Remus and Sirius

Remus and Sirius comic strip/year seven.

2008-10-11T13:40:53Z

Remus and Sirius comic strip/YEAR SEVEN

Artist: remeciel
BETA: melp

Rating : PG-13.

Disclaimer : All characters belong to JKR and Warner Bros. Ent. Harry Potter Publishing Rights copyright J.K.R, Harry Potter characters, names and related indicia are trademarks of and copyright Warner Bros. Ent.

15/21 pages

And remember The Studio Silence website is not DIAL UP FRIENDLY!
Reviews=♥♥

A Second Chance - Final Chapter

2008-10-10T19:40:24Z

Title: A Second Chance
Rating: PG (sometimes R)
Disclaimer: Not Rowling
Summary: After dying some wizards are given the option to be reincarnated. They get to live out their lives without their memories until their 12th birthday, at which time all of the memories of their past life and who they are return. The problem is that when you are offered the choice you say "yes" or you say "no" and you don't get find out what any of your friends have answered...

Notes: I messed around with the time-line a bit to do this. Some people lived after the Battle of Hogwarts and some people's birthdays were moved.

Chapter 20: The Hogwarts Express
http://www.blacklupin.org./smf/index.php?topic=7.105

Now with illustrations!

R/S Prophet Looking for Editors

2008-10-10T04:20:08Z

The rs_prophet is looking for a few good editors.

Applications are currently being accepted until Saturday October 11th, 2008 at 11:59 pm EST.

With the holidays coming up, this could entail a 2-3 hour commitment once a week.

If you're interested, please comment on the application post. All comments are screened.

FIC: Listening to blood

2008-10-09T12:37:25Z

Title: Listening to blood
Author: </a></b></a>evelynegrey
Pairing: Sirius/Remus
Disclaimer: I do not own the Marauders.
Notes: About the inevitable humiliation of being unwanted. Very much autobiographical.

Are you drunk yet Remus?

The Bet

2008-10-09T06:04:39Z

Title: The Bet
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not Rowling

Summary:
“Hermione thinks you and Professor Lupin are shagging!”
Sirius looked between the two for a moment. After deciding that Ron wasn’t joking he threw back his head and laughed. “Hell, I’m not even gay!”

Notes: Just a silly one-shot that struck me. Enjoy!

http://www.blacklupin.org./smf/index.php?topic=63.0

remusxsirius @ 2008-10-09T00:03:00

2008-10-08T23:18:26Z

Title: Arden/Lethe/Utopia
Author: centaurea_m
Pairing: Remus/Sirius
Rating: R, probably
Disclaimer: Not mine. And the talking crow at the beginning clearly wandered in from the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Summary: Greenspace, dreamspace, noplace.
A/N: Three short pieces from different eras; one MWPP, one Azkaban, one OOTP. They’re not necessarily continuous, but they can be read that way if you like. It’s about places that may or may not have ever existed, and what might or might not have happened there.

*

Arden

Remus sits, shirtless and barefoot, in a clearing in the Forest, and waits. It is high summer. The light makes the moss almost sparkle. The heat is heavy, but occasionally lightened by a breeze. He shifts his feet on the soft ground.

There is a clatter of wings, and a crow alights on a stump beside him. It cocks its head and looks up with button eyes.

‘Craaak,’ it says.

‘Fuck off,’ says Remus. He looks round at a fae who is peeping out from under a toadstool, filmy wings quivering. ‘You too.’

‘Okay,’ says the bird morosely and flaps away. The fae sticks a tongue out and then, shockingly, moons him. Then it disappears with a pop.

Remus bites his nails.

He lifts his head when he first hears footsteps, and some minutes later Sirius wanders into the clearing, and stands, arms by his sides, looking as if he doesn’t particularly have to be here. He does a jerk of his head that looks like a greeting but is actually designed to get the hair off his face. Sad eyes, Remus notices, as if for the first time. So that even when he smiles, it looks like he’s smiling in spite of something, and it’s that which gives the illusion of depth that makes all the girls swoon.

Girls. It hits Remus again that there’s no girl here, it’s just him with no shirt on waiting for Sirius, and he shivers, without wanting to at all, without even feeling cold. A summer shiver: the feel of someone dragging a tongue slowly down his gravestone.

Sirius laughs a little, and his head falls to one side, hair falling over his cheekbone. ‘Don’t look so fucking scared,’ he says. He walks closer, his feet making soft sounds on the moss. Remus stands up to meet him, looks him in the eye, jaw thrust out. Then Sirius lunges in, too early, clumsily, their chins clash, and they kiss in an unsatisfactory way for a moment before they break apart. Remus’s bitten nail snags on Sirius’s collar. He clenches his hands, looks down to watch again the light on the moss. Sirius walks off, stands by a tree while he pulls his shirt over his head, and rests his hand on the bark. His unspeaking back faces Remus.

He wonders why they are here. He theorises that maybe it’s because Sirius is going through a dry spell since he told everyone that he made Nancy Fitzsimmons cry in bed –‘with happiness, if you know what I mean’ – which he saw as harmless boasting but she saw as a betrayal of personal secrets, and her unfortunate position as most popular girl in the school turned the entire female population against him. He probably hasn’t had a shag in five weeks. He must be desperate. Remus feels pleased with this theory, in a masochistic way. Then he remembers who it was who pushed whom up against the wall in the dungeons, and considers that perhaps he isn’t entirely devoid of blame for this himself. Sirius, against all expectations, sort of gave deliciously as if being pushed up against the wall was something he’d craved all his life but had long ago given up the idea of asking for. When they pulled apart his breath was coming double, and someone Remus had never seen before was looking out of his eyes.

And now here they are, five paces apart, while the forest seems to be holding in a gasp.

Sirius turns, suddenly, and comes towards him with an intentive smile. Something in his face, the easy possession of it, repels Remus so forcefully that when he takes hold of him and pulls him closer he fights him, grabs his wrists and twists and pushes back, and then they are grappling, and a fist flies and they overbalance and are rolling on the moss. Remus tastes earth and his elbow hits a tree trunk and he kicks, savagely, and grasps blindly with his left hand. Then Sirius turns his head and they kiss, violently, without changing their posture, braced against each other, one of Remus’s arms trapped between Sirius’s thighs. It’s so natural and yet so perverse, that one thing should become the other thing without a seam, without a breath between, that Remus still fights him with his mouth and tongue, bites and sucks and gasps for supremacy. Sirius pushes him in the chest, pushes him down, and Remus snarls and rolls them over until he has him pinned. Sirius’s lip is bleeding. Remus licks the blood away, and then unpins his wrists, and they let themselves go in a frenzy of futile and mindless touching. It comes to him that this, the hateful necessity of it, is like scratching an itch you can’t reach – or one that keeps moving, elusive, so that now it’s his hands on Sirius’s hips, yanking him closer, and then on his back, fingers grinding through mud and moss and over flesh, and then tugging through his hair and curling onto his neck, and it’s never enough.

Then Sirius snarls, and rips down the fly of his jeans and touches him properly, severely and with intent, and it nearly is enough, and then it is.

He leaves him, for a moment, spreadeagled on the moss with his mouth open, gasping. Remus closes his eyes in an instinct for sleep. When he opens them Sirius is naked and standing over him, murder in his eyes. Remus stands up. Sirius unclothed should be, by any aesthetics, a beautiful sight, but by this stage Remus is finding out it isn’t about seeing, but about something closer, something unnameable that makes him shortsighted with need: seeing no more at a time than one mole on Sirius’s shoulder, or one fleck in his murky iris. He pushes him, the whole of him, back against a tree, and closes his eyes to see better. Light dapples his eyelids with warmth. Sirius’s back rasps against the bark in a way that sounds like it hurts but perhaps doesn’t. Remus fingers slowly down his belly, over the taut muscle to where the tuft of hair curls up like a dragon’s tail. Sirius twitches, and for a moment Remus holds the whole of him, body and quaking mind, motionless in his palm like a bird. Then he concentrates, turns methodical, and when Sirius starts to pant in a sort of ragged crying he opens his eyes. He watches Sirius’s face – the way he looks like he’s in pain, the way he stares desperately at Remus like he is his saviour and his tormentor. The way, at the end, his mouth opens wordlessly and he shudders for him, gives himself up to him: the perfect indignity of it.

