GREY

by Amy

John put up a challenge in his LiveJournal to write a short...thing, Harry Potter universe, of some sort based on the line from du Maurier's Rebecca: "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."

Fie on him. I haven't written anything creative in a couple of years, and I don't write Harry Potter universe fanfiction. That said, grr. The following is speculation, set after Goblet of Fire, partially based on canon, partially definitely not. All Lupin, with a Sirius cameo, G-rated.  Not Brit-picked, sorry.  Feel free to glower fiercely at any flaming Americanisms.

The cool air billowing in from the window smoothed the threadbare undershirt against Remus Lupin’s back. He opened the grey eye not buried against his pillow.

Early. Very Early, his clock told him. But all stains of sleep had been washed from him by the breeze, along with the technicolor of his dreams. The bedsprings spanged as he rolled upright, darting his hand beneath the mattress to retrieve his wand, which he tucked into the waistband of his undershorts. The sagging floor and the old stair boards creaked on his way down to the kitchen. With no fire yet in the wood-burning stove, the early spring temperature pricked at his bare arms and legs. Still, he wasn’t cold.

He didn’t think about his dreams yet as his hand bypassed the battered tea tin and the generally neglected box of instant coffee. He pulled the nearly empty, cheap brandy bottle and a juice glass from the open cupboard and looked out the window over the sink.

The hill dropped away from his little house to the wooded creek bed and got lost in mist that glitteried in the gold morning light. Above the trees, the moon was setting. Little more now than a shaved thumbnail, it would not glow at all the next night, raising both mute and unseen; but Remus didn’t feel the comfortable chill the waning moon usually bred in him. He tipped back the brandy, and when he breathed it down barely felt its warmth against the rising humidity already in his chest.

It was, he knew, anticipation. Several months worth of Daily Prophets lay on the crooked wing-table behind him, their black and white photographs moving offhandedly in layer upon layer of newsprint; a sheaf of parchment letters, some bearing the official Hogwarts seal, some written in a small, neat hand that belied their author’s fugitive state, were spilled over the top of them. These all had kept him just shy of the level of suspense he knew he’d be suffering if he had nothing more than rumor and hearsay to inform him. But until now he’d only read them and waited. Now…he expected.

Even awake, in the day’s growing light, his dreams fell over him like James’s old invisibility cloak, as if something approached with heavy and careless footsteps and wouldn’t know he stood a mere lunge away until….

He turned his back on the window and leaned against the rim of the porcelain sink. Along the angle where wall met ceiling, the edges of old wallpaper cracked and pulled away from the plaster beneath, and seemed held up by no more than the profuse, but dusty, strings of spider silk. This place might have been paid for by Remus’s family fortune, but it would be an embarrassment to all his wealthy relations. Inhabited by a man whose least worry was basic care taking, much less redecorating, its only worth was in its distance from anyone who would conceivably care that it was an offense to the landscape. Even Sirius thought it was a dive, and had repeatedly said so, laughing.

Remus thought it was perfect. He was probably the only one who would, although perhaps his mother would have agreed.

He didn’t have to close his eyes to see her. She had been in his dreams, and with them was still fully outlined in his mind’s eye.

In his dream, he’d stood outside the walls of his old home. His father, grandmother, and their servants still lived there in reality; but in the dream, all was overgrown, as unkempt as Remus’s own little home.

Much newer than the ancient house, the walls had towered over him, their stones so pale in the bright moonlight that they seemed constructs of cloud. He’d walked through them without a thought.

As he’d moved across the wide lawn scattered with remnants of neglected box shrubs and tumbled, empty fountains, he had walked on two human feet yet felt the springy turf beneath him as if on a wolf’s four. He loped silently, hearing no sound but his footfalls, seeing no other movement but the full moon following him through the skeleton trees. As he neared the manor house, he saw his mother standing at a ground floor window. She had worn robes of spun silver in his dream; her chestnut hair, prematurely graying, shimmered with a warm, moonwhite glow. 

In his cool, bright kitchen, Remus could still feel the full moon from his dream following him, and the shadow of his old home leaning away from them both. 

He’d made it a point to think as little as possible about his home as soon as he’d left Hogwarts. It wasn’t that he hated it, only that he could never go back. And he’d forgotten it easily enough. His mother lay in a graveyard far from it, and his father dealt with him by post, responding to letters with the requested funds but leaving out any sign of invitation. Remus understood; another left-over from the dream was the sound of desperate claws scrabbling against a reinforced cellar door, nearly drowned out by raised voices from the upper floors: his mother’s voice demanding, and his father’s voice pleading. Once the wall was built, his mother triumphed, and his father had to settle with the knowledge that at least the embarrassment, and danger, was kept in. However, once that same embarrassment could be kept out, his father had discovered he preferred it that way. Remus didn’t blame him, and didn’t want to go back anyway.

In his dream his mother had watched him run, and the wind held her whispers that not all hunger was wrong, not all danger evil. The whispers freed the heat within him, and he ran harder, scouring the walls for breaches, tasting the air for anything with blood that might cross his path.

He’d had this dream once before, and it had surprised him then because he so rarely thought about his old home. But the next night, a full moon night, prey had crossed his path, and he’d had a chance to taste the blood of the one who had betrayed his dearest friends. 

That time, a boy full of wisdom greater than his own primal instinct had talked him out of killing, but this time, he thought, bigger things were about to happen. He never wanted to endanger the innocent, or friends, or even hated allies, and most of the time, when the moon diminished and he could accept reason as constructed by the fragility of timid humanity, he worried, felt a little shame, and sometimes even feared himself.

But not all slaughter was unjust.

And now, suddenly, standing in the tilting sunbeams, he realized he really was hungry. Humanly hungry, overcome by a hankering for toast and jam, and possibly a cup of tea. He shook off the dream-images and crossed to the pantry. He had to rummage for the breadbox, which had a penchant for crawling to the farthest corner and barricading itself behind all of his canned goods for fear of too much healthy air circulation; while he was at it, he liberated the honey jar from the tangle of bagged dry noodles.

As he toasted the bread, one of the little bells on the shelf above his front door jumped up of its own accord and jingled. Someone had crossed the boundary of his property. By the time the teapot began to puff, the someone knocked at his door.

He spooned loose tea into a strainer and alohomora'd the door. Glancing at the man who crossed the threshold, he smiled. “Tea, Sirius? Or, some of that blackberry brandy you hate so much?”

Sirius shook himself from his windtossed black hair down to the worn hem of his robe, and finished off with an impatient tapping of boots on the doormat. Very doggish, naturally. “You don’t seem surprised to see me.”

Remus offered the steaming teacup to his friend as he came into the kitchen. Sirius took it, and Remus smiled.

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”

THE END

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