Once in a Blue Moon (COMPLETE)

A/N: Just in case you are reading this and haven't been here in a few days, please check if you have read the chapter before this one. Thanks to my beta, this chapter is being posted just a couple of days after the last one, so please make sure you have not missed any.

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Out of Control
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Remus soon decided against covering up the scar on his face on a permanent basis. “Maybe just for special occasions,” he suggested, as Sirius put away his wand, the concealing charm not yet performed.

“You’re sure?” Sirius asked.

“I’ve got loads of scars already, one more isn’t going to make much difference. It isn’t that bad now; it’s healed as much as it ever will.”

“And the girls will think it’s sexy,” James added, unknowingly echoing Sirius’s words in the hospital wing.

Remus snorted and shook his head. It seemed that despite their rather shaky start, Sirius and James were now on very much the same page, at least when it came to their advice.

He grabbed his books and headed downstairs to the common room. His head was held high as the other students turned to look at him, many doing a double take as they caught sight of his face.

It was just one more scar, he told himself. He had far worse on his body and he knew that any girl he had a relationship with would have to accept far more than a thin scar stretching down the side of his face.

-o-xXx-o-

Sirius looked at his handiwork on the wall of the Lupin basement. After nearly a year of hard work painting the walls the forest mural was finally complete. It had taken more hours than he cared to think about. The first wall, the only one entirely outside of the cage was worked on during full moons, the rest during Hogsmeade weekends and, on occasion, weekends when he and Remus had crept out to the house without permission. Today was just such an occasion.

“So, what do you think?” he asked from his position on the stairs as he waited for Remus to finish his inspection.

“You missed a spot,” Remus teased, pointing at the ceiling.

“Git!”

“You could enchant it like the Great Hall,” Remus suggested. “It can’t be that hard to do.”

“I suppose I could try,” Sirius agreed. “But I don’t want to risk mucking up your brother’s safety barrier or the forest smells spell.”

“I didn’t think of that. Maybe you’d better leave it as it is.”

“You really like the mural?”

“It’s wonderful. Makes it seem like less of a prison. Moony likes it, too.”

“He does? How can you tell?”

Remus frowned and rubbed his nose. “It’s hard to explain. Moony… he’s… well, he’s in me all the time, and he gets so agitated around the full moon. Sometimes I can tell what he’s feeling, just impressions really, but enough to know that he likes the mural. He…”

“What?” Sirius prompted.

“He likes you,” Remus finished with a shrug. “You keep him calmer, I think.”

“There’s only one more full moon before the summer holidays,” Sirius commented.

Remus sighed and sat down beside Sirius on the stairs. “I know. I’m going to miss you.”

“Was last summer really bad?” Sirius asked, turning to face Remus directly.

Remus avoided his gaze and chewed on his lip. Sirius already knew the answer to the question. He had seen the new scars that Remus had acquired over the last summer holidays for himself. Romulus believed that it had been bad partly because of the wolf having tasted something of freedom, but also because Moony had become used to Sirius being around when he was trapped in the basement. Sirius knew that the bond between them had only strengthened over the course of the year.

It was a difficult situation, and one that Romulus had spoken of on several occasions in recent months. He was worried that the bond between Sirius and Moony was too strong. On the one hand, it was comforting that Sirius was able to calm the werewolf and stop him from harming himself. But, by the same token, it meant that Moony was as dependent on Sirius as Remus had been. The difference with Moony was that no matter what choice they made now, sooner or later Remus would pay the price for the strength of the bond between Sirius and the werewolf.

Romulus had no ideas on how to solve the problem, and with the summer holidays fast approaching, it was clear that things were about to come to a head.

“I could come visit for the full moons,” Sirius suggested.

“Your mother would never allow it,” Remus replied in a tired voice. They had already discussed this a dozen times or more.

“I can’t just leave you to suffer again. I wouldn’t have left you last year if I’d known.” The accusation in his voice was barely concealed, but he reached out to squeeze Remus’s hand and take the sting out of his words.

“We didn’t know how bad it would be until it was too late.”