He leans heavily on him against the tree, sweat-melded, and they breathe, and Sirius’s hand rides his hip like an accidental passenger. He rests his chin on his shoulder. Then he draws back. They don’t need to, they shouldn’t, but they kiss, breathing in each other’s satisfaction – heavy-lidded and suddenly very grown up, like they have been here in the wood for years, learning each other inside out. Remus kisses Sirius ardently, like a lover, and whenever his mind tries to form a word he turns it into a senseless sound.

It’s only when he pulls back, and the dreamlike face in front of him resolves into that of his friend, that he lets them through. They are rationalising words, familiar and dry. None of them match the dark inarticulate thing that is twining through his body, growing wetly up from the root of his spine.

Sirius kisses him once more, playfully, on the jawbone, then pushes him gently away and staggers forward like a cripple to pick up his clothes. They dress slowly, while a bird calls harshly in a nearby tree. The bluebells nod their agreement.

‘Swim?’ suggests Sirius, pushing his hair back off his forehead, slightly damp.

Remus nods.

When they leave the forest lets out the breath it has been holding, and laughs.

*

Lethe

He dreams he is in the Eagle.

He’s not sure why, because he has only been there once and didn’t much enjoy himself, spending most of the night with his back pressed against a Toby jug trying to feign interest in the hobbies of the loud, awkward arithmancer he ended up being talked at by. The only part he liked was nipping outside for a cigarette in the cold, and craning his neck up to see the star-bright fragments of the sky between clouds.

But for whatever reason, he seems to be back. He is sitting, this time, at a table in an alcove, near a window looking out on the courtyard. Opposite him, framed against the humming glow of the bar, is Sirius.

He is sitting in an unfamiliar posture, his shoulders hunched forward and his head inclined slightly up. His hair is lank; his skin has an unhealthy, almost pearlescent sheen, like something that has started to go bad. His fingernails, dirty, grip the seat of the chair. A line of spittle glistens from the corner of his mouth through the patches of scruffy beard to his chin.

That is the detail that tells Remus this is Oneiromancy, and not something cobbled together by his subconscious. He could have imagined the grey prison smock, the state of the hair and skin; he could even, at a push, have imagined the eyes, burning out from the still-young face like a very hot fire seen from very far away. He has, after all, a good imagination. The drool, though, is a step too far; it is in bad taste. Only reality could offend so grossly against aesthetics. Sirius is quivering a little, too, in rhythmic jerks that creak the chair, and he seems to be trying to speak.

Remus sits, unable to move, and looks calmly out of the window, to where a group of people with the wrong faces on are sitting round a table in the hazy sunshine, while a man with rusty wings hurries past and disappears through a gate made of old women’s hands.

Sirius makes a sort of strangling noise and thumps the arm of his chair, and Remus looks back. An eye fixes him through the gap in two hanks of hair. He stares back, and thinks with a sort of detached academic interest of what he read some years ago: the problem with dream-magic is in the words. It’s easy enough to draw yourself into someone’s dream visually, in your own image or someone else’s – even so, for Sirius, surrounded day and night by Dementors, this must have cost him a great deal. It is almost impossible, however, to carry language across the barrier without it being swallowed, or degenerating into nonsense. He feels shades of Greek myths, grey spirits drifting back silent from the underworld. Then he looks at Sirius, alive and in pain, spitting and twitching with the words he can’t get out, and the comparison seems somewhat stale.

Remus tries to move, but there is something ponderous in the air that keeps him in his seat. Sirius chokes, and inhales sharply, and Remus decides that if he can’t move, he might as well talk. This is his dream, after all; he can say what he likes.

‘Why did you do it?’

Sirius smiles, horribly; his face contorts once more. Then he throws back his head and barks.

)(

He finds himself there again, in the RAF bar in the back, under burnt relics of words, words, spiralling over the ceiling in carbon on red. They are at a table in the middle, and the pub is crowded with un-people – continually they push past them, talking in gibberish, their faces obscured.

This time he has a pint of ale in front of him, which is an improvement. Sirius droops over the table, pale and exhausted, twitching every time he is touched by a stranger. His beard is perhaps a little scruffier. Remus watches as his mouth moves, as though he is doing something in there, and theorises that he is tapping his tongue on his teeth, running it over the roof, trying the movements that make the noises that make sense.

When he finally manages to speak his voice is soft, very different from how Remus has ever heard it.

‘Parsnip,’ he says. ‘Fifteen sock bees in mothering wishness. Withered summer broad cake minions. Bindlewands.’

Remus laughs. He has to; the contrast between the convict’s grim mien and the gibberish spilling from his lips tugs the guffaw out of him by the force of a universal law.

Sirius glares at him. He bites down, and kicks the table leg. Remus looks down to his feet, and sees that they are bare, and that there is a hefty manacle around his left ankle. The chain from it trails across the pub floor, coils round the bar, out of the door and out of sight. When he shifts his feet there are soft clinks. Remus wonders what a ragged effort it must take to stretch that chain so far, even in a dream.

Sirius breathes hoarsely, closes his eyes. His lashes are still long. His cheekbones pivot on the border between skinny and haggard. He has been in prison for two years. He sits very still, gathering his breath for a word, one word.

‘Peter –’ he manages after a minute.

It sickens Remus that it is the first comprehensible thing he can say.

‘Don’t talk to me about Peter,’ he says shortly, and drinks his dream-pint down. He notices out of the corner of his eye that it’s still full. He wipes his hand across his mouth, and looks away from Sirius, around desperately at the faceless people, one of whom has just elbowed him in the back, and notices that the barman has the head of a collared dove, and thinks he’d very much like to wake up now. He brings his right hand to his left arm and pinches it, with no expectation that it will work.

In a moment he is lying in his bed with the cobwebbed ceiling of his room above him and his fingers closed around his flesh. He is surprised by the familiar waking-and-falling sensation of coming out of dreamspace: the sense of loss.

)(

The third time, they are in the courtyard. It is raining lightly, and in addition to a pint he now has a bowl of peanuts. Sirius eyes them, but Remus is not sure if he is hungry or if he is just trying to focus his attention sufficiently to enable him to speak. Perhaps there is a deal with dream-food; perhaps here, peanuts stand in for pomegranate seeds.

He wonders why, only asleep, he keeps thinking of death.

‘Foghorn – smithereens.’ Sirius bites on his fist, then takes it out and laughs, briefly and sourly, showing yellowed teeth. His eyes meet Remus’s, and a connection jumps which he tries to break by looking away.

Sirius kicks his heels against the chair leg, with a rhythmic clinking of his chain. He looks up into the drizzle, blinks it out of his eyes. When he speaks again his voice is intense, his black brows furrowed. He taps the table with each word.

‘Mishap ship shop fiddle furlong hipzip squirrels. Arson. Squirrels. Squirrels.’ The last repetition is almost a sob.

‘Yes,’ says Remus, who is tired, too tired to spend his sleeping hours acting out some bad student play with the reason his world collapsed two years ago. ‘Thanks, Sirius, that’s very interesting. I’m so glad you came here to, to tell me about the squirrels.’

Sirius snarls, and swipes at his pint, knocking it over. Remus watches the beer foam across the table and drip through the slats in the wood, while remaining, sideways with a perfect frothy head, in the glass.

‘Blood in moving caves,’ Sirius growls, ‘watching, blind in earthness. Guttering.’

‘Leave me alone,’ says Remus, pushing his chair back, although every time he pushes it back he remains the exact same distance from the table. ‘Get out of my dreams. I don’t want to speak to you. Whatever you have to say.’ He looks back at Sirius, who is panting now, tongue slightly out of his mouth like a dog crying in the heat. He stays this way for what seems like days.

‘Innocent,’ he says finally, and it comes out of him like gunfire. His lips are trembling, and his eyes are wide and so grey and lost. His fingers twitch across the table, through the spilt beer. Remus watches them as he might watch a spider, warily.

When he looks up at Sirius’s face he can’t see it any more. ‘Time,’ someone says. He is being shaken awake.

)(

Again: this time, crowded into the table in the fireplace, with no room to sit up. His face is inches from his. Remus remembers reading that you can’t sense odours in dreams, but he is sure he can tell that Sirius’s teeth have already started to rot. His eyes are still too bright, too gentle for his face.

‘Why did you do it,’ he says again, softly, almost as if he is dreaming himself saying it, like his will is gone and there is nothing else he can say.

