What sealed it all was that it was going according to plan.
It was what Sirius could hold on to every time another curse hit him. Every time his own voice echoed in his ears and his throat hurt, raw from thirst and endless screaming. It was all going according to plan.
They were still trying to get the secret out of him. No one would ever suspect Peter. As long as Sirius was being tortured, as long as he held out, James's family was safe. Harry was safe.
It was not a thought that lent itself to hope in a conventional sense. Sirius was not hoping for rescue, he knew there was none coming. He had the vague thought that one day it would be over and he would be dead, and the secret would stay safe. He had been ready to die for the cause ever since the war had begun and now he had to live and suffer for the cause. Although in his mind it was less abstract than that. In his mind he remembered the last time he'd held Harry in his arms, the feeling of his tiny fist around his hair and how strong that little baby could already tug. He remembered Lily's laughter and James's smile and Peter's nervous chuckle and the vague notion that there should be peace for them one day. Sirius didn't think he was meant for peace. This role he'd chosen suited him.
He had no idea how much time had passed since he had been captured. They only gave him water and food when absolutely necessary, only healed him when he came close to dying. Maybe it had been weeks. Perhaps months. Any day he held out was a victory for his side and that thought alone kept his will from breaking. He was too proud and stubborn to allow for anything else.
The cell he was in had no windows, only iron rings in stone walls, one of which he was shackled to by the cuffs around his wrists. When he was left alone he was slumped over, huddled against the wall, legs drawn in against the chill damp in the air and to feel less vulnerable. His shirt had long since been torn to shreds by various curses, he was half naked with wounds all over his body, some fresher, other starting to scab over. No permanent damage, never that. It wasn't necessary. Sirius knew from school holidays at home that magic allowed for so many ways to punish someone that would end up not leaving a mark.
His hair was filthy, the way he'd have never let it get, hanging before his eyes and sticking to his face. They all really liked grabbing him by the hair and almost pulling his scalp off, going by how it felt. Sirius had never been tempted to shave his head as much as now.
He wouldn't really do it. He remembered complaining and joking about it once. Not too long after school, when they'd been by the sea and all the sand had gotten in his hair and it had been a pain to wash out, with magic not being much help. Lily had been pregnant at the time, James was preoccupied with tending to her and Peter had been ready to cut it right then and there, declaring that it'd only be fair to even the ground and give other blokes more of a shot. Then Remus had protested and it had somehow ended in Remus combing his hair out, which was the kind of memory that filled his stomach with butterflies while his chest got too tight.
There were many such memories with Remus. In school, plenty. After school, less and less, because the war was there. That spectre that kept him from saying what he maybe should have said to Remus, as his own inevitably painful death was taking on more concrete form and as the boy, the man he knew as Remus became less tangible with every day, as they both had to shoulder burdens they couldn't explain to each other. Different paths and friends could look at each other and discover that circumstances beyond their control had made them uneasy strangers. The memories remained, however, and chained up in his cell without any hope of ever being free again, memories had begun to feel more real than anything else.
Not that far from where he was kept, only a few floors above in the manor of some Death Eater - wearing a mask, of course - greetings were extended to new arrivals. Wary greetings, because no wizard trusted werewolves. A senior pack member had come in with Remus Lupin, looking at the Death Eater with barely concealed hatred. Nothing unusual there either.
"Took you longer than expected," the Death Eater remarked, looking them both up and down, hand hovering near his wand.
"We don't just come when you whistle."
"Not in a speedy manner, at least." Turning to look at Remus, the masked man gave a nod. "You will do."
There was a routine to how these things were conducted, Remus had found. First, they would receive a summons requesting particular pack members and including an address or set of coordinates. The summoned pack members were to arrive at the requisite location and be assigned their mission. Then would come the mission itself. Often it wasn't a violent act: it didn't have to be. They would simply make an appearance, at a place of work or a home - sometimes they would stop to talk with certain people, and sometimes they would simply place themselves nearby, seeing and being seen. That alone was usually enough: they would leave, and the people that they had so casually visited would no longer act in opposition to the Death Eaters.
But sometimes, their assigned missions took a bit longer. Sometimes one appearance by a group of werewolves caused people to panic and try to flee the country, or, occasionally, to turn into solid, stubborn steel at the thought of a bunch of Dark wizards and their bestial enforcers trying to coerce them. That was when the mission would become interesting to most of the pack. There might be more visits, escalating up from coercion to compulsion. There might be a hunt, a chase across the country or to places more distant. There might be ultimatums left outside of a window or slid under a bedroom door. And, in the rarest cases, there might be a full moon night during which they would have to use violence.
So far, Remus hadn't witnessed any of those rarest of cases. But with every summons, he dreaded that he might.
So it was with a sense of apprehension that was becoming quite familiar to him that he accompanied Burrett, one of Greyback's lieutenants, to the sprawling rural estate that had been named as their meeting place. He did not know if he had been summoned personally, or if Burrett had simply been commanded to take a junior pack member with her and had chosen him on a whim. But as they entered the manor house through the discreet servants' entrance and were immediately met by a masked and hooded Death Eater who turned his attention directly to him, some primeval sense in his hindbrain was beginning to clamor: Something is wrong and things are not as they should be. Something terrible is about to happen, danger is ahead, danger is ahead.
