Moonlight Sonata

For the night shows stars and women in a better light. ~Lord Byron, Don Juan

“Remus Lupin.”

It was hours yet until dawn, the darkest part of the night when sensible people were asleep. He was standing staring at the river, alone in his thoughts, and he would have preferred to stay that way. The husky voice startled him out of his reverie, and he looked up to see a woman walking towards him, cloaked in black.

She did not look immediately familiar to him, and the shadows did sinister things to her face so that he took a step back. The woman laughed, pushing the hood of her black satin cloak off of her face to reveal a wealth of dark hair. He thought she was wearing white underneath the cloak, but it was her skin shining white through the darkness of her cloak and hair, rather like the moon peeking out intermittently behind the dark clouds.
Her eyes looked liked drowning pools of darkness set in a sharp face, and the diluted violence of her posture was all he needed in order to place her.

“Bellatrix Black.”

She laughed; the sound unnerved him. Bellatrix and he had never been friends in school, the long-standing rivalry between Gryffindor and Slytherin House notwithstanding, he had never liked her. Remus liked stability, loyalty, steadfastness and a sense of reliability. She was none of those things, and her presence had always made him nervous. He remembered seeing her at Quidditch matches when he went to watch James, and the way she would clap and laugh in delight whenever a player fell or took a hit.

It did not matter to her if the player was from the opposing team or not.

“I'm surprised you remembered me.” She took a step closer to him, heels clicking on the cobblestones. She leaned against the railing in an attempt to look casual, but he was not fooled by the gesture. Nothing about her ever looked relaxed.

“You are hard to forget,” he told her in an ironic voice, feeling daring and a bit dangerous in her presence. Maybe that was why he had never liked her—she made him feel a treacherous desire to give into a part of himself that he kept strictly under wraps until the moon demanded he submit.

“Mmm. I've heard that before.” Her fingers went to the first button in the row on her cloak, and she played with it idly, giving him a look from beneath her lashes. “You're up late, Lupin. Imparting deep dark secrets to the river?”

He laughed mirthlessly. “Yes, actually, I am.” He crossed his arms, his posture closed and secretive. “Why do you care? Surely you have something nefarious to be doing.”

“Maybe I've finished doing it already.” She threw her head back and laughed, and his eyes focused on her smooth white throat while the animal in him woke up and hungered for a taste.

Her hands started unbuttoning the cloak she wore, and he noted she was revealing more of that milky-white flesh to him. The similarity between her and the moon was striking—both the glowing white orb and her smooth white skin affected the primal, animalistic urge inside of him.

The moon made him want to howl, to rip things, to tear, to hurt. As she revealed herself to him, it was the same urge that boiled up inside of him as her body became more and more visible to his gaze.

“I could, however, be persuaded to do something else nefarious.”

Remus narrowed his eyes are her, the aura of danger about her reaching out and curling, tendril-like, around him. He felt that pull in his stomach, rather like he did before he changed. Looking up at the night-dark sky, he saw the briefest flash of the almost-full moon. Two days more, and it would be fully swollen.

Like I am, now.

He dropped his arms and took a step towards her, a trickle of a growl escaping his lips.

She laughed softly in the darkness. “You look like you want to tear my throat out, Lupin.” She tilted her head to the left, and stopped unbuttoning her cloak long enough to push her dark hair off her shoulders, baring her shoulders and neck.

He focused on the smooth column of flesh, the jump of her pulse. “Maybe.”

There was a new tension between them now. She made a noise that sounded a bit like a moan, and stepped closer to him.

“You should stay back,” he told her, putting a hand up, unsure if it would wrap in the folds of her cloak and pull her near, or push her away. Or toss her into the river below, churning dark and angry. “It could be very dangerous for you.”

“I like things that are dangerous, Lupin.” She closed the distance between them until she stood a hairsbreadth away from him. She finished unbuttoning the cloak and stepped out of it, the satin pooling at her feet.

The moon peeked from beneath the clouds again, as if she had commanded it to highlight her beauty. For beautiful she was, pale shining skin and gentle curves evident, but she faintly glowed with something sinister, something horrid and evil and alluring. He saw the Mark on her forearm and shook his head. Death Eater. That force around her was dark magic.

“You've killed someone, tonight.”

“Mmm,” was her only answer, as she continued to regard him with the steady dark pools of her eyes. “No one you knew.”

“I could have you arrested.” His breathing was coming faster, and he did not move as her hand reached out to lie upon his chest. She had long fingers, tipped with long blood-red nails.

“But you won't, wolf.” The moon flashed again, and he saw her dangerous smile, a promise of sex and lust and darker things.

He caught her hand with a growl and pulled her against him. “Not now, Death Eater, but maybe later.” Remus leaned down to bite her neck, feeling her flesh beneath his teeth with something akin to relief.

