Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Bloody Skies	By : TokiMirage Category: Harry Potter AU/AR > Slash - Male/Male Views: 44832 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: JKRowling owns Harry Potter. Everything else is mine. I do not make any money writing this fic.

Chapter List
- 17
- 18
- 19
Bloody Skies
oOo
Chapter Eighteen:
oOo
As the afternoon wore on, Cyrus was beginning to feel less and less enthusiastic about his ‘date’ with Ashawyn. The tingling in his lips and the warmth in his body had faded as he pulled his head out of the apprentice-induced clouds and went to Wandless Magic class. He still didn’t really understand why he had said yes, either.
And now Yalmireth was ignoring him.
“Mr. Obsidian? Are you paying attention?”
Cyrus’s head snapped up to look at Professor Catchpool from where he stood in the corner, ‘practicing’ casting charms at one of the targets in the large classroom. “Huh?”
The professor crossed her arms under her rather voluptuous breasts, manicured nails tapping impatiently against her arm. She raised a blond eyebrow as his face flushed in embarrassment. “My point exactly. Normally by now you have mastered the spells of the day. I am going to have to give you a bad mark for this period if you fail to focus, Mr. Obsidian.”
Cyrus bit his lip. It wasn’t exactly like he could tell her that he was freaking out because he had a date. A date with a boy. A date with an ice fae who had kissed him last night and thrown a whole new hiccough into his already fucked up life. He wasn’t even sure he wanted a man touching him after the whole… Macnair… thing… And he’d finally found out he wasn’t going to be executed by vampires, too! And just because he’d come to accept the fact that he didn’t find Catchpool’s assets appealing, or any other girl’s for that matter, didn’t mean he was ready to jump on the boat of… of... well… gay.
The Dursleys had never had anything good to say about homosexuals. So, as a child trying to find love in a home that held nothing but hatred for him, he’d dismissed the idea that he could ever find his own sex attractive. He’d kept his eyes on girls, like he was supposed to, and never let himself watch the other boys he changed with after a Quidditch match. It had served him well, even after the terrible Cho Chang kiss, and he hadn’t questioned the fact that looking at the wizarding version of PlayBoy that Seamus always brought to Hogwarts didn’t make him… well, feel anything. Instead, he’s shoved it out of his mind. He’d had other problems, after all.
And then he came to Shikaan – where it seemed half the population was gay, bisexual, or just plain open minded. Maybe being straight was a human thing? But it hadn’t been until his first real taste of a vampire bite that he’d started having doubts. The first time Rivehn bit him. His body had been tortured by pleasure he’d never experienced in his life before he creamed his pants… but he’d brushed it off as the aphrodisiac that all vampires possessed, pushing thoughts of homosexuality out of his mind again. But then he’d witnessed the Kiss; Rivehn and Yankovich all but having straight out sex right in front of him, and all he’d been able to do was stare in shock and shift himself into a more comfortable position in his pants before he – completely mortified – came in his pants along with his two professors, the entire event super charged by the magic in the air and his unfortunate case of magic sensitivity.
He’d been pushed over the edge of denial that day, but he still hadn’t accepted the fact that he was… well. Gay. And it had never entered his consciousness that he would ever do anything about it. He wasn’t attracted to any boys… well, besides looking at them and thinking they were hot, that was. Okay, he was attracted to some people, but he didn’t have a crush on anyone, so he’d pushed his new sexual status out of his mind. Again.
But then Ashawyn… the stupid ice fae who just came barging into his room with that stupid endearing smile and sensual sway to his hips and kissable lips and now Cyrus had a fucking date that he didn’t even know why he agreed to and-
“Mr. Obsidian?”
The human snapped out of it to find that he had set his target on fire and quickly put it out with a wave of his hand. He let out a sigh and couldn’t meet the eyes of one of his strictest teachers. “I’m sorry, Professor,” he said quietly, repairing the charred target with another wave of his hand.
“I understand that all students have things that distract them, Mr. Obsidian, but I also expect them to leave such disturbances on the other side of my classroom door. Can I help you with whatever it is? Or do you need to leave my class and get a zero for today.”
Cyrus winced. Eek. Catchpool didn’t kick you out of her class unless you were being generally disruptive, so for her to threaten to… well, he needed to come up with something to cover his ass. He’d already missed his other classes for today. He’d rather not miss another. Wandless Magic was all about participation and progress, after all, not papers, projects or assignments.
“What’s magic sensitivity?” he blurted out.
Catchpool tilted her head quizzically to the side, and already Cyrus could feel the gears in her brain turning. Analyzing. Calculating. Cyrus had a hunch she was up there with Hermione in the area of sheer brainpower, but normally she didn’t turn that ‘what kind of bug are you’ look on her students. She saved it for her other projects.
He frowned when she adjusted the glasses on her face, and could feel the magic when it activated on the lenses. When her eyebrows rose in surprise, as she looked him up and down, he started to fidget. “What?” he asked defensively, kind of creeped out.
The professor pushed some of her straight hair out of her eyes and tucked it behind her ear. “I hadn’t realized you were a magic sensitive. No wonder you do so well in my class.”
Cyrus gaped. “I never said I was!” he exclaimed, looking around to see if hey had drawn any other students’ attention.
She raised a ‘no, really?’ eyebrow. “You need not worry of the other students learning your secret, Mr. Obsidian. Everything I learn with the use of these lenses, specially designed and crafted for my profession, I do not share with the general public. So, what is it that you wish to know?”
The human blinked. Wait a minute. Maybe… maybe he could salvage this. There was a disgusting lack of information on magic sensitives in the library. And if it was there somewhere, he hadn’t found it. “Everything?”
She raised an eyebrow and shifted on her hips, arms still crossed under her… very large assets. “Every person is magic sensitive. It is also be referred to by some as the ‘sixth sense’. What makes society refer to you as magic sensitive, however, is when your ability to sense the movement of magic is far above normal. Some are merely able to tell when a spell is about to make contact. Others are capable of telling you how many magical individuals are in a room and what species they are. It all depends on your ability and how you develop it.”
Cyrus’s eyebrows climbed into his hairline. “Huh.” He licked his lips in thought. “How… how do you go about… well, figuring out how it works?”
She hummed thoughtfully. “Practice. And meditation. I am sure you have noticed during your Animagus class with my sister that you can ‘feel’ things during meditation sessions?”
Cyrus nodded, wincing at the reminder of Animagus class. He’d been doing well in it for the first few months, but now he was stuck in a rut. One, he was easily distracted, and two, almost everyone in the class had found their animal by now and had started learning how to transform a bit at a time. Cyrus didn’t even know what he was supposed to be. It was beyond frustrating.
“You should start meditating in areas with both low and high magical concentration. High concentration will allow you to sense many different flavors of magic, while low concentration will help you learn how to focus your senses so they are not confused by so much ambient energy,” she lectured, adjusting her glasses on the bridge of her nose.
Cyrus frowned thoughtfully. That sounded like a smart idea. He’d have to try that when he had a free moment – a luxury that didn’t often present itself.
“Is that all, Mr. Obsidian? Will you be able to concentrate better now?”
Cyrus laughed nervously. “I think so, Professor. Thanks.” He watched her nod and walk away before turning his attention back to the target. There was no point in worrying about a date that wasn’t until later that night. Besides, it wasn’t like he had to go on a second date, right? He could just say ‘yeah, thanks, but no thanks. Bye.’ Problem solved.
He glanced over at Yalmireth, who was steadily pounding his dummy with a reducto – one of the spells he’d been able to manage since Cyrus’s session with him.
Okay, maybe the problem wasn’t as solved as he’d like.
oOo
“You’re goin’ in that?”
Cyrus grumbled as he towel dried his hair. “Why do you always come barging in here, Tara? I could have come out of the bathroom naked!”
The vampire snorted and flipped her loose hair over her shoulder. “Yeah right. You never come outa the bathroom naked.” She grinned. “Besides, lesbian? Remember? Even if I saw lil’ Cy-Cy, it’d be as appealin’ to me as a tree branch.” She tossed his boxers at him and he scowled as she started picking through the other clothes he’d left in a pile on his bed. “You’ve gotta have somethin’ nice in that trunk o’ yours. These can’t be all your clothes.” She raised an eyebrow, holding up a plain black T-shirt.
The human snatched the T-shirt out of her hands and pulled it over his head. He still didn’t drop his towel, though, not feeling comfortable doing it with her in the room regardless of her sexual preference. Instead, he slipped the boxers on underneath the towel and tried to pull them up without flashing her or dropping the towel.
“Well, no. I don’t really own anything nice. I’ve never needed to buy any.”
She stared at him incredulously. “No fuckin’ way. You are comin’ with me. I ain’t lettin’ my human go into public on a date wearin’ those rags.”
“They’re not rags! And since when am I your human?”
“You’re my donor, my human, same thing. And your clothes got holes in half of them! It’s pretty obvious by your wardrobe that you ain’t got a sense of fashion. So hurry up and put on your least disgustin’ pair of pants. I’m taking you shoppin’.”
Green eyes widened in horror. “No way, Tara. I’m not-“
“You can’t go on your first date in that getup, Cyrus. Who’s the lucky guy, anyway? Do I know him? Do I need to threaten him to put off the debauchin’ until second date?”
Cyrus gaped at her for a moment, completely speechless. “N-n-no! Tara- Just. No! I should never have told you I even have a date!”
She grinned, bouncing on his mattress. “Heheh, you wouldn’t have been able to keep it secret from me for long, Cyrus.”