Sirius makes an inarticulate noise, coming from his throat through his wide open mouth. He is crying, now, and it is awful to see, a grown man with the eyes of an angry boy, in a shapeless grey smock, snivelling and wiping his nose with the back of grimy knuckles.

He grabs for Remus’s hand, and his palm is clammy with horror.

‘Moony,’ he says hoarsely, and the intonation of it makes him remember, perversely, a time when Sirius didn’t speak at all: when he woke up in a cold sweat from the wolf-dreams with Sirius holding him, letting James do the talking, knowing his brusque words had a tendency to skew and upset, and instead using his arms, his solid strength, to hold him together. Sirius stares at him, panting.

Remus starts to speak.

Then Sirius yells and his head jerks, as though he is being dragged backwards by the hair, and the dream disintegrates and silence roars in and Remus falls down, down into a sleep that is black and oblivious.

He doesn’t dream of Sirius again.

*

Utopia

When Remus comes in, his hair wet from the rain, and shambles through to the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea, he finds it on the table: a box, exquisitely carved, in a dark wood that might be mahogany. Dust sits in the cracks that form the pattern of flowers. He fingers it, wonderingly, and then flicks it open with one hand; it sings to him, in a piercing note that reverberates at the back of his skull and brings a tear to his eye. He closes it again and strokes it with a quiet thumb.

They argued yesterday. This, then, is some kind of amends. Remus picks up the box, weighing it in his hands, and smiles at an image of Sirius, on his hands and knees, spitting and cursing as he tried to dig it out of some forsaken spider-haunted corner of the attic. He smells the dark rose-perfumed wood, and sets it down again on the table with a click. Two kinds of gifts: these, treasures of hate, presented without words and undusted, as if the house unearthed them itself to apologise for its usual air of sullen spite; and the other kind, dog gifts, a dead bird spread wetly on the tiles, a tufted branch of flowering tree left by the porch. Sirius’s wordless apologies. There is a sound in the doorway and Remus realises there is a third kind: his sudden appearance in a room, wearing a loose black robe and an uncertain grin. He has cobwebs in his hair. Remus smiles at the sight, and then realises that it means he is still not looking in mirrors.

‘You’ve been out.’

‘Yes.’ Remus runs a hand through his wet hair. ‘It’s raining.’

‘I know,’ says Sirius, ‘I’ve been staring out the window for the past hour,’ and strides to Remus and presses him fiercely against the wall.

‘Oof. Keen, aren’t you.’

Sirius studies his face with a roving gaze, and says levelly, ‘Of course I’m keen. This is all the exercise I get.’

Remus can’t resist. ‘Walkies?’ he suggests, and has to dart sideways to avoid teeth sinking into his collarbone.

They climb upstairs, hands lingering on the banister, followed by clucks of disapproval from the walls: spiralling up to the second landing and a door behind which a bed spread with old velvet lies. Sirius throws himself back on the counterpane, arms spread, hair falling around his face like a lopped starfish. Remus removes his shirt and lays it on a chair. His skin rises to the cold. Sirius watches him sideways as he removes his shoes and socks and pads over on bare feet to the window.

It is always this way, still; the shifting back and forth, the dance, pretending they are doing something else. As if they have really come up here to play chess, or read, or to admire the view over the rainy square, the ragged London grass and the spattered cars parked on the cobbles. Remus hears the shift of cloth, of Sirius’s nakedness emerging, and doesn’t look. He counts to twelve, a smile pulling at the corner of his lips. Then he turns back to the bed.

He is in a sullen mood today. His eyes are so old and so young that it is confusing, and to avoid it Remus closes his and moves for him, opening his mouth, pausing for a moment in the place where they are just waiting, breathing and nudging into each other, tasting the air between them as it tightens. Then he crosses the border, simultaneously slipping his hand down to hip and thigh, and Sirius gives, making a vibration in his throat that is almost a sound, hands tugging through Remus’s still rain-damp hair. Remus tastes him, slowly. He savours what it means to be older, because it means he doesn’t have to rush this; because the older you get, the more you understand what it is you’re racing towards, where the blindness and the convulsion and the gasping take you, after all. He isn’t sure Sirius understands. When he pulls back he is watching, with the same tired eyes. He keeps them open, even when they kiss. Remus isn’t sure if it’s that he doesn’t want to lose the sight of him, or that he fears what happens behind his eyelids when they’re closed. He has woken him from enough rictus dreams to think it is probably the latter.

Sirius touches him, carelessly, the back of his hand across his face; then he gets up with a quiet snarl and moves away, like this is all still too much for him, or not enough. He stalks to the wall where Remus’s pictures are and leans there, thunder on his brow. He still bears himself like a princeling – not a prince, certainly not a king. Sirius’s age has grown over him, not with him. Remus thinks in metaphors, in strange terms of tall young trees grown over with ivy; then he clears his mind and looks, and sees a naked man with sad eyes, thumbing the curled edges of photographs on a wall.

He is beginning to get some meat back on his bones, at least. The jutting lines of his hips are fading to something spare yet essential. From where he lies on the bed Remus can still count, distinctly, six ribs. The chest hair is shaggier than he remembers. His memory dwells always twelve years ago, not on their most recent encounters but on one, or two, endlessly relived: a panting fumble in a corner of the castle that smelt of moss and ghosts; that dreamlike time in his bed under the waxing moon when they left blood on the sheets and obscenities in the air, reverberating in their enchanted silence. Young Sirius is in the room with them, always, peering out from behind his avatar, who seems at times to display him consciously, like a beautiful feather gleaming in the corner of a dusty attic. There he is now in his pose against the wall, unconsciously graceful, shoulders raised and mouth opening in a grin. Remus smiles in return. He wonders if it matters that in many of the ways that count, he is sleeping with a ghost.

The ghost is Sirius’s soul, which haunts his body like an old temple its youth was sacrificed in. It looks out of his eyes at the stained wall of this room that is, nominally, Remus’s; his few pictures, inept collage of the years spent without him, on Greek sand and by jagged mountains with freckles and callused feet. He wants to know this Remus, long-legged, squint-eyed and tanned, slyly looking sideways in ragged shorts through the camera’s eye at someone that isn’t him or James. He wants to go back and drink retsina on a beach with this wanderer, hear him tell stories about pagans and gods until they are too drunk for any more words. He wants to leave him bereft, wants to wander the face of the earth screwing and drinking and singing, and then come back to him and see him for what he is and fall in desperate love and beg his forgiveness and give himself over entirely, be blinded by the totality of his surrender.

Then again, Sirius wants everything. He feels that all they left him was his want; he is a desiring machine. When Remus comes to him now he focuses it, all the burn of it, on him; all his lost years, all the fire of the boy who never got to be who he wanted to be and, unlike everyone else, never had to blame himself.

A strange sort of gift.

They fuck in earnest on the creaking bed, and they are undignified and loud and slick with sweat and embarrassing desire, and they mean it. When Sirius comes he finally closes his eyes. Remus watches him, as he lies cocooned in an instant of peace, his hand on himself, and feels again like a hiccup in his heart the shock of love. It hits him always like a light blow in the ribs, like being winded. He has to look away. Remus knows a little about love. He understands now, in a way he probably didn’t when he was younger, why it’s something you’re in, like being in a box-room you can’t get out of and eventually shrugging and curling up in the corner with a blanket until you notice that actually the roof is open and you’ve been able to climb out the whole time. It doesn’t seem an ideal predicament. He looks out of the rain-spattered window at the grey London sky, and consults wryly with the several other versions of himself who live in his head, as he often does, on how incredibly foolish it would be to be in love with Sirius in particular – Sirius who never really apologises, Sirius who can be spectacularly cruel particularly to those who love him the most. Sirius who is empty now inside like the faceless mirrors in the cobwebbed rooms of this house. They come to a consensus that it would be very foolish indeed. Remus takes in a dark heaving breath and bows his head to the crook between Sirius’s neck and shoulder, where the dark strands of his hair cling to his sweat.

Some days he thinks they will both make it out of this alive. The thought terrifies him; he keeps it at arm’s length, too deadly bright to be looked at directly or touched. Occasionally, distantly, he spins elaborate fantasies about what they will do in the future – too human to know that what he’s imagining is not so unlike what they have now: the two of them, a house, the feeling of having something to hope for.

They lie, panting into quiet, on the bed, and hear the wood creaking around them and, faintly, through the window, the beep of a car horn and the sound of talking. Remus palms Sirius’s hip with a sticky hand. Sirius moves his head and as if by accident presses his lips to Remus’s neck.

