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The Kneazle’s Eyes


Fallengunder was locked tight.

The drapes repaired and pulled shut.

Doors to refinished rooms shut and blocked.

A fortress on guard.

The kneazle lay in the shadows on the second floor, peering with wide yellow eyes through the rungs of the stairwell, watching as below the two strange humans he had been watching seemed to be preparing for something - an attack of some sort, though from what the kneazle was unsure. They seemed to be arming the castle from the inside out, as though they were protecting the world from a danger that might escape from within.

The air was thick with anticipation, with dread… and the kneazle could smell canine, which only set her further on edge, the hairs on her back bristling from her neck straight to her bottle-brush tail, which flicked with nervous energy.

“I think we’ve done all we can,” Veigler announced. He sat on the bottom step of the stairwell and Remus sat beside him, wincing as his bones touched the step. Veigler wore the same pained expression on his face as Remus did. Veigler reached a shaking hand into his pocket and withdrew some aconite leaves. He held a palm out to Remus, who took them and chewed them slowly, even though the very thought of chewing made him want to throw up. Veigler chewed in silence beside him.

Remus closed his eyes and wondered where Sirius was, what he was doing. He’d started a letter to Sirius - it sat upstairs, tucked between the pages of one of the books in the newly designated library, the words Dear Sirius across the top, but nothing below it. There was only one thing that Remus wanted to say to Sirius… and he couldn’t bring himself to write it on the parchment, to send it off tied to the foot of a bird across the 1300 miles that separated them. He couldn’t do it. It was the sort of thing that one needed to say in person, the sort of thing that Remus Lupin needed Sirius Black’s grey eyes to look into in order to speak.

He’d been stating out that window in the library all this time, staring at the stones. There was a stone… about halfway up the precipice the castle faced, one stone that stood out, that was a different colour than the rest. And that stone was exactly the shade of Sirius Black’s eyes.

Veigler stared up at the high windows that overlooked the hall where they sat. The sky outside was lavender. The moment was nearly upon them. He looked over at Remus. “How are you holding up, Rey?” he asked, concerned.

“I’m alright.”

Veigler reached over and patted Remus’s shoulder and Remus looked up at him. His wild, bushy hair was thick and he was still unshaven, as though Veigler had decided he rather enjoyed this untamed look he had about him. Remus thought it made him look like the sort of man that would own a secluded castle and secretly be a werewolf. It made Remus smile, and Ned reflected that smile back.

“I’m glad you’re here, kid,” Veigler said now.

“I’m glad, too,” Remus answered.

“Not to get all sentimental,” Veigler chuckled, “But you’re the closest to family I’ve ever had. You and the Scamanders.” He smiled. “I missed you something fierce these past months. You have no idea how… empty… this castle was before you came. Nor the place I was staying in town. It was quite lonely.”

Remus murmured, “I imagine it would be… but one day, it’ll be full of life. You can feel it in the walls, just waiting to happen.” He cast his eyes about and his focus landed on the kneazle, whose yellow eyes gleamed down at them. “We have a visitor.”

Ned turned slowly and looked and saw the feline watching.

He smiled. “Merlin’s beard, look at that tail.”

Remus smirked, “Imagine if Newt was here? He’d be crawling up the stairs with kneazle feed or something trying to coax it out.”

Ned Veigler laughed at the mental image of the magizoologist and the hunkered down long-legged way he would’ve been trying to sneak up upon the magical creature at the top of the stairs. “And Newt would probably succeed. Probably have that old shoebrush purring in moments. Creatures trust Newt Scamander. He’s genuine, that’s why, has nothing to hide. It’s the same reason you and I trust him. Animal instincts are rarely wrong. It’s what makes Newt Scamander a great man, what makes him a vulnerable man. It’s a good thing Tina’s as tough as she is. They balance each other out.”

Remus nodded.

“Lovers have to balance one another,” Ned said, and he shook his head. “Doesn’t work when it’s unbalanced.”

Remus thought of Sirius and how balanced they were. Sirius made Remus better at letting go of his worries and Remus made Sirius better at thinking things through. They were the answer to each other’s shortcomings. Like Ned had just said about Newt and Tina.

Remus rubbed his knees and bit his lip.

He looked back to Veigler, who was still staring at the old kneazle. “Have you ever been in love, Professor?”

There was a shift in Veigler’s eyes. He turned away from the kneazle and he said, “We don’t balance.”

“Who is it?” Remus asked.

Veigler stared ahead, his eyes searching the air as though he was looking at something more interesting than a dark wall, as though he were seeing a picture… and in his mind, he was, he was seeing her. “A muggle woman,” he said quietly. “When I came to see the castle, I stayed at the inn in that village we passed through, and she’s the sister of the man who owns the little pub there.”

“Is she beautiful?”

“To me she is beautiful as anything this earth offers our eyes to look upon.”

Remus smiled. “What’s she look like?”

“Silver blonde hair… long - long silver blonde hair. Some of it in braids, most of it loose in these curls…” Ned smiled, “And eyes to match. She paints her lips the softest red, nearly pink… and her cheeks flush naturally, right below a small smattering of freckles. She’s always bundled in thick sweaters and fur-lined parkas and cloaks… She could be a veela, she is so beautiful, Remus.”

Remus could imagine her... If she was anything like Ned described, then she certainly was beautiful. “What’s her name? Do you know?”

“Elva,” he said. But then, as though the mention of her name had brought reality on, Ned blinked and shook his head, casting away the vision before him, and he sighed, running his hands through his messy hair and looked down at the step at his feet, “It would never work.”

