Bad Moon Rising

The times are changing.

[clairehollands]

like the ghost you don't believe in / 8/11 / remus & claire

[clairehollands]

Claire swallowed again. “I hope you’re right”, she said, then sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s no use being afraid.” It felt wrong to say it, quite the opposite of how she felt - looking for Death Eaters everywhere in the castle, she hadn’t slept well ever since the attack, always afraid, always paranoid - but still, it was no use, especially because there was nothing she could prove.

She put both her hands back under the table, on her knees. He shouldn’t see them tremble (even though he’d probably noticed anyway).

Look at yourself. A few weeks ago you couldn’t even talk to people without blushing or getting nervous or saying too much or nothing at all. She put the smile back on her face. “But they must know you for who you really are, and they don’t seem to mind, do they? Maybe you’re just too hard on yourself.”

[monsterbymoonlight]

"None of us are used to being afraid, not truly," Remus agreed quietly, resigned. No one else was used to being terrified of what they were, what they could become, except for him. He was all to aware of the possibilities, all the ways he could hurt a human if he became enraged enough, and how that anger, that deep seeded anger burned just beneath his skin, now more than ever.

"They don't. No one can ever truly know a person, can they?" Remus cleared his throat. "Not without exploring their mind fully, and that's not something I'd ever be comfortable with anyone doing, brothers or not."

[wormypeter-blog]

blood brothers // peter&remus // nov 1st

[wormypeter-blog]

Remus has always had it worse, Peter reminds himself. And while Remus certainly isn’t cheery, he’s not shaking either. He doesn’t seem as bothered, as fundamentally changed, as Peter by the day’s events. Remus is brave. Peter is not. There’s nothing more to say on the matter.

“Not really,” he admits in response to the question. “I’m fucking scared, Moony. I’m bloody terrified of what they’re going to do.” An involuntary shiver makes its way up his spine, and he slides to the floor, cross-legged. He stares forward, at one of his best friends in the entire world, and tries to look strong for his sake. If it’s bad for Peter, it’s ten times worse for Remus. But he finds that he can’t.

“Do you ever think about how this is all going to happen? This war and fighting and the rest? Do you ever think about how we’re going to die, all of us? Are you ever just really scared for your own life, even though it’s not noble and brave and all that shit we’re supposed to believe in?”

[monsterbymoonlight]

Remus slips off the bed and joins Peter on the floor. He wrapped a hand around the back of Peter's neck. Peter wasn't a wolf, but this should calm him a bit anyway. "I know. I know you're scared. You'd be insane if you weren't, Wormtail," Remus told him softly.

Remus breathed in carefully, releasing it slowly, thinking about Peter's questions. "I do. As much as I try not to, I do think about it. But no one is going to die, Peter, not as long as we stick together. No one is going to get hurt. I promise you that, I won't let it happen."

[monsterbymoonlight]

Dark Side of the Moon || Remus & Rabastan || 18/11/1976

Remus blew into his hands again in an attempt to warm them. He wasn't even sure what he was doing out here, honestly. It was cold and the forest was dark. He was out here all alone.

Though to be fair, it felt kind of nice to be on his own out here. There was no one watching him out here, no one to interrupt his thoughts. No James to be awkward around or Peter to avoid or Sirius... whatever Sirius was right now.

"Nox," he whispered quietly, sliding down a tree trunk onto the forest floor. He leaned his head back on the tree, and listened to the wildlife. He could hear hooves racing in the distance, night birds rustling...

...and footsteps crunching through the underbrush.

"For someone sneaking around after hours in the Forbidden Forest, you're awfully loud," Remus called out, smiling gently. He was half-expecting one of the boys, but Remus' luck had been a bit sour lately.

[wormypeter-blog]

blood brothers // peter&remus // nov 1st

Everyone gets back from the Hogsmeade trip late. It’s chaos, all around the village and up to the Hogwarts grounds. Peter wonders whether the Ministry officials are sorting things out somewhere. Maybe they’re taking care of the injured, as there are few of his classmates in the halls when he makes his way up to the common room. There he finds some others, as confused as he is, and sits with them. He tries to blend in, to daydream, to not hear their words. He can’t think about this right now. Not now. Around midnight he grows tired of drowning out the near-strangers whispers. The common room is nearly filled, but not with anyone he cares to talk to. Slowly, he makes his way up to his dormitory. He expects the room to be empty, a place where he can wallow in solitude, but another figure catches his notice.