*

remusxsirius @ 2008-10-08T00:56:00

2008-10-08T04:59:11Z

Title: Reminiscing in the key of I Flat
Author: happi_feet
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 507 - a paltry third of my standard, I know... I'm sorry...
Characters: RL, SB
Era: Azkaban Years
Warnings: Random, dark, slash implied, one tiny swear
Disclaimer: The characters herein are not mine.
Author's Notes:Inspired by erushi's ficlet One Day in Summer: Remus is understandably startled after their dinner of takeaway chicken-and-chips when Sirius asks him to move in ("You should move in," is what the dark-haired man tells the grease-stained paper and scattered crumbs, but Remus understands). In his logical mind he is trying and failing to find the connection between this unexpected - but pleasant, he will admit to himself later, privately in the shower - request and the earlier activity of Can dogs taste sugar, Padfoot? with ice-cream smeared on his belly in a child’s painting before being ticklishly licked away by a coarse doggy tongue. But this is Sirius, who is by definition illogical (Remus has stuck a smudged print of his friend between pages 358 and 359 of his Oxford dictionary under the alphabet I), and so Remus dismisses the matter as he has dismissed many others before and will continue dismissing many others in the future.

( Follow the fake cut to my fic journal )

Drabble

2008-10-08T01:35:09Z

Drabble, written for the prompt R/S, jell-o, a spoon and a kiss. G-rated.

Follow the fake cut

Small Gifts 2008

2008-10-07T22:31:51Z

rs_small_giftsrs_small_giftsrs_small_gifts

It's that time of year again! As many of you already know, rs_small_gifts is a low-key, year-end Remus/Sirius exchange that's been lots of fun in the past. (Links take you to the 2007 and 2006 master lists.)

Small Gifts is for short fic (1,000 to 3,000 words), icons, or art. Sign-ups are in early November, deadlines are in early December, and posting begins in early-to-mid December and wraps up around the new year, depending on how many participants we have. (For more information, see last year's introductory post.)

Join the comm, watch for announcements about the schedule for sign-ups, and start thinking about the exchange! We've had some lovely fics and art posted here over the past few years, and it's a good chance to celebrate the season with friends.

Hi!

2008-10-07T20:18:08Z

I hope this doesn't bother anyone...but here goes.

I am brand new to this community...kind of. Have been watching and reading and LOVING it for a long time now, but being that I am neither a very good writer nor much of a fanartist I haven't made any contributions myself. Not to mention the fact that I haven't touched my old LJ in, oh, about 4 years.

SO, the real point of this post is to say that I have this idea for an AU fic that has been nagging me for quite some time, but I don't want to butcher it by trying to write it myself. It involves Sirius modeling nude for a muggle art class on a whim and (of course) Remus as a student. Sounds pretty silly I know, but I am sure you are all well aware of how those two can grab hold of your imagination and take off running in all kinds of crazy directions. Any takers? If so just comment.

I apologize if this is not allowed, or simply annoying! Just I thought I'd give it a try. I promise my feelings won't be hurt if my post is deleted! Thanks!

Fic: The Difference A Choice Makes 3/?

2008-10-07T19:13:43Z

Title: The Difference a Choice Makes
Rating: NC-17
Genre: angst, hurt/comfort, established relationship, drama, alternate universe
Spoilers: Major spoilers for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban as well as minor spoilers for Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets
Character/Pairing: Harry Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, SB/RL
Number: 3/?
Word Count: 4 362 (as stated in Microsoft Word)
Summary: The reality we live in is defined by the choices that we make. Depending on our choice, our world can change, sometimes for the good, and other times for the worse. Sirius made the wrong decision all those years ago and his whole world was destroyed. Now, one chance meeting may set everything right.
Author's Note: I said I'd get the rest of chapter two up later and well...it's later. I'm calling this Chapter Three only because it'll get confusing if I start calling it things like Chapter Two - part two or chapter two point five, ect. Thanks for all the support so far. You guys are awesome. Remember, if you have any suggestion, don't hesitant to tell me. I'm making this up as I go...*Grins* Writing is so much more fun this way. It's interesting seeing what just flows out of my fingertips. Plus I don't have to worry about the story going stale in my head because even I don't know what's happening. *Grins*

Previous Chapters:

Chapter One
Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Harry watched him for a moment, ideas about the exact nature of the relationship that Sirius had shared with this other man beginning for form in his mind. “You two were close?” He didn’t want to leap to any conclusions, as he knew that would only get him into trouble, so he figured hedging around the issue was a safer bet.

Sirius didn’t seem to catch the implication behind his question, too far gone in his own little world. “As close as two people can get, closer even…” he trailed off, his mind wandering over something that Harry wasn’t aware of, before his eyes regained their focus and his gaze returned to the younger wizard. “How do you feel about homosexuality, Harry?”

Harry tried valiantly not to blush, realizing that though he’d thought Sirius hadn’t noticed what he’d meant earlier, the glint in the older man’s eyes told him that he had. “Never really thought about it,” he replied honestly, looking down at the sheets in an attempt to hide the blush that was forming on his cheeks. “Uncle Vernon says that’s its wrong and unnatural, but then he says the same thing about magic, so I just tended to ignore it.” Sirius smirked slightly at this and Harry leaned forward slightly. “So, you and Remus…” he trailed off knowingly and Sirius nodded in reply.

“Since fourth year, though we didn’t realize how serious it was until our sixth year,” a peculiar expression crossed his face at this that Harry didn’t understand before it grew dark again. “We’ve been apart now longer then we were together.”

“I’m sorry,” Harry’s voice was soft and sympathetic. He couldn’t even beginning to understand what the other man was going through. He knew what it was like to lose loved ones, but not nearly to the extent that Sirius had. He didn’t think he’d have handled it as well as the other man seemed to, but then he couldn’t really tell how the other man was holding up, as he had nothing to compare it too.

Sirius nodded. “Probably for the best anyways. The distance I’d put between us is what protected him in the end. Otherwise I’m sure he would have been in Azkaban right along with me. The Ministry wouldn’t have believed that he could have been that close to me and not known what I’d supposedly done.” He shivered at the thought.

Though those words opened up a whole other line of questioning, Harry felt that it was better to get back on track and give Sirius a moment to recover himself. Speaking of his lover obviously hurt him much worse then anything else did.

“So what happened? I mean why didn’t anyone know it was Peter?”

Sirius was silent for a moment, studying his hands. “Like I said, Voldemort always seemed to be one step ahead of us. Lily and James were moving from place to place, trying to stay ahead of the Death Eaters and keep you protected, but it wasn’t enough. Dumbledore finally suggested that they use the Fidelius Charm.”

Harry frowned in confusion. “The what?”

“The Fidelius Charm,” Sirius explained. “It’s an extremely complex charm that magically conceals a secret with another living soul. That person, the Secret Keeper, is the only one who can divulge the information to another. So unless the Secret Keeper told Voldemort where your parents were, Voldemort could look right into your living room window and not see you.

Now, being James’ best friend, everyone just assumed that I would be the Secret Keeper. Even Voldemort would have assumed this and so I thought ‘wouldn’t it be brilliant to use that against them’.” He sighed deeply. “If only I’d known…”

“You switched?” Harry confirmed.

Sirius nodded. “I got Peter to be the Secret Keeper. The Death Eaters would come after me, thinking I was the one and Peter would be safe. Even if I was captured and tortured into giving up the information, it would have done Voldemort no good.”

“But Peter betrayed them,” Harry’s voice had grown quiet and dark, realizing the events that had taken place over twelve years ago which had resulted in the deaths of his parents. “And no one had known you’d switched.”

“No,” Sirius’s voice held a weight of sadness in it. “We thought it’d be safer if no one knew. We didn’t even tell Remus because of my suspicions. The truth died with your parents and then, once I tracked that rat down, he accused me of betraying them before blowing up half the street, killing twelve muggles in the process.” He chuckled softly. “The funny thing is, if Hagrid had just let me take you like I’d wanted, let me bring you to Remus, then I wouldn’t have gone after Peter and the truth probably would have come out, but I don’t think Dumbledore trusted me with your safety, Godfather or not.”

This got Harry’s attention and managed to take him out of the dark thoughts Sirius’s explanation had tossed him in. “You’re my Godfather?”

