Love's An Anarchist, parts III-V

[thrihyrne]

III.
To live with wolves, howl like wolves.


George didn’t notice anything odd until a Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks after the Drombeg Incident, as he now thought of it to himself. He had arrived in Remus’s rooms in his school robes, having attended a prior meeting with the few hardy souls comprising the Enterprising Witches and Wizards Enclave, all with ideas for new shops and business pursuits. After shucking his robe, he’d taken a short nap in his oxford and trousers.

Once he woke up, he made a cup of tea and sat on the bed, trying valiantly to convince Remus to leave off of grading parchments. As a beginning exercise, Remus had each student create their own wizarding family trees. This assignment was an anticipated exercise in the class, and, in fact, fast becoming a favourite for young History of Magic students, especially those of mixed Muggle and wizarding backgrounds.

“C’mon, Remus,” George pleaded from the other professor’s bed. “If they make even a half-arsed effort you give them full marks, so why spend so much time on them?”

“Because they’re fascinating,” Remus replied from the small study whose doorway was opposite the bed.

“I’m fascinating,” George said provocatively, making sure his voice carried into the next room. “And I’m getting hard, just thinking about you. Thinking about how hot your mouth is, especially when you’ve had one of your post-dinner drinks, and it’s like fire on my tongue, then you breathe in my ear…”

George surprised himself at his monologue of what Remus’s touch did to him. He usually let Remus do the dirty talk, but George found that he really was getting turned on as he spoke in no uncertain terms how Remus made him feel.

As George spoke about Remus’s teeth gripping his nipples, he felt the urge to touch them himself. He undid his shirt and wet his fingers, then clasped the hard nubs, pulling on the darker skin all while telling his lover how it felt when Remus was there. Then he undid his pants, freeing his hard cock, pushing his trousers down past his knees. After fishing about in his pockets, he took out a small vial of potent lubrication, sent to him by Charlie from the Dragon Preserve where he had returned after the War. “Not that I’d know anything about its other uses,” his older brother had written, “but a couple of the chaps here are like you- you know, that way - and they recommend it. Anyway, Happy Anniversary.” Eyes closed, he spread some of the tingly substance on his fingers then began slowly fisting himself, still speaking aloud what it felt like when Remus was touching him, though his commentary was more to himself than anything else. There hadn’t been any noise from the study for some time, and George had given up on Remus joining him.

“Your fingers, oh pixies and paradise, when they’re so slick and you know just how to tease and stroke, and you put me in that brilliant mouth of yours, and I’m just a goner. ‘Specially when you run your tongue all down me and then pull back, tugging on the top, and you put a couple of fingers in me and it’s all I can do not to come right then, but I want to wait, ‘cause then you’ll be inside me and it’s the best feeling ever, so thick and fuck, just unbelievable, you’re a man and still we can do that and- MERLIN!”

George’s eyes flew open.

Apparently Remus had been listening, because he had crawled naked onto the bed. The heavy cock that George had been lauding was now dangling precipitously near his mouth and Remus had a possessive look in his eyes.

“You were saying?” Remus said, his husky voice making George’s heart skip several beats.

“Fuck,” George murmured before sending out his tongue to swipe across the head of Remus’s cock.

“I hope so, after listening to all you just said.”

“Hmmmphphight.”

“Pardon?” Remus asked, withdrawing from George’s mouth, an amused expression on his face. “Didn’t quite catch that.”

“Light,” George panted. “Seems like the bloody sun is in my eyes.”

“It’s fairly overcast, but let me take care of the curtains.”

George appreciatively watched Remus’s slender frame as he closed the heavy drapes. Remus really did have a most fabulous arse. George felt immediately better, and even more horny than he had been before, if that were possible.

“Come and fuck me. Please. Oh. Gods.”

A throaty chuckle rumbled from Remus. “Just a werewolf. But your command is my wish.”

Everything that George had mentioned came to pass. After yelling Remus’s name so loudly he was sure that McGonagall had heard him and he just didn’t care, George surrendered to a deep, sex-sated sleep while Remus cleaned them both up and went back to the family trees.

***

The problems with light became worse. George found that he kept his curtains closed at his flat, and he became irritable in class when the sun was particularly bright. Given the time of year and their geography, it didn’t happen that often, but George didn’t understand what prompted his mood swings. Not only that, but he discovered he had an inexplicable fascination with, and desire for, red wine. Remus was more than happy to placate him, and Malfoy as well, who had a veritable cellar down in the dungeons. Oddly, George felt very comfortable in the Potions Master’s rooms, with the chilled stone and torchlight. He rarely went without Remus, given his few interludes with Draco last year, but he always came away feeling soothed and calm. George was also never entirely sure that Malfoy wasn’t modifying the wine somehow, though he was especially careful to watch him open the bottles and pour their contents.

