sirius. (ex_dog471) wrote in triumphic, @ 2014-04-06 20:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | !backstory, 1981 : 10, black sirius, lupin remus |
BACKSTORY LOG: REMUS & SIRIUS (+ NPC appearances by Peter and Moody)
WHO: Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and NPC'd!Peter Pettigrew (ie this was written before we had a Peter!) & NPC'd!Moody
WHERE: The ruinous remains of the Potters' home in Godric's Hollow
WHEN: October 31st, 1981
WHAT: :(
There was rubble, and then there was this.
It was a clear night, but the stars which pierced the ink-black sky were blotted from sight by the thick smoke unfurling in widely grasping tendrils from the ruins of a house. The house -- the Potters’ house, only no one was meant to have known what it truly was; no one was meant to have suspected that the quaint cottage with its well tended garden harbored three precious, much sought after lives.
As though from a great distance, Sirius heard himself say it aloud: No one was supposed to know. It was easier than you were meant to be able to fight them off, easier than admitting the truth to the wreckage, to the corpses he could not find as he had scrambled through the smoking wood and searing shards of metal, the faint and sickening stench of burnt flesh clawed into the back of his throat even as he’d lost his grip on Padfoot and reverted back into Sirius, crouched within what must have been the kitchen, hands and face streaked with soot.
Lily and James were meant to be able to fight off things like this -- but this, surely, had been the Dark Lord himself. You knew, you knew it would come to this, that he would want to end them himself, Sirius you knew--
He realised -- as though the thought came to him from a great distance, arriving with barely a shift of his own consciousness -- that he was all over the wreck, could be found in the drops of blood where he’d caught himself on a shard of something, in the single black strand of fur…
He realised he didn’t care.
It is to thick smoke and the burning stench of ruin that Remus is Apparated, clutching Peter's sleeve in a white-knuckled grip. His confusion--because Peter hadn't made any sense, any sense at all, because Sirius would not do something like that, no--is swiftly chased away by horrified disbelief.
"No. No, James…." stuck in his throat as he numbly stumbled away from Pete, meeting his friend’s equally anguished gaze. For a moment, Remus did not know what to do.
Then, he found himself running towards the wreckage carelessly, heedless to Pete's plaintive call after him.
"No, Remus! It's still--" Dangerous.
No sooner had he pulled his wand from his pocket that large pieces of wood and stone were blasted away in fits of charred dust. And when the hills of debris trembled ominously, he fell to his knees and began tearing apart the wreckage with his bare hands.
"James! Lily! JAMES!"
-- what was the point of instinct when you experienced so many at once? The sudden voices (desperately familiar) filled him with the warring urges to run to their source (to reassure, to warn) -- and to run away. Sirius Black had not run away since that day, and yet here, in his graceless sprawl in the detritus of ruined lives and betrayal, every single nerve in his body now thrummed with the impulse. He could not bear to look upon Remus' face when he knew, absolutely knew, that the other would smell the guilt for what it was.
Run. Run run run.
Wand clutched in a damp hand, he made a slow, careful rise, pushing himself up onto one knee as he waited for the best opportunity to dodge their attention.
When it became painfully obvious that nothing could have survived such utter destruction, that not only had the house been utterly obliterated, but its very foundations and the surrounding earth had been blackened into a crater, Remus stopped, breath heavy from the thin air and his efforts. Too late. He had been too late.
"Pete," he croaked. He hadn't been very loud, but he suddenly felt Peter's stumbling presence over the uneven ground. "I don't think--I.... Nothing could have survived this. We need to alert Dumbledore. How could this have happened? I don't understand. We need...we need...."
"We should go, Remus," Peter urged with a thread of anxiety laced through his voice, eyeing his surroundings. "Aurors will be here. C'mon. We shouldn't b-be here when they--"
"I can't help them," Remus nearly moaned, as if not hearing Peter at all. "I didn't help them. I didn't...."