Bellatrix rubbed her body sinuously against him. He still had one of her arms in his grip, but her free hand wrapped in his hair. Not to pull him away, but push him closer. “Harder,” she said, and all that was promised earlier in her smile thrummed in her eager voice.

He did not want to speak to her anymore, just wanted to howl and snarl at her, take from her body what she so obviously wanted him to take. He bit her again and she laughed, delight and madness heavy in the sound.

Remus did not stop to think what he was doing, that she was a Death Eater and therefore enemy, anathema to everything he stood for. He hated that he wanted her, but how could he not? She was the primal force of the moon that pulled the werewolf from him.

“Do you want me to struggle, wolf?”

He raised his head a bit from her neck, where he had drawn blood, and snarled “yes, damn you,” in her ear before he returned to bite her.

She did, and admirably so, moaning and tossing her hair and trying to pull from his grasp. He eventually let go of her hand so he could wrap both of his, vice-like, around her throat. It pleased him to squeeze until he watched her eyes flutter closed, and then he sat her up on the low railing that offered little resistance to the rocky riverbank below.

He was of the right height that he could unbutton his trousers and easily thrust inside of her, but he didn't. He wouldn't give her that satisfaction of joining his body with hers, this was not about sex. It was about lust, and power, and animalistic rage.

He pulled her against him so that he could rub his erection, still covered by the fabric of his trousers, against the wetness between her thighs. Her arms went around his neck, and he could feel the press of her breasts against his chest. Remus turned his head and saw the Dark Mark, the skull and serpent mocking him.

“You like this, don't you? The hate, the power, the rage. Her voice burned with something that went deeper than mere lust, though he knew she felt that, too. His senses were fine-tuned, he could smell her arousal. Her legs were wrapped tight around his waist, ankles crossed, heels pressing into his back.

His answer was to bite her again, breaking the skin, the taste of blood copper-sweet on his tongue.

“I can give it to you, Remus, bring you to him. He would make you powerful, he would give you whatever you wanted…” She threw her head back, dark hair cascading down her back as she moaned in pleasure. “He would accept you— all of you,” she gasped. “The wolf and the man, both.”

Remus did not stop thrusting against her, feeling himself close to the edge, wanting to spill and be done with this, done with her, and feel the shame that would inevitably come after his pleasure.

Her hands curled around his upper arms, and she bit her lip as she moved fluidly against him, pushing her hips towards him to draw out his pleasure. “Think of it, Lupin,” she whispered, voice seductive in the darkness, to the animal that was what he had become. “Reveling in what you are, like you are doing now. Aren't you tired of pushing it back, running in a forest in the full moon and hiding? You could be powerful, you could be vicious….”

“Shut up,” he growled at her, in a voice that sounded nothing like his own.

“You could be an animal.” Her voice caught, and he knew she was close to coming against him.

Remus turned his head until he was staring at her Dark Mark. “I am,” he said.

He bit the skin of her arm until the blood appeared, then licked it with his tongue. It smeared across the surface of the skull.

Bellatrix moaned, coming hard against him and laughing her mad laugh as she did so.

When he came moments later, Remus Lupin turned his face up to the moon that mocked him and howled.

He did not speak to her when it was over, merely turned from her and stared up at the sky, where the moon had retreated behind the clouds once more. He heard her dressing behind him, and when she spoke he turned to find her as enshrouded in darkness as she had been when she arrived.

“Think on what I have said, Lupin.”

He shook his head, and turned away from her. “Never, Bellatrix. You will never be anything other than my enemy.”

She was silent for a moment then her sigh fell like a caress in the night around them. “You're certain? You wish to refuse me, my offer?”

“No pleasure you can offer me, or my beast, will make me become what you are.” He did not look at her.

“A pity. Farewell, then. I shall take your answer back to My Lord and see you on the field of battle. Remember me fondly, wolf.”

He heard her heels clicking against the pavement, moving away, into the shadows from whence she came.

Remus vaulted over the fence easily, walking along the banks of the river. Every now and then he caught the moon's reflection in the dark water of the Thames, and the earth was soft and muddy beneath his boots. He kept his mind blank, not wanting to think about her—her soft white skin, her lush body struggling against his, the horrible temptation she had offered him, the brief moment for which he'd considered it.

When he arrived home, he brushed the mud off his shoes with the shoe brush next to the door. That little gesture made him feel human, and it helped, a little.

He went into the kitchen, and turned on the light. Remus saw the blood on his face reflected in the glass of the window, and scrubbed at it with a napkin until it was gone. He stared at his reflection for a moment, then turned the light off and trudged upstairs to bed.

He climbed into the bed and laid his head on the stomach of the man sleeping there. “Moony? Where've you been?” A hand tangled briefly in his hair, patting him, gentle and sweet.

“Nowhere, Padfoot. Nowhere at all.”

It took him a long time to fall asleep, though he was grateful that the moon stayed behind the clouds, veiled in the darkness and hidden from view.

~Finis