And then there was the fact that he was always cold.

He would sleep next to Remus, draped over him. Even though he had assumed that he had adapted to Remus’s higher body temperature, now he craved the body heat; he needed it. Sleeping alone at The Cleansweep became an exercise in retrieving as many of his Mum’s and Hermione’s knitted afghans so he could stay warm. Fred gave him no shortage of grief from the portrait, but George tuned him out.

About six weeks after they had been to Ireland, when George was clasped to Remus as though he were his very shadow, Remus ran his hand through George’s hair.

“Not that I mind, but what’s going on?” he asked.

“Dunno,” George replied. “I’m just cold. Stone castle and all.”

“Yes, but that’s never bothered you before.”

George traced his fingers across a raised scar on Remus’s back.

“Bloody hell,” he said, his body stiffening. “Remus. It’s from the Drombeg Incident.”

“The what?” Remus snorted.

“Don’t scoff, no, really. That bloody day in Ireland. I’d meant to tell you, but there was the whole emotion-smelling thing and then the shagging and then we got busy and since I didn’t feel poorly I never told you that- ”

“That what?” Remus pulled back from him, the look in his amber eyes suddenly very serious.

“While I was in the circle, the wind snatched my quill. When I got it from across the way, I noticed this mostly-buried stone and touched it. And then there was a lot of pain, and I passed out. I wasn’t out for that long, though,” he said hurriedly. “I was fine by the time you showed up.”

“Why haven’t you said anything until now?” It was obvious that Remus was on the verge of livid.

“I told you. I felt fine. Nothing happened, I didn’t think. And we were busy.”

“Not so busy that you couldn’t have bothered to tell me that you had been knocked out by something while in an area so drenched in dark magic that I could barely see you in it!”

“You’re yelling,” George seethed through clenched teeth. “Remus, you’re yelling at me. Bloody hell- I’m sorry. Honest to Merlin, I thought whatever it was had passed. I’ve felt just fine, up until recently.”

“We have to go back,” Remus said, his voice measured. “And I didn’t mean to yell. It’s just that Merlin only knows what struck you. A hex, heaven forbid, a curse? It could be anything, and now it’s been several weeks and whatever it was is probably ancient and it’ll take some time to figure out how to counter it.” He rubbed his long fingers into George’s upper back. “You could have been killed,” he said, quietly.

“Then let’s go.” George felt a bit sick to his stomach, his lackluster ability to get things right churning through him. “I’m sorry I always disappoint you. Look, you can get rid of me once we know whatever it was that’s made me so clingy…”

The remainder of his comment was swallowed in a searing kiss. When Remus pulled away, his expression was still severe, but it was obvious that it was because he was worried. “Not getting rid of you, and I don’t ever need to hear you say that again. But George, use that common sense that you have in spades. Please.”

George nodded, somewhat reassured. “Well, I’ve been hit by jinxes and hexes since Fred first learned to cast them. The War taught me about curses. I know what they can do.”

“Which is why I’m so flabbergasted that you hadn’t said anything!” Remus’s mood had tilted back to exasperated.

“I just did. Here, leave it, okay? I’m sorry for being such a bloody idiot and for making you look like one when you have to explain to the Ministry that you want the stones unwarded so we can go back.” George turned over so his back was to Remus, pulling the covers with him.

“I won’t look bad in front of the Ministry, not any more than I already do,” Remus said, rubbing George’s back gently.

George grunted, thoroughly disgusted with himself and wishing he could get his hands on one of the few legal time-turners to have that afternoon to do over again.

***

Remus was already halfway through his breakfast when George made it to the Great Hall the next morning. Thankfully it was raining, but even that much light made George feel achy all over. He didn’t usually take breakfast at the school, but Dumbledore had generously given him a small room off of the first-floor hallway, so his presence wasn’t immediately suspicious to anyone on the staff, much less the students. He took a seat across from Remus, who wished him a subdued ‘good morning,’ then George looked along the table for the tea.

“Tea, Mr. Weasley?” McGonagall held the kettle and motioned for his cup.

“Ah. Great. Thanks.” George passed over the cup then took it back, holding the steaming contents to his face.

In a voice so quiet that George had to lean in to hear him, Remus asked, “Do you remember what you were dreaming about last night? You were moaning, but I hesitated to wake you.”

George took a sip of tea, then busied himself slathering a piece of toast with butter. He chewed for a minute, studying the other food items available, then was assaulted by forgotten images from the night before. He swallowed as he looked over at Remus, who seemed unusually contemplative.

