Work Text:
"Sonnet" by Rupert Brooke
Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire
Of watching you; and swing me suddenly
Into the shade and loneliness and mire
Of the last land! There, waiting patiently,
One day, I think, I'll feel a cool wind blowing,
See a slow light across the Stygian tide,
And hear the Dead about me stir, unknowing,
And tremble. And I shall know that you have died.
And watch you, a broad-browed and smiling dream,
Pass, light as ever, through the lightless host,
Quietly ponder, start, and sway, and gleam -
Most individual and bewildering ghost! -
And turn, and toss your brown delightful head
Amusedly, among the ancient Dead.
Slughorn had more connections than a spider in a web. Despite the fact that Sirius and Remus avoided his machinations religiously (though they tempted him like some forbidden fruit, the Dark scion and the Dark creature; Slughorn never failed to ask their opinions of new war developments and Voldemort's publicized policies), they had been among the first to apply for the special NEWT seminar on poisons. McGonagall had insisted on interviewing both of them personally and made them both sign a magical contract to not use their acquired knowledge to, say, send the entire Slytherin House to early graves. But oddly enough, they were both serious (it rather made McGonagall dizzy).
Sirius still hoped to find employment with the Ministry in law enforcement. Few employers in the private sector would dare cross House Black. Slughorn had mentioned that the forensic poison expert who would be co-teaching was on retainer with the Ministry. Lily said Sirius would be a fool to pass up this chance; and Sirius Black was nobody's fool.
Remus was more concerned with the interactions between poison and magic; in particular the traditional Dark spells which worked as antidotes or which turned poisons. He kept his mouth shut about it, however, except with the professors supervising his work. It was tangential to the main body of his studies, and a useless pursuit (he said); but it fascinated him.
Which was how they found themselves, on the coldest morning of the year so far, on the wrong side of a heavy iron gate whose bolts shot home behind them, one by one. Before them, a fountain bubbled sullenly, the heroic statue of some famous poisoner or another obscured by grey mist. They huddled together on the slick pavement.
Their Poisons Master was a tiny woman with mahogany skin and bright yellow hair, and she barked out cautions and warnings and threats even as she made them all remove their school robes and put on shapeless apprentices' gowns in bright pink. The robes were impregnated with protective spells, if not very warm. Seeing Snape head to toe in pink was worth the indignity, Sirius thought with satisfaction.
They were given an overall tour of the gardens, which unfolded in a way which reminded Sirius of the Marauder's Map. The gardens surrounded the ruins of the Monastery of the Bella Dona Brotherhood, and the wispy cowled ghosts of novices drifted in and out of the overhanging mist. "Let that be a lesson to you all," Professor Gbala said. "Thinking you know what you're doing and knowing what you are doing are completely different things."
When they returned to their starting point in front of the greenhouses, Professor Gbala sent them off in pairs with apprentices who could answer their specific questions. Remus was paired with Snape, and Sirius tried not to feel sullen about it. His guide was a buoyant round-faced girl with dyed-red hair that added at least a handspan to her height. He was partnered with Frank Longbottom, who addressed all his remarks to her formidable chest. She didn't seem to mind.
Sirius took notes dutifully: he never ceased to be amazed at the way Muggle science merged almost seamlessly into magic in the field of poisons. Extracts of things gathered in the light of the third waning moon and rarefied in a silver cauldron with eye of newt were administered subcutaneously with hypodermic needles. There were no ridiculous prejudices against Muggles: knowledge was knowledge, death was death, and poison was poison to all.
Frank had led the conversation to a discussion of the apprentice's study of dumbcanes. Voldemort's Death Eaters had borrowed from voodoo in their misuse of its toxins to sow fear. It was legally harder to prove dumbcane poisoning than the use of a Silencing spell, for esoteric reasons that Frank hung on (ulterior motives, Sirius told himself). Sirius wondered idly where one might find a dumbcane; the apprentice gave him a cheeky grin and said, well, it's a houseplant.