But this was not a time to panic, he knew. His instincts were not going to help him in this situation: he must depend instead on his rational mind. The Death Eaters wanted him for something, and it was part of his mission, his real mission, to find out what it was.
Without blinking, he nodded at the Death Eater before him. "What is it you need?"
"You'll see. Downstairs." The Death Eater clearly didn't intend to make much small talk with the werewolves. Instead the hooded figure turned and headed for a door which did indeed lead to a staircase. They walked down the stairs in silence, finally reaching another set of doors and ending up somewhere that could really only be described as a dungeon.
As they walked down a dark hallway, the werewolf with Remus sniffed. The scent of blood in the air, definitely. She didn't know that it was the blood of Sirius Black, having no prior interaction with him, but it was fresh. Live prey.
"The prisoner is to stay alive," the Death Eater finally explained, as he stopped by a door, "He has valuable information. Crucial for ending the war. We were hoping you could help persuade us."
With that, he unlocked the door and walked through first. Sirius's hands tightened around the chains that held him to the ring in the wall and he used that grip to make himself sit up, to lift his head. He was exhausted and he looked it, but his stubbornness wouldn't allow for him to not meet any of these bastards with his head held high as long as he could at all manage it.
"I was beginning to feel lonely," he quipped, his voice hoarse and tired. He couldn't see past the Death Eater yet, though clearly the man hadn't come alone.
Downstairs? Remus thought. What could they want with us there? He stole a glance at Burrett out of the corner of his eye as their Death Eater contact turned away, half expecting her to question this unfamiliar procedure. But the senior werewolf neither spoke nor hesitated; perhaps she'd received orders like this before. Well, he could hardly refuse now. With a rising sense of apprehension, he followed their guide.
As they descended the staircase into the lower recesses of the house, the feeling began to rise in his chest, subtly but inexorably: a dawning fear, a slow dread of what lay before him. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck was beginning to rise; his skin pebbled in goosebumps and his breathing quickened. For a few seconds he could not pinpoint the source of this mounting dread, could not understand what his sharpened senses were trying to tell him. Then he heard the soft, deliberate intake of breath from Burrett just ahead of him, and all at once the source became obvious, unmissable: the smell of blood, wafting in faint currents in the air. Iron, rich, freshly-spilled and cloying in his nostrils and the back of his throat. And... something else, something familiar, like sweat and living, vital heat...
His heart froze like a stunned creature within the vault of his ribcage. He nearly stumbled; grabbed at the stone wall beside him for balance. Sirius?
For a taught, sparking livewire moment, he could not move, could not breathe. Then his heart exploded into frantic action. A wave of heat cascaded through his limbs as the blood rushed from his head and torso and into his extremities, his nervous system falling back on its ancient autonomic response to fear: fight, or flee. His ears were filled with a hollow rushing noise, his vision swam dizzily, making the flagstone floor below him rush upward; the small muscles in his fingers spasmed tight as he clutched at the wall, fingernails making a faint rasping noise against the rough granite while he fought to keep from falling to the ground.
They were headed down to a dungeon, and Sirius was inside of it.
Eyes stinging, he raised his head and looked up, into the barrel of the dim hallway still before him. In the foreground of his view was the shadowed back of Burrett's cloak, receding ahead of him: his whole violent reaction, from the first whiff of familiar blood, had only taken enough time for her to walk a few steps ahead of him. If he gave her another second, she'd look back and notice him holding onto the wall like he'd just been kicked in the chest by a horse.
No, no. He couldn't let that happen. He couldn't allow her to doubt him now. He took a deliberate breath, freeing up his frozen lungs; pushed himself off the wall and stood up straight. Schooled his face, willed his racing heart to slow. Then he began walking again.
In the same fraction of a second, Burrett glanced behind her and gave a small scowl. "Hurry up," she mouthed.
By the time they finally reached the end of the hallway and approached the last door on the left, Remus's face was a smooth, neutral blank again. His shoulders were relaxed, his arms loose by his sides. When the Death Eater turned to address them, he would see only the faces of his two enforcers, indifferent to their environment but willing to do as they were ordered.
Persuade, he said. Remus allowed his mind to reach into the deep well of his assumed identity, the affect and attitude of one of Fenrir Greyback's pack members. He raised a sardonic eyebrow.
"Why call on us for that?" he asked. "Keeping people alive is your specialty, not ours."
Unconsciously, he braced for a reprimanding look from Burrett. But she seemed in no mood to disagree with him: she was examining her nails with the haughty air of one who does not plan to buckle down and get to work without a good reason.
"Unless you want him to answer your questions solely in a series of barks, yips, and growls," she said, "we're the wrong tools for the job."
Within the shadowed eyeholes of the mask, Remus could just see the Death Eater's eyes narrow. Although no mouth was visible, he was certain the Death Eater was smirking.
"Not you," he said, one gloved hand making a dismissive gesture toward Burrett. He turned his head instead toward Remus and pointed. "You, alone. We believe the prisoner knows you well."
Despite the sweat sticking his clothing to his skin, Remus could feel a wave of cold washing from his head to the tips of his fingers and toes. They know. They know who we are to each other, and they know he has the secret.
He stepped into the cell behind the Death Eater. In here, the smell of blood was a thousand times stronger, not an occasional whiff of iron on the air but a solid, three-dimensional map of scent, swimming and swarming in the close atmosphere. There was a splatter of it near the right wall, dry and stale; a fresher fine spray across the center of the room; a thick, dense puddle of it in the corner. And there, against the back wall, was the source of the smell, strongest of all, mixed with the less all-encompassing scents of sweat and bile and filth and hair and vital living flesh: Sirius.