Sirius frowned at this, looking surprised. “Yes. Didn’t I mention that before?” At the shake of Harry’s head, Sirius explained, “James and Lily named me your Godfather and I was suppose to look after you if anything were to ever happen to them. You had two Godfathers, actually, both myself and Remus. It was Lily’s hope that if the worst ever happened, Remus would be the voice of reason in your life. I was too reckless for my own good, she used to say.”

Harry frowned. “Then why didn’t he take me in?”

“I don’t know,” he replied honestly, but a look in his eyes told Harry that he was withholding something. “I was in Azkaban within days after everything. I didn’t know what was going on in the outside world. The reason I didn’t put up much of a fight with Hagrid over you was because, besides being out of my mind with grief, I assumed Remus would be along to get you as soon as possible.”

There was silence for a moment and Harry watched his newly discovered Godfather thoughtfully. There was so much pain the in the man’s expression and Harry couldn’t even begin to imagine what he’d been through. He’d lost everything in the course of a few days and he’d spent the last twelve years paying for it. But maybe, Harry thought with a glance at Hedwig, he might be able to get some of it back.

“Why don’t you write him?” At Sirius’s confused look, he elaborated, “Remus. Surely if you explained yourself, he’d believe you.”

Though Sirius looked like he’d do anything to do just that, he shook his head sadly. “He’s got no reason to believe me. You have no idea how much I hurt him, Harry,” the pain in his voice caused it to crack slightly, “and I wasn’t the only one who lost everything that night. From his perspective, he lost his three closest friends at the betrayal of the fourth as well as his Godson, for whatever reason. He probably despises me.”

“Maybe,” Harry replied with a shrug, trying to image what that must have been like from the point of view of a man he didn’t know. “But you’ll never know until you try. It might be a risk, but then going on the way you have been can’t be any better.” A sudden thought occurred to him. “Speaking of which, why did you break out in the first place, I mean why now? You’ve been in Azkaban for twelve years, why break out now?”

Sirius sighed, rubbing his hands over his face. “I didn’t kill Peter,” he began again, “But I didn’t know where he’d gone. After it’d all happened I assumed he’d blown himself up when he took out the street, not scampered down with into the sewers like the rat he was. It was why I was laughing when the aurors found me. I was a little out of my mind, understandably, and I thought how funny it was that Peter had run so far from me only to then screw up and get himself killed. It hadn’t occurred to me that he might still be alive,” his shoulders sagged, looking defeated. “I also didn’t think I’d end up in Azkaban. Thought that everything would come out at my trial and so I didn’t put up a fight when they came for me…but there was no trial…they just tossed me in Azkaban and threw away the key. They’d found their killer.”

Harry felt anger well up within him. “They didn’t give you a trial?!”

Sirius shook his head. “The Ministry was in utter turmoil after Voldemort’s downfall, trying to sort out whom the true Death Eaters were and who wasn’t. Many people went to Azkaban without a trial, but to my knowledge I was the only one who was actually innocent of the crimes they thought I’d committed,” he sighed. “Didn’t matter anyways. I felt like I’d deserved Azkaban. I wasn’t the Secret Keeper, but I as good as handed your parents over to Voldemort. It was my fault they were dead, that you were now an orphan. It was my fault that Remus had lost everyone dear to him and was alone…” he trailed off, the misery on his face causing Harry’s chest to ache for him.

Harry reached forward and gingerly placed a hand on Sirius’s arm, rubbing it in comfort. Sirius tensed slightly at the contact, but relaxed after a moment.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Harry finally said, drawing his Godfather’s attention. “You couldn’t have known what was going to happen. No one could.”

“I should have,” Sirius said quietly and Harry realized that there was nothing he could say to make the other man think otherwise.

“So what changed?” he finally asked after a moment, shifting forwards slightly.

Sirius swallowed hard, trying to regain some sort of control over himself. “Fudge came by on one of his inspections of the prison a few weeks back. He stopped by my cell for a bit and when I’d noticed that he had a copy of the Daily Prophet with him, I asked if I could have it,” he chuckled slightly at some unseen joke, “told him I missed doing the crosswords…should have seen the look on his face. I guess he didn’t expect me to be as lucid as I was, but he just wanted to get out of there. He just handed it over without another word and left. It wasn’t until later, when I was flipping through it, curious to know what was currently going on in the wizarding world, that I found this,” he reached a shaky hand into his barely held together robes and withdrew a small, folded piece of paper. He smoothed it out reverently and handed it over to Harry.

Harry took it and stared down at it in confusion. It was a newspaper clipping of the same article Ron had sent him earlier the summer of him and his family winning all that money and heading to Egypt.

“This is the Weasleys,” Harry said, looking back up at Sirius in confusion. “Their youngest son, Ron, is one of my best friends. I think he said they’d be back soon, but I don’t understand what this has got to do with you.”

Sirius straightened slightly to lean over the clipping and pointed at Ron. “Look what’s on the boy’s shoulder.”

Harry frowned, looking back down at the picture. “What, Scabbers?” He looked back up at Sirius. “Ron’s had him since we started Hogwarts and he said that his other brother Percy had him before that, but then he got an owl and gave the rat to Ron.”

Sirius nodded. “Probably been in their family for twelve years.”

Harry didn’t understand what Sirius was getting at for a moment, but when he did, his eyes opened wide and he started at Sirius in shock. “You don’t really think…?”

Sirius nodded. “Look at the rat’s front paw. He’s missing a toe.”

A sure enough, when Harry looked back down at the picture, Scabbers was indeed missing a toe on his right front paw. Harry’s mind rebelled against this information. The rat couldn’t be Pettigrew, could it? He’d been living in the same dormitory as Harry for the last two years and hadn’t done anything, hadn’t shown himself once.

“I don’t understand,” Harry finally said. “Why hasn’t he shown himself before now? I mean, I’ve been in the same dormitory as Ron since we started school. If this man betrayed my parents, wouldn’t he want to hurt me?”

Sirius nodded. “Oh yes, he would, but Peter never did anything if there wasn’t something in it for him. Think of what would happen if Voldemort was ever to regain power. Peter is perfectly place to act. He’s not exactly liked among the remaining Death Eaters. They all think he betrayed them, which explains why he’s kept himself hidden all these years. They’d kill him if they didn’t already think he was dead. The only way for him to regain his favour with them and with Voldemort would be to deliver you to them.”

Harry felt as though he was going to be sick. To think he’d been living in the same place as the man who had been responsible for his parents deaths…it made him shiver.

“What are we going to do?”

Sirius shook his head. “We aren’t going to do anything. You are going to stay here for the rest of the summer and then get on the Hogwarts Express come September and go to school like usual. Let me worry about Peter.”

Harry stood up in anger. “You can’t just expect me to ignore this! That man murdered my parents. I can’t just stand by. Besides, I can help you. I know Ron; I’m with him almost every day. Getting Scabbers won’t be a problem.”

“I can’t ask you to do that, Harry,” Sirius sighed, closing his eyes. “I won’t have you risking yourself. I failed in protecting your parents; I won’t make the same mistake again.”

“And what do you plan on doing once you get him?” Harry asked, his voice still raised. “Kill him?! How will that do you any good?”

Sirius bowed his head. “This isn’t about me-”

“Bullshit,” Harry interrupted, causing Sirius to raise an eyebrow at him. He knew he was being rude, but he couldn’t help it. This man had given up everything in an attempt to protect him and his parents and he’d already suffered enough. If they caught Peter and forced the truth out of him, then his Godfather would be free and he could maybe try to get his life back. Harry knew it was worth a shot.

Sirius sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “It’s late,” he said finally. “You should probably get some rest. We can talk about this more tomorrow.”

But the last thing Harry wanted to do was go to bed. “How can I be sure you’ll still be here in the morning?”

Sirius grinned at him and it was the first time Harry caught a glimpse of the man that his Godfather used to be. “Well, I need to make sure that you stay out of trouble, don’t I?”

Harry growled slightly. “You’re the one who gets yourself into trouble.”

Sirius conceded on that point, moving to get off the bed. “You’re right, but I, however, didn’t go a blow up my aunt this evening.”

A blush rose to Harry’s cheeks at this and he had no resort. Sirius snorted, gesturing towards Harry’s trunk. “Get yourself ready for bed. You can use all the rest you can get.”