The human rolled his eyes. Tara had been practically bouncing off the walls all day. She had just gotten away with murder, after all, and got to kill two of the bitches involved in Amelia’s raping, as well as punish the third. She’d ambushed him in his room after Wandless magic class – Yalmireth still refused to even look at him for Merlin knew what reason – and had noticed his distraction. She would make a good interrogator one day. He’d spilled his guts in only a few minutes. Well, the part about the date. Not the part about how he’d only recently realized he was gay in the first place and Mac- Fuck. He really didn’t need to be freaking out about that too, right now.
“I’m not going shopping with you! And I’m not telling you who it is! And- and- there’s not even going to be a second date! So no threats are necessary!”
She looked at him as if he were speaking Welsh. “You serious? Cyrus, you have no idea at this point even if you like this guy, let alone whether or not he’s gonna get you to agree to a second date. So, just chill. You’re gettin’ way too worked up over this. And as for the clothes, how about this: we only buy one outfit. I know you got the money. But if you can’t stand my company for long enough to do a proper shoppin’, the least you can do is not embarrass me in public by wearin’ that getup.”
Cyrus frowned and looked down at his black T-shirt and the pants he’d pulled on during her tirade. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”
She rolled her eyes. “For a gay man, you have no clue about some things.”
Cyrus bristled. “Just because I’m… I’m… gay,” he spat out, “doesn’t mean that I’m suddenly going to go around wearing skirts and make up and speaking with that weird lisp and shit!”
“Cyrus Obsidian!” Tara barked out. The human blinked and took a step back as Tara got right in his face, red eyes burning furiously. “I would suggest you be careful what you say to other people. It may be acceptable in the human realm for humans to disrespect other human lifestyles, but here? It’s not cool. So keep your negative opinions to yourself, okay? Skirts or no skirts, we’re all people. And most of us have the power to kick your ass.”
Cyrus swallowed and licked his lips nervously. He looked away and clenched his fists. “Sorry,” he muttered, regretting taking his frustration out on Tara. His stomach knotted. That had been the Dursleys’ negative attitude towards... anything different coming through. He shouldn’t be so… close-minded. He was a wizard. ‘A gay wizard,’ he thought mirthlessly to himself, sinking deeper into a pit of confusion and depression.
“You…” Tara began, and Cyrus turned turbulent eyes back to her. The fire inside her red eyes was fading slowly as she searched his face, dawning realization making her eyebrows rise and mouth part in surprise. “How long have you known you were… attracted to men?”
Cyrus let out a self-depreciating snort. “Before Christmas… I think,” he muttered.
Tara looked genuinely surprised. “Wow. Took you a long time to figure it out, huh? I thought the Wizarding World was pretty open about that stuff unless it got in the way of the stupid purebloods trying to breed.”
Cyrus twitched. “Yeah. Well. I grew up with muggles.”
Her lips formed into a small ‘o’. “I see… so you didn’t always live with the two guardians listed in the Shikaan records?”
“No- hey, what? Shikaan records?”
Tara smiled a bit, amused. “Well yeah, dumbass. Librarian? Information is my currency.”
Cyrus smiled halfheartedly. “Oh. Right.”
She tilted her head to one side, staring at him. “Hmmm. Well, c’mon. We’re gettin’ you some sexy clothes. And you still got homework, right? I’ll shadow walk us.”
The human bit his lip and let out a breath. Well, maybe getting nice clothes for his first date would be a good idea. If she tried to replenish his wardrobe, though, he was disapparating. Period. “Fine. One outfit.”
She grinned and grabbed him by the arm.
oOo
Five hours later found Cyrus doing homework and absently picking at the hem of his new green dress shirt. He still wasn’t sure whether he liked the way the silky material tickled his skin when he moved, but he had to admit that a loose shirt and form fitting pants were much nicer looking and more comfortable than wizarding robes. He hated robes, especially the formal ones. The layers and material and… eugh.
The faerie seamstress Tara had taken him too had been nice, though. She’d had wings and everything. Cyrus didn’t know much about the fae, or if there was even a difference between a faerie and a fae, but aside from having eyes bigger than a human’s and the… wings, she had been pleasant.
Distinctly inhuman in everything from mannerisms to the way her nipples were visible through her the straps of fabric that might be called a shirt, but pleasant.
A knock at the door brought him out of his thoughts, and he glared down at the mostly complete homework in front of him. Runes was getting a lot harder. And this stupid transfiguration Runes homework was pissing him off the big one. He’d started working on it a week ago, and he’d been asking Rivehn questions at the end of each class, but he was still having difficulty with it.
Luckily, most of the class was as well, and Rivehn had outright admitted when he first handed it out that he expected half of the class to fail or nearly fail this first assignment.
Not a pleasant thought.
The knock sounded again, and he ripped himself away from the taunting mess of runes spread all across his conjured desk. He’d gotten sick of papers falling off his little dinner table, and he sucked at transfiguration, so conjuring had been the simplest solution.
Fidgeting with his collar, he opened the door. Ashawyn stood on the other side, unsurprisingly, with his usual disarming smile that made his eyes almost sparkle. When Cyrus just stood there for a moment, he raised an amused eyebrow, smile widening. “You going to invite me in?”
Blinking, the human moved to the side and let Ashawyn in. Closing the door again, he set up his usual half-assed wards. They still hadn’t even begun to cover warding in Runes class, which irritated Cyrus to no end.
“What’s this?” the ice fae asked, pulling one of Cyrus’s rough drafts off the table and staring at the mess of symbols as if it were Chinese.
“Runes homework. It’s a fucking pain in the ass. Normally it’s like math for me, two plus two equals four, but I keep getting fives, tens, and fifties out of it.” He sighed, grabbing one of the scrap sheets that he’d scribbled all over and crumpling it into a ball. He lit it on fire with a thought and kept it contained with a whim. Magic was a truly wonderful and tortuous thing.
“Interesting,” Ashawyn said, amusement coloring his tone. “Sound like fun. I have to say I don’t miss having to take all those extra classes. Focusing on necromancy is what I enjoy. But enough talk! We can chat more once we get to the restaurant and speaking of which…” he sauntered up to Cyrus, a flirtatious smile on his face. “You, Cyrus… look positively ravishing this evening,” he said dramatically, capturing the human’s hand and kissing the back of it romantically.
Cyrus rolled his eyes. “I may be gay, but I’m not a woman,” he said, pulling his hand back. And then he remembered what Tara had warned him about earlier and winced. With his luck, he just mortally offended the fae. He knew nothing about fae.
Thankfully, Ashawyn just laughed. “I was merely trying to show you that I find you attractive, but if that bothers your human sensibilities we can find another method.” His voice trailed off into a murmur at the end as he maneuvered Cyrus against the bookshelf – again – and proceeded to kiss him on the mouth.
Cyrus felt dizzy, all his senses overwhelmed with Ashawyn. Flavor burst across his tongue as the fae pushed inside, thankfully not trying to touch him again, just gently and insistently pressing inside and ravishing his mouth until he felt high with sensation. When the ice fae finally pulled back, Cyrus let out a trembling breath and blinked at the sight of condensation in the air, as if he were outside in the snow rather than indoors.
“Whoa,” he breathed shakily, trying to clear his mind from the fuzz that had set in with the kiss. Cho Chang hadn’t been like that.
Ashawyn smiled, amused. “You ready to go eat now? Or do you want to…” his eyes flashed downward, raking over Cyrus’s clothes.
The human cleared his throat nervously and pushed against Ashawyn’s chest. “Dinner,” he choked out, running a nervous hand through his hair. ‘Never put out on the first date’ was going to be his mantra for the evening. Merlin. He was already half-hard from a kiss.
“Very well,” the fae said with a smile, placing his and on Cyrus’s arm. “Shall we?”
What came next was nothing like the familiar squeezing sensation of disapparition. It almost felt as if Cyrus were melting and then being reconstructed again. When they appeared at their destination, his breath came out with a puff of condensation, but when he touched his skin there was only a slight lingering chill. It was very odd.
“Welcome to Yelaei ul Mbreida. The best fae pasta and greens in the sector. Not to mention the dessert that is to die for,” the fae introduced dramatically with a bright grin.
Cyrus raised an eyebrow at the sight of the very unassuming little restaurant. “But it’s so small.”
Ashawyn rolled his eyes. “It’s a family restaurant. They’re not well known yet, but they’re getting a reputation. In a year or two they’ll probably have to upgrade.” He led Cyrus inside with a gently guiding hand on his back, pointing out some pieces of artwork and commenting on them as they waited for a server to take them to a seat.
When a person finally did come, the language they started speaking was decidedly not English. Ashawyn seemed to understand well enough, though, and soon they were lead to a secluded nook surrounded by rock gardens and plants. After leaving a pair of menus on their table, the server left with a bow.
Cyrus stared down at the foreign text, wondering how in the world he was supposed to order. “How many languages are there in Other Realm?” he asked faintly. Human Realm had to have more than fifty. He’d never counted, of course, but with how many diverse cultures there were, it had to be a lot.
Ashawyn smiled. “Many. The werewolves and vampires adopted human languages a long time ago, and have had enough contact with outsiders that not too many dialects have emerged. They were created by viral mutations, after all, unlike the rest of us.”
Cyrus blinked. “Wait. Are you saying that the fae, demons, and elves aren’t even related to humans?”
Ashawyn shrugged. “No one knows, really. Most of us are close enough in physical form that we must be related somehow, even if it’s many, many generations back. The most unique species are of course the Goblins. I don’t believe they’re related to humans at all. Next is the demons. You’ve probably noticed a lot of them have different skin, hair, eyes, and body parts? Some scholars theorize that demons bred with humans many eons ago, but there’s no real proof. Some are trying to prove it by taking advantage of the… what was it? DMA? Some sort of physical blue print of our bodies. Muggles discovered it, I believe. It’s amazing what magicless humans will come up with to help explain the world around them… they’re very curious. I for one don’t care if it was humans, fae, elves, demons, or whomever that came first. I’m not one of those purists that refuses to speak to those outside of my own kind.” He smiled and drank some of the water that the server had placed on their table during his ‘lecture’.
