Secret Santa for RiversD - Enough Hippogriff to go Around (HP - Sirius, M) (1/2)

[PetalsAndThorns]

Happy Holidays, and especially Happy New Year RiversD! I am your (no longer) Secret Santa!

I first have to say: 1) I loved writing this. 2) Your current signature is a picture of Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes and this makes me inordinately happy every time I see it.

So I started off initially writing a Lucius Malfoy fic (because he is my guilty pleasure too), and then this bubbled out. With any luck I'll eventually post something Lucius related as well. ^^

This fic is set in the middle of the Order of the Phoenix, just after Sirius hosted the Weasleys, Harry, and Hermione for Christmas. I plan to have probably one more chapter, hopefully out within a week or two. But since I missed posting it on actual Christmas, I wanted to post it on actual New Years Eve. (In my time zone, at least.) This chapter is a bit lighter on the sneezing than I plan for the second chapter.

Part 1

The house was dark when Remus returned. He entered silently and shut the door with just the whisper of a click behind him, mindful of the constantly lurking presence of Walburga Black just behind the tapestries. When a cursory search of the dining room, the kitchen, and the sitting room all came up empty, Remus abandoned the first floor and took to the stairs. He glanced through a few of the newly vacated rooms on his way to the upper levels of 12 Grimmauld place. Hermione’s was swept so neatly clean it was hard to tell anyone had been living in it. Harry and Ron’s room spoke of a more hurried affair. The room Fred and George had been sharing was just as tidy as Hermione’s. Though knowing the two of them, the absolute cleanliness was more concerning than it was comforting.

“Sirius?” Remus came to Sirius’s room last, and knocked lightly on the aging, black door. “It’s me.”

When no response came, Remus ventured a little further.

“Harry, Ron, and Hermione are on the train, safe and sound. Tonks will be spending the night out with Moody. Some new training he wants to run her through from the sound of it. What say we break out the chess and the exploding snap, and pretend it's the 1970s? We’ve already got the blood purist lunatics running around to set the scene.” Remus let the silence sit for a few moments and still no reply came. His voice was softer when he spoke next.

“If you’d like some time alone, I’ll stop pestering you. But could you let me know if you’re in there? I worry. As you know, I was bitten by a high anxiety, middle-aged mother when I was a child, and I haven't been the same since.”

Still no reply.

“I’m going to peak inside now. If you are in there, and you don’t want me to, just make any noise.” Remus waited. And then he nudged the door open a fraction of an inch and peered inside. The window was open, spilling frosty air directly over the bed. The sheets sat in disarray, but aside from that, a desk, and a wardrobe, the room was bare.

Remus let the door fall shut again, his mind already webbing out with possibilities. Could Sirius have left? Gone for a walk while no one was home to stop him? If he had, would he ever be able to convince himself to return? Remus knew Sirius. He would rather die than do anything that he saw as deserting the group. But he had a habit of falling to temptation, and then finding the sides of the pit too slippery to claw himself back out. It was times like these that Remus envied Mrs. Weasley her clock. Just add a hand reading: ‘Off on some harebrained adventure but will probably return will all of the really important appendages still attached’, and it would be perfect.

Remus cut the cascading loop of his paranoia with a well-practiced effort. It wasn’t time to give his mind free reign just yet. Sirius’s room was on the top level of the official house, but there was one level above. Remus found the ceiling panel that lead to the loft, tucked in an out of the way corner of a dead end hallway, and tugged it open. It descended, unfolding a set of badly finished splintering wooden steps, making it clear that no member of the Black family had ever ventured up this passage unless they wore a dishtowel.

The steps creaked beneath his feet as he climbed up. The moment his head crested the opening into the loft, the sweet, biological smell of horse-sweat, feathers, and general hippogriff musk enveloped him. Remus pushed himself the rest of the way through the opening. There was a single window in the loft through which pale winter light streamed, shining in harmony with the white of Buckbeak’s feathers. The hippogriff was curled up against the wall in a small nest of news cuttings. As Remus entered, Buckbeak lifted his head and blinked slowly at him. Remus inclined his head and waited. There was a pause for consideration, and then the hippogriff bent his own head in a gesture of acceptance, before curling it in once more against his own flank.

