WILD & WICKED / © yllwjckts
032 ⸻ Of Monsters and Men

As it turned out, Peter Pettigrew's quick thinking had saved all of their lives. Instead of apparating somewhere far away, he'd gone into the Potter's parlor and used their floo system to get into quick contact with Dumbledore, who'd sent a hoard of Aurors their way. Had much longer gone by without Mathilde reemerging with Lux in her grasp, the rest of the Coven had all been stationed outside, prepared to set the Potter home ablaze and murder them as they fled.

Now, as wizards stronger than any of them could possibly be dealt with protecting the Potter home, the eight people present at Christmas now clambered into Dumbledore's office, taking seats in a semi circle made around his desk.

Lux was sobbing.

Fulk's hand remained present on her back as she bent over, face buried in her hands and refusing to look up and into the eyes of all those she had nearly gotten killed. A cowardly action, she was well aware of, but that was all Lux had ever known herself to be, and there was little use pretending she was anything different.

On the other hand, Fulk's gaze was molten lava, hardened and transfixed on Dumbledore even as he attempted to comfort Lux with his touch. Chances were, he knew words would do little to still her endless stream of tears.

"How did this happen?" He demanded, eyes fixed on Dumbledore, as if the old man knew the answer.

Dumbledore shook his head, releasing a weary sigh. "I don't know, Fulk. Just about everyone knew Miss Erzsebet was spending the holidays at the Potter home. Figuring out who within the walls of Hogwarts has a connection to the Coven would be near impossible."

"I don't understand," Fleamont interjected before Fulk, who had opened his mouth, could get a word out. "What exactly happened? That woman, who was she?"

"A group of vampires targeted your home," Dumbledore explained rather simply.

Effie, who had an arm draped around James, released a hiccup. Lux's shoulders shook as she sobbed harder.

"They were after Lux," Sirius breathed, not quite a question, but not a statement either. Even so, the inevitable why was buried in his words.

Dumbledore turned to Fulk, who stilled his movements rubbing the bawling Lux's back. "Professor Ingelger, would you like to do the honors?"

Dread churned in Lux's stomach, an understanding that there would be no going back from this day, from the knowledge about to be shared.

Goodbye, Remus. Goodbye, Sirius.

It was nice getting to love them, if only for a flicker in time.

"Lux and I are not what we seem," Fulk began with an almost shaky breath, indicating he too felt hesitancy towards this. "We're vampires."

Remus stiffened his posture. Sirius hiccupped. James fell out of his chair. Peter did all three, landing on the ground with a loud thud and a groan.

Fulk continued as though no one had shown a reaction, "Headmaster Dumbledore invited us to Hogwarts this year for protection from those very vampires who sought you out at the Potter home. In exchange, we're to aid in your war against Voldemort."

"I don't..." Effie began, sputtering over her words. "I don't understand. Why are they after you?"

"How old are you?" Sirius blurted before either could answer, question directed at Lux.

"She died at age seventeen," Fulk answered for her, the younger vampire too consumed with her sobs, growing more and more pitiful by the second. "That was three hundred and forty nine years ago."

"I'm sorry," was all Lux could say, breaking her previous silence through heavy breaths. "I'm so sorry. Mrs. Potter, I'm so sorry, I put you all in danger, I brought them to your house, I'm so sorry."

Effie wiped away tears of her own. "We're alive. That's what matters. You didn't mean for this to happen."

Lux wasn't convinced, shaking her head as new tears streamed down her cheeks. But it wasn't that helpless abyss of sorrow that kept hold of her for long, before anger spiked in her, gaze shifting towards Dumbledore. "None of this would've happened if you'd let us leave!"

"None of this would've happened if you'd stayed within the walls of Hogwarts," Dumbledore corrected. "As promised, you're safe from the Coven here. I cannot promise the same for anywhere else."

"The Coven..." Sirius repeated in a low tone, frowning. "I've heard that name before. I can't recall where."

"Somewhere in your home, perhaps," Dumbledore offered. "I wouldn't be surprised if the Black family knew of the Coven, considering how deep your ties run."

Sirius's face went pale. "What are they, then? And why do they want Lux?"

