TITLE: Call of the Wolf

AUTHOR: Jade Okelani

EMAIL: jade@vanishingscroll.com

WEBSITE: http://www.vanishingscroll.com/okelani

RATING: PG

CLASSIFICATION: Story, Angst, UST

PAIRING: That would be telling.

SPOILERS: Everything through OotP. My brain assimilates new knowledge the second it perceives it and there's no stopping it.

ARCHIVE: Please do not archive. If you would like to link to the fic at my site, you are welcome to do so, but please drop me a line letting me know.

DISCLAIMER: JKR would likely weep if she read this. But I don't think it would be a good kind of weeping.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: This fic was inspired by, but in no way based on, <a href=" http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=triumvirate">the RPG Triumvirate</a>.

BETA THANKS: As ever, to Sarea, who beta'd this even while she was shunning me, because she's just that good. She also fixed all my tense mistakes because I am shameless and she is just that cool.

DEDICATION: To my inspirations for this particular endeavor. I think you know who you are. :D

SUMMARY: The endless deliberations of a lone wolf.

~

We four were one.

Once, we four were one and I knew what it felt like to be part of a pack long before the wolf howled inside of me. James died and we lost our heart. Peter's death (betrayal) and the years upon years that Sirius lost ripped a jagged hole in my memory, tainted the friendships I held so dear until thinking of those times caused more pain than a thousand transformations beneath the harsh brightness of a full moon.

Dumbledore's offer brought me home again, to these halls of education and safety that had shaped me as much as being a Marauder had. I was able to look after James's son who has so much of the good and so little of the bad his father had possessed. Young minds looked to me for guidance, for protection, and I was able to impart both. I was their hero and their friend and I earned their respect.

Then, the impossible happened: Padfoot came back to me. He was nearly hollow, the devilish, fearless boy that I had known crumpled into something that bore vague resemblance to Sirius Black, but who I wasn't sure could be called entirely human. We were animagus, I was a werewolf, but Sirius had something wild in his eyes after Azkaban, something perpetually hunted and afraid. But when he looked into my eyes that first time, there was more than a glimmer of recognition: for a few brief moments, Padfoot was home, too.

For the briefest of instants, we two were one.

"Professor Lup--"

"I'm not your professor anymore, Harry." My voice sounds dead to me. I'm sure it sounds dead to Harry as well. Dead (but not buried) like Sirius.

I am alone.

Harry opens and closes his mouth like a fish out of water, and I would smile if I remembered how, because I'm sure the sight is quite amusing. Harry was often quiet out of choice, but rarely because he couldn't find the words to speak.

"What should I call you then?" he says at last, and I smile at the memory--

--and wonder at myself, wonder at my ability to smile at that when I thought the action as lost to me as Sirius.

"How about Remus," I offer and Harry nods once, solemnly.

"Remus." He's testing the name, trying to see if it fits. I think he decides that it does. "Mrs. Weasley is having some of us over. Not everyone, just -- you know." I see the words The Order fly through his brain, but he stops them before they can escape his mouth. "Everyone's welcome."

All members of The Order welcome. Was that true, though? Somehow I doubted the one person absent from this empty memorial would be all that welcome anywhere.

"Thank you, Harry. I think I'll stay here awhile longer. I'll see you later at the Burrow?"

"Sure." He paused a moment, then impulsively hugged me, his hands gripping the backs of my robes in desperate clutches. His glasses pressed against the side of my neck, and I held my arms up to awkwardly hold him back. I could feel the temptation in him to weep like a child and I wanted to tell him it was all right, that he could let it go, I understood, more than anyone I understood how deep a hole Sirius's loss cut inside of him.

But before I could express any of that, the self-consciousness of a nearly-sixteen-year-old boy took hold of him and he pulled away, quickly shuffling over to Ron and Hermione, the latter of whom looked immensely worried. She fussed with Harry's robes and ignored the seeming perpetual eye roll Ron sent her way as the three of them walked off with Arthur and Molly Weasley.

It's June now and the air is crisp, summer but a distant whisper on the breeze. Dumbledore called us all together to pay final tribute to Sirius. Things feel so unfinished, I feel like a hypocrite sitting here, staring out at that damned tree that housed so many secrets for so many years, mourning the last of my dead friends. Sirius wasn't just dead; he was lost. Beyond the veil is how we explained it to the children (Children; if you continue to mollycoddle them you might as well be signing their death warrants. The Dark Lord does not care about sentiment, Lupin), as though any of us really understood where Sirius was.

