parties: music, drinks, and dancing, but that theory was disproved quickly enough when a dueling lame was created.

“Illegal dueling?” Remus asked, and Regulus looked at the boy in a calm, almost appraising manner.

“You gonna tell on us, Mr. Prefect?" The other boy asked, a sly smile on his lips. 

Remus thought of the anger that he’d been biting at him since he spoke to James that morning, consuming the boy even as his bones ached from the moon. 

“That depends,” the werewolf decided, “could I fight too?”

Behind Regulus, Remus saw Barty and Evan grin like devils and knew his answer.

The members of Slytherin house placed bets as the sickly Marauder took his side of the dueling lane. They all knew that the boy was a gifted wizard, no one could truly deny that no matter how much of a sour taste it left in the snakes’ mouths, but none of them knew just how strong the werewolf’s magic was in the days leading up to and following the full moon. They didn’t know how much control Remus held, how much the lion held back.

That night, with anger and adrenaline coursing through the boy’s veins like blood, Remus Lupin didn’t hold back at all.

Regulus watched every moment of every duel as if he was watching some beautiful masterpiece unfold. Pandora knew that in a way he was.

—-

For the first time in Remus’s years at Hogwarts, it wasn’t the Marauders that he sat with on the train. This year the infectious laughter wasn’t from Sirius and James, but rather Barty and Evan throwing Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans at one another as they tried to get the other to eat the most disgusting ones that they could find. 

The quiet mummerings weren’t from Peter and the Ravenclaw girl that he was with - Desdemona - but rather Regulus, Pandora, and Remus himself as the trio poured over some books that Dora had gotten permission to bring home over the summer on the promise that she would pay for any damages found. The group just didn’t tell Madam Pince that the project that they were working on was a sort of precursor to the flying motorbike that they had promised to make. She didn’t need to know that, and Remus truly doubted that she wanted to. Plausible deniability and all that.

They were each going back to some varying level of hell, but it was fine. They were together for now, at least.

—-

St Edmund’s was just as horribly mundane as Remus remembered it being and yet it managed to seem more dreary than it had only the summer before, with the boys whose hair was all cut short like skinheads, and the identical gray clothing that made them all look just alike. After living in a world so drowned in color for the better part of a year, it was always a particular kind of torment to be back here once more. It was like being shown a whole galaxy and then not being allowed to even look at a single star.

It wasn't long before the letters came; apologies tied to the ankles of a familiar bird and promosies that they were still okay tucked in along with them from James. Remus hardly read them at all though. He was sick of apologies that no one meant and empty promises made by a boy that had never known a day without love overflowing around him. 

Looking back on everything with the gift of foresight, the boy knew that the Marauders had been as thick as thieves and as close as brothers since the day that Remus Lupin struck Severus Snape across the face in potion back in their first year. Remus guessed now that he shouldn’t  have been surprised as to how all of this had inevitably turned out, the Marauders knew exactly how Black treated his brother- even if Remus had only ever wanted to be more than that.

Remus spent the first two weeks of the summer holiday doing the homework that they had been assigned as the other boys played with a ball out in the yard. No one bothered him in those days, not when the sun was bright and the rain kept to a morning drizzle and little more. He did odd jobs with some of the other older boys at night that had been around for some years now and knew how to not get caught, abstaining from the bigger things that he thought held too great a risk. Remus was already sixteen after all, he didn’t need to get nicked by the muggle cops, not with his problem. He didn’t know if anyone from the magical world would step in and he didn’t want to find out what would happen if they did either.

The boy had already completely prepared himself for one of the most mundane summers that had experienced yet since starting Hogwarts, when one day thay expectation was broken by a loud crack . 

Remus had been walking what was considered to be the grounds of the children’s home - only a small chunk of yard and a few trees behind the building - when he’d found a good spot to read through the defense book for the following year that had already been sent to him a few days before. He’d only gotten a few pages in when the world had filled with the thick scent of magic, a kind as familiar as his own and another just slightly more wood - more pure, almost - than either of theirs.

The werewolf was already looking wildly around the small space before the cracking noise had torn through the air, and a pale boy with dark hair and a small creature - a house elf - appeared before him.

“ Regulus ?” Remus breathed, a name that fell so freely from the boy’s lips one would think that it was always meant to be there, because against all odds, that was who was standing before him.

Dark curls fell in front of gray eyes that got lighter as they went closer to the pupil, pale skin flushed by the summer’s heat. Remus recognized the younger boy as if he had seen him only the day before, but before either boy could say anything more - or anything at all really - another voice spoke.

“How dare the nasty half - breed speak of Master Regulus so casually!”

Both boys looked at the thin house elf, at the nasty sneer as he stalked towards the older boy, the smell of magic thickening in the air, but Regulus yelled first. 

“Kreacher!” The younger boy screamed, his voice thick with surprise and something like betrayal as he looked between the aging house elf and the Gryffindor. “Remus is my friend , treat him as such.”

The house elf’s ears drooped in a way that made the older boy wonder if the younger teen had ever spoken to the creature in such a way before. The sad look in each of their eyes was answer enough.

“Of course Master Regulus,” Kreacher said softly, slinking away from the two boys. “Kreacher will come and fetch Master Regulus when Master Regulus calls for Kreacher,” and with that creature was gone with a loud pop .

Regulus looked at Remus with sorry eyes, an expression that the older boy never wanted to see on the face of the younger teen, but knew that he would more and more as the war pressed on.

“He’s not usually like that,” Regulus said in lieu of a proper hello, Remus didn’t mind, nothing about their friendship was not proper in the least.

“It’s okay,” Remus said carefully, trying hard not to clips his words, though he thought some of the accent must have leached through anyway if the surprise in the other boy’s eyes was anything to go by.

“No, it’s not.”

No, it wasn’t , but Remus didn’t say that out loud, just as neither boy mentioned how Kreacher had called the Gryffindor a half - breed instead of a half - blood . Remus silently prayed to every god that he didn’t believe in, that Regulus had misheard the house elf.

It was then, as Regulus glanced around the pitiful excuse for a yard, that Remus remembered exactly where they were just then, and felt an embarrassed blush creep up his cheeks.

“What are you doing here?” The older boy asked, his voice coming out a bit harder than he thought that it would, the discomfort more evident than he ever wanted it to be. Remus had never wanted anyone else to see this place.

Regulus’s eyes turned back to Remus, and - not for the first time - the older boy found himself wondering if the younger could read his mind as Regulus didn’t look angered or hurt by the other’s tone, though he had every right to be.

“Mother and Father are at the Notts for some political meeting,” the younger teen said almost solemnly, “they always are these days.”

“So you thought that you’d just fancy coming and paying your favorite Gryffindor a visit?” Remus asked playfully, cheerfully even. A tone that the boy had no doubt would set Kreacher - or any of the other Marauders - into a right fit if they were to hear, though for much different reasons of course.

The younger boy looked away, suddenly finding the tree at Remus’s side to be much more interesting than the boy himself, but the older teen could still just barely see the dimple that formed when Regulus smiled just so, and the blush deeping on the other’s cheeks from embarrassment.

“You know, I could always just call for Kreacher and leave,” the other teen threatened, still not looking Remus in the eyes, but both boys knew that Regulus wouldn’t do so.

Remus dared a step closer as an idea came to him, a mischievous smile on the Marauder's lips as he did so. “Tell me, have you ever been to a Muggle town before?”

—-

And that was how the boys spent the days that Regulus visited, skiving off to the muggle town a little ways down the road from St Edmund’s until the novelty wore off and they’d seen all that there was to see. But Remus marveled at the younger boy each second that Regulus wasn’t looking on those days, as the absolute sight of him looking at everything with such shameless wonder. He’d laughed at the way that the Slytherin had coughed so violently drinking soda for the first time, the fizz buring the boy’s unsuspecting throat, and had thought that it was some sort of comic justice for some of the wizarding world sweets that he’d had.

After the adventure of the town had worn thin, the boys had gone to the old park and sat at the picnic tables (though Remus admittedly sat atop them, much to Regulus’s supposed annoyance) with books strewn between them - homework and ones just for pleasure.

Smoke billowed into the air one day as they had gotten to talking, and Remus had laughed so hard that he’d almost begun to cough.

“You’ve never read Sherlock Holmes? ” The older boy asked, twisting to look at Regulus fully, his legs pushed up against the younger boy’s side.

“ No ,” the Slytherin replied snappishly, not liking to not know something that others so clearly did, even if it was muggle. But Remus’s smile only deepened, forming into something that was all teeth- wolfish.

Regulus found that he loved it.

“Who was he then?”

And that was how the boys had spent an entire afternoon with Remus telling the story of how he had nicked a copy of some of the Sherlock Holmes books from the Matron, and how Regulus had learned every detail of A Study in Scarlet as if he had read it himself.

He did later that week when Remus had given it to him.

—-

“What are you reading about today?”Remus asked as he finished reading a chapter of next year’s Ancient Runes text, new ideas already playing beautifully in the older boy’s mind for things that the teen wanted to try.

Regulus grumbled in a way that Remus knew that he only did when the other boy was truly interested in what he was studying that day. Sometimes they would go hours without talking at all on days like this. Remus didn’t mind. He watched as the younger teen slowly closed the book, bookmark in place and looked at the Gryffindor with none of the aggravation that the older boy was sure that the teen felt.

“It’s a book on wandlore,” the younger boy said, his eyes bright. “Interesting stuff really.”

But Remus couldn’t match the other’s enthusiasm. “Wandlore?”

It was Regulus’s turn to look confused then, gazing at the older boy as if he’d grown another head in the past few seconds. “You know, ‘The wand chooses the wizard, ’” the boy’s voice got very airy in what Remus assumed was supposed to be an imitation of someone that the older boy should know, but so clearly doesn’t, “and all that.”

“The wand what ?”Remus asked dumbly, as Regulus looked exasperated- even more so than before.

“ Blimey , Rem,” the younger teen asked, “how did you get your wand then?” Regulus asked with equal parts genuine confusion and concern.

Remus only shrugged and told himself not to give into the remorse rising in his chest as just how much he didn’t know, couldn’t know because that would involve being allowed into the wizarding world outside of school to do so. 

“It was my father’s,” is all the boy says instead, surprising the younger as Remus had never spoken of his father before, but Regulus soon tsked once the surprise died down.

“Well that explains why it works so well for you even though it’s not yours ,” the boy said more to himself than the other teen, but quickly backpedaled at the dark look from the older boy. “I’m not saying that you stole it,” Regulus said quickly, though they both know that it wasn’t outside of the realm of Remus’s capabilities, “but the wand doesn’t truly recognize you as the owner. You didn’t win it from your father in a duel, or kill him for it, so it still - even after death - belongs to him. That’s why almost all wizards are buried with their wands, because they could never truly belong to another,” the boy explained.

Remus thought of the way that the wand had always felt just slightly off in the boy’s hand, as if it was trying to mimic the magic of another instead of his own- two magics that couldn’t be more different in nature, not with the wolf lingering inside of the boy.

“It works well enough,” Remus had muttered quietly, taking another drag from his cigarette and wished that it was something stronger. The Gryffindor didn’t want to be reminded of yet another way that he fell short of most wizards, of just how much harder he had to work to pull so far ahead so that he might have a chance at a good job after Hogwarts with the laws that made it so damn hard for those with his condition to survive. The laws that his father had created.

But Regulus was an unrelenting, unmovable force when there was something that he wanted and knew that he could have. He was a Slytherin after all.

“Tell me Remus,” the other boy stated, his face carefully blank as it so often was, but his eyes so bright that it was almost blinding, “you ever been to Diagon Alley?”

That was how Remus found himself stepping into a dingy bar in London and being led out of the back by an eager Regulus, who drew his wand and tapped on the stones there while looking at the older boy as if waiting for a reaction, but the Gryffindor could already smell the thick scent of magic coming from the other side of the barrier.

He still lit up with a childish wonder though upon seeing the sight that he’d been denied for so long.

Regulus watched as the older boy looked at the alley as if he was gazing at the stars on the clearest of nights instead of a small wizard shopping street. Regulus felt something clench in his chest at the sight and pushed it down just as fast as it had come, instead watching as the older boy’s fingers curled at his sides as if he wanted to reach out and grab the magic around him. Knowing Remus as he did, the younger teen had no doubt that if anyone could find a way to do just that, it would be the boy at his side.

Remus let the younger boy take the lead and soon found himself standing inside of a rundown shop that not even the boys at St Edmund’s would think to steal from. There were thousands upon thousands of long, sleeker boxes lining each of the walls and filling every shelf to the absolute brim. The shop was thick with the scent of magic, intoxicatingly so.

“Ah, Regulus Black,” a wispy voice that Remus recognized from the Slytherin’s imitation of it said, as a man with graying hair and a crazed look in his eyes came into view. The Gryffindor immediately felt on edge around the offer man, but couldn’t tell as to why. “Black Walnut and Phoenix Feather, eleven and a quarter inch. Flexible,” Ollivander said, his eyes looking at the boys but truly seeing neither of them. “Difficult wand to master, but I trust that it’s been working well for you?”

Remus watched as the other boy’s eyes grew a bit colder before a soft resignation set in once he caught the other teen’s questing gaze. “So long as I am not deceiving myself.”

“Good. Good,” the man muttered before his ghostly gaze turned to Remus. “Mr. Lupin, I was disappointed when I heard that you wouldn’t be coming, though I suppose your father’s wand had worked well for you these last few years. Ten and a quarter inch, Cypress wood and unicorn hair core. Pliable.” The man’s gaze tragedy uo and down Remus as if he was reading the boy like a book, then he hummed. “Yes, I can see how that would be a problem now.”

Remus had no idea what the wand maker meant by that and didn’t have time to ponder it as the man surged forward with a measuring tape in his hand. The Gryffindor thought that he saw Regulus smirk as the younger boy walked over to the. Hair in the corner of the shop, but could only glare at the wall in response.

The measuring tape started to move on its own as its owner began to pull out tens of boxes, the pile growing higher and higher but the moment as the crazed look in the man’s silver eyes swelled to dizzying heights. Ollivander snapped the fingers and the measure fell to the ground in an unceremonious heap as the wandmaker gestured the older boy forwards.

Remus stopped before him at the desk and had a wand thrusted into his hand before his legs had even come to a stop. Holding the wand, Remus knew that it wasn’t meant for him, he could feel the way that it protested even a hint of the werewolf’s magic.

“Definitely not,” the wandmaker said quickly and pulled the wand hurriedly out of the boy’s hand, with another one at the ready.

They continued on like this for some time, long enough that Remus found himself glancing back at the Slytherin boy, expecting to find him in the thralls of boredom, but instead found the younger teen watching with what could only be described as rapt attention.

‘Right ,’ Remus thought, ‘Reg likes wandlore. This is probably the most interesting thing he’s seen all week .’

Remus was right of course, just not for the reasons that he thought.

“How about this one?” Ollivander asked more to himself than anyone else in the room as he pushed the latest wand into the Gryffindor’s hand.

Warmth that the boy had never known before spread through Remus almost instantly, a feeling of rightness washing over the boy as he held the wand, as if all of the magic in the world was just one movement away. Remus waved it surely and watched with wonder as silver and gold sparks shimmered like stars through the air, the magic coming to him in a thick swell without so much as an uttered word.

Ollivander clapped, a triumphant smile on the crazed man’s face, but Remus only had eyes for the boy that had come to stand next to him, fingers ghosting over the delicately carved wood as their sides pressed so tightly together. The pair smiled quickly at one another and wondered how it could have taken them so long to find their way to one another.

“Beech wood, Dragon Heartstrings, twelve and a quarter inch. Brittle,” the wandmaker said as he took the piece back and slid it into the box that it had come from. “Yes, this will work well for you, Mr. Lupin.”

Remus reached into his trousers to pull out what little money he had, but was stopped by a sure jingling of heavy coins on the counter. When he looked up, the Gryffindor saw that Regulus had already paid and grabbed the wand box, slipping out of the shop and leaving Remus no choice but to follow.

“How much do I owe you?” The older boy asked once he’d caught up to the younger, it taking a bit of time with his bad hip protesting so much, but the Slytherin only waved him off and pushed the box into the older teen’s hands. “Reg-”

“We’ll just have Barty teach you how to play cards, then you can wipe those lions clean and pay me with their gold,” the younger boy said almost dismissively, but Remus could see the blush rising in the other teen’s high cheeks, the embarseed kind that came when one did something nice that they didn’t want to speak of.

“Thank you,” the lion said quietly, but earnestly.

“You’re welcome,” the snake replied just the same.

—-

“Do you think that Achilles loved Patroclus?” 

And Remus looked at the boy sitting next to him in the tall grass with surprise in his eyes, because this wasn’t something that they were supposed to talk about so openly. Not when everyone acted as if it was sin. But the earnest look in the younger boy’s eyes told him that it wasn’t some sort of cunning trick to trap the older boy. 

Remus pressed closer to the smaller boy, their knees knocking together as they looked up at the vast night sky, trading a cigarette back and forth with the gentleness of a kiss.

“I think that he did.”

Somehow the boy felt as if they weren’t talking about the Iliad at all.

—-

Summer soon drew to a close and Remus smiled proudly as Regulus told him that he was made a Prefect, the congratulations falling from his lips just as easily as it had when Dora had written him of her reaching the same thing only a few hours or so before. The Gryffindor couldn't wait for patrols with the other two.

They were laying in a field just beside the old playground, the summer sun shining down on them and tanning Regulus’s once pale skin to a comfortable glow that made Remus’s heart race each time that he saw the younger boy.

“This will be the last time that I can see you before the school term starts,” the Slytherin said as the clouds drifted by with an indolence that Remus felt in his bones, his body resisting movement more and more after each passing moon.

“So that means that I have a while to change my looks as drastically as possible then,” Remus said, receiving a glare in return, but the older teen could see an interested glint in that of the younger’s gray eyes and tried not to think too much if it as ideas bloomed in the boy’s mind of just what he could do.

“Are you going to forgive him?” Regulus asked, his eyes turned up to the sky and far away from the other boy, not that Remus wasn’t watching the darkening sky as well, but he still knew that the other feared the answer. Remus knew that Regulus feared that all of this would disappear the second they stepped onto the platform and would go separate ways once more.

Remus feared it too.

“I’ll be civil with him,” the Gryffindor decided, neither boy having to ask who ‘he’ was, “maybe even friends, but I don't think that I will ever forgive him.”

Regulus nodded, relieved, and Remus was too.

The thing that James didn’t seem to unders about what Sirius had done was that if Remus had killed Snape, or even just turned him, Remus would have been put down like some kind of wild animal before anyone even told him what he’d done when he wasn’t in control. He would have died a beast and nothing else would have mattered.

No, Remus Lupin wasn’t going to forgive Sirius Black.

When both boys stood, they knew that there wouldn’t be another summer like this one, not for either of them.

“I’ll see you on the train?” Regulus asked, his voice unsure. Just because Remus was with them for two weeks in public at the end of last term, Regulus knew that this didn’t mean that the Gryffindor would want to so publicly align himself with the snakes once more. 

“You’ll come and find me on the train,” Remus said with a finality that he knew the other wouldn’t question. “We’ll walk to the Prefect’s carriage together.”

“Alright.”

“Right.”

Chapter Text

The Marauders sat anxiously in their usual carriage, apprehension coiling thickly in the air as three parts of a whole desperately awaited their missing piece. None of them knew if Remus would be sitting with them at all this time, not when he hadn’t returned a single letter from any of the other three all summer. Not when the last time that he spoke to Sirius was when he struck the older boy across the face and left them for the snakes in the year below.

“He’ll come,” James said more for the other two than himself. “I’m sure that he will.”

But the boy only winced at the two almost identical glares of disbelief that were given to him by the other two teens, the intensity of them stifled by Sirius’s bouncing leg and Peter popping another chocolate candy into his mouth, going through them twice as fast as he normally would.

James looked at Sirius who, despite the summer sun from flying and constant visits from Mary over the holiday, still had something of a worried air that made him almost lesser than before. He didn’t look like Sirius, he hadn’t in a while.

He had to come.

Then the carriage door slid open, revealing to them an almost perfect stranger.

Peter’s eyes went almost comically wide at the visage of the boy before them, as James immediately wonders what could have happened to cause such a change - he knew, they all did, but didn’t want to admit it to himself, not yet at the least - and Sirius’s breath hitched with something . It was the same feeling that had occurred two years ago, the first time that Remus came to school with such drastic changes. He pushed it down now too, just like then.

“Alright there?” The stray Marauder asked, an almost predatory smile curling on the standing boy’s lips even after the soft summer that he knew that he’d had.

The teen took a drag from his cigarette, letting the other three take the change in; watching their reactions carefully as they did so. 

Remus knew how he looked, there was a small bar going through the top of his right ear and a small cuff below it in the shape of a golden snake - not that he thought that they could see that much detail of the piece from where the other three were - with the usual beginner’s piercings on both side - small black studs to match the black bar. On top of that, his hair was different this year too, the lower half of his head shaved as small loose curls rained down from the top.

He watched as three sets of eyes traveled every inch of his face, eyeing every detail as if they thought it might change back to normal if they were to look away. 

The next thing to be scrutinized was his clothes, the black knock off Doc Martens with red and yellow laces making an appearance once more, as dark torn jeans joined them with the usual sweaters. It felt something like a merging of timelines without any of the kindness remaining within them.

Remus rolled his eyes at the other boys’ shocked expressions and sat down in his seat with a regalness that he seemed to have picked up from a certain Black brother - not that they really acted like brothers much anymore. The idea that the younger boy could rub off on him so much after only a month or so alone with one another sent a pleased smirk to the werewolf’s lips - the breaking point it seemed for the others.

“ Bloody hell , Remus!” James exclaimed , looking at his friend as if seeing a stranger. “What did you do to yourself?”

Remus felt his brow quirk up at the other boy’s reaction which was so different from the polite avoidance of the topic that he’d given the last time that the other boy showed up to King’s Cross poking like a criminal. James noticed it too, but - ever the Gryffindor - refused to back down.

“Punched a few holes in my ears, didn’t I?” Remus shrugged, taking another drag of his cigarette. Though the Marauders’s reactions were interesting, they weren’t the ones that he was waiting for.

A sputtered coughing noise draws Remus’s gaze to the boy sitting next to James, but where he had expected there to be a pang in his chest - whether from some dulled form of what could have once been love or anger Remus didn’t know - there was none. Only a sense of cold apathy that he’d never felt for the other boy before.

“You alright there, Black?” The wolf asked as the other boy’s cheeks flushed from a lack of air, and Peter stood to open the window.

“Fine,” the older boy eventually manages, his tone careful. It was the first civil words that they’d spoken to one another in months. “How was your summer, Moony?” And Remus can tell that the other is testing the waters, the nervous looks on Peter’s and James’s faces tell him that well enough, so he decided to let the other call him what he wishes, only raising a questioning brow. Especially since another surprise was due soon

The werewolf shrugged, glancing out the compartment door for another figure that he wanted to see. “The usual, nothing too special,” Remus lied easily - it was all that he’d been doing since he’d learned to speak. Only Sirius knew what ‘the usual’ meant, about the stealing and fights, but he was too eager to be in the younger teen’s good graces once more to reveal it.

The softening look in James’s eyes and the relaxing of Peter’s shoulders made the deception worth it.

Remus relaxed into the seat as the train began to move and the other three boys told him stories of a summer spent flying and pretending that the war outside didn’t exist at all. With the tentative peace between the dog and the wolf taking shape, it wasn't long before the topic at hand turned to a certain red haired prefect, but the other three Gryffindors were mercifully saved for hearing more as the compartment door slid smoothly open.

Remus immediately pulled himself to his feet as the two newcomers stepped inside unified, an easy smile stretching itself across the boy’s lips that none of the other lions seemed to notice, too consumed with the visitors.

Regulus Black was standing inside of the Gryffindor compartment with a blank look on his face as he took in the image of the older boy. He’d known that the lion was planning on doing something, but never had his mind come up with this . He knew that his mother would curse him for even looking at the older boy the way that he was, and would do so ten times over if she knew of the thoughts suddenly consuming him since the middle of the summer.

He didn’t truly care.

Sirius watched his brother anxiously and saw a flicker of something in the younger Black’s gaze, though he didn’t know just what it was. He didn’t know if he wanted to either, not when he thought that the other boy might be looking at Moony the same way that he had countless times before when no one else could see.

“Interesting look there, Lupin,” the younger boy finally said at last, his voice holding none of the disdain or disgust that most of the Gryffindors present had expected it to. “Very muggle.”

The standing lion walked towards the snake with a casualness that only half of those present understood. “You like it?” Remus asked, his voice almost teasing in a manner, not  that anyone but the intended truly seemed to notice.

Regulus only hummed and goes for a non answer rather than a true one given the current company around the pair. “My mother would have a heart attack if she were to see it,” the Slytherin boy remarks flatly. 

“Good,” the Gryffindor boy replies, a hard note in his voice that goes heard by everyone there.

James and Sirius exchange hurried glances at the strange interaction unfolding before them.

“What are you doing here, Reg?” The elder Black brother asks, his hands moving stiffly to the wand at his side despite neither of the newcomers showing any hints of hostility.

“Just here to pick up Remus,” Pandora answers airily in the Slytherin boy’s steed as she turns to look at her Gryffindor, blatantly ignoring the others. Something that she knew that the other boys were in no way accustomed to. “Remus darling, please put that out,” the Ravenclaw says almost sternly as she points at the cigarette in the older boy’s hand.

Remus rolls his eyes but nocked the cherry off out of the open window before pocketing the other half, and looping his arm through the Ravenclaw’s.

The sitting Marauders watched the scene with a quiet bewilderment at the ease that the three moved around one another. They knew that Remus had hung around the younger Slytherins the year before - how could they not? The whole school knew - but somehow it felt as if they were expecting things to come back into a sense of normalcy that they’d created over the years once the school year started again. Now looking at Remus, it just seems like everything was changing even more than before. None of them knew what to think about that.

“I’ll be back after the prefect’s meeting,” the fourth Marauder said as if being carted off by a Slytherin boy and Ravenclaw girl was natural now, as if they all should have seen it coming.

Maybe they should have.

The three Gryffindor boys watched their last member leave and wondered what this meant for them all that Remus was around - around, but not friends, Sirius refused to let his mind wander down that path and James and Peter knew better than to let him - Regulus Black of all people. Someone that should hate to even breathe the same air as the half - blood boy, and yet almost seemed fond of him.

—-

The trio walked into the prefect’s carriage together, the two boys listening to the Ravenclaw girl give a recant of the information that she’d found over the summer, and the work that they still had to do.

So consumed in one another, they seemed to miss the strange looks that they were receiving from the other prefects, who had all stilled their own conversations to watch as the three took places right next to each other at the table, with Black in the middle and an open seat left on Remus and Pandora’s other sides for their respective house partners. But all those that were staring looked away once the younger of the two boys gave a fierce glare that would chill anyone’s heart.

Evans isn’t as shaken by the sight as the others, not after the events at the end of last year when Severus came running to her in the last few days of the school term with stories of a werewolf boy and a full moon night. She’d gone to Remus with the Gryffindor idiots on the train, but found him towards the back of the Hogwarts’s Express with the Slyherins instead. She’d seen the way that the three were pressed closely together then as they were now in conspiratorial whispers with the other two Slytherin boys laughing together on the ground, and had fought back a grimace. 

Black, Potter, and Pettigrew might have thought that Remus being with them in the last two weeks of fifth year did not mean anything, but she knew that it did.

She knew that it was a strange bond that wouldn’t die so easily with age.

Remus wasn’t one to abandon friends unless they had wronged him greatly, and even then he often didn’t let the separation last long.

So Lily just smiles at the Gryffindor boy and takes the seat that had been left open for her as if it was normal to do so. Remus smiled at her as well before going back to his conversation with the other two in just the same manner. She didn’t even balk at the change in the other lion’s appearance once she saw it, though she found that she liked how even though the boy was now - as always - so completely surrounded by purebloods, Remus seemed to flaunt his muggle upbringing even more than ever before. 

It eased something in the witch about the whole thing. Because it was a thing now.

Remus hardly listened as the Head Boy and Head Girl of this year went through the same speech that was given the year previous, only giving enough attention to know when the topic would change. No, his attention was drawn instead to the shoe pressed against his ankle under the table. To the occasional, but so transparently deliberate graze of the other boy’s thigh against his own. To things that could be so easily passed off as accidental if done by anyone else other than Regulus Black, a boy that seamlessly controlled how his body moved.

The Gryffindor boy knew what the younger was doing, testing the grounds to see if it would hold, and a wild part of him just wanted to drag the Slytherin boy over the line and let them both see what would come of it when doing so. But the more rational part of him knew that he could never hope to do so while the younger boy didn’t know of the beast living just under his skin

A reckless part of him wanted to give in anyways.

“Now that that’s out of the way,” the Head Girl - a seventh year Hufflepuff that Remus never did learn the name of - started, “onto scheduling. This year we decided to let you guys pick who you're assigned with so as to avoid any unnecessary conflict. So who is willing to work with another house?”

Three hands immediately pushed into the air, drawing an raised brow from the Head Girl that Remus steadfastly ignored.

“Variant combinations of Lupin, Black and Lestrange I assume?” The Head Boy asked as he sat over the unwritten patrol schedule, quill in hand. The three nodded as the seventh year sighed and began to write. “ It’s always the fucking Marauders ,” Remus thought that he heard the older boy mutter under his breadth.

He wasn’t wrong either way.

“Lupin and Black will patrol tonight then,” the Head Girl decided as the two seventh years began the slow process of combining houses and years so that no one was likely to kill one another and everyone was kept honest during their patrols.

Remus only listened enough to know what days he would be patrolling and with whom, pleased to find that it would be Regulus every Wednesday and Dora and Lily on Saturday and Monday, respectively. He really didn’t want to deal with any of the other prefects, not with the way that one of the fifth year Gryffindors seemed a little too put out about not being with the older boy.

“Library tomorrow?” Dora asked once they were dismissed and everyone else was returning to their own compartments. Remus gave Evans a small nod to show that he would be along soon if she wanted to wait. “Usual group?”

Remus was about to object when someone else spoke as if reading the Gryffindor’s mind. 

“Library tomorrow, just the three of us,” Regulus countered and Dora frowned at that.

The eldest of the three sighed in a put out way that neither of the other two were foolish enough to truly believe. “You know Barty and Evan would just be bored stiff the whole time if invited,” the teen reminded her. “We’ll do something with the five of us this weekend,” he said in compromise and Pandora nodded at this before smiling at them both and squeezing each of their hands affectionately before leaving for her own compartment.

She never really was the type to give a verbal goodbye.

The Gryffindor felt his body relax in an all too familiar way as it was just Regulus and him again, Remus half sitting upon the table as the Slytherin boy remained seated. The set up was a familiar one to the pair that brought back images of summer days spent in the sun and those rare summer nights. 

He missed it all already like a limb.

But there were still a few strangers from the other houses present and Lily was waiting for him impatiently outside of the carriage so they could walk back to the Marauders and the girls together, as both prefects were sure that Marlene, Mary, and Desdemona had found their way to the boys by now. Remus knew that the moment couldn't last. He also knew that he would immediately miss the comfortable silence once it was gone. Because Remus liked that when others demanded him to be loud, whispers were enough between the lion and the snake.

“I’ll pick you up from the dungeons at about thirty before curfew,” the older boy decided, knowing that Regulus would want to stay as far away from Gryffindor Tower and the boy inside of it as he could.

When the Slytherin looked at him, Rmeus could almost see a smile there. It was more than he thought that he would get.

“I’ll be waiting,” the younger teen says simply, plainly even. But fingers brush against his own as Regulus stands to leave and it feels like playing with fire.

Remus wondered just how long he could last before he became an arsonist.

The Gryffindor followed the Slytherin out a beat or two later, letting the other boy leave as he took up post at Lily’s side.

“Weren’t you one of the ones that warned me about befriending Slytherins?” The Gryffindor girl asked in that know - it - all voice of hers that everyone knew better than to question her by now when she started using it. Remus would have been annoyed, but in her eyes the boy found genuine concern among the righteousness.

The teen tsked as his fingers itched for a cigarette, or really just about anything to occupy them. “I warned you about a Slytherin, not all of them,” Remus reminded her as they walked.

The Gryffindor boy had never really understood the innate hatred that Sirius and James had for the house of cunning, going as far as to abandon a younger brother simply because he had been sorted into it. The teen could admit that most of them were assholes, but Remus would never forget the respect that he held for Narcissa after their second year, or anything that happened at the end of the last. Most of the Slytherins were raised in hate, the kind that made you fiercely protect those that they called their own.

No, Remus didn’t hate the Slyherins - he never had - he hated those that thought that he and Lily were lesser for their blood status and muggle parents - though Remus only had the one. He hated the monster that turned him into one. But he didn’t hate someone just for their house.

Lily sighed. “I just want you to be careful,” the girl said sympathetically, knowing a losing battle when she so clearly saw one, “we Gryffindors haven’t had the best of luck with the Slytherins in the past.”

A cold laugh of surprise encased the boy’s lips, something cruel rising in his chest that he half heartedly shoved down. He knew just how much of an understatement that was, how much worse it was likely to get with the war worsening as it was.

“You and Snape still on the outs then?” Remus asked instead of giving fully into the voice that whispered in his mind to turn his words into knives. To make her bleed.

Anger had always been one of the werewolf's main issues, with or without the moon to accompany it.

Lily nodded, something sad entering what was usually such brightly lit eyes. “For good this time it seems,” the Gryffindor girl admitted before rolling those eyes of hers, “especially after the stories that he was telling me about you .”

Though the last part was surely supposed to be a lightening force if the jesting tone that it was given in meant anything, Remus felt his heart beat faster as if he had a hummingbird in his chest instead. 

He stopped, bringing Lily to a sudden halt as well. He looked at her and Remus knew just what kind of stories that the girl meant. He knew it as surely as he knew the scars lacing his skin and the moons that they came from. As sure as the pain in his bad hip and fine scent of magic that clung desperately to his lungs all summer long.

“You can’t tell anyone,” Remus said quietly, watching as realization dawned in the other Gryffindor’s eyes, something that he didn’t know taking root in the other. “Promise me that.”

“I-I would never,” the girl stuttered out, shock heavy on her tongue. Remus watched as determination as bright as an explosion settled on the other Gryffindor’s face, the curve of her mouth and gleam of her eyes, and he wanted so desperately to believe it because he’d grown fond of the other teen over the past few years. “I promise.”

Remus really wished that promises meant anything in this world, but he wouldn’t be him if he only ever got what he deserved.