“Yeah. Nightmares. Fred.” George tried to concentrate on them, but the details fled his conscious thought as surely as students rushing off after exams. “Say,” he went on, spearing some bacon off of a nearby platter, “why don’t you go to Drombeg and I’ll poke around the library to see if there’s something that happened there that wasn’t already in my summary.”

Remus nodded, and George tucked into his breakfast. A few minutes later one of the students in the Enclave, Sebastian Langford, enthusiastically tapped him on the shoulder and asked if he could show George the first draft of a business plan he had come up with the night before.

“As long as you don’t mind risking getting egg on your parchment, the space is yours,” George said, gesturing at the empty space next to him.

The Ravenclaw gave him a wide-eyed look. “I wouldn’t presume to sit at the faculty table. Here,” he said, shoving the plan at him. “If you don’t mind, just look over it and I’ll see you on Wednesday.”

Langford beat a hasty retreat back to his classmates while George shook his head and placed the scroll carefully on the table next to his plate.

“You’re really something,” Remus said, looking admiringly at him.

George tried desperately not to let the goofy smile that he actually felt get to his mouth. “Not so much,” he replied, and glanced up at McGonagall, who had an eyebrow raised looking at the two of them. “Fred and I certainly weren’t the only students to enter Hogwarts intent on learning how to make a mound of galleons.” He gave Remus a knowing look. “And some were busy with other incredibly important, but non-schoolwork oriented activities, from what I hear.”

Remus quirked his mouth. “Students, up to no good? I wouldn’t possibly know anything about that.” He eased himself off of the bench and away from the table. “I hope that your research with Madame Pince is illuminating.”

“Me too,” George said. “Be careful.”

***

Even with Madame Pince’s assistance, George couldn’t find anything in the annals of wizarding history at Hogwarts’ library that had anything to do with Drombeg. Remus returned with the now-innocuous stone, placing it in a warded box for good measure.

George’s symptoms got worse. After a few more weeks he went to Dumbledore and told him what had happened and grudgingly asked to have someone else take over his Laughter in Magic course. He could no longer risk teaching during the day after he gestured through a weak sunbeam one day only to suffer a red burn on his hand. He became nocturnal by necessity, as sunlight became unbearable. George and Remus researched vampiric curses, as it was increasingly obvious that was what had affected him, and even Hermione got clearance to various restricted sections of the Ministry to find out what she could- which was nothing they didn’t already know. He did spend a few evenings with Lee Jordan, who was a regular at several clubs and didn’t mind George’s eccentric waking and sleeping habits, but the crush of people overloaded his senses after a while.

Remus was wary of trying the known counter-curses since the dark magic in the area had been so strong, but George was getting desperate.

“I can’t live the rest of my life like this, like some bloody half-vampire,” he said, huddled next to the fire in Remus’s room. “I can’t teach, can’t work the shop during the day, I’m sodding useless.” He jabbed at the burning logs with a poker. “May as well try and be a Muggle, as pathetic as that is.”

There was a sharp intake of breath from the opposite side of the room.

“Of course,” Remus said, slowly exhaling.

“Of course what?” George said irritably, turning around to see Remus shaking his head.

“I should have thought of this weeks ago!” He slammed his hand down on his desk. “Muggles, that’s it! I’m going to the Bodleian library in Oxford. Tonight.”

“I don’t follow,” George said. He pulled the afghan around his shoulders.

“I suspect the reason why we haven’t found anything is because whatever happened at the stone ring was witnessed by Muggles, not wizards.”

George rolled his eyes. “C’mon, Remus. If there’s so much residual dark energy there surely some wizard would have written something about it. And besides, what could a Muggle write that would possibly help? They don’t even believe in magic. Most of them.”

“But some do. It’s worth trying.”

At this point, George was ready to engage in any kind of magic, whether dark, blood-oriented, sexual or mind-invasive to get rid of the curse. “Right. You’re simply going to Apparate into some part of the library?”

“No.” Remus strode over to him and leaned down his hand. “We’re simply going to Apparate into some part of the library.” He pulled George to his feet, shoving the blanket off of him. George was still wearing an undershirt, button-down, and two oversized jumpers his mother had knitted. Remus looked strangely at the garish maroon ‘F’ emblazoned on the front. “Are you having personality confusion as well?”

“Piss off,” George grumbled, snuggling into Remus. “It was what I pulled out of the chest. I was cold. Fred, George, what’s the difference?”

“Well.” Remus ran his hands behind George and grabbed his buttocks. “For one, as charming as Mr. Fred Weasley’s personality is, he does seem resolutely confined to a world of portraits. And the George Weasley clenched in my hands is not.”

George sucked on the side of Remus’s neck. “We’d better go before I get ideas, then,” he said, rubbing his hips against the older man’s.

“And you need to eat more. There’s not much of that gorgeous freckled flesh for me to hold onto anymore.”

