SNUPIN fic. Remipunx's 2º sonfic challenge
Well, at least here I am with my fic for remipunx's second Songfic Challenge. Oh, oh, emotion, the winner will be elected at the end of the month, and this time the price is LJ paid time, or icon space! and their pic, of course.
So... read and enjoy!
TITLE: Careful about what you wish for
AUTHOR: noe
RATING: PG-13
PAIRING: RL/SS. Remus' POV
GENRE: Drama
BETA: remipunx. You know, I'm sorry about giving you this beta-work when life was tough on you. I appreciated it the more by that.
NOTES: Made for Remipunx Second Songfic Challenge. This month's song is Ask, by the Smiths.
Shyness is nice, and
Shyness can stop you
From doing all the things in life
You'd like to
[...]
I remember the night with startling clarity, as if in the event of my death, all my senses had held onto life tightly, sharpening desperately. My eyes wandered on the tree canopy, the darkness enfolded there, like a tomb. The cold air chilled my clammy skin, and one of my hands grasped the soil, as if wanting to take root here. The beast grunted over my shoulder, whined and whispered in my ear; and I heard it, knowing it would be the last song of my life.
But I was wrong.
Now I smile, shyly, lowering my eyes. The Headmaster Dumbledore smiles me back, as he usually does, and I can feel the brush of his mind inside my skull. That is me, the werewolf that doesn't like to be tricked, and he, myself, is an old creature, full of knowledge that by no means a sixteen years old wizard should be able to... sense.
But the Headmaster is ahead now, going to the Great Hall, and my placid countenance has not changed a bit. I've gotten used to being like that, after these six years in Hogwarts.
Shy, nice Remus Lupin.
Ahead of me I smell Sirius's citricacid odour, and it's so powerful that my nose wrinkles on its own. At his side, Peter's sweet-flower-rotting smell mingles with the crisp and salty marine air that I've come to associate with James. The Great Hall at dinner is an explosion of sensations this time in the month. But time has trained me, and I can easily discard everything to a low hum in the back of my mind. Sirius and Peter had been plotting again, I can see it in the way a dark blue mist is hanging around them. James is looking to Lily, a red light falling from his nostrils, his ears, his mouth like thick mud. Sincere desire, I suppose.
I look on my own, my enhanced senses trailing towards the Slytherin table. Severus Snape is there, he who smells of potion ingredients and damp soil. I smile.
Peter looks at the Slytherin table, too; a quick glance that makes him laugh harder.
Stupid rat.
I let you; the werewolf lets you plot along with Sirius. Tonight is the full moon, and I'm hungry, but still you, my friends, will plot around me, holding me in line, playing with me so I can't escape. You in your animagus form will be my cage, subtler than the Shrieking Shack, but a cage, still.
I also know that, when the moon wanes and disappears, I'll feel grateful to you... but now, with my mistress waiting for the dusk to finish its scene, I hate you with a passion that frightens me. It's the werewolf, I know it's him, and still...
"Remus, lighten up a bit!"
Sirius burrows his way around my shoulders, a mischievously smile in his handsome face. To him, tonight is a game. I curve my lips barely, a shy look in my eyes covering the painful hate that now rages inside me.
"Yeah", I answer. It seems enough for him. Then James talks about the transfigurations essay for tomorrow, and time slips away until only a dozen students remain at the Gryffindor table. I risk a glance to the Slytherin table, but Snape is gone.
The upward way to our dorms is a happy event, all giggles and smiles and easy chat. The dark blue mist clings around Sirius like a cloak now; I can't avoid looking at him, wondering what the hell his next prank will be. I never doubt about his victim's identity, but that is fine to me. I get to see him, smell him more often that way. Snape's fear feels like a chilly rain over my head, and his anger tastes so, so cold... Every time that they, my dear friends, play with him, guilt stabs me, because I'm a prefect, and I should stop them... But I'm so thirsty half the time, so hot, so in need of sensing his cold dampness... I should feel ashamed, but the werewolf, myself, grovels and smiles, contented.
About twenty minutes later, I'm on my way down, along Madam Pomfrey. I walk beside her like a docile pup, and her eyes are soft, as if she would not know what kind of monster she is petting. But I know my eyes are soft, too; shy and reserved, and so nobody suspects.