With his presence accepted, Remus turned his head up once more to gaze on the creature. A smile touched his lips.

“Hello, Buckbeak,” he murmured. “You haven’t seen a big, black, shaggy beast laying low and successfully staying out of trouble somewhere in this house, have you?”

Buckbeak opened one contemptuous eye and blinked at him.

“I didn’t think so.” Remus sighed. “Well, if you see him, tell him I’ve got all the worst products from Zonko’s, an empty house, and a pint of mulled cider, alright?”

The eye closed once more.

“Thank you.” Remus turned to slip back down the stairs.

“I’m not getting myself into trouble.”

Remus had been on the verge of slipping back down the hole when a muffled voice arose from somewhere around the vicinity of Buckbeak’s wing. Remus turned his attention back toward the hippogriff and squinted, trying to cut away the darkness. It took a couple of passes before his eyes managed to pick out the line of a black cloak from the generous spattering of shadows. Buckbeak was not, as Remus had first thought, curled up around himself. Remus could just make out the transition between cloak and shoe before the figure vanished beneath Buckbeak’s feathery head.

“And here I was, thinking I was talking to myself again.”

“Again?” Sirius’s voice emanated out of the darkness, dull toned and tired.

“I had a rather lengthy discussion with your bedroom door earlier.” Remus lifted his legs back out of the hole with a protesting creak from the floorboards beneath his hands.

“Door say anything interesting?”

“No, it was more of the listening type.” Remus eased himself into a sitting position a few paces from the entrance to the loft, one arm propped on his knee. “Very sympathetic to my condition as a were-middle-aged-mother.”

A muffled grunt emerged from the cocoon of Buckbeak’s wing.

“Always thought there was something off about you.”

“I’m sorry to have kept it a secret. I just didn’t know how you’d react.”

“Secret?”

Remus could hear the cocked eyebrow embedded in the words, and he grinned.

“Did you come up here to be alone?”

“If I wanted to be alone, I’d’ve stayed downstairs,” Sirius mumbled.

“May I come closer?”

“Do you need permission?”

“I’d like your consent.”

“For Merlin’s sake, Moony.” There was the sound of cloth shifting against feathers and Buckbeak opened his eyes with an indignant coo. “You’re talking to me, not plucking my virginity from the silky hands of a sleeping angel.”

“Is that how that’s supposed to go?” Remus waited for Buckbeak to settle back down before pushing himself to his feet and closing the distance between them. “Here I’ve been doing it wrong all these years.” He sank down again just beside Buckbeak’s wing.

From here he could make out the general outline of Sirius. The hippogriff’s head was propped against Sirius’s shoulder, a wing curled in an arc a few inches from his torso, keeping him hidden unless the onlooker sat at just the right angle. Sirius was curled into Buckbeak’s side, his face buried in the hippogriff’s feathers, evidently half napping before Remus came. He didn’t turn as Remus came to join him.

“Been taking a lot of virginity over the past few years?” Closer, Remus could tell that Sirius’s voice wasn’t just muffled by Buckbeak’s feathers. There was a low, raspy quality to it.

“Regularly and readily,” Remus said with no shortage of sarcasm. Sirius snorted.

“The only virginity you take on a regular basis is from books.”

“I will confess, I did have one spread out on my desk just last night. Though my books are rarely virgins. It’s a rather outdated concept to be concerned with.”

“Mmm. Must have missed that transition while I was gone. Nice to know I don’t have to worry about it anymore. I can finally come clean and admit I lost mine to Magnus, the family dog.”

“That was a secret?”

Sirius gave a little half laugh. It cut off abruptly into a breathy hitching, and Sirius jolted tighter in on himself with a stifled sneeze.