“Okay.”

The pair walked back to the other Marauders in a heavy silence, only for it to be broken right before entering the compartment.

“I like the new look by the way,” the girl said almost teasingly, her smile fierce yet unfailing kind. “Very punk.”

Very muggle, was what went unsaid by the other.

Remus heard it anyways.

—-

The Sorting Ceremony and feast were the same as every year before, something that annoyed Remus more than it ought to have as it never had before. But it wasn’t really the feast that annoyed the boy, but those around him at it.

Lily kept sending small looks at Remus and then at the Slytherin table on the other side of the Great Hall where Remus was taking great care not to look. Not when Sirius’s eyes seemed to be on the scarred boy as much as they were on Mary who was all but sitting in the older boy’s lap. Having already spoken to the older Black brother that day, Remus didn’t bother to meet the other’s gaze.

James was almost worse though in comparison to the others, a guilty look on the teen’s face every time that he looked at Remus that the boy wanted to claw off. Remus didn’t truly mind the other’s adverse reaction to his change in appearance - had expected it even since the other teen had barely held his tongue in fourth year, and had frowned spectacularly last Christmas when the wolf had given Sirius a piercing of his own. The Potters were of a clean sort, the kind not likely to get a tattoo or a piercing, or even dye their hair if Mrs. Potter had any say in the matter - she always did.

No, what got under the boy's skin was the way that the other teen seemed to be wishing desperately to take his reaction back . Remus has been raised in a way that remorse was expected of you, but completely useless to the point that he didn’t truly understand it at all. The damage was already done, you couldn’t fix it just by wanting to.

Marlene and Mary were like annoying balms for the boy, the pair of Ms instantly having noticed the change and all but gushing at him in a way too similar to how they looked at James and Sirius that it made the Gryffindor boy want to sick up and feel pleased all at the same time.

“ Careful there, Lupin ,” Mary had said teasingly from Sirius’s side, “ Black here might start to think that he has competition. ”

Remus had only laughed along with the others, the feeling bitter as he knew that the elder Black brother had nothing to worry about. Remus wasn’t exactly interested in the same sort that Sirius was.

Remus stood when Lily did to go to the first years as the feast ended. “The password is ‘lion heart [1]’ pass it on to the others,” the boy instructed, he didn’t miss the sharp look that the elder Black brother paid him at the password, he only chose to ignore it. Sixth years didn’t choose the password to the common rooms, and it wasn’t the taller boys' problem if the other teen was suddenly feeling a sense of guilt over it.

The prefects lead the first years to the dormitories with gentle smiles carved onto each of their lips as they were reminded of what magic was supposed to be - the pureness of first being so completely surrounded by it without a war looming over them all. Lily had to swat at the boy when one of the first hears gasped at the moving staircases and asked loudly how it could be safe - as if Remus hasn’t been wondering the same thing since they were eleven themselves.

If the Gryffindor boy had ever doubted his duty with fighting in the war, watching the first years as they gasped at a world of magic as if it was the most beautiful thing in the world made just for them would have been enough to make him decide right then and there.

The wolf never wanted the young lions to become casualties of war. He never wanted them to get blood in their hands.

—-

“Going to bed already, Moony?” Peter asked as the boy in question laid down his book and pushed himself to his feet, biting back a pained groan as his hip resisted the sudden movement.

“I’ve got patrol tonight, Wormtail,” the teen said not unkindly, if a bit disgruntled, but the other boys were used to his gruffness by now.

“Is Evans going with you then, Moony?” James asked as he sprung to a sitting position, suddenly very interested in the conversation at hand. The other three Marauders only rolled their eyes at the too familiar scene.

“No,” the standing teen said almost pityingly to the bespectacled boy, “I’m with one of the other houses today.”

Remus chuckled as he watched the boy all but deflate at not being able to see the girl that had already gone up to her dorm to unpack.

“Have fun, Remus,” Mary said kindly from her seat on the small couch where the girl’s legs were folded in the elder Black’s lap and her body leaning against the boy’s shoulder. The Gryffindor waited for the usual swell of jealousy and found it missing entirely.

Remus only rolled his eyes in response. “It’s a patrol, Mary,” he reminded the girl. “Can’t get more boring than that.”

It was a lie, he knew that it was.

“Be safe, Moony,” Sirius said in the bright voice of his that made everyone believe that everything was normal with the four. Remus only paid the older boy a nod in response and left.

—-

The snake and the lion walked together with their sides pressed tightly into one another, the same unspoken thing passing between the teens as it had all summer.

There wasn’t much that the boys had to do, only breaking up the usual secret pairings in the hidden nooks of the castle, letting the culprits off with a warning until the points system got into full swing in the coming days. So the teens had plenty of time to talk about whatever they wished, from muggle books to wizarding stories, and classes and projects they wanted to pursue this year.

They stopped outside of the entrance to the dungeons at the end of their rounds, a comfortable silence stretching out between the pair, one that the younger of the two saw fit to break.

“Slytherin is having a party this Friday,” the black haired boy said as they stood across from one another, close enough that the older boy could feel the younger boy’s breath on his neck.

The implication was clear enough to the older boy. “I’ll be there if you want me,” he assured. “Send Dora to pick me up then on her way?” He asked and the younger nodded, the smallest of smiles forming on his otherwise still face.

Remus felt heat blossom in his chest as it did everytime that the boy caused the younger to break his bearings, and had a sly grin of his own all the way back to the Gryffindor common room.

James and Peter had long gone to bed by the time that Remus got there, but the boy saw that Sirius was still awake as if waiting for him.

“Hey Moony,” the lede Black said softly from his own bed as Remus crossed the room.

The taller boy felt his heart pull in that familiar way that it always used to around the older boy, but this time it wasn’t because it was Sirius , but rather because the other teen sounded like another that they both knew when he spoke in such a way.

“Padfoot,” Remus said concisely as he gathered his things for bed.

“Good patrol?”

“The usual.”

“Moony, I-” the older boy started, a hint of a familiar desperation entering the other teen’s voice.

“Good night, Sirius,” Remus said tiredly, his cold tone never wavering as he closed the bathroom door, effectively ending the conversation.

Chapter Text

When Remus wakes the next morning, it’s to the hushed whispers of boys that seemed to have forgotten just how well the supposedly still sleeping teen could hear. 

“ He’s different now; cold ,” came the low voice of Peter as the other three boys moved as quietly around the room as they seemed capable.

“ Moony has always been a little distant,” came James’s Layla defense of the supposed to be slumbering teen - the sad thing was that Remus couldn’t even deny it. James and Sirius always hung all over one another, wrestling when all four of the boys had been young, and Peter was always eager to be as close to the spotlight as he could be. Remus had always been the most reserved of the lot of them, a boy that hid behind more secrets then he would ever know how to count. This was just the first time that anyone had ever said so much out loud. “ He’s still our Moony though.”

“It’s my fault, isn’t it?”

The voice was unsure and pained, almost unrecognizably so, but Remus still knew who had spoken even if he couldn’t see them. The hidden teen waited for the inevitable way that James would jump to the other’s defense - to protect his brother in everything but blood from the reality of it all as he had done when they were young. 

It never came.

Silence hung in the air for a long moment, broken only by a muttered curse as Peter seemed to have dropped something - likely the boy’s shoe - on himself.

Using the noise as a probable cover, the werewolf slipped out of bed, gripping the banner subtly as he stood, his bones protesting anything but a death - like sleep.

“Morning,” the tallest of the four boys muttered, his voice thick with sleep as he ignored the so clearly guilty looks on the faces of his friends in favor of gathering his clothes to go and change in the bathroom. 

When he came back out the other three were waiting patiently by the door for their fourth to grab his books and wand so that they could all walk down to breakfast. The rumbling in the wolf’s stomach made the teen eager to comply, but stopped short at the peculiar looks from the other three Marauders. 

“ What ?” Remus asked, his voice a little more than twinged with annoyance.

“Is that a new wand, Moony?” James asked, an almost tangible confusion lacing the other teen’s voice.

Remus looked down as the pale wood in his hands, his skin buzzing from the magic within it reaching out to his own in a way that the previous one never had. From how right it felt to hold it at last. A smile curved on the lips of the teen, sharp like a predator's teeth.

“Yeah,” he answered simply, slipping it inside of his robes as the others watched, seemingly no less confused than before.

“Did your old one break?” Wormtail asked almost meekly, a shiver running down the rat’s spine at the glint in the taller boy’s eyes. If Peter wasn’t already friends with the teen, he might had attempted to become so right then so that such a look would never seek to eat him whole.

“Nah, just wasn’t mine now was it?” Remus answered, his words inspiring more confusion than clarity in them once more, but the tallest teen started for the door before the others could ask anything else.

—-

Classes passed slowly though the rest of the day as long speeches warning of the dangers of false sense of complacency went into one ear and out of the other with each subject as OWLs were behind them all, but NEWTs only a year ahead.

Remus would never deny though the small thrill that went through him each time that he used his wand, the way that the magic seemed to ebb and flow in a way that it never had before. A stark contrast from the way that the old wand had always taken time to warm up to him at the start of each new term, yearning for an owner that was long gone now. The boy couldn’t help but wonder if this ease was how all of the others felt each time that magic poured from their skin - somehow he thought that it wasn’t quite the same for him as it was for the others.

The end of the school day couldn’t come soon enough though as Remus separated himself from Mary and Marlene after Care of Magical Creatures with a lie spilling too easily from the boy’s lips.

Too trustingly believed as well.

The library was quiet when the teen entered, a stillness laying thickly over it that only came from a strong bout of disuse such as the summer holidays. Madam Pince glared healthily as the boy as the Gryffindor walked past her and a NEWTs student or two, forcefully ignoring the compulsion to flip the witch off. It wouldn’t have done him any good to do so, but that didn’t mean that the thought hadn’t crossed the teen’s mind almost every time that he’d seen the ancient witch.

A smile crept across the lion’s lips, instantly dispelling his previous mood as Remus saw an achingly familiar stream of blond hair among the old shelves and a mop of black pouring over a book or three at one of the tables not far from the other.

“Took you long enough,” Regulus muttered as he turned the page of his book, but there was no bite in the younger boy’s words, only the barest hint of relief. As if he had feared that Remus wouldn’t have come at all.

“Care,” the older boy said as he sat down across from the snake, their feet knocking loosely into one another’s under the table from each of their long legs. Remus couldn’t wait for the day that the elder Black brother realized that Regulus had outgrown him, though he supposed that it might never come as the pair were hardly ever in the same room as one another outside of meal times. Rarer still to be so close to one another to notice such things.

Regulus only hummed in understanding, but Remus didn’t mind. He liked that so many things could be said through so few - words spilling from silent glances and gestures that almost no one else could read.

It felt a bit like a magic all of its own.

Parchment and books were scattered across the table hazardously, the papers filled with Pandora’s familiar messy scrawl. Sometimes Remus found himself wondering how he could have ever found Ravenclaws to be of one of the neater houses when this was a product of only one of them - let alone a whole house .

A new book joined the pile, its pages already opened to the needed one by its handler.

“Evening Dora,” Remus greeted to the fiercely imaginative girl. The blonde only waved half heartedly at the oldest of the two boys as she quickly scribbled another thing down before discarding the newest book as obsolete.

“ Remus ,” the girl said with more than a hint of surprise as she lifted her head once more, ink covering her pale finger and somehow smudged onto one of her cheeks. It wasn’t an uncommon sight in the days that the Ravenclaw girl became invested in projects heavily.

“Evening Dora,” the Gryffindor boy said once more, no heat or animosity in the eldest’s voice as he spoke.

“How long had he been here?” The blond asked the younger Black brother, not bothering to whisper as they all knew what the question would be.

“A good minute,” Regulus answered in a voice that sounded utterly devoid of anything at all, but the other two could see the slightest gleam in the boy’s gray eyes.

Pandora at least had the decency to look relieved that it was such a short time this time, before waving the matter off entirely. “Doesn't matter. I think that I found some spells that we could combine with…”

And just like that, the odd trio spent the next two hours or so working through spells and books, studying Ancient Runes and potential potions to try that could be modified to suit their needs. History books became their friends as the trio studied past delvings into such a subject as theirs as other students came and went.

By the time that the three came to a stop, the world outside of the caste windows was already beginning to grow dark and winter had surely already started not so long ago. The three packed up and did away with the mess that they had made in the time that they were there, talking quietly about nothing at all as they did so. It wasn’t until they had gone back to the table to get her their things that the three spoke of anything of importance.

Remus watched as the younger pair looked at one another proddingly, as if they each wanted to say the same thing, but neither wanted to have to be the one to do so. In the end, it was Dora who lost the silent tug of war and Remus bit back something of a genuine laugh as the Ravenclaw’s shoulders slumped into a pout.

“What is it?” The Gryffindor asked, his stomach grumbling iratably for the not so patiently waiting food just down a few halls.

Dora sighed as if some heavy burden had been placed upon her. “At the end of every year, Ravenclaw house has an exhibition of sorts to show off the things that we’ve created this year - a highlight to our obsessions I suppose you could say.” And Remus almost smirked at the last part that so perfectly mimicked the charms Professor’s voice that one would think that he had been standing just behind the Ravenclaw girl. “Students from other houses are typically invited to watch and judge, but not…”

“But not Gryffindors,” Remus offered, his voice sharp with something that the teen didn’t know, but he thought that he might want to. “Because everything else is about Gryffindor?” The lion garnered a guess, knowing that he was right by the way that the younger pair nodded their heads slowly. A small, self deprecating chuckle escaped the older boy’s lips before his face returned to something more impassive. “Can’t say that I’m all that surprised,” he muttered more to himself than the other two. “So are you planning on showing off this then?” Remus asked, gesturing to the spacers in the girl’s hands, tapping them lightly.

“I would like to.”

“Right then,” the eldest of the three said, slinging his bag over his shoulder and grimacing internally at how ragged it looked when compared with that of the two purebloods before him. “Tell me how that goes for you then.”

Remus didn’t bother to look at the other two as he spoke, keeping his head down as she me burned itself deeply across the elder boy’s face, but then he heard a familiar groan from one of the other two.

Pandora nodded in conformation, holding out her pale hand that was marred only by thin cuts from potion knives for the other to shake.

And if Remus smiled like an idiot for the first time in so long that the boy had long lost count of the days, then that was no one else’s business. Even less so if the other two mirrored it to some extent alongside the lion.

—-

Remus listened to the soft sounds of the other three boys sleeping, the slow deep breaths filled the otherwise silent room. With a practiced carefulness, the teen slipped from his bed with his wand held lethally in his hand.

The halls were dark as the boy crept across them with the fearlessness of youth, not needing light as those without his condition did. Remus had to admit that it made sneaking around a lot easier for the teen, even if that was about the only pleasant thing about what he was. Because of this advantage of his, the lion was able to spot the crouching figures of the others with an ease that he wondered if anyone else would ever think to envy. He thought that they might.

“Evan. Barty,” Remus whispered from just behind the other two boys, a silencing spell that he’d learned from James and Sirius’s late night conversations already hanging thickly in the air as the two snakes shrieked.

“Merlin Remus,” Barty whispered angrily as his voice was returned to him. “The hell was that for?”

“Don’t act all high and mighty, as if you wouldn’t have done the exact same to me if given the chance, Crouch,” the Gryffindor pointed out not unkindly.

Barty looked ready to object, but a swift slap to the shoulder from Evan was enough to stop the wizard short.

“So what are we doing tonight?” Evan whispered quietly to the eldest boy. Neither of the other two could see the lion very well, but there was an air about the older boy that told the pair of a mischievous look in the other teen's eyes nonetheless.

“You’ll just have to follow and see.”

The three boys walked down the hall with the practiced silence of those who spent a great number of years not allowed to be heard. Remus led them to a hidden room on the seventh floor behind one of the tapestries, the stitched fairies on the fabric speaking angrily with the three as they were moved aside to let the trio in.

“Remus, what in Salazar’s name is this?” Evan asked with the most unimpressed voice that either of the other boys had heard before.

Inside of the wand - lit room everything was barren, completely devoid of anything save for a slim coil of metal that sat in the middle of the floor and clanked pleasantly when Barty picked it up.

“Is this muggle?” The younger teen asked as he messed with the silver object, eyes going wide as he let go of one end while still holding the other and it came back towards the Slytherin like on the Screaming Yo-yos from Zonko's Joke Shop.

“It is,” the eldest boy confirmed, taking the toy and putting it onto the palm of his hand, letting the purebloods watch as it seemed to walk away after falling from it. “It’s called a Slinky.”

“ Brilliant ,” Evan muttered, his voice thick with sarcasm. “The Muggle world’s gift to wizarding kind. I still don’t see why we couldn’t have done this during the day.”

“Aw, is someone losing out on their beauty sleep?” The Gryffindors cooed coldly as he stood once more. “Yeah, this thing is about as interesting as one of Professor Binns' classes right now,” the eldest boy admitted with a non pulsed shrug. “But a couple thousand of these things and some good timing, well that wouldn’t be dull at all.”

In the dim light, Remus could see the other two boys sly grins mirroring his own, sharp as a blade.

—-

Friday came quickly, and with it came Friday night.

A now familiar sung in Remus’s chest as he walked back to the Gryffindor common room after dinner. The other Marauders were already talking about what prank they wanted to plan first, each wanting to get a good one in this year - to be children before they fully took to the war following next year. Remus stayed as silent as he always was during these discussions, only telling the other boys when their ideas were plain idiotic, even by the standards of the Marauders.

“Remus.”

Though only Remus was called, all four boys turned to look at the girls, James and Sirius passing furtive glances between one another at the sight of Dorcas Meadows and Pandora Lestrange done up prettily in clothes fit for a house party. The sixth year Slytherin [1] and fifth year Ravenclaw wasted no time in approaching the pack of Gryffindors.

“Meadows, Dora,” Remus greeted, a small feeling of dread pooling in the Gryffindor’s stomach at the idea of what those two could be striving to do together.

Dora looped her arm through Remus’s, grinning at his unanswered questions as if she could read them on him like an open book. Sometimes the boy found himself wondering if the witch could do just that. Meadows took his other side, but didn’t hold the boy so familiarly. 

Thank Merlin. 

The sight still drew quite the baffled looks from the other three Marauders.

“You ladies look nice today,” James complimented as Meadows sent the boy a cool look that did nothing to measure up to how Sirius was currently glaring at the trio. If looks could kill, Remus thought that they’d be dead already if Black had any say in the matter. “What’s the occasion?”

“Ravenclaw is having a party tonight,” Meadows lied smoothly, doing her house proud in doing so.

Pandora nodded as her airy voice floated between them all. “We’re here to help Remus get ready.”

“A nerd party?” The eldest Black brother asked, a scoff in the boy’s voice as he went ignored.

“I can dress myself,” Remus protested weakly, but was met with a shushing noise from the Ravenclaw and an appraising look from the Slytherin girl.

“Not for a party you can’t,” Meadows decided before nodding to Pandora.

The blonde girl gave a loose tug and Remus followed easily, shrugging at the other three Gryffindor boys that were left to follow as the group made their way to the tower. The wolf only spared the trio a pitying glance as they were forced to stay downstairs as the girls had commandeered the boys’ room. The majority of him actually found it quite amusing, seeing the self proclaimed kings of Hogwarts being ordered around.

Remus sat down on his bed as Dora and Meadows dug through his trunk, talking among themselves as if he wasn’t there at all. The boy didn’t mind, not when he knew that the pair were absorbed in a task for his sake.

“I think he should wear the muggle clothes he had on the train.”

“On, I saw him in those, they’ll work, but we’ll need to do something about that sweater.”

“A few too many holes to look entirely fashionable, still go though,” Dora said kindly, a set smile on her lips as she seemed to remember that the owner of such clothes was still present. “What about a flannel?”

“The dark green one with black lines could work. Grab the boots, yeah.”

A pile of clothes was dumped into the Gryffindor’s arms as the boy was forced into the bathroom to change. Remus knew that he could easily shrug the both off if he wished - he was naturally stronger than almost anyone in the castle due to his condition- but he went along with it easily.

Remus changed quickly, not entirely trusting the girls not to snoop into the boy’s things if curiosity became the better of the pair. And when he looked into the mirror, the Marauder didn’t entirely hate who was looking back at him.

The flannel added a pop of color to the otherwise dark outfit, the shirt and jeans both black as could be. The scars on his face were visible even beneath the beauty charms that Lily, Marlene, and Mary had shown him in second year to hide them, but in muggle clothes Remus found that they looked like the trophy of a great feat rather than the effects of a curse he could never rid himself of. Something to show with pride rather than to hold in shame.

There was a soft knock on the door and Remus opened it, slipping out into the other room and shaking his head at the smirks of approval on the faces of the two girls.

“You clean up well, Lupin,” Meadows said, a whistle soon falling from the Slytherin girl’s lips as Dora nodded along.

“We had an idea, Rem,” the younger girl said softly, stepping closer to the older boy as a wave of unease ran through the Marauder.

Remus trusted the Ravenclaw - truly he did - but they haven’t known each other long enough to know what lines are okay to cross just yet.

“And what would that be?” He managed to ask.

Meadows came closer as well. “We want you to take off whatever concealment charms it is that you wear to dull your scars,” the Slytherin girl said bluntly. “Even if only for tonight.”

The request hit the Gryffindor boy like a stinging jinx, knocking all of the wind from the Marauder’s lungs as worry and panic built up in the boy’s chest. The persistent, ever lingering fear that anyone would look upon him and just know . 

They’ll know anyway in just over a year , a voice inside of the wolf whispered and in a moment of reckless self destruction, Remus found himself agreeing.

“Fine.”

Dora stood up in her tiptoes to ruffle the older boy’s hair and Remus leaned into the touch.

—-

The Marauders watched as the two girls from earlier walked down the stairs to the boy’s dorms with Moony quick in toe. A Remus that looked as muggle as he did on the train to school only a few days before.

A Remus who’s scars stood out proudly against the tan of his skin.

The three boys glanced at one another in shock, knowing just how much shame the other boy always held for those very scars.

Sirius, sitting on the couch with an untrusted Mary quietly talking to Lily about the scene before them curled up on his side, wondered just how much someone could change before they became another person altogether.

—-

Remus grinned sharply at the now familiar sight of the Slytherin common room done up for a house party, amd took pleasure in knowing that it was a look cutting enough to keep those smart enough to remember the first time that the Gryffindor was here and keep their distance.

For now at the least.

“Rem! Dora!”

The older boy rolled his eyes almost affectionately at Barty’s already tipsy call drawing Pandora and Remus closer, as Meadows peeled off to go join her own friends now that her job was done for the night.

Evan was sitting next to the boy, their shoulders pressed tightly together as a bottle was neatly nestled between the pair. The blond teen nodded in welcome as the lion and the eagle sat on either side of the bigger couch with the last snake between them.

“Interesting choice of clothing there, Lupin,” the younger Black observed, his eyes slowly tracing across the older boy in a way that made Remus’s skin burn dangerously.

“Dora and Meadows put it together,” the Gryffindor explained, not tearing his eyes away from the other. “Do you like it?”

“It’s very muggle,” Regulus said slowly, his words measured neatly in a not answer.

“That’s not an answer,” the older boy pressed, his voice teasing in nature, something Remus never thought that he would be with one of his best mate’s little brother.

When Regulus looked at the older boy sitting so closely to him that their knees knocked together, he thought that he might finally understand the beauty that all of the muggle poets seemed to endlessly find in destruction. And, Merlin , did he want to see more.

The older boy’s scars were more prominent then than they ever had been before, even during the summer holiday. Every piercing looked like something out of a painting that he didn’t know the name of just yet, but he knew that his mother would have it destroyed.

The thought made Regulus only stare more.

In the back of the boy's mind, the Slytherin wondered how much prodding it would take to have the other try black nail polish. He didn’t think that it would be all that much if Pandora was involved as well.

Did he like it? That was the question right?

“Yes,” the Slytherin boy said bluntly, his voice thick with something that he didn’t know but the other did as the younger boy looked at the one beside him. To Regulus it almost looked as if the lion was finally beginning to give into something that he’d spent forever repressing.

Fuck yes.

And when Remus smiled, it was that primal - feral - thing that the younger boy had only seen once before.

It felt a bit like lightning.

—-

The party carried on the same as all of the other ones always tended to, with the boys - Slytherin or not - making absolute fools of themselves as the girls just barely acted any better. Remus would never not wonder why the lot of them decided to wait so long to hold duels as they did, but it was never not entertaining to watch drunk snakes fall over themselves as they failed miserably to curse one another.

Pressed nicely against Regulus and Firewhiskey pleasantly warming his veins, Remus hadn’t expected to get his knuckles bloodied that night, but Mulciber had other plans for the night.

The wolf could smell the foul scented teen long before he drew close to them. The only consultation seemed to be that Snape, who had seemed to linger around the taller boy like a permanent shadow, was nowhere in sight for once.

“You're inviting all of the trash to the party, Baby Black?” The towering teen asked with a nasty grin to match his less than pleasant personality. The boy’s words were directed to Regulus, but his sneer was given to Pandora; a fact that made the wolf want to growl. “You’ve even got Gryffindor’s Loony Lupin here.”

And just like that, the Gryffindor was on his feet with a look in his eyes so dark, so hungry , that anyone who saw it would know that there was a predator before them.

Smoke blew slowly from the wolf’s lips as a new cigarette burned between the lion’s fingers. “Duel, right now,” the boy demanded as the odd group of friends leaned forwards with sudden interest. “Unless you’re scared to lose to Loony Lupin ,” the teen taunted in true Gryffindor fashion, putting the same emphasis on the name as the other boy had.

“Deal, Mudblood ,” the other teen spat.

Remus didn’t suppress his growl this time.

The sixth years moved quickly into the dueling lane as the rest of Slytherin house drew in close to watch, almost all of them remembering the show that they’d been given the last time that the lion had fought. Off to the side, Remus could see Dora looking disapprovingly at the sight - never one to have liked violence much -  but the three Slytherin boys had varying looks of interest; Regulus looking at him with a raised brow as if asking what the lion planned to do now.

Fight .

“Wands at the ready!” One of the seventh year Slytherin prefects yelled from the right of the pair. “And… duel !”

The metallic scent of magic swelled deeply in the air, taking on a bitter twinge to it as spells fired from both the boy’s wands in an endless succession that didn’t fully require words as emotions field it all.

The wood snarled inside of the boy as animalistic instinct took over the teen, guiding the lion’s movements, pushing the teen closer and closer to the other. His spells growing stronger and stronger until the Expelliarmus went straight through the other’s Protego , the Slytherin’s wand flying across the room with enough force that the Gryffindor heard it hit the far wall.

But Remus didn’t stop there.

Fuming with a feral rage, the wolf jumped at the heavier boy, bringing them both to the ground as the lion beat the snake long after his knuckles began to bleed, only stopping once a cool hand pulled him back.

The Gryffindor let Regulus pull him into what looked to be a stairwell that led to the Slytherin dorms similar to the Gryffindor ones, not stopping until the pair were halfway up the flight.

“Did I take it too far?” The older boy asked as he watched the blood slowly spill down his hands, dripping to the ground. The wolf’s heart was still beating fast, adrenaline begging the lion to fight more. Remus felt a bit like a monster, but he didn’t know if that was entirely a bad thing anymore.

Remus knew that any of the Gryffindors back in the Tower would say yes in a heartbeat after seeing the mess that the teen had made of the other boy, but Regulus wasn’t like any of them and Remus didn’t want him to be.

The younger boy shook his head no as the snake loosely held the others hands within his own, the younger boy’s cool skin soothing against the dull ache cascading in the older boy’s hands.

“Not at all,” Regulus whispered the words as if they were something sacred. “You protected your own.”

Gray eyes met brown and once more Remus found himself wondering what it would be like to just light the match.

How it would feel to burn.

—-

The Marauders slowly dragged themselves to breakfast the next morning, Remus being the first to rise even as he was the last to go to sleep the night before.  The moon was drawing nearer and the teen could already feel its effects even days away.

“Looks like someone did Mulciber in real well last night,” Sirius remarked with a happy tone to the teen’s voice as he pointed at the black and blue snake walking to the Slytherin table.

Remus felt the edges of his lips quirk up into a smirk at the sight, one that only deepened as the boy met the eyes of about four snakes across the Great Hall whose faces mirrored his own.

“Looks like it doesn't it?”

“Remus,” a somewhat airy voice called from the boy’s Sadie as its owner drew closer to the four, taking the open seat on the boy’s other side - Peter was on the left.

“Dora,” the Gryffindor greeted quietly, knowing that the Ravenclaw girl would have a much worse hangover than his own.

The witch wasn’t having any of it.

“Hands,” she firmly commanded while removing a vile of something clear from one of her pockets as the other Marauders watched shamelessly, Sirius glaring for a reason that Remus didn’t know.

“ Dora -”

“ Remus .”

Remus pulled his hands out from lap and placed them a top of the table.

Using one of the clean cloths at table, the Ravenclaw girl poured some of the clear liquid upon it before applying it to the angry wounds on the scarred boy’s knuckles.

“Muggle rubbing alcohol?” The boy asked as he recognized the scent immediately from almost every night after the full moon before coming to Hogwarts.

Pandora only shrugged in response as she applied more. “One of my dorm mates is a muggleborn,” she explained. “I figured that you wouldn’t want Madam Pomfrey to see this, so this will have to do.”

Remus nodded, knowing that the younger was right. Madam Pomfrey would ask far too many questions when it looked like a fight was involved instead of just magic.

Peter looked wildly between the teen next to him and the one across the hall as Lestrange wrapped Moony’s knuckles in long bandages. “ You’re the one that did that to Mulciber,” the rat realized aloud, a thick sound of amazement coloring the boy’s voice.

Sirius and James looked at Wormy as if the boy had finally gone mad, but then the information settled in their minds as well.

“He had it coming,” Remus growled in a way that the other three boys had never heard him do so before.

Dora swatted at the older boy’s shoulder.

“Next time just hex the bastard unconscious and be done with it, Rem,” the girl said softly as she stood, giving the boy’s shoulder a small squeeze as she left to Remus’s quiet thank you.

James and Peter looked as if they wanted to ask more about the fight, but Sirius spoke first.

“The Lestrange girl your girlfriend now, Moony?” Sirius asked in a voice that was supposed to sound jesting, but had a curious edge to it that could almost be misconstrued as jealousy by another.

But Remus only laughed, an earnest thing that shook the thin teen’s frame like a leaf in the wind.

“ No ,” the boy breathed. “Merlin no, Dora isn’t exactly my type, Pads.”

And Sirius was so placated and the other two so completely bewildered that the other three missed how Remus’s eyes flickered across the Great Hall to catch that of another’s.

Chapter Text

The heat of summer died as September draws to a close, October fast on its heels with the promise of Halloween enticingly close by. It was a holiday that didn’t truly mean as much within the magical as it did the muggle, but was a good enough excuse to have a feast and hold a party afterwards, smuggled liquor from Aberforth filling the teens as much as any food. It really shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone that chaos of some sort was bound to ensue in the time between the end of September and the beginning of October, and yet no one was on guard as they left the Great Hall from breakfast to go to class.

They really should have been on some type of guard.

Remus walked with the other three Marauders, instinctively tuning out Prongs’ unending rants about a certain red headed girl, the boy almost wished that she would accept his affections so at least the rest of them would no longer have to hear about it. In the back of his mind though, he almost wondered if her doing so would only make it worse in the end as he would know even more about her than before.

The four, and almost everyone else leaving the Great Hall, stopped as a strange metallic sound was heard coming closer. The Gryffindor boy smiled as everyone glanced around at one another and the halls around them until a third year Hufflepuff boy pointed to the stairs.

“Are those… slinkies ?” Remus asked, as three of the metal coils raced down the stairs, each of them a different color from the other two. 

No one seemed to notice how the fifth year Slytherins had drawn closer, a Ravenclaw and sixth year Slytherin girl quickly in toe as well. No one noticed the looks shared between the six, or how Regulus pressed closer to the older boy as Remus shared a sly glance with the other two fifth year snakes.

It wasn’t their business anyways.

“Looks like someone tried and failed at a prank,” Sirius remarked, his laugh barking through the hall as everyone began to stir. 

The metal coils met one of the lands between the sets of moving stairs and stopped as all of the Marauders, save one, laughed at what appeared to be a botched attempt, others soon joining in. Remus smiled sharply at Barty and Evan as he saw that golden coil had gotten the farthest out of the three, and reached behind Regulus’s back to collect the two golden coins from the younger boys, his fingers brushing the younger Black’s hips in a rather like touch that made them both shiver. 

The laughter died on each of the students’ lips as a deep rumbling noise was heard from within the castle from the direction that original three slinkies had come from. The stairs stopped their movements for a moment and suddenly hundreds upon thousands of the metal coils in shades of green, gold, and silver were pouring downing the stairs like a relentless wave, one after the other. There were timed duplication charms set on an easy half of them that coasted even more to be created as they colored with the others that had piled up at the bottom of one of the flights of stairs, causing the pile to grow enough that it spilled over onto the next set of stairs again and again until there was enough that the metal could spilled from the sides.

Remus laughed as the magic worked well enough that the coils had soon made their way down to the last set of stairs and were beginning to roll at students' feet. Regulus only rolled his eyes, but the pressure at the older boy’s side deepend, so Remus knew that the Slytherin boy could be too annoyed by it all.

“You were saying Pads?” James asked cheekily as the bespectacled teen elbowed the other, now scowling, boy.

“Still doesn't beat anything that our Moony has come up with,” Sirius protested petulantly, his arms crossed like a child as the pair stole a glance at the boy in question, not noticing how the younger Black brother had slipped away from the wolf’s side.

Remus only smiled in a way that could almost be construed as sweet, as he let the words that might have blush to his cheeks only a few months before roll off of him. He knew that the real fun hadn’t begun just yet.

“You four couldn't even go a month without causing some sort of mass chaos?” A new but familiar voice chided.

The Gryffindor boys turned to see the teachers pushing their way to the front of the gathered crowd of students, annoyed smile carved into some of their faces as something softly amused danced across others.

“It wasn’t us this time,” Peter squeaked in a weak defense as he looked at Professor McGonagall with big eyes. The witch only raised a prim brow. “Honest!”

Remus would never know what made the witch decide to believe the other boy, or if she ever did at all, because the next thing that he knew, the Gryffindor head of house had sighed and moved to the now growing pile colored coils.

The students watched as the Transfiguration professor withdrew her wand smoothly and waved it with a delicacy that most of them had yet to learn. They had all expected the somewhat interesting sight to disappear at once as so many of the Marauders’ pranks had time and time again, but that wasn’t what happened at all.