The fae laughed. “But back to your original question, the fae, demons, goblins, elves, and other subgroups developed separately from humans for the most part, and that’s reflected in our languages. We created Other Realm, actually. It was only in the last few millennia that vampires and werewolves joined us here. Some people are still angry about the outcome of the wars, too.”
Cyrus choked on his water. “Wars?”
Ashawyn smiled sadly. “Yes. War exists in all cultures. I’m sure you are familiar with it in Human Realm?”
Thinking of Voldemort, the World Wars, and countless other feuds in history, Cyrus nodded.
“Back to the language part of it; among the subgroups within each species, we each have our own dialect. Some of the dialects can be understood by one another, similar to the different accents in spoken English. The difference is, we don’t have a ‘main’ dialect like the Chinese have Mandarin, as we are all separate species and cultures, not different groups within a culture.”
Cyrus blinked. “Huh. I didn’t know that. Is there a universal language? One that you all know?”
Ashawyn shook his head. “No. Actually, it’s gotten so bad with the many languages that exist in both realms, that some scholars have researched the most effective ways to learn new languages with magic and potions and the like. It’s also recommended that parents have their children learn ten languages before they are sent to senior magic school at around age sixteen. And sixteen is relative. The children that mature the slowest are the Elves. I believe they aren’t sent to their senior education until they reach fifty years of age.”
Cyrus gaped. “Whoa. So, when you said you were 21, are you actually that old? Or is that the human equivalent?”
Ashawyn laughed. “I’m surprised you remembered that. By human measurement I am 21. But in my own culture I am still not considered an adult. Our life spans are closer to three hundred of your years, after all.”
“Huh,” was all Cyrus managed to say. It was a lot to absorb in one sitting. Thankfully, the server came back at that moment with a smile and greeting in that musical language that made no sense to Cyrus at all.
He really needed to look into learning more languages if he decided to move to Other Realm. Of course, he didn’t even know how welcome humans were in Other Realm… it all seemed very complicated and he sooo didn’t want to think about it right then.
“Cyrus? I already know what I want, but you haven’t really had the chance to look at the menu yet.”
Cyrus glanced down at the swirly symbols that made up the fae language – or was it dialect? – that he was looking at. “Um… do you have any suggestions?” he asked helplessly.
Ashawyn smiled. “Well, they don’t prepare meat here. Your options are pastas, salads, fruit dishes, cooked nuts, other vegetables…”
“Er… can I get pasta? Just… whatever you think is good.”
Ashawyn nodded and rattled off something to the server who smiled prettily and took back their menus.
After she had scurried away, Cyrus raised an eyebrow. “Does she speak English at all?”
The fae shook his head. “Nope. This is a very traditional family restaurant. She probably knows just enough of the main languages used in Other Realm to get by. English isn’t on the list.”
Cyrus made a thoughtful sound in his throat and absently played with the odd cutlery on the table. It was the oddest shaped fork he’d ever seen, with three long spokes instead of four short ones.
“I hope you aren’t overwhelmed,” Ashawyn said carefully, a hopeful hint to his voice.
Cyrus looked up from fork he’d been playing with and blushed, embarrassed. “Sorry,” he said, putting it down and trying to ignore it. “I’ve just never spent much time outside of Shikaan. I mean, Tara took me shopping today, and I’ve been to Shelby’s Blood Bath, but nowhere else.”
Ashawyn raised an eyebrow. “Why would you go to a vampire blood club?”
The human shrugged and took a sip of water. “I had to. School gathering, or something, for the vampire students. I’m Tara’s donor.”
Ashawyn’s eyes very suddenly lost most of their pigment, turning nearly white. “You… you’re a vampire donor?”
Cyrus blinked. “Um… yes?”
“I… see.”
The human frowned at the blank look on Ashawyn’s face. “What? What is it?”
The ice fae shrugged. “Nothing.”
Cyrus raised an incredulous eyebrow. “Right. Like I believe that.”
Ashawyn didn’t seem inclined to speak, but when Cyrus started to get seriously annoyed he finally cracked. “I just… Well. I don’t like vampires. I’m sure some of them are nice enough, but their whole culture… A lot of fae aren’t on very good terms with them, especially with the wars, and the recent fiasco with vampires feeding on unwilling faerie in sector two. It hasn’t been pleasant. The council’s been pushing for sector two to be a fang-free zone.”
Cyrus frowned. “Sector two? How many sectors are there, exactly?”
“Well, there are quite a few. Sectors one through three are mostly fae populated areas, with high forest density. A group of vampires went trolling through sector two a few months ago and some faerie got killed, and now the council’s pushing to get vampires banned from the sector. Who knows how well that’ll turn out. The vampires have very skilled lawyers in their command, after all.”
“But, I don’t get it. What’s a sector?”
Ashawyn took a drink of water. “Kind of like a country, except the borders aren’t tightly controlled. Each sector is a section of land that was fought or negotiated for during or after the wars. Since then, multiple treaties have been drawn up, and the territory lines were officially drawn. Since I’ve brought you into sector three, I vouch for your being here. If you cause any trouble while you’re here, I’m directly responsible. The same thing probably went for when Tara took you to Shelby’s in sector four. If you tried to travel to these areas yourself, you’d likely run into trouble. You need to be registered as a traveling human in order to move through the sectors freely, and even then some sectors won’t be open to you. The elves are the most private and stuck up. They don’t let any humans have travelers rights into their sectors, as far as I know.”
Brain just about ready to explode from information, Cyrus let out a relieved breath when their food finally arrived. He stared at his pasta for a moment, confused.
It was purple.
Raising an eyebrow, he looked up at Ashawyn’s dish, which was an artistic mesh of color and leafy bits. The fae smiled at him obliviously as he dug into his own food.
Cyrus looked back down at the mass of purple. Shrugging slightly, he picked up his fork, stabbed it into the middle of the mass, and started twisting in typical pasta fashion. When he had enough on the fork for a mouthful, he took the plunge and stuffed it into his mouth, biting off the leftover bits still connected to the plate. Chewing slowly, his eyebrows rose in surprise at the burst of nutty flavor. The texture was very different than human pasta. The outside of the large, hollow noodles was soft, but the inner layer had a crunch to it.
After he finished his first bite, he decided he very much liked the new dish. “What is this again?” he asked, taking a drink from the fruit juice that had come with the dish. It was very sweet, but had just enough tart to wash down without making your taste buds explode.
“I believe that is called Nashjevaeil. Nash is the plant that the noodles are made from, and jevaeil is the seasoning - the purple stuff that it’s cooked in, basically.” At Cyrus’s odd look, he grinned sheepishly. “I’m a bit of a cook myself. I can never get the noodles quite so crunchy on the inside. Don’t know how they do it.”
“Huh.” Shrugging, Cyrus continued eating, occasionally picking at the leafy bits and fruits that had come on a side dish. Some of them were very sweet, but a couple were so sour he’d had to chug an entire glass of water to Ashawyn’s amusement.
“So tell me about yourself, Cyrus,” Ashawyn said a few minutes later with a hopeful smile. “What kinds of classes are you taking? What do you do for fun?”
The human stared down at his Nashjesomething. He was enjoying the date so far. And Ashawyn didn’t seem like such a bad guy… besides, this was what you were supposed to do on a date, right? Get to know the other person? “Well… There’s Weapons and Battle, Wandless, Dark Arts and Their Defense… Runes, Necromancy, Animagus… and Healing.”
Ashawyn’s eyebrows rose. “That’s quite a few. What are your favorites?”
Cyrus licked his lips nervously, twisting his fork for another mouthful. Maybe if he ate something, he wouldn’t have to talk as much. There was only so much he could share about himself before they went into Potter territory, after all… “Runes and Necromancy.”
The ice fae smiled. “Now, Necromancy I’m not surprised about, but Runes? I thought you said earlier that you didn’t like the class.”
Cyrus shook his head. “No, it’s the assignment we’re doing. It’s… evil.” He stuffed the fork in his mouth.
Ashawyn smiled. “I see. That’s too bad. Necromancy was my favorite class, though I took other courses like you are now. I was very lucky, actually, to get Mikhail for a Master. He’s very selective with his students, and the last one he had was some decades ago. Personally, I think it’s because they keep dying on him.”
Cyrus’s eyes snapped up from where they’d drifted down to his food. He swallowed quickly. “Dying?” he asked curiously.
Ashawyn smiled sadly. “Some Masters take many apprentices because they enjoy teaching, while others never take one. Mikhail, I think, falls somewhere in the middle. There are four apprentices that I know of that died while he was teaching them. Now, it’s not unusual for a learning necromancer to get eaten by their own inferi, or for their death magic to consume them and kill them, but Mikhail’s had a particularly bad run of luck. That’s why I think he’s so picky. He’s trying to find one that won’t make a stupid mistake and die on him. Again.”
The server came at that moment and rattled something off to Ashawyn. The ice fae smiled, said something back, and she was scurrying off again.
Cyrus twisted his fork for another bite. He was almost done. The quicker he finished, the faster he could leave. But did he want to leave…? He was kind of enjoying himself… “That sucks. So they’ve all… how does one get killed practicing necromancy, anyway? I mean, I’ve studied some of the more dramatic cases in Yankovich’s class, but those were all fully trained necromancers making stupid decisions.”
Ashawyn hummed thoughtfully, taking a sip of his fruit juice. “Well… untrained necromancers have to be careful that their natural magic doesn’t get too low, for one, for long periods of time. If you practice your magic and constantly bring yourself close to magical exhaustion, you run the risk of your death magic going rogue and killing you. Your natural magic stores act as a balance to that energy.”