We cross the grounds quickly, and soon I'm under the Whomping Willow, trailing the long tunnel to the Shrieking Shack. The damp earth is alive with little insects, and my skin crawls, but I go ahead. I hate this place, this dark, claustrophobic hole that guides me to my 'security'. The hate, the hunger is railing inside me, and so I speed up, a little fear urging me on, from my human, weak self.
I push myself out the trapdoor, and I'm on the dirty floor. I feel disquiet, more so that usual. Something is going to happen, and myself, the werewolf, whispers "stay here, just here, just close to the trapdoor".
I smile, a shy look that nobody can see. Feral me, I think, and laugh hoarsely. I cuddle on the floor, and spend my time feeling the moon, who is appearing slowly, full and yellow and powerful, trailing her cold damp fingers over my heated skin.
Then I hear it.
Him.
His smell.
Severus Snape.
Me, the werewolf, is taking control. Pain ripples through my limbs, and my stomach flutters.
Hunger, hunger...
Half formed, I growl, my hands not paws yet, so I can open the trap door and jump towards him, to him.
I desire his coldness... the clammy feel that always clings to his skin. Now that the fire overtakes me, I'm changing into a beast that hungers for him, for his blood...
He is shrieking, and he is running away, and now I sense... salt marine air, more human blood that calls me as surely as veelas do. Seduce me, I howl to the dark, while my bones reform and mend, my fur grows and my teeth ache.
I lay rolling over the dirty floor until I recover my old body, and it's so easy, so natural, to watch and smell and hear the world this way now that I'm myself, a werewolf.
How can I survive the long nights being a simply human, now that my body is supple and precise, and I feel the strength of my limbs? Life herself is humming its song into my veins, I feel the overwhelming need to run, to hunt, to eat.
They, humans, are not so far ahead. I run, fast like wind and my freedom exhilarates me. Salt marine air will be tasty, young and healthy and so, so good for me, when I rip his throat and squelch my thirst on his blood.
And the cold, damp one... I could eat him too, but... Life is singing. Expand your existence, bite and reproduce, she commands, as inexorable as the moon herself.
So, that I'll do.
Be like me, cold, damp one, run at my side under the stars... The stars that I can see now, in a hole just at the end of the tunnel... The night, the sky, the forest... is calling me... I need to go out... out and onto them, my prey!
When the pain explodes on my flank, my howl reverberates in the tunnel. The tree... the tree which will fight me, I always forget... when the moon is gone, I forget...
So I howl my frustration, my pain, my stolen freedom.
I cry all the night, curled over myself, as a little cub. I'm hungry, and I miss you, cold, damp one... my chosen mate...
When the moon is gone, I forget. The pain of my transformation awakes me, but always, without fail, I look around me, wondering where I am. My senses are dim, just as those of any human, and I miss their sharpness, the way they make me feel alive. I look at the closed space, and recognition shocks me, I'm in the tunnel to the Shrieking Shack.
Where are my friends? Gone, surely... gone with my memory of the night.
I drag my tired body upright, and settle for Madam Pomfrey to arrive. I have not to wait for long, she paralyses the Whomping Willow branches and comes holding a cloak. She has seen my battered nude body for six years now, I allow her to manoeuvre me as a little child.
I am so, so tired...
After some hours I know I'll be glad, knowing I have an entire month ahead only for me, not the werewolf. But now I feel strangely empty, as if I have lost something important, something cherished, and I can't remember what. Maybe it's true, I can't say.
Inside Hogwarts, Madam Pomfrey doesn't lead me to the Hospital Wing. This change in our routine startles me, and I look inquiringly at her, but she presses her lips in a fine line and avoids my shy, lost gaze. She steers me towards the Headmaster’s Office, not minding that I'm stark naked under the black cloak, not wearing even shoes.
It occurs to me that now, she treats me like a monster, the werewolf; now, when I am more human.
Up in the office, Albus Dumbledore asks how I am doing, and I want to spit that I'm naked and tired and cold, thanks. Instead, I smile, shyly.
"Fine, Headmaster."
My voice is soft, and Dumbledore watches me with his clear blue eyes as if reading my soul. He asks, and I remember in my head the previous night, our laughs, the hot dinner, my own quick glance to Severus Snape. I startle, why did I think of that? A telltale blush spreads in my cheeks, how I hate myself in moments like this! I have the right to look at anybody I wish, don't I?
