Silver Bullets // Wolfstar AU

MILK MOON WAXES

April 26th 1979

THE EXHIBITION ROOM

They'd told Remus that he had some guests coming. There had been a suspicious glare behind Moody's eye. There had been a nervous tremor in Dumbledore's hand. Sirius had bitten his lip and looked away.

Remus sat, as he had not done in a while, on the bed, leant over, head in hands.

Guest. The word left an awful lot to be imagined. The phantom of Greyback's words came back to him; "When you want to know about wizarding society, look no further than the executioner standing behind you, gun loaded with silver bullets, barrel pointed at your head," the Alpha had growled when he'd caught Doc teaching about wizarding life to some of the younger ones. Remus had been young then-young and still terrified-and the words had never left his head.

In Remus's head, the man stood behind him, breathing into his ear, then pausing to let him hear the click of the safety. The gun, cold against the back of his head, where the neck joined the skull. The bullet, lodging in his brain with a spurt of blood and an earsplitting shot.

He flinched when a gust of wind blew through the open window and brushed against his throat.

Surely Sirius could never let that happen? Surely after everything recently...?

But no. It was only sex (good sex-Remus could take control, could be the one with the reins for once, could feel the shape of the other man below him rather than above). To Sirius, Remus was nothing but a werewolf and an easy shag. A dead werewolf was not something to cry over. A shag was not something to cry over. Sirius, with his cheekbones and his hair and his blinding smile, could easily find someone else.

"Remus?" came a voice from outside. Sirius.

He didn't reply, preferring to watch the door in silence.

"Here we are."

Three sets of footsteps outside. The door pushed open slowly, tentatively.

A woman and a man, followed by Sirius, came in, looking at Remus in shock as if they'd never seen anything like him before.

Certainly not executioners.

He raised a questioning eyebrow.

"Remus," the woman breathed. The man continued to stare, mouth hanging open, eyes wide.

The werewolf frowned. "Who are you?"

They looked stumped at this question. The man opened his mouth wider, as if to speak, and closed it again. The woman's shoulders drooped.

"Who are you?" Remus repeated, more forcefully this time.

"We're..." the man sighed. "Remus, we're you're parents."

He stilled. With all the possibilities he had considered and despaired about, he had never once considered this.

He drank in the long nose of the man-his father-and the round lips of the woman-his mother. Despite his strength, he'd inherited a gauntness from his father, who was tall and long-limbed. His eyes were the same shape, his chin the same angle. His mother had curls as tight as his own, though darker, and there were dimples on her cheeks as she broke into a smile-dimples which he had always hated on himself, but made the woman have the same cosy, enticing feel as a crackling fireplace or a particularly fluffy sofa.