The Language of the Body

 

On the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest, Sirius plants his foot firmly in a puddle of mud.  “Oh, fuck,” he nearly shouts, as the mud squelches around his boot, “oh, fuckity fuck.”  He hates the rain, and he hates October, and he hates that all he can do the night of the full moon is stomp across school grounds after hours and hope he doesn’t get caught. 

 

He really hates the blasted sinkhole that has caught his foot and — impertinent thing — refuses to let go.

 

(While he’s on the subject, he also hates his mother, and his father, and Regulus, and Snivellus, and Lily Evans, too, for good measure.  He hates how much homework Slughorn insists on assigning, and he hates that he couldn’t write his Potions essay by the lake this afternoon, as he’d planned, because a large group of first years had gathered there to gawk over the Giant Squid.  He supposes that means he hates first years, too.  Bunch of twits, excited over a few prods from an oversized tentacle.)

 

The mud is suctioning Sirius’s boot, letting out a few glorps and schlups, noises like Peter choking on his toast at breakfast.  A thick, wet, sticky sound that pushes through Sirius’s ears like molasses.  Glancing at the sky, he sees the omnipresent moon, faintly orange and paper thin in the darkening sky.  He wonders how he can hate something so pretty.

 

“Fuck it,” he mutters, pulling his socked foot out of the boot completely, and he turns, dashing back to Hogwarts castle, unable to face the night any longer.

 

*

 

Remus hears his own body.  He can feel each electron orbiting each nucleus, releasing quantum bursts of energy.  Molecules build and buzz within him, pulsating with life and the ability to change.  As the moon ascends, the lines of his body become blurry, inconstant, preparing for the snap of bone and the stretch of sinew.

 

He is not alone.  The words drum against his veins and arteries in staccato beats.   I am not alone.  I — am — not — alone.

 

It isn’t a comfort:  His companion is the Wolf.

 

The milk he drank with lunch curdles in his stomach.

 

I am not alone.

 

It’s almost time, his deflating lungs tell him.  He undresses — fingertips and eyes equally careful to avoid the naked pink-brown lines of scars — knowing that his clothes will be ripped or at least strewn across the floor by morning, no matter what place in this room he might think to hide them.  He folds them neatly anyway and pushes them under the bed, pretending it isn’t his hope lining the creases, instead of just cloth and dust and sticky scent of sweat telling him that I am not alone.

 

He sits cross-legged on the floor, and waits.

 

*

 

Morning dawns wetly, with a light sprinkling that quickly turns into a full-blown thunderstorm.  Remus wakes in the hospital wing, a headache pounding at the back of his eyes.  He is glad to find that he can’t quite understand the message the pain is attempting to relay.

 

The language of his body has been forgotten, the Rosetta Stone coiled within him dormant for another month.  He takes comfort in the simplicity of his humanity, and falls back asleep to the untranslated sound of his own breathing.

 

*

 

“Hello, Sirius,” Remus says upon waking, a little rasp in his voice.  He blinks again, and the other two, just behind Sirius, become clear.  “Peter.  James,” he adds apologetically.  “What time is it?”

 

“Half two,” supplies Peter with a smile.

 

A vertical line is folded down James’s forehead, the valley of skin very much like the worry molded into Remus’s father’s face.  “Are you alright?  Was it bad?” he asks.

 

“No worse than usual,” Remus says.  “Nothing to be too concerned over.”  He admits, “My face hurts a little.”  His cheek stings with whatever potion Madame Pomfrey applied.

 

“New scar,” is James’s terse reply.

 

Remus’s fingers jump instinctively to the wound, as if he can feel out just how terrible it looks.  The truth is that he doesn’t feel anything, except a hard, bumpy line across his left cheek, serrated like the edge of a knife.  “It seems I’ve ruined my chances as Mr. October in Witch Weekly’s annual Most Eligible Bachelor calendar,” he jokes weakly, drawing up the corner of his mouth into an almost-smile.  His hand lingers over the fresh mark.