Cyrus frowned. “How does it ‘go rogue’?”
“Picture in your mind a set of scales. When you use all your natural magic, the scale tips in the death magic’s favor. If it is not brought back into balance, the axel on which the scale balances begins to strain. As soon as it weakens to the point of breaking, your death magic kills you.”
“O-oh… how long does it have to be out of balance for that to happen?”
Ashawyn shrugged. “It depends on the necromancer. Some can handle the strain for days, some weeks. Others can’t last a few hours magical exhaustion before their death magic kills them.”
Cyrus’s eyes widened. “Why didn’t Yankovich ever tell us this?!”
The ice fae shrugged. “Multiple reasons, I’m sure. One, there are natural barriers on every necromancer’s death magic when it’s first awakened. He probably only has you doing small raisings of muggles, right? Until your death magic becomes more active, there’s less chance of it going out of control. It’s when the magic is fully awakened and you can do large raisings that drain all your death magic at once that you have to start being concerned and aware of your internal balance.”
“How? How can you- how do you learn how to be aware?”
Ashawyn opened his mouth to answer, but the server came back at that moment with a bright smile and a heaping bowl suspended by four ‘legs’ filled with some sort of… ice cream? Gelato? And it was literally covered in fruit and chunks of colorful sugar crystals. The ice fae nodded his thanks and she left again.
“It’s called uirdash. I do not know the human name for it, but it is a fruit and ice treat.” He smiled. “I love ice treats,” he said before scooping off a section of it with a spoon and holding it out to Cyrus. “Try it.”
The human stared at the spoon held inches from his mouth. It did look good… Throwing caution to the wind, he leaned forward and took the spoon into his mouth, ignoring the pleased expression on Ashawyn’s face in favor of the flavors bursting across his tongue like fireworks. What was it with fae food tasting better than human food? It was criminal. Humming in delight, he pulled away from the spoon and savored the fruity flavor. It was the best dessert he’d ever had.
“You like?” Ashawyn said with heat in his eyes, taking the spoon that had been in Cyrus’s mouth and licking the back of it. The human’s lips parted in surprise, and his pants started to feel just a little bit tighter. Blushing, he nodded, snagging the other spoon the server had left and helping himself.
“So, my question?”
Ashawyn blinked, eyes flicking upwards from where they had been… watching his mouth? “Question? Oh. Right. It takes some people a while, but you just have to-“ he cut himself off, checking his pocket and frowning. He looked at Cyrus. “You going to get that? I swear it’s not my magi-com, and I’ve been hearing it vibrate for the past ten minutes.”
Cyrus blinked and then swore and dug into his bag, trying to locate the device he’d tossed in it ages ago and forgotten about. Pulling it out, he opened the flip and put it to his ear. “Hello?” he said, hoping they hadn’t hung up yet.
“FINALLY! Do you have any idea how many fucking times I’ve phoned you in the past hour? You know what, never mind. Don’t answer that question. Sorry to interrupt your dream date, Juliet, but you got a serious fucking problem over here.”
Cyrus frowned and put up a silencing ward. If Ashawyn’s ears were so sensitive he had heard a magi-com vibrating, the human probably didn’t want to chance the fae hearing this conversation. “Tara? What are you talking about?”
“It’s your guardian. Rema… uh, Remus? Anyway, the bat, Snape? He came by your room a little while after you left – and you’re lucky I went there to tell you good luck and missed you! – and apparently your other guardian is like… well, going to die. Soon. So, you need to get your ass home, you hear?”
Cyrus felt his heart freeze in his chest. “W-what?” he whispered, turning away from Ashawyn’s curious gaze and focusing on the rock next to their table instead.
“Remus is probably going to die, Snape said. He got poisoned or something. Anyway, he came to get you, but you weren’t here, so he told me to get a hold of you as soon as I could and tell you to get your ass back home. So tell Romeo you need a rain check. Gotta go now! Good luck with your guardian,” she said, hanging up before he could even get in a word edgewise. Cursing under his breath, he closed the magi-com, shoved it into his pocket, and pushed out of his seat, tearing down the silencing ward with an angry twist of magic.
Ashawyn followed. “What’s going on, Cyrus?”
The human, still not completely comprehending that Remus was dying, turned to Ashawyn in a daze. “My… uh… one of my guardians. He’s injured. I’ve gotta… I gotta go.”
The fae came around the table and ran a hand down his cheek, icy blue eyes staring into his own. Warmth spread from the touch, and all he wanted to do was stand there and let Ashawyn kiss him, but he had other shit to deal with. With a shake of his head, he pushed the fae away, clearing the fog from his thoughts. “I have to go. Now. Thanks for the date. I’ll see you around.” Before Ashawyn could even open his mouth, he had disapparated.
oOo
Cyrus apparated into the middle of the living room with a loud crack, not having the presence of mind to decrease the noise. Severus was at his side in a moment, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him upstairs to the bedroom. The human followed in a daze, barely registering the fact that Severus was manhandling him when he caught sight of Remus.
He stumbled back into the wall. A mediwitch was running diagnostic charms over him, and had placed a cold cloth on the werewolf’s forehead. He looked… he looked horrible. The veins in his body stood out in sharp relief against his pale and scarred skin, blackened unnaturally.
“It is silver poisoning of some kind,” Severus said quietly, arms crossed over his chest as he stared at his lover with a blank expression. “I brought him earlier today. The pack members said that he had been feeling sick all morning. He was perfectly healthy before he left to see the pack, so I can only assume that he was poisoned after he departed.”
Cyrus swallowed. “Can she heal him?”
Severus said nothing for a moment before shaking his head. “No. She says she has never seen the likes of this silver poisoning. Her attempts to remove it failed. It is in his blood stream, and at this venture it is likely that it has poisoned his very tissues. There is… nothing she can do.”
Cyrus walked forward slowly, around the bed to the side that wasn’t occupied by mediwitch. Remus’s eyes slowly opened, and he smiled half-heartedly up at the human. He tried to choke out a greeting, but Cyrus just shook his head and took one of the werewolf’s hands in his own. Placing the other on the man’s chest, he closed his eyes and sent his energy inside, as he did with healing.
He could almost taste the poison on his tongue. He could feel the silver, and… and something else. And Severus had been right. It was started to attack the very cells in Remus’s body. He could see it inside, tearing apart the werewolf’s body from the inside out. He was literally dying before Cyrus’s eyes.
“Is there nothing we can do?” he asked softly, pulling out and casting a cooling charm on the cloth on Remus’s forehead.
The werewolf’s eyes closed, and the grim look on the mediwitch’s face didn’t do much for Cyrus’s confidence.
“He’s dying,” she said softly, patting Remus gently on the arm. “And since I’m not sure if potions will react negatively with the poison, I can’t even stop the pain.”
Cyrus frowned. A niggling idea was insinuating itself into his mind. “You can’t use potions, no, but what about stopping the pain impulses from going to his brain at all?”
The mediwitch stared at him in incomprehension. “Even if I knew how to do what you just said, I am not a Healer. I am only a mediwitch. I am trained to use spells and potions to heal, not raw magic as a Healer does.”
Cyrus narrowed his eyes. “Well, I can stop the pain impulses to his brain.” He moved forward, but Remus choked slightly and shook his head. “Why not?” the human asked, frustrated.
“Just… dull…” Wracking coughs shook the bed, and Cyrus felt his eyes begin to sting, seeing the last connection he had to his parents and now his guardian fall apart in front of him. Seeing the blood on the Were’s lips, the mediwitch gently dabbed it away.
Severus translated. “He probably would like you to dull the pain, Cyrus. If you stop him from feeling pain altogether, he will not know when his body begins to fail him.”
Cyrus swallowed and blinked rapidly, trying to dry his eyes. “Okay, Remus. I can do that,” he said softly, smiling tremulously back at the werewolf. Closing his eyes, he pushed his magic into the sickly body beneath his hand and sent it to the base of his brain. Locating the pain nerves easily because of the constant electric pulses pumping pain into Remus’s brain, he placed dampening magic around them that would whittle away the strength of the signals until they were pinching levels of pain instead of ‘my-body-is-slowly-melting’.
Oh Merlin… Remus… “Isn’t there something we can do?” he asked Severus. “She’s just a mediwitch, right?” he asked, ignoring the way the woman glared at him out of the corner of his eye. “What if we brought an actual Healer here? Would they be able to fix him?”
Severus looked thoughtful. “We cannot bring a Healer from the Wizarding World into this house. One, I am a known Death Eater now that I have left the protective claws of Dumbledore. Two, Remus is a werewolf. Very few Healers would be willing to be in the same room as one, let alone heal one. And three, Dumbledore and Voldemort’s spies are everywhere. They cannot know the location of this house. I only told the mediwitch because she made an unbreakable vow not to reveal its location to anyone.”
Cyrus frowned. “Okay, but why is she here? You just said that no Healer would be caught dead in the same room as a werewolf. She’s a mediwitch.”
“She is a newly turned werewolf from Remus’s pack. Some of the more loyal members, her included, also informed me that it is very likely someone inside the pack poisoned him. I would return and tear apart their minds until I found the culprit, but Remus refuses,” the vampire snapped, fangs glinting between his thin lips as he spoke.
“He’s protecting all the innocent werewolves, Mr. Snape. You can’t just rip apart every person’s mind that you run into on the street looking for the bad guy. It’s not right,” the mediwitch argued passionately, eye beginning to glow amber.
The vampire, arms still crossed over his chest, hissed at her. “I will if I have to.”
Cyrus shook his head. “Well aside from finding out who did it and what kind of poison they used, it’s not going to do Remus much good, right? We need to find a Healer that can heal him. Did you think of anyone in Other Realm?”
The mediwitch frowned. “What is Other Realm?”