“HH-TZCHnnxx!” Even stifled it drew echoes from the rafters. The fact that Buckbeak didn’t show any signs of startling at the sudden noise told Remus that it was not the first of the night.

“Bless. It’s a bit cold up here. Any chance I could lure you downstairs?”

“Buckbeak’s warm,” was Sirius’s only reply.

“For one of us, perhaps.”

“Get yourself a chunk of hippogriff then. There’s plenty to go around.”

“ ‘Enough hippogriff to go around.’ I could swear there’s a drinking song by that name.” Remus shifted closer and rested a hand on Sirius’s shoulder. True to his word, though his cloak held traces of the room’s cold, when Remus rested his hand for long enough to let the heat sink through, he found Sirius’s skin warm.

“Prob’ly a Welsh one,” Sirius concurred.

Remus searched Sirius’s skin beneath his cloak for his spine, and working from there, ran lines down his back in a vague sort of massage. Sirius shrugged away from him.

“Stop.” There was a bitterness in his voice. He finally broke from Buckbeak’s side, and he rolled over to face Remus. His face was lined with exhaustion, eyes dark, expression sour. “Don’t you have something more important to do than babysit me?” He scruffed a hand through his hair, pressing a couple of sweat slickened locks back into the general mass.

“Spending time with you is important. To me.”

Sirius groaned hiding his face in the palm of his hand.

“That was painful, Moony. Painful. You should put it on your application to be Headmaster. Right under ‘Trust is the miracle we birth in the hearts of others’.”

“Well, that is one of the last positions I haven’t been rejected from yet.” As Sirius moved to get comfortable in his new position against Buckbeak, Remus’s attention was caught by something moving on the ground. Tucked between Sirius and Buckbeak, propped up on the hippogriff’s side, was an old photo album. From its time battered pages, James was smiling out at the two of them.

One half of the open book was a headshot in which he was grinning and ruffling his hair at odd moments. On the other page Sirius and James were sitting together on the steps of Hogwarts, each competing to give each other bunny ears when they thought the other wasn’t looking.

Sirius followed his gaze.

“Arthur took it from the ministry. After they’d destroyed everything I owned that they deemed ‘dangerous’. Gave it to me for Christmas.”

Remus hummed in appreciation and watched as the two-dimensional Sirius feigned distraction, looking casually out the edge of the frame, while his hands crept out toward James and positioned themselves as antlers on either side of James’s head. James proceeded to put on his best imitation of a stag, perking his head up, looking furtively from side to side, then opening his mouth in a silent impersonation of a stag’s call. Sirius’s hands fell away as he burst into laughter. James was grinning from ear to ear.

“Say what you like… He had a fantastic smile…” Remus reflected. He let a hand wander into Sirius’s hair as he spoke.

“Yeah. He did.” Sirius didn’t pull back this time, and Remus took to working circles against his scalp. They watched the book for long stretching moments, before Sirius gave a shudder. He turned his head away, lifted a hand to his nose, and pitched into the scattering of news scraps.

“HH-TTCHhhnnxx!” He’d only half lifted his head before his lungs started with another hitching waver and he pitched forward again “Hhh—hh-HH-DDZCHhhnngh!”

“Bless.” It took Remus more effort than he would have liked to admit to drag his eyes from the photo album.

“Save it,” Sirius grumbled thickly. He scrubbed at his nose irritably and turned his eyes toward the rafters. “If the God, Gods, Goddesses, Griffons, or Other in heaven have any goodwill to spare for us, we’d best start saving it up now.”

“I don’t think that blessings are finite.”

“Everything is finite.” There was more than playful back and forth in Sirius’s voice. There was a cutting edge eating its way through the layers of indifference that Sirius tried to wrap it in. Searching for hot flesh to tear into. “If it’s not finite, it's fantasy.”