“Moony?” he asks. “Sorry mate, I didn’t know you were here.” He’s not quite sure why he’s apologizing, other than that he feels he’s interrupted a personal moment. He keeps talking, to fill the silence more than anything.

“That was… that was bloody insane. I’ve never heard of anything like that before. Death eaters, fucking death eaters, in Hogsmeade Village. There were people shopping… and students… and…” He finds that he can’t continue. He clears his throat.

“I guess this is it, then? What they’ve been talking about? War and the like?” He closes his eyes. “They kept says it would happen, but I never thought… bloody hell… You okay, mate?”

[monsterbymoonlight]

Remus had stumbled back in as soon as he'd been able. It was dark out already, and he didn't feel like sitting in the Hospital Wing for hours with students and villagers crying and bleeding everywhere, not with his ire already up. He knew he needed to clean his wounds, so he slipped in and took what he knew he needed.

Climbing the stairs back up toward the tower, it felt so strange. He'd been so happy this morning... and now. It felt like his whole world was falling apart. With the movement so close to Hogwarts, inside Hogwarts... it was brought home to Remus that he would soon have to make a choice.

He slid past the party of frightened and shaking, but otherwise unharmed students in the common room. He didn't have the patience for them, and he didn't have the humanity to deal with their fear. His blood was high, and he felt too much like the predator he'd been earlier in the day to take their crying.

He shook as he took off his filthy clothing, the smell of soot and blood overwhelming to his sensitive nose. He took a bath as quickly as he could, his wounds stinging. He was still shuddering, the adrenalin still pumping through him. He felt shaky and unsure now that he wasn't in the middle of a battle.

He wasn't meant for this. He wasn't meant to be a soldier. He wasn't brave and sure. He wasn't a fighter. Not outside of the moon.

But that strictly true, now wasn't it. And that's what frightened him the most.

Remus finished covering the last of his burns with the poultice he'd nicked from the Hospital Wing, and wiped beneath his eyes, sniffing. "I'm fine. Are you?" Remus asked, voice gruff. "Are you alright?"

[beckywiththesplitends]

Gaspard Ulliel

[monsterbymoonlight]

Two questions: 1) Have you had any interesting dreams lately? and 2) Now that it's starting to get chilly outside, what is your favorite sweater?

I had an odd one the other night! All the boys were girls and all the girls were boys, and Bellatrix kept asking me to eat her(his) fish. I really don't want to think about what that could possibly mean...

The rumpled one with the fuzzy bits hanging off and the holes in the end of the sleeves for my thumbs to slip through.

[monsterbymoonlight]

a monster born to build 

a victim born to bend

a monster born to break

and all will meet their end

[monsterbymoonlight]

Though all hell a-sail me, I shall not be moved.

[monsterbymoonlight]

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before || Sirius & Remus || 9/10

[blackheartedlions-blog]

Winter was setting upon Hogwarts, and Sirius awoke, shivering in his nakedness, within the Shack decked with specks of frost. “Remus,” he mutters, bitterly, “Cheers for waking me up. Not that you’ll mind me telling you, mate, but you look like shit.” It’s a classic greeting for waking Remus up after a full moon. He always looks ill.

Sirius stands, and to his dismay, sees both himself and Remus absolutely naked, with both sets of clothing ripped and torn away to shreds. It’s also not the first time this has happened between he and Remus. Padfoot and Moony have a tendency to get, ah, aggressively hormonal, when in animal form. Shit. Because there’s nothing else to say out loud, Sirius says that instead, “Shit,” looking at Remus, embarrassed.

Nothing for it, Sirius wanders to Remus, grabs a hand, and hoists him up. “Come on you,” he says, grinning sheepishly, “Guess we’d better go get the others,” 

Sirius doesn’t quite know where he stands with Remus. He knows that there is something between them that the other two don’t share, some kind of awkwardness, tension, silence, punctuated by the odd drunken groping at parties. He also knows that he awakes naked alongside Remus more often than he does the others. 

Something he doesn’t know is that he has absolutely no idea what Remus thinks about the situation. What he does know is that with Remus, is, although he doesn’t feel whole in the way he does with Bella, when he’s with Remus it’s the closest he can be to the broken jagged pieces of his mind ever being glued into something resembling him being fixed. “So,” he says, “Awks. Like this has happened again,”

[monsterbymoonlight]

"Cheers," Remus grumbles back, not terribly irritated. It was merely fact. One that he'd grown used to over the years. "Your hair is fantastic, mate," he teases back, cracking a tired grin.