Cyrus stared. “You’re a werewolf. How can you not know?”
Severus snorted. “There are two kinds of werewolf, Cyrus. Those that left for Other Realm many years ago evolved to the point where they are capable of controlling their beast and transforming at will. It was knowing this that made me believe creating the Wolfsbane potion was possible. But in regards to Healers from Other Realm, I have not been in contact with that world for some time. I do not know anyone who would be willing to come here and heal a werewolf without questions, and Remus is too ill to transport.”
Cyrus bit his lip thoughtfully for a moment. “Wait. What about Healer Svea? My Healing professor?”
Severus raised an eyebrow. “You believe this Healer would be willing to come here and swear an oath?”
The human shrugged. “It’s worth a try, right?”
The werewolf stood there in thought for a moment before nodding sharply. “Very well. Retrieve this professor, if you can.”
Cyrus nodded and left the room before disapparating, not wanting to disturb Remus too much with the noise.
He apparated right into the Healer’s waiting room and walked up to TA sitting at the desk, probably doing homework. “Excuse me? I need to speak to Healer Svea. Is he in right now?”
The TA looked up with a raised eyebrow. “He only comes in for emergencies during off hours. Anything else I take care of. You need a broken bone set or something?”
Cyrus took in a calming breath, repeating an ‘I will not kill this idiot’ mantra in his mind. “Well, this is an emergency. A friend of mine has been poisoned with silver.”
The TA immediately perked up a bit, now paying full attention. “A werewolf I take it? That’s pretty bad. Svea doesn’t take cases outside of the school, though. He’s not paid for them. You have to contact another Healer with a private practice or get an account with the Aengar. They don’t come cheap, though. Most clans have their own Healers. This werewolf doesn’t have a Healer to take care of this in his own clan?”
Cyrus narrowed his eyes. “The mediwitch is incapable, yes.”
The TA shrugged. “Well, that’s too bad. I have a list of Healers who have a private practice, if you want to phone them.”
Cyrus put his hands on the desk and leaned forward, magic crackling under his skin and starting to heat the air around them. “I don’t think you understand,” Cyrus said in a soft voice, boring into the man’s eyes with his own. “I need a Healer I can trust. Now. And Svea is that Healer. So you will call him here, and he will be the one to refuse me. Not. You. Do we understand each other?”
The guy snorted. “If you think I feel threatened by a first year student, you’ve-“
Cyrus didn’t wait for him to finish, summoning his magic and slamming the TA against the wall with sheer power. The guy tried to break free of it with spells, but as it was pure magic they had no effect. When the human spotted a knife slipping into the TA’s hand, he pasted him more thoroughly to the wall, disarmed him, and held his limbs away from his body so he couldn’t slip any other weapons free. In a last bid for freedom, the guy sent a powerful Dark curse at him, but Cyrus knocked it to the side with a shield and snapped his death stick into his hand. Walking around the desk, he held it to the TA’s throat.
“Now,” Cyrus said loftily, eyes sharp and cold. “I will say it again. Call. Svea. Here.”
The TA cleared his throat nervously and nodded. “O-of course. Yeah. I-I can do that,” he stuttered. When Cyrus didn’t let him down, he cleared his throat. “I-I need the magi-com on the d-desk.” Cyrus let him down, but kept his wand trained on the guy. Thankfully, there were no other tricks up his sleeve and he just picked up the phone and hit speed dial.
After a murmured conversation into the phone, Svea appeared with a glow of light. The energy of his transportation discharged like fireflies, fading into the air around him. “There is an emergency?” Svea asked his TA after glancing at Cyrus. The human sheathed his wand.
The TA just pointed at Cyrus, looking decidedly pale.
Healer Svea looked him up and down. “You do not appear to have been bitten by an inferius again, Mr. Obsidian. Or sustained any other injuries that you cannot heal yourself.” He narrowed his eyes on the TA who looked like he wanted to be anywhere but there.
“It’s my guardian, a werewolf. He’s been poisoned by silver, and- and something else. I don’t know any other Healers in Other Realm who might be able to save him. He’s… he’s dying.” Cyrus swallowed back the despair that threatened to choke his words.
Svea crossed his arms over his chest, looking decidedly unimpressed. “As my TA should know, I do not take cases that occur outside of the walls of Shikaan or my own clan, Mr. Obsidian.”
The human gathered his courage. “There must be some sort of arrangement we can come to. I have money.”
The elf laughed. “I do not require funds, Mr. Obsidian. Shikaan pays well enough for my needs.”
Cyrus bit his lip, starting to get desperate. “There must be something. He’s- He’s going to die!”
Healer Svea stared at him with a blank expression, and the human’s spirits began to drop. The elf wasn’t known for being… well, nice. In fact, he was one of the most inflexible teachers Cyrus had ever had, and that was saying something. He’d known the chances might be slim when asking the Healer… but… it was Remus.
“You are familiar with the Human Realm, Mr. Obsidian?” Svea asked, neither his tone nor his face giving anything away.
Cyrus blinked. “Well. Moderately.”
“I am in need of someone capable of navigating both the magical and muggle worlds in Human Realm to retrieve items for me. Potions ingredients, chemicals, medical books and supplies… Do you believe yourself capable of this? Do you have any experience with the muggle world?”
Nervously licking his lips, Cyrus nodded. “I’m familiar with both, yes.”
“I have seen the lack of sense some magical humans possess. Have you ever lived in the muggle world for any period of time?”
The human blinked. “I grew up with muggles, Healer Svea. I can get you what you need. Does this mean you’ll help me?”
Svea stared at him inscrutably for a few moments, strands of his long white hair falling into his face from where they’d escaped the tie. Cyrus didn’t see why the elves tied their hair that way. What was the point of tying it between your shoulder blades instead of the base of your neck? It would constantly fall out and get in your face… was probably an elf thing…
“Very well. I will do my best to help this… werewolf. You must understand, however, that silver is a very precarious poison to extract from werewolves. We must hurry.”
Cyrus nodded. “If you don’t mind, I’ll have to take you there myself?” he asked hesitantly. Svea inclined his head and held out a hand. Cyrus gripped it and paused. He had no way to get the elf past the wards. Frowning, he pictured the muggle street and gate just outside Spinner’s end, remembering the first time Severus had taken him there and added him to the wards. With a quiet pop, the waiting room disappeared around them.
Cyrus had to go and get Severus to add Svea to the wards, and he had to admit watching the two most stoic men he knew stare each other down was at the same time the most entertaining and boring thing he’d ever witnessed. After a minute of grand standing, Svea finally swore an oath not to reveal the location of the house to anyone, or take advantage of his being welcomed into the wards.
Finally, they went up the stone walkway and up to Remus’s room. Upon seeing Remus’s state, Svea’s eyes narrowed and he commanded the mediwitch to step away. She did so with wide eyes and watched, fascinated, as Svea placed his hands in the air above Remus and began to glow a soft white. After a few minutes, the magic faded and Cyrus felt his insides squirm at the grave look on the elf’s face.
“I am afraid there is nothing I can do for him. I have never seen the likes of this poison. It simultaneously has the same effects as both silver and Wolfsbane, but there is another chemical that is slowing its progression. He should have died nearly instantly, but instead must now suffer a slow, painful death.”
Remus, who had been watching Svea with hopeful eyes, closed them and coughed. Seeing the blood on his lips, Svea conjured a cloth and wiped it away. If Cyrus had been in the right state of mind, he would have been surprised at the uncharacteristic sympathy on the elf’s face, but as it was he just felt even more depressed. “There must be something. Why is it impossible? Can’t you just extract it like with every other poison?”
Svea shook his head. “I do not have the sheer magical capacity to heal a poisoning of this magnitude, especially for someone not of my species. Healers are most effective when helping their own kind. Cross species healing is difficult and requires large amounts of magic.”
Cyrus shook his head, not willing to just give up so easily. “There must be something. When I was involved in a raising, I channeled death magic to three other necromancers in order for them to raise the inferi. Can’t we do the same?”
“No. That is impossible with natural magic. Death magic remains the same, no matter what species in which the gift develops, but magic does not possess the same properties. Your magic is too different from my own for me to be able to use it effectively, and teaching you the proper converting technique would take far too much time.”
Cyrus still didn’t get it, but he wasn’t going to give up. He had healed Yalmireth without any difficulties. They were learning a lot of theory and anatomy in class, and how to heal themselves. He’d already learned how to extract poisons from his own blood stream and tissues – they’d covered that before Christmas – so how was this any different? “Can’t you at least try?” he snapped, desperation making him forget that it probably wasn’t a good idea to piss Svea off.
The elf’s expression didn’t change, though. He watched Cyrus carefully for a moment before looking at Remus again. “I will try on the condition that our original agreement still stands. You will be in my service until your graduation from Shikaan, regardless of whether or not this healing works. I do not waste my efforts with no compensation. Understood?”
Cyrus nodded. “Yes.”
Svea inclined his head and conjured a chair with a wave of his white wand before disappearing it up his voluminous sleeve again. “Come here,” Svea commanded without opening his eyes as he placed them over Remus’s chest. “You might as well learn something.”
Cyrus conjured himself a chair with a wave of his hand and sat down next to the elf.
“Place your hand on his stomach and observe. It is pointless to try to teach you the conversion technique, but you will be able to see how a poisoning of this magnitude is removed from a body. I will be using the second and third techniques. Recite to me all three.”
Eyes closed as well, Cyrus twitched as he felt the large amount of magic that Svea was gathering between his hands. Watching the process, he absently recited, “Localized poisoning extraction directly from a wound by attaching your magic to the poison and pulling it out, bleeding it out by creating small cuts over the major veins for blood stream poisoning, and full body removal through the pores for when it has already entered the tissues and saturates the entire body.”
