The Letter, Delivered
Bill Weasley woke up to the sound of his two year-old brother crying loudly from across the room they shared. Bill stared at the door expectantly, but their mother didn't come. He pushed his blankets off himself and rolled out of the bed, stooping on the way over to the little crib to pick up the stuffed dragon from the floor that baby Charlie had chucked over the side. Bill jammed the dragon through the rungs of Charlie's bed roughly and Charlie clutched the dragon to his chest, sucking on the toy's tail and quieting. Bill blinked sleepily at his brother -- all that noise for a stuffed dragon! - and suddenly he heard it... Charlie wasn't the only noise echoing through the walls of the Burrow.
"-- HAVEN'T GOT TO BELIEVE ME BUT I KNOW WHAT I SAW ARTY!" Uncle Bilius's voice carried up the stairs, "I'M NOT CRAZY!! I DON'T NEED TO GO TO MUNGO'S!!"
Bill looked to be sure Charlie was going to keep quiet and then he snuck out to the bedroom door, out to the landing of the stairs, which overlooked the dining and kitchen area, where Mrs. and Mr. Weasley stood, Bilius cornered in the kitchen, a funny, wild sort of look in his eyes. Bill inched closer to the stairs carefully.
Mr. Weasley said, "I'm not trying to fight with you, I'm trying to help you, alright? Bilius, the Grim isn't coming for you, you've got to calm yourself down."
Mrs. Weasley nodded.
Bilius's hands shook, "You don't understand, you don't bloody understand. He's come for everyone of my mates, one by one. The grim's brought Death along after him... Derek, and Alex... I've got to be next. I'VE GOT TO BE!"
"Bil... Dumbledore said --"
"He's wrong!! DUMBLEDORE IS WRONG!!!" Bilius cried.
Mr. Weasley held up a palm, "Bilius..."
"WRONG! HE'S WRONG! I don't need any help, I don't need to go to Mungo's. It isn't something I'm making up -- I saw the Grim. I did. And people keep dying about me. I'm jinxed, I'm telling you, I'm jinxed. I'm horrible luck! I've GOT to be next or else everyone's going to just keep on dying! Because of me!"
"Arthur," Mrs. Weasley whispered and she made a face of regret...
Mr. Weasley looked near to tears. He looked on as Bilius Weasley began to throw an absolute fit, tossing things down to the floor, breaking a couple of Mrs. Weasley's trinkets. He nodded. Mrs. Weasley aimed her wand. "Petrificus Totalus," she called and froze Bilius right up as the spell hit him and he toppled over, stiff. Arthur ran forward. "Bilius, I'm sorry," he said to Bilius. It's... it's for your own good..."
Upstairs, Bill backed away from the rungs of the stairs, scared. He backed up so fast he ran into a small table, knocking a family photo that was sitting upon it, framed over and the glass in the front of the frame shattered loudly. Charlie started crying at the sound of it. Mrs. Weasley heard it that time and Bill could hear her on the stairs, coming up in a rush. Not wanting to get caught, Bill made a mad dash for the bedroom, diving into the bed and pulling the covers right over his head as Mrs, Weasley came into the room.
Bill lay very, very still beneath his covers, listening as Mrs. Weasley quieted Charlie down, and he wondered what he'd just seen happening... if Uncle Bilius was alright.
In the Shrieking Shack, the wolf was fully transformed and opened its glowing yellowed eyes. He sniffed the air in confusion at first... then looked up to see the stag. James's antlers were knocking into the rafters as he watched the wolf warily, his hooves clunking on the wood floor as he moved them about nervously, short tail flicking. The wolf watched the stag, just as warily. The stag was just so... impossibly out of place... that it shocked even the werewolf to see it there. James was honking nervously deep in his throat, low and funny sounding and the werewolf tilted his head like a regular dog might, trying to figure out what the sound meant. Sick of banging his antlers on the rafters, James laid down. The werewolf jumped up and backed away, hackles raised, looking at the stag as he lay down, swinging his head side to side, trying to keep them balanced. The motion seemed to make the wolf rather timid.
James honked what he hoped the wolf would take as an apology for scaring him, but the way the werewolf stared at him, it didn't seem to have worked very well.
They spent a good deal of the night like that, staring at each other from across the room, neither daring to look away from the other... Then sometime in the wee hours, the wind began to howl outside and the temperatures turned frigid and the fire was dying in the hearth and the werewolf shivered, his fur much patchier than a normal wolf's fur would be, and therefore much more prone to the cold. James made his funny stag sound again and shifted so there was a space about the size of a wolf against him and he tried to signal for Remus to come and share some of the natural heat that the stag form put off. Hesitantly, the wolf stood... sliding off the couch and walking tentatively over, keeping a careful eye on the antlers... then rushing into the spot and pressing against the stag, burying his cold, wet nose into the thick fur at the neck of the stag.
James lay his head down, too, careful to lay his antlers down (blimey these things are awkward, he thought) and they both finally fell asleep.