Remus blinks at the pile of what used to be clothing, not terribly surprised. Human clothes meant human scents, and no doubt in drove the werewolf mad to have the smell so close, but nothing to rend and tear and shred. He swallowed a little thickly, growing paler at the thought of what those claws could do to a human being. 

Remus leans heavily against Sirius' side, his legs not quite up for taking his weight. The trek up to the castle would be hard, and all Remus really wanted to do was go back to sleep. Sirius was burning hot against him, and Remus' muscles loosened from their tense position just a bit. "Sorry, Sirius, I can't seem to find my feet," he mumbled as the other boy all but drug him across the floor towards the door.

It was odd, being around Sirius again, so close, after a summer of being around only werewolves, even in his free time outside the study. He knew it would take Moony time to readjust to the pack of a dog, a stag, and a rat, rather than being surrounded by his own kind, but he hoped the wolf got over it soon. Being close to Sirius should feel like this, despite his own human emotions fiddling with things. Those emotions that he shoves to the back of his head, never thinking about unless he absolutely had to. Sirius was his friend, and that was all. Nothing more to be done.

"Honestly, Padfoot, at this point it's all pr for the course," he murmured back. "Besides, it's not as if this is the first time, nor will it be the last. Though if I had to choose any group of young men to see me in a state of undress, it would be the three of you."

[clairehollands]

like the ghost you don't believe in / 8/11 / remus & claire

[clairehollands]

Again, the thought is sickening, but Claire manages to feel even worse imagining what others went through. She only thought of herself, of course. Never of others. Self-centered monster. “Well, you never know”, she heard herself say, from far away, “anything could happen, even her on the grounds.”

She forced herself not to drift off into that space of dreams or something where she’d recently been to often. Half memory, half imagination - she hoped that was only imagination, at least. Things she did, that were done to her… She swallowed. “I’m sorry”, she quickly says. “It must be horrible, talking to me with me whining and drifting off all of the time. I’m sorry. You are very nice. Remus.”

Friends. What that must be like. “I can’t get close to people, I think.”, she said without the intention of saying anything, actually. “At least, I’ve never really been. Except my real family, of course. But what you four have, sounds great. Even though I don’t think there’s a ‘despite’ in accepting you. You seem utterly… nice, everybody would want to be friends with you.”

[monsterbymoonlight]

"No. Not here," Remus refused to believe it. That something like that could happen inside these walls. "Never here."

"No, it's alright. It's not whining," he told her softly, at last releasing her hand and folding down his sleeve again. "I find it helps to put things in a bit of perspective, on occasion."

"Before those three, I couldn't either," he admitted, smiling softly to himself. "It was difficult, learning to adjust to dealing with people, with them, but I did, eventually." The smile slid off his face. "You don't know me very well, then. If you did, you'd know I'm far from nice."

[monsterbymoonlight]

"He’s run away. He’s been faced with a real fight for the first time, a real battle, something dangerous and violent and real, and what does he do? He runs and hides and he’s a coward a coward a coward.

He doesn’t know how long he lets himself sit there and hate his own weakness; hates how small he feels, how young, not like James Potter at all, not the Marauder or the Quidditch Captain or the brave young man who’s going to join the resistance when he finishes school — he feels like James the boy, scared and useless and scared." 

[monsterbymoonlight]

blackheartedlions replied to your photo: beware the wolf, for his heart is lost 

ooc: omgggg GORGEOUS THO

ooc: asdfghjkl; thank you!

[monsterbymoonlight]

Wild-Eyed Boys || James & Remus || 11/11

[jaamespotter-deactivated2013102]

James shrugged unabashedly at Remus’ accusations, knowing and fully accepting them to be true and not really seeing any point in denying them. Remus was one of best friends, and James was — well, he was James. Could he really be blamed for taking an interest? Remus’s love life — if you could call it that, poor sod — had been all-but blank until the owls had started arriving with twice-weekly updates this summer.

So he laughed, loudly, when Remus fumbled his way through his explanation, grinning when his friend blushed hotly and looked away. “Moony! I’m scandalised! A prefect, having a hot summer fling? Whatever will the parents think?”

He paused, biting his lip in a moment of consideration, and then continued in a quieter tone, looking up to check somewhat unnecesarily that the classroom they were using was still deserted. “And the — your little — furry problem. That wasn’t a…problem?”