For all that he was easy to identify by smell, by sight he was no more than a lump of deeper darkness in the dark room - but it was clear that he was connected to the wall by chains, and that most of his body was curled up, crumpled on the floor. Remus blinked hard and swallowed with difficulty as his stomach turned, threatening to be sick.
He moved slowly forward, approaching that crumpled shape behind the Death Eater. As he did, he could see the shape stir, unfold, and then sit up. He could hear the clink of chains, the drag of exhausted limbs. As Sirius lifted his head and the narrow beam of light from the outside hall illuminated his features, Remus could see him clearly: gaunt, raw-boned, fish belly pale with bruised eye sockets and sunken cheeks. His hair fell in matted, felted hanks that stuck to the sides of his face; every crease, scar and faint wrinkle of skin was outlined in dark residue, the remains of dried blood. Here and there, the skin was split open in wounds like rifts and fissures, unclean and patchy with scab tissue. Almost unrecognizable -
Except the eyes. The eyes were still Sirius's, alert and lucid, fever-bright and glinting with stubborn defiance. Not far below them, the thin, parched and bleeding lips parted to reveal teeth like a set of bloodstained blades and files. When he spoke, it was in a voice that was gravelly and exhausted, but familiar enough to shatter Remus's heart.
"Yes, he knows me," Remus said quietly, in a voice that did not shake. And it was true, Sirius would know who he was now, even though the light from the hallway was at his back and his features were obscured in shadow. His voice hadn't changed, even if his tone had. He stepped to the side, out of the light entirely, moving in an oblique half-circle around the side of the room so that he could face Sirius directly without the Death Eater between them.
"You lot have done a poor job with him, haven't you?" he continued. "Did it never occur to you that beating him just strengthens his resolve? No wonder they called me in."
"Do not -" the Death Eater began, but Remus turned his head abruptly towards him and pointed back toward the door, his expression arrogant and disdainful.
"Out," he commanded. "Leave him to me. I know how to break him."
"Moony..." Sirius mumbled it to himself under his breath, an automatic response to the familiar presence. Oh, he recognised him by his voice, by his stance, by every single feature he could barely make out in the dim light. They'd spent entirely too much time together for him to not be intimately familiar with every detail. If it had been quiet enough and they'd been closer, he could have known him even from the sound of his breathing.
Relief didn't set in, however, because he knew there was no relief to come. That wasn't part of the plan, after all. Instead his mind was scrambling to deal with this new circumstance, to know how to react. He peered up at Remus, not acknowledging any other presence, and he would have braced himself if he'd known what to brace himself against. As familiar as he was with Remus, he had never seen him quite like this. Werewolf.
It wasn't a bad look on him, obvious connotations aside. Feral, dangerous. A stark contrast to how he knew him.
Only on the periphery of his mind did he register the other werewolf and the Death Eater exiting the cell. Then he was alone with Remus and he shifted a little, trying to sit more upright.
Clearing his throat, he listened to the door falling shut. "So. How have you been?"
This was Remus Lupin after six months undercover among the werewolf packs: his hair grew long and ragged, reaching unevenly down toward his shoulders in some places and picking up in curls in others, giving him a look that went well past "scruffy" and could better be described as "slovenly;" he was no longer clean-shaven but sported a layer of short, thick brown stubble that - as he had long ago predicted when they'd all started having to shave back at school - grew over his scar tissue in strange, irregular patterns; his eyes were reflecting the dim light from the hallway oddly, so that they were no longer brown but almost yellow, luminous around to his dilated, ever moving pupils; he wore Muggle-style clothing that covered him from neck to ankle, and though it was still mostly drab brown and grey in color, it was threadbare and worn, ragged in a way that no self-respecting wizard would ever wear; his stance, once so understated and perfectly calculated to slip under the radar of people's attention, now conveyed power, dominance, and no wish at all to appear understated. This was not a man, but a werewolf, a predator in a world of so much easy prey.
He stood quite still in the darkness of the cell while his Death Eater guide left the room. He gave no response at all to the muttered, "Just call out when you're done with him," as the heavy door closed behind him, plunging them into complete darkness.
For a moment, there was silence. Remus did not answer Sirius's question, nor move closer to him. The air inside the cell, no longer moving in and out of the open door, was once again going still - the atmosphere was stuffy, contriving to be humid and chilly at the same time.
Then, with a soft scraping sound, there was a small supernova burst of red light and a bursting corona of warmth. A ball of red and yellow flame had appeared in the air between Sirius and Remus, and as it floated slowly to the stone floor and settled there like a flower fallen from a tree, the shadows of the room shifted and Remus was finally striding closer.
"Look at me," he commanded. In the firelight he was holding up four fingers, his thumb folded inwards. "How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Four. I'm exhausted, not imbecile." Sirius looked at Remus, not because he had commanded it but because what else was he going to do? It was a sight for sore eyes, even underneath everything that was unfamiliar. Somewhere down there was still Remus Lupin, the boy whom he had asked all the questions about the muggle world first time they were alone together in their dorm. The boy he had grown up with. The man before him now, who held himself in a way that he didn't know, but that wasn't altogether unbecoming.