“Like you can talk.”

Remus swatted him on the arse. “Let’s get to the Forest.”

***

After Apparating from the Forbidden Forest, George stepped away from Remus in the near pitch-black. The library was, rightly, empty. Except for the ghosts. Several phantasms wandered through the stacks of books while two sat across from each other at a reading table, caressing each other’s translucent fingers.

“Hag’s hounds,” George breathed. “What are they all doing here? Don’t the Muggles see them?”

“Well, I put much more stock in Muggle-wizarding interaction than you do, but I suspect that most of them don’t,” Remus replied, his voice quiet and tinged with melancholy. Or so it seemed to George, who was simply unused to seeing ghosts of any kind outside of the Hogwarts castle. Poltergeists, well, there had been Peeves, and the one at the Burrow. Outside of school, however, he had never run across other figures that haunted particular locales dear to their corporeal hearts.

“We’re on the wrong floor. Follow me.”

George did, noticing the broad swaths of tarnished moonlight illuminating high shelves and row after row of books. Thanks to his curse and Remus he was even more attuned to the moon’s cycles and knew that the full moon was in three nights.

They made their way through several descending staircases until Remus stopped. “Wizard,” he muttered under his breath. “Can’t imagine who else would be here this time of night.”

George shrugged. “Guess we’ll find out,” he said as they readied their wands.

Both George and Remus incanted lumos spells on their wands as dimly as they could make them, then entered an area that even to George’s unschooled eye was obviously not visited by many people. There, at a reading table with thick tomes hovering around her, was Hermione Granger.

“Hermione?” George spluttered as she jumped up from her stool and jutted her wand unwaveringly at the two interlopers.

“Who’s there? I knew you were coming, you know,” she said in an authoritative voice.

“Remus Lupin.”

“And George.”

“Thank Merlin,” she said as she watched their approach from the gloom, then pocketed her wand. “If I get caught doing any more obliviate spells on the cleaning staff the Ministry is going to get after me.”

“What’re you doing here?” George asked, still taking in their surroundings.

“What do you think?” she asked, incredulously. “I’m trying to figure out what in blazes happened at that spot in Ireland and what it will take to find the correct counter-curse for your…” she hesitated, “condition.”

“Mum put you up to this,” George stated, looking around the room. “I should’ve known.”

“No,” she replied, waving Remus over to her. “Well, I mean, she did owl me a couple of times about what was happening and that you were drawing more and more away from everyone, and Ron-”

“Have you found anything?” Remus interjected, leaning sideways to look at the book titles. “I feel twice the fool now, thinking that my idea to go to a Muggle library was such a clever idea. Apparently you’ve already been here a few times.”

Hermione smiled and twisted a rogue curl of hair into the orderly plait running down the back of her head. “Guilty. But I may have finally found something.”

After stowing their wands, Remus and George clustered over her shoulders as she pointed to some mid-1700’s writings about a mysterious Angel and his unfortunate demise at the Druid’s Altar.

“I need to do a bit more research, but I’m almost absolutely certain that there was a vampire coven and this Angel figure was a wizard. He was a rector at the parish church- might’ve been mad, I’m not sure. But it seems that the people in the village saw him as a sort of God-blessed deity, and so he decided to fulfill that role.”

“Sweet Merlin,” Remus said, his fingers brushing the brittle page with its unmoving text. “A wizard priest?”

“I suppose,” Hermione answered. She continued in a subdued, storytelling voice. “And he took it upon himself to be the saviour of the village, even though there were more than just vampires.” She pointed at a paragraph.

“Priest?” George asked, feeling oddly distanced from the discussion. Remus and Hermione had extensive Muggle roots, but compared to them, his interaction with the complexities of the non-wizarding world was woefully limited.

“Religious figure,” Remus said, his eyes still focused on the text, though he did rub his fingers into George’s shoulder.

“There were dark wizards who preyed on the seeming infallibility of the vampires,” Hermione said excitedly. “All of them gathered together and Angel went out to try and defeat them and save the parish from whatever dark magic they would have inflicted 300 years ago.”

“So all we need to is find out how to counter a vampiric curse spelled into a stone by dark wizards in Ireland in the 1700s,” George said, wrapping his arms around his chest and feeling dismal. “No worries.”

“Actually, having the time period can make all the difference,” Remus said consolingly, running his fingers on the bump at the bottom of George’s skull.

George almost allowed himself some hope, his head leaning on Remus’s shoulder, relaxing into the strong fingers kneading under his hair into his scalp. “D’you have some bright idea?”

“He wasn’t Defense Against the Dark Arts professor for nothing, George,” Hermione reminded him, waving the books back to their usual shelved, and in one case, glass-encased locales. She stood up and looked at the two men, hands on her hips. “I would never have thought so, but you two do make a very handsome couple.”