Screams spilled from the younger years as the slinkies gathered in the ever growing pile of metal suddenly shivered and changed .

The silver coils convulsed as wings sprouted from them in what could only be described now as their backs. The metal coils took the air and began to fly high and swoop down like birds of prey. Barty smirked proudly as one of the Gryffindors foolishly attempted to bat one away and was met with three more springing from it; a modified Gemini Curse.

 Someone shrieked as the silver coil sprouted legs like lizards and began to climb the walls like the very same creature. Evan laughed quietly as some of the younger years began to run away and bump into the others as the lizard - like coils jumped from the walls and onto them.

Remus smiled sharply as the golden coils fell limply to the floor like fabric before they began to slink and slither, hissing like snakes. The Gryffindor could see the delicate scales shining in the torch light. The snakes slithered around the hall with the same reckless abandon as the other coils and could feel the wolf stir in his chest as if it wanted to hunt. 

The other three Marauders were not spared from the thick of it all as they scurried and dodged the animated metal coils. Remus could have sworn that he saw Peter’s nose twitch like a rat’s just before Filch started to run at the three with demands of them righting it all and complaints about not being allowed to string the three from their ankles and wrist anymore.

And in the extraordinary chaos of it all, Regulus grabbed the older boy’s hand and their strange little group weaved and dashed through the crowd to the Slytherin common room, and then the boy’s dorm.

—-

Classes were canceled for the day after that, the slinkies had escaped the confines of the hall and had begun to run amok around the caste. The three conspirators grinned at one another as the five of them lazed around the fifth year Slytherin boy’s dorm room, the echoes of frightened screams following them down even to there. The metal coils would vanish within the day, but no one else outside of their little bubble needed to know that.

The five of them were laid out between two of the beds, Barty laid out on his own as Evan leaned against it from the floor. Regulus and Remus were arranged comfortably on the younger boy’s bed, their backs pressed nicely against the cool stone, as Dora leaned against the bed in a similar manner to Rosier. 

“ Merlin ,” Regulus cursed, his head thrown to the side in a way that caused his curls to cascade prettily across his face and Remus’s breath to catch harshly in his throat, “where do you gits even find those spells?” The boy asked, the laugh that followed resonating quietly through the room like a forbidden melody.

“It was all Lupin over there,” Evan remarked, his voice the lightest that the Gryffindor had ever heard it before, bouncing buoyantly through the air with the light feeling of success.

The younger Black turned to look at the eldest boy expectantly, their faces close enough together that the lion could see the faintest of freckles on the snake’s cheeks. Remus only shrugged and fought down the heat rising in his cheeks.

“I only modified some spells and curses, and combined some others,” the oldest boy said quietly, not meeting any of the others’ eyes. “Really it wasn’t much.”

And to the older boy it truly wasn’t. The Marauders had been doing things like this since their first year, modifying spells to suit their needs and incorporating anything that they needed to into it.

“Only, sure,” Barty scoffed petulantly.

Pandora turned on the floor and patted the older boy’s knee lightly, aware of just how unused the Gryffindor is to any sort of casual touch that didn’t hurt, more than once she realized that it was a marvel that the lion let her and Regulus be so liberal with their affections for him, but that was a topic for another day. 

The touch was a message in of its own, a silent whisper that told the other that he was allowed to accept praise. Ravenclaw only knows that she had done the same thing more times than she could count with the boy pressed so freely against the other; then again, maybe that was a part of the reason why Remus tolerated them both so easily.

“Tell us what you're learning in those older classes of yours,” the witch said airily, her voice visibly calming the older boy.

“Sure,” the lion said, rolling his eyes as he settled once more. “We’re studying the Patronus Charm in Charms right now and should be attempting to cast it later in the year.”

“Why are you having to wait so long to actually cast it?” The younger Black brother asked curiously, but Remus only shrugged.

“Not everyone can cast one at all,” the older boy explained easily enough. “We’re just waiting until after the holidays when spirits are highest. James has already said that he wants to be the first in our year to cast it.”

The strange group smirked in a way that could almost be seen as cruel as a distant shriek floated down the dungeon halls, the magic behind the Slinkies still going strong.

“Spirits are pretty high right now,” Evan said with that knowing look of his, Barty’s soon following suit. Remus shook his head and wondered how they could have all taken so long to come to this point.

“Okay,” the oldest of their strange group conceded, peeling off of the bed with the younger Black brother soon following suit. “Everyone grab their wands.”

Little time was spared for the theory that they had been learning in class, though Remus understood it better than most, he also knew that some magic that was so inexplicably tied with emotion as this was didn’t require much theory to it at all.

“You think of the happiest memory that you possess and let it fill you till, then speak the incantation,” Remus instructed as the dive spread out across the room more than they had been before, wands held loosely in each of their hands, but none of them looking at one another.

The lion closed his eyes and thought of summer days spent with someone that he had deemed untouchable only a few years before, and gentle touches that both set his skin on fire and caring in a way that he had almost never experienced before. It was Madam Pomfrey’s gentle embrace the morning after the full moon when she refused to let him die, and seeing the Marauders turn for the first time. It was sneaking out to meet two of the boys within the room and the feeling of a delicate hand grasping his own as they ran with laughter tearing at their throats.

It was being alive and finally learning how to live.

“ Expecto Patronum! ”

Spools of silver light spilled from the tip of the Gryffindor’s wand as a warmth like none that he had ever known before pooled in the boy’s chest, consuming him like a flame. And then suddenly the light gathered into something recognizable as a silver fox trotted through the air, its tail bouncing as the creature ran around the eldest boy.

A laughter so light and free spilled from the teen’s lips that the other four turned to look at the oldest member of their group and marveled at the creature that ran so mischievously around the scarred boy, bringing him to life as it shined brighter than it had only a moment before. 

None of the others could have known the fear that had gripped the lion’s heart at the idea that the spectral image of a wolf would be where the fox was now. None of them could have known how free he felt when it didn’t. So Remus laughed and smiled with a fierceness that most would shy from as the silver creature ran around him, casting distant hues across his summer tanned skin.

“ Expecto Patronum !”

A small silver cat leapt from the tip of the younger Black brother’s wand, running with a feline grace for the fox trotting through the air. Remus briefly wondered if Patronuses could touch one another, the inquiry went unanswered as the two spectral protectors ran with one another through the room, wispy trendles trailing in their wake. 

The owners of the creatures looked across the small room at one another and smiled in a soft way that seemed to make each of their beasts shine a little brighter than before.

Remus didn’t think that he’d ever seen a more beautiful sight before.

Before long there is a bat flying above the other two creatures, watching over them in the way that only a sister could do. It swept low and rose high above both of the running creatures to the falcon and blackbird that flew with it, as the creators all huddled closely together to watch the lazy circles that the vestiges were making about the room. 

Remus didn’t know if your patronus was always the same as your animagus form, it was one of the fears that had stopped the teen from attempting the transformation with the other three. He was already stuck as a wolf one night each month, he didn’t want to become one voluntarily as well. But if the patronus form was the same as the animagus, then the Gryffindor found that he wasn’t so opposed to it all.

—-

Remus rolls over in his bed and gives an annoyed groan at the noise filling the room around him as the other three occupants moved about in the impossibly loud process of getting ready. And then suddenly the curtains to the boy’s bed are being pulled back and light is pouting into Remus’s eyes in a way that makes the boy want to reach for his wand.

“Wormtail, what the actual fuck?” The boy cursed groggily as he pushed himself up on the bed and looked at the other teen, a slight growl in his voice.

The plump boy had gone pale as he began to stammer out an answer, but was gracelessly saved by James.

“It’s a Hogsmead day, mate,” the smiling boy explained, but Remus could see the caution in the other boy’s eyes, as if James thought that he was looking at a wounded animal rather than a boy. “If you don’t get up now you’ll be late.”

“Doesn't matter,” Remus huffed, falling back into the bed with an annoyed sigh. “Can’t go anyways, got my permission revoked, didn’t I?”

“How in Merlin’s name did that happen?” Sirius asked, his head appearing in the curtain slip.

Remus sighed and made a dismissive gesture with his hand before flopping it back onto the bed in a rare show of childishness. “They don’t want to risk it.”

He didn’t have to explain who or what, the other three already knew it as well as he did. Dumbledore was a strange man, someone that kept all of his chard’s close to his chest and never made his manipulations too obvious. Remus didn’t much appreciate being a card that the man was locking away after the attacks that had occurred during the summer as more and more werewolfs flocked to the other side.

“That’s too bad, mate,” James said softly, his hand twitching at his side as if he had thought about reaching out but had decided against doing so at the last moment.

“We’ll bring you back some sweets, Moony,” Peter offered kindly, knowing just the way to the other boy’s heart.

The two of them peeled away and then it was only Sirius left. The other boy looked as if he wanted to stay something, as if he wanted to say quite a few things that Remus would never have the opportunity to know become the teen only shook his head and smiled instead. “Have a nice lie in, Moony.”

As he watched Sirius turn away and the curtains fall back into place, Remus couldn’t help but wonder if the others would ever stop walking on eggshells around him. He wondered if it even mattered anymore at all if they did.

—-

Remus pulled himself out of his bed sometime later, his bones creaking angrily at the movement as he did. 

Gryffindor Tower was quiet as he left it, only a low mummer of voices could be heard anywhere within it as most of the students were either in the village or somewhere else on the castle grounds. 

The Gryffindor walked slowly, taking in the cool breeze as October continued on. He didn’t have any books with him, or really anything at all which was an oddity in of itself. The leaves had begun to die, Remus noticed, a vivid world of color appearing with the unmistakable signs of dearth. Stars were the same, he knew, burning so brightly during their final years that their death was a stunning sight to see as the star shedded its layers. So beautiful in fact that most forgot that it was death that they were seeing. He wondered if people were the same as they changed from one version of themselves to another, if they burned brightly too before they became someone new. 

He thought that they might.

Two familiar sources of warmth pressed in on either side of the lion, one snaking her arm through Remus’s while the other pressed closely to the Gryffindor’s side until all three of them were walking in step with one another.

“Morning,” the eldest of the group grumbled, his voice gravelly from disuse. “You two didn’t want to go to the village?” He asked curiously, looking between the two fifth year prefects.

Dora shook her head no, blonde waves of loose curls gently falling around her. “I felt that something good would happen if I decided to stay,” the younger girl said airily, her words holding that vague sense of certainty that always made the Gryffindor wonder if her family hadn’t been touched by something mystical in a way that the rest of them hadn’t been.

“I just didn’t want to have to see my idiotic brother,” Regulus said in that flat voice of his that always made the older boy want to curse the snakes that had taken a child and punished him for emotion until a shell of it was all that could be seen in public.

Remus hummed. “My dorm room is free if we want to go there, the others shouldn’t be back for hours,” he offered.

 The eldest of the three knew of the other boy’s aversion to the Gryffindor common room, but thought that he would still offer anyways. Remus and Regulus couldn’t get into the girl’s dorm room for Ravenclaw tower because of the sliding stairs spell that they all seemed to have, and the Slytherin dorms weren’t really the safest place for a half - blood outside of house parties and times when all five of them were strew together.

It wasn’t truly all that much of a surprise when the other two agreed to come along.

—-

There was something almost drunk in the way that the three of them walked up the stairs to the sixth year Gryffindor boy’s dormitory, ideas and theories falling from each of their lips as Dora pulled out the condensed version of the notices that they had all been taking for months now.

Looking back on it, Remus still had no idea how the three of them came to the conclusion of duplicating his knock of Doc Martens, maybe it had been because they had the most surface area for the runes that they wanted to word with to be sewn on. Or maybe it was because they were all in the lion’s room and Regulus had seen them as the two sat closer to one another than was necessary on the older boy’s bed.

Either way, the next thing that the Gryffindors knew, he was holding a pair of shoes that looked exactly like his own, and was slowly drawing the rune combinations on one as Dora did the same with the other, and Regulus slowly muttered and wove the spells that they had chosen above them both.

The silver runes gave a brilliant flash as Pandora and Remus finished off and tied the last one at the same time, Regulus’s spell following right after. The three grin as the light fades and they see that the runes aren’t there at all, or at least they don’t appear to be. It was a part of the spell that had been particularly tricky to add and weave into everything else, but seeing the modified disillusionment charm hiding the runes from sight and even touch sent a wave of excitement and pleasure through the Gryffindor.

Remus kicks off his old shoes and slides on the modified ones as Dora pulls herself up onto the older boy’s bed with a stack parchment and a pencil poised delicately in her hand. Regulus stands next to the other boy, his arm held out for the other top take as Remus lifts each foot one at a time to quietly cast the activation charm on each. 

The older boy holds on tightly to the younger as he takes the first step, the air turning solid beneath him, and slowly Remus began to walk through the air as if there were a set of stairs that no one could see, something entirely for the Gryffindor alone.

Higher and higher Remus climbed until the moment that he had to let go of the younger boy’s arm, fingers brushing against one another like lightning as the older boy straightened and looked to Pandora who gave a silent nod. Pointing his toes, Remus felt the air give way below him as he tore through it as gravity found meaning once more. Remus tried to flex his feet once more to stop the fall, but the runes gave a weak flare and the descent only slowed for a moment. 

Hitting the ground was a resounding thunk, Remus laughed as he looked at the other boy who had jumped back to avoid becoming a casualty of the fall. Regulus glared at the older boy as he helped Remus to his feet, the pair moving easily with one another.

“Well the first test was a failure,” Dora remarked bluntly, though her voice held none of the disappointment that it ought to, instead there was only the thick sound of excitement at the promise of more. The girl slid off of the bed and walked closer to the two boys, her eyes glued to the shoes on the taller one’s feet as if they were a puzzle that she wanted nothing more than to solve. “Onto to the next combination!”

And if the other three Marauders came back to the dorm hours later to find their dorm mate lightly bruised from falling, and happier than they had seen him in weeks with an unfamiliar mix of scents and the heat of magic lingering in the air, then no one said a thing.

Chapter Text

I’m an alligator 

I’m a mama - papa comin’ for you

I’m the space invader

The music floated through the air as Remus sorted through the notes on different variations of levitation charms piled messily on his bed, attempting - futility it seemed - to put them in some sense of order before meeting with the others. Truly they should have just gotten some blank notebooks and given each of the books a topic to stick with, but doing so now would be detrimental as they were in the stages of writing through the small problems, the bigger ones that this level of organization would have helped greatly with was already dealt with.

I’ll be a rock ‘n’ rollin’ bitch for you

Keep your mouth shut

You’re squawking like a pink monkey bird

And I’m bustin’ up my brains for the words

The door to the boy’s dorm opens with a huff and Remus stops singing along to see who the newcomer was. Today was another Hogsmead weekend, so everyone else should be out in the village, yet the countenance of Sirius Black was staring the other lion back in the face, gray eyes solemn in a way that Remus often found that Regulus’s were. Today was Halloween, and later the Marauders were throwing a party with enough alcohol smuggled in from the Hog’s Head to make even the Slytherins jealous, Remus knew that the Gryffindor had no business looking such a way.

Sirius walked in despondently and layed down on his bed without so much as an uttered word. A small, pathetic sigh escaped the other boy’s lips. 

“I can turn it off if you want,” Remus offered, hand already reaching for the dial.

“No,” the other lion said quickly. “Leave it.”

“Okay,” the wolf said with a voice much softer than he had used with the other teen in a long time, the awkwardness of the situation and the other boy’s mood dulling his usually short tone.

Remus drew his hand away and went back to sorting through his papers, making a stack of what he would take with him and what he was fairly certain could be left behind, as an uncomfortable silence hung in the air between the pair, filled only by the ever present music.

Keep your ‘lectric eye on me, babe

Put your ray gun to my head

Press your space face close to mine, love

Freak out in a moonage daydream, oh yeah!

After not hearing the other boy move or make any noise at all for a long moment, Remus glanced up at the other bed and found Sirius’s eyes already on him. The gray just a slightly wrong color for what the Gryffindor wanted to see. The dark hair lacking the curls that Remus sometimes thought of as he fell asleep.

“I ended things with Mary,” Sirius said suddenly, and Remis couldn’t truly find it in himself to be that surprised. A relationship could only last so long when one half of it was having to ask James to remind him of his own dates, and then both of the boys got so wrapped up in a new scheme that they each forgot anyways.

“Oh,” Remus says dumbly as he stands, unsure of what to do and finding himself desperately wishing for James to come barging into their room with that perfect Potter timing that he always seems to have when it comes to Sirius. 

He doesn’t.

Don’t fake it baby, lay the real thing on me

The church of man, love

Is such a holy place to be

Make me baby, make me know you really care

Make me jump into the air

Sirius stands as well and begins to draw closer to the other Gryffindor, something wild in the shorter boy’s eyes that has Remus taking an instinctive step back now, when he knew deep down that he would have been moving as close as he could this time last year. The realization doesn’t hurt as much as used to.

Keep your ‘lectric eye on me, babe

Put your ray gun to my head

Press your space face close to mine, love

Freak out in a moonage daydream, oh yeah!

The darker haired boy opens his mouth to say something, something utterly damning most likely if Remus were to venture a guess, but is stopped as a silver wisps floods into the room in a buoyant stream, morphing into the slim figure of a cat as the wolf smiles. Sirius stares dumbly as the full bodied patronus runs around the other boy, Remus so taken with it that he seemed to have forgotten that the eldest Black brother was there at all as sleek animal settles at Remus’s feet, curling up there before it disappeared as if it hadn’t existed at all. 

Keep your ‘lectric eye on me, babe

Put your ray gun to my head

Press your space face close to mine, love

Freak out in a moonage daydream, oh yeah!

Remus’s smile is brighter than Sirius had ever seen it before, and it hurts the elder Black to have not been the one to put such a look there.

The wolf snaps out of his quickly as excitement thrums in the boy’s chest. Every clandestine meeting always did feel like flying without the inevitable fall. Though Remus was sure that it would one day come.

It always did.

“I have to go,” Remus said uselessly as he began to gather his things, shoving them hazardously into his bag, the soft smile never leaving the boy’s lips, not even with Sirius’s sour gaze staying stubbornly on him. “I’m meeting a friend.”

Keep your ‘lectric eye on me, babe

Put your ray gun to my head

Press your space face close to mine, love

Freak out in a moonage daydream, oh yeah!

“Of course,” the older Black says brightly, forcing himself out of whatever strange swell of emotion had momentarily taken over him as the other boy slides on the combat boots that Sirius had secretly loved since Remus came stomping onto the train in them in their fourth year.

“I’ll see you at the feast,” Remus assures, his voice still stubbornly softer than it had been before, some part of him still trying to be a good friend to the boy that had been his before the disastrous end to their previous year.

“Of course,” Sirius says once more, and if Remus notices how much duller it sounded than the previous, then he didn’t say anything.

Freak out, far out, in out

The door closed excitedly as Remus left in a hurry, and Sirius couldn’t decide then if the other boy hating him, or acting as he just did - as if Sirius was nothing special - was worse.

—-

Remus found the owner of the familiar patronus a few halls away from Gryffindor tower. The younger teen was sitting on the floor in a way that would surely make his mother scream about the inappropriateness for someone of his station if she were to ever see the younger Black brother sitting cross legged as he was with a book perched in his hand and back curved beautifully. Remus sat down next to the other boy and rested his arm on the teen’s thigh as if it was something normal to do. 

For them it was. 

Regulus leaned back and placed some of his weight on the older boy’s side without a word passed between them, and fire danced across the lion’s skin at every point of contact.

Remus couldn’t pinpoint when souch casual touches between him and Regulus became something normal, something that he found himself craving when the other wasn’t near and seeking out when he was, and always returning when the other gave it first. Regulus hummed as he became more comfortable against the Gryffindor and Remus knew that he didn’t want to live to the day that this was something that he lost to the truth of the older boy’s condition.

“No Dora?” Remus asked, his voice quiet enough that the other boy could pretend that he hadn’t heard it at all if he so wished to, he never did. Not when it was Remus asking.

“She had to go into the village for some books that the Hogwarts library doesn’t have,” Regulus said just as quietly, closing his book to give the other boy his full attention, but left his finger between the pages.

Remus hummed, something small and content as he shifted into a more comfortable position against the other boy and the wall. “You didn’t want to go with her?” He asks, but they can both hear the true question lying just beneath it:

You chose to be with me instead?

Regulus shrugged as he turned his head up to look at the other teen fully, and Remus found that the gaze felt right as the shade of gray that the other possessed was finally looking back at him, those eyes that got lighter as they went towards the pupil, hues of blue sneaking in. It was Remus’s new favorite color.

“She didn’t really need my help.”

Of course I chose you.

Neither of them were used to being another’s first choice. Neither of them ever had been before. 

Now they were.

“What are you reading?” Remus asked as he stooped to look at the back cover of the thin book that had an unmistakably muggle look to it. Hands gently cascaded over his shoulders as he moved and Remus found himself leaning into the soft touch, aching for it as he had to pull away once more and it was lost.

“It’s one of the muggle books that you told me to read a few weeks ago,” Regulus said calmly, truing the book in question over in his hands so that the other could see. Lightning danced across the code as a shadowed figure stood proudly within the forest.

Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

“Thought that you would read the first work of science fiction on Halloween?” Remus asked, running his scarred fingers along the pages. The scars were still on prominent display, even two months after the party. Remus still couldn’t Stanford to look at them in the mirror, but he didn’t want to hide them behind weak beauty spells either.

There was a strange freedom in his damnation.

Regulus runs his fingers over one of the longer scars on Remus’s hand and the older teen bites back a sigh. “The story isn’t as interesting as I thought that it would be,” the Slytherin admits sullenly.

“Hoping for a take of mad doctors and fights to the death?” The older boy jests because that had been exactly what had drawn him into the story and had left him so dissatisfied with the ending of it.

Regulus gets this prim look on his face and for a moment Remus thinks that he won’t answer at all, but then his visage shifts once more into genuine disappointment. “Yes,” the other boy admits as if it was somehow shameful to have wanted something out of the book that he held. To want something for himself.

Remus knew then that he wasn’t the only Ken holding them back from their eventual conclusion.

“I only finished it because it was one of the modern classics,” Remus admits. “Truthfully I had wanted more action.”

“Then why did you tell me to read it?” The snake asks, turning to look at the lion, the annoyance almost tangible in the other’s voice as he spoke. Remus found that he loved every genuine emotion that he could draw out of the younger teen and into the open. He loved even more that he was one of the few that ever got to hear it.

“I thought that you might like the parallels between Frankensten and Prometheus, given your love for myths, and the similar parallels between the doctor’s creation and Egyptian gollums,” the Gryffindor replied honestly, heat blooming in his chest at the honest look of warmth in the other boy’s eyes.

“I did,” he admits, the younger boy’s voice was so soft that if any other noise were to have occurred at the same time, anyone with normal hearing wouldn’t have been able to perceive it at all.

“I’m glad.”

The pair stayed there on the ground and talked about the differences between the imagined science and the magic that they each knew to be real, from gollums to inferni, until legs grew numb and their backs began to ache from doing so. Remus was just relieved that he had remembered to grab the map the night before.

—-

Hours later Remus’s senses were assaulted with the loud music of Gryffindor tower as the party came into full swing. Streamers and floating Jack - o - lanterns decorated the common room as the Gryffindors milled about, Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs slipping in too in a steady stream. 

Bodies flitted through the room, the intoxicating scent of magic coming with each and every one of them, and sometimes Remus felt as if he could reach out and grasp it all for himself. Sometimes he could just imagine how it would sing on skin if he were to do so. He thought that it would feel a lot like flying without the curse of falling, like the high of fighting.

But the magic stayed trapped under everyone’s skin as they all took the chance to get wasted.

It was the same scene that he had been in countless times before, and yet Remus wasn’t able to settle within it. He felt trapped in his skin like in the days leading up to a full moon, but the once for October had already passed and November wasn’t due for a good while. His body felt ready for a fight; to feel the magic pour from him and the skin on his knuckles tear.

But this was Gryffindor - not Slytherin and not the home either where fighting while drinking was practically a given- so Remus settled for moving into the crowd of bodies and danced to the songs that had the other Marauders sending him strange looks because this sort of music wasn’t supposed to be his genre, and dancing wasn’t something that Remus truly did.

I’m dirty, mean, I’m mighty unclean

I’m a wanted man

Public enemy number one

Understand?

The wolf missed the violence and Remus found himself agreeing.

Dancing and drinking soon wore thin, it always did when it meant nothing, and Remus drew away from it all to one of the couches by the fireplace, sitting down in it with a glass of something strong enough to actually make his blood buzz. If he closed his eyes, Remus could almost pretend that the music was something similar to the wizarding kind that would be playing in the Slytherin common room right now, and the couch was a posh black.

“Well, there’s Mr. Life of the Party.”

“Yeah, when did you get to be so fun, Moony?”

Remus opened his eyes to see the other three Marauders drawing close, each of the boy’s skin appropriately flushed for the amount of alcohol that the common room now reeked of. 

“I’ve always been fun,” the sitting teen protested weakly as the other three took seats of their own around him, “you sorry lot normally just steal the spotlight enough that you don’t see it.”

It was a half lie, not that the other three would know. Remus spent so much of his time at Hogwarts these past six years attempting to be the perfect student and get all the best marks, so that he could have even a sliver of a chance of being something after school - of being more than a werewolf who will never be able to hold down a job - that he pushed down anything that didn’t fit with that image. He’s always repressed a part of himself, nights like these just reminded Remus of how much.

“Oh, is that how it is, Moony?” James asked, his voice light as he smiled mischievously as always.

“Yeah, it is, Prongs,” Remus replied just the same, finally beginning to feel a little more at ease within the party as the familiar banter rolled off of his tongue. 

“Well,” the other boy smirked as the other two Marauders watched the pair go back and forth fondly, “show us something else that we don’t already know then.”

“Alright.”

Remus pushed himself to his feet, the spirits warming his blood enough that he could almost ignore the way that his body instantly resisted the sudden movement. There was a deck of muggle playing cards that he had swiped from Barty stashed behind one of the paintings in the common room just for an occasion like this.

Taking one side of the table, Remus motioned for the other three to take the remaining sides of the low table as he shuffled the cards, a sly smirk on the lion’s face as the other Marauders’s eyes went wide with an impressed gleam at some of the fancy shuffling tricks that he had learned from the youngest Crouch.

“Now,” Remus started as he began to deal the cards, “have any of you gits ever played Poker before?”

As the party began to wind down for the night and the boys went to bed, Remus’s smirk didn’t fade as he climbed the stairs to the sixth year boy’s dorm, three drunk - and considerably poorer - Marauders trailing at the tallest boy’s heels.

“I am never playing muggle card games with you again,” Peter grumbled as the four walked a little hazardously into the room, Remus’s pockets jingling lightly with each movement. 

“But that was only one of the games that I know,” Remus protested coely as he kicked off his shoes. “We still have at least three more to try.”

James groaned as he fell face first onto his bed, his feet still hanging off of it as his face just missed the pillow.

“Where did you learn how to play that damnable game?” Sirius asked, a brow raised primly in a manner that reminded the wolf too much of another boy for the amount of alcohol in his body.

“A friend,” Remus said with a hard undertone that should have let the other boy know not to push any further. If Sirius heard it, he didn’t listen.

“The same one that sent for you with that cat patronus earlier?”

James’s head popped off of the bed with a suddenness that made the teen drunkenly groan from the movement, but his eyes were alight nonetheless. “Cat patronus?” He asked. “Like a full bodied patronus?”

Sirius nodded at the other boy before both sets of eyes turned to the only one of them that was still standing, as Peter was already groggily snoring from his own bed, day clothes still firmly on. 

“Yeah,” Remus said with more than he felt, “I know a bloke that can cast one, but he’s not in our year.” The wolf held up his hand as Sirius opened his mouth to speak, already knowing the question that the other was bound to ask. “And no, he’s not the one that taught me cards either.”

“Didn’t know you were so popular,” James giggled blearily, but an effect that he might have attempted to have was runnier by the way that he drunkenly wiggled his brows.

“I’m not popular,” Remus protested, absolutely detesting the idea of being so for anything other than what he already was. “I just meet a good deal of people through the study groups that I host every now and again, you lot would too if anyone in this room bothered to study, or not wait until the absolute last minute to do so.”

The words had their intended effect as both of the other boys groaned and huffed at the badgering, spent with the conversation as they both conjured the energy to change into night clothes, Remus doing much the same in the bathroom.

Sometimes Remus wondered just who he was turning into. With the money that he owed Regulus hidden comfortably away in his bag, the lion found that he didn’t much care.

—-

The November moon comes and goes like all of the others since the Marauders became animagi, the woods unfolding like a home that he never had the right to keep. Sometimes Remus thinks that the Forbidden Forest feels different to the wolf than it does to the others, like the magic of the woods was trying to reach out to him, but the wolf was too stubborn at the moment to take it. Remus figured that it must be different for the others, because he knew that they would each leap at the chance to tempt the fates in such a way.

The four were eating dinner with an irate Lily Evans close enough to talk to - and to ignore a relentless James Potter - but far enough away that Mary didn’t have to be close to her ex as the girls were all together, something that Remus didn’t really understand since both Mary and Sirius had been dating new people since that Halloween night.

“Evening everyone,” Pandora said politely as she drew near, a soft look on her face that she reserved for the public and paled in comparison to any genuine expression that she would normally divulge when their group was alone. 

Remus grinned at the younger girl as she stopped in front of him and the other lions, something held delicately within her hands. “Evening, Dora. What'cha got there?”

The Ravenclaw smiled like a simple girl - something that she so clearly was not - as she held out a folded piece of paper that was spelled a familiar shade of blue. “What do you think?” Dora asked as Remus grabbed it to examine the piece, the others at the table staring at the interjection as if the pair were animals at the zoo. The friends didn’t mind and pretended that the other lions weren’t there at all.

“A bat,” Remus observed, his fingers ghosting over the creation as if it was something to chairished. That was all Pandora needed to know how the other felt about what she had made. “How fitting.”

“I thought so,” the younger witch agreed.

“Where did you learn to make it?” A new voice asked and both of the friends turned to see Lily leaning forwards on the table, interest bringing her green eyes to light.

“There’s actually a book on it in the library,” the blonde said excitedly, leaning against the table at Remus’s side so that she could talk with the red head, which, for whatever reason, caused Sirius to scoff into his goblet. Remus and James both sent the other boy a pointed look, silently telling the other Gryffindor to behave. “There’s a section on it in a book on different types of animations for paper,” the Ravenclaw explained, her soft voice becoming more animated by the moment. “A bunch of low level animation charms that do similar things to the moving portraits, but with much more limited capabilities.”

“Fascinating,” Lily said enthusiastically. “Did you spell this one?”

Dora nodded before turning back to the wolf. “Just tap the right wing.”

Remus did as asked and smiled proudly as the bat’s wings began to move and the paper creature flew from his hands and made a lazy circle around the boy before landing back in them and going still once more.

“Beautiful magic,” Marlene complimented, joining the conversation as well. “Maybe you could show us how you did it later, and bring that Meadows girl with you. She was here and gone last time and none of us got to properly meet Remus’s new friend.”

Dora smiled in a knowing way as she nodded and walked away, leaving almost everyone else confused.

Sirius was in a poor mood for the rest of dinner, but Remus didn’t the boy much attention as he fiddled with the paper creature that was no bigger than the Gryffindor’s hand, eyes flickering to a certain snake across the Great Hall and found him looking back just as much. 

—-

Remus waited until the other boys had begun to settle down to unfold the paper creature, knowing that - no matter how nice the girl was - Dora would never voluntarily subject herself to the Gryffindors just to show him something that could have waited until the next time that they saw one another.

Remus grinned as he saw the familiar scrawl at the heart of the no longer folded paper and quickly slipped out of the bed, sliding on his non - spelled shoes on the way out of the room.

The night air was chilled as Remus snuck out into it, but the wolf naturally ran warm and Remus found himself relaxing into it instead. Everything looked so small from the top of the Astronomy tower and everything paled in comparison to the boy waiting at its railing.

Remus sat down next to the other boy without a word needing to be passed between the pair, fitting himself at the younger boy’s side and letting the other take in the warmth that he could give. He let the silence stand until the other boy knew what he needed to say, a soft patience that few had ever given either of them before.

“Do you know the story of Orion?” The other boy asked softly, his fingers raised as if to try and trace it, though Remus noted that they never grazed the Bellatrix star. He quietly shook his head, but he knew that it was probably one of the first ones that the Black brothers learned with their father being named after it. “Well it all started after the first titan war…”

Remus listened intently to the story of the Hunter constellation. How the giant had been born to fight Artemis but had joined her hunt instead. How he had fallen for the maiden goddess and her twin, Apollo, had slain him for it, not wanting the goddess to risk breaking her vows. Orion had been made a part of the stars after his death.

Next was Perseus and the head of Medusa, and the myth that came with the gorgan. The tale of a priestess turned into a monster by the very same goddess that she had worshiped. The younger teen told all three versions of the myth that he knew and Remus found that he liked the one where the snakes were a gift given by Athena to her priestess so that she may never be harmed by man again the best.  It sat the easiest against this scarred skin.

“Lupus, the wolf constellation,” Regulus says just as softly, pointing to it in the sky, but Remus has gone so incredibly still that one would think that he was a statue himself. “There’s no myth behind it, not like the others.”

And then those gray eyes are on the older boy, looking at him completely for the first time all night. Looking at him as if the younger boy could see everything that the lion had ever tried so desperately to hide. And Remus can hear his heart hammering in his chest. He wonders if Regulus can too.

“I know.” The words are soft, but they hit the older boy like a bullet, draining him of all of his life.

And Remus is running before he even remembers how to breathe, ducking into one of the secret tunnels that had found all those years ago. He curses himself for thinking that he might have had more time.

—-

Remus doesn't leave the dorm at all that Saturday, pushing away the offers of food that the other three give and blatantly ignoring what the other boys bring anyways, leaving it on his nightstand as if it didn’t exist at all. The Marauders share worried looks between one another when no amount of poking, prodding, or planning can get the sullen boy to move. Even more so when offers to go and find the Lestrange girl are met with a firm shake of the fourth boy’s head and the curtains being promptly closed.

It looked like it was going to be the same story Sunday as well when nothing that any of them did could even get the boy to leave the bed while they were still in the room, that is until there is a guest at the tower.

Regulus glares at the portrait of the Fat Lady, arms crossed as the singer glares back and stubbornly attempts to break the glass in her hand. 

She can’t.

The Slytherin is saved from another agonizing minute of it screeching when the door is opened by a familiar face.