“But this summer we do know.”

“Moony will just have to learn to get through the night without you here.”

“You know he’ll hurt you more if I’m not around. I’ll find a way to get here.”

“Maybe it would be best if you didn’t. Rom’s right. You can’t always be around for me and I’ve learned to accept that. Moony will just have to learn it, too.”

“You don’t have to do this.”

“Yes, I do,” Remus replied with a sad smile. “Moony has to learn not to depend on you.”

Sirius remained silent, he knew as well as Remus did that it was already way too late for that. “I’ll be here,” he whispered. “I promise.”

-o-xXx-o-

The summer holidays arrived all too quickly. No sooner were the exams out of the way than the students seemed to be packing up their belongings for the journey home.

“You’re not hiding your report card, are you?” Remus asked as he spotted Sirius stuffing it between his books in his trunk. “You got top marks in nearly everything.”

“Like my Mother will care anything about that,” Sirius replied as he pulled the report card back out and pointed at the front. “She’ll take one look at the fancy Gryffindor lion on the front and chuck a hissy fit, just like every other year.”

“Maybe you could ask Professor McGonagall to write it out again on plain parchment?”

“Or maybe I could just hide it in my trunk and hope she forgets to ask to see it.” Sirius stuffed the card back in the trunk with a sigh. “What are you going to do with your card?”

“Leave it for Rom to look at when he pops in again,” Remus replied with a shrug. “I passed everything, just, so hopefully I won’t get too much grief about the comment about ‘an abundance of detentions’.”

Sirius laughed and continued to pack his belongings away, determinedly not looking too closely at Remus, and hoping the other boy really had forgotten what had nearly happened at the end of the previous school year. He had been trying to forget it himself, but it was easier said than done. Occasionally, when he thought he saw Remus looking at him in a curious sort of way, the memory popped back into his mind and sent his heart racing once more.

It was best forgotten, he told himself. It was a single moment of adolescent madness. He was older now, older and wiser, and not willing to risk losing his best friend for another one.

Sirius was getting quite good at lying to himself.

-o-xXx-o-

Remus didn’t get the opportunity to travel back to London with the rest of them, and consoled himself with waving the other boys off from Hogsmeade Station.

He stood on the platform until the train had vanished from sight.

“They’ll be back soon,” Romulus told him.

“Six weeks of boredom.”

“Only if you let yourself get bored,” Romulus pointed out. “Why don’t you go visit with Firenze and the centaurs? You’ve not been there for ages. He probably thinks you’ve forgotten all about him.”

Remus nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve not seen him since Easter,” he replied, somewhat surprised to realise how long it had been. “I think I’ll go visit the camp tomorrow. What about you? Going to take advantage of the empty castle to spend time with your new girlfriend?”

Romulus rolled his eyes. He was more than used to Remus’s teasing about Myrtle’s persistent pursuit of him. The pesky ghost had taken to appearing at the most inconvenient times, most recently singing – in a voice that was even more off key than Remus’s – outside the window of the boys’ dormitory.

“Why don’t you give her a chance?” Remus teased. “She seems to have taken quite a liking to you.”

“She’s a kid and she’s really not my type,” Romulus muttered.

“So, who is your type?” Remus asked with a cheeky grin as they made their way home.

“Not Moaning Myrtle, that’s for sure,” Romulus replied with a grimace.

-o-xXx-o-

It was raining in London, but Sirius was ecstatic anyway. The sight of his Uncle Alphard waiting for him at the station was enough to make him grin widely and throw himself into his uncle’s arms.

“It’s nice to see you, too,” Alphard chuckled. “Though you know your mother wouldn’t approve of such a public display of affection.”

Sirius didn’t care. “You’ve got to meet my friends,” he said as he waved over James and Peter.

“And where’s Remus?” Alphard asked when he realised that someone was missing.

“He lives in Hogsmeade,” Sirius reminded him. “He saw us off at the station and I promised to send him an owl as soon as I get home.”

“Speaking of which, we’d better not linger,” Alphard advised. “Your mother told me that dinner is at eight prompt.”