Harry finally allowed himself to listen to his Godfather, moving to collect his pyjamas from somewhere at the bottom of his trunk. He wondered if this was what it was like to have someone who looked out for him, to have a family. If it was, he vowed to do everything in his power to help Sirius out, whether the man wanted his help or not. His Godfather deserved that much from him

It was some time later, after Harry had fallen asleep, that Sirius found himself sitting next to the window in the room, watching his Godson sleep as well as listening to the sounds that flowed from Muggle London. He found that, for the first time in twelve years, he was content. Harry was safe and though there was still the threat that Peter posed haunting them on the horizon, he could almost ignore it and pretend that all was right with his world…almost.

He sighed and started sadly out the window, looking up at the quarter-moon that shone down on him. He wished he knew where Remus was, what he was doing with himself now. He hadn’t been able to allow himself to think much of his lover over the past twelve years; terrified that the Dementors would take the few memories he had managed to hold on to away. Now that he was free to think of him, Sirius found that it left a gapping hole somewhere in his chest. He knew what was causing it and the thought only made it hurt all the more.

There were many things he had left out of his conversation with Harry. Not that he didn’t want to tell his Godson or thought that the boy wouldn’t be able to either understand or handle the information, but because it would have meant breaking a promise he had made almost twenty years ago and after everything that had happened, he refused to do that. He had so little left of his lover; the very least he could do was keep his secrets safe for him. If that meant keeping things from Harry, then that’s what he’d do.

Harry’s owl, Hedwig he’d called her, hooted soft at him as though sensing his melancholy mood. He started at her for a moment, Harry’s earlier words coming back to him. He wanted to contact Remus, desperately so, but like he told Harry, he was pretty sure that his lover despised him now. He would, if he was in Remus’ position. But Remus had never been one to hold grudged and he knew that he might listen to him, if he pleaded enough.

After he had been sent to Azkaban, Remus had tried to get in to visit him. He knew because the few wizard guards there were at the prison had used to taunt him with the information. That stupid werewolf of yours tried to get in here again, they would say, their voice mocking and saying the name werewolf as if it made Remus the lowest form of life on the planet. If he wants in here so badly, maybe we should just stick him in a cell as well. Those taunts had used to anger him, causing him to lash out. The Dementors couldn’t do anything to hold him back as it wasn’t happy thoughts he was thinking and in the end the guards would have to stun him to get him under control. He just couldn’t help it. Remus was too good, to innocent to end up in a place like Azkaban. Just thinking about his lover somehow ending up there had caused him to become physically ill on more then one occasion.

He rubbed a hand over his eyes. The taunts had stopped eventually and he knew it was because Remus had stopped trying to get in. His lover must have known it was useless and thus had given up. He wondered if that’s what had happened with Harry. Had his lover tried to gain custody of their Godson only to have been rebuffed because he was a werewolf?

He’d been completely honest with Harry when he’d said that he didn’t know why Remus hadn’t taken him in, but he had his suspicions. Werewolves, under Ministry law, weren’t actually allowed to have children of their own, or adopt a child. He remember that they’d been trying to get around that when they named Remus Harry’s Godfather, but with everything else that had been going on, there hadn’t been much time to fight the Ministry over it. They just figured that if the worst happened, Sirius would take Harry and they’d sort out the rest of it later. But things hadn’t worked out that way and he knew, just by the fact that Harry had still been with the Dursleys, that Remus obviously had been unable to get anywhere on his own.

He could only imagine what that must have done to him. What must his lover have been thinking in those days that followed Voldemort’s downfall? He knew Remus hadn’t been doing well to begin with and that had been his fault. He hadn’t told Harry, but being a werewolf made Remus different from other wizards in more ways then just the obvious. The wolf, to a certain degree, influenced him and one of those influences was the urge to take a mate. He and Remus had gotten together in their fourth year, but they hadn’t consummated the relationship ‘til their sixth and only because he’d been able to convince Remus that he never planned to leave him. Consummating the relationship meant that he and Remus were now bonded and since werewolves mate for life, he was it for Remus. There would never be another.

This is why he was fairly certain Remus hated him now. He’d left when he’d promised that he wouldn’t, probably causing the werewolf far more pain the he could possibly imagine. He could feel it himself, to a certain degree, even now. That gnawing pain in his chest that was the result of the forced separated from his mate. In Azkaban, the Dementors had seemed to heighten the feeling, but it had paled next to the guilt he felt over James and Lily’s deaths. Now, with no Dementors around to force him to relive those particular memories, all he could focus on was Remus and how much it hurt not to be with him. If it was like this for him, he was terrified to know how it was for his lover.

Was Remus even alive now? He was too afraid to find out. He knew it wasn’t uncommon for a werewolf to literally just curl up and die of loneliness at the loss of its mate, and Remus had lost so much more all those years ago then just him. He’d lost his entire pack as well, and god only knows what the wolf was like at that loss. He flinched as he remembered some nights when the wolf had taken out its anger at certain situations on Remus. It’d gotten better when they’d been able to join him, but sometimes even that hadn’t been enough.

Harry shifted slightly in his bed, drawing Sirius out of his dark thoughts. Thinking like this wasn’t doing anybody any good. He had Harry to worry about now, something he hadn’t even considered when he’d broken out of Azkaban. He’d went to Little Whinging with the intention of just getting a glimpse of Harry before heading north, but the boy had look so much like James that he couldn’t help himself but try and get closer to him. When he’d realized that Harry had no intention of heading home, he’d revealed himself to the boy, not being able to, in good conscious, allow him to roam around on his own. He hadn’t been the worse thing out there.

And so now he found himself trying to take up the job he should have been doing all these years instead of wasting away in prison. Harry was terrified that he’d leave, but even if he’d wanted too, he couldn’t. There were too many things going on behind the scenes that Harry wasn’t aware of and he wanted to keep it that way. It was too dangerous for him to be out on his own and so that just left him to protect him until the start of term. After that…

He sighed, turning his attention back to Harry’s owl. Could he continue to do this all on his own? He knew that come September, Peter would be at Hogwarts and he also knew that it would be next to impossible to reach him. He could sneak into the castle easily enough – he done it so many times as a boy it was almost laughable – but getting into Gryffindor Tower was another problem all together. Without the password, he didn’t have a hope in hell…unless he had help.

Why don’t you write him? Surely if you explained yourself, he’d believe you. The question was would he? If Remus was still alive, what reason would he have to want to listen to him? He’d done nothing to deserve that from his lover and Remus could very well turn him in as soon as he got wind of where he was. Maybe, Harry’s voice rang in his mind again. But you’ll never know until you try. It might be a risk, but then going on the way you have been can’t be any better.

Harry did have a point there. He could be caught at any moment and then who would be left that knew the truth? Who would protect Harry from the man who had murdered his parents? At least if he told Remus, even if his lover didn’t want to believe him, at least he’d know. It was better then the alternative.

So, with his heart in his throat, Sirius very quietly moved to rummage around in Harry’s trunk for a spare bit of parchment and some ink. This could very well be the stupidest choice he’d ever made, but like Harry said, what did he have to lose? He’d already lost everything. What was it worth to put his heart on the line one more time if it meant a chance to have Remus back?

The answer was clear as he settled himself back down in his chair with the parchment in his lap. Everything.

Green and Growly

2008-10-07T16:12:46Z

Title: Green and Growly
Summary: What happened to the thing Sirius pulled out of Remus's trunk?
Rating: PG-13 for liberal abuse of James's sensibilities
Genre: Humor
Disclaimer: Not mine.
AN: A short sort-of sequel/outtake to my fic Sirius's Discovery.

Green and Growly

remusxsirius @ 2008-10-07T22:42:00

2008-10-07T14:57:32Z

Hey everyone -

I've come with a question and a plea.

Firstly, the question - I know this is the wrong place to ask this, but does anyone here write fictions featuring OCs? And either Sirius or Remus in a hetero relationship (usually Sirius, because Remus has Tonks and she is, after all, canon) with that OC?

I love wolfstar, obviously, but I did not begin my foray into fanfiction writing this ship. Actually, I began with a piece featuring Sirius and a (female) OC, and then gave in to my love for wolfstar, jumped ship with the intention of soon returning, and forgot to look back. And recently, I realized that I do miss that OC-fic, and would like to return to it alongside my wolfstar projects, and I have such plans to rewrite what I already have to make it better. You see, I already have 38 chapters of that fic, and am quite reluctant to give it up, because well, that fic (and the OC) were created to fulfill my own shameless daydreams of Sirius. *sheepish*

Anyway, this is my plea - I am desperately seeking a beta for my OC-fic, preferably someone who doesn't mind OC-ness and a relationship outside of our beloved pups. I am insanely, obsessively worried that my OC is too Mary-Sue, and my plot too stupid/senseless/directionless, and I would really, really, really much appreciate the help of a beta. And where better to look than here , with all our wonderful, wonderful writers and kind reviewers? (Yes, that was a shameless and cheap attempt at flattery.)