There were goose-bumps on his bare skin, now that it was exposed to warmth again for the first time in too long. His eyes stayed on Remus and he got closer to smiling a genuine smile than he had in a long time. "You're looking awfully manly there, Moony. Ain't the worst."
"Shut up," Remus responded at once, as sharply as he could manage. It was hard to look into that bloodstained, exhausted face and see recognition in the eyes, see something like pleasure in the faint quirk of the lips. Sirius was glad to see him, and he was showing it freely, without the natural suspicion that he should be showing to a werewolf who had been brought here to force him to talk. That wasn't something either of them should be doing yet - not until they were certain it was safe.
"Follow my fingertip with your eyes," he continued, folding three fingers down so that Sirius could see only his index finger. "Don't move your head. And what was the name you wanted to give the Giant Squid during our first year at school?"
Sirius, Remus knew, would probably understand what he was doing, at least if he wasn't too addled by his - how long had it been? Weeks? Months? - of imprisonment and torture. This was the same procedure that Madame Pomfrey used to conduct for him when she collected him from the Shrieking Shack after each transformation: a test of eye movement, pupil dilation, the ability to follow simple directions. It was to make sure he hadn't sustained any concussions or other injuries that might affect his brain. Only in this case, instead of asking, "who is the current Minister for Magic?" Remus was asking a question that would tell him if Sirius's responses were being controlled by someone else. Someone who didn't know all of their stupid in-jokes from ten years of friendship.
"Cuddles. Which is a great name for reasons that are threefold." As he had painstakingly explained back then. His eyes were blurry from exhaustion, but the pupils followed Remus's fingertip easily enough.
He knew his guard should be up. However, it did feel good to be im a familiar presence, even knowing that it might get twisted into something awful at any point. As close as he was to the darkest pit of despair right now, even the smallest flicker of something that felt good resonated.
Remus's presence brought more warmth than that spell he had cast that illuminated the cell. "That bird with you looks rough, mate, don't tell me you're seeing her."
It was a tease, accompanied with a hint of a glint in his tired eyes. Humour brought him more strength than hope, he had none of that. "You can do better than that."
At Sirius's unhesitating answer, something in Remus's chest relaxed; he lowered his hand, then let out a long breath that he had not been aware of holding. Yes, that was precisely what he had said back then, when they were all new students at Hogwarts: the Squid's name is Cuddles, for threefold reasons. The mathematical reason, the zoological reason, and the emotional reason - he'd explained each at length. None of it had made much sense then, and it didn't make any more sense now. But that wasn't the point: the point was that no Death Eater would know about that long-ago interaction between four eleven-year-old boys.
Well, now he was satisfied that Sirius was neither suffering from a brain injury nor acting under the influence of the Imperius Curse. He was intact and unharmed - well, unless you counted the fact that he was here, in a Death Eater's dungeon, in the process of being tortured for information.
"You haven't checked whether I am who you think I am," he pointed out, ignoring Sirius's suggestive comments about his companion for the moment. "Go on, ask me a personal question."
Not that he was about to wait for Sirius to be certain of his identity before invading his personal space. Kneeling down on the cold stone floor before his friend, he reached out to grab hold of one manacled wrist.
"Let me feel your pulse," he said. "What hurts the most right now?"
"I know you are who I think you are, you're very recognisable," Sirius muttered, figuring that he probably couldn't ask Remus to simply show his patronus. "What happened with the chocolates I used to get from the girls for Valentine's at school?"
There, that was personal enough. Insider knowledge and the kind of memory that felt bittersweet. But then, there was no memory left these days that didn't have bitterness attached to him.
His eyes followed Remus's actions as he took his pulse, lips quirking up into a smile. Such a practical and caring thing to do. Such a Remus thing to do, in other words. He really had missed him. "I don't know. Everything hurts. I know you know the feeling."
He had witnessed his transformations a few times, after all. "I'm not going to break, Moony. They aren't-- It won't happen. So it's fine. It will be over one day."
"The chocolates that you used to get from the girls for Valentine's were routinely left on the floor of our room, as I recall," Remus answered, his gaze lowered and his brows knit in an expression of deep concentration as he drew the manacle up Sirius's arm and out of the way. "Carelessly abandoned at random, resulting in unsightly clutter and putting us all at risk of tripping and doing ourselves a terrible mischief."
Only then did his eyes flick back up, glancing briefly at Sirius's face before focusing back down on his wrist. Despite the gravity of the situation, a hint of a smile could be seen in the way the corners of his eyes crinkled.
"Whereupon," he concluded, "I selflessly took on the duty of cleaning up the mess by removing the chocolates to a place of safety, where they could put no one in danger..."
As he spoke, the pad of his thumb was gently massaging into the underside of Sirius's wrist, searching until it found a vein. His pronouncement trailed off as he took Sirius's pulse: for a solid thirty seconds he knelt still and silent, eyes unfocused, counting the number of beats. When he let Sirius's wrist go, placing it gently back on the ground, his expression still registered concern.
"I know you won't break," he said, now looking into the exhausted face before him again. "But your body will, sooner or later."
He shook his right arm, as if trying to regain the feeling in a limb that had fallen asleep; his wand slid smoothly down from inside his sleeve until it was resting in his hand.
"Right. Can you sit up a bit straighter for me? Rest your back against the wall. We should have enough time for me to clean up some of these bigger injuries, at least. Then, let's think about to get you out of here."