“Evans,” the younger prefect says quickly as the girl blanches, not having expected to find someone so close to the door, let alone a Slytherin. 

“Sirius?” Evans asks, knowing that the younger teen was there to speak to someone, and that this person was obviously not her.

“Remus,” and the way that the younger boy says the name, as if it was little more than a desperate prayer on his lips, has the girl immediately knowing all that she needed to. 

“Come on then.”

The pair walk into the common room, steadfastly ignoring the looks that the younger boy was attracting simply by being in there. Regulus was desperate enough that they didn’t matter and Lily knew that she could always hex them later.

The climb up the stairs was a quiet affair that felt like a slow death to the snake as they drew closer and closer still to the door. Evans knocks on it and immediately scowls when Potter is the one to answer.

“I knew you couldn’t resist me forever, Ev-” the boy starts upon seeing the familiar red hair, but stops as he spots the boy that Lily had brought with her.

Lily takes advantage of the eldest boy’s temporary silence and slips away, squeezing Regulus’s shoulder as she goes in a way that could almost be seen as sisterly, or simply as good luck.

“Who’s at the… door?” 

The Black brothers look at one another properly for the first time since that day on the train as Sirius freezes at the sight of the younger boy much like how James had only a moment before.

“I’m not here for either of you,” the youngest boy says coldly, slipping inside of the room before either could stop him.

There were four beds in the warmly lit room, but Regulus ignored all of the ones on the left side of the room in favor of the one on the farthest right with the curtains drawn closed. The Gryffindors watched in stark confusion as the Slytherin moved towards it and pulled back the thick curtains all of the way without having to think about it at all.

Remus immediately pulled himself up, a curse on his lips until he saw the boy before him and froze once more.

“You look like shit,” Regulus said bluntly, looking down at the older boy.

“You don’t look much better.”

And he didn’t, now that the others were looking. The youngest boy’s hair was messy and bordering on the side of unkempt, the bags under his eyes more prominent than they should be. 

“Can we talk?” Regulus’s voice was softer than Sirius had heard it in years, his gaze more vulnerable than both of the brothers knew that their mother would ever permit. “ Please .”

Remus’s eyes fitted to the two interlopers and knew that neither of them were going to leave the pair alone where James and Sirius couldn’t see them to make sure that neither killed the other, as if either would.

The wolf pulled his legs in closer and shifted on the bed so that the other could sit next to him on it and the other two Marauders were surprised to see the Slytherin climb into it easily and settle next to the older boy, their sides pressed flush against one another, as if they had done this countless times before. As if touch wasn’t something that neither boy held onto greedily, never giving it out freely.

Remus raised his wand and casted a silencing spell around the bed so that the other two boys could see and not hear what was said.

“You never let me finish what I had to say the other night,” Regulus started, going straight to the point of the matter.

“Does it matter?”

Regulus looks at him and Remus sighs. They both knew that the younger boy wouldn’t have come to Gryffindor Tower if it didn’t matter. 

The younger boy’s fingers trace lightly over the Gryffindor’s in a way that makes Remus shiver and the interlopers raise a brow. “How did it happen?”

Remus sighed. “My father was pushing for more regulations on…”

“Werewolves,” Regulus supplied and Remus nodded.

“He made the wrong one mad, a man that goes by Fenir Greyback,” the older boy explained and the other nodded but showed no signs of recognizing the name. Remus pushed on anyways. “Greyback came on a full moon night when I was five. He has a penchant for children and I was an easy enough target. My father offended himself with a gun after the first transformation and then my mother gave me to St Edmund’s. Matron’s husband was a wizard, so she was the best equipped to handle me.”

If Remus closed his eyes he could just remember the light leaving the room as a beast tore through the window, the scream that tore through his throat and the all consuming pain that was worse thing that he had felt at the time until a month later, when the full moon became his least favorite thing.

He could still remember the sound of the gun too.

Remus kept his eyes open.

James and Sirius watched as Regulus leaned further into the other boy in a show so intimate that it felt wrong to see it. They hadn’t known that the boys were so close.

“You're still one of us,” Regulus said quietly, so much so that Remus might not have heard it had he not had his condition.

Remus leaned more into the other’s touch, the closest to a thank you that he could manage with there being a break in his voice.

Regulus smiled, something small but gentle and honest as he pushed himself off of the bed, the silencing spell breaking as he left it.

“Later, Moony .”

And then the younger boy was gone and Remus was smiling so brightly that the sun would pale in comparison if it were to see.

Chapter Text

December came, Remus wished that it hadn’t.

The Daily Prophet had reported a werewolf attacks after the last moon, finally giving a name to the attacks that had been stuffed between the pages for almost a year now as they became more frequent. It was harder to hide things once people started to make the connections themselves, Remus supposed, so the Daily Prophet went ahead and said it so they wouldn’t look as if they were hiding the truth. Remus found himself wishing that they had lied just a little longer.

Silver flooded the castle, lining the hands, wrists, and necks of nearly everyone within it. The wolf rattled against the Gryffindor’s chest, howling in pain with every subtle brush of the delicate metal against the teen’s ruined skin. It begged to be released, to run, to do anything but be in a place that so clearly wanted it gone. Instead Remus just sat down next to Marlene in Care of Magical Creatures and smiled at the girl as if nothing was wrong, as if the jewelry on her skin wasn’t making him sick.

But things had changed.

None of the Marauders let Remus walk the castle alone, at least one of them at the boy’s side regardless of whatever stood between the two. And if it was a class where one of the other three couldn't be there, then Remus was passed off to Lily, or even Regulus when the situation allowed. Remus found himself too tired to care about the confining treatment, the beast within him cowed and taking pieces of him with it that Remus hadn’t realized that he would miss.

With the silver came the whispers among the halls. The cruel things that children say when they don’t realize that it matters, but it did and left Remus going between violent states of wanting to tear at his skin or everyone else’s. It left him with a sense of shame that he hadn’t felt for his condition in long enough that he almost forgot the sting of it.

“Why do they let them roam free? They should be locked away for everyone else’s safety.”

“At least more restrictions. They’re monsters after all.”

“Tag them.”

Remus and the strange Slytherin group walked silently together amongst the voices of the rest of the school, not joining in the murmured conversations as they walked to the library, the other three Marauders at the pitch. Nails dug into the palms of Remus’s hands and it took him a long time to realize that he was the one doing so, his face carefully blank as he listened to the whispers in the halls and dug them in deeper, pain swelling in a way that consumed his mind and quoted all else.

A gentle hand brushes against the Gryffindor’s almost as if by accident as the scent of blood begins to fill the air. Regulus grabbed the older boy’s hand, lacing their fingers together beneath the robes where it couldn’t be seen and began to drag the lion away, towards the entrance of the school, the others following suit without question.

The Forbidden Forest welcomes them as if it was home, the woods as beautiful in the light of day as they are beneath a full moon night. Remus walked them with familiarity that had the others raising their brows in a silent question that none of them actually thought to speak. Remus was a Marauder after all, no matter how much time he spent with the younger students that wasn’t going to change.

Even if sometimes he wished that it would, because then maybe he wouldn’t have to see how they looked at him as if he was turning into a stranger. He would truly be one.

Still, he wouldn’t give up the past few years for anything. They were his brothers and families grow apart, they were still family though. He always wanted them to be.

“Okay, what’s up with Lupin?” Barty asks, but his voice isn’t judging, there was concern hidden neatly beneath the masks that everyone within the grove always donned with everyone outside of it.

Regulus glanced at the older boy, a look that told him that it was Remus’s choice as to what he wasn’t to say. That it always would be. The younger boy would never know just how much that meant to the Gryffindor, not when that choice had been stolen from him so many times before.

Remus opened his mouth, the words that he could hardly ever speak to himself - but had known how to spell since he was small before he knew how to read - but it felt as if his voice had been stolen like in an old fairy tale. Except this time there was no kiss that could bring it back.

“You’re a werewolf.”

The voice was soft and airy, delicate as the girl who spoke it, but nothing about it was a question and never would be again. 

Remus doesn't deny it, but he doesn't confirm it either. He didn’t need to. The eldest boy only bows his head and waits for the verdict of the others, the decision of those that had encouraged him to seep into this part of himself over the past few months without even knowing that it was there. 

Pandora stepped through the forest floor as if she had been meant to live among the trees, her hand raising gently to the older boy’s face as she looked at him with those blue eyes that were always impossible to read and excruciatingly open. Light touches brushed over the silver scars, brushing over them as if they were something to be delicate within and not a source of shame.

“You look the same to me,” she whispered, yet the Ravenclaws’s words carried in the quiet clearing.

A tear slipped down the boy’s face, the first one in years. She brushed it away with the same loving care that a sister might hold for their brother.

Dora stepped up to Remus’s left, Regulud still at the older boy’s right as Barty and Evan glanced at one another, their sides pressed closely together in the same manner that the other snake and lion often were.

And Evan smiles.

“I’ve never liked pure silver much anyways,” the boy says as the pair draw closer, a small circle forming as if they were performing a ritual that only those present knew. “Too posh, even for me.”

And if the Gryffindor laughed weakly at that, then that was only the business of those gathered.

Barty spoke last, a playful smirk on his face that already had Remus rolling his eyes at whatever the younger boy was going to say. “I should have seen it coming, Mr. Werewolf McWerewolf,” the snake says in a falsely disappointed tone, pointing out that the older boy was named after one of the sons of the she - wolf Lupa and the wolf constellation.

“I was born a few days before a total lunar eclipse,” the lion admits with a smirk of his own.

“ Merlin !” Barty laughed, and the sound runs through the clearing like a broken melody that they all soon sung, surprising the Gryffindor with just how easy this was. How little the fear gripped at him the way that it had in second year.

Remus looks at the last boy and sees that smile on Regulus’s face, the secret one that so few ever got to know. The wolf smiles back, something just as small and fragile, but means everything as fingers lace together as if they didn’t know what it meant to be apart.

Acceptance.

That was the only emotion that the others gave to the eldest boy. In the others’ eyes, Remus found none of the hesitant fear that the other Gryffindors had held upon learning the truth, none of the disgust that so many adults that had figured it out on their own without even knowing him. 

He thought that this was what a family was supposed to be like.

—-

The only time that Remus had ever received mail from St. Edmund’s during the school year was the obligatory Christmas present that Matorn sent each year and perhaps something small on his birthday as well if she remembered the boy at all. The letters never came in the middle of December.

This one did.

The letter was short, simple, and impersonal, just like the woman that had sent it and the place that it had come from. It was only three paragraphs long, eight sentences in total telling the boy that since wizarding law considered him to be an adult at the age of seventeen, he would not be allowed to return to St Edmund’s after his birthday in early March. 

Remus thought that he should feel like screaming, like crying, or filled with some sort of blinding panic at the news that he would never be able to go home again, that he wasn’t wanted there, but he didn’t. A particular feeling of numbness gripped at the teen, holding him down and drowning him within its depths. 

St Edmund’s wasn’t home, it never had been one to the boy no matter how long he had spent there. Hogwarts, Remus found, wasn’t quite one either, not with the tensions steadily rising and the way that a fourth of the castle acted in public as if he didn’t have a right to exist among them, to practice magic at all because of his blood status, but feared him within the confines of the Slytherin common room as they were constantly reminded of just what his magic - stronger, quicker, and more natural in its destruction since getting the new wand - could do. And of what Remus could do with his  fist alone. 

That aside, Hogwarts could never truly be home again with the fact that all but a few wanted those like him locked away. Caged like an animal. The fact that sometimes, when the wolf tore at his skin and Remus wondered what would happen if it were to tear just a bit deeper as his bones ached, Remus wondered if they might be right.

The numbness came mostly from a feeling of hopelessness as Remus knew that once the train pulled into the station at King’s Cross, he would have nowhere to go after getting off of it. Remus had always been dangerously independent, but the thought of being so completely on his own made the teen want to shut down and pretend that the letter didn’t exist at all for as long as he could.

A week later, the Gryffindor boy thought that he was doing well at just that. Clearly he wasn’t hiding it as well as he had thought.

Pandora found him in the library one day, her hair was done up in an intricate braid with small trinkets dangling from it at seemingly random spots, a look that garnered more than one inquiring look, all of which went steadfastly ignored as the younger girl sat down at Remus’s side without saying a thing or grabbing books of her own. She let the older boy finish the thought that he was for his Transfiguration essay before gently pulling the quill from the Gryffindor’s hand and setting it out of reach.

“You missed lunch,” the Ravenclaw said softly, but was only met with a hum. “And dinner,” the younger of the pair added. 

“Sorry,” the boy mumbled, but Dora didn’t think that he sounded very sorry at all.

“Come on, Moons. What is it?” Pandora smiled as the boy looked up with a confused face at the use of the nickname that the Gryffindors had given him. “Got your attention,” the Ravencalw added with a hint of mischief.

Remus sighed and leaned down towards his bag, flipping it open and grabbing the potions book that he had stashed the letter in knowing just how likely the other boys in his dorm would be to delve into anything from the subject during their free time. The Gryffindor handed over the letter without saying anything on the matter and the Ravencalw took it just the same.

Silence passed as Dora read it and Remus laid his head down, a new wave of helplessness consuming the teen as he had no idea what he was going to do once summer came.

Dora brushed the scars on the older boy’s hand to get his attention, something that she had been doing a lot recently for reasons that the Gryffindor couldn’t understand. But it never wavered from the gentleness of the first time that she had done, her fingers still grazing lightly as to reinforce the idea that they were a part of him that he couldn’t shun. That he shouldn’t want to do away with. It felt a lot like the night that the girls had suggested that he not cast the concealment spell. 

“The Lestranges have this old cottage in Wales,” Pandora said slowly. “It’s beautiful there during the summer months, but with my parents growing old, and brother marrying who he did, no one has been there in over five years, and it was down even before that.” Remus looks up at the girl as she explains and sees the softly pleading look in her blue eyes that were currently the color of a summer storm. “It could use someone.”

And Remus thought about slamming his book closed and growling that he didn’t need anyone’s charity, something that he had done to some extent since first year. But unlike all of the times before when he could afford to turn down such a thing, this wasn’t one. He had nowhere else to go, and he didn’t want to disappoint Dora either in the same way that he so often did the other Marauders.

“Alright,” Remus says just as slowly, and Dora smiles as if he truly was the one doing her a favor, not the other way around.

“We’ll all come over during the summer and help fix it up.”

Neither of them mention the likeliness that all of them wouldn’t include Regulus, that it couldn’t after what the Blacks had done when Sirius had turned sixteen. That they would do the same to Regulus, only he wouldn’t be able to escape. Neither of them mentioned the path that the younger boy would be taking, the mark that could never be erased from his skin if the boy’s parents had their  way. They both knew, but sometimes it was easier to pretend.

—-

The winter holidays couldn’t come fast enough for anyone in the castle, though Remus found them a lot less enticing this year than any other before.

“You’re coming to mine for the holidays, right Monny?” James asked at breakfast two days before those that were leaving the castle were supposed to be departing. 

Sirius and Peter raised their heads with interest at the question. None of them had heard Moony say any hiring about holiday plans, and the two boys didn’t really think that it even needed questioning at this point. James did, and he was right to.

“I actually can’t,” Remus said solemnly before lowering his voice so that those around the four couldn’t hear and would just think the Marauders scheming once more if they were to pay any mind at all. “With the attacks Dumbledore has strongly… suggested that I remain within the castle for my own safety.”

It hadn’t been a pleasant letter to receive and had left the Gryffindor pacing with an angry energy for hours until the snakes had grabbed him and dragged him back out into the spot in the woods. Some trees had suffered for it, being blown to pieces by some well placed hexes and curses, but it was better than the teen letting the anger build until he snapped at someone who could actually die from such a thing.

“Well that’s bollocks,” Sirius cursed, angry on the other boy’s behalf, but Remus wondered if he really was. Things had been tense since the end of last year and any ear that they might have found with one another was set back once more when Reg had shown up at Gryffindor Tower the month before. Remus knew exactly how the other boy felt about his younger brother, or at least how he insisted that he did. 

“He can’t keep you locked up forever,” Peter said, eagerly joining the conversation once more.

“No,” Remus agreed, more to himself than the others, “he can’t.” 

But what they didn’t know was that the wolf didn’t think that the Headmaster planned on doing so. What use was a pet wolf if you were just going to keep it chained during a war that had them on the other side. It was more a matter of waiting for when Dumbledore wanted his used, not if. Remus would be little more than a dirty secret until then, and the thought of it all made him sick.

“So you’re coming to mine then?” James asked, the grin of his - wide and brilliant in ways that Remus could never hope to be - making an appearance.

But Remus only shook his head no.

“I wouldn’t be allowed to even get on the train, and it’s not bothering your parents to fight it when we all know Dumbledore won’t change his mind.”

I’m not worth it , the wolf thought, and for a second he wondered if the others could read it on his face as well.

“I just don’t want you alone on Christmas,” James said sadly, seeing that for once he had truly lost. Sometime when Remus was truly feeling bitter with the boy before him - the one who had always had everything that he didn’t - he would wonder what such a look of defeat would be like on the other’s face. Seeing it now, and for his sake no less, Remus decided that he didn’t like it at all.

“I could stay.”

Three heads turn sharply to look at the fourth boy, and Sirius just shrugged as if it was nothing. And it was because there was no way in hell that Remus was letting it happen.

“No,” the word was hard, leaving no room for question but the other boys.

Sirius seemed to find it still.

“Why not?” The other boy whined like the animal that he turned into.

But Remus didn’t know how to explain it. He didn’t know how to put words to the way that it hurt to be alone in the same room as the other boy and remember how much he had cared for him before and to feel that absence now as Remus looked at him as he might any of the other Marauders. And he couldn’t voice how half the time when the other teen moved just right, or when his hair was in messy tangles after a shower that almost looked like coils, when he smiled in just the right way Remus didn’t see Sirius but someone just across the Great Hall.

“Just no.”

Remus stood and left the Great Hall, none of them noticed the dark haired boy that soon followed after.

—-

Regulus found the Gryffindor in the Charms classroom, chalk in his hand as the older boy began writing out what appeared to be a list of topics that they were going to be covering during the study group that the lion normally held after lunch on Saturdays. He didn’t bother announcing his presence, he knew that the other boy could hear him coming from a good while away, and instead just stepped up behind the older boy and slipped the chalk out of Remus’s fingers. Remus sighed at the familiarity of such a thing as the younger boy moved to his side.

“You’re angry writing again,” the snake observed, erasing a sentence or two that had come out just jumbled  enough that he could still read what it was supposed to be and rewrote it with the correct spelling.

Regulus didn’t ask why, he knew that Remus would tell him if he wanted to, about both the reason for his anger and the effect that the change in concreation had on how the older boy wrote.

“Dumbledore is making me stay at the castle over the holidays,” the lion explained tiredly, and Regulus could see now that the anger was that of an animal trapped in its cage as all of the others got to leave it.

“I could stay.”

It was the exact same words that the older Black had spoken not even half an hour before and yet Remus felt how his reaction to them was completely different, though it always was where the Black brothers were involved. Before, there had been anger and fear if he were to be honest, now there was only concern and a selfish hope.

“Your parents would never let you,” Remus protested, though he worried that his eyes gave away just how much he wanted this. Creatures like him never got what they wanted once others knew that they did.

“I’ll tell them that I’m staying to study for my OWLs,” the younger boy decided, “even they have to admit that the Hogwarts library is better equipped for the exams.”

“Sneaky snake,” Remus said, but there was affection there and Regulus fought back a smile at the name, but the older boy could see a dimple there.

Times like this reminded him that lying wasn’t always a bad thing.

—-

Two days later Remus found himself standing outside the castle with the Marauders so he could bid them goodbye before they left to board the train.

James smiled in a shaky way as he looked at the taller boy silhouetted against Hogwarts. Remus was dressed as he usually did these days, all dark colors and hard angles, piercings and clothes that made him look impossibly muggle. He had thought that this would wear off by now and the other would go back to the Remus of last year, but the scars had been on display for almost nearly as long and the bruises on the other boy’s knuckles never seemed to fade. Sometimes it was hard to look at him and remember that this was the same boy from before the incident.

But then he smiled.

“Have a Happy Christmas you lot,” the tallest boy said, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans. And if the smile was a little more wolfish than it used to be, then it was James’s problem if that made him uncomfortable.

Sirius was about to open his mouth to force out some pleasantries when four familiar figures bounded over, invading their little group as if they had the right to. It made the animal in him want to snarl.

The two boys, Barty and Rosier hung off of Remus’s shoulders, mischief in their eyes as they laughed at the way that Moony growled at them each in turn but didn’t force away the touch. Sirius wanted to growl too, but the two fifth years left, sure that their friends would follow.

Next came the blonde girl that was always close to Remus when the Marauders weren’t, enough that the boy sometimes came back to the dorm room smelling of her and someone else. Lestrange ghosted a featherlight touch over Remus’s hand and gave the boy a soft smile that looked almost intimate in a way that Remus wasn’t with the Marauders. With them he was never one for touch, it seemed to Sirius that with this lot he couldn’t get enough. Lestrange glided away with the soft steps of a forest creature instead of a witch.

“You gonna do some kind of strange ritual goodbye too?” Sirius snarked as the last of the group stepped forwards and stood close at Moony’s like the eldest Black might once have had the timing been right.

“Don’t have to,” Regulus replied, speaking and shrugging in a manner that would have made their mother scream bloody murder had she seen it.

Sirius almost felt proud until he remembered who he was talking to.

“And why in Merlin’s name is that?” The eldest Black brother asked crudely, earning himself a glare from both James and Remus and causing Peter to shift uncomfortably at the scene.

“I’m staying at Hogwarts over the break,” the younger boy explained boredly.

Sirius balked at his brother, wondering why anyone would subject themselves to such a thing as being alone the entire holiday. But then he remembered that Remus was staying as well and felt something coiling in his chest.

“What, did Mother finally get tired of you biting at her heels begging for affection?” Sirius said harshly, the beast beneath his skin bearing its teeth. Or maybe it was just the eldest Black doing so.

Remus looked at James and Prongs seemed to understand exactly what was being asked of him in that second and started leading the older Black brother away, not bothering to hide the disappointment that he felt with the boy.

Walking away, Sirius had a vision of Remus and Regulus in the library all holiday with books piled around the pair. He could not have been farther from the truth.

—-

All of the Gryffindors and Slytherins had gone home for the holiday except for Remus and Regulus. It was as if they had the entire castle to themselves - they didn’t quite, there were still two Ravenclaws roaming about somewhere. 

Remus smiled as the pair walked back into the castle, sides pressed against one another like some sort of promise that neither knew. 

The castle was cold from the winter, the stones cool to the touch in a way that they only were this time of year. It was worse still in the dungeons, where some days students’ breaths came out in little white puffs that always reminded the lion of cigarette smoke, but it was always gone before it could curl in the air. Remus led them to Gryffindor Tower instead and laughed at the horrified expression that the other boy still held each time that he stepped inside of it.

“So this is where dignity comes to die,” the younger teen said, but there was no malice in his voice.

Remus smirks. “You should see it when everyone is stumbling around drunk during the house parties,” the older boy says, the smirk deepening. “There is absolutely no dignity then.”

And when Regulus laughs, Remus thinks that it might be his favorite sound.

The pair spent the rest of the day until it was time to go to dinner playing exploding snap and every other loud wizarding game that would never be played in the Black household, but the Potter home drowned in. And when they came back, the pair sat down on one of the couches, leaning into the warmth of the fire and into each other, the silent thing between them always more prominent when they were alone.

Regulus’s eyes shined like silver in the firelight, bright and dangerous- something that could hurt, and Remus thought that he would let him do so. That any pain would be worth it. 

The younger teen’s hand grasped the wolf’s cheek, fingers gliding over the scars there. Where Dora was soft in her touches, Regulus was firm - a sculptor molding his clay. Remus’s heart was breathing faster and faster with every purposeful touch, coming so completely undone that he wouldn’t have been able to speak if he wanted as the other boy touched him as if he was something to be admired, to be held reverently. 

Remus reached for the other desperately, a scarred hand tugging at the back of a pale neck, the owner of which was more beautiful to the wolf than words could say. Lips brushed together feverishly as the moon and the star crashed together, two beings made out of the same cosmic dust.

The world finally burned.

Chapter Text

Remus wakes to the foreign feeling of a weight on his chest, warm and slowly rising and falling, heartbeats crashing into one another as if they were meant to always be this close. The lion looked at the sight before him, the boy with the dark curls and slightly bruised lips, the tan had long faded into only the whisper of a warm glow, and the spray of freckles that one could only see from this close. If he’d had a camera he would have taken a picture.

Gray eyes soon opened to meet his one as the younger boy stirred, and Remus couldn’t help but wonder if the other would slip away and pretend that nothing happened at all now that the sun was shining once more. If the younger teen would only come to him at nights like some sort of secret that he couldn’t bear to have others know, or not come at all and regret everything with the clarity of day. 

But then there’s a soft smile on the other’s lips, something a little mischievous as if the Gryffindor common room was wearing off on the younger more than any snake would want it to - though Remus supposed that it could easily just as well be Barty and Evan’s doing a well. There’s a soft press of lips against his own, and a warm hand on the older boy’s hip, pressing him down and thumb passing over the bite mark there as the shirt rode up from sleep, as if to give it a new meaning. Remus almost thought that it worked.

The touch was there and gone before the Gryffindor could even do anything to return it, just the brush of something - a promise that this wasn’t going away just because the stars were no longer painting pictures upon the sky like stolen gems. 

Regulus pushes himself off of the couch and onto the floor, looking down at the older boy expectantly in a way that makes the lion want to pull the other close so that they might go back to only a few moments before when each were pleasantly asleep and moving despite the ache deep within his bones wasn’t something that he had to do.

“Come on,” Regulus says, his voice barely above a whisper because there was no need to be loud, to demand more of one another in such a way, when others weren’t around and all else was quiet anyways. 

The younger boy holds out his hand to the Gryffindor and Remus takes it, cool hands meeting warm ones as water and fire danced around one another in a way that could only prove fatal if things continued on exactly as they were. Remus took the hand and let himself be pulled to his feet by the younger. He didn’t let go even as they left the common room, guiding the younger boy along as the moon pulls at the sea.

He wasn’t going to allow them to become a catastrophe.

—-

The pair walk down to breakfast together, the younger dressed in the nice clothes like armor as the older dressed in the muggle ones that he wore just the same, their sides pressed so tightly to one another that if the layers of fabric weren’t there one couldn’t tell where the elder boy ended and the younger began.

The boys sat down a little ways from two Ravenclaws that had few too many differences in their features with one another to quite be siblings or anything of the like and neither of them needed the faint reddening of the girl’s from the studying glances to know what they were to each other. 

As the meal went on though, the two pairs found themselves talking to one another, each of them savoring the idea of speaking with another that didn’t know the exact same things of the past day as they did.

The conversations were interesting enough, as the Ravenclaws were both seventh years, staying at the castle under the guise of studying for their NEWTs. Debates and theories came quickly 

Regulus’s knee bumps into Remus’s as they all speak and the lion savors the warmth of the star with the heart of one, that the other stays long after most would have pulled away from an accidental touch.

It wasn’t an accident at all.

“We were going to go skating if you lot want to come,” the Ravenclaw boy offers, sounding only slightly reluctant in doing so as he glances at the younger Black brother.

The other two boys glance at one another, a silent question in each of their eyes that matched the other’s. Regulus shrugged one shoulder with all of the elegance attached to his name, and Remus gestured down to his feet, the point he made was clear.

“We can transfigure you a pair of skates,” the younger whispers softly.

“So you can laugh when I fall?” The elder asks with a teasing glint to his voice.

“Of course.”

Less than half an hour later, all four of the students were out at the lake, looking at the ice that had frozen over it as they laced up their skates and took tentative steps out upon it. 

Remus’s legs were wobbly on the new surface, but Regulus held onto his arms in the way that friends were allowed to do when one was reaching the other how to skate, but both boys found the heat to it to be more than that. Neither shied away from that fact, only pushing more closely together until the lines between them began to blur once more in their heavy winter clothes.

When the Gryffindor finally found his balance on the ice, he pulled away reluctantly and moved around on his own, stealing glances at the snake as they parted.

The sight took the breadth straight from his lungs, the air curling in a white cloud that danced around the lion.

Because Regulus is beautiful in a way that is so heartbreaking it hurts Remus to look at the other as the boy spins so fluidly that one would think that the younger was only made to move in such a way and no other. And the Gryffindor knows that his own actions are sloppy, but the embarrassment of it is dulled by the heart wrenching way that Regulus smiles in the way that the older boy had found was only reserved for him, the pain in the lion’s chest growing more in a way that it was almost impossible to look at the other and know that he could not touch him with the other two around. 

He welcomed the pain still.

—-

The pair found themselves laid out on the couch once more, the fire burning brightly beside them as the teen curled into one another, lips bruised one more from kissing one another, skin stained a light purple on each of their necks from the very same. 

Regulus traced the scars on Remus’s neck, the silver lines that the beast inside of the other boy had marked him with forever. The lines, that while beautiful, only grew each month, even if they only did so slowly this past year. He didn’t want them to have to grow at all, but knew that there was no cure for the other teen’s affliction. Not that anyone could even get close enough to attempt one while the full moon is out, as the wolf would attack any man with a heartbeat.

“Do werewolves attack animals during the moon?” The younger of the two asks as the sun begins to dip outside of the window, the room slowly darkening but neither bothers to cast any spells to change that.

“No, only humans. It’s something about the scent, I think,” Remus answers and he can already see where the conversation is going and knows that it must be a Black thing for both to come to the same conclusion.

“What about animagus?” The younger asks almost innocently, as if it were only pure curiosity and nothing more.

“Animagus are seen as animals when in their form,” the elder teen answers with a surety that the other doesn't want to question in case of finding out something that he shouldn’t.

“And if I wanted to do some research on becoming one?”

“Then I know where you can find some already done for you.”

The pair smile at one another in a knowing way as they move from the couch and up the stairs to the sixth year boy’s dorm, neither boy having to look anymore to know where they are going.

Over the next hour or two, the pair divide among the room, looking beneath beds and the bottom of drawers for the notes, as Remus knew that neither Sirius or James would risk bringing them home and it becoming clear to Mr. and Mrs. Potter just how many laws they were currently breaking. 

And if they found what they needed for the process and then Regulus pushed and followed the older teen onto the Gryffindor’s bed and the world burned as they touched, lips crashing into one another with the adrenaline of what was to come rushing through their veins, then no one else needed to know.

—-

The closest that Remus had ever had to a proper Christmas were the ones that he had spent hidden away at the Potter's house, but with those he always felt more like a guest than anything else as he couldn’t bring himself to be as open or as soft as everyone else was. He spent most of the time envious of things that he could never have and hating himself for it because he could never bring himself to be as happy as the others.

But this year was different.

There were gifts beneath the tree in the Gryffindor common room as Remus walked down the dormitory stairs to the main room alone, Regulus having spent the night in his own common room so that he could receive his own presents from the tree there. The wolf had never seen so many presents under the tree before meant just for him.

There was a black sweater made of a nice material that the Gryffindor knew before he even slide it on that it would be kind on his scars unlike some of his other one that dragged at them and irradiated the boy to the point that he would thrown them away if he had any clothes to truly spare. Remus didn’t have to read the tag to know that it was from Regulus, and he smiled at the thought of wearing it down to breakfast as seeing the other look at him in it. 

Next was a small fox stuffed animal from Barty and a golden slinky from Evan that had the older teen smiling at the memory of it all. The chaos that the three of them had caused that day and the way that the patronus had run around the room, free in a way that only youth could ever hope to obtain. He knew that he would put each of the items on his nightstand and wait to see if the others said anything at all of it.

The last one was from Dora, and it was the strangest of them all, with there being black nail polish and eyeliner in the little golden bag. 

When Regulus came up to the tower with Remus after breakfast, the older boy allowed himself to become pliant under the younger’s touch as the other teen took the two items with a practiced ease and applied them to the elder. Neither of them said anything about the way that Regulus sat in his lap to do the eyeliner when he clearly didn’t need to, holding the lion's face still when the other hadn’t moved at all. 

Neither said anything about how they both liked the intimacy of it and wished for it back when the snake moved away to do the nail polish after. Regulus would scowl a few days later once he saw that the polish that he had so carefully applied was already chipped by the older boy, but neither would miss the way that the younger’s ears turned a delicate shade of red from how it went with the look that the lion had cultivated over the past few months.

—-

Remus has always known that the castle was filled with secret passageways and knocks and crannies that students could go their entire seven years in the castle with ever even finding one, but he never expected to be walking the seventh floor with Regulus and finding a room that came and went like the tide, changing depending on what one was thinking before the door appeared before them.

The boys looked at one another before walking onside, their breadths catching as if another had stolen them as a familiar sight sprawled out before them. 

The room had taken on the shape of an old, abandoned park. Some of the equipment was falling apart and quite a few of the ionic tables looked like they had seen better days as weeds grew up the sides of them. The grass was tall everywhere and the air was warm with the heat of summer and the boys knew that the room looked exactly like the place that they had found during the summer holidays near St. Edmund’s. 

And Remus knew that he wouldn’t be adding this to the Marauder’s Map.

The pair moved farther into the park, casting spells to repair the swings before sitting upon them like the school children that neither of them had ever gotten to be before, and for the last few days of the holidays, they fell back into the habits of their summer selves only the touches were no longer stolen or chaste as Remus laid his head in the other boy’s lap as they sat in the grass.

Chapter Text

Remus walked next to Regulus, close as ever, as they wandered the quiet halls of Hogwarts, savoring the small world that they had drowned themselves in the past two weeks and mounted it now that the others were all coming back. But for all the peace that they would miss, it still felt like finally breathing once more when the rest of their strange group crashed into the pair, sly smiles and quick touches on wrist, silent assurances that they were all still in one piece.

“We have something to show you,” the younger Black whispered as the five of them walked into the castle, neatly avoiding the wandering looks of three ditch year Gryffindors searching for a fourth. 

“And what would that be?” Evan asks, ever the impatient one.

“You’re just going to have to wait,” the other snake replied, a smirk on his face that none of them found any malice in. 

“Not even a hint?” Dora asked from Remus’s right as the younger Barack stayed to his left. There was a soft look on the girl’s face that they knew better than to believe as her curiosity won out.

“You’re the Ravencalw,” Barty reminded the girl. “Shouldn’t you be able to figure it out?” The rest of their group ignored the way that the boy’s voice rasped as if he hadn’t spoken since the train ride back home for the holidays. They ignored the probability that this was exactly the case, knowing that there was nothing that any of them could do. Not right now at the least.