If I want to watch Severus Snape, I can. I don't do wrong, I don't do pranks to him, I don't... avoid him getting into them, either. Damn myself.
I don't touch him, I don't do anything. Never I do anything about him.
By the time the Headmaster has finished his report of the night, I've gone numb. It seems that Sirius *did* something about him, at the end.
The words fly in my head with an insistent buzz: prank, accident, repentant, werewolf. Fine, Snape is fine. Sleeping in the Hospital Wing, thanks to a potion. He has agreed to keep silent, and say nothing.
Nothing about me.
I had only wished to spend a night with Severus Snape. Why or how, I had not cared at the moment; my only yearning to draw my fingers over the Slytherin's skin, to listen to his breath and eat his sighs, to watch him under the cover of the dark. The dark would make Snape beautiful, I knew. The dark would mould his oily hair in a gleaming veil and transform his sallow parlour into alabaster. The dark would deepen his onyx eyes until they were bottomless, until I could only let myself to be sucked into them, defenseless...
In the dawn, he has lost his magic. Alone and fragile in the white bed, the sun treats him badly. He looks like a little, ragged bird, and I watch him from far, seated in my own bed, the black cloak still around my shoulders. I listen to Madam Pomfrey opening and closing her cabinets, and muffled voices carried away on the air. A sight odour of disinfectant catches in my nose, and there are soft linens under my fingers. I'm thirsty.
So poor, my senses are now. I can't read him, the werewolf a little, ragged presence in the deepest of my soul.
But when Snape wakes up, I know that the werewolf will be the only being he will see in me.
And I can only smile, slyly, brokenly.
[...]
Nature is a language - can't you read ?
Nature is a language - can't you read ?
SO ... ASK ME, ASK ME, ASK ME
ASK ME, ASK ME, ASK ME
Because if it's not Love
Then it's the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb
That will bring us together
If it's not Love
Then it's the Bomb
Then it's the Bomb
That will bring us together
SO ... ASK ME, ASK ME, ASK ME
ASK ME, ASK ME, ASK ME
Oh, la ...
(If you liked this fic, vote for me HERE!!! there is a poll at the end of the post... Thank you! :D)
So... read and enjoy!
TITLE: Careful about what you wish for
AUTHOR: noe
RATING: PG-13
PAIRING: RL/SS. Remus' POV
GENRE: Drama
BETA: remipunx. You know, I'm sorry about giving you this beta-work when life was tough on you. I appreciated it the more by that.
NOTES: Made for Remipunx Second Songfic Challenge. This month's song is Ask, by the Smiths.
Shyness is nice, and
Shyness can stop you
From doing all the things in life
You'd like to
[...]
I remember the night with startling clarity, as if in the event of my death, all my senses had held onto life tightly, sharpening desperately. My eyes wandered on the tree canopy, the darkness enfolded there, like a tomb. The cold air chilled my clammy skin, and one of my hands grasped the soil, as if wanting to take root here. The beast grunted over my shoulder, whined and whispered in my ear; and I heard it, knowing it would be the last song of my life.
But I was wrong.
Now I smile, shyly, lowering my eyes. The Headmaster Dumbledore smiles me back, as he usually does, and I can feel the brush of his mind inside my skull. That is me, the werewolf that doesn't like to be tricked, and he, myself, is an old creature, full of knowledge that by no means a sixteen years old wizard should be able to... sense.
But the Headmaster is ahead now, going to the Great Hall, and my placid countenance has not changed a bit. I've gotten used to being like that, after these six years in Hogwarts.
Shy, nice Remus Lupin.
Ahead of me I smell Sirius's citricacid odour, and it's so powerful that my nose wrinkles on its own. At his side, Peter's sweet-flower-rotting smell mingles with the crisp and salty marine air that I've come to associate with James. The Great Hall at dinner is an explosion of sensations this time in the month. But time has trained me, and I can easily discard everything to a low hum in the back of my mind. Sirius and Peter had been plotting again, I can see it in the way a dark blue mist is hanging around them. James is looking to Lily, a red light falling from his nostrils, his ears, his mouth like thick mud. Sincere desire, I suppose.