As Remus recounts what happened to those chocolates, Sirius's eyes close for just a few moments. It's almost as if he can feel himself be transported back, to a time when there had been little to worry about, when he had just been entertained by Remus taking it upon himself to eat his chocolates and sell it as a selfless deed. Especially when Remus would then bitterly complain about feeling sick when he'd eaten too much.
His eyes opened when Remus took a hold of his wrist and there was an uncertain frown. He wet his cracked lips and cleared his throat, doing what he could to force his tired mind to keep up with what was happening.
Sitting as straight as he managed, he looked up at Remus. "Careful, Moony. They know who you are. Who we are. They're not gonna... I don't want you in any more danger than you are already."
Was that selfish? It definitely was. "I can take what they do to me." He trailed off there, the implication clear. He didn't want to have to take them doing anything to Remus.
It was difficult to watch the way Sirius moved here in this dark, lonely cell; it was painful to understand that he had been reduced to moving like this, stiff, slow and uncoordinated, for a long time before this moment. How long had he been stuck here, in pain and without any hope of rescue, knowing that the only way this would ever end was with his death? Sirius was a strong-willed person, Remus knew that better than most people: even so, the effort of will it must have taken for him just to survive to this point was staggering.
It occurred to him somewhere in the back of his mind that Dumbledore - or maybe several members of the Order - must have known what was happening to Sirius. And they hadn't told him. They'd had the ability to get in touch with him, even among the werewolves - he's been summoned by secret Order contact more than once in the past few months - but they'd never told him. Had anyone told James and Lily what was going on? Had they told Peter? Or had it been felt that it was safer to let Sirius endure what he could here alone? He was going to have to think about this later on, and about what it meant. But there was no time now.
"Right, good," he said quietly, steadying Sirius upright against the wall with one hand on his shoulder. He was examining a particularly crusted gash across the right side of Sirius's chest. "Let's start with this cut here."
He glanced up into Sirius's face, his lips pulling back in a brief sympathetic grimace: the light from the magical fire beside them glinted off teeth that were noticeably sharper than usual. "I'm going to have to decontaminate it first, I'm afraid. Tell me if you need a moment and I'll stop, all right?"
There was no need to warn Sirius that decontaminating an injury without using a numbing potion was painful - all of them had performed this procedure for one another at some point in the past couple of years.
As he set to work cleaning the area with a conjured cloth, he finally responded to Sirius's warning. "Yes, it looks like they know who we are," he agreed, looking studiously down at Sirius's chest rather than up into his face. "That's why they called me here in the first place. But I'm not leaving you here, whatever you think you can handle."
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It was what Sirius could hold on to every time another curse hit him. Every time his own voice echoed in his ears and his throat hurt, raw from thirst and endless screaming. It was all going according to plan.
They were still trying to get the secret out of him. No one would ever suspect Peter. As long as Sirius was being tortured, as long as he held out, James's family was safe. Harry was safe.
It was not a thought that lent itself to hope in a conventional sense. Sirius was not hoping for rescue, he knew there was none coming. He had the vague thought that one day it would be over and he would be dead, and the secret would stay safe. He had been ready to die for the cause ever since the war had begun and now he had to live and suffer for the cause. Although in his mind it was less abstract than that. In his mind he remembered the last time he'd held Harry in his arms, the feeling of his tiny fist around his hair and how strong that little baby could already tug. He remembered Lily's laughter and James's smile and Peter's nervous chuckle and the vague notion that there should be peace for them one day. Sirius didn't think he was meant for peace. This role he'd chosen suited him.
He had no idea how much time had passed since he had been captured. They only gave him water and food when absolutely necessary, only healed him when he came close to dying. Maybe it had been weeks. Perhaps months. Any day he held out was a victory for his side and that thought alone kept his will from breaking. He was too proud and stubborn to allow for anything else.
The cell he was in had no windows, only iron rings in stone walls, one of which he was shackled to by the cuffs around his wrists. When he was left alone he was slumped over, huddled against the wall, legs drawn in against the chill damp in the air and to feel less vulnerable. His shirt had long since been torn to shreds by various curses, he was half naked with wounds all over his body, some fresher, other starting to scab over. No permanent damage, never that. It wasn't necessary. Sirius knew from school holidays at home that magic allowed for so many ways to punish someone that would end up not leaving a mark.
His hair was filthy, the way he'd have never let it get, hanging before his eyes and sticking to his face. They all really liked grabbing him by the hair and almost pulling his scalp off, going by how it felt. Sirius had never been tempted to shave his head as much as now.
He wouldn't really do it. He remembered complaining and joking about it once. Not too long after school, when they'd been by the sea and all the sand had gotten in his hair and it had been a pain to wash out, with magic not being much help. Lily had been pregnant at the time, James was preoccupied with tending to her and Peter had been ready to cut it right then and there, declaring that it'd only be fair to even the ground and give other blokes more of a shot. Then Remus had protested and it had somehow ended in Remus combing his hair out, which was the kind of memory that filled his stomach with butterflies while his chest got too tight.
There were many such memories with Remus. In school, plenty. After school, less and less, because the war was there. That spectre that kept him from saying what he maybe should have said to Remus, as his own inevitably painful death was taking on more concrete form and as the boy, the man he knew as Remus became less tangible with every day, as they both had to shoulder burdens they couldn't explain to each other. Different paths and friends could look at each other and discover that circumstances beyond their control had made them uneasy strangers. The memories remained, however, and chained up in his cell without any hope of ever being free again, memories had begun to feel more real than anything else.
