October 30, 1993
The only sounds in the dusty house, amid broken furniture and forgotten rooms, aside from the settling eaves and rattling windows covered in slats of splintered wood, was the gasping heaves of the short man kneeling on the floor.
“Please—" his dirty hands clutched uselessly at his own knees, nails scraping along the grimy worn fabric. “You don’t— you don’t have to do this.”
“And you didn’t have to sell out your friends.” Remus’s voice was measured, calm. It didn’t betray the riot of consuming feelings that threatened to undo the last of his frayed self control. He was barely holding himself upright, unravelling as he had been for the better part of a decade, now.
“But— but he was taking over everywhere!” Peter’s justification fell on deaf ears. “There was nothing to be gained from—"
“NOTHING TO BE G—” Sirius’s voice boomed suddenly as he took a stomping step forward with a raised hand and a crackle of magic, ready to throttle Peter.
Remus, feeling the static of an impending lightening strike building in the room, reached out to wrap his fingers around Sirius’s cut and bloodied hand.
“Not yet.” He reminded him in a quiet, even voice that didn’t match the simmering rage in his gut at the idea that Peter hadn’t thought standing up to Voldemort hadn’t been a worthwhile endeavour. Saving James and Lily hadn’t been worthwhile.
Remus had already let Sirius drive his fists into Peter far too hard over the course of the evening since capturing him in the forest. He couldn’t afford to lose control now. Not this close to resolution. “Just a bit longer.”
Sirius let out a growl of frustration as he spun around, walking away from the sight of Peter bleeding and sobbing on the floor, pitiful and forlorn. The smell of fear and a suffocating tension, thick and pungent in the air.
Remus watched Sirius with his thin frame and too long hair, his sallow face and haunted eyes, pacing the once grand parlour of the Shrieking Shack in Remus’s baggy clothes. The sight did not endear him to the pathetic wheezing escaping Peter’s throat. He had no empathy left for this person whom he’d once considered a brother when he’d been alone for twelve years because of him.
At the start of term, Remus had, what he thought was a vivid hallucination of Scabbers running across Harry’s lap on the train just after dealing with the dementors. The shock of it had him rooted to the spot and Remus reasoned that the knowledge of Sirius at large, the stress of coming back to the castle, the sheer number of dementors hanging about, and the utterly destabilising experience of seeing James in miniature after so many years had, rightfully, sent him round the twist. Surely.
But not a week later, Remus had caught the Weasley twins out of bed after hours with a shockingly familiar bit of parchment. That night, lost in a moment of wistful nostalgia, he saw two names and two sets of footprints he thought he’d never see moving across the worn and faded page again.
Impossible.
Remus saw Peter’s footsteps somewhere in the dungeons and Sirius’s walking down a 7th floor corridor. He had a split second to make a decision. To tell someone Sirius Black was in the castle. To tell someone that a long dead wizard was wandering about the dungeons.
He hadn’t even thought about what he was doing before tearing off out of his office. Running through the corridors, his oxfords squeaking on the stone floor to the One-Eyed Witch, he felt like he was 16 again. He was surprised how quickly Sirius had moved, slipping out of honey dukes and down the lane, only catching up to him on the edge of Hogsmede, near the caves they used to smoke in as teenagers.
When Sirius had turned to Remus, stone faced and resolutely bitter in the dark cave, his very first words to Remus after twelve years were, “I’d offer you a cup of tea, but I’m afraid all I have are dead rats in here.”
He didn’t defend himself against Remus’s wild-eyed advance, and only a furrowed brow gave away his fear. But once he was within reach Remus had fallen into him, squeezing him hard, afraid to let him go. “I bloody knew you were innocent. I fucking knew it.”
Sirius had wrapped shaking arms around him and choked out a sob of relief.
And, after a lot of crying, they hatched a plan of retribution.
“Please, Moony, talk some sense into your boyfriend, would you?” Peter grovelled with a wavering voice, shuffling forward towards Remus’s scuffed oxfords.
“If you think I would show you more mercy than Sirius would, then you never really knew me at all, did you?” Remus asked flatly. “He was always the forgiving one, Peter. Not me.”
Sirius snorted from across the room. “You’ve always held a grudge like a murder of crows.”
Remus managed a grin and this seemed to tip Peter into another cataplectic fit of tears, hands covering his face, smearing blood and dirt across his skin. Catching Peter tonight without killing him, bringing him here to face his sentence, had taken more self control and cunning than Remus and Sirius had ever had to muster in their lives. And Peter had fought.
