Requested by: CricketCat

Words: 2804

Description: Remus goes missing and Sirius is determined to find him.

Story:

"You're positive?" Sirius asked Remus. Remus nodded, a pained look on his face.

"Sirius, you have to leave. This is a bad moon, I can tell already. I'll be fine, you can come get me in the morning."

The sun was setting and Sirius didn't have much time. "That's all the more reason for me to stay, Remus. I can't leave you. I...I have a bad feeling."

Remus shook his head, a sad look in his eyes. "I can't hurt you. And I will if you stay. Please, Sirius. Trust me."

Sirius hated it. He didn't want to leave Remus. It was the last thing he wanted to do, but he had to respect Remus's choices this time. He ran forward and wrapped Remus up in a gentle hug as he was in a lot of pre-moon pain. He kissed Remus deeply. 

Finally, Remus broke away, resting their foreheads together. "Go, Sirius. I love you."

Sirius stood, a lump in his throat. "I love you, too. I'll see you first thing in the morning."

Remus nodded, glancing nervously out the boarded window. The sun was setting, but it was something else that worried him. 

Sirius left just before the sun set. Remus, with a terrible feeling in his heart, lost his mind to the wolf.

+++

Sirius, true to his word, was up at dawn with James and Peter. The three of them made the trek out to the Shrieking Shack through the Whomping Willow passage. Sirius led the way through the trap door.

"He's probably still sleeping," Sirius whispered to the other two and crawled through, glancing around the level, towards the couch. Remus was usually on or around it in the mornings after. But Sirius didn't see him there. 

"Remus?" He called softly. Sun was filtering in through the boarded up window and the dust was floating around the air, still and peaceful. 

There was no answer. James and Peter bounded up the stairs to see if he'd gone to the bedroom to lay on one of the beds. But the open front door caught Sirius's eyes. 

That door was never open, not unless Sirius himself opened it when they were going on a full moon adventure. He approached the door and looked out towards Hogsmeade in the distance. The bad feeling from the night before intensified as he looked out over the town. He wasn't sure what he would do if Remus had gotten out onto the town. He couldn't imagine having to tell poor Remus what he'd done. 

But strangely enough, Hogsmeade was tranquil in the early morning. Nothing seemed to be wrong. 

Sirius transformed into his big black dog form and started sniffing around, heading in the direction of the Forbidden Forest. 

By the time he returned to the Shrieking Shack to see James and Peter waiting for him on the front step, he was distraught. 

He stumbled out of his dog form and James reached out to hold him up. "What is it, Sirius? What'd you find?"

"Greyback," Sirius said, voice trembling, "he's been here. I think he took Rey."

+++

When Remus woke up, he didn't know where he was. But he wasn't necessarily surprised. He'd sensed Greyback the night before. He knew he was there, that's why he sent Sirius and the others away. He knew Greyback was there for him and he couldn't risk his friends getting hurt. 

But that didn't stop him wishing Sirius was there with him. 

He was convince he did the right thing by keeping Sirius safe, but he also sort of wished he hadn't told Sirius to leave. 

On top of it all, Remus hadn't been entirely lying when he said it was going to be a bad moon. He had the bleeding wounds to prove it. 

God, he wished Sirius were there. 

He heard a clang and echoing footsteps and he scrambled to sit up, noticing for the first time the burn of the silver chains at his wrists. 

The low rumble of cackling reached his ears from wherever he was, he wasn't sure. 

Bellatrix Lestrange swung around a pillar, laughing at his frightened expression. 

"Oh, ickle Remmy-poo is going to have so. much. fun!"

Fenrir Greyback walked up behind her, arms crossed. He looked a little worse for wear, blood still dried on his chin from the full moon only hours ago. 

Remus squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. He wouldn't show it, he refused to show it, but he was scared.

+++

Sirius was pacing. James, Peter, and he were standing in Dumbledore's office as the man himself tried to calm them. The door opened and Professor McGonagall entered. 

"I've just received your patronus. What do we know?" She asked.

"I last saw him just before the full. I had a bad feeling, but I left anyway. The next morning he was gone and the front door was open. I tr-I went outside and I could uh, I could tell that Greyback had been there. I could feel it," Sirius said.

He tried to brush over the holes in his story, and McGonagall eyed him strangely, but Dumbledore took the information and kept going. 

"I will contact the Order and we'll send a search party through the Forbidden Forest. I'll speak with the Aurors Department and have them search the homes of suspected Death Eaters. We'll find him, Sirius," Dumbledore assured. 