“Good. Why the veins? Why not the arteries?”
“Veins take blood back to the heart. The blood moves slower because there isn’t as much pressure like in arteries.”
“Very good. Mediwitch, if you would please keep the sheets clean as unobtrusively as possible?”
“Yes, Master Healer,” the soft voice of the werewolf came from where she stood near Severus. Cyrus absently noticed her shuffle over as he watched Svea begin to form the magic in his hands.
It was one of the strangest works of magic he’d ever seen. There was no spell, necessarily; it was just a huge… funnel? Yeah. It looked like a funnel. He could feel the way the multiple rings that made up the structure rotated at different speeds, clockwise and counter clockwise. Finally, when it seemed like it was complete, Svea began channeling his magic down the funnel and into Remus’s body, and Cyrus watched in complete fascination as the rotating rings of the funnel twisted and changed the magic until what actually entered Remus’s body was the same ‘flavor’ as the werewolf’s own magic. He’d never noticed the different flavors before, but after watching the elven magic convert into Were magic he could pick it out, the… the wavelength, the frequency, the whatever-it-was-that-made-magic-different.
The magic that entered Remus got to work, distributing first through the blood stream and gathering the poison in it into his femoral vein. “Mr. Obsidian, if you would please make an incision? Focusing on three things at once at this point would be unwise.”
Moving quickly, Cyrus sent out his magic and sliced Remus’s leg open just enough for a the poison to be removed. Svea healed it right afterwards, using his magic to keep the blood from gushing all over the place. Cyrus could feel the sheets move under his fingers as the mediwitch lifted them and got rid of the poison. He could hear Snape speak quietly to her, but didn’t bother to pay attention, as Svea was already beginning the extraction process from Remus’s tissues.
“We begin with the most life threatening wounds first when healing. In this case, I will be removing the poison from his brain. Without the brain, we cease to function. Mediwitch, please be advised the poison will be extracted through the ears.”
“Yes, Master Healer,” she said softly again.
And Svea began the process of removing the poison from Remus’s brain. After that, he did the heart, lungs, liver, digestive system…
He was in the middle of cleaning out the pancreas when his magic started running out.
“I will have enough magic to begin removal of the poison from his kidneys, but I will be unable to finish, Mr. Obsidian. It is as I said. Unless you find a Healer of my caliber in the next hour or less, he will still die. The skin, the largest organ in the body, has yet to be cleansed, as well as his muscles, fatty tissues, and lymphatic system. You are fortunate we caught the poison before it entered his bone marrow, but it makes no difference.”
Knowing that the likelihood of them finding a competent Healer in the next hour was slim to none, Cyrus decided to take a gamble. Holding his hands above Remus’s body, he channeled the same amount of magic he’d ‘seen’ Svea channel, and started forming the same rotating rings, based off what the elf’s had looked like.
“Mr. Obsidian. I would advise against this action. You are not a fully trained healer-“
Somehow just knowing that the same rotation wouldn’t work for both of them, he focused on lining up the magic within Remus’s body and his own.
“-and we haven’t even begun to-“
The three largest rings, close to his hands, changed speed and direction slightly. Feeling them ‘click’, he sent his magic through the funnel and into Remus’s body, taking over the poison removal in the Kidneys.
“-cover this in… class…”
Svea’s voice trailed off, but Cyrus paid it no mind. His entire focus was on every detail he had learned about the poison removal process while watching Svea. First, he sent his magic into the cells of the kidneys. Next, he ‘attached’ the magic onto the poisonous particles. Once he had a hold on all the poison, he pulled it out of the cells one by one and gathered it in the renal pelvis, the area that toxins in your body were funneled into after being filtered from the blood stream.
“Healer Svea, do I remove the poison from the kidneys via the urethra?”
The elf was silent for a moment. “Yes. Ensure that you do not forget to remove the poison from the ureter and urethra as well. Mediwitch,” Svea called, letting his own funnel dissolve and pulling the magic back into his channels.
Flushing Remus’s system of poison was easy after that. Well, not necessarily easy, but with Svea there, watching every move he made and advising him on locations and methods to remove the poison (they hadn’t gone into such detail in class yet), he managed to cleanse Remus’s whole body before the hour was up.
When he could no longer sense any poison remaining in the werewolf’s body, he let the funnel collapse and pulled it back into his body, falling back in his chair in exhaustion. Checking his resources, he was surprised to find that he had used a huge chunk of his magic during the healing process. He estimated that he would probably be able to heal around ten people Remus’s size and weight before he was completely drained of magic. That was… well. He’d never had to worry about his magical reserves before, but now…?
He’d just have to hope that he didn’t need to cleanse more than ten people at once.
Opening his eyes, he gratefully accepted the glass of water that Severus was holding out to him. Wiping the sweat from his face with a hand, he started chugging. When he’d finally emptied it, he handed it back to Severus with a nod and turned his attention back to Remus, whom the mediwitch was bustling about and no longer looked like all his blood had turned black.
Content that his guardian was out of the red, he finally looked at Svea, not knowing exactly what kind of expression he wanted to see on the elf’s face. It was blank, as per usual, but the way that Svea just stared at him, as if he were pulling the wings off a fly just to see what would happen was kind of… creepy. He raised a defensive eyebrow, casting a wandless cleaning charm on himself to get rid of the stink and stick of sweat. His clothes had been soaked as if he’d been running instead of sitting still.
“I should have asked for a different form of payment,” Svea said simply, raising his own challenging eyebrow.
“Huh,” Cyrus grunted noncommittally, not sure he wanted to know exactly what that might have been. “Thanks for coming, Healer Svea. Remus would be dead now if it weren’t for you.”
The elf let out a small snort of air. “Yes, so it would seem. But he would have died regardless if it were not for you.” The Healer stood and brushed the wrinkles out of his white robes. “Do you have a magi-com with which I may contact you for the fulfillment of our agreement?”
Cyrus nodded and pulled it out of his pocket, where he’d jammed it earlier in his hurry to go see Remus. Flicking a few buttons, he called up his own number (which he had yet to memorize), and recited it to Svea. The elf inclined his head without saying a word or writing it down. “Mediwitch, I trust you will help the werewolf to full recovery?”
The woman nodded with a bright smile. “Yes. Thank you very much, Master Healer.”
Svea gave that half-nod again and disappeared in a flurry of white fireflies.
Cyrus flinched when Severus came up behind him and put his hands on the human’s shoulders. Still not comfortable with physical contact, Cyrus wondered how long he could force himself to sit there before he had to just get away from the touch. ‘It’s only Severus,’ he kept telling himself, but it didn’t seem to help.
“Thank you, Cyrus,” the vampire said softly, squeezing slightly before letting go and sitting next to Remus on the bed. “Katherine, if you could please seal the container of poison and leave it on the dresser?”
“Yes, Mr. Snape,” she said softly, grabbing a basin that Cyrus hadn’t noticed sitting next to the bed and moving it to the other side of the room.
“Remus?” Severus asked softly, gently running a hand down the side of the werewolf’s face.
After it appeared Remus was still unconscious from the physical strain of having magic pull poison from nearly every cell in his body, the vampire slumped slightly and placed his other hand over the Were’s heart. Cyrus wondered if he could feel the vibrations of a heartbeat against his hand.
“He may not wake up for some time, Mr. Snape,” Katherine began tentatively. “His body’s undergone a huge strain. It may take days for him to fully recover.”
Severus’s head dipped slightly. “I am going to find out who did this to you, Remus,” he said quietly before standing up, a determined set to his shoulders.
Cyrus blinked. “Severus? What- where are you going?” he asked as the vampire stalked around him and to the door.
“Katherine believes that another werewolf poisoned Remus. I will find out who it was if I have to rip apart their minds for answers!”
Alarmed, Cyrus stood from his seat. “You can’t just- Severus! There are other ways of finding out who did it. You can’t just rip apart the minds of innocent people until you do!”
Severus bared his fangs, and Cyrus resisted the urge to take a step back. This was the vampire that had cast crucio on him just so he could find his magical core. What was stopping him from physically removing Cyrus from his way? Preparing his magic under his skin, he shifted on his feet until he was better balanced to defend or attack. Not that he’d be able to fight a vampire anyway.
“S-severus,” a weak voice croaked, and before Cyrus could even blink Severus had moved behind him and now sat on the edge of Remus’s bed.
“Remus? How are you feeling,” the vampire said softly, his attitude having completely turned around.
The werewolf cleared his throat, and Severus brought a glass of water to his lips. After taking a few sips, he spoke again. “I’ve been better. I’d feel even better if you weren’t going to hurt those loyal in my pack.”
Severus hissed quietly. “Someone poisoned you, Remus. Silver, cut with Wolfsbane and something else! It was killing you slowly and painfully!”
Remus let out a soft sigh. “Yes, it was. But now I’m better, Severus, and I don’t want to worry about you hurting my wolves. So please, promise me you won’t hurt those not involved?”
The vampire was silent for a long moment, before he finally caved. “Fine. But what about the guilty parties?”
Cyrus started as Remus’s eyes glowed soft amber and narrowed, a snarl baring his teeth. “Bring them here. I want to look into the eyes of the wolf who tried to kill me before I tear his throat out.”
Severus placed a calming hand on top of Remus’s own. “You are too weak to kill him. And a torn throat is not an unpleasant enough death. May I?”
Remus looked surprised. “What do you plan to do with him?”
The smirk that spread across Severus’s face was scary, to say the least. “I will keep him alive as I remove the body parts that are suitable ingredients. There is a potion I have been wanting to try for some time, but I was unwilling to pay for the vital ingredient on the black market.”