Sirius nodded and let his uncle take the weight of his trunk. He waved his goodbyes to his friends and walked towards the barrier.

Alphard was looking at him curiously and Sirius felt his face flushing under the frank appraisal. “What?” he asked.

“You’ve grown up so much since last summer,” Alphard replied. “Things more clear for you now, or are you still confused?”

“Um.”

“I should warn you, your mother has set up even more dinner parties this summer and I think she’s invited every pureblood female in the country, not to mention most of those on the continent. The first one’s tonight.”

“Great,” muttered Sirius with a total lack of enthusiasm.

“Is there really no girl that you could invite home to appease her?”

“I tried,” Sirius declared. “Really, I did. I tried not to look at him like that and…”

Alphard stopped walking and spun Sirius round to face him. “Now stop that. Stop worrying. If there is a girl out there for you, you’ll find her when you least expect it.”

“And if there isn’t? If I can’t stop thinking of him like that, what then?”

“We’ll worry about that if and when it happens,” Alphard reassured him. “Now, come along. We don’t want to be late.”

Sirius nodded as he followed in his uncle’s wake, he didn’t dare voice his fear that it was no good saying ‘if and when’, because he was fairly sure that he would never stop wanting Remus in the one way he knew he shouldn’t.

-o-xXx-o-

“What is that awful noise?” Walburga asked, casting an annoyed look towards the ceiling.

“Sounds like music,” Alphard replied. “Probably coming from next door.”

“Next door?” Walburga looked disgusted at the very idea. “The spells on this house are more than adequate to keep out noises from the muggle neighbours.”

“It must be Regulus,” Orion growled.

“Regulus?” Pricilla, who Sirius was mentally referring to as girl number one, asked.

“My younger brother,” he replied with a forced smile.

“Sirius, hold your tongue,” Walburga snapped, even as Pricilla’s mother asked if she had heard correctly.

“He’s a squib, so Mother makes him stay upstairs when we have company,” Sirius explained.

If he had been hoping for a sympathetic reaction from their guests, Sirius was sadly mistaken.

“A squib in the family?” Pricilla asked, her nose wrinkling with distaste.

“It happens to the best of families,” Walburga assured her, eager to smooth things over as quickly as possible.

“It hasn’t happened in mine,” Pricilla’s mother announced with a sneer. “Come along dear, we’re leaving.”

“Now, don’t let’s be hasty,” Orion intervened, but it was too late. Pricilla took hold of her mother’s arm and they apparated right out of the dining room.

“How rude,” Alphard muttered as he reached for his wine.

“May I be excused?” Sirius asked, now that what little appetite he had left, after eating so many sweets and cakes on the train, had disappeared completely.

Orion nodded and he bolted from the room before anyone could stop him. He took the stairs two at a time and burst into his brother’s room, only then stopping to catch his breath.

“Don’t you knock any more?” Regulus asked, his voice nearly a shout in order to be heard over the music.

“You better turn that music down a bit,” Sirius warned. “They heard it downstairs and as soon as the guests heard you were a squib they took off. Mother’s on the warpath.”

“Who cares?” Regulus muttered, though he did turn the volume down a little.

“Where did you get this?” Sirius asked as he looked at the muggle record player and the album sleeves scattered across the bed.

“Muggle store across the city.”

“When did you get a chance to visit there?”

“Father was late meeting me at the airport,” Regulus replied. “I thought he’d forgotten me, so I made my own way home, and stopped at a few muggle shops on the way.”

“You have muggle money?”

“Yeah.” Regulus looked towards the door with a nervous glance. “Do you remember the gold galleon I got from Uncle Alphard on my birthday? Well, I took it to a muggle pawn shop.”

“You didn’t?”

Regulus nodded. “It’s gold and the owner just thought it was some fancy medallion or something. He gave me muggle money in exchange for it.”

“But we’re not supposed to give wizarding money to muggles. If you want muggle money, you’re supposed to exchange it at Gringott’s or somewhere like that.”