"Remus!" Peter hissed, giving the other boy's shoulders a firm shake. "We need to go. There's nothing we can do now. Sirius will--"
"Sirius." At once, everything narrowed to pinpoint precision. The churning chaos of his thoughts grew cold and still.
Their backs were turned to him. The remains of what must have been the chimney's central structure provided a temporary, crumbling veil from gazes that might have turned his way -- Peter would not be a problem, grief no doubt numbing every inch of his already slow body, but Remus? Remus who was inherently a predator, who had undergone enough grief to be able to move beyond the suffocating weight of it once realisation pierced the fog?
Sirius' hands were shaking as he rose to his feet -- shaking enough to dislodge a stone from the structure as he gripped it for balance. It fell with a sharp thud and he, as though burned, threw himself back, the sickening realisation that he didn't know whether to Apparate away (and risk a splinch) or stun his friends made him as stupidly slow as Peter.
The lines of the world, once muddy in confusion, now stood out in sharp relief. Remus could feel all of his senses, his very human ones, but more importantly, his not so very human ones, come alive. Peter's high-pitched breathing, the way he constantly fidgeted and almost seemed to quake in his very limbs, his hummingbird fast heartbeat. The wreckage groaned as it began to settle, as stones and brick and mud were loosened. Dust, burning, charcoal. The fading taste of magic like ozone on his tongue and skin.
Canine.
Sirius.
A stone drop, and Remus was up, shoving Peter forcefully away with one hand, the other retrieving his wand and bringing it up to the clay rubble, blasting the remnants of brick into the air.
A very loud "FUCK!" filled the immediate silence that stretched sharply behind the spell as Sirius, caught in the hail of debris and his own surprise, stumbled back. An arm thrown up to shield his face and eyes, he nonetheless thrust out his wand, its tip glowing dully, faintly with the beginnings of a shaken ward of protection.
"Remus -- Remus, I didn't --" Please understand. And yet, were their positions changed, would he, Sirius, believe anything that came out of Remus' mouth? He was now the very worst of things, a traitor to one's found-family, murderer-by-association; Remus would not tolerate a single thing he said, nor should he.
"They weren't meant to die."
Sirius's shout nearly made Peter jump out of his own skin, even as Remus's shove had him falling clumsily to the ground with a yelp.
There was no sense of urgency as Remus smoothly approached his former friend through the shower of debris, only a damning inevitability. Jaw and gaze grimly set, his wand never wavered from where he kept it aimed at Sirius's heart. "What did you do?"
Despite the horror of the situation they now found themselves in, the sound that came out of Sirius' mouth was of laughter, less a bark, more a toneless whine of appreciation for the way the tables had turned. Remus was not the one to turn wands on friends, and yet here they were.
His own wand remained, if tightly gripped, thrust against the dirt.
"How did you -- how did you know to come?"
Behind Remus, Peter slowly clambered to his feet, suddenly wary. His sweaty hand trembled as he reached into his own robe, fingers finding and gripping his wand.
"Pete came to me." There hadn't been time to figure out the why's and how's after that. It certainly wasn't at the forefront of his thoughts now, not with Sirius (enemy) before him not denying it. Not even so much as telling Remus he had it all wrong and that there had merely been a small mix up somewhere. Sirius didn't smell like nervousness or fear; he smelled like resignation and guilt. "Why did you do it? How could you do it?"
Pete came to me. Later, much later, these words would return to him; Pete came to me, Pete had brought Remus some manner of warning. How had Peter known to do this? How did he know to come? And if he had known, why didn't he move to act against the forces that conspired against the Potters, now dead and less than dust?
-- no matter. Like Remus, Sirius did not care to pick apart the finer details, intent instead on the slick rage on his friend's face. The aim of his wand. The tenor of his voice.
"They were meant to be able to take it. They -- they weren't meant to die, Remus. They weren't supposed to die." He had been given a choice, had weighed the evidence, thinking James and Lily capable of fending off the sort of violence his own flesh and blood never could.