Remus looked thoughtful for a moment before nodding. “Very well. You may,” he said with a hard glint in his eyes. The werewolf had changed a lot, since Christmas. He wouldn’t have agreed to something that… he wouldn’t have agreed to torture, before. Cyrus wasn’t sure if Severus’s obvious influence was a good thing or not. On one hand, Remus would hopefully survive as alpha, but on the other…? Well, it wasn’t like Cyrus could do anything about it even if he wanted to. He just hoped that the changes turned out for the better.
“Thank you,” Severus said quietly, leaning forward and kissing Remus tenderly on the lips. Cyrus politely averted his eyes. It was one thing knowing that the two were… well, but seeing it was a completely different story. He didn’t need details.
“Cyrus. While I am gone I want you to do a complete diagnostic on Remus and make sure there is nothing out of place. Understood?”
The human raised an eyebrow. “…sure.”
Severus nodded and disappeared into the shadows of the bed without a sound.
Rolling his eyes at the typical vampire dramatics, Cyrus plunked himself back down in his chair and sighed. He wished he knew some cool swearwords in one of the Other Realm languages. Making a mental note to look into it when he had a free moment, he put his hands on Remus’s chest and ran an in depth diagnostic. Aside from what appeared to be a healing fracture in his arm, he was perfectly healthy. Sending healing energy to the bone, he paused as he noticed something odd. Pulling back the magic, he frowned. Sending the magic with the intent to heal again, he stopped. There it was again. Slowing down the process, his eyebrows climbed into his forehead at what he was ‘seeing’ or ‘feeling’ happen.
Holy shit. He’d never noticed before. His magic automatically created a much smaller version of the funnel as soon as he sent it anywhere near Remus’s body.
How could he not have noticed? Had it done that when he’d healed Yalmireth’s leg when they first met? It must have. At the time Cyrus hadn’t even known that healing cross species was supposed to be… difficult. Or that he needed to use an energy converter.
And how come the version he subconsciously created to heal Remus’s broken bone was so much smaller than that funnel with the rotating rings? It didn’t make any sense. Svea had implied that it was arduous to heal someone from another species, but for Cyrus… it was easy. He hadn’t even noticed the funnel being created, it was just there, almost like… it was like breathing. He didn’t even think about it. Was this ability to just… subconsciously do things related to his magic sensitivity?
Getting a headache just thinking about it, he shelved it for a rainy day and went back to healing Remus’s fracture. Before he pulled out, he also got rid of the block he’d put on the werewolf’s pain receptors. When the werewolf groaned, his eyes snapped open. “You alright, Remus?” he asked, concerned.
The werewolf smiled. “I’m fine, Cyrus. I just… hadn’t realized how sore I was. My whole body is aching.”
Cyrus nodded. “I’d try to heal you, but I think it’s best we just let your body recover on its own. If this keeps up, though, I want you to get in touch with me, alright?” Conjuring a piece of paper and pen, he scribbled down his phone number. “This is better than owls. You should get one,” he said with a grin.
Remus rolled his eyes. “I’d probably forget about it and step on it.”
Cyrus shrugged. “Still. It’s faster than owl. Just in case.” He tacked it to the wall with a light sticking charm.
Remus watched him sleepily. “Are you going to stay?” he asked, yawning and shifting under his blankets.
The human frowned in thought, but eventually nodded. “Yeah. I think… I think I’ll go get my homework, and come right back.” He turned to the mediwitch. “How long are you going to stay?”
Katherine stared at him with wide, doe eyes, and Cyrus had to wonder what had put that look of admiration on her face. Was it because of the healing? “Of course. Remus is Alpha, and I’m going to make sure he heals up just fine.” She smiled brightly.
Cyrus nodded. “I’ll be right back.” He disapparated with a quiet crack.
oOo
“Cyrus!” Tara shouted, jumping up from where she’d set herself up on his… bed.
“Tara. What the hell are you doing in my room? Homework?”
She grinned, flashing fang. “ ‘Course! Homework can be done anywhere, so I figured I’d wait until you came back. From the lack of red eyes and gloomy face, I’d say Remus is gonna live?”
Cyrus cracked a smile and nodded. “Yeah. Healer Svea helped out.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Really? You actually got him to go to Human Realm?? He avoids that place like the plague, you know.”
The human frowned. “Really? Huh. That must be why I’m his errand boy now,” he muttered, going over to his conjured desk and starting to pack up all his Runes homework. He still hadn’t finished his assignment, and it was due tomorrow. At least tomorrow was Friday. Thank Merlin it was almost Friday. What a hellacious week.
“Errand boy? Oh, I see. You made a deal with him.”
“Yeah,” he murmured absent-mindedly, shuffling his papers together. What else was due tomorrow? Yankovich hadn’t assigned anything. Neither had Instructor Catchpool. Eugh. He hated Animagus class. If he couldn’t transform by the end of the year, he was going to have to take it again or just drop the class. Catchpool insisted that almost everyone was capable of animagus transformation, with very few exceptions. Maybe he had just gotten the short end of the stick and was in the ‘near-impossible’ percentile.
Anyway. So all the homework he had to do was Runes… he still didn’t think he was going to get it done that night. And if he did, most of the answers were going to be wrong. He just knew it. Transfiguration had always hated him, no matter what form it took.
“You leavin’ already?” Tara asked, snapping him out of his thoughts.
Cyrus blinked. “Er, yeah. Remus is still recovering. I want to make sure he’s alright.”
She nodded, becoming serious. “Before you leave. Ashawyn came by, asking what happened. He also wanted your phone number.”
Cyrus froze. “And? Did you give it to him?”
She shrugged. “I figured if you wanted him to know either, you would have told him.” She paused. “How’d your date go?”
It was Cyrus’s turn to shrug. “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”
Tara raised an eyebrow. “That’s not exactly a positive conclusion.”
He shrugged again. “I dunno. He’s… very intense.”
She smirked. “That’s ‘cause he wants to fuck you.”
Cyrus choked. “T-tara!”
Her lips widened into a cheshire grin. “What? I know plenty ‘a people who wanna fuck you. You’re hot for a human, you know. And it helps that magic practically cloaks you like heady cologne.” A teasing glint brightened her eyes.
Cyrus spluttered. “T-too much information!”
Tara just laughed. “You comin’ to school tomorrow?” she asked.
He nodded. “Unless something comes up. You going to stay in my room all night or something? Or were you just waiting for me?”
“Eh… actually, I’m kind of avoidin’ someone. And I wanted to know how your date went. Do you mind if I stick around? And you think you can open your trunk for me before you leave?”
Cyrus shrugged. “No, I don’t really mind. It’s not like I could force you to leave anyway.” He threw his bag, now filled with homework and Runes reference texts, over his shoulder and crouched in front of his trunk. Placing his hand on the smooth metal lock, he commanded it to open. The lid swung back with a click. “See you tomorrow,” he said, standing upright. Tara just waved with a smile, already sucked back into her book.
He disapparated with a crack.
oOo
Cyrus spent the rest of the evening pouring over his Runes homework, trying to get his assignment in a facsimile of order. He’d been picking away at the questions for a week now, and some of them still didn’t make any sense. What was it about Transfiguration that was so illogical? Most magic had some kind of logical base if you looked deep enough, but this homework… he kept adding twos and getting sevens. It was driving him insane.
“Why don’t you take a break?” Remus said softly, sipping a glass of water with Katherine’s help. The human had to admit he still wasn’t sure if she was actually competent, so he still didn’t feel comfortable leaving the room in case Remus had a relapse, and he still gave the werewolf a full diagnostic every twenty minutes despite the insulted expression on the mediwitch’s face every time he did so.
“Break?” Cyrus repeated, surprised out of his thoughts. Looking down at the mess of notes on his conjured desk, he frowned. He hadn’t really gotten much done in the last twenty minutes. Maybe he should cook dinner or something. Get his mind off everything. “You hungry?” he asked, getting up and running another diagnostic on Remus, as he had been doing every twenty minutes for the past three hours in spite of the fact that the mediwitch seemed to think herself competent enough to do so. She’d been giving him the evil eye, but seemed to have enough respect of his capabilities after watching him take over for Svea to not say anything. The human didn’t really care about her opinion on the matter. He’d almost lost one of his guardians today, and if he had to bruise a little mediwitch pride to assure himself that Remus was recovering, then he was completely comfortable doing so.
“I am, actually,” Remus said thoughtfully. “If you don’t mind,” he added with a smile.
Good old Remus. Always so polite. “Of course I don’t.” He turned to the mediwitch. “Have you eaten?”
Katherine shook her head.
“Alright. I’m sure you have something downstairs I can whip into a meal.” He didn’t feel comfortable leaving Remus alone so early in his recovery. And what if the mediwitch was a plant? She seemed like a nice enough woman, but you never really knew a person from first glance.
Half the vegetables in the fridge were looking down, but there was plenty of frozen meat in the icebox. Pulling it out, he defrosted it with a slow acting heating charm, pondering recent events as he tried to salvage what he could of the vegetables. So much had happened since Christmas. The night before the first day of class Yankovich had ambushed him, trying to get information about Voldemort, and later that week he’d found out that the demon’s niecehad been captured. Then Cyrus had to help when the demon decided to ‘acquiesce’ to Voldemort’s demands. The memory of Voldemort’s face when the zombie army had turned on him had been priceless, though.
But if that hadn’t been enough – he cut the carrots particularly viciously – Tara had thrown a life-threatening wrench into his life, almost getting him killed when she took him to a meeting with the Akkad interrogators, ACIF. She hadn’t even told him about her Trial. She’d gotten captured after they stole Dalesh’s body from an Akkad mansion, and Cyrus had had to go to Rivehn and promise him a debt in order to get her freed. Her trial had been the next day, Thursday, today, and she had taken him gallivanting off to steal a corpse of all things.