Remus still hit the younger boy on the back of the head though for the remark, a slight pop that sounded much worse than the slight sting that the teen would have felt in reality, and Barty scowled even as he was thankful for the normalcy of it.

The Gryffindor and Slytherin pair led the others up the stairs to the seventh floor, blatantly ignoring the way that the o other teens protested under their breaths at the long climb from the ground floor. Regulus stood back as Remus moved the stalk in front of the wall, the snake knew that the lion was better at replicating the room than he was, as if the magic in it all spoke to the older boy in a way that it didn’t do so with the others.

He knew why it did so, they all did, but the lion didn’t tap into the power that laid inside of him. Regulus thought that he might never do so.

Looking back one day, he would see that he was wrong.

The park was just as they had left it the last time that the pair was there, the breaking equipment and the thick grass. Remus walked over to one of the picnic tables and sat on top of it, watching as the younger teens took it in, their little hidden world within Hogwarts. The Gryffindor was surprised when Regulus sat himself down next to the lion, the younger teen atop the table as well.

“Not very proper of you,” the older boy remarked as they sat flush against one another, connected fully from their knees to their sides.

“I could move…” the younger said slowly, leaning away from the lion, and Remus hooks their fingers together to make the other stay.

Regulus leans back against the older boy, connecting them more fully than the pair had been before as he lays his head on the other’s shoulder without thinking anything of it. They were around family after all.

Remus moved his arm hesitantly, circling it behind the younger teen’s waist with movements that were much more hesitant than the younger Black’s had been. He knew that in the muggle world - and wizarding too from the way that some people talked - that even the way that the Slytherin was laying on him would get them both beat to a pulp. He didn’t think that any of the others would do that, but the fear was always there, lingering like a disease.

But Dora only nodded with a soft smile as she sat down on the bench, and Barty and Evan only pressed closer to one another as they sat down in the warm grass, Evan’s leg on top of Barty’s with Barty’s hands resting on the blond’s knee.

“I can tell what you blokes have been doing over the holiday,” Barty said with a suggestive tone as he eyed the barley visible mark on the older boy’s neck, though the way that he was lacing his fingers through Evan’s said that there wasn’t any harm in it.

“We’ve been doing research actually, Crouch” the Gryffindor replied easily.

“Over what then?” The dark haired boy asks, a brow raised at the idea of what could have been important enough to cause both of the other teens to voluntarily open school books during the break for something other than homework.

“Animagus,” Regulus says simply as if they weren’t speaking of attempting something highly illegal for their age.

But the others were two Slytherins and the Ravenclaw that hung around them, and none of them even faltered at the idea. Not one of the other three questioned it either, alreadying knowing just why the younger Black and the lion would have been doing such a thing. The Slytherin cunning and Ravenclaw wit kept them from asking why Remus was sure that this was a safe solution to the problem that he was plagued with. Then there was the unquestioning loyalty that they held for one another - the bonds that none of them had ever had with those that they shared blood with - that had each of them agreeing without the idea even fully needing to be spoken aloud.

They had three new people helping in the research after that day.

—-

It was February before the strange trio that they had created were able to gather in earnest to test their project once more. 

Remus was up in Gryffindor Tower with the rest of the Marauders, smiling at their particular brand of chaos, when slight gasps had spread throughout the room as the spectral figure of a bat flew into the common room, swooping down in front of the teen as if to touch him. Sirius raised a brow at the sight, this being the second corporeal patronus to come to the taller boy, from a different person at that. James and Peter only stared in slight awe, never having seen one so close before.

“Well, that's my cue to leave,” the scarred boy says as he stands, sliding the book that he had been absentmindedly reading for the past half hour into the bag that he otherwise hadn’t touched before then, Sirius was curious to know just what was inside of it.

“Who are you meeting, Moony?” James asks, his brows wiggling in a mocking way.

“It’s only Dora, you prick,” Remus says with a roll of his eyes, but the older Black brother can hear just how much lighter the other boy’s voice is when speaking of the Lestrange girl. Light in a way that he so rarely heard it this year.

“Lady killer!” Peter called as Remus walked away, middle fingers held high for all to see in a way that wasn’t exactly proper for a prefect to act, but the teen smoked enough that it was a minor offense.

Sirius scowled as the other two lions laughed, and when James noticed, confusion rumbled through him.

“Why do you look like Moony just killed your dog?” The bespectacled boy asked with a tactlessness that only a Potter could use and it still be something akin to endearing, though Sirius found the teen gaze to be unsettling as he did so, calculating and attuned in the way that only the deer part of his really tended to be.

“I just don’t trust Lestrange is all,” the boy argued weakly, not wanting to admit just how childish it must look like he’s being. Well, he’s never cared about that before.

“Moony does though,” James said as if that proved something. And maybe to the other boy it did, but Sirius knew the Remus that sold cigarettes behind their backs and broke into shops during the summer. He seemed to be the only one that remembered that Remus seemed to trust Crouch and Rosier as well - he wasn’t even going to think about Regulus.

He trusted me, too , his traitorous mind reminds him. Look how that turned out.

“I still don’t like it.”

“We could follow him.”

Sirius and James turned to where Peter was sitting in his chair, innocently holding up a bit of parchment that they all knew was much more than that.

Better people might have stopped at the obvious invasion of privacy, but they were Marauders, and Marauders thrived on chaos.

—-

The Pitch was still cold in the February chill as the three Marauders walked out to it, following the small footsteps of Remus all the way there, confused looks on each of their faces once they saw the other boy stop in the middle of field and at the fact that he hated flying. They weren’t prepared for the sight before them once they finally reached it.

Regulus was standing atop his broom high in air, tall and proud with all of the grace of a seeker, as Remus stood beside him, their hands held tightly together as the Gryffindor wobbled. 

If they were to have glanced into the Ravenclaw stands the three of them would have seen Pandora sitting there with parchment and a quill in her hands, poised and ready to take notes. But instead they watched as the boys let go of one another and Remus tilted back, falling from the broom like an angel that had lost its wings, like Icarus as his had burned. Regulus dived down beside the other like a shooting star, ready to catch the older boy should the need arise, but suddenly one of the lion’s feet separated from the other and the wolf was running through the air. The Gryffindor laughed, strong and loud enough to be heard even from outside of the pitch as he ran through the sky as if he was always meant to be a part of it, the moon and a star.

Remus had always hated flying, ever since their first lesson at elven, but this was nothing like that. Running freely through the sky, the teen felt a lot like the constellation that his last name came from. It was the kind of freedom that he had never thought that someone like him would be allowed to have, but he was grasping onto it like it was all that he had.

Sirius stormed onto the pitch as obscenities that would have made a sailor blush fell from his lips, spurred on by the recklessness of the boy that was supposed to be the most sensible of them all.

“ Lupin ! What the fuck were you thinking?!”

Remus sighed as he and the Slytherin landed on the ground. He had known that the others were coming, their scent was a familiar one after all of these years. But he hadn’t expected to elicit such a response with his stunt, and a part of him knew that he hadn’t, that this wasn’t about his reckless actions at all but who he had chosen to complete them with.

Remus shakes his head subtly as Dora moves to come closer to the spontaneous inquisition before looking to the younger Black and nodding at him, a silent plea for the other to go, to trust him to handle this. The wolf knew that Padfoot’s head was never on straight when his family was involved. Regulus left with a cold glare in the direction of each of the Gryffindors, Remus included, but he brushed their hands together as he left nonetheless.

“What were you doing with him, Moony?” James asked, his head cocked to the side.

“We were working on a project together,” the boy in question explains as he leans down to change his boots out for the non - spelled ones.

“Just the two of you?” Peter asked, a slight tone of surprise in the smallest Marauders’ voice.

“Dora too,” Remus explains bitterly at the fact that he has to at all, that the others didn’t seem to trust him enough for this. A glimpse at the cracked skin on his knuckles was enough to make the boy wonder if they were right not to.

“Right, Lestrange ,” Sirius snarls, rolling his eyes as he looks everywhere but at the tallest boy in their group.

“Yes, Dora,” Remus replies with a similar tone. “Without her Regulus and I would be at each others’ throats the entire time,” the wolf says, knowing that it wasn’t technically a lie at all.

None of them liked it, not even Peter who had some friends in Slytherin as well - though his dislike, the wolf assumed, was mostly caused by wanting to fit in with the other two boys - but the three knew that there was nothing that they could do about it, not when it was Remus that they were against.

Things were cold between the four of them in the tower of a while after that.

—-

The next time that the pair were able to sneak off to the Room of Requirement it was Valentines Day. James was busy chasing after Lily in Hogsmeade, Sirius had a date with whichever girl he was with this week, Peter was with Desdemona, and no one was looking for the fourth Marauder.

Lips crashed together in the stolen moment that they had been able to steal, not truly having been alone with one another since the holidays and missing the contact like lung. 

When Regulus left sometime later, there was a small cuff on his left ear in the shape of a golden snake that matched the one that Remus always wears on his right. No one but their small group ever noticed, but it didn’t matter. After all, it  wasn’t for them.

Chapter Text

“Today we are going to be practicing the Patronus Charm!” 

Remus stood with the rest of the Marauders as the small Professor went over the incantation one last time before allowing students to try it. James was smiling like some sort of maniac as he held his wand, eager to be the first in their year to get the charm to work and the wolf couldn’t help but smile at the sight, at the innocence of it and the fact that another had already beat the chaser to it.

“So we know that I’m going to get it first,” James started, his voice filled with the boyish cockiness that time never did seem to drain from him, not yet at the least, “but what about second?”

“Wormtail probably,” Sirius said with a grin similar enough to James’s that one truly could mistake the pair for brothers if they wished to. The rat almost seemed to be blushing at the small sign of approval until the eldest Black began to speak once more. “Merlin knows Wormy has had the second easiest life out of the four of us.”

“Oi!”

As the three bickered Remus wanted to tell them that it wasn't about how easy your life had been, that half of the time it wasn’t even about the pleasant memories that everyone always seemed to be so focused on, but a feeling of warmth. That feeling that makes one human. But the wolf kept his mouth shut as his name wasn’t even brought up within the discussion, it hardly was these days and the teen knew that it was his own fault because he had been with the fifth years - with Regulus - and Sirius couldn’t stand the supposed slight that this was.

“Wands at the ready,” Professor Flitwick instructed from atop his stack of books. Remus raised his own with an intention that he hadn’t come into the lesson carrying, but was there now and refused to die as easily as a muggle flame. “Now cast!”

The wolf closed his eyes and thought of summer days in a park, the sun kissing his bare skin as fingers glided across it as if he wasn’t something horrid. Lips pressed against his own, and Dora’s laugh as their small group ran through the empty castle on a Hogsmead weekend to enact one of her newest spells. Pranks that Remus, Barty and Evan got away with, and sly smiles over breakfast. Dancing in the air with shoes spelled to dull the pain that each step so often brought him these days, Regulus flying alongside him. The taste of a Mandrake leaf in his mouth and their strange groups laughter at its horrid taste.

“ Expecto Patronum !” The wolf cried with a surety that none of the others within the room could claim. 

Silver pooled from the boy’s wand, as bright as a full moon as it swelled and gathered into a familiar shape that ran around the scarred teen as if searching for another boy to be there.

The Marauders watched as a silver fox, quick and sly, darted around the classroom as the charms Professor exclaimed in a pleased surprise. Three of the Gryffindor boys were surprised by the shape that it had taken, having expected a very different creature to appear, if one at all. But Remus thought that it was still as perfect as the first time that he had seen it.

“It’s beautiful,” Lily complimented softly as she and Marlene and Mary walked over, wands held loosely in their hands and soft looks on their faces as they watched the spectacle creature.

“It suits you,” Marlene decided as she stared at it for a moment longer.

“Yeah, Mr. Marauder,” Mary chimed, a mischievous grin on the girl's pleasant features.

The other three boys didn’t say anything as their eyes followed the fox until Remus broke the spell and put his wand away, so the wolf didn’t say anything either when the other three eventually managed to produce spectral protectors of their own.

He knew that there was a barrier growing between them, something that could be fixed if only someone were to reach out a hand, but at the same time Remus was tired of trying to be someone that he was not. Of trying to pretend that he was as good as the others were, that he wasn’t a monster hiding in the body of a man. 

He was tired of pretending now that he knew what it meant to smile with all the sharpness of a wolf and the grace of a fox, as he ran with a black cat through the night as birds flew high above; all of them finally free of the chains that tried to shape them into someone they were not and never would be again.

He was tired of pretending to be good when he knew that he wasn’t and now had people that didn’t ask him to be.

—-

 Time passed as it always does: much too fast, and all too slow. By the time that March rolled around the rest of the lions had eased around the scarred boy, finally accepting what they should have always known, which was that Remus wasn’t one to abandon those that he calls friends - that he calls family if he were to be honest with himself - and that the Marauders would need to adjust.

The wolf wasn’t sure if they could, but was woken up on March tenth with three lions jumping on his bed with bright smiles and a chorus of Happy Birthday spilling from each of their lips nonetheless.

“To youuuu!” The three all but screeched with voices not made for singing. 

“Asshats,” Remus cursed, but he was smiling despite himself. 

“Our best spell caster is now seventeen,” James started conspiratorially as the three peeled themselves off of the bed, dragging the tallest of their lot with them. 

“Just imagine all of the chaos we can now create, Prongsy,” Sirius said in that joking voice of his that made teachers immediately hide anything that they wouldn’t want used in a prank, something Slughorn had taken much too long to realize.

“Indubitably so, Mr. Padfoot,” James agreed with a dramatic bow.

And Remus laughed as he always did at the pair’s antics despite himself as Peter grinned at him, because he loved them even as he knew that they loved a softer version of him. 

The four laughed as they walked down to breakfast, all Gryffindor warmth and bravery as they spoke of the party that would be held later, as was almost every year when one of the Marauders birthdays came around. But the smiles of three of them soon shrunk as they approached the Great Hall, while the fourth’s only grew.

“We just want to steal Kit over here for a moment,” Evan said before the older teens could speak, his hands held up in a mock surrender. “Then you lot can have him for the rest of the day.”

Remus raised a brow at the others, but Dora only pointed to where Meadows was standing off to the side, a muggle camera held in the girl’s hands, a Polaroid.

“I’ll be in there in a minute,” the wolf said, already sliding past the rest of the lions to venture towards the snakes. The Marauders watched him go, and knew that this was something that they would have to be okay with now if they wanted to keep the fourth lion.

Dorcas stood in front of the five students that had no right to be around one another as they were if the rest of the world had any say in the matter, and held the camera up to her eye as the five gathered together; Remus in the middle with his arm around Regulus’s waist and the other across Pandora’s shoulders as Barty and Evan crouched before the three. Five pictures were taken, one for each of them that the snakes, lion, and egal all put into books to be kept safe from prying eyes.

Remus and Regulus watched as the others left, the pair staying behind in the hall off to the side of the entrance. Their hands were laced together and the Gryffindor knew that this was a feeling that he would never get tired of.

“Close your eyes,” the snake said softly, lifting Remus’s hand as the older teen did so. Something cold was pressed into the lion’s hand, metal he realized. ‘Open them.”

When Remus looked down there was a black ring decorated in gold and false silver in his palm, the piece placed on a long chain that could easily be touched beneath a shirt without being seen. He ran his fingers over the chilled metal for a moment before looking up at the other.

“Is a promise ring,” the Slytherin explained, his face was set in an unbothered mask, but Remus could see the red on the tops of the other boy’s ears. “It’s a pureblood tradition. You don’t-” but Regulus stopped speaking as he watched the older wizard slide the chain around his neck, tucking the ring beneath his clothes as if it was something to be handled with care.

“It’s perfect,” Remus said with a surety that he hardly ever held outside of their strange group before leaning down to kiss the other. It was chaste but spoke of an eternity of time for more. 

Regulus pulls out a ring that matches the one around the lion’s neck and Remus slides it onto the teen’s pale finger. 

Unbeknownst to the Slytherin, Remus knew then that he would do anything to see all five of them through the war in one piece.

Neither of them could have known that meeting in the library that day would create such a change to what could have been. What was almost prophesied to be.

—-

When Remus was called to Headmaster’s office that night and paperwork was laid out on the man’s desk - forms that he had been dreading since the moment that the wolf had heard of the registry - the teen refused to sign them, staring at the older man with a defiant gaze. Months spent with the Slytherins was how he knew that though Dumbledore acted displeased by this turn of events, he was the farthest thing from it. Months spent with the snakes was how the teen knew that the old man was playing a game that no one else knew, and that the wolf was one of his chess pieces.

Months spent with the Slytherins was how the wolf knew to pretend that he didn’t.

—-

The party that night was as loud and lively as any other house party that the Marauders had thrown when one of their birthdays came around, music playing too loud and alcohol flowing too freely, but like so many times before that year Remus couldn’t seem to fall into it all the way that he used to. But for the first time, someone else noticed.

“What?” Sirius asked with a teasing smile as he left some Hufflepuff girl to come and talk to the only lion that looked almost bored in the room. “Are the Ravenclaw parties really more exciting than ours?” 

It wasn’t a question that the drunken boy meant to be answered, but a way to goad the other into loosening up. Remus did both.

“No,” the wolf admitted with a too sly grin for someone of their house, “but the Slytherin are.”

Remus walked away from the other Marauder before he could see the stuffed look on the teen’s face, and faded into the crowd, dancing with those that came up to him and not remembering any of their faces as he knew that he was promised to another.

—-

It was two weeks before that came around to bite the wolf in the ass. 

The Gryffindor common room was quiet for once as almost everyone was outside soaking in the warm air before a frenzy settled upon the castle as exams began to loom over the students like some sort of curse, those taking OWLs and NEWTs becoming particularly difficult to be around. Remus could still remember hearing about how Bellatrix had cast a curse to remove all of the tongues from the younger years in the Slytherin common room in the Marauders’ first year. Now that he was older he didn’t think that it was such an overreaction as he had back then.

He should have known that the quiet wouldn’t have been able to last.

The rest of the Marauders bounced into the common room with mischief in their eyes, the three boys heading straight for their fourth with that manic step that they only ever had when one had an absolutely terrible idea and the rest were going along with it as if it wasn’t. It always worked out in the end either way, that or they cursed one another in detention.

“We want to go to a Slytherin party!” James exclaimed as Remus closed his book and the three crowded before him.

“Why?” Remus asked slowly as he looked up at the three from the couch, confusion clear in the teen’s face.

“C’mon Moony,” Sirius whined, “you’re the one that said that they were better than ours,” the boy reminded him, though Remus thought that there was likely something else to all of this.

In the end Remus agreed to take them, knowing that they wouldn’t stop asking or would find a way in on their own if he didn’t.

“Alright, your funeral.”

—-

The presence of the extra Gryffindors wasn’t met with open arms, though Rmeus had known that it would be this way. This was the one house that didn’t truly like the Marauders. 

The Black brothers didn’t look at one another as the two groups came together and the wolf figured that this was for the best, the pair often tended to be very explosive when around one another and he didn’t want the brothers to duel, he didn’t think that he would handle it very well seeing the younger Black hurt by the elder.

“Lions among the snakes,” Evan scoffed as he looked at the three, ignoring the fact that he’d had one around him for the past year now. “What a rare sight.”

“Wonder how long they’ll last,” Barty whispered just loud enough for their five to hear.

“Manners, boys,” Dora chided with a swat of her hand on each of their shoulders. 

“Don’t mind them,” Remus said, waving the boys off, used to and unbothered by their antics, “they're a bit eccentric.”

“Right,” Peter said slowly, but even he didn’t look convinced.

When the duels come around, Remus doesn't hold back - the wolf doesn't hold back. 

Curses spill from the boy’s tongue, ones that they all knew and some that the lion had picked up during his time in the dungeons, each more devastating than the last as he taps into something inside of him that sings with pleasure at it all. The snake crazy enough to challenge the Gryffindor soon loses his wand with a strangled cry, but Remus doesn’t stop there - he never does, nor does anyone ever try to make the wolf lest they be next - and runs at the wizard, fist flying and knuckles bruising skin as they split open. 

The teen only stops when the other cries out in defeat, and the Slytherins and Ravencalw that the Gryffindor claims as his come running forward with bright smiles, uncaring of the destruction that the older boy had just caused only a moment before. The rest of the Marauders were slower to approach, hesitance in their every step.

“You’re changing,” Sirius says so quietly that no one other than the wolf could hear the boy.

“Sorry,” Remus replies in a way that showed that he clearly wasn’t. “I didn’t know that I had to stay the same.”

Some brows were raised at the words but it was eventually ignored as Dora dragged the boy away to wrap his hands with the bandages that she always brought. The Marauders watched her go and thought that they were watching a stranger walk beside the younger girl.

A monster in human skin.

—-

Exams came and went and soon June was here and with it came the end of the year Ravenclaw exhibition, not the Gryffindor house knew about it.

When Remus left the dorm well past curfew without a word of explanation and with a bag laden with documents, James and Sirius exchanged a worried, but curious glance and followed the boy under the invisibility cloak and on the map, surprised to see him heading for Ravenclaw tower of all places. 

(Remus knew that they were there, he could smell them from over half way down the hall, but he let the pair follow nonetheless, letting them see what they wished to.)

The riddle was impossibly easy -  always was on exhibition days to give pity to those not born with the cleverness that the eagles so easily possessed in waves - and Remus slipped inside without a problem, taking his time to leave the door open for the other two boys to grab as they unknowingly were allowed to follow.

The visible lion smiled as he let himself be lost in the gathered crowd of blue, yellow and green, leaving the other pair clueless as to where he was.

He never did intend to make it easy on them.

“Welcome to the Ravenclaw exhibition,” the seventh year Ravenclaw prefect announced with an eager voice. “You all know the categories and how this works, and if you don’t then just sit back and enjoy the show. We’re going to start with inventions today,” he decided. “Lestrange, if you will.”

The two hidden lions watched as the blond girl that was so often around Moony these days walked up to a table - the only one within the room - that was left completely bare of papers or books before pulling out parchment to cover it. They were only a little surprised when Remus and Regulus soon appeared at either of her sides. 

The lion emptied his own bag, his back to the other two boys where they couldn’t see what he was showing everyone else, but could see the way that the eldest of the trio reached behind the Ravenclaw and stole one of the papers from the younger Black with a familiarity that neither of the Marauders had known that the two teens had and made Sirius clench his teeth, grounding them with some emotion that he didn’t know.  But James didn’t see that as he watched the younger Black brother glare at the Gryffindor only to be met with a cheeky smile that they hardly ever saw from the teen when it was the four of them.

And then Remus was stepping away from the table, sliding onto the boots that he was wearing and putting on another that looked just like them but flashed with green light as the lion touched his wand to them.

Hermes’s Sandals , the three called them and the hidden pair knew why when Remus ran forwards as if his bones didn’t creak and then leapt into the air, stepping onto it as if it were a solid thing. The lions were reminded of the scene that they had witnessed the last time that it was just the strange trio and knew that this must have been what that project was. 

Sirius watched with hooded eyes as Remus danced through the air to some melody that he didn’t know but looked stunning while doing so, the wolf going higher and higher toward the tall common ceiling until all the scarred boy would have to do to touch it would be to simply raise his hand and brush his fingers against the painted ceiling there, touching the stars in the way that only the moon could. They watched as he leaned back, arms stretched out wide as if to welcome what was to come, and then the boy was falling.

Even falling the wolf still looked impossibly free.

Just like last time, Remus stopped just before any damage could come to him; a reckless show that had more than one audience member cursing the teen as the boy laughed and glided to the ground like some sort of angel.

Lestrange and Regulus rush to the Gryffindor with bright smiles on their faces and the hidden pair watch as Remus hugs the Ravenclaw girl before throwing an arm around the snake as if that was something natural for him to do. Watching the three, the lions start to understand that whatever exists between them is something untouchable; that in some ways it’s a lot like the bond between Sirius and James themselves. The lions, Sirius especially, tries not to be too jealous because of that as he watches his brother laugh in a way that he never had before and the boys look at the Lestrange girl as if she were their sister.

When the pair leave, they don’t even know exactly what their mourning the loss of, only that they are.

—-

When the five of them meet by the Black Lake the day before they are meant to leave Hogwarts for the summer holidays, the air is a lot more grim than it ever had been between them, as the future hung over the lot of them.

“My parents are going to make me take the mark over the summer,” Regulus says from his spot between Remus and Dora, finally voicing the thing hanging so heavy between them all.

Remus doesn't miss the way that the rest of the snakes steal glances at him, waiting to see just how he would react. They didn’t know that he had been thinking about this a lot since the day that he first hung the ring around his neck.

The wolf turns and looks the younger Black in the eyes and knows what he must do once he sees the fear in them. Remus grabs the other boy’s hand, the ring that rests there - the promise that it represents - and speaks before he can talk himself out of it.

“Do it,” he says with a firm voice, surprising the others. “I was there when Sirius came to the Potters last year when they wanted him to take it,” Remus informs them, something that none of the others had known before. “I know that you won’t make it out of that house otherwise, so do it.

“Do it, but don’t join him.”

“That makes no sense and you know it, Lupin,” Regulus says with a shake of his head, but Dora’s eyes light up with recognition.

“You want him to become a spy,” the Ravenclaw realizes, intelligent eyes locked onto his.

“For Dumbledore?” Barty asks with a scoff that everyone in the group agreed with.

Remus shakes his head. “Dumbledore doesn't give a damn about any of us outside of how he can use us,” the wolf said with enough scorn to cut like a blade. “No,” he decides, “we create our own side.”

“Me with the Death Eaters,” Regulus says slowly.

“And me with Dumbledore,” Remus finishes before looking at the others, hope so painfully clear in his eyes. “You guys in or what? ”

They all looked between one another, determination setting in the snakes and eagle’s eyes. It was answer enough. 

“Merlin, we’re all suicidal,” Evan says with a shake of his head, but the Slytherin was grinning sharply. They all were.

The world saw them as monsters, they would prove them right.

Chapter Text

The cottage that Pandora had given Remus the coordinates to was small, or at least appeared so on the outside the Gryffindor soon realized as he walked inside. 

There were a total of three floors that made up the ‘cottage’, two above and a basement down below that the wizard had already mentally set aside for Dora to use for her experiments. The front door immediately led one into a well light, but rundown and tarnished kitchen that was only thinly divided from the large living room by the flooring left open so that one could freely walk between the two and the door to a rather large office that was off to the left, the stairs - going both up and down - to the right.

The upstairs had three rooms, each much too large for there not to be an extension charm somewhere in play. The rooms were rather dark looking, worn down and dirtied by so many endless years without use, but Remus knew that it would all change soon enough.

For the time being he only cast a few cleaning and repairing charms and slept in the bed in the room farthest from the stairs, but with the largest windows, his Hogwarts things at the end of the bed, all that he had to his name. The starlight kept him company at night as the sunlight woke him with the morning.

—-

Two days later there was one loud crack outside of his house, the scent of wild magic belonging to an elf coloring the air as Remus walked out to meet the newcomers, the Fidelius Charm thick in the air around the cottage as he could see them, but only Dora could see the lion.

Remus could tell the moment that this changed as Evan and Barty’s eyes went wide, almost comically so, and the Gryffindor could tell that the secret had been shared.

“The cleaning crew is here to help!” Dora called brightly as the three drew close, wands in their hands as the elf - Evan’s house elf - popped away to return later once the boy called for it.

Remus would never know how the wizarding world could look down on such creatures, but the wizarding world seemed to look down on anything and anyone that they deemed other, he knew that about as well as anyone.

No one mentioned the third snake that they were missing, the one whose rings matched Remus’s own that he wore on stark display for all to see now that summer was here. They didn’t have to, they all felt the absence like some sort of serverince charm.

“Then I suppose we should get to it.”

And they did. 

The four started with the study, the least damaged place within the former Ravenclaw home as it was spelled with protective charms. The boys set about moving all of the books and furniture from the room as Pandora casted repairing charms on the walls and the bookshelves that sprouted from them like limbs from trees. Muggle music played through the air as the four painted the room a soft gray, a miniature version of the sky bewitched on the ceiling as it was at Hogwarts. 

Remus felt the itch to flip through the books, magics of all kinds staring back at him from the spines of each of them, but he only shelved them with the others to be looked at later.

Next were the bedrooms. Dora took the one nearest to the stairs, painting it a deep blue, while Evan and Barty took the middle room turning it the same shade of green as the Black Lake during the day. The Gryffindor let the trio do whatever they wished with the rooms as he painted and repaired his own - the walls were a warm gold with silver linings - it was theirs after all. 

As the four met in the hall on the way to go down the stairs, a feeling of tightness fell over the group, the wall opposite to the rooms staring back at them as if they had offended it. The magic worked was hesitant, but soon a balcony that overlooked the living room was where the wall had been, one that opened the space and allowed those upstairs to see any that dared come through the door with the advantage of height.

Remus never thought he would be making changes to his house based on offensive capabilities. He never thought that someone like him - a wolf, an orphan in everything but the legalities, a care home kid - would have a home to change. He never thought a lot of things actually.

The four of them paint the living room and kitchen white, a dull color that shines with the warm glow of the sun. With the water on for tea and his friends gathered at the table discussing which flavor they should make, Remus could almost forget that there had been a time before it was always like this, and that they weren’t heading head first towards a war that none of them are likely to get out of unscathed.

Reality was a cruel thing , Remus knew, thinking of the mark undoubtedly marking Regulus’s pale skin now, marring it. The same mark that was sure be borne on the other two Slytherins as well before the war comes to a close, one way or another.

No one is owed anything in life.

Remus had known this since he was five, but for now he would bask in the sounds of his friends’ laughter, in the home that was entirely theirs.

—-

Remus wanders into the study one night when the moon is too close to sleep and the time too late to go into town and do anything productive that he had been putting off for some time now. The books there stunk of dark magic, gray and light, wild and none at all. Remus grabbed book after book, making small piles of them on the floor with some parchment beside him as he set about the ambitious project of reading through as many as he could, writing down anything that he thought would prove helpful in the times to come. 

There were books on healing magic and prophecy, wild magic and rituals, soul magic and necromancy. On nights like these he read of creatures that they would never teach of at school and of spells so sickening that he took to keeping a trash can in the study and the windows open as he smoked everything else away.

There were old books on werewolves that he was hesitant to even touch, knowing already of what each of the ones within the Hogwarts Library told.

Sometimes on restless nights like these he took to pretending that there was another on the floor beside him, scowling as muggle music filled the cottage.

There never was, but Remus held the ring that laid against his chest with the silent hope that there might one day be.

—-

The crack of apperation fills the air one night when Remus is in the study reading a particularly dark book with spells on healing within them, the full moon was soon and Madam Pomfrey wouldn’t be there to help as she had so many years before.

Remus grabbed his wand, holding it tightly within his hand as he walked to the window, prepared to fight should he need to, but lowered it and left the cottage almost immediately, feeling almost like a child again.

Regulus didn’t bat an eye when Remus appeared out of thin air before him, only returned the tight embrace. The past few weeks had been the longest that they had been apart from one another before then, and it showed. 

They each knew that it would only get harder.

“Why are you here? How are you here, love?” Remus asks, worry in both his gaze and tone. They had all known going into the summer holidays that the Blacks would have a tight grip on their youngest son, one that wouldn’t allow any of them to truly see the boy even without Voldermort and his schemes.

“My parents are at a meeting, something about financials,” the Slytherin answered before kissing the other as if he were air and Regulus had been holding his breath.

Love , it wasn’t a name that he ever thought he would be called by someone that he would want to hear it from.

Hands roamed thin frames, and the younger teen let out a soft moan when the other’s lips fell to his neck, kissing it as the wolf growled with restraint, not leaving a mark. Regulus almost wished that he would, it would be better than any other one he had.

Remus led the other over the line of the Fidelius charm, a special tweak to the spell that Dora had made that allowed the lion to bring others inside so long as they were touching, even if their memory of the location of the home would still be blurry once leaving. They knew that Regulus wasn’t nearly good enough at mental magics to fend off Voldermort should he come prying.

Regulus wanted to stoop and look at the carefully redone cottage, but he knew that they were on borrowed time, meetings could only last so long, and Remus was looking at the other with a hunger in his gaze as the wolf rumbled in his chest.

The bed was soft beneath the snake as Remus sat atop him, lips hot on his skin as the other kissed his way down it, buttons coming undone as he did. There were scars from a wand on his chest that Regulus could never bring himself to look at in the mirror, but Remus only touched as if they were the mark of a survivor. 

The Dark Mark on his arm wasn’t, and shame and disgust coiled in Regulus’s stomach each time that he saw it glaring up at him, no matter the fact that he knew what the alternative would have been. 

Remus only kisses it as if it were any other scar before looking at Regulus with enough adoration that the Slytherin found it hard to breathe.

“I love you,” Remus said as if the words were some sort of oath, one that he knew to be true. One that he would never give to another. It was the sort of love that one risked everything for, fighting with your life on the line just for the chance to make it back to the one that you held it for.

Regulus sat up some, pulling off the other’s thin shirt as if it had done something to offend him.

“I love you too,” Regulus breathed, kissing his way down the other’s scars, the tarnished body that he adored. The broken boy that he loved more than he ever thought he could.

Regulus has never believed in soulmates, or if they existed he never thought that he would have one of his own, but as their bodies moved as one, he thought that maybe they were made from the same cosmic dust, connected by a red string, whatever the story was.

He knew that there wasn’t anyone else out there for him.

—-

Regulus stole one last glance at the sleeping teen, a boy whose body was now covered with marks and bites that matched his own, one set of clothes strewn across the floor. One day he promised that he would come to this room - good and silver and so clearly meant for them both - and he wouldn’t have to ever leave.

But that wasn’t tonight, he knew as he left the teen, the ring on his finger heavy as he disappeared with a crack once more.

—-

When the moon came, it wasn’t a dog, deer, and a rat that the wolf ran with, but two birds and a bat that soared high above him all through the night. He gained a few scars as he always did, the wolf missing his previous pack, but it was enough.

Chapter Text

Remus sighs as he walks through the Hogwarts Express, going to school for the last time. There were less people here than all of the years before, less first years and hardly any muggleborns at all. The Gryffindor wasn’t surprised, not with the way that the war had been progressing, the danger that lurked just from existing. He wasn’t surprised at all to see that all of the Gryffindor seventh years had returned, blood status be damned. They were lions after all, reckless and brave.

Sometimes Remus found himself wondering if he was still one of them at all.

Remus walked into the prefect's carriage and grinned at Dora as she smiled up at him, her eyes bright. Nodding at Regulus as he did so back, stretching like a cat.