Remus’s knuckles were sore and he could feel the paunchy swelling around his left eye, making it difficult to keep fully open. Sirius’s cut lip had bled down his chest, staining the clothes Remus had given him earlier in the year.
“But— but—“ Peter snivelled. “But why didn’t you just kill me in the forest when you caught me? Why are we here?”
“Oh, excellent question, Wormtail.” Remus’s voice had lightened considerably, as if he were teaching a class. Encouraging and engaged. “Pads, would like you like to explain what it is we’re doing here?”
This, it seemed, was enough to halt Sirius’s pacing and he spun on his heel to come stand beside Remus, looking down at Peter with his arms crossed and face severe.
“I mean, I very well could, Moons.” Sirius said in a light voice that didn’t match his visage. “But, I’d rather like to see if Pete, here, can piece it together himself. What do you think?”
“Hm.” Remus hummed in mock consideration. “Interesting idea, Sirius. Yes, I think I’d enjoy that as well. But, before we start, would you mind?” And he handed Sirius his own wand, gesturing to the tunnel door.
Sirius cracked a genuine grin, taking Remus’s wand in hand before turning to the door. Light green ethereal wisps of magic poured out of his wand like smoke as Sirius cast the familiar spell that had kept Remus safely tucked away during every full moon he’d ever spent in the Shrieking Shack.
The spell worked instantly as the air took on an astringent quality. The rattling and creaking of the ancient, dilapidated house was muffled as powerful magic reinforced its boundaries into an impenetrable, immovable fortress.
Peter was stricken by the realisation. Shaking his head, tears and snot ran down his face as he rocked feebly back and forth, begging, “no, no, no, not like this—"
When Sirius tried to hand Remus back his wand he shook his head and Sirius pocketed it. He wouldn’t be needing a wand tonight.
An old grandfather clock ticked loudly in the corner, showing nearly 2:45am.
“It’s poetic, don’t you think?” Sirius asked Remus thoughtfully. “I mean, that the full moon is landing just the day before the twelfth anniversary of their deaths?”
“Very, yes.” Remus agreed.
Sirius had been decidedly concerned, at first, when Remus proposed this utterly unhinged idea. When he told Sirius the sickly satisfying fantasy that had come to him when he realised the full extend of Peter’s betrayal and Sirius’s innocence. Of Harry’s pathetic excuse for a childhood and his neglect.
Sirius was worried that the guilt would eat Remus alive afterwards, that he was doing this somehow to punish himself for his years of survival and freedom. But, in all his life, in all of his fear and worry of hurting other people, other living beings, of wanting to make sure he was safe for everything around him, this was the exception. This was catharsis. This was healing.
Peter’s death would be the anomaly in Remus’s moral compass, and while he didn’t think Lily or James would approve, the blunt reality was that they were dead. So it didn’t matter what they might have thought. They were dead and their death had consequences. They were dead and Remus and Sirius deserved resolution.
During the first war, before it all went to shit, Remus and Sirius struggled to communicate amid all the change. The suspicions and secrecy. The missions. Peter had been a friend they could lean on outside of their relationship. He had been someone everyone could lean on. Remus. Sirius. James. Lily. Marlene. Dorcas. All of them. Peter had drawn them all in with kind words and his stoic presence. And Peter had weaponised this kindness to lull them all into a false sense of security. To gather their secrets and sell them off. To use these secrets as a currency to sow discord and deepen suspicions. To weaken the bonds of trust that could have held them safe in the face of insidious dangers that sought to destroy them.
Sirius had crouched down in front of Peter, at eye level to speak to him. “So, here’s how this is going to work, Wormy.”
Still shaking his head in horror at the reality he found himself in, Peter refused to look at Sirius who kept speaking in a low tone. “In about twenty minutes, give or take, the moon is going to rise.”
“Please—“ Peter cried, coughing and sputtering.
“And you can decide what you’d like to do. You can transform. You can run. You can hide. You can fight. Do whatever you like, actually. But these wards won't come down until the moon sets.”
“You’re going to let him kill me?!” Peter tried to shout, choking on his own words.
Sirius smiled cruelly. “Only if I don’t kill you first.”
“What?” Peter sputtered, terrified, leaning away from Sirius, scooting back to the wall.
“Padfoot’s been living off of rats for months, now, didn’t you know?” Remus offered blandly. “He’s become quite an adept exterminator.”
Sirius stood back up and reached for Remus’s hand.
