The Marauders: Year Four

Black Ashes

Black Ashes

Sirius Black woke in the middle of the night, sweat pouring over his neck and chest. Sirius had been having another of The Dreams. He'd begun thinking of The Dreams with capital letters when he'd realized that it had recurred several times in a week... but the longer he was away from Hogwarts and the other boys, the longer he was stuck here at Number 12 Grimmauld Place, the closer it had become to recurring every single night.

Sometimes, like now, twice.

The thing about The Dream was that it wasn't a bad dream, exactly, at least not all of it. In fact, in the dream, just before he would wake up in a panic, he was very, very happy. It was just that the moment he realized it in the dream, he would wake up, and panic would fill him up...

The Dream started the same way every time - with him running away from something that was chasing after him, something unseen... But he would be running and running and suddenly he would remember that it was a wolf he was running from. But he wasn't afraid of the wolf anymore, he realized, and he would stop and turn back and Remus would be laying there on the ground on his back, eyes closed, jaw slack... Panicked that one of the spells he'd been shooting over his shoulder as he ran had struck him, Sirius would run back to him and shake Remus, begging him to wake up, and he wouldn't. So Sirius would bend down and try to do muggle resuscitation, pressing his mouth onto Remus's mouth very hard and desperately...and tasting his lips... Remus's mouth always tasted a bit like chocolate and something almost minty - he guessed this was the aconite leaves that Rey had taken to chewing at Veigler's recommendation... Then suddenly the feeling of being chased was gone and they were just two boys on the floor of a forest, amongst the bracken and the leaves, and suddenly Remus's mouth was moving against Sirius's as he did the resuscitation. But it wasn't a resuscitation any longer - Remus was no longer in trouble but awake and aware - so instead it was really kissing. Remus's hands were up in Sirius's hair and there was a great deal of tangled limbs and Remus would lean forward and suddenly Sirius would be on his back, staring up at him, and the world would go all fuzzy so that it was only Remus that he could see. Remus would lean closer and his mouth would open and Sirius would open his too and they'd kiss and Remus's body weight would press against Sirius and he'd feel safe, despite Number 12, despite all the fears he kept buried deep inside himself everyday. Because Rey was there and if Rey was there then everything was alright. And for the briefest of moments, as Remus Lupin's mouth traveled to Sirius's neck, he would be truly, blissfully, absolutely happy. In his dream, he would even go so far as to groan with pleasure and he would run his hands up Remus's arms to his shoulders... and Sirius would tilt his head back to give Remus access to this throat... surrendering completely to his Moony and Remus would kiss him gently, softly, right above his jugular and... and then Sirius would wake up in his own bed, sweating and choking for air, panicked and sick to his stomach.

Sirius rolled over and pressed his face into the pillows.

He wished he'd brought his Divination book home with him. But since they hadn't had the subject in some time, ever since Cassandra Vablatsky had been poisoned, it had been kicked under his bed back at the dormitory in Gryffindor tower and forgotten. No doubt, that's where it was now, unless some house elf had found it cleaning the dorms over the summer and moved it onto the little bookshelf in the boys' room. Either way, the book was at Hogwarts and Sirius was not. But he would've liked to know what the meaning of the dream was, for surely it couldn't possibly mean what it seemed on the face of it...

Could it?

He stared up at the ceiling and the moonlight cutting across the bedroom, reflecting on the posters of muggle motorbikes and half-dressed muggle women that he'd spent a good deal of the last month of term tearing from old muggle magazines at the Hogwarts library, just to bring them home and stick up about his room with permanent sticking charms. The motorbikes and half-dressed muggle women were what he'd picked out of the magazines because that's what turned him on, he told himself. And it was true. At least about the motorbikes. But there was something indecent about the pictures of the muggle women, something unnerving that he didn't particularly like. He'd told himself it was because the photographs didn't move and frozen solid people in photographs were unnerving in general (it's creepy when a person doesn't blink, after all). The motorbikes filled Sirius with adrenaline.