Not that far from where he was kept, only a few floors above in the manor of some Death Eater - wearing a mask, of course - greetings were extended to new arrivals. Wary greetings, because no wizard trusted werewolves. A senior pack member had come in with Remus Lupin, looking at the Death Eater with barely concealed hatred. Nothing unusual there either.
"Took you longer than expected," the Death Eater remarked, looking them both up and down, hand hovering near his wand.
"We don't just come when you whistle."
"Not in a speedy manner, at least." Turning to look at Remus, the masked man gave a nod. "You will do."
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But sometimes, their assigned missions took a bit longer. Sometimes one appearance by a group of werewolves caused people to panic and try to flee the country, or, occasionally, to turn into solid, stubborn steel at the thought of a bunch of Dark wizards and their bestial enforcers trying to coerce them. That was when the mission would become interesting to most of the pack. There might be more visits, escalating up from coercion to compulsion. There might be a hunt, a chase across the country or to places more distant. There might be ultimatums left outside of a window or slid under a bedroom door. And, in the rarest cases, there might be a full moon night during which they would have to use violence.
So far, Remus hadn't witnessed any of those rarest of cases. But with every summons, he dreaded that he might.
So it was with a sense of apprehension that was becoming quite familiar to him that he accompanied Burrett, one of Greyback's lieutenants, to the sprawling rural estate that had been named as their meeting place. He did not know if he had been summoned personally, or if Burrett had simply been commanded to take a junior pack member with her and had chosen him on a whim. But as they entered the manor house through the discreet servants' entrance and were immediately met by a masked and hooded Death Eater who turned his attention directly to him, some primeval sense in his hindbrain was beginning to clamor: Something is wrong and things are not as they should be. Something terrible is about to happen, danger is ahead, danger is ahead.
But this was not a time to panic, he knew. His instincts were not going to help him in this situation: he must depend instead on his rational mind. The Death Eaters wanted him for something, and it was part of his mission, his real mission, to find out what it was.
Without blinking, he nodded at the Death Eater before him. "What is it you need?"
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As they walked down a dark hallway, the werewolf with Remus sniffed. The scent of blood in the air, definitely. She didn't know that it was the blood of Sirius Black, having no prior interaction with him, but it was fresh. Live prey.
"The prisoner is to stay alive," the Death Eater finally explained, as he stopped by a door, "He has valuable information. Crucial for ending the war. We were hoping you could help persuade us."
With that, he unlocked the door and walked through first. Sirius's hands tightened around the chains that held him to the ring in the wall and he used that grip to make himself sit up, to lift his head. He was exhausted and he looked it, but his stubbornness wouldn't allow for him to not meet any of these bastards with his head held high as long as he could at all manage it.
"I was beginning to feel lonely," he quipped, his voice hoarse and tired. He couldn't see past the Death Eater yet, though clearly the man hadn't come alone.
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As they descended the staircase into the lower recesses of the house, the feeling began to rise in his chest, subtly but inexorably: a dawning fear, a slow dread of what lay before him. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck was beginning to rise; his skin pebbled in goosebumps and his breathing quickened. For a few seconds he could not pinpoint the source of this mounting dread, could not understand what his sharpened senses were trying to tell him. Then he heard the soft, deliberate intake of breath from Burrett just ahead of him, and all at once the source became obvious, unmissable: the smell of blood, wafting in faint currents in the air. Iron, rich, freshly-spilled and cloying in his nostrils and the back of his throat. And... something else, something familiar, like sweat and living, vital heat...
His heart froze like a stunned creature within the vault of his ribcage. He nearly stumbled; grabbed at the stone wall beside him for balance. Sirius?
For a taught, sparking livewire moment, he could not move, could not breathe. Then his heart exploded into frantic action. A wave of heat cascaded through his limbs as the blood rushed from his head and torso and into his extremities, his nervous system falling back on its ancient autonomic response to fear: fight, or flee. His ears were filled with a hollow rushing noise, his vision swam dizzily, making the flagstone floor below him rush upward; the small muscles in his fingers spasmed tight as he clutched at the wall, fingernails making a faint rasping noise against the rough granite while he fought to keep from falling to the ground.
They were headed down to a dungeon, and Sirius was inside of it.
Eyes stinging, he raised his head and looked up, into the barrel of the dim hallway still before him. In the foreground of his view was the shadowed back of Burrett's cloak, receding ahead of him: his whole violent reaction, from the first whiff of familiar blood, had only taken enough time for her to walk a few steps ahead of him. If he gave her another second, she'd look back and notice him holding onto the wall like he'd just been kicked in the chest by a horse.
No, no. He couldn't let that happen. He couldn't allow her to doubt him now. He took a deliberate breath, freeing up his frozen lungs; pushed himself off the wall and stood up straight. Schooled his face, willed his racing heart to slow. Then he began walking again.
In the same fraction of a second, Burrett glanced behind her and gave a small scowl. "Hurry up," she mouthed.
By the time they finally reached the end of the hallway and approached the last door on the left, Remus's face was a smooth, neutral blank again. His shoulders were relaxed, his arms loose by his sides. When the Death Eater turned to address them, he would see only the faces of his two enforcers, indifferent to their environment but willing to do as they were ordered.