"B-but we're only seventeen, not even in the Order yet, why..."

"If you are right about Greyback being there, then you know why," Dumbledore interrupted darkly. 

Sirius clenched his fists in his grief and anger. McGonagall's expression softened and she reached over to rest her hand on his shoulder. "We will find him, Sirius, rest easy."

Sirius wanted to scoff, how could she say that? But instead, he tried his best to accept her comfort.

James and Peter led him back to the dorm where Lily was anxiously waiting for their return. They broke the news to her that Remus was missing. 

Sirius was anxious to go looking for Remus. He knew deep down that Remus wasn't in the Forbidden Forest, but it irked him that the Order was going to be searching for him there without him. No one knew the Forbidden Forest better than Sirius! He should be out there!

But Dumbledore had forbidden him doing anything rash. He'd sprouted some bullshit about how if Remus was taken, then they were in danger too and they should just leave it to the adults. 

What bullshit! Every time they'd been told to leave it to the adults thus far in the war, they'd screwed it up. Sirius knew that it was up to them. 

"We have to look for him ourselves," he said finally.

Lily looked up. "What? Sirius, we can't--"

"No, he's right," James said. "He would do the same for any of us. We need to find him."

Sirius stood, reading to storm out of the castle at a moment's notice, but Lily grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back down. Sirius thought she was about to tell him off again. He was scrambling to think of something to quiet her with, some retort to prove his point, when she surprised him. 

"Well if we're going to do this, then we need a plan. We can't just go storming into a Death Eater's house! We'd end up dead, most likely."

James reached over and laced their fingers together, nodding his agreement. Sirius felt a pang in his heart at the sight. He just wanted his Moony back. 

"Okay," Sirius said, sitting back down. They brainstormed for a little while before Peter voiced a thought. 

"I wish there was someway he could get someone to investigate the homes in secret, since we can't."

Sirius and James shared a look. "House elves," they said at the same time. (this part is also kind of borrowed from Pengiwen's Marauders series, year five).

Sirius was quick to summon Kreacher and sent him to check all of the suspected Death Eater homes and to talk to the house elves there and report back his findings. Kreacher was reluctant to do so, but Sirius promised him some things in return. 

They didn't hear back from Kreacher for a week. A week. Seven days. The Order had no luck in the Forest as Sirius had predicted, and the Aurors hadn't found anything. The seventh years suspected as much, if the Death Eaters were going to kidnap someone, they wouldn't leave them out in the open for the Aurors to find. 

The remaining Marauders hadn't let up in their part of the search either, they were relentless. Sirius didn't sleep much, he was tirelessly looking for leads or information within the walls of Hogwarts. He would frequently meet with Dumbledore to find out what was new in the search. It was never much. 

Until the day that Kreacher appeared to them seven days after Remus went missing. He said only two words, "Malfoy Manor."

The three of them (Peter had disappeared, probably to the library and there was no time to fetch him) wordlessly jumped to their feet, grabbed their jackets and went to grab onto Kreacher so he could transport them. 

He did, right outside of the manor. The three of them quickly got under the invisibility cloak that James had remembered to grab just before they left. 

They snuck through the manor, looking for where they could possibly be keeping Remus. 

They walked right past a room that contained both Greyback and Bellatrix, by the sound of it. They entered the hall, a great big room with a great big chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Lily spotted a staircase leading down a level at the end of the hall and they hurried over as quietly as they could. 

At the end of the staircase was a door made of metal bars. Sirius shivered at the sight. He knew this was the place. He pushed past James and Lily, out from under the cloak and James barely had time to cast a silencio around the area before Sirius blasted the door open. 

He pushed past the ruins of the door and saw Remus. He was initially crying tears of joy, but they turned into tears of something else. He hurried over to Remus. 

He was laying on the cold, hard ground, OH (#taylorswift). Sirius slid across the concrete to get to him. The right side of his face was black and blue and his hands were shackled. Lily knelt down behind Remus and pulled his head up to rest on her lap while James and Sirius assessed the damage. 

"Accio Remus's wand," James muttered and it cluttered and shot into his hand from way across the room where it had been discarded. James slipped it into his pocket so it wouldn't be forgotten. 

Sirius conjured a cloth and wet it with an aguamenti charm and ran the cool material over Remus's face, wiping away the grime and blood. He couldn't tell whether the wounds he was seeing were untreated from the moon or if they were newly acquired. 

"Remus," Sirius whispered, gently brushing his hair out of his closed eyes. James had been trying to get the shackles off his wrists and every time he would shake them, Remus would wince. 