"She doesn't need to answer," Remus spoke for the first time since the meeting had begun, his words sending a jumble of emotions through Lux. "It's not any of our business."

Why was he defending her, she wanted to demand. Since when did Remus Lupin, of all the people in the world, come to her defense in a situation like this? Since when was he the one to shield her from harsh words, from her own mistakes?

"They nearly killed us all!" Peter shouted in protest. "I dare say it is our business!"

"Peter, mate," James began, voice hoarse.

"No, I won't let Remus sympathize with her nearly getting us all mauled to death just because he's a—"

"Pete!" This time, Sirius interjected, shooting him a furious glare from across the room. "Shut the fuck up, yeah? Now's not the time."

Peter, to his credit, did not speak further, slouching down in his chair.

For a long moment, silence passed through Dumbledore's office, the unbearable kind that had Lux wanting to rip her skin off with her nails. Instead, if only to douse the fire erupting in her conscious, she spoke. "They want me because I killed their leader. They've been after me for twenty years, and Fulk as well, after siding himself with me."

"Fulk." Rather than discuss the bombshell Lux had dropped, Remus instead repeated the name of the other vampire present, more to himself than to anyone else. When he looked up, his expression was unreadable as he questioned, "You're not actually father and daughter then, are you?"

Lux shook her head, the tears she'd just managed to quell returning to her at full speed. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to lie to you, I swear it. There wasn't any other option. I'm so sorry."

It was James who voiced the next question, sounding oddly intrigued as he asked, "Why'd you kill their leader?"

"Why would you invite a killer into Hogwarts?" Peter demanded at Dumbledore before Lux could come up with an adequate answer, that didn't consist of three hundred years of endless rape, of held tongues and torn out throats and a need to put a stop to the endless wheel of suffering, even if it resulted in her own death in the process.

"She's not a killer!" Fulk protested, though Lux shook her head in a gentle denial.

"Don't lie, Fulk. You know exactly what I am."

"It was self defense," he tried to explain, but she shook her head again.

"Philip's death may have been a long time coming, but that doesn't make me any less of a killer. I was brainwashed, for a long time, and too many people to count died because of it. Because of me. It's no excuse, I know that. I'd do anything to change it all, to go back in time and fix it. I swear, I'd never want to get any of you hurt."

"You nearly did," Peter spat. "We could all be dead right now, and it would've been your fault."

"Peter, stop it," Remus shot back, but his argument went unacknowledged. Even Lux didn't want to address his words, knowing just how undeserving she was of them.

"I'm sorry," was all she could come up with, the only words she knew how to say. Wiping away the rush of tears that had built in her eyes, she choked out, "I'm so fucking sorry."

"What's the Coven, then?" Fleamont questioned over Lux's sobs, wearing an anxious expression, almost as if he didn't want to know the answer. Effie held the same aura, frequently rubbing her arms up and down with her hands.

"A group of very ancient, very powerful vampires," Dumbledore explained. "My fear is that they intend to ally themselves with Voldemort in the war. Lux and Fulk needed protection from them, and I needed vampires to aid in defeating that man. It was a simple exchange, never meant to go this far."

His last words were seemingly directed at Lux, who sniffled as she took them in. By all accounts, Fulk had done everything requested from the Headmaster, and nothing more. Lux had been the one to complicate things, to allow her personal feelings to get mixed in with their goals.

"And you were once a part of this Coven?" Fleamont frowned, glancing at Lux for a moment, before lowering his gaze to the floor as though she might attack him for the crime of staring.

She paused for a moment, then nodded. "Philip — the leader, bit me the day before I was to burn at the stake."

James fell out of his chair again.

"Burned at the stake?" Sirius confirmed, voice dry. "For what? Witchcraft?"

She nodded, twisting her hands in her lap, those tears returning to bite at her eyes once more. "I came back alive, and they wanted me to join them, and I did. I didn't...I didn't know what would happen, I swear it. I didn't know what they'd make me do, what they'd make me believe. I didn't know if I could leave. I couldn't leave. I was scared, and alone, and I'm so sorry."