“The exchange rate at Gringott’s isn’t as good as the muggle pawn shop. Besides, he didn’t know what it was.”

“How do you know about exchange rates?”

“Learnt about them in school last year,” Regulus replied with a grin. “Muggles have different money for different countries and all sorts of complications. But I found out about the pawn shops from a fifth year student at school who pointed out that you can get more money from pawning a wizard coin than exchanging it properly. Isn’t it great?”

“Mother and Father will go nuts if they find out.”

“You’re not going to tell them, are you?”

Sirius knew that he should. What his brother had done was not approved of in the wizarding world and, at worst, risked the exposure of their world. But he didn’t want to get his brother into trouble, not when he was already in enough of it already.

“You’d better hide this lot,” he warned, waving his hand towards the albums.

“You won’t tell on me, will you?” Regulus asked again.

“No,” Sirius replied with a small shake of his head. “Just don’t do it again.”

“I’ll use a different pawn shop next time,” Regulus promised, and Sirius knew that that was the best he was going to get. He hoped his brother knew what he was doing.

-o-xXx-o-

The centaur camp had changed since the last time Remus had visited. As he looked at the fortifications that surrounded the buildings he realised that it had actually been nearly a year since he’d been there.

Remus walked around the edge of the tall wooden wall, wondering which way was the quickest to the gate that would lead inside.

Finally he reached the gate and knocked for entrance.

“Who goes there?” a voice called out from inside.

“Remus Lupin,” Remus called back. “Is Firenze around?”

The sounds of hooves were his only reply and he wondered if he was going to be kept outside all day.

“Cub, is that you?”

Remus stood back as the gate swung outwards and Firenze trotted out to greet him. “Don’t call me that,” Remus muttered. “I’m not a kid any more.”

“Sure you are,” Firenze replied with an easy grin. “Compared to me, anyway.”

Remus rolled his eyes and looked back at the gates that were now closing once again. “So, when did all this happen?” he asked, waving towards the wall.

“We finished it a few months ago,” Firenze replied with a wary glance behind him. He drew Remus away from the camp before he continued. “Magorian suspects the Ministry will try to take our lands by force. He’s taken these precautions to ensure that doesn’t happen.”

“The Ministry doesn’t have enough land of its own?” Remus asked. “It’s not like the centaurs have that much of it.”

“It’s not so much how much we have, more like what we have,” Firenze pointed out. “The forest is rich with plants and herbs, many of which can’t be found anywhere else in Britain. Then there are the unicorns to consider; this forest is one of only three locations in Britain where they’re still found. Well, let’s just say the Ministry know how valuable the land is and Magorian believes they’ll use any means they can to get it from us.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I’ve not been party to the discussions with the Ministry,” Firenze replied, bitterness evident in his voice.

“You’re still being shut out?”

“As much as they can.”

“But you’ve been doing everything Magorian has asked you to.”

“Not quite.”

Remus waited for Firenze to elaborate, wondering what it was that Firenze had refused to do. He had thought the young centaur would do anything to regain his birthright, but it seemed he was wrong.

“Magorian and Ebony had a son a couple of months ago,” Firenze explained. “Magorian has made it clear that their son is going to be raised to lead the herd, and he wants me to be his sponsor.”

“Sponsor?”

“Keep an eye on him, help to raise him and train him…”

“But he’s your nephew, wouldn’t you do that anyway?”

“Yes, but as his sponsor it also means that I’m giving away any rights I have to the leadership. Only the heir of the Chief is sponsored.”

“Were you?”

Firenze snorted and stamped his hoof in the dirt. “By Magorian,” he replied. “My father’s most trusted friend was chosen to sponsor me and instead…”

“He stole what was rightfully yours.”

“And now he wants me to sponsor his son, knowing that I’d never do to him and his son what he did to me and my father.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“What does Ebony think about all this?”

“She agrees with Magorian.” Firenze snorted with barely concealed contempt. “As long as she gets her own way, she’ll agree with anything.”

Remus didn’t know what to say to that and when he felt the first spots of rain beginning to fall he used them as a chance to change the subject.