Regulus fucking Black was safe at home, whilst James and Lily and little Harry were now permanently and absolutely beyond anything and anyone.
"It was Voldemort! You led Voldemort to their front door!" Remus screamed out. The stream of excuses, so pathetic, so senseless, only made him more furious. The heat of madness was beginning to seep into his blood. If ever he could have willed his transformation, he would have done so then, letting his wolf rend and destroy mindlessly. "Your best fucking friend, his wife, and his baby! You killed them, Sirius. They--we--trusted you and you killed..."
Words faded, only a shuddering gasp of air to fill their void.
As the tense silence drew out, Peter relaxed his grip on his wand, eyes darting between his two so-called friends. "Remus. I think that--"
"--Crucio!"
The curse was a collision of grief and fury against a body that, though nurtured and hardened by this type of magic, had not experienced the brunt of one cast by someone he loved, someone who was not accustomed to handling such poison and thus poured all of his new-found hate and anger into it. The curse was personal.
Rightly so.
Sirius felt his fingers claw into the dirt beneath him, spine going concave as he curled into himself in response to the agony that shot across him. "-- I thought they could fight him! They did it before, James and Lily, they fought him before." A gasp for breath as he scraped his gaze across to Peter, before returning it to Remus. "Oh Christ, they're dead. They're dead. I couldn’t find -- James."
As soon as the curse left his lips, the pure intent channeled through his magic, Remus knew something had irrevocably broken inside of him. Had broken between them. And there was no going back.
He didn't care. Dead-eyed, he watched Sirius writhe and he listened to his words. Then he flexed his fingers over his wand. "Crucio."
"Moony." Sirius didn't know what he was saying until he said it, the words requiring the strength of someone who had ever diminishing reserves. The vocalisation of pain as the second wave of magic swamped over him was louder, looser this time -- but it was sharply cut off by the gnash of his teeth as he hauled himself up, from knees to feet in unsteady movements.
"Fucking do it, Moony." Neither of them were going to bring James back.
Peter didn't know whether it was to his credit or not that he could only remain where he was, paralysed by both fear and a deep-seated sense of vindication. Not only for James's death, but for all those years of being reminded of his place.
Look where you are now, Sirius Black.
The scent of pain and sweat, salt, bile, and iron, was too intoxicating to just end now. The high frequencies of agony, the rapid thudding heart--
"It's not going to be that easy, you bastard." Remus pitched his wand away, uncaring of whether he should ever see it again, and lunged at Sirius.
Reflex took over, a lifetime of scraps and fighting out of sheer frustration -- here, now, however, Sirius was acutely aware that he was fighting for his life, worthless thing that it was. But as he stepped forward to meet Remus' rush, to welcome the impact with the brace of his own body, he heard himself bite out the words that then rendered the fight in him meaningless: "I'm sorry. I'm sorry! James, I'm so --"
There was a sear of orange light meant to pry the two men (boys) apart, then a bellow.
"ENOUGH."
Alastor Moody, too late to save the Potters, but just in time -- perhaps -- to stop these stupid, broken children from destroying themselves further.
No sooner had the tips of Remus’s fingers brushed against the bony planes of Sirius’s chest when Moody’s spell nearly blinded him and he found himself propelled backwards, away from the target of all his hate. The frustration of it made him gnash his teeth, savagely clawing against at the magical confinement, even as the light seemed to tighten around him. “I am going to kill you! I’ll kill you!” he snarled at Sirius. Then, as if realising the very chances of this coming to pass were rapidly dwindling by the second, his voice rose in a feverish pitch, nearly slurred in froth and rage, “I’LL KILL YOU!”
Sirius, his own snarl dead in the back of his throat as the spell held him in an equally merciless grip, felt his rage falter as quickly as it had come on. There was no forgiveness for what he'd done, no redemption -- one life for three, and when that life was that of a weak-spined Death Eater who just so happened to possess the same toxic blood that ran through his own veins, the trade off seemed even less.
Remus was right to want to kill him.