All I truly understood was that after all he had been through, after finally tasting the freshness of free air and closing his eyes to rest without the acrid breath of a Dementor clouding his soul, Sirius was blotted off the face of the earth as though he had never been here at all. There wasn't even a body; there was nothing.

Leaves crunch beneath his gliding form, but I sense his presence long before he makes a sound. I'd been beginning to wonder if he planned to hide behind a tree for the rest of the afternoon.

"I understand there is some sort of maudlin display of solidarity and loss at the Weasley home," he drawled in his sneering voice. I hate him so desperately sometimes, I can barely see.

"What do you want, Snape?"

"Don't ever tell me to be careful!" Snape rounded on Remus, stomping right through the orange liquid (it seemed to be eating through the stone of the dungeon floor) until his long, crooked nose was a scant inch from Remus's. "Your irresponsible, big headed friends are menaces and I don't see you skulking about behind them, showing an ounce of your oh-so-very-touching concern. Or perhaps you spare them the ordeal because you are friends. Whatever your motives -- leave. Now."

"Forgive me, Snivellus--" the name made him cringe on the inside; he hated it, and hated himself for indulging James and Sirius's flights of bullying. "--I didn't realize you had become lord and master of the Potions Dungeon."

"Leave me alone." Every word was measured with Severus, and if those words weren't cutting, they were merely dismissive. This time, however, something inside of him seemed ready to break. His hands were balled into impotent fists, his shoulders shook with an almost imperceptible tremor, and his voice betrayed the barest of trembles. The incident earlier that day was not forgotten, and, Remus was sure, would never be forgiven. Something had shifted between them. Remus suspected it was having Lily bear witness to such an intense humiliation.

"I've merely come to make sure you aren't planning to do away with yourself," he answers in a slow, laconic voice.

"I didn't know you cared." Go away. Go away, go away, go away…

The air was still for a time and I almost convince myself he'd listened; that he'd finally thought of another person before himself, considered the pain I'm in (or, at the very least, considered the idea that I might soon become an inconvenience if I were to break down sobbing like a child) and simply gone away.

"Black had been looking for a way to end his useless existence since the moment he escaped from Azkaban."

I do not remember moving. I have no memory of crossing the distance between us, wrapping my hands around his throat, and shoving him harshly against the rotting corpse of a hollowed tree. His gasps for breath bring me back to myself, and I loosen my hold until I can release him completely and step back. He looks as shocked as I feel and my hands shake as I wring them together. I do not lose control. I am not allowed to lose control. If I were to lose control in the wrong moment…

"Don't speak his name," I rasp out with vocal cords that seem suddenly too strained to form clear words.

"Oh, that's right. How could I forget your steely loyalty to one another? Tell me, is that why the four of you in your infinite loyalty managed to ignore that there was an enemy in your midst? How was it that James and Lily were killed again?"

"I would say it isn't like you to be so cruel, but we both know differently, don't we, Severus?"

"Your thinly-veiled attempts at insulting me have never gone over well, Lupin. I have to wonder why you persist."

The sneer on his face is so familiar to me, but it is not his mouth that draws my fascination: the lines on his face become startlingly clear to me and I wonder how long we have been doing this. I think of Harry, proud and lost and add the years -- twenty, twenty-five. For twenty-five years we have been on the periphery of each other's lives in some context or another. Yet even now when we purport to be on the same side, we do nothing but make one another miserable. I think of Draco Malfoy and his association with Harry and is it always to be this way? Will Harry save Draco's life one day and cause Draco to curse his memory long after he is dead for taking away the one thing that meant the most to him: his hate.

"Why did you hate us so much?" There is confusion in Snape's eyes. My question seems abrupt to him, but I am beyond caring. "Before we gave you cause to, before James decided he was better than everyone else, why did you hate us? Why did you hate us first?"

"Hate you first?" A methodical eyebrow rose. "I didn't realize this was about firsties."

I turn from him in a flash. "Fine. If you don't want to answer my question, then go."