“I’d invite you back into the camp, but Magorian won’t permit any non-centaur to pass through the gates,” Firenze explained apologetically. “Are you staying at the castle or in Hogsmeade?”

“A bit of both really. I’m allowed to go into Hogsmeade whenever I want during the holidays, but I’ve got to make sure I’m back at the school by sunset. Except on full moons, obviously.”

“Sounds like they’re taking good care of you.”

Remus laughed. “They are. Between the teachers and the ghosts I don’t get a minute of peace.”

“Don’t complain, you know you love it,” Firenze teased. “What about your friends? Are they coming to visit you during the summer?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Not even Sirius?”

“His parents probably won’t let him. You know who they are, right?”

“Who doesn’t know the Black family? Even the centaurs have heard of that particular household, though we’ve not had dealings with them for several generations. Not since one of them decided they wanted to add a centaur trophy to their macabre collection.”

“Trophy?”

Firenze ran his finger across his throat and make an ick sound to demonstrate his point.

“They didn’t kill one of the herd, did they?” Remus whispered. His mind filling with a gruesome vision of a centaur head on display in Sirius’s home.

Firenze laughed. “The foolish human forgot that centaurs are far better hunters than he was, though our arrows helped to remind him of that fact. It was a long time ago, a little over a hundred years, but it’s a story that gets retold every few years.”

“I wonder if Sirius knows about it.”

“I doubt it. I don’t imagine the noble house of Black would advertise their shortcomings and failures.”

“Sirius isn’t like the rest of them.”

“No, he’s not,” Firenze agreed with a smile that was more of a smirk.

“What’s that look for?” Remus asked. “He’s not like the others, really.”

“I never said he was. Anyway, you’re what, fourteen now?”

“Fifteen,” Remus corrected with an annoyed sniff.

Firenze grinned, making it clear he knew exactly how old Remus was all along. “You got a girlfriend?”

“No,” Remus replied with a laugh.

“Has Sirius?” Firenze asked, and there was something in his tone that caused Remus to wonder at the question.

“Why did you ask like that?” he asked.

“Like what?”

“Like you already know the answer and find something amusing about it.”

Firenze chuckled. “I just think it might be a long, long, time before you see your friend Sirius with a girl on his arm.”

-o-xXx-o-

The latest of Walburga Black’s dinner parties seemed to be lasting forever. It was already well into the evening and they weren’t even halfway through the main course.

Sirius had chosen a seat opposite the windows of the dining room, much to the annoyance of his mother, and was watching the moon as it appeared and disappeared behind the clouds. He wondered how Moony was coping without him and silently plotted how he could sneak out to Hogsmeade.

He had a handful of floo powder in the pocket of his robes, purloined from the bowl in the study earlier that morning. He just needed to find a way to get out to a fireplace without being noticed. The fireplace in the study was out of the question, the room had been locked earlier that evening after a niffler had mysteriously found it’s way in there. Sirius suspected that Regulus had probably helped it into the house as a way of making his presence known and to show their uncle that he was still taking an interest in magical creatures. Unfortunately it meant that Sirius couldn’t slip into the room as he had initially planned to do.

Since the study was off limits, that left the kitchen fire as the only option, and Kreacher would be sure to tell tales on him if he spotted him escaping through there. He had persuaded Regulus, once again confined to his room until the guests were gone, to keep Kreacher occupied upstairs as best he could after the main course had been served. Unfortunately, the house elf was still very hostile towards Regulus, and Sirius knew that the longer the dinner dragged on, the more likely it was that Kreacher would have returned to the kitchens, his brother no doubt giving up on exchanging pleasantries with the horrible little sneak.

“Isn’t the moon lovely tonight?” Cherie asked from beside him. “So romantic, don’t you think?”

Sirius made a non-committal sound and tried to ignore the hand that had suddenly appeared on his knee. Across the table his Grandmother Irma was glaring at him. He wondered what it was she was trying to convey to him, but he was at a bit of a loss. Was she annoyed at the obvious activities going on under the table or at the fact he wasn’t responding to them? If it was the former, he wished she would glare at Cherie instead of him, and if it was the latter…well, there was nothing he wanted to do less.