The three didn’t say anything to one another, only that small gesture as Remus sat down on Pandora’s other side. They knew that this year was going to be different from the last, people were going to care now what the three did, what the son of two purebloods and the supposed puppet of Dumbledore were going to do. Their group’s friendship always raised brows before, but now they couldn’t afford for them to do so.

The trio watched as James and Lily walked into the carriage, the pair close in a way that made most of its occupants breath a sigh of relief that they had finally gotten together and would no longer have to watch the pair pine over one another from afar. Head Boy and Head Girl, together at last.

This fact didn’t stop James from looking at Remus strangely every few minutes, as if expecting the wolf to suddenly move to another seat while he was not watching. Remus only rolled his eyes, running out the same speech that he had been listening to for years now as he thought of how to adjust the runes and enchantments that the trio had used last year with the shoes to give a muggle motorbike the same properties.

“ Lupin .”

Remus looked up as his name was called and a hand roughly shook his shoulder, the voice using a harsher tone than it had in years. Using his last name as well.

“We’re discussing schedules, dear,” Dora said airily as she shifted to cover up Regulus’s retreating arm, but the damage was already done.

Silence filled the room as everyone had seen the mark peeking out from beneath the youngest Black brother’s school robes. Remus pretended to be just as surprised as the rest of them, not that James seemed to buy it much.

“Patrol schedules, right?” Remus asked after the silence had dragged on long enough, after the sight had been ingrained in the other’s minds enough for the whole school to know by the end of the feast just how the youngest Black had spent his summer. 

Remus and the rest of their group had engineered it this way, to see the school’s reactions out and in the open, and for Regulus to know those most likely to join the other side as well.

It was a test, as plain and simple as they come.

“Patrol schedules,” Lily agreed, but there was fear in the girl’s voice. Fear that Remus had intentionally caused. He knew that he should feel bad about doing so, but he also knew that this was for the family that he had chosen, the one that didn’t fear the darker parts of himself.

He could live with whatever the costs.

—-

The dorm was quiet when the four boys walked inside of it, Wirius the only outlier as he bounded around the room with a manic grin and grand ideas for pranks spilling from his lips. This was their last year of being children, their last year before joining Dumbledore and the war. He didn’t want to waste it.

He couldn’t understand why the other boys didn’t seem to agree.

“ Sirius ,” James said softly, too softly for this to be a normal conversation and Sirius felt his heart stop because the other boy only ever used that voice where one group of people were concerned, each of them sharing the same last name. “Please sit down for a moment.”

James almost felt his heart break as he watched his brother do so like some sort of lifeless doll. 

“What happened?”

“He took the mark.”

The three boys in the dorm closed their eyes as the fourth fell apart before them, the anger in Sirius’s eyes palpable as the teen himself started to curse and swear at his mother and his father, and at Regulus himself. Magic stuffed in the room, but the teens within it had learned too much control over the past six years for it to do much more than that. James held his brother anyways until Sirius suddenly became quiet, mourning a boy that wasn’t even yet dead. 

And Remus will always remember that this was the moment that he wanted to tell them all the schemes that he and the others had been creating for the past few months. And he will always be grateful that he hadn’t because of the rat in the room.

James looked at the other two boys in the room as Sirius finally began to calm down and found Peter looking worriedly back at him as Remus looked stubbornly away, a distance in his gaze that had been there since the end of their fifth year. James felt foolish for hoping that it would be gone by now, and angered when he realized why it had appeared now.

The Head Boy slid away from his brother and grabbed Remus harshly by the elbow. He knew that the taller teen could easily pull out of his grip if he wanted to, but went along willingly as James pulled him into the hall.

“You knew, didn’t you?” James asks as he pushes the other boy against the stone wall, one hand  still firmly holding the other even though he knew that Remus could always leave.

Remus looked down at the older boy with a wolfish gaze and all of the slyness of a fox. “I did,” he admits easily, his voice empty of any emotion at all.

James startled, but recovers quickly enough after the other’s confession, one that he had hoped the teen would deny. “ Remus -!”

“I was the one that told him to do it.”

James feels his face go as empty as Remus’s tone as the other teen’s confession settles inside of the Head Boy’s mind once more. “What?”

Remus rolls his eyes, annoyed at having to explain something that seemed so clear to himself. At playing checkers instead of chess. “Do you honestly believe that he would have survived the summer otherwise?” Remus asks, scorn making its way into his voice as he knew the answer clear as day, as he knew that he would have had to bury a corpse this summer had Regulus not agreed.

James only shakes his head though. “We could have gotten him out, Remus!” The boy explains with a tone that says that he actually believed what he was saying to be true, a Gryffindor foolishness. “If you had said anything then we could have-”

“Nothing,” Remus says coldly as he interrupts his friend. “We could have done nothing . They already lost Sirius, and there was no way in hell that those bastards were going to let Reg go too,” the teen explained, a venom in his tone. “Besides,” Remus adds with a scoff, “the only chance for him to leave paused when Sirius did, when Dumbledore left him there to rot .”

It was a gamble, Remus knew, to reveal his grievance with the Headmaster as easily as he had, but a part of him hoped that one day the other three would realize that the old wizard wasn’t the saint that he portrayed himself as. The rest of him knew that they likely wouldn’t.

Remus saw the defiance in the other boy’s eyes and walked back inside the dorm.

—-

Remus sighs as he and Regulus patrol the halls, his hip making every step that much slower and more painful than the last. The moons had always been hard, but it seemed that the effects last longer now than they never had before. He was only seventeen, the wolf didn’t want to think about how the damage would feel should he live to thirty.

Sometimes, in the quiet of the night, he could almost admit to himself that he didn’t want to live long enough to find out.

A warm hand grabbed his own, the familiar bite of cool metal grazing his skin. Remus looks down at the younger teen, finding nothing but understanding in his eyes. An understanding that no one else ever seemed to have, but Remus had seen the scars on the other’s body. He was grateful that no one else could understand as easily as they could one another.

He didn’t want to share anyways.

Remus allowed himself to be pulled into an abandoned classroom, left over from when the schools used to be larger and NEWTs classes need much more space than they do now. A warm hand rubs circles against his hip and Remus leans down and captures the other’s lips in his own. 

It was a hurried embrace, it always seemed to be these days, these stolen moments that they managed to take, but when they were connected like this, the outside world didn’t seem to matter. There wasn’t a war closing in on them, or marks on their skin that neither of them could ever hope to erase. It was only them, two parts of a soul.

These little brakes in their patrol become one of Remus’s favorite things.

—-

The Great Hall was quieter than it had been in previous years as less bodies were there to fill it, something that no had truly become used to just yet as the term was only one week in, but one was still there that most people within the school could have done without.

Remus stopped by the entrance to the Great Hall and watched as Snape strutted towards him, a sneer firmly on his face as he did so. The fox had hoped that after the year of peace that he had been given all through sixth year that the other would leave him alone through this one as well.

It seemed that once more Remus had wished for too much.

“Loony Lupin, all alone,” the Slytherin goaded as he drew closer, “looks like Regulus is finally done with his little charity case after all.”

Snape was smiling something ugly as Remus felt a growl build in his throat, he didn’t even notice the other two that had joined them.

“He’s ours now, you know?” The snake asked rhetorically, moving his left arm as if to draw attention to it and the mark that was undoubtedly hiding beneath it. “You tried to corrupt him, but I guess he finally realized that you were only a filthy wolf .”

Remus growled as he tried to lunge forwards, but found himself restrained by two sets of hands. Snape raised a brow as he watched Barty and Evan hold Lupin back.

“Slytherins take care of their own,” Barty said by way of explanation, just enough to fool the other, though Remus knew that the words were meant for him.

“And we don’t fight in public either,” Evan reminded the seventh years coldly, but Remus could smell the fear coming from the other seventh year at even the idea of a fair one - on - one fight. He knew that the other had seen the duels that Remus had participated in during Slytherin parties, and Snape knew what he was. He knew that the seventh year Slytherin would never duel him at all. 

Somehow that only made the wold want to tear him apart more.

The other three Marauders watched the scene unfold and wondered what game the other was playing.

Chapter Text

Remus laid his head down on his hands as he let the sound of McGonagall’s lecture roll over him, resolutely ignoring the boy that he was sitting next to - the Slytherin that he was paired up with because bloody Peter was in the hospital wing with a broken arm after falling while trying to escape Mrs. Norris mid transformation. It wasn’t the other boy’s finest of moments, but no one told him to try and shift into a rat to escape Filch only to attempt to shift back after hearing the tell - tell pitter patter if paws on the old stone floor.

Normally the o furnace would have been halirious, Peter’d had the blood map on his for fuck’s sake, but it was the map that was the problem and had all three of the Marauders in a sour mood as all three did anything but listen to one of the last lectures by their favorite Professor. In Peter’s haste and failure to get away unscathed, the rat had gotten the parchment confiscated by Filch of all people.

The wolf only stared out the window and thought of simpler times of a year previous when he didn’t have to pretend to be anything other than himself. A time when stolen kisses were accompanied by a group of friends walking through the castle in public, now it was almost NEWTs and the only time he got to see any of the other four was when no one else was looking.

He missed this time last year.

—-

Remus was sitting at the Gryffindor table one breakfast on the last Hogsmead day of the year, eating with the other three Marauders before the trio went into the village. He was surprised when Sirius started to sneer all of the sudden. The conversation had been playful only a moment before, ideas for pranks spilling from lips as Remus talked through the mechanics behind each. But the wolf only turned and smiled at the cause of the shift.

“Morning, Dora.”

The Ravenclaw smiled but it didn’t reach her eyes, something that Remus noticed right away.

“What happened?” The fox asked, his brows drawn in concern. Pandora wasn't one to fake emotions.

“I have a date with Lovegood today in the village,” the blond says softly, and Remus sees Sirius draw a brow, some of his previous good mood restored for whatever reason.

“Isn't that a good thing?” The dog asks and for the first time in a while the wolf finds himself agreeing with the other Marauder.

“Would be,” Dora admits, but still doesnt look away from Remus, “but Reg found out.”

And now Remus knew the problem.

Blood meant nothing to the members of their group, blood was the people that threw you away like trash to Boy’s Homes and house elves to raise. The people that beat you for small mistakes and thought you strange and less than human for anything peculiar about you. When blood meant nothing to you, those that you chose as family meant more than another ever could. Dora was their sister and Regulus was a very protective older brother.

“Where is he?”

“He went after Xenophilius,” the Ravenclaw admits, “but it gets worse.”

“ How ?” Remus asks, already planning lies in his head to cover should anyone hear the threats that the younger Black brother was bound to make.

“Barty went to stop him… and then Evan went to stop Barty.”

Remus stood, already knowing what sight would greet him once he found the four and smiling all the same.

“Where are you going?” James had asked, confusion clear in his voice as the strange pair began to walk away from the lions.

“To go stop Reg from killing Lovegood,” Remus said with a smile, as if it were obvious, “and maybe to kill Barty myself should it come down to that.”

Dora shook her head as the three Marauders watched their fourth leave. If they had paid attention then, then they might have known just how much the wolf held the snakes - his snakes - dear. But they only watched in confusion as the pair left to join the mischief of the others for one of the last times in public, the promise of summer weighing down on each of them like a curse.

—-

Remus started listening to the lecture once more, brought out of his daydreams by the low laugh of the Slytherin next to him. Nothing that ever made the snakes in his year laugh was something that should be tolerated.

“Something funny?” McGonagall asked, as she looked at the Slytherin coldly, her voice stern in a manner that made first years tremble but had stopped working so resolutely on the wizards and witches within the classroom a while before. War had a funny way of making one fearless when they knew that they were about to step head first into it.

Mulciber laughed once more, and Remus already felt his finger balling into fist at what the marked Death Eater was bound to say, spurred on by his newfound courage. If the bastard didn’t calm down soon then Remus would be tempted to call for a resort, the fact that school was almost over be damned. 

“I’ve just always wondered how muggles could be so stupid is all,” the snake said and Remus watched as McGonagall raised a brow, the warning clear.

The Slytherins didn’t care to hear it as they all snickered.

“And how is that?” The Professor asked, her voice as warm as the arctic.

The snake shrugs. “All I mean Professor is that magic is all around them and they’re all so stupid that they can’t even tell. Leads me to wonder why we bother keeping them around at all.”

McGonagall’s anger had a sadness to it that Remus knew only came from watching a student that she had taught for seven years become a monster, but the Gryffindors’ anger was something primal, all hard eyes and barely restrained fist from the other side of the room. It was an amount of self control that the lions hardly ever expressed.

Remus found that as someone that hardly was a lion anymore these days, the wolf didn’t feel the need to abide by such rules.

Mulciber opened his mouth once more, but Remus didn’t care to hear the rest of it.

James and Sirius watched as Remus sat next to the Slytheirn with a blank look on his face, as if he was unfazed by the words spilling from the other teen’s mouth. Words that were directed at the half - blood too. 

The fox moved quickly, a hand in the snake’s hair with a bruising grip. The same hand bashing Mulciber’s head against the table in one quick move, the sound of bones crunching and a muffled groan of pain as Remus pushed the bleed boy away, his face just as blank as it had been before.

Sirius didn’t bother to sort through the emotions the rose up within him at the sight, only knowing that they were far from negative and that he should do something about them soon.

“Sorry, you were saying?”

“Mr. Lupin! Detention!” The Professor screamed, shock masking the anger that would normally be there. 

Only the snakes and the present marauders knew of the violence that laid beneath the wizard’s studious facade. One would think that one already privy to it would know better than to risk incurring it once more, but no one ever did accuse Mulciber of being intelligent.

Remus raised his hand slowly, a smirk on the teen’s face that no one outside of the snake den had seen before.

“Yes, Mr. Lupin?”

“If I heal it can I have my detention time cut in half?” The lion asked, that smile still on his face as if all within the room were peering at a stranger instead of the boy that they had known for a few years shy of a decade.

“Why not,” the professor said, her voice exhausted and questioning the Marauder’s capacity of even doing so.

Remus gaze his wand a lazy flick to the angered and stunned snake, the damage completely reversing itself to the point that even the blood from the Spytheirn’s broken nose had disappeared, before grabbing the other by the hair and whispering in the other's ear. His smile was as sharp as a wolf’s, his voice as sly as a fox.

“We’ll settle this in house, Friday,” Remus whispered, leaving no room for question, not that Mulciber would have dared to, remembering the last time that the pair had dealt with an issue ‘in house.’

The lions watched as Remus let the Slytherin go before stretching with his hands high above his head and then laying down against the desk like a cat. He wasn’t exactly far from being one.

The display was violent in ways that they wouldn’t have thought that their Moony could have been only two years before, but it settled the unease that has lingered inside of the other two boys since the day that they had found out about Remus’s continued closeness with the younger Black brother the year before. It let them know that for all Remus had changed, he was still the same boy that designed pranks to make it to where the snakes couldn’t say slurs.

Neither of the boys thought that the display had been engineered by a certain group of friends. They weren’t cunning enough to think of such a thing. But neither were exactly surprised either when Remus disappeared Friday night and Mulciber came to breakfast Saturday morning looking as if he had lost a fight to a bludger or two.

—-

Remus watched from the carriage as Hogwarts became smaller and smaller in the background. He watched as the school faded for what should have been the last time, but somehow knew that he would be back one day, that he was bound to be. He wasn’t sad to watch it disappear though, not when he knew that he had a home to return to.

—-

School hadn't even been out a week before Remus and the other Marauders were brought into their first Order meeting. Dumbledore had sent each of them a note by owl with the name of a secret location protected under the fidelius charm. Remus had smiled along with the other three as he held his, ignoring the guilt that coiled in his stomach at the lies that seemed to fall constantly from his lips. It didn’t matter, he would do what it takes; everyone in their group would.

Remus stood quietly in the small room as he looked at all of the faces, familiar and not. Arthur Weasely was a kind man that the boys had met a time or two at the Potter’s Christmas parties over the years, his wife Molly was much the same. Hagrid stood tall in the room, standing out among all of the others as a man that Remus could only assume was an auror - Moody , someone called him - stood beside the half giant. The Prewett twins smiled mischievously as they recognized the four Marauders moving about their ranks, though time had taken its toll on the pair as well. Remus smiled as he recognized three more faces.

Lily, Mary, and Marlene.

The girls smiled when the four joined them, but the mood was still solemn within the room, like a poison hidden beneath false cheer.

The meeting flew by quickly, Dumbledore handing out assignments and never giving any reason as to why. Remus didn’t understand most of it, as if the adults were speaking in a language that he didn’t yet know, but for the most part it seemed as if everyone was being sent off in desperate missions to try and help, ones that would do little even if they did.

This was a war that only ended once the leader had died and yet no one else seemed to be realizing that, or if they did then Dumbledore was holding his cards tight enough to his chest that no one else knew of an assassination plans if he had them.

Remus sighed, he had known it wouldn’t be so simple, so quick.

He was surprised though when Dumbledore had called him aside after the meeting and gave him his first task.

Parlay with the werewolves. 

To meet with Greyback and his pack.

—-

Remus watched as the moon grew more and more full by the day and felt dread well up within himself as he knew what was coming. Dumbledore knew where the wolves were, all he had to do was go to them and run with them. It almost sounded simple but Remus knew that it would be anything but.

—-

Howls filled the night within the enchanted forest and Remus screamed in a way that was neither human nor animal as his own joined them, his body tearing itself apart and he joined the members of a pack who were all turned by the same man or by those that had been.

The wolves circled the newest of their number, teeth bared in a challenge that the beast knew that he couldn’t fail. The other beast bit at his skin and the newest tore right back, blood thick on his snout that tasted of magic instead of iron alone.

When the sun rose and Remus was still holding onto life, the rest of the pack smiled, blood on their mouth and coloring their teeth. Remus smiled back just as sharp, as feral as the rest, ignoring the blood spilling from his bare body as the rest of the pack healed one another with a magic that he didn’t yet know and wasn’t yet welcome to participate in but knew he had to stay to witness.

His bones ached and yet it was less so than it had been in quite a long time.

—-

Dora scowled at the sight of her friend as Remus drug himself down to the lab that he had given her in the cottage, healing magic spilling from her wand as the wolf downed potion after potion.

“Is this really necessary?” The girl asked and Remus sighed, knowing that he would ask the same had she appeared before him just the same.

“It’s the mission,” Remus answers simply, hating the way that Dora’s shoulders sag as she bandages his side, covering the teeth marks now permanently painting his skin.

It’s the mission.

—-

Dumbledore wasn’t pleased to hear that Greyback wasn’t present, but Remus tells him that it was to be expected, not caring if he appeared imprudent before the man he had once called Headmaster.

“He’s busy turning other children into monsters,” Remus reminds the older wizard coldly.

And no one is doing a thing about it.

—-

The second moon Remus is there when they turn, he sees the tattered rags that the pack under Greyback calls clothes and hears the rattle in their lungs as each of them cough through the transformation. He knows that he will be just the same soon enough, should all things go to plan. 

The wolves run through the night, the newest at their side as the pack hunted, though he didn’t yet get to partake in the spoils.

When they are human once more, the sun low in the sky, the others crowd around Remus, healing his cuts and bruises with a magic that required no wand - a magic that the boy was starting to feel more distinctively in his bones, something that had been there since that night when he was young, but had been cloaked under the magic thought at the school. Something dark - before sending the teen back off where he had come from.

—-

Dora insists on looking Remus over in the lab once more and agrees that he is fine. She still brews potions for the wolf, ones for the former lion to take once she had gone back to school by the next moon. 

They don’t talk about Regulus on these stolen nights, knowing that he was probably having just as good of a time as Remus was. Knowing that they could do nothing to save the boy that they each loved more than anything else. Knowing that Barty and Evan had been drawn into it as well, brands on their skin like the scars on the wolf’s.

—-

The moon was half full in the sky when Remus snuck out into the London night, the other Marauders asleep at Sirius’s flat after James and the man himself had returned from their latest mission, Peter and Remus helping their few scrapes. Remus didn’t think that Peter had even been so happy to be working at the Ministry.

Remus walked the city streets until he came across what he had been looking for.

The bike wasn’t anything special to the wolf, but Remus knew that Evan would love it once he saw the thing. It was embarrassingly simple to copy the contraption with the modified Gemini spell that they had created in fifth year, the runes only giving the teen a day or two of trouble but he had it done in time for the younger boy to use before going back to school. They ignored the mark on his skin when he did just as Remus ignored the approaching moon.

He wasn’t allowed to ignore it for long.

—-

The third moon with the pack came not long after the school term had started back. Remus said goodbye to the Marauders before setting off to the woods, the other three knowing of the assignment that he had been given.

“We’ll meet up after, yeah?” James asked, concern lacing his voice as Sirius looked on worriedly, his hands moving at his side as if he wanted to do something but was resisting doing so.

“Sure,” Remus lied. 

He knew even then that he wouldn’t be back for a good while.

He went anyways, the ring that he normally kept so close to his heart was left at the cottage.

With one last look at the Potter's home, Remus apparated to the woods and ran with the wolves through the night, only to be taken in the morning.

Chapter Text

Remus’s skin itched, too tight on his body, and his bones ached in the way that they only did after a full moon. He’d expected to smell the strong scent of coffee and Dora’s herbs that he was growing in the garden, and almost choked when he was met with the dampness of bodies and the scent of earth.

Wolves , his mind whispered before he had even opened his eyes.

The previous night came back to him in flashes: the full moon glistening high above as a pack ran through the night, each of them calling to one another during the hunt. They called one another kin and the wolf wondered if he might fit better as one of them. Even in the madness though, he never stopped looking for creatures in the sky and a dark cat at his side.

Remus opened his eyes slowly, hearing nothing but the slow breadths of others around him, none of them awake just yet. 

There was stone all around him, the only light coming from the mouth of the cave that they were in. The others slept in small pods, pressed flush against one another, bare skin on display for all to see. He wasn’t any better, though he was removed from the rest of them, not yet trusted by the pack.

That was fine.

Remus slowly pushed himself up to his feet, biting back a groan as he weaved through the mass of bodies, his body gaining more strength with each step but still unsteady from the violent change. He almost lost all of the strength completely once he had made it to the mouth of the cave.

The woods were splayed out like a gift before him, the leaves all holding warm hues of varying shades of gold, the mountains tall behind them. The trees looked small though, everything did when the cave you were in was high up one of those mountains with no walkway on either side. He almost wondered how they had gotten that high, but he could smell the magic running through each of the wolves’ skin, something thick and metallic that didn’t quite smell the same as a wizards’.

“Beautiful isn’t it?” A voice asked from Remus’s side, the voice low and gravely in a way that only a wolf’s could be after a full moon night. 

Remus turned slowly, curing himself mentally for not even noticing that the other had crept up beside him, for not knowing that anyone had been awake at all. He wanted to blame his own incompetence on the mistake, but one glance at the stranger told him that it likely wasn’t that at all.

The stranger’s skin was caked with dirt in the same way that all of those within the pack’s was - the way that Remus’s was - dirt under his fingernails, and scars shining through the grim. The man couldn’t have been older than thirty - three, his hair long and swept in front of his face, matted from not being cared for. His eyes were wild like a beast’s, like a man that had completely given himself over to one. From the wolf - like features on his face and fingernails that could almost be called claws, Remus thought that maybe he had.

Greyback .

Remus felt the way that the wolf within him called out to the other and knew that it couldn’t be anyone else.

“I chose this place to keep my children safe until the moon, or until we were called for by the Dark Lord,” the older wolf explains with a proud smile that revealed too sharp teeth. “What do you think?”

The younger thought about not answering at all, but somehow knew that things would take a very nasty turn should he do so. “It’s high,” the teen said softly, not knowing which was worse to look at, the monster that had turned him into one, or the ground so far below.

Greyback barked a laugh in a way that reminded Remus of Sirius’s, the animalistic tent to it. “Wolves do not like being so far from the ground,” the man said simply, as if he was delighted to find that Remus held the instincts of one of them. He probably was. “But a father does what he must to protect his children.”

Father. Children.

Remus felt his gut give a sickening twist at such names, knowing that - at least in the others’ minds - one of those belonged to him.

A snarl built in the younger’s throat and Remus bit it back, but Greyback only smiled even sharper than before.

“Good to see that the damned wizards didn’t completely domesticate you,” the older wolf noted with an appreciative flick of his eyes, “it would be a shame to have to break one of my children, even if you are Dumbledore’s favorite pet.”

“I’m not his anything,” Remus growled before he could stop himself, anger flaring in his body in the way that it only could around a moon, magic crackling in the air as if he was ten once more with no control.

A hand was on his face before Remus had even registered that it had moved, cupping his cheek in the way that a parent might, though the look in the older wolf’s eyes was anything but parental. “You’re right,” the wolf agreed, running his nails across the younger’s scarred skin with too much pressure, “you’re mine.”

Remus felt the nail break skin.

Down. Down. Down, the nail tore, opening a wound on the side of the younger’s face, from the corner of his eye down to the edge of the teen’s jaw. A mark of ownership. 

As if the bite mark wasn't enough, Remus thought bitterly.

As if knowing what the younger wolf was thinking, Greyback raised his free hand and gripped at the mark on his hip, entirely too close.

“Don’t worry,” the older wolf said softly, his voice still managing to sound wild instead of comforting, like the wind during a storm, like seas during a hurricane, “you’ll be one of us soon enough.”

—-

Magic thrummed through the air, thick and coppery and almost tangible as Remus spoke to the other wolves throughout the day, teens younger and hardly older than himself. 

Brother, they called him, their eyes just as wild as Gryeback’s. As his own as the days passed.

They hunted at the start of each morning, donning fur coats and apparating in a way that wasn’t down to the woods below, the magic pulling on something more primal than what a wand would call for.

The magic came easy to him, the wind whispered it and the ground beneath his bare feet felt of it with each step. It was a natural sort of magic that hardly took any energy at all to bend to his will once he had learned how, something addicting that made the wolf forget of the wand that he had lost in the woods the night that he was taken.

It was hard to remember that he had spent so long learning anything else.

The wolves wrestled through the day, a new hierarchy being formed to accommodate the newest addition to their pack and sometimes it was easy to forget that he wouldn’t be staying long enough for it to matter. 

The older wolves, the one that had been with Greyback since they were young, glared at him each time that he passed, suspicious of him in the territorial way of wolves. Remus didn’t mind, they were right to be and he knew that it came from the instinctual urge to protect the young of the camp.

The gazes softened some though on the first half moon night.

The pack gathered in the woods, a fire burning high as the chilled wind kissed at their skin, magic coursing through the air in a way that only the wolves could touch. The pack danced around the flames beneath the bright sky, the stars watching over them in a way that made Remus want to see if they could grasp one, the heart of the Lion reminding him of a world outside of this one. 

With each step plants sprung up at their feet, the flames danced higher and higher still, as the wind smelled sweetly of summer even in the middle of October. Sometimes Remus wondered if this was the magic that the school would have classified as dark, the sort that he would find back on the shelves in the study back home, most nights he didn’t care either way.

Reality had to find him at some point though.

Greyback stayed away after that first morning, always rushing to one meeting or another and leaving the pack like an absent father, still expecting his children to fight his battles for them as if he were some god and this were a quest.

Remus noticed how the youngest among the pack didn’t seem to know much of the wizarding world, not having grown up within it. The older ones that did held no love for the magical world that had scorned them and deemed them wild beast, caring nothing for the magic that the wolves possessed as it wasn’t their own. 

Dangerous they called it.

He knew that some of them would gladly fight at the sides of Death Eaters should their father ask it, thinking that the world would be kinder to them should the Dark Lord win. Remus wasn’t foolish enough to agree, nor was he idiotic enough to say so out loud where he was so easily outnumbered.

The scars on his body grew, as did his control over the primal magic that he held. The pack dueled with the magic that they held and the moon grew fuller still until the night came that each of them let their furs fall to the ground as their bones began to creak.

They traveled to the woods that Remus had first met the pack in, arriving long before the moon had fully risen, still in their human skin. Remus had followed at the front of the group as Greyback led them away from the familiar clearing and to a place with things that he hadn’t seen in a long time.

Streetlights shined high above, the yellow light harsh in a way that it hadn’t been only a month before. Remus felt his bones creak in a familiar way and understood then what this was.

There was the scent of magic that he had grown up in the air, floating from house to house while skipping over one or two. It didn’t take a genius to know that this was a magical village, or why they were at one during a moon. 

It was one of the attacks that he had read about in the Daily Profit since well into the previous year.

Greyback grinned as his bones broke and grew long. It was the last time that he was able to do so.

The younger wolf growled as it looked upon the older, the rest of the pack falling back at the clear challenge that the once wizard was presenting. The pack leader stopped the way that it had been walking closer to the village to turn to the younger, a snarl in its throat. An answer to the challenge.

What followed after was bloody.

The pair of wolves leapt at one another, fangs bared as claws dug into one another. There was no way to tell one from the other as the pair tore one another apart,  the fight like every time that the pack had wrested one another, only this time neither stopped after first blood.

Neither stopped until there was a body on the ground.

When the sun rose and the wolves shifted back, the pack fell tiredly to their knees before Remus, Greyback dead at his feet.

Then the Order came.

Remus growled like a rabid beast once he heard the first faraway crack of apparition, recognizing the smell right away. With a wave of his hand the light bent around the pack - his pack - rendering them invisible to those other than him. He knew that it wouldn’t be enough.

“Go,” he whispered, “leave the country and this war behind.”

He looked to where he knew the older wolves to be when he said it, he knew that it was an order that they would have to follow. He had killed their previous leader, and as such had become their new one.

He knew that a life outside of the war was the kindest future that he could offer them, Dumbledore be damned.

The air lost the scent of other wolves just as James and Sirius found their friend covered in the blood the way that others would be in clothes, his eyes a little wild and his teeth too sharp as a familiar body laid at his feet like some sort of prize. For the first time he was undeniably every rumor that they had ever heard and an almost perfect stranger wearing the scarred body of a friend.

Chapter Text

When Remus opened his eyes, he immediately shut them once more. The world was too white, too sterile compared to the colors of the forest. For as much as he missed the world of magic that he had known for the past eight years now, he knew then that a part of him would always remain among the trees.

He smelled them long before they arrived, the thick scent of wizarding magic that lingered on each of them, Remus less than them all. His magic was wild in a way that theirs could never hope to be. It always has been, but now so more than ever.

The door was opened up gently, hesitantly as if not to wake the inhabitant inside, but Remus only pushed himself to a sitting position and met the surprised gaze with an even one of his own. 

"Remus," the boy said, his voice strong in a way that the wolves so often weren't. The forest may be beautiful, but it did nothing to shield them from the sickness that such conditions wrought. "You're awake."

The wolf almost flinched away at the too bright smile of the other teen, seeing the strains in it. The dishonesty. The pack may have been a lot of things, but dishonest was not one of them, not when everyone knew the other's tells.

"Yes," Remus agreed evenly as James walked into the room, Sirius following right behind him with a strained smile on his lips.

"You look better," the elder Black brother said, though his eyes seemed to tell another story, as if the other boy thought that Remus looked alien. Wild.

He was.

"A good sleep in a clean bed will do that," Remus said, his response neither here nor there as memories from the night before flashed across his mind. Memories that belonged to the wolf that Remus had to sort through. 

"Right," Sirius said awkwardly, the long haired boy shuffling his feet against the ground as he looked anywhere but at Remus' too wild eyes.

"Where am I?"

"My old room," James said, his voice slightly off. As if he thought that this was something that Remus should know but then remembered why he didn't. Something that had occurred during the past month, the wolf realized. "Mum changed it into a medical room for the Order. It's safer this way for some members."

"Like me?" Remus asked, his eyes trailing across the scars lining his body, his arms on full display in the short sleeved shirt.

James looked away. "Yes," he answered all the same.

"Remus, what happened?" Sirius suddenly asked, unable to wait any longer. It was an impatience that Remus had once found endearing. Now he just missed Regulus.

"A very good question Mr. Black."

Remus bit back the growl that was building in his throat as the door opened as a third man walked through it, his robes some obscene color that the wolf didn't know and his eyes lacking the signature sparkle that they always held.

"Dumbledore," Remus said in a way of greeting, his voice thick in a way that the other two Marauders had never heard and dit want to again.

"You've been missed, my dear boy," Dumbledore said, his voice light in a way that did not match the look in his eyes.

"The absence wasn't exactly planned," Remus said shortly.

The Headmaster hummed. "I suppose it wasn't."

They both knew that it nearly was.

"You were found covered in blood and scratches. Tests have shown that it wasn't all your own," the older man said, his voice holding a sternness to its usual softness, showing more of the cold man beneath the facade that uses men as chess pieces.

"You're right," Remus says easily, ignoring the sharp intake of breath from the two other boys. "Its wasn't all mine."

"Moony," James said, his voice almost a hiss as if he was attempting to will the wolf to be quiet. Remus didn't listen either way.

"There was a body found next to you," the Headmaster continues, headless of his effect on the other two lions in the room who looked sick at the thought. "A wolf's. I assume that it was one of Greyback's pack."

And Remus almost wanted to laugh at how close the other man was, yet so far away in his assumptions.

"It was Greyback himself," the teen says with a cold voice that pains the other two, that emphasizes just how different he is from them. How strange and inhuman he has always been.

"Fenrir Greyback is dead?" The Hogwarts Headmaster asks bluntly and Remus almost flinches at the words.

"He is," the wolf confirms instead. "I killed him."
And it was sick, but for some reason it hurt to know that he had killed the only person that had ever called him son.

"I see," Dumbledore said slowly, enough so that he almost seemed shocked, but Remus knew that he wasn't. The Headmaster had been hoping for this conclusion for a very long time. "And what of the rest of the pack?"

"Gone," Remus said simply, too much so for the eldest man's liking. "They will take no further role in this war." The wolf's voice was firm, leaving no room for question. A leader protecting his back. A brother protecting his family in what few ways he could.

Dumbledore seemed to see this as well.

"Very well," he said just as softly as he might have when dismissing a student from his office after dealing out the punishment that he found appropriate. "I'll be taking my leave then. Rest well, Mr. Lupin."

Remus said nothing back.

The door closed softly and the wolf immediately pushed himself out of bed and to his feet, ignoring the worried noises of his friends as he dressed in the clothes that Mrs. Potter had left for him. He was eager to be away from such a confining space, a place where his skin itched as the beast within him growled distrustfully at the wizards around him, the ones that no longer thought of him as one of them. Hadn't for a while now. 

He wanted to be back in his cottage with Dora's herbs and a library full of books that would be taken away should the Ministry ever lay eyes upon them and woods that almost looked like the ones that he had left, and in the room that he shared with the boy that he missed like a lung.