Okay, I'm done. That was easier than I thought. And thank you all for reading this, and I apologize for not putting the space to better puppy loving use. Soon, I hope!

a doodle (r/s, g-rated)

2008-10-07T14:16:13Z

Fic: The Difference A Choice Makes 2/?

2008-10-07T13:36:27Z

Title: The Difference a Choice Makes
Rating: NC-17
Genre: angst, hurt/comfort, established relationship, drama, alternate universe
Disclamier: I don't own Harry Potter. If I did, half the things that happened, wouldn't of happened...*cough cough* Sirius *cough cough*. Plus there would have been much puppy love. *sighs*
Spoilers: Major spoilers for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban as well as minor spoilers for Philosopher's Stone and Chamber of Secrets
Character/Pairing: Harry Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, SB/RL
Number: 2/?
Word Count: 2 049 (as stated in Microsoft Word)
Summary: The reality we live in is defined by the choices that we make. Depending on our choice, our world can change, sometimes for the good, and other times for the worse. Sirius made the wrong decision all those years ago and his whole world was destroyed. Now, one chance meeting may set everything right.
Author's Note: Here's the next chapter. Didn't turn out quite the way I wanted, but it'll do. Hope you enjoy it and again if you have any suggestions, just leave them in a comment. I have no idea where this is going...I'm making it up as a go... *Grins* More fun that way!

Previous Chapters:

Chapter One

Chapter Two

As Harry stumbled off the Knight Bus in front of the Leaky Cauldron, he vowed to himself that he would never take it anywhere ever again. He’d thought travelling by Floo Powder had been horrible, but at least that had only lasted a few moments. This, he decided, had been must worse. How anyone could possibly sleep on that thing was beyond him.

Sirius trailed along beside him, snorting somewhat, but at the same time sounding slightly weary. When Harry glanced down at him, he could tell that while the dog seemed highly amused at how he’d responded to the Knight Bus, he seemed somewhat hesitant and it didn’t take Harry long to figure out why. After what he’d heard about Sirius on the Bus, he was a little more hesitant to keep going along with the older man. Granted he’d known before hand that Sirius had been accused of murders, but he hadn’t known the exact circumstances. He knew the Animagus must be a little worried as to what his reaction to that was.

“You could have warned me,” Harry said suddenly, in an attempt to alleviate the other man’s fears; he’d come this far and he wasn’t about to leave now. “If I’d known the ride was going to be like that I would have held onto something.”

Sirius just looked up at him in what Harry assumed was an apologetic expression while at the same time looking slightly relived that Harry wasn’t afraid of him. Harry sighed, shaking his head slightly as he pulled open the door to let the dog in before dragging his trunk in after him.

“Harry Potter!” a voice exclaimed, causing Harry to drop his trunk in surprise and resulted in Sirius letting out a high pitched yelp as the heavy object almost landed on his tail. Harry winched and gave Sirius an apologetic smiled as Tom, the Inn Keeper, came towards them.

“Thank goodness you’re alright, boy,” Tom was saying as he drew near, not seeming to notice the rather large dog that was watching him wearingly. “Everyone’s been looking for you. The Minister was even here earlier, seeing if you’d shown up.”

Harry frowned, imaging the chaos he must have caused and though he felt slightly guilty about it, he couldn’t help but feel relief that he’d missed the Minister. He didn’t want Sirius anywhere near Fudge or any other member of the Ministry for that matter, wither they knew Sirius was an Animagus or not. Although what Fudge was doing looking for him was beyond him.

“Sorry,” he muttered, casting a glance at Sirius. “Took longer to get here then I’d planned.”

Sirius whined softly at his side and the soft sound finally drew Tom’s attention to him. “Blimey, Harry,” he exclaimed, his eyes almost popping out of his head as he took in Sirius’s size. “That’s a mighty big dog you got there. He looks like a Grim.”

Harry didn’t know what a Grim was, but he surmised from the way Tom said it that it wasn’t anything particularly good. Glancing down at Sirius, he could tell that this comparison wasn’t anything new if the way the older man was rolling his eyes was of any indication.

“It’s alright that he stays with me though, isn’t it?” he was slightly concerned about that. Sirius had said there were still some things that needed to be explained and after what he’d heard on the Bus, Harry had a few questions of his own. The last thing he wanted was to be separated from the older man.

“Oh yeah, sure,” Tom replied. “Just keep him close; can’t have him scaring the customers.”

Harry nodded in agreement, feeling relieved. “I’d like to get a room then, please.”

It took awhile – Tom was in a very chatty mood that evening, going on about Sirius Black and how he was glad Harry was alright and so on – but finally he and Sirius managed to make it up to their room. As soon as the door clicked closed, Sirius had reappeared at his side and moved quickly to lock the door.

“Is it safe for you here?” Harry asked, plopping his trunk down at the end of his bed.

“It should be fine for now,” Sirius replied quietly, gazing quickly around the room, making note of the slightly open window. “That your bird?”

Harry frowned and looked over towards the window himself to see Hedwig perched on the sill. He smiled and made his way over towards her, stroking her feathers.

“Yeah,” he replied as she nipped fondly at his fingers. “I sent her to stay with Hermione when my Uncle’s sister came to stay with us, but I guess she got tried of that and came to find me.”

Sirius nodded. “Smart bird.”

Harry seemed to realize how softly Sirius was talking and turned to him with a frown. “You’re sure it’s safe?”

Sirius sighed, moving to sit on the edge of the bed. “I highly doubt the Ministry expects me to show up here,” he glanced around the room for a moment, before his gaze settled on Harry again. “Listen, I know you don’t have much of a reason to trust me, but if you lend me your wand for a moment, I can set up a silencing charm. It’ll allow us to chat more freely.”

Harry was a little hesitant as he didn’t know Sirius that well, but he had trusted the older man this far and he hadn’t tried to kill him yet. Sighing deeply, Harry pulled his wand out of his pocket and moved to place it in Sirius’s outstretched hand.

Sirius took it without another word, though his eyes clearly showed how grateful he was, and then he began waving the wand around the room, muttering incantations under his breath as he did so. He went on like that for a few moments, moving around the room and then he finally stopped, looking satisfied as he sat himself back down on the bed.

“Thank you,” he said, handing Harry back his wand, his voice at a now more natural volume.

Harry nodded and perched himself down on the bed beside Sirius, watching the older man. Now that they were here, he didn’t know what to say to continue their pervious conversation. He couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d heard on the bus. It was one thing to know that Sirius had been accused of committing murder, but it was another to know the exact details of those accusations.

“How did it happen?” Harry finally asked, drawing Sirius out of whatever world he had fallen into. “The murders, I mean. If you didn’t do it, then who did?”

Sirius’s features darkened slightly at Harry’s words. “His name is Peter Pettigrew. He’s the wizard that everyone thinks I killed. In reality he killed everyone, cut his off his finger as some proof that he’d been killed and then scampered down into the sewers as a rat. He’s an Animagus as well.”

“Was he one of the two you mentioned earlier?” Harry questioned, twisting slightly so he could pull a leg up onto the bed and face Sirius better.

Sirius nodded. “There were four of us, in the beginning,” he began, his voice tinged with sadness. “Myself, Peter Pettigrew, your father, James, and another boy named Remus Lupin,” his voice waved slightly over the last name, his eyes seemingly more haunted then before. “Four friends who would have done anything for each other…or so I thought.” He looked down into his lap, his hands pressed together.

“My father was an Animagus?” Harry had many questions to what Sirius was telling him, but he hoped that by asking that one he could draw the older man out of the obviously painful memories that his words had sent him into.

It must have had some effect as a smile flittered across his face. “Oh yes,” he replied, looking back at Harry. “He could change himself into a stag. Prongs is what we called him. I was Padfoot, for obvious reasons. Peter, fittingly enough, was Wormtail and Remus…”he swallowed hard, “Remus was Moony.” The nickname was said with such reverence that it sent Harry’s mind racing. Obviously whoever this Remus Lupin was, he’d mean a great deal to Sirius.