Remus was silent. Refraining from providing more words for the anger to spark at. Sirius’s eyes were fixed on the ceiling, his bitter expression drawing every line of fatigue and malnourishment that into stark contrast with his pale complexion. It painted his face closer to the hollowed out skull it had been at their first meeting in the Shrieking Shack than the warm, buoyant curves of recovery that had begun filling the bony crags over the past year.

Then, piece-by-piece, Sirius’s face crumpled in like a collapsing mountain and he turned away once more into Buckbeak’s side. When Remus lighted a hand on his back, he felt the ripples of suppressed pain radiating down Sirius’s spine in a cascade of warmth, and cold, and bitter memories. Remus closed the distance between them. And with gentle, guiding touches he coaxed Sirius’s head out of Buckbeak’s feathers to rest against his chest. Sirius resisted for a few moments, then relented and allowed himself to be guided into the crook of Remus’s arm, his nose pressed against Remus’s sweater. His body was firm. So still that Remus couldn’t feel him so much as breathe. A moment later Sirius’s lips broke open.

“God-” he exhaled the word with the first stuttering shivers of breath leaving his body. His shoulders trembled as he drew in fresh air. “God, I miss them.” His tone tried to be conversational, but there was a wistful ache in it that cut jagged tears into the blanketing façade of nonchalance.

“I do too.” Remus whispered the words into his hair. Smelling the sweat, the clinging scent of ink from the newsprint, and the familiar underlay of dog woven into his natural musk.

“I thought…” Sirius swallowed a cracked attempt at the word and tried again. “I thought, that I’d relived it enough times. That it wouldn’t be so devastating anymore.” Buckbeak, sensing the mood lifted his head, nudged it lightly against Sirius’s arm, and readjusted his wing to enfold Remus into his dome of protection. “I can’t remember how many times I relived the moment I found out they were dead in Azkaban. I thought- that that would make it real. But it didn't. It wasn’t. Not until. Not until I got out. And everything’s the same. And everything’s still here. Except them.”

Sirius shuddered once more in Remus’s arm, and Remus felt the first drop of water make its way through his sweater to bloom into his shirt. Sirius broke then, gasping in a breath and snarling at the ceiling.

“My mother died, and she’s still here to make my life a living hell. But they’re just gone.” The anger dissolved just as suddenly as it had appeared and Sirius sagged back into Remus’s shoulders. “They’re really gone.”

Remus’s grip tightened around Sirius’s shoulder.

“Yes,” he breathed. “They’re really gone.”

Sirius seemed to have exhausted his words with that proclamation, and he let himself be held, fresh water sinking from his eyelashes to dampen Remus’s sweater. Remus clung to his friend, holding fast to the proof of life in his companion’s pain. Simply glad to have someone to mourn with, and unfathomably glad to have one less person to mourn.

The sun sank a few shades toward darkness, stealing a few degrees of the ever-waning warmth from the room as it went. The tears were beginning to dry, and breath beginning to return to normal when Sirius gave an exasperated sigh. He turned his head out from Remus’s chest, pinched the bridge of his nose. His brow furrowed and he gave a sharp jerk.

“HH-DZCCHhhnngh!” Sirius grimaced, and pressed his fingers to his temples. Remus brushed the hair that had scattered into his face away, and rested his palm over Sirius’s forehead.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” his voice was a comforting rumble beneath Sirius’s cheek, “but you’re burning up.”

“Sounds nice.” Sirius mumbled. “Never seen a pile of ash break down in the attic of his parent’s house. Sounds like a good life. I’ll tahh—HH-TTZCCHHnnnggh!”

“Bless. What’s the forecast on coaxing you downstairs into a bed?”

“Cloudy. With chances of divine storms capable of wiping out small civilizations.”

Remus sighed. “That’s a no, then?”

“This is the only room that doesn’t feel like I’m home.”

“I understand. Can I bring up some blankets, then?”