Fleamont cleared his throat, attempting to gather a semblance of composure. "And why did you kill the leader? This Philip you speak of."

"This conversation isn't productive," Fulk interjected, much to Lux's relief. "All that anyone needs to know is now known. I fail to see what else could be spoken about."

"But—" Peter began, but one furious glare from Remus had his lips locking.

"Lux can divulge the rest of the information as she sees fit. Assuming we are permitted to remain within the castle walls."

Dumbledore nodded without missing a beat. "While I understand your fears, I have no intention of exiling you from Hogwarts just yet. I have far more use for you here."

"But they're vampires," Peter said, this time able to get his words out without being cut out. "They're dangerous!"

"Mr. Pettigrew, with all due respect, do you truly think you would be living and breathing right now if either of us wished to do you harm?" Fulk asked with the subtle cock of his eyebrow. When he was silent, the vampire finished, "If my Lux can take down the leader of an ancient group of vampires with ease, I struggle to imagine just how easy it would be for her to kill you. But she has not, nor will she ever."

The silence that basked itself over the room was a deafening kind, a quiet Lux had grown so accustomed to once before, but sworn herself away from twenty one years ago. Now, it felt as though she was within those walls again, the judgment that loomed over her, a consistent observation of her that she could never escape, never find solace in.

"If you would be kind enough to excuse us, I think Lux would appreciate some privacy for the remainder of the night."

Lux wasn't quite sure how she'd ended up in Fulk's bedroom, if she'd walked there with him, been carried, or if the wards on Hogwarts had been taken down, allowing Fulk to apparate her there. The ten or so minutes it would've taken to reach his room from Dumbledore's office were a mysterious blur, in which her only comfort was the reminder that she wasn't alone, not completely. Fulk kept an arm firmly locked around her, even as she shook from the efforts of her weeping.

"It's okay," he assured her over and over, gentle whispers into her ear. "It's going to be okay. You're going to be okay."

"They hate me," she managed to sputter. "I lied to them and now they hate me, they know what I am, they know what I've done, they know I'm a monster."

"Stop that," he said, a newfound harshness to his tone. When Lux flinched, he softened himself again, tightening his grip on her. "You're not a monster. You're a girl who did what she had to do to survive."

She shook her head, pulling herself out of his grip and turning her back towards him. "I shouldn't have. I should've died rather than kill people — innocent people, Fulk! Why am I alive, and they aren't? What right do I have to live?"

"Philip and his cronies brainwashed you. You cannot fault yourself for succumbing to the manipulations of a man of his age, of his strength."

"I should be dead," was all Lux could lament, the thought lodging itself in her mind and refusing to leave, no matter what kind words Fulk could spew up. Turning around to face him once more, she questioned more to the world than to him in particular, "Why am I not dead? Why is Elias dead, and not me? Why didn't he kill me? I don't understand, why didn't Philip just fucking kill me?"

He didn't deign her question worthy of an answer, instead wrapping his arms around her torso, pulling her in tight against him. She didn't have the strength to pull away, to do anything but bury her face into his chest and spill her words out as fast as her tears.

"I should be dead. I wish I was dead."

"Don't say that," Fulk scolded through the hard grip he held on her, as if she might truly kill herself if she managed to break free from him. "Don't you ever fucking say that."

The intensity of her sobs increased. "I could've gotten them all killed. They could all be dead, and it would've been all my fault, just like Elias."

"You deserve to live a semblance of a normal life, with Christmases at friends homes. Don't fault yourself for trying to hold onto that human part of yourself. It's an admirable goal." His grip around her loosened, much to her displeasure, as she moved to hang onto him even as he pulled away. "I'm going to draw you a bath."

Lux shook her head, ignoring the pathetic feeling growing larger and larger with every passing second. "I'm scared to be alone."

The sympathy in which he looked at her with made her want to crawl into her skin, never to emerge again. But then, Fulk's strong arms were around her again, banishing any feeling away until all she knew that was in that moment, in that brief lapse of time in which the world seemed to be crumbling around her, she was safe.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .*:☆ﾟ. ───

James and Peter had long since fallen asleep, their snores echoing through the seventh year boy's dorms when Sirius gathered the courage to slip out of his bed and make his way into Remus's.