George rolled his head on Remus’s bony shoulder blade. “Hermione, I think you’re just saying that because we’re the only poofs you know. And besides.” He turned to Remus so he could encircle Remus’s middle with his arms, and looked into the amused expression on his lover’s face. “We all know that Remus is the catch in this pairing. Dangerous, sexy, and indecently good-looking for a man his age.”

Remus snorted, but gave George a look that he knew very well. An appreciative, lusty, ‘you’re going to be holding onto that headboard for dear life while I fuck you from here to Thursday and you’re going to love it’ look. “You’d better be careful. Aren’t you the one that said flattery will get you buggered?”

Hermione looked incredulously at them. “I don’t believe you two! How can you want to have sex so much? Ron and I don’t. I mean, well, we do sometimes, but it’s not like-”

“Don’t want to know, Hermione,” George interrupted, turning his head to look at her. “For all I know, Ron likes to be tied up and have you use a riding crop on him. But he’s still my brother, and you’re going to be my sister-in-law at some point, and I just don’t. Want. To. Know.”

She blushed an extraordinary beet-red colour.

“Oh, bloody hell,” George said. “You don’t really use a riding crop on him, do you?”

Hermione clasped her hands to her mouth as Remus gave a rare, throaty laugh.

“Thank you, Hermione, for all the work you’ve done here on George’s behalf,” Remus said after he regained his composure. “I think we should all get home.”

She nodded dumbly, mouth still covered.

Remus was chuckling as they Apparated back to the Forbidden Forest.

*****

IV.
If you want a partner, take my hand.

It was Christmas Eve. Hogwarts was empty, save a few professors and even fewer students. Mid-afternoon found George in the dungeons, watching Malfoy hand Larkspur and Remus their wolfsbane for the month, in the same stoppered green beakers he always used.

“Happy Christmas,” Malfoy said, raising the vials in a toast. “Sorry to leave you out Weasley,” he continued. “Except, I won’t. A Malfoy could never be so rude as to leave out one of his guests.”

While Draco strode across the room toward a cupboard, Beauchamp turned to Remus, blushed, gave him a fierce hug, then bid a hasty retreat from the dungeons.

“Full moon at Christmas. That’s dismal,” George said, watching as Remus kept his eyes fixed on the door where she had exited.

“Indeed.”

“It’s really great that she has you here.”

“Yes. I was, of course, fortunate in my friends, but knowing someone else like me would’ve made a world of difference. Perhaps.”

“Ah, the happy couple,” Malfoy said, appraising George exclusively. “Cheers.” He handed George a dusty bottle of red wine.

“Malfoy, this is ancient! You can’t give me this.” George turned the bottle in his hands.

“I can and I will. Now go on. I need to pack my trunk and get home to the Manor. Besides.” Draco reached out his arms and rested his hands on the other men’s arms. “If what it takes to lift your curse is what I think it is, you’ll need it afterwards.” Malfoy was looking at Remus, but he gently ran his thumb along George’s bicep, then squeezed it lightly.

“Happy Christmas. See you next term,” Malfoy said, stepping back and crossing his arms.

“Thank you, Malfoy,” Remus replied, nodding briefly and turning to leave.

“Cheers,” George said, hefting the bottle, then followed Remus out of the laboratory.

“Good luck.”

The door shut firmly behind them.

***

They made their way through the quiet halls back up to the first floor, the near-silence broken only by two Slytherins protecting the back of their heads as Peeves chucked chestnuts at them. The poltergeist waved at George, who waved back.

“Say!” George exclaimed as they approached Remus’s door. “I could try and learn how to become an animagus, too. Bollocks. I should have thought of that ages ago.”

Remus pointed his wand at the door to undo the locks, then he looked at George and shook his head. “It’s not like it used to be, George, and I truly appreciate your sentiment.” He opened the door and waved George through. “The transformations, thankfully, are virtually painless. And there’s enough to deal with ridding you of this curse. You don’t need to spend extraneous energy learning how to transform yourself.”

George placed the wine bottle carefully on a table near the doorway to Remus’s study, knocking some parchments over in the process. He squatted down to retrieve them. “Not like I can do much of anything else right now,” he muttered to himself. “At least that would be something useful.” Standing, he glanced over at Remus as he shoved the scrolls into as tidy of a pile as possible.

Remus had knocked back his wolfsbane, grimacing at the taste, then put the beaker on his nightstand. He shook his head a few times, silver-streaked hair flying around his face. “Awful,” he growled.

“Isn’t it always?”

“Yes, but I half-expected Malfoy to give it some festive flavour.”

