#hsfty

[ashes-and-ashes]

Written on February 2, 2020 and found only recently :) Another bit of HSFTY!

tw for pretty graphic gore!!

~

“Jesus Christ,” Remus says.

Sirius forces a chuckle, wincing as he feels his lip split open wider. “That bad?”

Everything hurts. There’s blood everywhere, coating his lips, his shirt, dripping down into his eye and stuck underneath his fingernails. He coughs, spitting up more blood; red, red, red everywhere and he thinks he’s about to pass out.

“Fuck,” Remus says. He reaches out, though Sirius doesn’t know why, either to hold him or steady him or -

Sirius pulls away. “Don’t. You’ll get blood all over yourself.”

Remus levels a flat, unbelieving look at him. “Really.”

Sirius shakes his head. “I...I can stand.”

“And I can talk to animals but that’s not fucking useful, is it?” Remus hisses, grabbing onto him. Sirius tried to twist away but Remus holds firm. His fingers are wrapped tightly around Sirius’ wrist, heedless of the blood there, and Sirius frowns.

He doesn’t know why his stomach turns, every fiber in his body twisting at the contact. He feels dizzy, almost light headed; he wonders if it’s due to the blood loss.

“Shit,” Remus hisses again. His face has gone grey, his breathing stuttering in his chest. “It’s not stopping.”

Sirius clamps his lips together; he feels a bubble of laughter rising up his throat, a strange sense of giddiness overtaking him. He bites down hard on his cheek, lets the pain bring everything back into focus, body aching with every movement.

Remus glares down at him, then shakes his head. “You need help. I’ll get someone - “

“No,” Sirius says. “Don’t. Don’t tell anyone. I can’t let them see me like this.”

Remus stares at him, then slowly looses a breath. “Why? Why do you keep - keep fucking with people? Keep getting into all these fights?”

Sirius shrugs, then winces. “I don’t know,” he says. “Guess it makes me feel alive.”

“You’re an idiot.”

Sirius laughs, then immediately regrets it. He doubles over, hands pressed to his side, gasping as the pain slowly worked its way up his body. “I happen to be your idiot.”

Remus doesn’t bother arguing. He stares at the marks, the blood, his face a cold, flat mask. Sirius takes one look at his expression and curses himself - Remus always did this, when confronted with blood and torn flesh. He didn’t know what memories plagued Remus’ nightmares, what had been done to him to leave those huge, ripping scars. He wasn’t sure if he ever wanted to know.

“Wait here,” Remus says, his voice gravelly and low. His footsteps are silent as he leaves Sirius’ room - the handle of the door clicks behind him, the faintest scrape of picks against metal. Sirius closes his eyes, breathes through gritted teeth. Water drips on the roof above him, a maddening beat in time with his heart.

He’s not sure how long it’s been when Remus gets back. Long enough that his muscles ache in protest when he forces himself up, elbows braced against the pillows behind him. “Where did you get that?”

“Where do you think?” Remus dumps the first aid kit on the bed, the white plastic luminous in the moonlight. It casts strange shadows across Remus’ face - jagged lines, sharp edges. “Supply closet.”

Sirius huffs a laugh that quickly turns into a wince. “That easy to pick?”

“I did it in the dark,” Remus says flatly. “What do you think?”

His hands are hot against Sirius’ skin as he finds the hem of his hoodie, yanks it up to his shoulders. Sirius hisses under his breath at the scrape of fabric against his wounds, the cold brush of air, the searing touch of Remus’ fingers. He’s not sure what aches more, actually - broken skin or the feeling of Remus’ hands on him, fingers pressing gently into the spaces between his ribcage. “Fuck.”

“Shhh.” Remus’ voice is muffled - he has a small packet gripped between his teeth, tears off the corner. Sirius only has a moment to brace himself before fire snakes up his side - he groans into his arm, teeth digging into his skin. “Ah fuck.”

Remus merely dabs at the wounds again with the alcohol. Sirius has to choke back tears, biting down hard into the half-healing marks on his lip. “Shit that burns.”

“Maybe next time you won’t be such an idiot,” Remus says dryly. The burning moves higher - he presses the cloth against the cut on his chest, fingers so searingly hot against Sirius’ skin. “Who knows if I’ll bother to clean you up again.”

“You will,” Sirius says. He means for it to sound flippant, but the words land too heavily for it to be anything but the truth. “You love me too much.”

Remus’ eyes flicker down, to his own hands pressed against Sirius’ chest, flits back up to meet Sirius’ gaze. He can barely see Remus’ face - it’s all covered in shadows and moonlight and scars like strips of stars set into his skin. “Maybe,” he whispers, and it’s the truth too. “Maybe I do.”

[ashes-and-ashes]

For all the lovely people who wanted more HSFTY <3

~

Sirius catches him in the hallway, all grey walls and dark shadows and the silver light of the moon. He’s leaning against the corner, just across from the door, arms folded and eyes dark.

“It’s not going to work,” he says, and Remus startles so much that he almost drops his picks. It’s only a sharp twist of his wrist that saves them from clattering against the floor, cold metal gleaming in the moonlight, a needle spinning around the soft skin on his fingers. “Trust me. It won’t.”

Remus slowly gets to his feet, slips the picks deeper into his sleeve. He shrugs the bag across his shoulder in an effort to distract Sirius from the motion. “What won’t work?”

Sirius laughs. “Running.”

“Who says I was running?”

Sirius inclines his head. “The bag. The clothes. The lock picks.”