“If you must.” Sirius tried to accompany the words with an overly dramatic sigh, only to end up coughing into his sleeve with a rough rattling in his chest. “Grab them unwashed if you can.” The words came out somewhere between a rasp and a croak. He coughed once more to clear his throat. “Kreacher never changes his habits. Once he’s touched them, they smell just like they did when I was five.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Remus remained where he was for a few more moments, enjoying the position and the proximity. Then he extracted himself from the human, human, hippogriff huddle.

“I’ll be right back up,” he promised. Sirius grunted his acknowledgement. As Remus stood, his eyes caught sight of the photo album again. At some point during their conversation the photograph James and Sirius had graduated from giving each other figurative bunny ears, to charming them onto each other’s heads. James currently had eight, while Sirius had five, with the odd one sticking straight up like an antenna. Then Sirius rolled back into Buckbeak’s side in Remus’s absence, and the book vanished back beneath his black locks.

Edited January 1, 2016 by PetalsAndThorns

[Dusty15]

…

Wowza.

I can't believe there's going to be another part after this one! This isn't even a secret santa for me and I feel spoiled by it

You've 100% nailed their voices and characters. There's so much heavy sadness and depth of feeling in this, but you never once lose their sense of humour. I love love love Remus' drier, self-deprecating wit in this, especially:

I worry. As you know, I was bitten by a high anxiety, middle-aged mother when I was a child, and I haven't been the same since.”

BRILLIANT.

“I’d like your consent.”

“For Merlin’s sake, Moony.” There was the sound of cloth shifting against feathers and Buckbeak opened his eyes with an indignant coo. “You’re talking to me, not plucking my virginity from the silky hands of a sleeping angel.”

“Is that how that’s supposed to go?”

So so perfectly them that I'm sure I made an audible "YES" when reading it

I eagerly await part 2 as well as RiversD's reaction. I think they're going to LOVE IT

[Kaze Wo Hiku]

HHNNNGGGGGG ok it is no secret these two are my HP OTP and while I normally prefer sick Lupin, this was glorious!!

100% agree with Dusty, you nailed them!!

“I had a rather lengthy discussion with your bedroom door earlier.” Remus lifted his legs back out of the hole with a protesting creak from the floorboards beneath his hands.

REMUS LUPIN I LOVE YOU! He can be a tad snarky at times.

“May I come closer?”

“Do you need permission?”

“I’d like your consent.”

This was my favorite exchange, it's them. Just perfect.

Not my SS but GOD I enjoyed this.

[RiversD]

Wheeeee! Let me start off by saying 1) I'm so glad, and 2) Well, that seems like a good reason for me to never change it ever.

3) My gosh, you're good. Teach me your ways.

4) The atmosphere of this piece is incredible and perfect. I would love you for that regardless of fetishy content.

5) Did I mention that you're amazing, and I want to quote all of this for the purposes of squeeing over it?

6) How do you get even the descriptions of how teenagers would leave their rooms after Christmas so right that I'll never be able to believe any other headcanon?

7)

As you know, I was bitten by a high anxiety, middle-aged mother when I was a child, and I haven't been the same since.”

This was the point I knew for sure Remus was safe in your hands (as though I ever truly doubted).

8)

It was times like these that Remus envied Mrs. Weasley her clock. Just add a hand reading: ‘Off on some harebrained adventure but will probably return will all of the really important appendages still attached’, and it would be perfect.

PERFECTION.

9) Buckbeak is more beautiful here than I have ever imagined him, and I'm so happy that you kept his personality and he wasn't just a prop.

10)

It cut off abruptly into a breathy hitching, and Sirius jolted tighter in on himself with a stifled sneeze.

niiiice.

11)

“Prob’ly a Welsh one,” Sirius concurred.

The most authentically British comment to ever exist. I love this.

12) Why must you invoke James' essence so beautifully? You're gonna do my heart an injury.

13) Sirius' bitterness is so real here, omigosh.