He wanted to be somewhere where he was allowed to be wild.

He wanted to be home.

"Where are you going?" James asked as Remus started unbuttoning his shirt, the other two teens tried not to stare at the myriad of scars lining Remus' chest, some older than they had known him and others as fresh as last night. They were painful to see.

"To sleep in my own bed," Remus answered shortly as he slid a pair of dark jeans on, muggle ones that James must have bought to blend in when in muggle London for jobs for the Order.

"You can't be serious, Remus," Sirius said, finally finding his voice once more.

"You're right, I'm not. You are. But I'm still going."

"To what? An empty house?" James pressed, his concern eating away at his sudden uneasiness with the other boy. They might not have been as close as they once were before the incident in fifth year, but that didn't mean that he didn't still care about the boy that was almost like a brother. "Stay, let us take care of you."

Remus could see how concerned the other was, and for a moment he wanted to break for old times sake - for the memory of a love that was once there - but he didn't. He wouldn't.

"I really do have to be going," Remus said, softer this time than he had been in years. "I'm sorry." And he meant it.

—

Remus sighed contentedly as he appeared before his cottage, the tall grass brushing gently against his fingertips, kissing at his skin as he walked to the door. Everything was just the same as he had left it, the books and parchment on the table, the dishes in the cabinet, and the sheets on the bed. Everything was the same and yet he felt as if he was discovering it all once more. 

The paint on the living walls weren’t a pure white, but something mixed with yellow and there were little chips on the legs of the couch from something long before his time. The clock made a ticking noise as the seconds passed, one that rung like bells in his ears and was only silenced once the record player was turned on, much quieter than it had been before but Remus heard it all the same. The false tree in the library, he could feel its want to grow, its frustration at being restrained. His magic reached out to everything, reminding him how much he had changed, but it was worth it when the clasp of a familiar necklace clicked around his neck and he touched his ring once more, reminded of the one that wore its match on his finger.

It was worth it because he had done all of this for his family, the pack that he had made in school. And if he gained a new one in the process, then he would keep it as far away from the fighting as he could, hoping that at least one comes out unscathed. 

—

The rest of Autumn passed in a flurry of secret letters sent to those at Hogwarts and less and less Order meetings as Winter dug its harsh claws into the war. 

Part of it, Remus knew, was because Dumbledore - and therefore the Order of The Phoenix - did not trust the wolf as much as they once had. Not after the month spent amongst the pack. Some of them were waiting for him to prove ferial and weren't shy with their disapproving gazes. But the other reason was that there were less and less members to invite so such meetings as they suffered losses from attacks waged on them, even less information to give at such meetings. 

The only good thing about winter was when Dora was able to sneak away during the winter holidays, bearing letters from the other three as they were unable to do the same. They drank hot chocolate in front of the fire and she told him stories that the boys hadn’t thought to write of and of hidden places that none of the Marauders had ever found. They spoke about books and the older teen the younger in the lab down below, brewing more potions for the full moons and dancing around the time that had been missing. They ran through the woods as animals until long after dark, the stars their only companions as the pair thought of the others that should be alongside them. But even that, those precious memories that kept the wolf sane during the long months, were tainted by the all consuming loneliness that set in once more as the Ravenclaw left.

With spring came a swell of magic as the world came to life once more. The sort of wildness that only life could bring. He could feel every flower and vine and the blades of grass returning to life once more after a long winter. The air was full of the sort of magic that only his kind could grasps, and some days weren’t spent doing only that, dancing through the gardens and growing the potions ingredients there as the world sung a song that none of those with human ears could ever hope to hear. The feeling of it was breathtaking with the new control that Remus held, but he would have given it all up in an instant for summer not to come, because that was the summer that everything began to change.

It was the summer that Regulus Black died. 

Chapter Text

Remus sighed as the summer heat brushed against his skin, the morning sunlight slipping into the room. He let his hand wander out to where Regulus was supposed to be in bed beside him, brows knitting together in confusion when the other wasn’t.

The four Hogwarts students had come to the cottage after graduation, leaving the homes that they had never wanted, but retaining contact with those within them. It had only been a week or two, but Remus thought that he could live the contestant noise, the life that the other four brought. He’d never say it out loud to anyone other than maybe Dora, but having the others living with him, in the rooms that they had designed just the summer before, made it all feel like home in a way that nothing truly had before, like a piece clicking into place on a puzzle that he hadn’t known existed.

Remus didn’t think much of the absence of the other teen, it was often enough that he would wake up alone, or with only the tapping of Regulus’s owl at the window for company. Some mornings when the other woke before him, Regulus would go down to the lab to make sure that Dora had made it to bed at all the night before, more often than not being roped into helping with one of her experiments and failing at his objective along the way. 

But most times that this occurred, both Evan and Barty were gone as well, not coming back until late in the morning, skin smelling of dark magic. On days like that, he and Pandora only sat together in the garden and waited, the herbs around Remus growing quickly as anxious filled magic rippled off of the wolf in waves until the other three came back. 

He couldn’t do that today though.

Ever since coming back from Greyback’s pack, the other Marauders had made an effort at reconnecting with Remus. The four would meet at pubs and one another’s houses outside of Order meetings every now and then, but mostly wrote to one another about simple things that could be shared without having to worry about the consequences of mail being intercepted. There was no talking of pranks or cramming for tests, and yet it somehow had begun to feel like the early days of their friendship when Remus was still an unlikely addition that they didn’t quite know what to do with. 

Today was one of the rare days that the four met one another at the flat that James and Sirius shared with one another in muggle London, just like Padfoot had always wanted.

On simple days like these, Remus found that it was easy to be happy for the others for getting the things that they wanted. Easier still when Dora smiled at him on the way out the door, a chipped mug in her hands, as Barty flipped through the records that the five of them had collected, Evan watching the other former Slytherin fondly from the kitchen as golden light filled the room.

It was easy to not be so cold when he had everything that he had wanted as well, even if it wasn’t with the people that he’d thought that he would find it.

(Something prickled at the back of the former Gryffindor’s mind, a whisper of things that he had forgotten, but couldn’t for the life of him remember. Promises of wrongness seeping in through the contentment, but the teen only pushed it aside. The whispers had been there since that day at the Potter’s home, his actions always looming over him and haunting him at night. He didn’t want to admit that this was different though. That it was something just out of reach, like a willow - o - wisp)

—-

Remus smells the difference in the air long before he knocks on the door of Sirius’s and James’s flat, before the door opens to reveal a sullen James, before his gut begins to twist in the way that it always did when he reached for the paper in the morning (he hadn’t looked at it today, even though he always did. Another peculiarity). 

“What happened?” Remus asks, and he wonders how the man even hears him as the wolf could barely hear himself over the thrumming of his own heart. Something so loud that he was sure James must have heard it as well. Remus found that he didn’t care if the other did. He just wanted an answer. ‘Prongs, what happened ?”

The nickname slips out, the child that Remus hardly got to be crying as it clung to someone familiar, to something other than the dread coiling in his chest that made him sure that he would hate what came next.

“It’s Reg,” the other man starts, sounding just as horribly young and terribly old all at once, as if it was both a miracle that they had lived this long and as if they each had their entire lives ahead of them all at once. 

From inside the apartment, Remus can hear the wine of a dog that he knew to be Padfoot, and Remus is already shaking his head.

“No,” the teen whispers, terrified and small like he had been when Greyback came for him that night, tearing at the seams like he had been when he had killed the wolf last fall.

“Remus-” James starts, but the wolf is only shaking his head more.

“No.”

“Moony-”

“No, no, no,” the words fall from the scarred man’s lips like some sort of prayer, as if he said them enough then it wouldn’t be true.

“He’s dead, Moony.”

“ No!”

There were tears in the wolf’s eyes, tears that he hadn’t cried since he was young and learned that doing so was weakness. The boy’s hand flew to his chest, where his heart was racing as if it wanted to use up all of its beats now so that he might join the man that has claimed a piece of him that no one else could ever have. He clutched he’d at the ring that lay on his chest and almost wasn’t aware of the ground rising to meet him, or the dog curled against him in the hallway before the apartment door, each of them grieving someone that they hadn’t thought that they would lose. 

James stared down at the pair, sadness in his gaze that in no way measured what the boys - his boys - must have been feeling as he sat down with them as well, holding onto them both as if he could mend the broken pieces by being there. He couldn’t, but he was damn sure going to try.

(None of the three noticed or had any way of knowing, but in the apartments surrounding the trio, all of the plants within them died, as if they too mourned the loss as the wolf did. 

They didn’t of course. No one could have)

—-

When Remus left the flat his eyes were red and stung and his movements were as slow and strange as the morning after the full moon when he still hadn’t settled back into his skin. It wasn’t the conditions for apparating - in fact it was just about the opposite and any instructor would cry and revoke his license if they were to see - but the wolf truly didn’t care. Not about how much worse he would feel after doing so, not about the possibility of splinching, not about the war that had killed his lover.  Not about anything.

(A part of him hoped that he did die, at least then he wouldn’t have to wait long to see him )

But there was no blood on his skin when Remus landed in the field outside of the cottage, only the smell of his sick as he fell to the ground and lost what little he had eaten that day.

The lights of the cottage shined brightly as Remus approached it, but even from right outside the door he couldn’t hear the usual swell of music and laughter. It was a good thing, the wolf didn’t know what he would have done if he had.

When he opened the door Dora was there waiting for him, her arms open and face drawn into a complicated frown as the man fell into them, tears streaming down his face even as he thought that he had none left. The girl’s hand rubbed circles on the boy’s back, familiar symbols that the teen wouldn’t remember until later. When she drew back, it was with a soft smile, and for the first time Remus felt the genuine urge to hurt the girl, wondering how she could look so close to fine when they each should be falling apart at the seams. 

“Look,” the girl whispered after seeing the wolf’s too hard gaze. When she stepped aside, Dora revealed the figure of a ghost.

—-

It was the winter Holidays before Remus saw any of the others once more. Too long in his opinion, but finishing school was important if they wanted to get anywhere in life after the war. And Remus had to believe that there would be a time after the war for them all, he wouldn’t accept anything else.

It was winter when Regulus snuck away in the dead of night with rumors of a soul being split and hidden away, a cave and a locket within it. Plans slipped from the boy’s tongue, each less likely to work the last. Remus fought desperately against them all. Regulus was an extraordinary wizard, but they had no idea of the traps that the Dark Lord could have placed. 

He knew that gojng was suicide and the younger boy agreed. He thought that this would be it. 

He was wrong.

—-

The summer was warm, filled with music and faces flushed with freedom during the long days. During the night, the five poured over documents and thought about the traps that could have been placed, how they might get around them. How they might all survive to see another dawn once attempting to do so.

It wasn’t enough.

—-

‘ Sometimes I think of that day in the library, love. The one where we met as something other than unlikely aquanctices, connected only by the blood that I shared with a brother that didn’t want to be mine. What I never told you about that day was that there was another table by the door, hidden neatly from you behind the stacks, that we could have taken. I never told you that I chose you that day and every day since. 

At first I just wanted to know the boy that Sirius seemed so infatuated with, the quiet Marauder. Moony. I had remembered the way that you were only the year before that, how unbelievably muggle and beautiful in a way that I hadn’t known that people could be. The following year you mellowed and seemed to have lost that and yet Sirius’s eyes still trailed after you as if you hadn’t changed at all. I wanted to know the new you. 

I smiled for long enough that Barty laughed at me once I realized that it was only a mask.

Masks.

I don’t know if anyone ever told you, but you would have made the perfect Slytherin - the secrets, the lies. Your cunning and the intelligence that you dedicated to flawless pranks. And yet fiercely protective of your own. Of your pack. You would have been the best of us, love. 

The first time that you fought during one of the house parties, I fell a little more in love with you than I thought that I would ever feel for another. The way that you moved so naturally with an elegance that the rest of us had to be taught, it was an image that I never could forget.

You’re asleep now, and the moonlight is tracing your scars as if it knows that they belong to it and I’m reminded of the day that we spent learning how to cast a patronus out of spite for my brother and his friends. I never did tell you that you were my memory. I suppose I should have.

I love you, I wish I would have said that more.

Forever yours, 

R.A.B.’

Tears smeared the ink. Remus didn’t know if they were his own or Regulus’s. He thought that it might be both.

—-

Regulus was the heart of the lion constellation. Remus almost wished then that the boy would have left it at that.

—-

The winds ripped at Remus’s skin as he stood on a small cliff not too far from the cave. Even from there, through the scent of sea all around him, the wolf could smell the dark magic coming from the cave. The sort of dark magic that got the entire practice banned. 

Remus knew that he was in the right place.

—-

Kreacher stood at the edge of the lake as Regulus stood at the center of the cave, something in his hand that Remus could quite see from so far away, but knew that it was nothing good. The water laid still before the wolf and yet Remus felt it thrum with a sort of twisted life, a force just left of what sat in each of their veins.

“Take me to him.”

The elf that had never liked the wolf, never listened to a word that the boy man said from the first moment that they had met, held out his hand so quickly that Remus almost thought that he would hurt himself while doing so.

—-

There was a locket in Regulus’s shaking hands as Remus held him, the younger pale as if he had never seen the sun. Remus held him even as the corpses rose up from the water, horrible things that they had learned of in Defense Against the Dark Arts. He held him even as fire peeled away from his skin, shrouding the entire cave in light as foxes ran along the troubled waters and dragons made of flames swooped down through the air. He held him until the last inferni was nothing but ash. 

—-

“You’re an idiot,” Remus all but cursed as he breathed in the fresh ocean air, sea mist clinging to each of their skin.

“You love me,” the other boy said with a shaky smile. 

Remus didn’t have anything to say against that, so he held the other instead and thanked the fates for not taking the other.

—-

“Your reaction to the news of his death will have to seem genuine,” Evan said as they sat in front of the fire, the five of them close enough to one another that each of them were only a simple touch away.

“I know,” Remus said glumly, sinking down into Regulus’s side as if to remind himself that the other was still there. The younger threads their fingers together as if reading his mind.

Remus was a good enough actor when he wanted to be, but he didn’t think that he could fake this. That he would even know what they would need to see. 

“I’ve been working on a modified memory charm,” Pandora says softly, her fingers laced with Regulus’s other hand. “There is a trigger to it that will undo the spell once a certain thing is seen or heard.”

That was all the boys needed to know.

—-

“You’re still an idiot,” Remus says as he holds the younger man tightly to his chest as if he truly were a specter that could disappear at any moment. 

“I know,” the other whispers back, holding the older boy just as tightly,mad if to make up for the tears that had been spilt in his memory. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Chapter Text

The locket glared at the group as it sat on the table, each person’s skin crawling just being close to the fowl thing, the creation that defies the laws of nature, life and death. 

They’d had it for months now as summer had long ago become fall. Months of trying spells and mundan methods to destroy the thing that all resulted in the same: the locket perfectly fine and their frustration rising.

They had started with spells, harsh ones that they didn’t truly think would work but had hoped that it would at least damage the locket, even if only on the outside. Explosion spells only made the locket jump and shrinking charms didn’t even affect the chain.

They had tried potions, both successfully made ones and those that were intentionally ruined so that they had become corrosive. The Draught of Living Death which all of the wizards present had seen Professor Slughorn use only a drop of to completely destroy a leaf until there was nothing but ash, had so little success that it was almost laughable when they removed it from the cauldron that it had been sitting in all night. Even the bloody chain was still perfectly preserved.

They had left it with Remus on the night of a full moon, hoping that a dark creature such as a werewolf could destroy a dark object. They had thought that the wolf had only hated being locked up alone after having run with a park for so long, but when they unlocked the door in the morning the sleeping figure of their friend was curled up in the corner of the room as far away as Remus could get from the cursed object. It hadn’t affected the wolf the same way that it does man, and instead had instilled enough fear to make a werewolf cower instead of anger.

They were a roadblock.

“I say we just burn it,” Remus said, breaking a long stretch of silence that had been plaguing the five of them since they had walked into the living room that morning.

More than one set of eyes turned to glare at the man but he only shrugged.

“And what would that do?” Barty asks, his voice tinted with the easy anger that they all knew that they had the Horcrux to thank for and promptly ignored.

“Make me feel better,” The wolf said flatly as flames danced across his fingers, the man’s magic responding easily to his intention. As they watched it shifted and changed shape, a fox running across the wolf’s knuckles, a dragon soaring an inch or so above. It was beautiful and dangerous, but most things were.

Evan gave a small wave of his hand towards the locker, silent permission for the former Gryffindor to do as he wished, knowing good and well that everyone within the house needed to blow off steam in one form or another before they let the locket become too much for them. Before they broke.

No one wanted to see what happened when the wolf lost control.

Remus figured he already knew.

Scarred fingers flicked just the smallest bit, but the cursed flames all but leaped to the cursed object, growling more and more in size as it took the form of a serpent that looked suspiciously like a basilisk as it coiled around the horcrux until it was completely covered by flames.

No sooner had the locket been consumed by the flames than did a horrible screeching sound fill the air, something ragged and sharp like a banshee’s wail. Regulus looked at his lover in concern as Remus crumpled to the ground as he held his ears, his hearing much sharper than that of anyone else in the room. Black smoke started to rise from the flames, taking the shape of humanoid faces that whispered things that they all knew not to be true but secretly feared that they were. 

They stopped when the flames consumed them too.

Everything was silent for a long moment, only the slight crackle of flames from where they had begun to lick at the table, but that too was soon ended by a light summer rain that Remus had co Jared from his spot on the ground, putting out the flames.

No one spoke for a long moment, but soon Dora reached out and grabbed the locket, holding it for a time before a slow smile stretched across the teen’s lips.

“Only the faintest lingering trace of dark magic,” the girl proclaimed with a smile so bright that it was almost blinding as she held up the tarnished and ruined locket for everyone else to see, the coloring of it now wrong after having been in the cursed flames. One never would have guessed that it was one of the founders’ personal possessions just by looking at it anymore, but the five of them knew the truth.

“Woah,” Barty muttered before sending a look to the eldest wizard, one that was both apologetic and filled with awe.

“Do you think he’s mortal now?” Remus asked hopefully, but wasn’t surprised when the three marked Death Eaters all shook their heads no.

“He’s much too paranoid and ambitious to stop at one,” Reg said solemnly, hating being right more and more as this war dragged on.

As more horrible things were revealed to them all.

“Three?” Evan guessed, “it’s one of the scarred magical numbers.”

Some of the others nodded at the idea, but Dora frowned. “Seven is the most powerful number in though,” the witch pointed out, her voice much too serious for the girl that Remus had first met all those years ago now.

No one said  anything. They all knew that she was right, none of them wanted to be the one to say it out loud though. To make it a reality that they would have to face.

But they had to.

“Seven is a lot to find, even for us,” Regulus pointed out morosely, joining his lover on the ground and leaning into the older man’s side, wishing that they were doing anything else on this fall day. Wishing that they were younger and back at school, running around the halls and lying to the other man’s friends about what they were to each other as their hands wandered across each other’s skin when they were alone together in the dark. “We won’t be able to do this alone.”

Remus’s head turned quickly to look at the teen. “You don’t mean…” he said slowly.

Regulus didn’t say anything. It was answer enough.

“We’re going to do something stupid, aren’t we?” Barty asked as he looked between the pair.

“When are we not?” Evan asked, moving to lean into his partner’s side as Dora joined the other two boys on the floor.

Remus didn’t know if this was more or less idiotic than the cave, but he did know that it was something that they would never be able to undo once it had been set into motion.

Chapter Text

Remus sighs as he knocks on the door of the meeting house for the Order. Another moon had just passed only a few days before and his bones still ached more than they usually did. He’d known that the transformation was going to be harder and harder each year as he grew older and his body more worn, but he truly hadn’t expected it to start so young. The twenties were supposed to be the prime of one’s life. If this was that…

The door opened to reveal a shock of red hair and bright green eyes that always spoke of summer even in the middle of the winter.

“Remus,” she greeted kindly, her smile not quite making it to her eyes. It hadn’t in a long time now, not since school. 

The false smile dropped altogether as she looked past the man’s shoulder.

“What the hell, Remus?” Lily growled, a wand in her hand as fast as any dueler. It was pointed directly at Remus’s head. “Why-” but she stopped as she finally recognized those behind him. “Sirius!”

Footsteps could be heard moving through the house, more than one set, as they rushed to the door. Lily gripped her wand tighter and it was then that Remus noticed the rings there. An engagement and a wedding band. He hadn’t been told of either.

The first set of footsteps drew closer, stopping abruptly at the sight before them.

“You brought three marked Death Eaters?” James asked, his voice high with disbelief, but not the sort that came from an unforeseen betrayal.

“Three marked Death Eaters that are legally dead,” the wolf corrected, reminding the man. He didn’t exactly need to, not as Sirius joined them.

“ Reg ,” the elder Black brother breathed, his speech ragged as if he had just seen a dementor away from Azkaban. Remus supposed that this mustn't be too different. “ How ?”

“You gonna let us in or what?” Regulus asked crudely, his voice gruff in a way that Remus knew that he had himself to blame for. 

The three former Gryffindors’ eyes were wide at the former Slytherin’s word, as one of the others snickered behind Remus, but another slapped them to shut them up. They acted like children sometimes and Remus loved them for it.

James and Sirius drew their wands and joined Lily in pointing it at the five.

“Hand over your wands and we will,” James said stiffly and Remus fought the urge to roll his eyes at the man. 

“Yeah, whatever you need to sleep at night,” he replied gruffly before nodding at the others and holding his hand out for the wands to be placed in. The others did so without question. “Here,” he said, handing them over.

“And yours?” The Potter heir asked as he took the wands, his voice harsh in a way that never had been with Remus before.

“Left the bloody thing in the woods last year,” the wolf replied shortly, not feeling too nice with the other either, “never went back to get it.”

It was a shame, truly, Regulus had bought him that wand, but it was all but useless in his hands now. He didn’t need it when he could do so much more without it.

The three inside of the house raised a brow at that, but there wasn’t much they could do about it.

“Come in then,” Lily decided, stepping to the side but keeping her wand at the ready just in case.

The five followed James into the house, with Lily staying at the back. Sirius tried to slip in with Regulus, but was forced to the back with Lily by Pandora.

“Good, Lupin,” Moody said as he glanced up at the opening door, wondering what had been taking for so long. “We were just about to-” the man cut himself off and stood quickly with his wand in hand, the other Order members still alive now following suit, all of them trained on the group of five. “Knew there was something off about you.”

“Can’t deny that,” Remus agreed easily as he raised his hands as if in surrender.

“We have their wands,” James said quickly, almost as if he were worried about one of the five being hurt by the older wizards. Remus supposed it wasn’t an unwarranted fear.

Dumbledore held out his hand for the wands and James gave them over easily, forever trustful.

None of the Order members lowered theirs.

Remus sighed as he looked at the room and then flicked his fingers to the side.

The result was instantaneous as the wands in all of the older members’ hands flew from them and up into the air. 

Another flick.

The wands flew to the right towards the wall, sticking into it like arrows, and everyone’s eyes were wide as they looked upon the scene.  

“That is some dangerous power there, my boy,” Dumbledore said at last, his eyes holding no spark. Remus hadn’t expected them to.

“It got your attention at the least,” Remus said as he stepped forwards. An Order member moved to meet him, but it only took a simple thought for vines to grow from the ground and hold them in place. “Just like this should.”

Remus stopped before the older wizard and drew the burnt locket from his pocket, letting it hang from his finger for the other wizard to see from across the table.

“Is this a…?” The Headmaster asked slowly as he reached out to the piece.

“Yes,” Regulus said, stepping up beside Remus, their sides pressed firm together. Sirius whimpered at the sound of his brother’s voice. “It’s his. Or it was.”

“How did you destroy it?” Dumbledore asked, genuine curiosity filling the eyes that were no longer quite as cold. The rest of the Order watched on in confusion. 

Remus held out his hand, flames dancing atop it, a fox running across the man’s fingers. It was a stunning display of power, something controlled and simple that none of the Order members had seen before.

“I see.” Dumbledore’s fingers brushed the locket and Remus let him take it. “So he is mortal once more?” The headmaster asked, his voice optimistic yet cautious.

“Not quite,” Evan says as he steps up to join the pair, Dora and Barty close behind. “We believe that he has, or he intends to, make more,” the man says bluntly.

Dumbledore shudders at the thought, but the other Order members only looked confused.

“What is it?” Lily asks as she steps closer, curiosity overshadowing the betrayal in her gaze. In her voice.

Knowledge always was more important, it was her use of her intellect that had landed the girl in Gryffindor, Remus knew.

The Headmaster opened his mouth, his lips drawn in what the former Slytherins knew was going to be a hurried avoidance or an outright refusal to allow them to tell the others. 

Pandora was faster.

“It’s a Horcrux,” the woman said quickly, watching with a slight glee as the others in the room shuddered if they recognized the name and only looked confused if not, “or at least it was before.”

Dumbledore sighed in defeat.

“What is a Horcrux?” Lily pressed as she let her hand wander to the dangling object, the radiating off of it both enticing and horrifying to the young woman. Mary and Marlene pressed close to her as the former Gryffindor drew away from it, the friends sharing a concerned glance.

“A Horcrux is an object in which someone hides a piece of their soul within after killing another.” The answer came from someone that hadn’t spoken in a while, and all but shrunk under the attention. A strange sight to see when he normally bloomed from it. “There is a book on them in the Black family library,” Sirius explained, “I read it when I was younger, before I knew what it was.”

“And you think that he has split his soul more than once?” Shackelbolt asked, disgust clear in his voice, though whether it was for the topic at hand, the strange group that he was addressing, or a combination of both, only he knew.

“Yes,” Remus says with an air of finality. “The bastard is too paranoid to not have to.”

“How many?” Dumbledore asks.

“Don’t you know already, sir?” Pandora says in a way that is anything but sweet.

“Seven,” the older man says as if the world were ending.

Maybe it was.

“Salazar Slytherin’s Locket,” Remus said, holding up the object in question, “and likely five other things related to the school or the man himself if wanted himself to be the seventh piece.”

“This is crazy, Moony, you have to know that.”

The voice is sudden and holds more than a note of fear to it, something reasonable for the topic at hand, but sets the wolf’s teeth on edge.

“I’d be quiet if I were you, Petigrew,” Barty threatens lowly, but the room is small enough and the rat far enough away that everyone hears anyway. Just like intended.

“And why is that?” James asks, stepping closer to his friend since before Hogwarts. But only a little at the dangerous look in Remus’s gaze. It wasn’t quite as strong as it had been upon seeing Sirius again after that night, but the anger was there nonetheless.

“Because Dumbledore here probably takes to traitors as well as the Dark Lord does,” Evan says flatly.

“I d-don’t know what he’s t-talking about,” Wormtail attempted to protest, but stopped as James began to look upon him with distrust.

There was a mass scratching of chairs as those seated around the table made to stand as where a man had been standing only a moment before, he was now gone and a rat in his place. A spell or two was named as in their panic, the Order members forgot that their wands were otherwise occupied with the wall. The rat scurried between feet as everyone made a grab for the creature, but none were successful.

“Stop.”

The word rung with power as it was spoken and everyone within the room felt their bodies still even as it wasn’t directed at them.

The rat froze on the ground by the door and the wolf grinned with too many teeth.

“Change back.”

Where a rat had been a moment before there was now the cowardly Gryffindors, unmoving where he stood. Not even breathing.

“Breathe,” the wolf commanded in a way that showed that he hardly cared if the rat did or not.

“Show them.”

Peter raised his arm with jerky movements, pulling back his sleeve as if he wanted nothing more than to do anything else but.

They could all see the mark on the man’s skin that matched that of the three marked Death Eaters within the room.

“An animagus form is the reflection of one’s soul,” Dora says with her light voice as she walks towards the once more frozen man, touching her fingers to his pulse and nodding to Remus once she confirms that it is steady and there. One never could be too sure how magic like this would affect a knowing recipient. “Yours seems spot on.”

“So we had two traitors in our midst it seems,” Dumbledore says with a sad sort of sigh that seems to hold more within it than it should. The former Slytherins all glance at one another at the older man’s words, at the implications behind them as the Order members glanced at them .

At Remus.

“You seemed to have your Goblins out of order, old man,” Regulus said suddenly, glaring at the man across the room from him as the youngest Black grabbed the back of the rat’s collar and shoved the still man towards the headmaster.

“Regulus,” Sirius tries to intercede, but the youngest Black brother isn’t listening to the older.

 “Only one person in here was actually working for him ,” Regulus continues as if no one else had ever spoken. “The rest of us were always on another side.”

Not his side, not Dumbledore’s, they meant. Just a side other than Voldermort’s own.

Something cold flashes in the Headmaster’s eyes, an expression more genuine that most that they had ever seen him wear.

“And what side are you on?” Dumbledore asks as his eyes bore into Remus’s.

“The side that doesn't treat its members as chess pieces,” Remus says harshly, as he looks at the older wizard and glances at the rest within the room, “collecting them, and sacrificing them for a greater good that only you can see. A side with some humanity to it.

“Our own, always our own since you decided that it was fine to leave a boy in a house that was sure to turn him into a Death Eater, and keep the boy that almost had a student killed just because he was angry. Since I knew that you would never do a thing to help those that you couldn’t use.”

And there wasn’t any guilt in the older man’s eyes, as if he still thought that all of his actions were justified. He probably did.

The rest of the Order didn’t seem to think as much.

“But they’re marked,” Lily points out hesitantly.

“Remus told me at the beginning of seventh year that he told Regulus to get it,” James says suddenly, not as if he just remembered the detail but as if it had just taken on a new meaning. “He said that Regulus’s parents would have likely killed Regulus if he didn’t.”

There’s a look in Sirius’s eyes as James speaks, something hopeful and broken all at once as he looked at Remus. 

“And Crouch and Rosier?” Mary asks quickly.

“Agreed to take the mark so that we had more people to be able to hear about things like this,” Pandora said as she pointed to the former Horcrux locket at the end.

“Do you really think that there’s more?” Marlene asks as she looks at the locket.

“Yes,” Remus says simply, a little miffed about having to repeat such a thing once more. “We know that it’s unrealistic to try and find them all on our own, so we came here to ask for your help in doing so, because ‘teams’ aside, he won’t die otherwise.”

“We’ll help,” James says suddenly, speaking for the former Gryffindors even as the older wizards still looked on with hesitancy at the wolf and the snakes around him.

Just like in school, the other former Gryffindors nodded along with James’s plan, never questioning it.

“Alright,” Remus said easily as he turned and flicked his wrist once more, the wands of the other snakes flying into his hand as he passed them back to their owners as the five walked to the door once more, two other sets of feet hot on their heels. Just as Remus had known that they would be.

“Regulus, can we talk, please ?” Sirius said hurriedly as he tore after his brother, James following quickly behind him as always.

Regulus only looks at his brother coldly, grabbing Remus’s wrist quickly, a gesture that didn’t go unnoticed by any of the four presently close to one another in the hall.

“I just want answers,” the eldest Black says sadly, as if he hadn’t left first.

They all knew that he had.

“Here,” Remus cuts in, handing James a slip of paper that he had prepared and drawing the attention to himself.

“You knew that he was alive all this time,” Sirius says suddenly as if just understanding this fact.

“Of course I did,” Remus replies harshly as James took the slip, a sad look in the bespectacled man’s eyes, “I’m the one that helped the idiot fake his death.”

“I’m not an idiot,” the youngest Black brother protests quickly.

“You were that night,” Remus says just as fast, something sorrowful in his tone that neither of the other two former Gryffindors missed. “Dora will pick you two up from there next Friday at five,” the wolf continued as he points at the paper in James’s hand. “Even a minute late and she leaves without you,” the man says firmly before looking at the Black brothers. “You two can speak then.”

Regulus nods and the pair turn quickly to leave, catching up with the other three members of their group before disappearing with a crack as if they never existed at all.

Chapter Text

They never told Remus where they lived. 

After James and Lily had gotten married, the pair had each moved out of the flats that they’d been renting and into a small house owned by the Potter family in Godric’s Hollow. 

Sirius had come with them.

There was no need for anything like a secret keeper, they weren’t being hunted anymore than any of the other members of the Order, but they never did tell Remus that they each had moved or to where. Not when they had thought that he was a spy.

(He was, just not for the side that they had thought. Not for a side that they had known existed at all)

They never told Remus where they lived, and yet the Friday after the Order meeting there was a knock at their door and Lestrange was on the other side.

“Evening,” the younger girl greeted as Lily opened the door.

“How-?” The former Gryffindor asked, her voice raspy.

“Our Rem is very gifted in magic,” the girl says with a soft smile that the lion didn’t truly believe as well as she might once have. “A tracking spell didn’t exactly take much effort. Or any at all.”

Lily nodded uncomfortably, she’d had gotten the same impression the week before.

“I thought we were meeting you at the drop point later,” the older witch asks as she steps aside to let the other girl in.

“We were,” Pandora says simply as she steps into the entry hall, following the redhead further into the house, “but studies show that it isn’t safe for pregnant women to travel by apparition, so here we are.”

“Pregnant?” Lily choked as they stepped into the living room, her voice low as if to keep others from hearing. Pandora could hear the laughing voices of two men from the kitchen in the next room over, it wasn’t hard to figure out who.

“Oh,” Pandora says softly, her voice holding that dreamy note that it always did, “you didn’t know. Well, now you do.”

“How…?”

“Hello, Potter. Black,” the former Ravenclaw greeted as the two men walked into the room, confusion on each of their faces. “Good, you’re both dressed. We can leave now then.”

Pandora held out her arm for the other three to grab, a bracelet decorating the younger girl’s wrist that seemed to be in the shape of a snake eating its own tail. The others grabbed on hesitantly and watched with wide eyes as the former eagle tapped the metal band and it began to spin, as did the world around them.

The next thing that any of them knew they were inside of another house, the walls white in a way that felt homely instead of gold as the sun casted a golden hue around the open living room and the kitchen at their backs. There was a couch and a couple chairs in the living room, a coffee table at the center of them covered in papers that didn’t match the otherwise clean feeling of the room. Two of the chairs were occupied by familiar figures, each holding a book.

“Are those muggle books?” Sirius asked, immediately wanting to take his words back as his brother looked at him with a too blank expression. 

“They are,” Regulus confirmed shortly as he stood and walked over to the group, Evan following the other snake. 

The younger Black brother holds out his hand and Lestrange hands over the bracelet without any other form of indication. Regulus immediately passes it off to Rosier, who’d had some sort of bag ready. The three moved easily with one another, with an ease that Sirius and his brother had lost a long time ago.