“I thought you said there’d only been two others that became Animagi with you?”

Sirius nodded, staring off into a far corner of the room. “There was. Remus is…” he cocked his head to the side, a slight frown crossing his forehead, “complicated, but that isn’t my story to tell. It’s his.”

Harry nodded in understanding. While he was curious to know what Sirius meant by that, he understood the other man’s need to keep his friend’s secrets. It was all he had left of them now and he guarded them closely.

“So what happened?” He knew it had to have been something horrible for one friend to betray the others.

“The war,” Sirius continued, his voice heavy. “Voldemort,” he all but spat out the name. “It’s funny…when you’re in school, you never realize how truly isolated you are. It wasn’t that we weren’t affected by what was going on – I don’t think there was one person who didn’t know someone who had lost loved ones – but it all seemed so very far away at Hogwarts. That all changed after we graduated though.

“I joined the Aurors straight after school, wanting to train to become an Unspeakable to help both the Ministry and Dumbledore as much as I could. James taught at Hogwarts for a little while until a group of Death Eaters murdered his parents, your grandparents, and then he quit and joined the Aurors as my partner. Lily worked with us as well, for a time, until she became pregnant with you. By that time, our actions against Voldemort were being noticed and we were all on the Death Eater’s wanted list. Not long before you were born, we got wind that Voldemort was after your family and that’s when Lily and James went into hiding.”

He sighed, swallowing hard before continuing. “We knew there was a spy on our side feeding information to Voldemort. He seemed to always be one step ahead of us and Lily and James had to move around because each one of their safe houses was being discovered. The scariest thing was that we knew it was one of us four: Remus, Peter, James and I. Obviously it wasn’t James, so that just left us three. James and I had been friends since we were small, we were so close we were almost like brothers and so James knew it wasn’t me. So it had to have been either Remus or Peter.”

Harry watched him for a moment, knowing before he even asked who it was that Sirius had suspected. “You thought it was Remus.”

Sirius looked down at the quilt upon the bed, picking at the threads. “Remus,” he breathed softly. “I never wanted to believe it was him, cursed myself for ever having doubts about his loyalty, but Peter had never been a strong or confident wizard and I just couldn’t imagine him as the traitor. It makes perfect sense now…Peter always did like to hang around with the stronger kids in the playground, but at the time I just couldn’t imagine there’d be anything he could offer Voldemort. So that left Remus. There were many reason why I thought it was him, most I won’t get into, but the one that kept gnawing at me was that I knew he’d gone to met with a couple of Death Eaters. I don’t know what they talked about or what they were doing, but when Remus came home, he didn’t even mention it. Hid it from the others and myself and I just couldn’t figure out why.”

His eyes seemed weighed down with a completely different type of pain then what Harry had seen so far. “I must have hurt him so badly, walking out on him the way I did. I didn’t want to and it killed me to do it, but I couldn’t look at him without the doubts rising to the surface and the guilt over having them was almost overwhelming. So I left.”

***

AN: I would have added more to this chapter, but LJ keeps saying my post is too large. *Sigh* I'll get more up later!!!

[Fic] One Day in Summer

2008-10-06T14:25:37Z

Wrote this recently for a friend:

Title: One Day in Summer
Author: Erushi
Rating: PG-15 to a very soft R?
Pairing: Sirius x Remus
Summary: In which it is summer, there is much ice-cream, and Sirius asks Remus to move in with him.
Disclaimer: Not mine.

(In which it is summer, there is much ice-cream, and Sirius asks Remus to move in with him.)

X-posted to remusxsirius, marauders_slash.

Sirius's Discovery

2008-10-06T02:11:25Z

Title: Sirius's Discovery
Summary: Sirius is determined to find out Remus's secret.
Rating: hard R, flirting with NC-17
Genre: Romance, Humor
Disclaimer. It shall never be mine.
AN: I'm not sure this really counts as NC-17 since there's no actual sex, but it does get pretty graphic at the end, so...If you're not a member of blacklupin.org, you'll have to sign up to read it. Don't let that scare you away! It's easy, fast, free, and you don't have to post if you don't want to. We're all really friendly over there, so just take a minute and sign up!

Sirius's Discovery

The Front Door

2008-10-06T01:52:57Z

Title: The Front Door
Summary: Remus' thoughts after Sirius' supposed betrayal. They had had plans, dreams as a couple, and now... this. Poetry.
Characters: Remus/Sirius
Rating: PG
Word Count: 140
AN: Unbeta'd. Based on a piece written by loveangelstar.

( The Front Door )

Fic: Waiting

2008-10-05T11:02:55Z

title: Waiting
characters/pairings: Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, Remus/Sirius
genre: humor/angst
ratings/warnings: pg-13 for cursing.
word count: 1, 214
a/n: Erm, I don't exactly hold any delusions that anyone would remember me, but I used to be known as "musicgeekgirl26." Just changed my name recently!
summary: If Remus had been told five years ago that his post-Hogwarts life would consist of waiting around for orders from a clandestine rebel group in a blood war, he would've raised an eyebrow, chuckled calmly and kindly suggested that that person pay a visit to Madame Pomfrey.

(waiting)

FIC: "Right there beside you" ~~ NC-17 ~~ Sirius Black/Remus Lupin

2008-10-05T09:34:47Z

Title: Right there beside you
Author: Esinde Nayrall
Beta: midnitemarauder
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 7,610
Pairing: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Summary: You nurses are all sluts, aren't you?
Warnings/kinks/squicks: Slash. Cross-dressing. Object insertion. Light bondage. Nurse!Sirius.
Notes/Extras: Written for rs_games and originally posted here.

Links go to my Live Journal/Insane Journal.

Fic: Pulse Point (one-shot)

2008-10-05T08:36:50Z

My R/S muse went haywire a week or two back. :P Home for two weeks due to hurricanes, what else is there to do?

Title: Pulse Point
Author: Liz//cherryfeather
Pairing: Remus/Sirius (First War)
Rating: PG-13, for semi-off-screen violence and torture, and Sirius cursing once
Spoilers: none
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: Many thanks to the lovely such_heights for giving this a read-through. :D
Summary: He, Sirius, might not have died if James hadn’t come. But Remus would definitely have died. Remus would at this very moment be dead. There would be no Remus Lupin in the flat Sirius was now speeding toward.

It was amazing how he could feel so cold surrounded by so much fire.

Sirius and Remus, after very nearly too close a call.

( cold hard wand stabbing into my throat cold hand grabbing my hair dragging my head back hot breath in my ear )

(fake cut to my fic journal, x-posted to hpfic)

Fic: Untitled

2008-10-04T17:20:23Z

Title: Untitled Angst
Rating: R
Warnings: AU, quick, sort of messy ending (which I'm not happy with), UNBETAED
Disclaimer: Not mine

The Cut

remusxsirius @ 2008-10-04T16:36:00

2008-10-04T14:37:41Z

Remus and Sirius comic strip/YEAR SEVEN

Artist: remeciel
BETA: melp

Rating : PG-13.

Disclaimer : All characters belong to JKR and Warner Bros. Ent. Harry Potter Publishing Rights copyright J.K.R, Harry Potter characters, names and related indicia are trademarks of and copyright Warner Bros. Ent.

10/21 pages

And remember The Studio Silence website is not DIAL UP FRIENDLY!
Reviews=♥♥

A Second Chance Chapter 19

2008-10-04T08:29:56Z

Title: A Second Chance
Rating: Mostly PG/PG-13 Almost R in Chapter 8
Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling
Summary: After dying some wizards are given the option to be reincarnated. They get to live out their lives without their memories until their 12th birthday, at which time all of the memories of their past life and who they are return. The problem is that when you are offered the choice you say "yes" or you say "no" and you don't get find out what any of your friends have answered...

Notes: I messed around with the time-line a bit to do this. Some people lived after the Battle of Hogwarts and some people's birthdays were moved.

Chapter 19: Dora's Decision

http://www.blacklupin.org./smf/index.php?topic=7.90

Weird, the options for putting a link are gone? Well, just copy and paste that.

The new chapter is a few posts down and all previous chapters are there as well. Feel free to join the forum!

I See The Way You Look At Me Now

2008-10-03T23:30:06Z

Title: I See The Way You Look At Me Now
Disclaimer: Alas I do not own Harry Potter. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended on any company, author, or anything under this earth that you would like to sue me for.
Pairings: Remus/Sirius
Rating: PG

{Torn between love and a cause}