“Why?” Remus asked.

Ned smiled sadly, “She’s a muggle, I would be asking her not only to accept the wizarding world… but that I am a werewolf. They have legends and fears in that village, the same as the village by the Great North Woods. A werewolf lived in this castle before, Remus, and though he was not one of Greyback’s, he was not always good, either. The village bears the scars of his time here. Literal scars, mind. And Elva’s brother was nearly killed once, protecting her, when she was young. Their parents are long dead, they are all each other has and he has raised her to fear the forest, to fear things that howl at the moon.”

“But you aren’t bad. Not all werewolves are bad,” argued Remus. He was surprised by his own statement. In his head, it sounded an awful lot like Sirius Black’s voice saying it, rather than his own, and his heart tightened.

“A werewolf is a werewolf, there are no good werewolves and bad, simply werewolves... whether that is right or wrong, a fearful mind cannot always tell.” Ned Veigler sighed. “You see, Remus, fear often lacks the ability to distinguish the difference between the two. Fear sees only a monster.”

Remus looked down at his hands. “We aren’t --” But before he could finish the sentence, suddenly, there was a shock that ran through him. The moon had come.




The next morning, Remus awoke on the floor. His shirt felt heavy and he looked down to see it was stained red against his chest and he sat up, struggling to pull it over his head, which was hard to do as his shoulder and back ached as he stretched other wounds across them. He looked down at five great gashes across his chest - claw marks, oozing blood quietly, beneath torn skin that hung ripped like the wallpaper on the walls. He winced and pressed the shirt over the wound. He looked around. He was alone.

“Professor?” he called.

And there came the kneazle, lurking ‘round the end of the staircase, looking at Remus with wide, green eyes, looping about the last of the rungs on the stairs, studying him with it’s lamp like eyes, inspecting him… curious… flicking it’s tail.

“Professor?” Remus called again, his voice echoed through the empty hall.

The kneazle leaped off the last step and into the shadows beneath a long end table in the hall as Remus pulled himself up the stairs, moving as slow as a rock climber at the peak of Everest, clinging to the rail as they might a rip cord. He winced with each stretch of his shoulder muscles. At the top of the steps, he called again - “Professor?”

There was a quiet sound, a small purr. And he looked down to see the kneazle at the corner of the hall to his right, rubbing against he wall, looking at him.

“They say kneazles are smart, yeah?” he said to it, breathless from having climbed the stairs, “D’ya know where he is, then?”

The kneazle seemed to consider him a moment, then pranced a few steps down the hall, tail held high, before pausing and looking back. Remus followed, watching the tail of the cat flicker ahead of him like a flame. “Lumos,” he said, lighting the hall with his wand, as the cat ran along, pausing every now and then to allow Remus to catch up.

They came to a room off the corridor with a window that overlooked a the sea far below at the foot of the crags - the north side of the castle. The tall windows were the height of two, maybe even three stories and the whole room was paneled in mahogany. This was to be the headmaster’s office, Ned had said, because he loved the view of the sea. And sure enough, there he lay, still unconscious, in a pool of sunlight cast by the window. The kneazle jumped onto a shelf and watched from the top looking down as Remus went over to Ned Veigler.

“Professor Veigler,” Remus said, kneeling beside the man. There was blood in his beard from along his jawline, and a long scratch down his arm… teeth marks in his shoulder. Remus felt sick. Those had to be his doing. He drew his wand and aimed it, “Scourgify,” he whispered and the wound oozed pus for a moment and then he applied bandages, moving his wand about to cover the open bite and scratches.

Ned stirred, his eyelids fluttering, looking up at Remus as he mended the damages. “When did you become an alpha?” Ned murmured, still waking.

Remus looked at him, “I’m not, I’m Sirius’s Beta,” he said.

“You called yourself Alpha. Your Alpha was overthrown, you said... When?”

“I.. I don’t know,” Remus replied. But even as he said it, he remembered Sirius and James saying the May moon had been a rough one… Remembered James saying that in the other timeline, the one he had changed, Sirius had been overthrown by Fenrir Greyback in a fight outside the Shrieking Shack in February. March and April had been Full Moon nights without Sirius because in March was the night of the so-called prank and April Sirius had refused to come because of the prank’s repercussions… Was Remus an Alpha as a bit of artefacting from the changes James had made? And if so, what did it mean?

Was that part of the anger and resentment that he and Sirius were experiencing that was keeping them apart? Two Alphas in a pack, jostling for control, however buried in their subconscious the fight might be?

He wished he knew more - could find more - about time turners and the theory of artefacting so that he could help not only James but, apparently, also himself.

Remus stared at Ned Veigler. The one person who knew everything - about the animagi, about the werewolf - and had been there for Remus every step of the way. The one person who was trained in defensive magical theory, who might be able to help them figure out what was happening, who might have answers. “Professor,” he said slowly, “What do you know of time turners?”

Veigler said, “The Prewett brothers and I were working on studying the effects of the time turners before Christmas… when we talked to you about the Time Thief theory that Newt had developed about Kostos Mopsus, the Blind Seer.” Ned sat up, wincing and staring at Remus through the violently bright sunlight streaming through the window. “What do you know about time turners is a better question - they don’t speak of those in any classes at Hogwarts to my knowledge!”

Remus hesitated.

“Professor, if I tell you… you must swear not to tell another soul.”

High above them, on the bookshelf, the kneazle’s ears twitched.