Finally, James was able to charm them off of Remus's wrists and he tossed them to the side, wincing at the loud clattering sound they made. James inspected Remus's wrists and cringed at the angry red burn marks all around them from the silver. 

He took the cloth from Sirius and carefully pressed it to one of the burns. Remus groaned and his eyes flickered open. 

"It's alright, Remus," Lily said softly as she brushed his curls out of his face soothingly. Remus's eyes filled with hopeful tears and his eyes found Sirius and James. 

Sirius smiled sadly down at him, leaning down to press a sweet kiss to his forehead. "Let's get you out of here, yeah?" Sirius said. 

Remus was too exhausted to say anything, so he just let out a sigh of relief. James stood and reached down to pull Remus into his arms. Remus whimpered in pain at the movement. 

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," James muttered, adjusting him around. His head flopped back because he was too weak to hold it up on his own, so Lily leaned in and carefully nestled Remus's head against James's chest so he would be more comfortable. 

They were just getting ready to head out by summoning Kreacher again, when a low, growl-y voice echoed over the cell. "And where do you think you're going?" Greyback asked, pacing closer.

Remus squeezed his eyes shut once more, almost crying with the weight of how grateful he was that his friends had come to save him. He felt safe, even in the face of the danger before them, he felt protected. 

James had angled away from Greyback to block Remus, and Lily and Sirius had both stepped in front of him. 

"We're leaving," Lily said sternly and boldly. 

Greyback's laughs were echoed by another, more unhinged voice. Bellatrix Lestrange had joined the party. 

"You won't be going anywhere," she cackled. "Especially you, you filthy mudblood," she said, pointing at Lily. Sirius pushed her behind him when James couldn't.

"Shut your ungodly mouth, Bella," he snarled at his cousin. 

Bellatrix widened her eyes in mock surprise at his words. "Bold, are we? Crucio."

But Sirius had been expecting it, "Protego! Is that the only spell the Blacks know? For Merlin's sake!"

Fenrir snarled and pulled out his own wand and started casting spells their way. James was helpless in the fight and it was up to Sirius and Lily to hold their ground. Lily wasn't known as the best witch in their year for nothing and she kept up with Bellatrix's spells as Sirius battled Fenrir away from his boyfriend. 

James was busy trying to summon a patronus. They hadn't yet learned it in school, but they'd been practicing it on their own and James had been able to produce one twice before. He had a hard time casting the spell while holding Remus, but he managed it and sent a message to Dumbledore for help. 

He dashed behind a pillar as Fenrir shot a hex his way. Greyback wasn't very good with his spells, but his determination and blood lust made him a feared enemy. Sirius was the better dueler, but he still had his work cut out for him. 

Lily on the other hand, was starting to have trouble keeping up with Bella's quick and harsh spells. She was hardly landing any spells of her own, just focusing on defense. 

James set Remus down to lean against the pillar. "I'll be back," he said, handing Remus his wand in case he needed it. 

James burst out into the open and started shooting spells at both Greyback and Bellatrix when he could, trying to throw the both of them off so Sirius and Lily could make more advances. Sirius, James, and Lily were good, but Greyback and Bellatrix were better. They had way more experience with the Dark Arts and dueling than the three seventeen year olds and they knew it was only a matter of time before they were overpowered. 

So it was an absolute relief when Dumbledore arrived with the Order of the Phoenix. 

There was only a few more moments of dueling before the two Death Eaters got scared and disapparated. 

James ran over to pick Remus back up, who'd fallen back into unconsciousness in the time he was gone. Dumbledore was quick to apparate them back to the castle, where James carried Remus up to the Hospital Wing, Sirius and Lily right behind him. 

Madam Pomfrey was waiting for them when they got there and she quickly ushered them to set Remus down in his usual bed as she got to work. She applied some burn paste to his wrists and woke him up to give him a potion to heal the bruised bones and the queasiness he was feeling. 

She smoothed a bruise cream over his face to help with the bruising, though most of it would have to go away on its own. 

When she was done, she finally allowed Sirius to come closer. He'd been watching from afar the whole time as he was not going to leave Remus so soon after finding him. As she left, he crawled into the bed beside Remus and pulled him into his arms, holding him close. 

"I was so worried," he whispered into his curls.

"I was so scared," Remus agreed, burrowing deeper into the cuddles. 

"Well I've got you now. I'm never letting you go."

With those words of comfort, Remus fell asleep in Sirius's arms.

+++

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