Rolling his shoulders, Remus tried to stretch the sudden tension from his neck as the moon pulled uncomfortably at his bones before he took Sirius’s hand and squeezed reassuringly. Peter’s violent sobbing faded into the background as Remus closed his eyes and breathed through the roiling discomfort that was gripping him, letting Sirius's hand ground him.
No matter how old he got or how often he did this, his transformation was always deeply unpleasant. But, even so, this was different. This was a kind of excited anticipation he’d never felt for the moon. He was ready this time. Ready to become the monster and let the beast do what it always wanted to do.
Hunt.
The clock struck three with loud, ringing chimes and Peter screamed before completely loosing his head and transforming into Scabbers. Remus and Sirius watched for a moment with mild interest as the rat raced along the baseboards, searching uselessly for an escape, for any little hiding place it could burrow and wait out the impending terrors.
Sirius turned away from the rodent on the floor, the reason their life had been so torn asunder for so long, and faced Remus.
“Ready?” His voice was softer, as were his eyes as he looked into Remus’s face, his hands coming to rest on the sides of his neck, thumbs against his jaw. Scabbers could be heard thudding to the floor after a failed attempt to scurry up tattered velvet hangings.
Remus nodded, bringing their foreheads together, an uncomfortable shudder of the reprising moon running through him. They heard Peter running up the stairs at full speed, tripping several times in his hast. “Are you?”
“I’ve been ready for twelve years.” A faint echoing sound of frantic, tiny teeth on wood carried down the stairs where Remus guessed Peter was trying to chew his way through drywall and out of the magical fortified house.
“When this is done—" Remus paused, suddenly nauseous as he broke out into a cold sweat.
But Sirius continued for him. “You’ll go get Harry, he’ll be waiting in the common room. We’ll meet at the caves, and take the portkey.” Peter, clearly human again, could be heard screaming for help from an upstairs window, banging his fists against the slatted boards.
“What if—” Remus voice cracked, completely ignoring Peter’s pathetic hysteria.
Sirius shushed Remus quietly, “Stop worrying. We’re almost done and then we’ll finally get to be a family. Like we were supposed to be twelve years ago.”
Remus nodded and took a deep breath, nausea welling in him. He wanted to respond, but it was coming for him. The moon was breaking the horizon somewhere off in the distance and his mouth watered uncomfortably. He pushed Sirius away from him and gripped the hem of his sweater to yank it off.
Sirius helped him strip out of his clothes as quickly as possible, trousers dropped down lanky legs and oxfords kicked off unsteady feet, as they heard Peter clattering into what sounded like a wardrobe upstairs. As if a wolf and a hound wouldn’t be able to find vermin amid the mothballs and long forgotten bathrobes.
Turning to leave, to give Remus the privacy he’d always demanded during his transformation, Remus grabbed Sirius’s wrist. This moon was different. Everything was different.
“Stay.” Remus was breathing hard, panting. He wanted Sirius to see him. Wanted nothing but bare honesty between them from here on out.
“Okay.” Sirius grabbed his face and pressed a quick closed lip kiss his to his mouth.
Remus blinked and Sirius was gone.
The great black dog stood at his feet with big eyes and a wagging tail. Remus was brought to his knees with a scream of pain as his bones broke and his skin ripped. A scream that turned into a guttural wolf’s howl drown out the frantic pleading cries of the traitor in the house.
The hound and the wolf greeted one another with a fond familiarity in the old dusty house, stiff tails wiggling and wet noses pressed into thick fur. As the moon took dominion of the horizon the two canines tore off through the house in search of the pungent, irresistible source of fear that permeated the still air. Claws dug deep scratches into wooden floor boards for purchase, pulling themselves towards their quarry with a single minded focus.
Furniture was tossed aside in the hunt, carpets shredded, and drywall smashed to bits. Beneath a large, canopy bed with a broken frame and dusty hangings in the master bedroom, a traitorous rat was finally found.
Its soft body was torn easily in two with little fanfare by the adept jaws of hungry predators, its blood staining the oak floors and white teeth in equal measure.
Somewhere beyond the shimmering wards of the Shrieking Shack a pair of thestrals could be heard nickering in the cold night air, leathery wings stretched wide in the night as they swooped and glided out over the edge of the forest.
The next day, feeling lighter and more certain of their future together, Remus and Sirius stood with a scrawny Harry between them, hands all touching the battered can opener as it glowed blue, pulling them all away towards safety and home they could build together.