Moving within the fetters of the spell was difficult; finding his voice more so. "Let him." Louder, then, for Moody -- "Let him."
Alastor Moody, with the ravages of war seemingly imprinted upon his face, was stonily calm in the face of all this agony. A twitch of his wand would be enough to hold Peter back if he decided to advance, but for now, his attention was on the remains of the house (only debris)... then the two men who had been the Potters' closest friends.
"Lupin, enough." The rage that propelled the normally serene Remus was a thing he would not quickly forget, but he was prepared to wait it out, letting the magic that held him bleed the immediacy of his fury out him. If that didn't work within the next few minutes, he would Stun him. "The Ministry will be here shortly. The Potters?"
Sirius, in a flattened tone: "Dead."
Dead.
As if Sirius had uttered a spell himself, the decisive word seemed to cut the strings of fury from Remus's limbs, leaving only a devastating sense of loss in its wake. He wiped the corner of his mouth with a shaking hand, unable to tear his gaze away from his former friend, who was so calm, so unfeeling, so distant from what he had done. But then, Sirus was never one to ever fully grasp the consequences of his actions.
"And Sirius was the Potter's Secret Keeper," Peter said in a tone of accusal, seeming to have gathered his courage now that the threat of bodily harm was over. He threw Sirius a heated glare before turning imploring, watery eyes at Moody. "I--I saw him. With his cousins and brother. He never sees me."
Sirius, his gaze locked with Remus', was deaf to Peter's thinly whined accusations.
But Moody, all brisk, militant efficiency even in the face of tragedy, turned on Peter with a furrow of his brow and a cutting gaze. "You saw them? Where did you see them, Pettigrew? Lestrange? Regulus? TALK."
With the full force of Moody's focus on him, Peter felt like sinking into one of the large, deep cracks in the earth. He gulped audibly and seemed to fold in on himself. He tentatively stepped closer to Moody. "I...Sirius had been acting so strange these last few months." Which wouldn't be so difficult for other Order members to believe. "Drinking a lot. He was so angry. I was afraid. He would disappear for lengths of time and wouldn't tell us where he was going. I was suspicious."
Gradually, his wavering voice dipped lower and lower, until one had to strain to hear him. "I followed him a few times. He didn't see me. He was meeting Regulus in secret. And...and just now, tonight. It was...it was more than just Regulus. It was...it was...You-Know-Who."
As Peter began to speak, Sirius strained to hear, pushing against the hold Moody’s spell had on him. If James and Lily had survived, perhaps Pete’s confession would have had a different effect on him, but Lily was dead, James was dead, and Sirius couldn’t think of a world in which he would want to exist without James in it. As Wormtail’s voice dropped, Sirius could feel his pulse rise with every word, deafening him, blinding him, robbing him of reason in much the same way Remus had been, not minutes before.
“-- they’re dead, Moody, they’re dead, and it’s my fucking fault!” His hands scrambled at binds he couldn’t see, couldn’t feel for all that they held him in place, his feet leaving tracks in the dirt and soot as he fought. “It’s done. I did it and it’s done, please--”
“Stupefy!”
And as Sirius crumpled to the ground, Moody turned back to Remus, his artificial eye swinging wildly to keep Peter in its grip. “You two need to leave. Now.”
When his magical bonds loosened and then dissipated altogether, Remus nearly slumped to the ground, saved only from Peter's quick stumble to his side. He hesitated, staring at Sirius's crumpled form, where even unconsciousness did not ease the deep guilty lines from his face.
It hurt to just leave all the bodies of his friends behind, knowing he would never see them again.
Blinking back the sudden heat in his eyes, he turned his head towards the wreckage. "I'm sorry I failed you," he whispered. "I'm so, so sorry."
Sensing that if he didn't take Remus away now, the man would never leave, Peter tightened his hold around him and gave Moody a quick nod. Then, with a last glance to Sirius that was equal parts contempt and smug, Peter Apparated his last remaining friend away.