Persuade, he said. Remus allowed his mind to reach into the deep well of his assumed identity, the affect and attitude of one of Fenrir Greyback's pack members. He raised a sardonic eyebrow.
"Why call on us for that?" he asked. "Keeping people alive is your specialty, not ours."
Unconsciously, he braced for a reprimanding look from Burrett. But she seemed in no mood to disagree with him: she was examining her nails with the haughty air of one who does not plan to buckle down and get to work without a good reason.
"Unless you want him to answer your questions solely in a series of barks, yips, and growls," she said, "we're the wrong tools for the job."
Within the shadowed eyeholes of the mask, Remus could just see the Death Eater's eyes narrow. Although no mouth was visible, he was certain the Death Eater was smirking.
"Not you," he said, one gloved hand making a dismissive gesture toward Burrett. He turned his head instead toward Remus and pointed. "You, alone. We believe the prisoner knows you well."
Despite the sweat sticking his clothing to his skin, Remus could feel a wave of cold washing from his head to the tips of his fingers and toes. They know. They know who we are to each other, and they know he has the secret.
He stepped into the cell behind the Death Eater. In here, the smell of blood was a thousand times stronger, not an occasional whiff of iron on the air but a solid, three-dimensional map of scent, swimming and swarming in the close atmosphere. There was a splatter of it near the right wall, dry and stale; a fresher fine spray across the center of the room; a thick, dense puddle of it in the corner. And there, against the back wall, was the source of the smell, strongest of all, mixed with the less all-encompassing scents of sweat and bile and filth and hair and vital living flesh: Sirius.
For all that he was easy to identify by smell, by sight he was no more than a lump of deeper darkness in the dark room - but it was clear that he was connected to the wall by chains, and that most of his body was curled up, crumpled on the floor. Remus blinked hard and swallowed with difficulty as his stomach turned, threatening to be sick.
He moved slowly forward, approaching that crumpled shape behind the Death Eater. As he did, he could see the shape stir, unfold, and then sit up. He could hear the clink of chains, the drag of exhausted limbs. As Sirius lifted his head and the narrow beam of light from the outside hall illuminated his features, Remus could see him clearly: gaunt, raw-boned, fish belly pale with bruised eye sockets and sunken cheeks. His hair fell in matted, felted hanks that stuck to the sides of his face; every crease, scar and faint wrinkle of skin was outlined in dark residue, the remains of dried blood. Here and there, the skin was split open in wounds like rifts and fissures, unclean and patchy with scab tissue. Almost unrecognizable -
Except the eyes. The eyes were still Sirius's, alert and lucid, fever-bright and glinting with stubborn defiance. Not far below them, the thin, parched and bleeding lips parted to reveal teeth like a set of bloodstained blades and files. When he spoke, it was in a voice that was gravelly and exhausted, but familiar enough to shatter Remus's heart.
"Yes, he knows me," Remus said quietly, in a voice that did not shake. And it was true, Sirius would know who he was now, even though the light from the hallway was at his back and his features were obscured in shadow. His voice hadn't changed, even if his tone had. He stepped to the side, out of the light entirely, moving in an oblique half-circle around the side of the room so that he could face Sirius directly without the Death Eater between them.
"You lot have done a poor job with him, haven't you?" he continued. "Did it never occur to you that beating him just strengthens his resolve? No wonder they called me in."
"Do not -" the Death Eater began, but Remus turned his head abruptly towards him and pointed back toward the door, his expression arrogant and disdainful.
"Out," he commanded. "Leave him to me. I know how to break him."
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Relief didn't set in, however, because he knew there was no relief to come. That wasn't part of the plan, after all. Instead his mind was scrambling to deal with this new circumstance, to know how to react. He peered up at Remus, not acknowledging any other presence, and he would have braced himself if he'd known what to brace himself against. As familiar as he was with Remus, he had never seen him quite like this. Werewolf.
It wasn't a bad look on him, obvious connotations aside. Feral, dangerous. A stark contrast to how he knew him.
Only on the periphery of his mind did he register the other werewolf and the Death Eater exiting the cell. Then he was alone with Remus and he shifted a little, trying to sit more upright.
Clearing his throat, he listened to the door falling shut. "So. How have you been?"
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He stood quite still in the darkness of the cell while his Death Eater guide left the room. He gave no response at all to the muttered, "Just call out when you're done with him," as the heavy door closed behind him, plunging them into complete darkness.
For a moment, there was silence. Remus did not answer Sirius's question, nor move closer to him. The air inside the cell, no longer moving in and out of the open door, was once again going still - the atmosphere was stuffy, contriving to be humid and chilly at the same time.
Then, with a soft scraping sound, there was a small supernova burst of red light and a bursting corona of warmth. A ball of red and yellow flame had appeared in the air between Sirius and Remus, and as it floated slowly to the stone floor and settled there like a flower fallen from a tree, the shadows of the room shifted and Remus was finally striding closer.
"Look at me," he commanded. In the firelight he was holding up four fingers, his thumb folded inwards. "How many fingers am I holding up?"
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There were goose-bumps on his bare skin, now that it was exposed to warmth again for the first time in too long. His eyes stayed on Remus and he got closer to smiling a genuine smile than he had in a long time. "You're looking awfully manly there, Moony. Ain't the worst."