“Sirius, stop fidgeting,” Walburga snapped. “At fifteen you should be more than capable of sitting through dinner without squirming around like a toddler.”

Sirius shovelled a forkful of carrots into his mouth rather than reply, earning him a further reprimand. This one came from his Grandfather Pollux about his poor table manners.

Sirius sighed as his relatives took turns in criticising him, and he wished that his Uncle Alphard hadn’t been running late. At least he stuck up for him once in a while, unlike his Great-Aunt Cassiopeia who actually seemed to be surreptitiously encouraging Cherie to be even bolder with her wandering hands.

The main course was finally over, and Sirius turned to his father to ask to be excused. Orion hadn’t even opened his mouth when Walburga interrupted with a loud ‘no’.

It was going to be a long evening.

Dessert was brought into the room by Kreacher, and Sirius knew his chance to slip into the kitchen whilst the house elf had been occupied upstairs had been lost. The guests were served first and the family second. Sirius wasn’t surprised in the least to discover that he was served last of all.

Cherie’s hand seemed to be permanently attached to his leg, and as such it was she who screamed out in surprise when Kreacher accidentally spilled Sirius’s dessert into his lap. Sirius couldn’t help but think there was some sort of justice in that.

After that things seemed to descend into something of a farce, and whilst Cherie was wailing about the mess, Sirius took the opportunity to slip out of the room unnoticed.

The kitchen was empty since Kreacher was no doubt punishing himself for inadvertently insulting a guest, and Sirius wasted no time in climbing into the fireplace.

He threw down the floo powder and stated clearly ‘Lupin residence, Hogsmeade’, but nothing happened.

He tried again but although the flames were green, he simply wasn’t going anywhere.

A shadow passed the door and he caught sight of his Uncle Alphard hovering in the hallway. He didn’t blame him, if he’d arrived to witness the chaos of the dining room, he’d not want to go in there either.

Sirius tried the address for a third time, in a quieter tone, before he suddenly remembered one important detail. Remus wasn’t on the floo network. Romulus had never applied to be connected because it would have alerted the Ministry to their presence, and Remus was still underage and couldn’t apply until he was seventeen. How could he have forgotten such a thing?

He shook his head at his own stupidity and instead tried The Three Broomsticks, which was the closest public floo to the Lupins. This time it worked and a moment later Sirius was stepping out of the fireplace in Rosmerta’s pub in Hogsmeade.

He hurried through the crowded pub and out into the night air. He wasn’t sure of the time, but he knew it was late. In the distance he could hear Moony howling in protest at his captivity and he sprinted down the path towards the Lupin’s house and pushed his way through the front door.

Moony’s howls were louder now and Sirius stumbled down the stairs to the pitch-black basement, scared for what he would find when he arrived.

Romulus was hovering at the foot of the stairs and Sirius could tell from the look on his face that it was bad.

“I came as fast as I could,” he panted.

“I know you did,” Romulus replied. “We knew it was going to be bad this month.”

“How bad is it?” Sirius asked. He could only see the golden eyes of the werewolf, but there was a sharp smell of blood in the air, and cold feeling of dread settled down in his gut. He had his wand in his hand, but was reluctant to light up the room.

“Bad,” Romulus said. “I’ve never seen him so violent, nothing I did calmed him down.”

“He’s quieter now,” Sirius commented.

“You’re here.”

Sirius stood silently for a minute more, gathering the courage to light up the room and look at the werewolf properly.

“Lumos,” Sirius whispered, though he kept his eyes shut to put things off just that little bit longer.

Finally he opened his eyes and looked into the cage. “Fucking hell,” he swore, and it was a testament to how bad things were that Romulus didn’t even scold him for his bad language.

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A/N: Another evil cliffhanger. But the next chapter has already gone to my beta and will hopefully be online before too long.

Thanks to everyone who is reading, and especially those who have commented. It is very much appreciated.