Remus closes his hands tighter, feels the metal dig into his palm, sharp and bright and cold. “What lock picks?”

Sirius just laughs again. It’s almost too loud in the silence of the hallway, louder than the pounding in Remus’ chest and the empty echos of a settling building. “That explains it then. They locked the bedrooms.”

“How did you get out then?”

Sirius just grins, holds up his hands. The fingertips are rubbed raw and bloody, the nails broken and cracked. “Climbed out the window. Across the roof and in through the sitting room.”

Remus just swallows. He spares another look behind him: the door lies closed and mocking where it’s set against the wall, the lock dark and empty. He needs at least another minute on the lock, maybe two. Slowly, he takes a step back, hands dropping down to his side. “That’s dangerous. You could have fallen.”

“Oh,” Sirius says sarcastically. His grin is dark and savage and beautiful - Remus remembers when he had seen him for the first time, his mouth dripping with blood and his knuckes bruised, still smiling even as the staff had forced him to his knees. He looked like a demon, something delicate in its twistedness, an angel long fallen. “Yes. Because climbing a roof is the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done.”

Remus takes another step back. If he reaches out he can almost brush the cool texture of the wall, press his fingers against the wood. “Then what got you in here?”

Sirius’ eyes go dark. “Isn’t it rude to ask questions like that?”

“Maybe,” Remus says. Another half-step and his back is pressed up against the wall, fingers pinned behind him. “But I’m curious.”

Sirius studies him for a long moment. It’s bothered him, for the 3 months he’s been at Hogwarts. People are like locks to Remus, made up of metal pins and empty spaces. He’s always known where to push, where to scrape, how to work them with nothing more than a few twists and prods. It’s how he survived for so long on the streets.

Sirius is different though. Sirius is a lump of melted metal and twisted wires, full of too many cracks and sharp, vicious edges that tore at Remus’ hands whenever he tried to push. Sirius was rusted iron in a corroded keyhole, grating and jolting, full of so much anger that sometimes it reminded Remus of himself.

Remus’ fingers ache, sharp pains shooting all the way up to his shoulders. He swallows it down though, meets Sirius’ level gaze.

“You tell me first,” Sirius says.

Remus takes a deep breath. “I stole from the wrong person,” he says, and the words echo softly in his head.

Something like sympathy sparks in Sirius’ eyes. “I killed the wrong person.”

“I’m sorry,” Remus whispers, and he gives his pins one last stabbing jolt. The lock clicks behind him; he wrenches the handle open with one hand, sliding his foot into the crack between the door and the wall. Sirisu blinks in surprise.

“You - “ he starts, then he cuts himself off. Remus’ hand tightens around the handle, hard enough that if he looks down he thinks he’ll see straight lines seared into his skin. Sirius swallows, mouth a tight line.

“The door’s on the right,” he says. “Two halls down. Past there it’s the showers, then the searching room. I only ever got to there. There’s bars of the window, and blocking the main door. They come down from the ceiling. Never knew how to get past them. If you manage though, there’s the waiting room.”

Remus nods, shoulders tensed up.

“They’ll taser you when they catch you. Don’t resist. One of them broke my arms once.”

“They won’t catch me.”

Sirius gives him a sad smile. “That’s what they always say.”

His face is the last thing Remus sees as he slips into the darkness, closes the door behind him.

~

He makes it all the way to nearly the front door before they catch him.

[ashes-and-ashes]

h i i m i n l o v e w i t h hogwarts school for *tap dancing* (hehehe) youth i t h a s t o b e m y f a v o r i t e modern school au !!!!!!! i re-read everything you have written about it annnnnnd now im *super curios* (again lol) what would hermione and ron get in for? also, i was wondering whether you've thought about dumbledore and what he would be- in the books ive always seen him as a mastermind-puppeteer-who-moves-the-strings-of-the-war man, what would that make him in ur au?

Ahh thank you so much!!! It’s been really fun coming up with ideas and things for it!

To answer your first question - Ron would be in for drug manufacturing. I’m sure the Weasley’s have a whole little empire - Bill manages, Charlie collects ingredients, the twins make it and Ginny and Ron distribute. (Percy probably manages finances haha.) Obviously Ron gets caught and he takes the blame to make sure Ginny gets let off! Hermione would be in for being a general nuisance to her parents - her dad runs a very shady company (that actually has ties to the Weasley gang!!) and she basically tries to expose and raise attention to it. Cue her parents getting pissed and dumping her into Hogwarts on some bs excuse. I’d imagine a very Romeo and Juliet style romance for Ronmione ☺️

To answer the Dumbles question - I absolutely love how twisted Dumbledore is haha. I think he’s pretty wealthy and powerful politically, and he carefully runs Hogwarts to keep that power. Because Hogwarts caters to rich and poor right - obviously he has so much power over the richer people because a) he’s handling their kids and they basically don’t want to piss him off and have him leak names/refuse to enroll their children and b) once those children get ‘fixed’ the family is also in his debt. For poorer kids - it’s kinda similar to Harry in HP. He gives them a home, a chance to turn their life around - he basically spins it so they’re so bloody grateful and just super loyal to him as a whole. Obviously the Marauders aren’t too fond of him but I think for the most part he’s pretty successful!

[ashes-and-ashes]

Will you be doing more of HSFTY? :)

Hey!!

I’m not too sure at the moment! I just finished writing twwfs and I currently may be writing something else, depending on how easy the ✨writing vibes✨ come, so I’m not super focused on my tumblr one shots. Who knows though! Maybe I’ll do something a little longer for HSFTY in the future!