“I wouldn’t have put it past him.”

“Drink? There’s a few hours yet.”

“Sure.”

George waved his wand at the fireplace, murmured incendio, and soon they were both seated next to the cheery flames. He was sitting on the floor, sheltered within the confines of Remus’s legs, nursing a glass of wine and luxuriating in the other man’s touch as Remus ran his fingers through George’s hair. Then the fingers moved down, running across George’s chest, and he felt his lover’s growing erection nudging into his back.

“Mmmmm,” George said, tired but wanting to do something for Remus before his change, especially on Christmas Eve. He disengaged himself from Remus’s legs and turned around, kneeling in front of the older man. The room was very dark, an attempt to keep George as comfortable as possible. It meant that the firelight playing on Remus’s face set his features in sharp relief, his expectant expression captured in flickering illumination. George ran his hands up Remus’s legs to the bulge tenting his wool trousers, letting his fingers rub against the hardening shaft. He looked up at Remus to gauge his reaction, but Remus’s eyes were closed. His legs opened wider, however, and George smiled to himself.

He undid Remus’s belt and waist buttons and unzipped the placket. The tempting, musky smell of remusex was there as George shamelessly rubbed his face in Remus’s groin, inhaling the other man’s scent and powerful lupine smell from the wolfsbane potion. “Think I need to get you out of these,” he breathed into Remus’s boxers.

“Another brilliant thought from that mind of yours,” Remus said, lifting up from the chair so George could pull down all of the clothes until the fabric clustered around Remus’s ankles. George took care of removing the obstructing shoes and socks, then tugged off Remus’s trousers and underthings, throwing the garments out of the way. George knelt again, closing his eyes and running his tongue up the inside of a hairy knee and inner thigh. He rubbed the trimmed hair of his goatee against the sensitive soft skin of Remus’s balls, a gesture he knew Remus loved. George sent out his tongue, deftly tracing a familiar and scent-driven trail of skin, pulling one of the soft sacs into his mouth and running his tongue all around the lightly furred surface, grazing his teeth a bit when he heard Remus’s appreciative growl above him. Eyes still closed, George suckled the sac, then suddenly stopped. His nose had run into something hard. Something at the base of his lover’s cock. George sat back on his heels, gasping.

“What’s that?” he asked, then abandoning any decorum, leaned back into Remus’s crotch and stared.

“Happy Christmas, George,” Remus panted, placing his own fingers around the device, turning it in a slow circle. George felt his own cock jump in a frisson of hedonistic need. In front of him was a magical cock ring. Glowing in the dim light, the words ‘Property of George X. Weasley’ pulsed on the surface. “Do you like it?”

George responded with dangerous enthusiasm.

***

A few hours later, George was curled up on the floor, huddled in several blankets, a few feet away from where the wolf lay, looking back at him with disconcertingly familiar gold-flecked eyes. George had finally convinced Remus to let him spend the night with him after his transformation, though it had taken ages to get there.

“We’ve been together almost two years!” he’d insisted. “It’s Christmas. Bloody hell. You’ve even been officially accepted into the family, for bollock’s sake.”

Remus had tried to stare him down with his most severe glare, but it was rather unconvincing when he had been unable to resist the siren call of the hand-knitted maroon jumper with a large silver R in the middle, Molly’s white flag of truce. “All right,” Remus conceded. “But only after. Not during. And go ahead and put some clothing of yours in the room. If Malfoy hasn’t tinkered with the wolfsbane, I should be able to recognise you without any problem, but bring your wand with you regardless.”

Now the two gazed at each other until George couldn’t stand it. “I’m cold,” he apologised, then got up to his knees and shuffled toward the wolf. He pulled back his lips at first until George put out his hands in front of the wolf’s nose. He was sniffed, then licked. Accepted. George didn’t dare pet Remus in this form- truth be told, he had never quite realised nor appreciated what it must be like to turn into an animal, especially one as large as the full-sized grey wolf in front of him. Every movement George made was done in a gesture of submissiveness; Remus had stressed that while it was certainly him in the room, and ultimately he inhabited the mind of the creature George would confront, Remus the person would be untenable and unaccessible on any profound level.

But George was freezing, and he knew it was Remus there, and honestly, he was suffering no small bit of apprehension about what had to be done the next night to be rid of his curse. He missed his lover; he missed Remus’s body heat and furry chest.

“I’m going to lie down in front of you,” he said to the wolf, which raised its head and held out its tongue, breathing open-mouthed for a bit. “I’ll take it that’s okay.”