I look on my own, my enhanced senses trailing towards the Slytherin table. Severus Snape is there, he who smells of potion ingredients and damp soil. I smile.
Peter looks at the Slytherin table, too; a quick glance that makes him laugh harder.
Stupid rat.
I let you; the werewolf lets you plot along with Sirius. Tonight is the full moon, and I'm hungry, but still you, my friends, will plot around me, holding me in line, playing with me so I can't escape. You in your animagus form will be my cage, subtler than the Shrieking Shack, but a cage, still.
I also know that, when the moon wanes and disappears, I'll feel grateful to you... but now, with my mistress waiting for the dusk to finish its scene, I hate you with a passion that frightens me. It's the werewolf, I know it's him, and still...
"Remus, lighten up a bit!"
Sirius burrows his way around my shoulders, a mischievously smile in his handsome face. To him, tonight is a game. I curve my lips barely, a shy look in my eyes covering the painful hate that now rages inside me.
"Yeah", I answer. It seems enough for him. Then James talks about the transfigurations essay for tomorrow, and time slips away until only a dozen students remain at the Gryffindor table. I risk a glance to the Slytherin table, but Snape is gone.
The upward way to our dorms is a happy event, all giggles and smiles and easy chat. The dark blue mist clings around Sirius like a cloak now; I can't avoid looking at him, wondering what the hell his next prank will be. I never doubt about his victim's identity, but that is fine to me. I get to see him, smell him more often that way. Snape's fear feels like a chilly rain over my head, and his anger tastes so, so cold... Every time that they, my dear friends, play with him, guilt stabs me, because I'm a prefect, and I should stop them... But I'm so thirsty half the time, so hot, so in need of sensing his cold dampness... I should feel ashamed, but the werewolf, myself, grovels and smiles, contented.
About twenty minutes later, I'm on my way down, along Madam Pomfrey. I walk beside her like a docile pup, and her eyes are soft, as if she would not know what kind of monster she is petting. But I know my eyes are soft, too; shy and reserved, and so nobody suspects.
We cross the grounds quickly, and soon I'm under the Whomping Willow, trailing the long tunnel to the Shrieking Shack. The damp earth is alive with little insects, and my skin crawls, but I go ahead. I hate this place, this dark, claustrophobic hole that guides me to my 'security'. The hate, the hunger is railing inside me, and so I speed up, a little fear urging me on, from my human, weak self.
I push myself out the trapdoor, and I'm on the dirty floor. I feel disquiet, more so that usual. Something is going to happen, and myself, the werewolf, whispers "stay here, just here, just close to the trapdoor".
I smile, a shy look that nobody can see. Feral me, I think, and laugh hoarsely. I cuddle on the floor, and spend my time feeling the moon, who is appearing slowly, full and yellow and powerful, trailing her cold damp fingers over my heated skin.
Then I hear it.
Him.
His smell.
Severus Snape.
Me, the werewolf, is taking control. Pain ripples through my limbs, and my stomach flutters.
Hunger, hunger...
Half formed, I growl, my hands not paws yet, so I can open the trap door and jump towards him, to him.
I desire his coldness... the clammy feel that always clings to his skin. Now that the fire overtakes me, I'm changing into a beast that hungers for him, for his blood...
He is shrieking, and he is running away, and now I sense... salt marine air, more human blood that calls me as surely as veelas do. Seduce me, I howl to the dark, while my bones reform and mend, my fur grows and my teeth ache.
I lay rolling over the dirty floor until I recover my old body, and it's so easy, so natural, to watch and smell and hear the world this way now that I'm myself, a werewolf.
How can I survive the long nights being a simply human, now that my body is supple and precise, and I feel the strength of my limbs? Life herself is humming its song into my veins, I feel the overwhelming need to run, to hunt, to eat.
They, humans, are not so far ahead. I run, fast like wind and my freedom exhilarates me. Salt marine air will be tasty, young and healthy and so, so good for me, when I rip his throat and squelch my thirst on his blood.
And the cold, damp one... I could eat him too, but... Life is singing. Expand your existence, bite and reproduce, she commands, as inexorable as the moon herself.
So, that I'll do.
Be like me, cold, damp one, run at my side under the stars... The stars that I can see now, in a hole just at the end of the tunnel... The night, the sky, the forest... is calling me... I need to go out... out and onto them, my prey!