Sirius looked around the greenhouse, awash with colours, warmth, and magic. A bank of bright azaleas; a stand of lupines, destroyers of unborn children;, the tall solid stalks of monkshood, whose juice when used on arrow points killed wolves. Oleander, a single leaf of which could kill a child. Tempting berries hung red and white, black and yellow: moonseed, mistletoe, nightshade, daphne, yew. Someone's lovingly tended hemlocks. Bright orange angel's trumpets, heralding delusions and death. A few straggly narcissi: but of course they were a lesser poison, merely irritating to the skin (he wondered if his cousin were aware of the fitness of her name).
Death wasn't supposed to be so beautiful. It wasn't supposed to be as easy as crushing the oil from leaves onto skin. It was not supposed to come in such an undignified package: vomiting, hallucinations, bleeding, thirst, fits. Sirius fidgeted, the sweet heaviness of the air around him both lulling and drugged, and finally gave up. He walked away to the door that opened onto the tattered remnants of autumn.
The mist was patchy, nearly rain in some places. The great crumbling stone walls of the monastery cast not a shadow but a gloom over the gardens. Even the vivid pink robes were hard to spot. Sirius looked anyway, finally catching sight of Snape trudging down a hillock with his guide to take shelter under a spreading oak (kidney damage). Sirius leant against the doorframe and waited for Remus to appear.
He came over the hill in a tangle of mist that resolved itself into a throng of colourless children. They ran ahead of him, the littles stumbling and being tugged upright and along. There was a swing hanging from a low branch, and the two boys who reached it first, laughing breathlessly, sat side by side on the plank, strong legs kicking them up into the air. A daring girl grabbed at their ragged shirts, and when she'd pulled them off she set three of the small ones on a gentle, wobbling ride. More tugged at her; the next to clamour aboard was a cocky, skinny boy whose powerful arcs forced the others back. Remus was jostled away; the boy's mouth opened in a triumphant shout; and he launched himself from the zenith.
Sirius could see that he'd overbalanced: if he were an acrobat he might have turned elegant somersaults, but for a child it meant snapped collarbones or neck. Sirius took an impotent step out into the grey, but Remus was right there, turning, twisting, his hands reaching out.
And the boy went right through him.
Sirius thought Remus had missed: the boy lay crumpled on the grass. But then the bossy girl went over and kicked him hard, and he leapt up and chased her around the tree, trying to catch the ribbons from her hair. And Remus lowered his empty hands slowly, surrounded by the laughter of dead children.
"Plagues," the apprentice's cheerful voice said from behind him, and Sirius jumped. "Or poxes, and some from war, I'm sure. We've quite a little tribe here. They go out sometimes and collect new playmates—you know, when a field is turned and old bones are uncovered. Our lost boys and girls." Longbottom chuckled appreciatively at this, and grabbed Sirius' quill and parchment to get her name and address.
Remus looked lost, Sirius thought. Too late to save the boy, too late by more years than he dared consider. And he thought of the war mounted against his world daily, and the rumour of resistance. He'd fight, he'd said, and James had concurred, and Peter and Remus had looked at each other and said, well, probably.
He'd been angry with Remus for that reluctance. But he watched Remus shake the water from his hair, kneel to joke with one of the babies, and shape a figure out of his handkerchief which made the girls shriek with laughter. He'd been naïve, he thought. He'd not considered loss, or failure, or death. Remus had; and had still said, well, probably.
There was cold deep in the marrow of Sirius' bones, and he knew that no spell could warm it from him, no blanket could ease it away, no touch could reach it. He was still watching Remus, who looked up suddenly, caught his eye, and raised one hand cautiously, before allowing the children to pull him back into a hand game.
And which one of us will die first, Sirius wondered; and he wondered if Remus would teach him the trick of living with this coldness, or whether it would devour him in the end.