The wolf - Remus - yawned, jaw unhinging as only can be done by a canine. George smiled, then slowly lowered his body down, facing the wolf, and then turning his back to it. He scooted back until his prone figure was next to the more rapidly breathing animal, not wanting to rush things, but needing to be near Remus, regardless of his temporary form. After awhile, George relaxed enough not to jerk away when the large head behind him leaned over and licked the exposed skin above his ear, then rested behind him on a bony paw. A heavy foreleg draped over George’s shoulder, and he nestled into the heat of the prominent ribcage behind him.

“I love you, Remus,” George said quietly, quite sure that the wolf couldn’t hear him. “I know I’ve never said that to you before, and it’s pretty cowardly to do it while you’re not really who you are. I mean, aside from Mum, and maybe Ginny, I’ve never said it to anyone. Not even Fred, but I guess that went without saying.” He rubbed at his nose, willing away the tears that pricked behind his closed eyelids. “I must sound like a lovesick git or something, but you do mean the world to me, and I really do want to do right by you, no matter what. Just can’t believe you still put up with me, and that cock ring…” he grinned, rubbing his shoulder blades against the wolf’s fur, surprised when a loud huffing noise blew into George’s ear. “Oy! Can you hear me? Do you understand what I’m saying?”

George turned his head around only to have a large wet wolf nose nuzzle him on the sensitive spot on his neck, behind his ear. “You’re tricky, Remus Lupin,” he said, settling down and curling up his arm so he could lay his head on it as a cushion. “I do love you. Happy Christmas.”

The wolf made a low whining sound, then licked George’s neck two more times for good measure. George was asleep within minutes.

***

“Hermione, I’m bloody freezing!”

“I know, I know. And I’m sorry,” she said, pity in her expression. “This is the only way, though, and even I’m not sure it’s going to work.”

“Let’s get it over with then,” George replied through blue lips. Remus, in wolf-form, wouldn’t leave his side, rubbing up against him. The moon was full for two consecutive nights, which made Remus miserable, but had been responsible for the opportunity to perform the ritual that would hopefully rid George of the vampiric curse. The trio had stood at the ocean’s edge, a mile from the Drombeg circle, where Hermione had made two braided circlets of seaweed, incanting something in Middle Irish and fastening them around George’s wrists. He was naked, and shivering; feet in the ocean, almost falling in with the slick stones and the fact that he could barely feel his feet. Súanem suthainn. It sounded like Parseltongue to him, but Hermione insisted that it would allow him to be bound to Remus. It was only blood-binding with another dark creature that would expel the vampiric curse which could then be, in theory, infused into the earth where it would be too diluted to be harmful. Or so Hermione thought.

George and Hermione Apparated from the sea to the circle, and Remus followed, panting, a few minutes later.

“Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks, bollocks, bollocks!” George was shaking. “You’re not going to be able to get any blood out of me. It’s all vanished.”

“George, I am so sorry-”

“Just go on. I’m sure seeing me like this is no picnic for you either. Thank you for giving up your Christmas night to be blinded by my glow in the dark body and having to do dark magic. I swear I’ll get you something nice once this is all over.”

She enfolded him in a full-body hug, garnering a low growl from Remus.

“Just being friendly,” she said as the wolf nosed at her legs. “You have the stone?”

George nodded. He stood in the center of the circle, all too aware of how he must look in the moonlight, knees knocking together, and his private bits shrunken with cold, trying desperately to curl up into himself.

Hermione took her wand and began speaking the counter-curse very carefully. She invoked the powers of earth and stone, blood and water, then took out a small knife. George knew she had memorized the pattern of the cracked rock that had housed the curse, but he held it in his hands with the spiral turned outward so she could see it.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, placing the knife to his chest. With a deliberate hand, she cut him, making a replica of the spiral on his body. The magic she had called around him made the pain far more bearable, but Remus was whimpering nearby, making it seem worse.

Once the pattern was done, George lay down on his back on the pebbled ground. The wolf came over and licked his ribs, lapping at the blood and then letting some of it fall onto the stone in George’s hands. George felt as though the wind had been knocked out of him as his breath seemed to rush out of his fingers. He dropped the stone at the same time that the seaweed ties sizzled and smoked; it had felt like a burning coal, and he rubbed his hands in the damp ground in an effort to cool them off. The wolf continued licking at the circular trail until there was no blood, just a slightly oozing welt in a spiral.

“Did it work?” Hermione was breathless, and looked apprehensive.

“Dunno. Something happened, though,” George managed to say through chattering teeth. “Can we get out of here now?”

“Most certainly.”

George allowed himself to be pulled up from the ground and gratefully wrapped the bathrobe around him that Hermione had brought. “Ready to Apparate back?” George asked the wolf, squatting down beside the large grey body. Remus had insisted that he could Apparate while in wolf form as long as he knew exactly where he was going, but it had made George very uncomfortable. It was one thing to be clutching Remus the person and travel magically, but it was quite another to try and hold onto a dangerous-looking wolf, even if George rationally knew it was Remus. The wolf licked the side of George’s neck. “I guess that’s yes.”