Pulling back the curtains hanging around the mattress, he wasn't at all surprised to find his boyfriend wide awake, seated upwards with his nose dipped into the pages of a book.

"Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," Sirius read off the title, voice low as to not wake the other boys. "Interesting choice."

Remus lowered the book, moving inwards on his bed to give Sirius enough room to enter. Sliding the curtains shut, Sirius waved his wand to cast a silencing spell around them, before allowing himself to speak further. "Can't sleep, I take it."

"I'm reading about vampires," Remus explained in an almost calm tone, as if unaffected by the events of the day. "I want to know everything I can. Turns out, I'm quite uneducated on them."

Sirius reached over, snatching the book out from Remus's grip and pulling it open to the marked page. "A five X classification. Isn't that the most dangerous?"

Remus shrugged, moving to lean against Sirius, sighing at the warmth his body provided. "Same as me. Suppose we're similar."

Sirius wanted to say no, no it wasn't at all the same, but something held him back. Instead, he scanned the words in the book, curious to discover what Remus had read.

"They can't consume anything but blood. They'll throw it all up otherwise," he continued, reading off from the paragraphs Newt Scamander had written years ago. "That...well, that explains a lot."

Remus let out a dry sort of laugh. "At least we don't have to worry about her having an eating disorder."

"Hey, it was a solid theory." Sirius turned the page. "Incredibly dangerous. Deadly. Known for their ability to shift away from human emotions such as empathy, disregarding humanity at the beck and call of blood."

Remus's nostrils flared, and he reached over, snagging the book out of Sirius's grip. "This was written ages ago. It's outdated."

Sirius thought, considered if he agreed or not, before saying, "Lux doesn't strike me as someone without empathy."

"Because she's not. She's..." Remus shook his head, running a hand through his hair. "This doesn't change anything, does it?"

"I don't know," he admitted, hating the words the moment they came from his lips. It shouldn't change anything, Sirius knew that deep down. He'd come to care for Lux so swiftly and with such intensity he could barely comprehend how it had come to place, his desire for her in both physicality and emotional connection running just as deep as what he harbored for Remus.

But that was the Lux of yesterday. The Lux of now was someone far, far different, a girl with three hundred years on her back, a girl with blood stained teeth and charred flesh. A girl who had been hidden away.

He understood why she'd needed to keep her identity a secret, it was little different than Remus. But vampirism was far more complicated than lycanthropy. Being a werewolf didn't come with years of stories to tell, it didn't come with uniformed scars and murdered men and Covens out for revenge.

He'd once asked Lux why she was the way she was. Locked in a cupboard with her lips only inches from him, he hadn't expected an answer.

"If I told you why I am the way I am, you'd go running for the hills," she had warned him, the hypnotism of her raspy voice distracting him at the time from the all too real truth behind her words.

"Sirius," Remus breathed, a resigned sort of sound that had his heart twisting. "Just...just think, for a bit. Your family knowing of this so called Coven must mean it's dark. Darker than anything we've ever had to deal with."

Sirius nodded in agreement, wondering where he was going with this.

"If Lux was involved in that sort of thing...they must've really hurt her. I mean, for fucks sake, you've seen her back."

All the moisture left his mouth, recalling those elongated slashes across her pale skin. "You think that happened in the Coven?"

"As opposed to what, Ingelger doing them? You saw how she clung to him like her life depended on it, I think we can throw that theory out the window. I have a feeling those scare are the least of what happened in that place, if Lux wound up killing that Philip bloke. She wouldn't do that without provoking."

Sirius rubbed his fingers to his temple, feeling as though he was only just beginning to put together the pieces of a puzzle that would take him years to complete.

Then, Remus's head snapped up. "Fuck."

"What?" He frowned, reaching over to grab onto his hand. "Moony, is everything okay?"

He was silent for a long moment, the pale shade of his face indicating he was not, in fact, okay. "Ingelger's first ever lesson, remember? Werewolf bites. They're lethal to vampires."