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"Follow my fingertip with your eyes," he continued, folding three fingers down so that Sirius could see only his index finger. "Don't move your head. And what was the name you wanted to give the Giant Squid during our first year at school?"
Sirius, Remus knew, would probably understand what he was doing, at least if he wasn't too addled by his - how long had it been? Weeks? Months? - of imprisonment and torture. This was the same procedure that Madame Pomfrey used to conduct for him when she collected him from the Shrieking Shack after each transformation: a test of eye movement, pupil dilation, the ability to follow simple directions. It was to make sure he hadn't sustained any concussions or other injuries that might affect his brain. Only in this case, instead of asking, "who is the current Minister for Magic?" Remus was asking a question that would tell him if Sirius's responses were being controlled by someone else. Someone who didn't know all of their stupid in-jokes from ten years of friendship.
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He knew his guard should be up. However, it did feel good to be im a familiar presence, even knowing that it might get twisted into something awful at any point. As close as he was to the darkest pit of despair right now, even the smallest flicker of something that felt good resonated.
Remus's presence brought more warmth than that spell he had cast that illuminated the cell. "That bird with you looks rough, mate, don't tell me you're seeing her."
It was a tease, accompanied with a hint of a glint in his tired eyes. Humour brought him more strength than hope, he had none of that. "You can do better than that."
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Well, now he was satisfied that Sirius was neither suffering from a brain injury nor acting under the influence of the Imperius Curse. He was intact and unharmed - well, unless you counted the fact that he was here, in a Death Eater's dungeon, in the process of being tortured for information.
"You haven't checked whether I am who you think I am," he pointed out, ignoring Sirius's suggestive comments about his companion for the moment. "Go on, ask me a personal question."
Not that he was about to wait for Sirius to be certain of his identity before invading his personal space. Kneeling down on the cold stone floor before his friend, he reached out to grab hold of one manacled wrist.
"Let me feel your pulse," he said. "What hurts the most right now?"
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There, that was personal enough. Insider knowledge and the kind of memory that felt bittersweet. But then, there was no memory left these days that didn't have bitterness attached to him.
His eyes followed Remus's actions as he took his pulse, lips quirking up into a smile. Such a practical and caring thing to do. Such a Remus thing to do, in other words. He really had missed him. "I don't know. Everything hurts. I know you know the feeling."
He had witnessed his transformations a few times, after all. "I'm not going to break, Moony. They aren't-- It won't happen. So it's fine. It will be over one day."
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Only then did his eyes flick back up, glancing briefly at Sirius's face before focusing back down on his wrist. Despite the gravity of the situation, a hint of a smile could be seen in the way the corners of his eyes crinkled.
"Whereupon," he concluded, "I selflessly took on the duty of cleaning up the mess by removing the chocolates to a place of safety, where they could put no one in danger..."
As he spoke, the pad of his thumb was gently massaging into the underside of Sirius's wrist, searching until it found a vein. His pronouncement trailed off as he took Sirius's pulse: for a solid thirty seconds he knelt still and silent, eyes unfocused, counting the number of beats. When he let Sirius's wrist go, placing it gently back on the ground, his expression still registered concern.
"I know you won't break," he said, now looking into the exhausted face before him again. "But your body will, sooner or later."
He shook his right arm, as if trying to regain the feeling in a limb that had fallen asleep; his wand slid smoothly down from inside his sleeve until it was resting in his hand.
"Right. Can you sit up a bit straighter for me? Rest your back against the wall. We should have enough time for me to clean up some of these bigger injuries, at least. Then, let's think about to get you out of here."
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His eyes opened when Remus took a hold of his wrist and there was an uncertain frown. He wet his cracked lips and cleared his throat, doing what he could to force his tired mind to keep up with what was happening.
Sitting as straight as he managed, he looked up at Remus. "Careful, Moony. They know who you are. Who we are. They're not gonna... I don't want you in any more danger than you are already."
Was that selfish? It definitely was. "I can take what they do to me." He trailed off there, the implication clear. He didn't want to have to take them doing anything to Remus.
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It occurred to him somewhere in the back of his mind that Dumbledore - or maybe several members of the Order - must have known what was happening to Sirius. And they hadn't told him. They'd had the ability to get in touch with him, even among the werewolves - he's been summoned by secret Order contact more than once in the past few months - but they'd never told him. Had anyone told James and Lily what was going on? Had they told Peter? Or had it been felt that it was safer to let Sirius endure what he could here alone? He was going to have to think about this later on, and about what it meant. But there was no time now.
"Right, good," he said quietly, steadying Sirius upright against the wall with one hand on his shoulder. He was examining a particularly crusted gash across the right side of Sirius's chest. "Let's start with this cut here."
He glanced up into Sirius's face, his lips pulling back in a brief sympathetic grimace: the light from the magical fire beside them glinted off teeth that were noticeably sharper than usual. "I'm going to have to decontaminate it first, I'm afraid. Tell me if you need a moment and I'll stop, all right?"
There was no need to warn Sirius that decontaminating an injury without using a numbing potion was painful - all of them had performed this procedure for one another at some point in the past couple of years.
As he set to work cleaning the area with a conjured cloth, he finally responded to Sirius's warning. "Yes, it looks like they know who we are," he agreed, looking studiously down at Sirius's chest rather than up into his face. "That's why they called me here in the first place. But I'm not leaving you here, whatever you think you can handle."