*****

V.
Here I stand- I’m your man.

“So I wondered how daft he must’ve thought I was not to notice that he didn’t care for all the birds I tried to set him up with, and I tried not to get too sodding cranky with him, ‘cause it’s George, y’know, and I just can’t stay angry at him for long, and so anyway, here’s to George and Remus!”

Lee Jordan raised his pint, already at least two sheets, if not three, to the wind.

“To the oddest handfasting, wedding, whatever, I’ve ever attended, but it’s George, and he’s happy and that’s all I’ve ever bloody cared about. You’re the best, mate.”

George about spewed his beer all over the table. Molly was in tears, his father’s face continued to have a blushing tinge to it, Hermione saluted and then grabbed Ron’s glass and swallowed a hefty amount of the contents as Ron began to curse a blue streak. Charlie and Percy’s children ran around the table while their parents each had slices of cake, and Ginny clutched George’s arm.

“I just wish Fred and Bill were here,” she said, her eyes red. “But I’m happy for you too.”

“Oh, I told Fred. You should have heard him, after he quit swearing. He was more than happy not to have to cope with Mum being a faucet.”

Ginny sniffled. “Sounds just like him.”

“Because it is,” George replied, moving his arm to drape around her shoulder. “Chin up, Gin.”

She nodded, then wiped her eyes and allowed herself to be eased from him back to Neville’s side.

“You didn’t have to do this, y’know,” George said to Remus, who appeared to be surprisingly comfortable being the center of attention, even with the gaggle of Weasley clan all around him. His voice took on a serious tone. “We’re really a nightmarish lot. You’ll probably regret it.”

Remus shook his head and with his thumb, ran over the trail hidden under George’s shirt and robes. “I’m done with regrets. Life’s too short, and there are far worse ways to spend my life than with a handsome man who can make me laugh and who’s only just hitting his sexual prime. Especially now that I can enjoy seeing you in daylight again.”

“You’re barking,” George said, his heart fit to burst, still reeling that they were publicly joined and that they were accepted. “You should be with somebody better.”

“You are better, George. You’re marked. For me.”

“You’re a hopeless romantic.”

“Yes.” Remus leaned over and kissed him lightly, the gesture mostly unnoticed in the cacophony of the revelry going on around them. “You are too, you just haven’t realised it yet.”

“Bloody sentimental poof.” George grinned.

“Takes one to know one.”


***

Author's Notes

~"Love's An Anarchist" comes from a poem by Kurt Brobeck and is used with permission.
~ "I’d crawl to you baby and I’d fall at your feet," "If you want a partner, take my hand" and "I'm your man" are all from the fabulous song I'm Your Man by Leonard Cohen.
~"To live with wolves, howl like wolves" is from a 2002 Russian Proverb calendar a friend gave me a couple of years ago.
~"Things which cast no shadow" is from the poem Poen by Leonard Cohen.
~ Sumain súil should roughly translate to “summon sun” in Middle Irish; Súanem suthainn should roughly translate to “(rope) twisting eternal.” My thought was that the binding spell would be braided into the seaweed armbands that Hermione places on George.

Acknowledgements-

~Eternal gratitude to Jen for yet another spot-on and insightful beta.
~The idea and multi-use lubricant from the Dragon Preserve comes directly (but within a different context) from Minx's great story, "Here There Be Dragons."
~Remus's ability to sense people's emotions is fanon within many communities, and I would acknowledge multiple authors if I could only remember who they all are. One, for sure, is Minx.
~The idea of an 'angel' having been killed at the Drombeg standing stones came from one line of a song by Beth Patterson, "Steer By the Stars." The inspirational phrases are:

Now we all take our chances on what we regain
But only fools would rush in where an angel's been slain

Comments

[snottygrrl.livejournal.com]

v. nice - liked the ghosts in the library, the lovely scene with wolf!remus and george. and of course always happy to see my favorite slytherin doing the things he does best, make potions and know tons about wine....[*grin*]

[thrihyrne.livejournal.com]

Jen loved the ghosts in the library, too. I just figured in a locale that old, there were bound to be such around, but the visual in my head was compelling, I must say.

And yes, Draco is doing what he does best. *cough* Well, actually, he was doing that in "All Men Make Faults." Maybe I'll reread that one. I do like the idea of adult, snarky, manipulative and yet very sexy Draco making the moves on George. Who could resist??

Thank you for making it all the way through this. Now they're together though- I think the only thing next to happen would be a big 'ol angstfest. Not ready for that. Must post part 2 of the darkfic stuff. :P