"I'll answer your question, Lupin." I see him from the corner of my eye. He's beginning to pace the way he does when he lectures a class, his shoulders drawn back imperiously, his steps even and carefully paced in such a way that small children are naturally terrified. "I hated you all on sight because you were unspeakably insufferable."

I confess that at that point I had no choice but to roll my eyes like Ron Weasley.

"The three of you bonded instantly," he continues, "and it was sickening. Pettrigrew seemed like an afterthought, the boy you deigned to let tag along with you because you felt sorry for him."

My head bows, and he sees it; gives a satisfied smirk for having been right.

"We loved Peter," I insist quietly, to myself and to Snape. "James loved Peter."

"And look what love cost him," he says bitterly. "Look what it cost you all. Potter loved Black as well, did anything he asked of him, practically turned himself into a Sirius Black clone."

"That couldn't be further from the truth," I say tiredly. "You've never looked beneath the surface to see the truth; you're much more comfortable with easy assumptions."

Easy assumptions. The cool air turns frigid and a shudder runs through my body.

"Yes, and you, Lupin, would never be guilty of that."

"What is he doing here?"

"But these are desperate times, and we cannot afford such charity," Dumbledore said pleasantly. "I understand your fear, as well as your reservations, Remus. But given that these are such desperate times, we also cannot afford to -- what is the colorful Muggle expression -- look a gift horse in the mouth."

"He is a Death Eater," Remus said, casting Snape's arm away as though it had burnt him. "And you've brought him here, where James and Lily are--"

"Hold up!" Remus said, taking offense. "You're the one that called me here for this clandestine gathering--"

"What is that supposed to mean?!" I'm furious now, furious that Snape's right, and because he's always been so totally wrong. "You speak in riddles, Severus, and--"

"It's no riddle when I say that you are a coward, Lupin," Snape says. "You refuse to face the reality of your friends' deaths -- Black was buried a bloody long time before now, and we both know it. You've spent the better part of your life hiding from them and from yourself--"

"Hiding from myself?! When have I ever--"

"You are a werewolf, Lupin," he says coldly, as though it were the most obvious fact in the world, and how could I possibly not realize what he's talking about, "and you behave as if it is the end of the world."

"Isn't it?" I laugh, because it's just too funny -- life advice from Severus Snape. "You speak so loftily of it, as though you have any idea what it's like. I can't teach because of it. I can't go into some shops or restaurants because of it. I am branded dangerous and unfit to be around small children because of--"

"Rubbish," Snape says, waving a dismissive hand. "They're all excuses. You could have continued teaching at Hogwarts -- Dumbledore would have let you -- but you didn't want to fight. You didn't want to exert enough energy to save your sorry hide from the meaningless, endless existence you'd been living before the offer to teach came in. Defense Against the Dark Arts -- I would have done anything for that position, and it just fell right in your lap, and you, Lupin, spat on it."

"I did nothing of the kind!" I turn on him, furious. "Don't ever speak of my decisions like that again! Turning away from that position -- from those children -- was the hardest thing I have ever had to do, but I did it -- I did it because their well being meant more to me than my own happiness."

"You did it because you were afraid of loving people again, of having them love you, and then being left alone," Severus pronounces with finality. "Nothing you say now will ever sway my certainty."

"Well, then I might as well not bother," I say cuttingly. "Since you already know everything, I can't imagine how trying it must be for you to sweep down upon high and placate the unfortunate mortals that fall in your path."

"You are a fool," he says, and I note that his voice is not the bitingly cruel snarl I am familiar with -- he sounds almost sad, as if he were capable of emotions not connected with the derision of his fellow man. "Tell me, Lupin, do you ever tire of sitting in judgment of every man, woman, and child on this earth?"

"Do you ever tire of following me around?!" I've lost all sense of propriety and tact now. He accuses me of standing in judgment of the rest of the world. Severus Snape, who'd appointed himself judge, jury, and sometimes executioner years ago. "James and Sirius are dead now, Severus, Peter as good as, as far as I'm concerned. Other than being branded by the company I kept, what have I ever really done to you? I defended Sirius, but surely this cannot be so great a crime that you would continue to punish me after all these years--"

"Of course you would see it that way," Snape says, "as though I have nothing better to do with my precious time than punish you. You think far too much of yourself, Lupin."