When the pain explodes on my flank, my howl reverberates in the tunnel. The tree... the tree which will fight me, I always forget... when the moon is gone, I forget...
So I howl my frustration, my pain, my stolen freedom.
I cry all the night, curled over myself, as a little cub. I'm hungry, and I miss you, cold, damp one... my chosen mate...
When the moon is gone, I forget. The pain of my transformation awakes me, but always, without fail, I look around me, wondering where I am. My senses are dim, just as those of any human, and I miss their sharpness, the way they make me feel alive. I look at the closed space, and recognition shocks me, I'm in the tunnel to the Shrieking Shack.
Where are my friends? Gone, surely... gone with my memory of the night.
I drag my tired body upright, and settle for Madam Pomfrey to arrive. I have not to wait for long, she paralyses the Whomping Willow branches and comes holding a cloak. She has seen my battered nude body for six years now, I allow her to manoeuvre me as a little child.
I am so, so tired...
After some hours I know I'll be glad, knowing I have an entire month ahead only for me, not the werewolf. But now I feel strangely empty, as if I have lost something important, something cherished, and I can't remember what. Maybe it's true, I can't say.
Inside Hogwarts, Madam Pomfrey doesn't lead me to the Hospital Wing. This change in our routine startles me, and I look inquiringly at her, but she presses her lips in a fine line and avoids my shy, lost gaze. She steers me towards the Headmaster’s Office, not minding that I'm stark naked under the black cloak, not wearing even shoes.
It occurs to me that now, she treats me like a monster, the werewolf; now, when I am more human.
Up in the office, Albus Dumbledore asks how I am doing, and I want to spit that I'm naked and tired and cold, thanks. Instead, I smile, shyly.
"Fine, Headmaster."
My voice is soft, and Dumbledore watches me with his clear blue eyes as if reading my soul. He asks, and I remember in my head the previous night, our laughs, the hot dinner, my own quick glance to Severus Snape. I startle, why did I think of that? A telltale blush spreads in my cheeks, how I hate myself in moments like this! I have the right to look at anybody I wish, don't I?
If I want to watch Severus Snape, I can. I don't do wrong, I don't do pranks to him, I don't... avoid him getting into them, either. Damn myself.
I don't touch him, I don't do anything. Never I do anything about him.
By the time the Headmaster has finished his report of the night, I've gone numb. It seems that Sirius *did* something about him, at the end.
The words fly in my head with an insistent buzz: prank, accident, repentant, werewolf. Fine, Snape is fine. Sleeping in the Hospital Wing, thanks to a potion. He has agreed to keep silent, and say nothing.
Nothing about me.
I had only wished to spend a night with Severus Snape. Why or how, I had not cared at the moment; my only yearning to draw my fingers over the Slytherin's skin, to listen to his breath and eat his sighs, to watch him under the cover of the dark. The dark would make Snape beautiful, I knew. The dark would mould his oily hair in a gleaming veil and transform his sallow parlour into alabaster. The dark would deepen his onyx eyes until they were bottomless, until I could only let myself to be sucked into them, defenseless...
In the dawn, he has lost his magic. Alone and fragile in the white bed, the sun treats him badly. He looks like a little, ragged bird, and I watch him from far, seated in my own bed, the black cloak still around my shoulders. I listen to Madam Pomfrey opening and closing her cabinets, and muffled voices carried away on the air. A sight odour of disinfectant catches in my nose, and there are soft linens under my fingers. I'm thirsty.
So poor, my senses are now. I can't read him, the werewolf a little, ragged presence in the deepest of my soul.
But when Snape wakes up, I know that the werewolf will be the only being he will see in me.
And I can only smile, slyly, brokenly.
[...]
Nature is a language - can't you read ?
Nature is a language - can't you read ?
SO ... ASK ME, ASK ME, ASK ME
ASK ME, ASK ME, ASK ME
Because if it's not Love
Then it's the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb
That will bring us together
If it's not Love
Then it's the Bomb
Then it's the Bomb
That will bring us together
SO ... ASK ME, ASK ME, ASK ME
ASK ME, ASK ME, ASK ME
Oh, la ...
(If you liked this fic, vote for me HERE!!! there is a poll at the end of the post... Thank you! :D)