Sirius scowled at the sight.

Lily opened her mouth to say something, the tension in the room becoming too much even for her, but music followed quickly by an angry scream and the patter of feet cut the young woman off.

And then suddenly Remus was coming down the stairs and was before them all, the expression on his face angry in a way that the Marauders hadn’t seen it in a long time.

It was the sort of anger that he used to have with them when they all pranked one another.

The sort that was almost fond.

Dora smiles at the sight, everyone else sees it.

“Control your bloody boyfriend!” Remus screams in the direction of the young trio, and Lily raises a brow as she had thought that Lestrange was dating Lovegood and he didn’t seem the type to be involved with anything here.

“Is Barty making werewolf jokes again?” Regulus asks, his voice light in a way that hurt. 

Everything about all of this hurt the three that had come for the visit.

“No,” Remus says, his voice only the slightest bit quieter but with no less emotions, “but if he keeps playing Werewolves of London, then he’ll be one if he doesn't stop.”

The snakes laugh and the Marauders know that it’s a joke. The three were ashamed to admit that they hadn’t been too sure before.

“Just turn all of his clothes pink,” Evan suggests as he moves to put away the Port Key.

“And the four of us have to live with that for a week?” Dora asks, going along with the others, all but completely ignoring the three practical strangers in their home.

Regulus snaps his fingers. “Change of perception spell to where only Barty sees the affected clothes as pink.”

“I could do it,” Remus decides, “or Dora could make a potion.”

The nickname seemed to be the last straw for the eldest Black.

“Can we get on topic here?” Sirius asked, his voice filled with exasperation.

“Of course,” Remus says with an ease that no one present believed, but also did not comment on. “Barty, you can come out now,” the man called out, drawing more than one look as he seemed to yell into the air.

Only the Marauders were surprised when a bird swooped down from where it had been perched silently on top of the kitchen cabinets, out of sight, and turned into a dark haired man.

Barty Crouch junior.

“You’re an animagus,” James said with a hint of excitement.

“We all are,” Dora said calmly with a shrug. “The study is through here,” the former Ravenclaw continued, “we can keep company in there while the brothers speak and tend to dinner.”

Lily looked at the others, but this was their house - their home, a part of her whispered - their rules. She followed Lestrange, Rosier, and Crouch into the room, dragging James along even as he seemed to want to stay.

Pandora closed the door before anyone could think to make Remus join them, that didn’t mean that Sirius didn’t try.

“Remus… could you…?” The older Black trails off at the look on his brother’s face.

“He stays,” Regulus said firmly.

“Reg, this is personal, not even James is here.”

“He stays,” Regulus said once more, his voice harder as he grabbed the wolf’s hand, lacing their fingers together. It was only then that Sirius noticed that the ring on his brother’s finger Matt he’d the one hanging from the other lion’s neck.

Oh.

“How long have you…?”

“The Christmas of our sixth year,” Remus said as he turned and walked to the kitchen, his fingers slipping from the younger Black’s as he did so. Not that it truly mattered, as Regulus followed right behind him anyways, the pair moved even more easily around one another than the trio had earlier, soft touches as they passed ingredients to one another and each worked on parts of the meal, small smiles on each of their lips even as there was a tension from Sirius’s presence as he thought about where to start. 

(It was the life that he had wanted.)

He told himself to be happy for them.

(He wasn’t sure that it worked.)

“You went to him after…”

“After you almost had me kill Snape?” Remus asked almost innocently as he stirred the sauce.

Regulus choked and Sirius looked on in surprise.

“What?” The younger Black all but growled as he looked between the pair.

“You didn’t tell them?” Sirius asked slowly.

“Why would I?” Remus asks with a sneer as he puts the spoon down. “Doesn't matter now,” he continues, “I got blood on my hands all on my own.”

But he’d needed Sirius to remember that he wasn’t innocent before they went into more recent topics.

Regulus squeezed his hand, just as he always does when Remus remembers what he had done.

You did what you had to, the other seems to say.

Remus always knows it, but the guilt is still there.

It always would be.

“But that’s not what we’re here to talk about,” Remus said softly as he turned back to the soup.

“You faked your death,” Sirius said, starting as blunt as always.

“I know,” Regulus said coldly.

“I mourned you.”

“It was necessary.”

“Necessary?” Sirius asked, angirly.

“Yes,” Regulus insisted bluntly. “I joined… him, so that we could find a weakness. Anything. Him thinking that I’m dead was the only way to get out, and it had to look real. Your mourning had to as well.”

“You’re a bastard,” the elder Black growled, though each of the others knew that he didn’t mean it.

“It was my plan,” Remus admits as he adds salt to the sauce.

“You’re a bastard too.”

“Maybe,” the wolf agrees with a shrug, knowing very well the grief that he had caused the other. 

He’d felt it himself that day.

“You could have filled me in after,” Sirius protests weakly. Tired.

“You left first, bother mine,” Regulus reminded his brother coldly, still not having forgiven him for doing so even as he had helped Sirius leave that night.

(Not over it because he never came back for him. Sirius left him there, a place that left scars on them both.

Remus kisses them as if they are beautiful anyways.)

“I didn’t think that you would care whether I lived or died.”

“I left you, so you left me?” Sirius asks as he looks at his younger brother, a sadness that matched in each of their eyes. “You left me too,” the man continues, looking at the wolf.

It wasn’t a question.

“You hurt me first,” was all Remus had to say.

“Right.”

“Not like it matters,” Remus decides as he begins to crack the noodles in half.

“Why’s that?” Sirius asks.

“We were bound to grow apart regardless, you always would have thought that I was a traitor because of what I am even if I was perfectly on your side. At least this way we’re all alive.”

At least Regulus is alive, both of the older men hear.

Sirius had nothing to say to that.

“Right.”

—-

“I want to rob a bank.”

The silence in the room was almost tangible as everyone stopped eating at the wolf’s words.

“Remus, love, you can’t just say shit like that,” Dora said as she slowly put her fork down, but Regulus was grinning.

“You think one of the Horcruxes is there?” The younger Black asks, leaving the older to wonder how Regulus had gotten to this assumption.

“Think about it,” Remus starts, “you have a bunch of contraband, you don’t keep it all in one place. What if someone finds it? What if it accidentally gets destroyed? He hid the locket away, what's to say that he didn’t hide the others as well?”

“And where better than with people that are completely faithful to him?” James asks, a conspiratorial smile on his lips. This was the Remus that he knew.

“Exactly.”

“And Gringotts is the most secure Wizarding bank in the country,” Evan said with a grin of his own. “Of the possible five remaining, there is bound to be at least one there.”

No one could fight that logic.

“Bellatrix,” Barty says with a smirk, earning looks from the rest of those at the table. “They’re screwing each other,” he informs, “other than the Malfoys, there’s no one closer to him than her.”

“Didn’t see that one coming,” Lily admits, her face a little green.

“It’s disgusting,” Remus agrees, “but her bad taste is fortunate for us.”

“How so?” Sirius asks, his voice still subdued.

Remus grins, his teeth too sharp. “Because between Dora being a Lestrange and us having both Black brothers here, we should have access to the family vaults that she might have hidden it in,” he explains.

Now the others smile as well.

It didn’t take much to know what they would be doing soon.

Chapter Text

Ravenclaw’s diadem:

Horcrux hunting, that was what James had called what they planned to do. It was something of a childish name for a series of actions that all but sought to kill them all.

Remus thought that it was perfect in a way.

It was dark when what was left of the Marauders snuck onto their old school grounds, the wards letting them walk right through in their animal forms. James and Sirius had been surprised at first when their friend had turned into a fox and not a wolf, but then they remembered that it was his Patronus form as well, and found it more fitting as they thought of it longer. 

Foxes were cunning and tricksters, Remus was both of these things.

The three slipped back into their human forms once within the castles, knowing that a deer, a giant dog, and a colorful fox were quite the easiest things to hide, but the three had years of hiding within the castle in their human forms.

Remus couldn't help but wonder if they were always meant to do something like this.

The wolf silently handed the Filibuster fireworks in his pocket to Sirius as they approached an office that the three of them knew all too well. They knew that they would need a distraction should Filch come at the wrong time, and they couldn’t expect Dumbledore to bail them out if they are caught.

The old man had told them the location of the Room of Requirement and how to get into it,  but the rest was up to the three of them as the Headmaster wanted to keep his hands clean should they be discovered.

Bastard.

“Alohomora,” James whispered as he waved his wand at the lock on the caretaker’s office.

Nothing happened.

“Dumbledore must have had the magic on the locks changed when the war started,” Sirius logically guessed as he looked at the unmoving lock.

“It would make sense given that Filch is a squib,” James agreed. “Not even the castle would be completely safe for the old jerk. Does not change the fact that we can’t really get in now without breaking the locks.”

Remus sighed and rolled his eyes. “Move over,” the man said as he pushed past the pair and knelt before the lock when they complied.

The wolf pulled out two thin picks and inserted them into the lock, feeling for the soft push and pull of it all. The act took the man a bit longer than it would have when he was younger, but soon enough the lock was coming undone with a soft click.

Remus pushed himself to his feet before turning to the other two Marauders and smirking at the surprise that he found there as he twisted the handle and the door opened with ease.

“After you.”

They had a map to retrieve and then a Horcrux to find.

—-

Hufflepuff’s Cup:

Pandora held her head high as she walked into the Wizarding bank, a black cat trailing at her feet. She knew that the goblins could tell what the other was, Regulus could too as he shifted back as soon as they were far enough into the bank. The deception wasn’t for the goblins after all, but those outside that might recognize the man for who he is if given a good enough look.

“We’re here to access the Black and Lestrange vaults,” the witch said sweetly, holding her wand out for the creatures behind the high desk to see as Regulus did the same. 

The goblins took them with sharp smiles and led the pair to the carts once they had been verified. 

The woman sighed as they took off and nodded at the other wizard as they each flicked their wands at the goblins, knocking them out on one of them harder turns. Creatures like them were vain, but could be so easily bought if given the right motivation, one could never truly trust them.

They couldn’t trust them to give up something as valuable as this either from the vaults, especially once they knew that the artifact was real. Even if they did, they couldn’t hope for the goblins to not sell them out in the end as the fair folk couldn’t lie, only mislead. 

“Meet at the Thieves' Downfall once you’ve gone through your vaults,” Dora said as she slid out from beneath the safety belt and climbed atop the moving cart, jumping from it as her fault came into view down below. The woman smiled freely as she jumped  from the cart and shifted on the way down. 

Regulus knew that the recklessness that the former Ravenclaw now held could be blamed on the Gryffindor that they had taken in so many years ago now. He thought that maybe he should be concerned with just how much they had all come to change once Remus had come into their lives, but as the cart came to a screeching stop and Regulus felt adrenaline rushing through his veins once more, he wouldn’t change anything at all. Not when he was finally coining something good.

Not when he finally felt free.

—-

Tom Riddle’s Diary:

Barty was thankful for the existence of silencing spells as he walked through a large home that he had only been in a few times for political meetings that his father had dragged him to on the days that he was feeling fatherly and wanted to teach him some skills that would help if he were to join the Ministry of Magic. 

Not often enough, to say the least.

Barty fought the urge to hold his breath as he walked through the dark halls of Malfoy Manor, Potter’s invisibility cloak shielding him as much as anything could as the man snooped through the library of the almost empty home, the house elfs within it staying out of sight and out of the way. 

Not interfering in the least.

A few detection spells later, Barty found a locked drawer with more wards than anything else within the library, but even the wards couldn’t hide the signature of dark magic coming from within it that leaked out with the influence of detection spells. 

Barty grinned, he always did like a challenge.

—-

The Ring:

When Evan was told to go to the home of one of the oldest pureblood families within the Wizarding world - the one that reached back to Salazar Slytherin himself - he hadn’t been expecting to find a shack in the woods. 

The man sighed as he stepped into the all but collapsed building, weary of the rotting floorboards that he was treading across and almost wishing that he could cast detection spells as bird because then he wouldn’t have to worry about his weight.

It didn’t take him long to find the object regardless, even he could feel the combined dark magic coming from the ring in the floorboards and the wards that had been crafted around it to keep the heirloom safe should it fall into unsavory hands. 

Didn’t protect the thing from a simple levitation charm though. 

Evan figured that Remus could find out how to strip the wards on his own as he dropped the object into a special containment box so that he’d never have to touch it.

He knew that this was going to be a sight to see regardless of what happened after bringing the Horcrux home.

—-

The group arrived one by one as the night wore on. Lily greeted them each with tea and food waiting and they smiled at the woman in turn, greeting little Harry even as the boy had yet to be born. The witch knew that the boy would be supported no matter what, even if not by the people that she had originally thought would be by his side.

Remus and Regulus went to one another first when they saw the other, holding onto one another as their lips pressed together. 

“Oh,” James said dumbly as the pair parted and stayed close to one another. The man glanced around the room and looked at everyone else, gauging their regions only to find them all looking at him. “Did everyone else but me know?” 

Lily laughed into her hand as her husband’s exasperation. 

“Great,” the man bemoaned once realizing that he was right. “I’m happy for you, by the way,” he said as he looked at the pair.

You deserve to be happy, his eyes whisper and Remus nods in thanks, not that the other’s opinion really meant much to him now.

“Let's get this over with, yeah?” Remus asks as his cheeks flame red from the attention of the room, Regulus not looking much better. 

Each group moved and placed their prizes down onto the coffee table and watched as flames sprung from the wolf’s hand, creatures dancing through them as they licked at the cursed objects. The Horcruxes wailed as they died, dark smoke rising from within them.

The pieces were gone.

—-

Remus’s group and those that were left of the Order stood within a secluded clearing only a few days later, far from both the muggle and magical world as they could be but with the woods nearby for cover should it come to that. They knew that it likely would.

Remus looked at the faces of those that he had come to see as family as he held onto his lover’s hand as if daring the fates to take any of them away from him.

He knew that he would be testing them today.

“Voldermort.”

Chapter Text

Loud cracks filled the field long before the screams did and yet the latter would be what haunted Remus forever.

The Deatheaters didn’t bother with masks, not today when the rest of the world wasn’t so close as to warrant the need to hide from those that they already knew the identity of. There was no need to do so after all if one didn’t plan on leaving anyone alive to tell the tale.

Green curses sprouted from the wands of people that Remus had known from nights spent in the Slytherin common room back when they were in school and the only thing he had to worry about were the secrets that he had sought to keep from the others. They were the people that Regulus had lived with, Barty had pranked, Evan had learned from, and Dora had been fawned over by. 

The five dodged the green curses dividing into varying directions, and cast spells that Dora had made since the start of the war, new things that stopped the heart slowly, leading the affected person to pass out long before they died.

It was a mercy, one that they could hardly afford.

The Black brothers turned the other way as they saw their crazed cousin slinging angry red curses about the field, the torture curse even at a time like this. They each remembered how the curse felt on themselves, the way that their body would twitch with phantom pains even hours after, sometimes longer. They turned and moved to another part of the battle field, keeping close as only brothers could as Remus stuck to Dora’s side, doing the same.

Sirius didn’t see Regulus turn and conjure a serpent as they ran, sending it to their cousin’s ankle. The bite would have her dead by dawn.

James dodged spells and curses as he cast his own, using what little grace he had to avoid all that he could, casting quick shields for those that he couldn’t. He ignored the faces around him, focusing instead on the style of robes. He had a wife to get back to and a child that had yet to be born, he couldn’t afford to be distracted by a familiar face on the opposite side.

Harry, he wasn’t even born yet and James already loved him more than life itself. He didn’t want his son to grow up the way that Remus had - alone and cold, or orphaned by choice. He knew that if he were to die and something were to happen to Lily as well that his leaving would be a product of his choice to fight. He didn’t ever want Harry to grow cold to the world, to feel abandoned even if he was being raised by those that cared for him.

He didn’t see the man with angry eyes that had cast a spell of his omen making, one intended for the former lion. He only felt the pain.

Remus moved through the battlefield like a child that had been made for war - he wasn’t naive enough to believe that Dumbledore would have wanted him for anything else. 

He was the only one on the field without a wand and yet he was the most dangerous one there as vines sprung to life with each of his steps and grabbed onto the dark robbed individuals, dragging them to the others as the ground opened beneath the Death Eaters. Magic coiled at the wolf’s fingers as flames sprung to life and burned wands right in enemy hands, and the winds picked up the owners high into the night sky before letting them fall with a sickening crunch.

No one would ever tell the man of the savage smile that he had worn. Remus knew it still.

(If Regulus was a snake with the heart of a lion, then Remus was the lion with the heart of a snake.)

Through the whole battle, a bat stayed at the wolf’s side, though sometimes the woman would shift, a potion of her own design already in hand. Some Death Eaters found themselves wishing for the vines or the sky to take them instead as the potions hit their skin, reacting with the magic there. A slow death or a sudden painful one would have hurt less than the explosions that tore at their bodies, ripping them apart.

The pair were vicious and many doubted their house placements that day. They were siblings of destruction, each always looking out for the other.

When Remus shifted into the fox, the scent of blood was stronger than it had been only a moment before, his wolf senses combining with that of the fox’s. It was easier to find the others in such a state, something that Dora knew as well as she flew above him, the pair weaving through the thick crowd as only animals could. It was too easy to find one of their own.

Remus shifted back quickly at the edge of the battlefield, blood on his hands and clothes from where it had stuck to the fox’s fur. Dora shifted next to him, drawing a potion from one of the pockets of her muggle cargo pants as she knelt to pour it down the bleeding man’s throat. It wasn’t working as the wounds would seem to heal just before they tore open once more, like forever wounds.

The wolf held James’s hand, the other man’s grip weak as the pair looked at one another, but neither’s eyes any less desperate. Magic poured around them, siphoned from those that they fought against and the push and pull of the world itself. He knit the wounds together slowly - almost too slowly - as he ignored the signature that he recognized and focused on stripping away the magic that had cursed the other instead.

He sighed in relief when his magic took, overpowering the weaker spell. He knew that James wouldn’t have lasted much longer if it hadn’t.

“There’ll be scars,” Dora said as she poured blood replenishing potions down the bespectacled man’s throat, James having fallen asleep as soon as the magic took. 

Remus’s eyes fell to the scars on his own arms, the silver ones created by magic and would never fully fade. They didn’t look so different from the angry red ones lining the other man’s body now, especially not when Remus knew that those too would become silver soon.

“He’ll live though,” the wolf says firmly. Some scars were a small price to pay just then. 

Dora nodded as she grabbed the former lion’s hand and the shard of sea glass that hung around her throat, a portkey whisking them away in seconds to the home that the five Slytherins shared. 

Scars were a small price to pay.

Remus rejoined the fight.

—-

Voldermort wasn’t one to fight his own battles, not when he had so many willing to do so for him, and yet when none of his men had returned from the calling, he found himself following after them, uncaring of what dangers he might find. When one was immortal, they didn’t need to worry about the same trivial things as those that were still bounded by the rules of life and death.

(It was hubris of him to think so.)

—-

Remus tore through the crowd, paws silently hitting the field’s soft ground as he weaved through the tall bodies, following the scent of one. He shifted back once he and found him, and for the first time Remus regretted not having killed the other man when they were younger and the moon was full.

It would have made his life easier now.

Snape dropped his wand on instinct as it began to burn with a silver light that he hadn’t created, the heat burning his hands even as the flames had never touched the man’s skin. 

The man looked around wildly for the source of such flames, but was met with a sight that he had never wanted to see again:

Remus Lupin running at him, his face painted in rage.

Only this time the wolf wasn’t limited by the rules of their school, and it was going to be far worse than a punch.

—-

When Voldermort found his way to the battlefield, he was met with far fewer of his followers than he thought that he would be, but the same number of corpses that he had expected.

(He hadn’t thought that they would belong to his men instead of the enemies)

He certainly hadn’t expected to see a member of the Order wielding magic that he hadn’t possessed, wrapping one of his Death Eater’s in vines with sharp thorns that dug into the half - blood’s  body, tearing into his as Snape screamed. 

The potioneer wouldn’t die for hours.

Voldermort wondered then if in another life the Order member would have been one of his.

It was a shame that he would never be.

—-

Silent spells were traded when Remus turned to the other Half - blood, a flurry of them that the pair moved through as if in a dance rather than a duel.

There was far too much green for it to be anything as nice as a dance though.

A spell struck Remus’s shoulder, and the wolf bit back a scream as he forced himself not to be distracted by the pain that was there. 

Remus growled as he let his magic fall to the stones that hid within the earth, sharpening them into blades as they tore through it and then the older wizard himself.

Remus smirked as the great wizard fell in a way that would have been entirely muggle had it not been for the magic involved. His smirk only grew wider as fear set into the other man’s dark eyes.

It was the fear that came when someone knew that they were going to Diderot too soon.

—-

They brought the bodies to the Ministry, revealing the Dark Lord’s first to the Minister of Magic. Spells had been cast to prove that the body was truly that of Tom Riddle’s. It was and they made sure to bury the monster under that name.

The war was over.

Chapter Text

Harry had never been one to stand out much in a crowd. The boy was small for his age, a curse that he had inherited from his mother rather than anything malicious. Growing up as he had, surrounded by the people that he had, the boy was more of one to weave through a crowd than to draw eyes to him on purpose (his mother like to laugh with his father at just how unlike either of them this was, but it couldn’t be helped with how much the boy took after his uncles.)

He has never been one to draw much attention from others - and he wasn’t now - but those around him were.

Uncle Padfoot was laughing with Mum and Dad as the trio trailed behind the boy in the crowd, hurrying to keep up with the young wizard as he moved through the rest of the gathered families as if they were water (it was easy to do so when he already had a destination in mind. When no one was paying the boy any mind). Harry ignored the way that people’s gazes caught on the trio, he’d grown used to it after so many years of them doing so.

Even after eleven years the gazes still clung to the war heroes, though they weren’t as heavy on the trio as they were on some of the others that had fought.

As they were on Uncle Moony.

Harry smiled as the familiar sight of flames entered his vision, the Weasley family standing outside of one of the train cars as the five children present looked around the train station as their mother spoke pleasantly with a familiar blond woman and her son. The two youngest boys returned his grin as Harry was finally sighted by the two families, Mrs. Weasley and Ms. Black nodding silently to the other three adults as the children greeted one another as if they hadn’t seen each other only a few days before to buy last minute things for school.

(Harry always hated and loved shopping with the other two families. He’d known the Weasleys since he was young to remember doing so. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley had fought alongside his parents and Uncles and Aunts in the war, though Mr. and the then Mrs. Malfoy had fought for the losing side. Mr. Malfoy had died in the final battle, his body bloodied and splattered as if it had fallen from a height that the auros couldn’t explain. Narcissa had been left to raise her son alone in the aftermath of the war, with the rest of her family having either been killed during that last battle, or a member of the winning side.

It hadn’t meant much to anyone else, but Narcissa had changed her name back to Black in the first year after the war. It hadn’t meant much to anyone but only other surviving Blacks and those that called them family.

Regulus had been quick to welcome the older Black back into his family, having been close with his cousin when they were in school together and Sirius had hardly spoken to him at all. The others from their group had been quick to accept the woman and her son too after seeing how easily Remus and Pandora had.

Remus had never been close with the older Black in school, but he did remember how they had worked together to get Sirius and her our the engagement, the way that she hadn’t truly looked down on him for his blood but just for being a nosy child poking his nose into things where it didn’t belong.

Pandora had never spoken to the other woman in school, she hadn’t needed to when they were in such different years and different houses as well. But they were technically family with Bellatrix having married Pandora’s brother. They were family and Pandora thought that she was tired of seeing families hurt one another.

So, Remus, Regulus, Pandora, Evan, and Barty had welcomed the mother and her son easily into the family that they had made for themselves, though it had taken Sirius - and by extension James and Lily - longer for them to do the same. They had eventually though, Harry gaining another cousin that day when he was five and had first met the blond boy. Harry had loved Luna as fiercely as a brother in everything but blood could, and easily accepted the other boy once he saw that Draco was the same with the young witch.

The Weasleys had soon been added to the equation when Harry’s sixth birthday had rolled around and he had wanted Draco, Luna, and all the Weasleys that could come there. His parents had been hesitant to invite both groups, but Remus had promised to play mediator back then, should any fights break out. The wolf loved Harry as much as he did little Luna and Draco - the troublesome trio that was always causing havoc when the three spent the night at his and Regulus’s cottage on the weekends, having taken over the rooms that had once belonged to Pandora, Barty and Evan - and he knew that he would do anything to see the bright eyed boy smile.

James hadn’t been the only one fighting for him that day.

So the Wesealeys had come to the party, and the children had been completely oblivious to the tensions between the former Malfoy and the red headed parents. The tension hadn’t been allowed to take charge though when the three parents had looked up and seen the children flying low through the sky on childrens’ brooms the only flew a few feet above the ground, playing Quddittch as Luna spoke more about the clouds and the wind spirits that shaped them than the game itself.

Remus hadn’t needed to intervene as the trio had softened watching as Harry, Draco, and Ron had laughed together, their clothes dirty as the game had descended more into a game of tag as Harry had taken the muggle football that they had been using in place of a proper bludger from Ron’s had and had been dribbling it down the field, something that technically wasn’t against the rules that they had set.

The families that had once hated each other had learned to tolerate one another for the sake of the children that already seemed to be falling fast for one another in the way that only chilren could, the childlike innocence that died as you grew older, but tensions were still there, especially in public with the prying eyes of the world heavy in them)

The twins were quick to grab the youngest Potter’s trunk, knowing that Harry couldn’t lift it himself if he tried (he had, and had joined the other two in laughing while in the store once the embarrassment had worn off).

Harry wasn’t the strongest of the little trio of first years, that honor fell to Ron after so many years of throwing gnomes in the garden, but he was quick. He could climb a tree faster than any of the others, even though it left him with scrapes on his knees, and sometimes scars on his arms from the boy picking at the scrapes that he had gotten from the branches (the only scars on the boy’s body were from the trees). Harry could run as fast as a raging stream and as silently as a wood nymph, a skill that had come in handy when Luna and the three boys had begun to take after Harry’s after and Uncles Padfoot and Moony in pranking.

(James and Sirius were already awaiting the Howler from McGonagall, regardless of the houses that the four went to)

The three boys sat together on the train, thick as thieves as the twins sat on the floor, their friend Lee Jordan with them as the three plotted, papers strewn between them. It was a familiar sight for the youngest Potter and always brought a smirk to the boy’s lips. He couldn’t wait to see the full force of their chaos firsthand.

“What house do you think we’ll be in?” Ron asked as the train began to move, the faces of parents fading and the city coming up around them. It would be another few minutes before they were in the more rural areas.

“We?” Draco asked, his brow slightly raised and mischief in the boy’s eyes that Harry knows that he learned from Uncle Barty.

Ron only nodded assuredly. “Wherever you lot go is where I want to.”

“Careful there Ronnikens -” Fred chided falsely, having overheard the conversation between the three.

“- your Hufflepuff is showing,” George finished.

“I don’t know,” Harry drawled, stretching out lazily as he rested his hands behind his head, a relaxed sort of pose that he had learned from Uncle Padfoot, “he’s beat our asses enough in chess over the years to fit in well with the strategical lot.”

Neither boy knew if he meant Slytherin or Ravenclaw, and neither wanted to ask.

“You got it easy,” Ron whined, not preening at the compliment as he usually would, “you’re the son of two of the bravest Gryffindors there are, there’s no way you won’t go there.”

“So are you,” Harry reminded the other boy with a huff as he let his arms fall to his lap, “I don’t see why it matters though, I’m not exactly my parents and you aren’t yours.”

And didn’t everyone on the car know that to be true.

Harry had always been a private person, knowing when to keep quiet and just how much to share. Even if no eyes stayed on him in a crowd, people still expected things from the young wizard, the son of two war heroes that was raised alongside of a whole slew of others. He knew what sides to show who and how to adapt. Those skills were the walls that he built growing up just within the public’s eye. Though he let such walls fall around the other three in their group, sometimes the other two boys felt as if only Luna truly understood the boy.

Ron only shook his head as he looked down at the twins, his brothers that could have just as easily gone to Slytherin or Ravenclaw, but had asked for Gryffindor instead. They had wanted to make their parents proud. It was hard to explain to someone like Harry the tear in his heart when he thought of going to Gryffindors and just being the sixth Weasley son to do so, the way that he wanted desperately to prove himself as more than those that he came after, and yet didn’t want to break his mother’s heart.

(He didn’t know that Harry understood that divide as well, but had held onto it for so long that the shape that hit held within him differed from that of the youngest Weasley boy.)

“None of us are our parents,” Draco said with an easiness that almost mimicked Harry’s. While the other two boys felt guilty for such a fact, Draco wasn’t.

From what the boy had heard from others and from his mother herself, his father wasn’t someone that he should strive to be like. That was fine by him, he wasn’t someone concerned with power or status as his father had so clearly been. Draco loved running through the woods with Luna and Harry, the freedom of it all. He loved the way that the wind ripped at his hair while he, Harry and the Weasleys flew together, the tricks and dives that Bill would teach them when he was home for holidays, and the stories that Charlie brought of the dragons that matched Draco’s namesake.

Power wasn’t something that the boy sought. Not at all.

Fred and George glanced at one another and sighed as they looked back at their plans, they knew that they were going to have to try harder this year to prevail in their chaos with how widespread it would all be.

(Ravenclaw was safe, though only until the next year)

—-

Hogwarts was just as beautiful as everyone had told him that it would be.

Harry watched with bright eyes as the castel drew closer, the stars bright like some sort of painting in the sky. He’d seen them every night at the cottage back home, but they’d never looked quite as beautiful as they did now.

When they got to the hall, Harry could easily see the twins placing bets with the others in Gryffindor house on who would be sorted where. Harry pitted anyone that bet against the pair, though at the same time he couldn’t help but think that whatever loss they received was well deserved if they didn’t know any better by now.

Harry chose to smile up at the staff table instead, at the two professors sitting side by side that nodded back at him.

Uncle Moony and Uncle Regulus.

Professor for Defense Against the Dark Arts and the Potions Professor.

(The pair had taken the job after Dumbledore had stepped down only a year before, McGonagall taking his place as Headmistress of the school and Remus taking her place as the Head of Gryffindor house so that she could still manage to teach Transfiguration until finding someone that she wanted to for the job and passing it on. Regulus had come with him, taking over Head of Slytherin house after Slughorn had quit just after Dumbledore had. Remus had been surprised that the old potions master had been allowed to stick around for that long, but assumed that Slughorn had known that his standard of teaching would have never been allowed under her strict gaze.

It had helped that the kids were old enough now to be starting school soon, so they wouldn’t be without them. Their stitched together family was a close one after all.)

The sorting was quick, as the Headmistress read out the names as she had for the past countless years, another duty that she wasn’t quite ready to pass onto the next Professor. No one but the few that were paying close attention noticed the way that the woman rushed over some names, and drew others out, as if she couldn’t decide if she were constantly torn between the names of the children whose parents she had once known burning her or soothing an ache that she had almost forgotten.

Harry had been paying attention though, he always was.

He noticed the way that the witch stumbled over Draco’s name when he was called first out of their little - incomplete - group, as if she herself couldn’t decide whether his name was sour or sweet on her tongue.

Harry watched with keen eyes helped by the glasses on his face as the Sorting Hat all but swallowed the blond boy whole, the old hat resting there upon the other wizard’s head for longer than it had most of the others before him. Harry wondered if in another life time where Mr. Malfoy had lived, if the sorting would have been more instantaneous, as the hat had originally seemed to think of doing before actually looking at the other boy’s mind. Either way, Harry was one of the few unsurprised when the tear in the hat opened and it screamed out a house that only one other Black had gone to before:

“Gryffindor!”

Harry clapped along with the rest of the stunned hall as he thought of the stunts that the youngest Black liked to pull on his broom. The house was a fitting choice.

(Remus and Regulus looked at one another with sharp smiles that mirrored the other’s. James owed them each money now, and they were only a third of the way through)

When Harry’s name was called sometime later, the hall didn’t fill with more than the usual whispers that accompanied the sorting as hurried bets were placed and some of the students grumbled about how long it all took as they wished for the feast to start already.

McGonall smiled encouragingly down at the small boy as he sat down upon the stool, her heart not breaking as it had in another life when she had seen his wild hair and her unmistakable eyes for the first time in eleven years.

Instead she saw the boy that she visited at Christmas and told the stories to him that his parents wouldn’t share of their exploits that had been more on the failed side than the ones that they usually shared with their son. Harry’s favorites were all the times that the Professor had willingly ignored the fact that almost everyone in their mismatched family were illegal animagus and reading havoc on the poor school.

Harry hummed as the hat was placed over his eyes, a spooky sort of tune that he had learned from Luna ages ago and always sung with the girl in the dead of night when the others hated to hear it the most. The boy was calm as he already knew just where he was going and the hat all but laughed as it agreed.

“Slytherin!” It bellowed out into the hall as it filled with clapping from all four of the houses.

Remus and Regulus looked down at the boy that took a little too much after the pair of them and knew that they couldn’t have been prouder.

Harry walked lazily over to the table filled with the other snakes and sat next to a boy with a sharp look in his eyes that Harry thought would be useful, though he didn’t like that the other had it so soon and wondered what had caused it.

“Theodore Nott,” the boy said, holding out his hand for the other, his expression bored even as his eyes were anything but.

“Harry Potter,” Harry said in return, already knowing that he was going to like the other well enough and hoping that the others would too.

If they didn’t then Harry wasn’t above playing the long game until they did.

Harry and Ron clapped the loudest of those in the hall when Ronnwas sorted into Hufflepuff, the first in his family to do so.

Remus smiled softly at the content looks on the kids’ faces even as they were sorted into different houses, and grabbed his husband’s hand beneath the table. The pair had fought hard for such a peaceful ending, one where they all came out alive at the end, one where they gained more than they lost.

One that made the blood on their hands worth it, because each drop was too high a cost.

Looking down at the students then - his husband’s hand in his own, and in a world where he didn’t have to hide as he so often did the first time and Everytime after stepping into these halls, a world where the children from his pack that had returned from Germany after the war could come to Hogwarts and learn every sort of magic that they wanted to without having to hide what they were - Remus was more grateful than ever that he’d chosen this life, this path.

They were all made of the same stardust, constantly orbiting one another in every reality as the particles combined. The world that the wolf had once envisioned - one with a different Black brother at his side - was over then from the moment that the lion had met the snakes in the library that day, and Remus knew as he felt the cool press of metal against his palm, that he wouldn’t have wished for any other constellation.