Will Be Dead Men (The Claude Rains Remix)
Remix Author: Fleshdress
Original Story: Boys Will Be Boys by Greenie
Summary: Not at first sight, but at last.
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Harry Potter
(I come back to this too often. I can’t stay away. I should stay away, I know I should but… I just… can’t.)
“What the hell is a light sabre?” asked Sirius.
(Sirius, pretty pretty Sirius who all the girls wanted. You fell through the Veil. Bellatrix told me. Such a dramatic death, so typically you. Like an actor bowing out off the stage. I cried where I couldn’t be seen, which was everywhere.
Of all of them, you were furthest from me. But even though you never closed the gap between us, you saw me. Saw what you could use me for.
You chose me over Remus at the end. When it mattered. "We can trust Peter," you said. Hm, saw me all wrong though, didn’t you?)
Remus snatched his Muggle Studies essay away from Sirius, a flush of amused irritation colouring his thin face.
(Remus was always saying: "I’m a human, human do you hear me? Treat me like a human." But your skin melted around my silver fingers and the wolf howled as you died. I didn’t cry after that. I couldn’t. You were the last of us and to cry would be to admit that the last pillar had fallen. How funny that I was the only one left to represent the Marauders.
You were always kind to me, though. When you noticed me that is. When you weren’t too preoccupied with the shadowy sweep of Sirius’ hair or the sparkle in James’ bird-of-prey sharp eyes.)
“I told you to do your own work for once,” Remus said, though his heart obviously wasn’t in it. His hold on the papers in his hand was too loose to be taken seriously, but Sirius’ attention had already darted off to something else.
(You could never tell Sirius no, could you? You couldn’t say no to James either, but it was worse with Sirius.
What, do you think I didn’t see? Do you think that because it all took place in front of someone you didn’t notice that it made it any less real?
And what came of it? All those promises and vows? You both lost faith, and let me worm my way between you.
Still, promises were never a strong suit for us. Neither were secrets, when I think of it. We couldn’t keep either of them; they floated away in the bad days.
I’m not like them at all, I’ll be one of you, I won’t tell anyone what the moon does to you, it won’t hurt if you just hold still, I mean forever, Lily will never come between us, I’ll take care of Harry, I won’t tell a soul, I’ll never let you go again…
Don’t tell don’t tell, promise not to tell…)
Sirius twirled a quill between his fingers, and rummaged through the pile of paper before him.
“If you won’t help, I’ll just use Prongs’s,” he said. There was a muffled “-Oi!” from behind the dormitory bed curtain and James threw himself at both of them.
(Oh James. Precious, clever, shining James. You have no idea what it does to me whenever I see you. I never wanted to do it, not to you. Never. But you don’t understand, do you? Of course you don’t. I don’t blame you for it though. No, really I don’t.
Do you remember when we met? In the dormitory. I fell over your trunk, remember? Sirius laughed, but you helped me up. You should have realised then, you know. I wasn’t the same as you. I couldn’t do the things you wanted me too. I was scared, always so very scared.
But I couldn’t leave you alone either. I didn’t want to explain to you that I wasn’t good enough, that I wasn’t a rat for no reason. So I went along with it. Stupid stupid stupid.
Why did you keep me?
You wanted a triangle – you at the top with handsome Sirius and clever Remus holding you up. I was only ever a stray point. A square was too democratic, too equal for you. You loved Sirius, I know you did, but he wasn’t as perfect as you. You wouldn’t share your position with him. And Remus, well, Remus was always a little too odd to be the same as you, wasn’t he?
But you had them both right where you wanted them. And they were right where they wanted to be.
So what was I there for?
Oh James.
I cried the most for you, when it all went wrong.)
“Should it surprise me that this has Evans’s initials all over it?” said Sirius, holding the essay away from the grasping boy. Remus took it instead.
(Lily. A stark, elegant girl who reeked of death. Everything began to end the moment she smiled back at you, James.
I never knew what to say to her. She was too pretty, too clever, too female.
Rams are put in with sheep when they’re young, you know. So they learn which end is up. I never got anything like that.
There were girls at Hogwarts of course, but why would they talk to me when there was you Sirius, or you, James? Even you Remus, if you think about it, got your fair share of admiring glances.
It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with me. Nothing wrong, just… nothing right either.)
“You should have better taste, James.” He turned it upside-down.
“At least I don’t like Star Wars.” James smirked.
“Is there something I’m missing here?” Sirius asked.
(Yes! I’m sitting on my bed, there in the corner. There, just there. Can’t you see me? Why can’t you see me? Why could you never see me?
Maybe I hid in my skin, behind the flab. I didn’t mean to, if I did. I wanted you to see me. Wanted it so badly.
Wanted it even when I sold you all.)
Remus laughed and explained, “It’s a movie.”
“Excellent! We have to go see it.”
(So keen Padfoot, always so bloody keen. Never took time to think things through. Go there, prank that, fuck them. That was always how it was with you.
I admired that. Even as it made me nervous.)
“It can be a date,” deadpanned James, and rolled off the bed and onto the floor to avoid the pillows thrown at him.
(But not with me. Three is only a crowd when I’m a third of it. You never saw me, but I was too much with you.)
“At least,” said Remus, turning James’s essay into a paper plane and sending it zipping over to his crumpled form, “You’re beginning to develop taste.”
“Depends what you think of as taste,” came the muffled response. “Don’t know that I fancy werewolves and braggaaargh!”
Sirius smirked at Remus over James’s pinioned form. “Shall we make him regret that?”
(Oh, you have no comprehension of the word regret. Or how confusing it is when you regret regret regret but you don’t… I keep thinking I want to go back. To be with you. But I can’t, can I? Because, and be honest now, I’m as close to you now as I ever was, aren’t I?)
“I think so,” said Remus, and tackled them both.
(I come back to this memory too often.
When the Dark Lord took Hogwarts, he gave me this Pensieve. It was Dumbledore’s, you know. Both Malfoy and Bellatrix were jealous; they thought it should have gone to them. Spoils of war and all that.
But I think they’re happy with the way things turned out. I keep out of their way now, maybe so much that they too have forgotten that I’m wandering the same halls as them. I go on living, and I come back to watch you three.
I come back to this memory too often. Because I can’t forget that you’re dead, even when I see you so alive. I watch you together and know that you’re gone, and you’re not coming back for me, not waiting for me round the corner of these corridors I haunt.
Sometimes I ache to tell you the truth.
I want to tell you:
James, you’ve rotted to bone. So handsome, so clever. No more.
Remus, I lost you, somewhere on a battlefield under a pile of bodies. I looked, when it was over, but I couldn’t find you.
And Sirius, who knows where you are? Tumbling through space and night, vanished into oblivion.
I stand here, in this memory, and I want to tell you. To warn you. To beg you to run. Even if it’s me you’re running from.
But you won’t hear me. Because I’m not here. I never was.)
END
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Will Be Dead Men (The Claude Rains Remix)
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