And then Ashawyn came traipsing back into Cyrus’s life and cornered him into accepting a date. A date that hadn’t actually gone as horribly as he’d worried, but still – he boiled the water in the pot with an aggravated jerk of his hand and tossed the carrots in – and now he had Yalmireth ignoring him.
It reminded him of the way Ron- Weasley, he mentally corrected, used to turn on him when something fucked up happened. The Weasel had always gotten pissed off that Harry got the attention and thrown in life-threatening situations instead of him. Maybe that should have been Cyrus’s first clue that the teen wasn’t exactly ‘right’ in the head. And why had the wizard resorted to Dark magic of all things? Did it have to do with the brains from the Ministry of Magic or had it been something deeper, something that he’d missed all those years being the redhead’s friend?
Not that he would ever find out, now. Since Cyrus had killed him with a giant, dead snake.
Pausing in his slicing, he stared down at his hands. Did he feel guilty about it? R- Weasley had been torturing Severus. The word that had spewed from his mouth were anything but innocent, aiming to hurt and anger. By the end of it… Weasley hadn’t been the friend he’d gone through so much with.
So… no, he didn’t feel guilty. He bit his lip. Did that make him a bad person? Did he… did he like this person he was turning into at Shikaan?
He had changed. Like Remus, he had changed to adapt to his new circumstances.
And he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.
“Um, excuse me?”
Snapping out of his thoughts, Cyrus turned his head to Katherine, who was standing cautiously in the doorway. “Yes?” he asked, turning back to the diced potatoes and tossing them into the boiling water too.
“Where is your tea set? Remus said he’d like a nice strong cuppa, and I have to admit I wouldn’t mind one myself.”
Cyrus waved a hand at the cupboard and moved the tea set to the kitchen table as he filled the kettle with water from the tap. Not wanting her in his space any longer than possible, he forwent heating it the natural way and just used magic to bring the liquid inside to a boil. “Tea’s on the counter,” he said shortly, ignoring her wide eyes and turning back to the food. The steaks had thawed, so he removed the warming spell on them. He’d cook them rare when the vegetables were almost finished.
“Wow. You are indeed a powerful wizard,” she chatted, and Cyrus could hear her as she poured the tealeaves into the strainer that sat on top of the teapot. “You use wandless magic so carelessly. Doesn’t it take a lot of magic to cast spells that way? I heard only the most powerful of wizards can learn how.”
Cyrus frowned. “What? No. I mean, sure, it’s easier with a wand, but it only takes more magic to cast wandless if you don’t have very good control and you use too much and waste it. Anyone can learn. I only started at the end of this summer.”
She gasped, and Cyrus glanced over his shoulder with an eyebrow raised in irritation at the cow-eyed look of surprise on her face. Really. She was such a… He paused. He’d been about to call her a human. Magical humans were so… lacking in common sense. Perhaps after spending so much time with beings that had grown up in Other Realm he was beginning to adopt their beliefs through social osmosis.
It was a disconcerting thought.
“Really? You mean, even I could learn how?”
Uncomfortable with the way she looked at him in awe, Cyrus shrugged and turned back to the vegetables. “Yeah. You just have to be patient and not try to force the magic to work the way you think it should, and instead focus just on what you want to happen. For something without conscious thought, magic is a lot smarter than you think.”
She made gasps of ‘why I never’ and hummed thoughtfully to herself as she took cream from the fridge and took the tray upstairs.
When she was finally gone, Cyrus let out a sigh of relief, returning to the mindless motions of preparing dinner.
They were almost finished eating when Severus returned with the crack of apparition, startling Cyrus enough to knock his empty plate off his desk. He cleaned up the broken dish with a thought, placing an immobilizing charm on his homework and moving the desk over to the wall.
He didn’t want to get blood on all his hard work. And there was a lot of blood. The man Severus held by the shoulder was covered in it, and the mediwitch gasped and backpedalled into the corner to get as far away from him as she could.
Cyrus was getting more annoyed by her by the second. How had she survived in a werewolf pack so far?
“Tell your Alpha what you told me, Perry,” Severus snarled, tightening his grip on the werewolf’s shoulder and eliciting a grunt of pain.
The Were spat out a mouthful of blood with a sneer. “You should be dead,” he bit out, bearing his teeth. “You are not fit to be-“ Severus’s fist smashing into his face cut off his acrid words.
“If you refuse to keep a civil tongue, I will cut it out and cauterize the wound so you cannot bleed to death. Now. Speak.”
Seeing Remus trying to sit upright, Cyrus moved forward and helped, seeing as the mediwitch was too useless to do even that. Remus gave him a short nod of acknowledgement, but most of his attention was on the werewolf kneeling at the side of his bed. “Perry Witacre,” he barked out once the pillow had been settled at his back. “Somehow I’m not surprised it was you that resorted to poisoning your own Alpha instead of making a challenge. You never were very… honorable. You are a pitiful excuse for a werewolf.”
Cyrus’s eyebrows rose. Wow. Remus was good. Perry didn’t react at all, but the bumbling pile of goo behind him told him all he needed to know. Remus was actually learning how to be a leader. A true Alpha. And the waves of authority coming off him would have cowed Cyrus as well if they had been aimed at him.
When Perry said nothing, Severus tightened his grip on the werewolf’s shoulder. “Where did you get the poison?” the vampire growled.
Perry winced in pain as the Potions Master’s fingers dug into what was probably an open wound. “D-death Eaters. Got it… from Death Eaters. I don’t wh-where they got it from.”
“And what about the contents of the poison? It was not just silver. They cut it with Wolfsbane and something else.”
“I- I don’t know. I was just told… that it would k-kill him slowly, and p-painfully.”
If Severus’s eyes narrowed any farther they be closed. “Indeed. And did you believe that such an act would go unpunished?”
The werewolf snarled. “I was to be rewarded! I would be the new Alpha, and we would join He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and finally werewolves would be respected!”
Remus scoffed. “There is no respect with Voldemort. He expects you to obey him without question, and when you have outlived your usefulness, he kills you. You are a fool, Perry, for buying into his propaganda and turning against the Alpha who is fighting for our rights and freedom.”
Severus squeezed again, as if to prove a point. “Are you finished with this driveling piece of refuse, Remus? Once I kill him I am going to find who supplied such a poison and kill them as well.”
The werewolf nodded and watched with emotionless eyes as Perry was dragged, screaming, from the room. Cyrus cleaned up the blood with a wave of his hand before it could stain the wood floors and helped Remus recline again, trying not to think about the way Perry was going to painfully die that night. Hopefully Severus would use silencing charms.
As soon as they couldn’t hear the werewolf anymore, Remus finally relaxed, tension leaving his body.
Cyrus ran another full diagnostic, wanting to make sure the stress hadn’t upset anything. Aside from his tension and the slight shaking of his muscles as a result of exhaustion, Remus was still doing fine. Most of the tissue damage was healing nicely, and at the rate he was going he would be fine in another few days or so.
“Sleep, Remus,” Cyrus said, using magic to gently maneuver the werewolf until he was laying flat. The Alpha looked annoyed, but resigned to his fate.
“I still can’t believe that Perry would-“
“Later, Remus. Right now you need to sleep. Tomorrow you can get the gruesome details and worry about everything else, okay? Do I need to knock you out with a spell?”
Lips twitching upwards in a smile, the werewolf shook his head. “That’s not necessary,” he said with a yawn. “I’m pretty… tired… as it is…” he trailed off, eyes closing as he fell asleep.
So what if Cyrus hadn’t actually been making a question of it? It was hardly a sin to push Remus over the edge with a spell. He really did need his rest.
Casting a quick tempus, he stared in surprise at the floating numbers. Was it really nearly midnight? Yawning, having been reminded of his own exhaustion, he gathered up his homework and attached the sheets together with a conjured staple. He’d done as much as he could with the assignment, and he wasn’t going to get much more done that night. It was time to cut his losses.
“Wake me up if he shows any changes or wakes up, alright?” he said, casting a monitoring charm just in case. It would wake him up if anything changed, but some things could be missed that the mediwitch might catch. It was always a good idea to have a back up plan.
“Of course,” she said, having pulled herself out of her corner and taken a silent vigil at Remus’s bedside, shakily pouring herself another cup of tea.
Cyrus took himself to his old room, dragging his feet as exhaustion caught up with him. He tried not to think of how long and horrible a day he’d just had, but it was difficult.
Hopefully tomorrow would be a bit better.
-Toki Mirage-
(cough) Well… surprise!! … (crickets chirp) … Yeah… I’d say I’m pretty much utterly and irreversibly addicted to this bugger. (kicks a can labeled ‘BS’) Anywho… I can’t say whether there will be more updates or not… Because I’m unpredictable even to myself, obviously, as I didn’t even think I’d write this chapter until Xmas…
(whistles)
What else is there to say? Thanks go to Roos, once again, for being the most awesomest Muse EVER. Y’all owe her for this chapter. If she hadn’t phoned me up and said ‘Hey Mirage, I wanna muse chapter eighteen,’ and I reluctantly agreed, (dramatic announcer voice) this chapter would not be here today.
I’d also like to thank Evy for the B-day prezzie! (glomps) Consider this an early B-day present, or a belated one if we already missed it. :P
BS Podfic CHP 3 is UP thanks to the awesome Istalindir, podfic editor extraordinaire. I have two others helping out so far, but Istalindir has returned three chapters to me, and is working on a fourth. If you listen to my podfics, please thank her for time well wasted! :)
I dunno if I told you all, but R/Y PODSMUT IS POSTED. Details on my profile.
Check out the Forum for unanswered questions about BS. I may not always answer if it gives away spoilers, but often I will throw you some kind of bone. This includes the pairing. Info is in the Forum.
IF YOU WOULD LIKE ALERTS, THIS STORY CAN BE FOUND ON FFNET
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Bloody Skies