[monsterbymoonlight]

"I think the parents would be more concerned with my furry little problem than my, er, my love life," Remus cleared his throat, picking up the next puffskein. "And she was... she had the same problem. I've never been able to connect to anyone else like that. She- she understood in a way no one else can."

He looked up at James shyly. "Were the letters dreadful? I tried not to make them all about her, or rather, about what I should do. Thank you, for all the advice, by the way. Most of it was helpful, though I didn't follow through on some of your, er, suggestions, as it were."

Remus handed off the next creature to James, thinking back on summer. It had, hands down, been the best of his life. He missed being there. He missed her, but nothing compared to being back at Hogwarts, with his friends, his pack. "How are things with Lily?" No doubt in a few moments he'd regret that question, but it was still better than talking his own girl problems. Writing in down was so much easier than talking about it in person.

[monsterbymoonlight]

beware the wolf, for his heart is lost 

[monsterbymoonlight]

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before || Sirius & Remus || 9/10

Remus woke shivering. Winter had fallen in with a vengeance, and the thin, ripped sheets on the cot in the Shack were insufficient for warmth. There was a line of heat down his back, and when he looked over his should her could see the pale shoulder and dark head of hair of one Sirius Black.

Remus sighed, rolling over onto his back, the shredded canopy grey with dust, motes floating through the air, lit up with sunbeams from the window. Dawn was stretching over the horizon, frost lay over the land outside, dew turned hard over the cold night, and Remus dreaded the coming march up the to the castle.

Every sinew throbbed with old pain, and Remus groaned as he sat up, running a hand through his hair. At least it was Saturday. He could do his best to recover from the change in time for classes Monday. "Pads. Paddy, wake up."

[monsterbymoonlight]

Wild-Eyed Boys || James & Remus || 11/11

[jaamespotter-deactivated2013102]

“Good idea,” James nodded, a slow burn of malicious anticipation spreading through him like Firewhiskey. They worked quickly together, Remus carefully holding the bottle of potion away from his face and sprinkling a dusting over each puffskein before handing it to James for charming. There was no need to talk once they’d set up a rhythm; they fit together like they always did, a well-oiled machine, having practised the art of practical jokes to (they liked to think) perfection years ago by now.

“So go on, then,” James said, after a while; he looked across at Remus and bit his lip to keep from grinning too widely. “The Summer of Love! Tell me everything, Moony, you can’t just owl me every three days asking for help and then say nothing at all for two months once we get back to school…Did you really think I’d let you  get away with not telling me anything?”

[monsterbymoonlight]

Remus cleared his throat, blushing furiously, as they worked. "You could do to be a bit less enthused, you know," he muttered, embarrassed. "And we've all been a bit... busy, as you well know. I didn't really want to discuss this in front of the others. You know how Sirius gets, and Peter. Well, Peter."

He handed over the puffskein he'd finished and paused, biting his lip. "She was lovely, though. She was... like me. And- and I fell in love with her. She, er," Remus blushed harder still, most likely mimicking a Red Kappa. "Let's just say, I've lost the last vestiges of childhood, and leave it at that."

[monsterbymoonlight]

Prompt: You wake up post-full moon to see your friends sleeping beside you.

Thursday, 9 September 1976

Remus woke with a soft groan, every muscle in this body throbbing, stretched well past normal human limitations the night before. It had been the first moon of the school year, and he’d made his friends promise to keep him inside the cabin this time. Undoubtedly it had been a violent moon, but they’d opted to stay with him anyway.

He carefully turned his head to the side, a little surprised to find them there, but a smile bloomed across his face, as much as it hurt, he couldn’t get rid of it. It felt too good, to have them here when he woke. They were out, no doubt having worn themselves, and Moony, out the night before. Class wouldn’t begin for a couple hours yet; Remus always woke at dawn after a full moon, more than a little relieved to look human again. They could afford to sleep in a bit.

He studied each of them as they dozed on. James was on his side, spine arched backward against the wall, soft breathing nearly making Remus drift off again. Peter was curled in on himself, squeaking in his slumber at some imagined foe, perhaps. Sirius was sprawled out on his back, loud, snuffling snores vibrating through him.

Times like these gave Remus a kind of focus and perspective he rarely had at all. These boys, these Marauders were his family. There was no getting around that. They were his brothers more than his blood relatives were his family. These three boys were his pack.

Remus sighed, relaxed as best he could. His eyes drifted closed, a soft smile playing along his mouth. He was safe. His pack was watching over him. He could go back to sleep.