Next morning, Remus woke up still nestled against the stag, but in his human form once more. He had one arm up 'round the stag's neck and the other below his own head. It was ice-cold in the shack, he could feel the chill of it behind him, but the stag was warm, nearly hot to the touch, like a hot water bottle. Remus didn't dare move away, afraid of how bloody cold he'd be if he did, so he stayed still, feeling the rise and fall of the stag's chest as he breathed.
James honked in his sleep. Even as a stag, he was snoring. Remus laughed quietly.
He stared up at the shadow the morning sunlight cast of James's antlers against the ceiling and he suddenly was overcome with the realization of how bloody amazing it was, what James had done -- what all three of his mates had done, becoming animagi as they had... for him. He truly had the best friends in all of the world, he realized, and he stared proudly at the silhouette.
All of his life, Remus Lupin had been utterly and horribly without friends - for ten long years, he'd had only his parents, his books, and his imagination. He'd figured out ways to play things like Gobstones and Wizard Chess alone, he'd imagined trees as the dark wizards he was catching when he played at being an Auror in the backyard, and he'd only ever had Hope and Lyall to talk to. How much had Dumbledore changed Remus Lupin's life by allowing him to come to Hogwarts! Remus couldn't help but marvel at the vast and extreme differences between the then and the now. Everything had changed... here he was, just four short years later, with all these amazing friends - Hope and Lyall both gone - everything flipped upside down and about.
The stag stirred and James struggled to balance the antlers as he lifted his head, blinking 'round the room. He looked down and saw Remus.
"Hey," Remus said, "It's morning."
James shifted away and Remus pulled his arm back from around the stag's neck, getting the feeling that it was perhaps making James a bit uncomfortable. Then James turned back to a person. "Morning," he mumbled once he was able to, his voice thick. "Bloody hell it's freezing."
"Yeah. You were sort of our little heater," Remus chuckled.
James rubbed his arms, "Blimey."
Remus stretched, his spine cracking along each vertebrae as he did, stiff from the floor and the night's transformation. James was doing the same and they were both wincing and caught each other's eyes and laughed, "This floor does no wonders for the body, does it?"
"Not at all, but I doubt very much whether that stag of yours would fit on the couch," laughed Remus, "You barely fit in the shack!"
They both looked up at the digs in the rafters were James's antlers had cuffed the wood up.
James grinned. "Yeah, I'm pretty massive as a stag. I like it."
"You're a very nice stag," Remus nodded, "I mean, you're the first stag I've ever seen, but still."
James laughed.
Suddenly the trap door burst open and both boys sat up, turning in a panic to see who was coming in - and the straw-haired head of Peter Pettigrew popped up like a strange Jack-in-the-Box toy. "Peter!" cried James, "What're you doing here?"
"I just - this note - it came - last night," Peter panted, "Couldn't get out here 'til just - just now." He waved the parchment in the air and James got up swiftly heading over to take it out of his hands as Peter pulled himself the rest of the way up into the Shrieking Shack as James shook the parchment open and stared down at the letter, written in Sirius Black's messy scratch of handwriting.
He stared at it, frozen, not sure what to say without sending Remus into a total panic. He looked up at Peter. "Did you read this?" he asked.
Peter flushed, "Well... sort of, yes."
James looked back down at the parchment.
"What is it?" Remus asked, his senses still heightened from being a wolf, he could feel James's anxiety seeping through the air. Whatever that parchment said, it wasn't very good.
James took a deep breath, "Alright. Now don't panic."
"That's the worst thing you can say when you're on the verge of panicking yourself," Remus said.
James walked over and put the parchment down in Remus's lap.
Seeing Sirius's handwriting, Remus grabbed the parchment and smoothed it, reading the hurried note. He looked up, eyes positively popping with panic. "I'm sorry, how am I not supposed to panic over this?" he demanded, looking up at James. "He's practically said good bye! We have to go to save him! We have to go to Grimmauld Place!"
"It says he's left Grimmauld," James pointed out, "And even if, we can't go - Sirius isn't a secret-keeper. EVen if we went, we wouldn't be able to get in."
"No. I don't care. We have to go. I don't care. We have to save him."
Peter looked quite terrified. The last thing he wanted to do was go to another Death Eater's house after what had happened in the last one. He looked at James.
"Rey... he's probably nowhere near Grimmauld. There's no telling where he could be --"
"He could be dead!" Remus said, truly panicking now. "He could be dead on the floor of that horrible place! You-Know-Who could be laughing over his dead body right now." Remus could see it in his mind's eye, could hear it even, and it made his veins go cold.
"I'm sure - I'm sure he's found a way out..." James said, though he didn't sound sure, he sounded just as afraid as Remus did.
"Yeah, Sirius always finds a way," Peter said, relieved that James, too, was against the idea of going to Grimmauld Place.
Remus stared at the parchment, at the way Sirius's letters curved the words tell Moony I love him and he felt his heart break.
Bloody come tell me that yourself, he commanded Sirius silently.