A Twilight Wooing (scarvesnhats Day 07)

[rosie_rues]

I II III IV V VI VII

Title: A Twilight Wooing
Rating: PG
Words: 1219
Prompt: Identical twins Er, they're alluded to, anyway. Reconciling plot and canon was hard enough with this installment.
Disclaimer: They belong to JKR. I’m just borrowing them.



The wolf was asleep, spread out across the rug in the library. Sirius shimmered back into human form and waited for his sight to dim and fill with colour again. It still made the breath catch in his throat to stand this close to the slumbering wolf, close enough that he could smell the smoky wilderness of its fur with his weak human senses.

The Dementors had not been able to take his memories of the wolf; those vicious, violent canine memories of absolute, exhilarating terror. They hadn’t understood that he had loved the heady thrill of fear. Now, that same wolf, a little greyer and a little stiffer, slept quietly. It was almost harder to see Remus in the wolf now. Before it had been the opposite of everything that made him Remus. Was the man wilder now the wolf was controlled?

He bit back a snort of derision as he padded out of the library. If anything the git was more controlled. The bastard should just spit out whatever it was he was fretting over. It wasn’t as if it could be anything genuinely dreadful – he would have remembered it, if so. Which meant it was either trivial, or something happy, in which case Remus deserved to be tortured into honesty.

Or possibly pranked into it.

Sirius mulled over that thought as he eased the kitchen door shut behind him. He was sure Fabien and Gideon would have some good ideas, thought Molly might have something to say about them pranking one of their old professors.

He had made it clear to the rest of the Order that he didn’t want company on moon nights, so he was the only person awake. He took care to be quiet anyway. It was probably better if Remus didn’t know what he was doing.

It wasn’t as if Dumbledore had directly forbidden him to use the fireplace. Moody had, that was true, but he was a paranoid git, and Sirius worked for Dumbledore these days.

He built the fire carefully, laying the sticks into careful patterns. The clock above the mantelpiece showed it was twenty past midnight. Sirius set the little pot of Floo powder down in front of him, and sparked the fire into life silently. Then he settled back on his haunches to wait.

He already knew what he wanted to say to Harry – kid had the right instincts but could do with some practical advice on how to find a decent hideout. He felt the grin spread across his face again. Bloody rebellion, he was leading. James would have loved it.

The silence was teasing at the edge of his mind again, trying to steal the memories he did have. He fought it by filling his mind with the most solid, real things he could think of – the taste of cheese, the sting of doxy teeth, Remus smiling at him, faded and fussy and still here. He needed to do something about Remus – needed to work out what he was lying about and why and then worry the truth out of him. He could almost remember how to do that – the knowledge was in his skin and the beating of his heart, but wouldn’t settle in his mind. He rather thought he’d spent a lot of time unrepressing Moony.

There was obviously something Moony had expected him to remember. He thought this argument about not giving him memories was a piece of shite, but when Remus went stubborn on something there was no point in tackling things head on. It usually worked better to come at things sideways – he had a little scrap of memory of Remus saying, scrawny and small, No, you can’t keep me company at the moon, no matter how many shielding spells you use. Don’t be stupid, Sirius.

So they had found a way to keep him company without shielding spells and look how well that had turned out.

He couldn’t remember the expression on Remus’ face when they’d told him.

His good memories were coming back scrap by scrap as he dug at them. The ones he wanted most were still elusive, though. Huge swathes of his life were missing, and there were connections he should be making that he wasn’t.

He could even remember the first time the Dementors took one of his good memories – the shame and outrage and desecration of it. He could remember forcing the memories down in response, layering rage and self-hate and despair over them until they were untouchable. Now he just had to work out how to get them back.

Perhaps he should practice being happy. Get his brain back into shape.

Upstairs a clock chimed the half hour, so he took a pinch of Floo powder and cast it into the fire, breathing, “Gryffindor common room.”

The world whirled around him, red and golden, stinging his eyes. He clung to the hearthstones for balance and then blinked as the common room shimmered into sight. For a moment everything was repeated, and he thought he had stumbled onto the twins instead of Harry and his friends.

Then two Weasleys resolved into one, and Ron said sleepily, “Sirius!”

“Hi,” Sirius said, unable to bite back a grin as they crowded around the fireplace. Harry looked well, though there was a smouldering anger in his face than recalled Lily far more than James.

Crookshanks pressed his face towards the flame, eyes saucer wide, and Hermione pulled him back, letting Sirius speak.

Hermione fussed a bit, but the other two seemed glad of his advice, and he relaxed. He had been right to Floo – even Harry looked a little less stormy now.

Then, beside his ear, a clear female voice said, “Sirius! Sirius Black!”

Sirius broke off mid-speech. Who the hell?

“Sirius!” she said again, urgently. “Get out of the fire!”

He swung towards the voice in time to see a shadow sweeping through the flames towards him. He hurled himself backwards, crashing into the kitchen of Grimmauld Place as a fat, ring-weighted hand surged out of the fire after him, groping through the flames.

“Exflamarae!” Sirius roared at the fire, lashing his wand down, and he was left in darkness.

Shit. That was fucking Umbridge. Had the kids got away safely? There was no way he could know so he swore aloud again and then paused. Who had warned him?

The voice had been too old to be one of the kids. It was itchingly familiar, but he didn’t think it was one of the Order. All of them except Emmy Vance had strong accents, and this voice had been as patrician as his own, and Em and Molly were on guard at the Ministry tonight.

He began to pace, and then swore again as he tripped in the darkness. He snarled a spell and the kitchen lit up, glimmering in the spitting flames spinning out of his wand.

The wolf was standing on the stairs, eyes reflecting the flames.

“Ah,” Sirius said, and resisted the urge to put his wand behind his back. “Awake, are you?”

Even in human form, he could feel the reproach in that stance. Wincing, he sank back into Padfoot and slunk up the stairs behind the wolf as it turned back towards the library. He was obviously going to have some explaining to do in the morning.