14)

Then, piece-by-piece, Sirius’s face crumpled in like a collapsing mountain and he turned away once more into Buckbeak’s side. When Remus lighted a hand on his back, he felt the ripples of suppressed pain radiating down Sirius’s spine in a cascade of warmth, and cold, and bitter memories. Remus closed the distance between them. And with gentle, guiding touches he coaxed Sirius’s head out of Buckbeak’s feathers to rest against his chest. Sirius resisted for a few moments, then relented and allowed himself to be guided into the crook of Remus’s arm, his nose pressed against Remus’s sweater. His body was firm. So still that Remus couldn’t feel him so much as breathe. A moment later Sirius’s lips broke open.

I may have stopped breathing while reading this.

15) Everything about how Sirius expresses his grief, and the matching rawness of his crying is beautiful and painful and too, too real.

16) Have I mentioned how good you are? Because you're good.

17) I hadn't thought about how his mother's portrait must have been a constant reminder that, of all the dead people, she's the one who stuck around. Bravo for introducing new sadness into my life.

18)

Simply glad to have someone to mourn with, and unfathomably glad to have one less person to mourn.

UNFAIR. I am broken and ruined and it is your fault. I'm dead. This is coming at you from beyond the grave because I needed to let you know that this was your fault.

19)

“This is the only room that doesn’t feel like I’m home.”



“I understand. Can I bring up some blankets, then?”

*gross sobbing on account of pain and Remus, angel of ministering grace*

20)Kreacher has definitely used the same detergent for the last 50+ years.

21) This is amazing. HOW is there a second part? How did I get such an awesome author as my SS, I am not worthy.

22) Thank you.

[Winged]

Happy holidays to all of us! Wolfstar is one of my earliest and longest-running OTPs, and I do love seeing them on the forums. Your writing is gorgeous, and I really love the image of Sirius and Remus snuggled up under Buckbeak.

[AngelEyes]

This is absolutely Brilliant! You set the scene so vividly and the characters so perfectly!

As you know, I was bitten by a high anxiety, middle-aged mother when I was a child, and I haven't been the same since.”

LOL, so Remus!

It was times like these that Remus envied Mrs. Weasley her clock. Just add a hand reading: ‘Off on some harebrained adventure but will probably return will all of the really important appendages still attached’, and it would be perfect.

Totally!

As Remus entered, Buckbeak lifted his head and blinked slowly at him. Remus inclined his head and waited. There was a pause for consideration, and then the hippogriff bent his own head in a gesture of acceptance, before curling it in once more against his own flank.

With his presence accepted, Remus turned his head up once more to gaze on the creature. A smile touched his lips.

I love that you included the ritual.

“I had a rather lengthy discussion with your bedroom door earlier.” Remus lifted his legs back out of the hole with a protesting creak from the floorboards beneath his hands.

“Door say anything interesting?”

“No, it was more of the listening type.” Remus eased himself into a sitting position a few paces from the entrance to the loft, one arm propped on his knee. “Very sympathetic to my condition as a were-middle-aged-mother.”

Hysterical!

“For Merlin’s sake, Moony.” There was the sound of cloth shifting against feathers and Buckbeak opened his eyes with an indignant coo. “You’re talking to me, not plucking my virginity from the silky hands of a sleeping angel.”

“Is that how that’s supposed to go?” Remus waited for Buckbeak to settle back down before pushing himself to his feet and closing the distance between them. “Here I’ve been doing it wrong all these years.”

Their banter is just perfect and fantastic!

“ ‘Enough hippogriff to go around.’ I could swear there’s a drinking song by that name.” Remus shifted closer and rested a hand on Sirius’s shoulder. True to his word, though his cloak held traces of the room’s cold, when Remus rested his hand for long enough to let the heat sink through, he found Sirius’s skin warm.

“Prob’ly a Welsh one,” Sirius concurred.

Definitely Welsh.

“My mother died, and she’s still here to make my life a living hell. But they’re just gone.”

Oh my heart!

Then he extracted himself from the human, human, hippogriff huddle.

Awww. Such a fluffy image.

I love this so much. Excited for more!