"That's Defense Against the Dark Arts," Remus interrupted, "and I can't imagine why."

Sighing, Remus opened a desk drawer, pulled it free, turned it upside down over the box, then replaced it once it was empty. "I can't afford to be serious just now, Severus," he confessed. "I do not trust my control over my emotions this close to the full moon." An eyebrow lifted, a conscious imitation of the man before him. "The fact that I can't really control myself might have something to do with why the parents of the Hogwarts student body might object to my teaching skills."

I shake myself at the memory, forgetting the present, Severus standing before me, the horrible ordeal that had been the last month -- I shake myself, and I remember that moment, the insistent tone to Snape's voice, and I wonder: why? I never found out what his game was then. Professor Flitwick, wanting us to come down to the Great Hall, interrupted us. The faculty had prepared a private farewell celebration, without the prying eyes of students so that we might gather. It was that night, I recall, that The Order began to take its current shape.

Snape had been almost tolerable for the brief time I spent teaching. It wasn't until Sirius returned that his anger bubbled up within him and spilled over on us all. We were -- not friends, never that -- but I began to count us as colleagues.

"As compelling as I find the argument your blank stare offers, I had hoped for something slightly more stimulating," Snape says after Merlin knows how many minutes of silence.

The anger sparks inside of me again easily.

"Then why don't you answer my question instead of avoiding it as you're so fond of doing, Severus," I hiss. "Why have you always followed us about like a lost, angry puppy, dying to find something to chew on?! Now that the rest of them are dead or as good as, will you finally let us rest in peace?!"

"You are not dead," he says coldly. He says that and nothing more.

Hysteria lights inside of me, loosens my tongue to speaks truths I've known for years, truths I never wished to be known by another living soul, let alone his.

"I might as well be! They were the best of me, everything I was that had meaning was because of them! Now what I am to do? Find a cave and curl up into a ball until I transform and some wizard looking to make a name for himself puts me down?! Perhaps I should stay rooted to this very spot. It might make the job easier. I know! I'll drop to the ground and howl, a wounded animal left to die alone."

"You are not alone," he says, just as coldly as before.

"I am always alone!"

Snape strikes like a serpent, and for an insane moment, I think he's going to hit me.

He doesn't.

His mouth is cool as it touches mine, rough in its insistence as it scrapes against my parched lips. Snape's tongue reaches out and tastes me and I feel everything course through me all at once -- shock, paralysis, confusion. But the one thing I do not feel, the thing I am sure should be present, is horror; revulsion. Instead, I feel something deep inside, buried so securely beneath my skin, quicken and come alive. This tremble is new, an endless quake of my blood and flesh longing to be set free.

I don't know how long it lasts. I know that I can hear the wolf scratching at the door, begging to be let in (out) as the rough grip Snape's hands have on my shoulders loosen until it feels shockingly like a caress. His mouth isn't as rough as it was, either; it has gentled, and I think, so this is what they mean when they talk of stolen breath and hearts standing still.

There is no time to think, and just as I might have reacted, might have kissed him back or pushed him away or pulled him closer or hit him or pushed him to the filthy ground tears for Sirius were wept a short hour ago, he stops. He shoves me away with more anger than he had displayed in pulling me toward him and my head and my heart are riotous within me.

He pants in contradictory time with me, I notice, because I have to pay attention to small details like these or risk going mad. I breathe in, he breathes out, in, and out, in, and out. His tongue darts out to lick his lips, and I find myself fascinated by the motion. He catches himself, seems to realize the control he has sacrificed, the carefully manicured façade he cultivates, but when his eyes meet mine, I see, not the barely controlled fury or disdain I had expected, but the frightened, wounded heart of a deeply scarred man staring through serpent's eyes.

And I see.

"You," he says with a great heaving to his voice, "are a fool."

I try to speak, but find I have no words. Deafening silence passes between us and whatever vulnerability lived within him for a brief moment vanishes as though someone had blown out a candle. He pivots sharply and begins stalking across the ground, making a sharp left where the mourners gathered earlier had gone right, and soon, he is not even a speck on the horizon. It is as though he was never here at all, and I try to remember my life, my heart, before this conversation.

The task proves too great to achieve. I touch my fingers to my mouth and stand beneath the silent summer wind.

Alone.

~

End