 

“I was worried,” Sirius announces suddenly in a loud voice that is sure to have Madame Pomfrey come running if she’s anywhere in earshot.  His face goes a light shade of pink.  “Just so you know,” he continues, now speaking instead of bellowing, “I was really, really worried.  And I lost one of my wellies.”

 

“You’re always really, really worried,” admonishes Remus, shaking his head.  He can still remember just after Sirius first found out, and his panicked insistence that he would help Remus, of course he would, no matter what.  He would find a cure, whatever it took.  Remus remembers desperately begging Sirius not to make extravagant promises — promises his parents had driven themselves to poverty by making.

 

Remus puts his hands in his lap and grins up at Sirius.  “This bit about your wellies is new, though.”

 

 “I just bought them this summer,” he begins, inordinately proud, “when I was shopping with James in London.  They were wicked, weren’t they, James?”

 

“Oh, yes.”

Remus notices James rolling his eyes as Peter stifles his giggles behind his pink, freckled hands.

 

“A huge Muggle trend right now,” Sirius explains, but the smugness is fading from his face.  Apparently he too can sense the impending doom.

 

“Certainly,” says Peter.

 

“All the rage,” adds James.

 

Remus asks, carefully neutral, “What did they look like?”

 

But Sirius has cottoned on, and he has turned to glare hard at James.  “You bastard,” he grumbles.  “Four-eyed, monkey-haired—”

 

“They were pink,” James says, batting Sirius out of the way as he addresses Remus.  “Bright pink, sort of like the color of Sirius’s face right now.  Yeah, just about that shade.”

A funny half-breath pushes through his lips, though Remus tells himself it’s debatable whether it’s laughter or not.  If Sirius asks, he’ll say not.

Peter bursts out, “And they had flowers!” just as Sirius shouts, “Fuck you!  You’re . . . un-Marauderic.  Rotten bastards, the both of you.”

Sirius spends a good twenty seconds staring furiously at his friends, and then he raises his arm with a flourish and points.  His finger is absurdly straight.  “Out of my sight.  Go think about what you’ve done.”

 

Doubled over with laughter, James and Peter exit, banging into the doorframe on their way out, and Sirius turns back to Remus.  Sirius seems caught between amusement and defensiveness, eventually opting for silence.

 

Remus sees Sirius looking at the new scar, dark eyes following the puckered path down his face to the corner of his mouth.  “Un-Marauderic?” asks Remus, touching his face nervously.

 

“Like unpatriotic,” Sirius elaborates, making wide, indistinct gestures with his arms.  His eyes remain on the scar.  “Only several times more horrendous a crime.”

 

Remus smiles.  It is not the first time Sirius has made up a word.  “Ah, I see,” he says, nodding.  “Your genius continues to leave me in awe.”

 

“Ha ha,” Sirius bites out, sarcastic, and Remus doesn’t bother to tell him that he wasn’t completely joking.

 

“Though, Sirius, I really am sorry to have never seen your wellies.  They sound magnificent.”

 

Sirius groans.  “Stuff it, please.”

 

“Perhaps we ought to set up a search party to locate it,” continues Remus blithely.  There is something refreshing about this dynamic, him teasing Sirius, when it is so often the other way around.  “Missing:  one pink rain boot, decorated with flowers.  A reward is being offered for information, and—”

 

“Moony, stuff it, will you?”  There is a sharp edge to Sirius’s words, and Remus loses his voice.  “Look, I — I really was worried last night, you know.”

                                                                                                                     

There is something quiet and new blooming between the two boys, firmly rooted in either stomach.  Remus can see the creeping vines in the backs of Sirius’s eyes.

 

“I know,” Remus says, the words budding from his lips.

 

Sirius brushes Remus’s hairline with his fingertips, and Remus doesn’t need to be on the brink of madness to know what it means:

 

You are not alone.

 

Fin.