Sirius gulped, sensing the guilt he knew was swimming within the boy he loved so dearly, the anxiety at being an even greater danger to her than before. Stupidly, all he could come up with to comfort him was, "Well...be sure not to bite her, then."

Shaking his head, a breath released from his lips, a hesitancy before speaking. "I did, though. Don't you recall? In detention, we snogged and I bit her collarbone. That's why she collapsed."

"Oh." Sirius blinked. "That makes sense, then."

"Fuck," Remus murmured. "This is all so fucked up."

Sirius nodded in agreement, before moving to place his lips on top of Remus's head. "What do we do, then?"

"Talk to her?" Remus suggested after a long, thoughtful pause. Moving inwards to rest his head on Sirius's chest, he said, "This isn't any different than when you came to me in second year, claiming you knew what I was."

"It's very different," Sirius argued, stiffening against him. "You haven't killed anyone. You haven't drunk blood. You didn't have a choice with what you were, Lux did. She could've...I don't know. Could've been different."

He couldn't deny this. But even so, just as Sirius felt within his bones, Remus wasn't ready to give up on her just yet. "We don't know everything."

"Don't we?"

"She's not a monster," Remus argued. "If she was, wouldn't we be dead?"

"I never called her a monster."

"No, but you were thinking it."

"She drinks blood! She—"

"She made mistakes," Remus interjected, voice eerily cool. Glancing up at him, making eye contact, Sirius felt a shiver run through him. "She's not the only one."

"Moony—"

"How can you fault Lux for being a killer, when James is the only reason you don't have blood on your hands? The only reason I don't have blood on mine?"

"That was two years ago," Sirius sputtered out, a helpless sort of desperation filling him.

"And Lux has been out of that so called Coven for much longer. Honestly, Sirius, you don't have much moral high ground here. Lux was brainwashed, she was trying to survive — what's your excuse?"

All Sirius had been raised to do was defend himself, hold onto his Black pride like a shield and force blame wherever he could find room for it, and that he did, moving away from Remus, putting as much space between them on the bed as he could. "Snape never should have listened to me. He shouldn't have taken the bait."

"You know how I feel about Snape. You know I'd eat nails before say a kind word about him. But you nearly got him killed, Sirius, and for what? A schoolyard fight?"

"He called Mary a mudblood in Charms! My girlfriend, at the time, mind you!"

"And the solution was to have me murder him? Set me on him like a feral beast? I may be a werewolf, but I've come to learn that I'm not a monster."

"I'm sorry," Sirius sniffed, finding himself close to tears. "I thought we'd put this in the past."

"We had. I made the choice to trust you, to give you a second chance, and I hope it doesn't come back to bite me in the arse." Releasing a shaky breath, Remus ran a hand through his hair. "If I can forgive you for using me as a weapon for petty revenge, surely you can forgive Lux for actions committed under circumstances we don't know, before we were even born."

Sirius hugged his arms to his chest, a movement symbolizing giving in to the fight, allowing Remus a victory. Instead, his nose scrunched up, a whole new set of problems occurring to him. "She's old, then."

"Page two hundred and twelve of the book says vampires' brains don't develop past the age in which they died at. She's still mentally seventeen."

"Right. And someday we'll be fifty, and she'll still be seventeen."

Even this Remus couldn't argue with, biting down on his lip as his eyes flickered downwards.

"I suppose we'll have to make the most of what time we've got then, yeah?"

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .*:☆ﾟ. ───

okay so basically everyone in the comments of the previous chapter said they couldn't wait a week for an update, and since this chapter is more of a buffer in between the climax and the sirelux confrontation (next chapter) i figured i'd post it early! the next chapter will still be up on wednesday as per usual but i hope you enjoyed this one :))) we're nearing the end of the first "act" of the story, which are basically just how i map out parts of the fic, of which i have six planned!

for those who are curious, the acts are as followed: act 1 (this one) ends at the end of 1977, act 2 follows the 1978 school year, act 3 is post graduation through halloween 1981, act 4 is 1982-1992, act 5 is poa-ootp, and act 6 is hbp-post dh! so yeah, as said before, this will be a long fic lol.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .*:☆ﾟ. ───