FIC: Reasons for Defying Reason (now complete)
Title: Reasons for Defying Reason
Author: bronze_ribbons
Pairings: Snape/Lupin; ref. to past Lupin/Tonks & Lupin/Black
Rating: PG-13
Words: 3800 4100
Warnings: infidelity and ref. to character deaths
A/N - 1: Part One was originally posted to lupin_snape in response to the community's "Remus Lupin's Birthday" challenge; I've reposted it below with assorted edits. I finished Part Two this morning, and the marvelous aunty_marion beta'd it. What infelicities remain are all my fault, alas.
A/N - 2: catrinella's birthday is coming up, and Part Two was originally meant to be her present (hence its specific date, and the presence of Sinistra and Giulio Cesare), but it ended up not very birthday-ey, so it's an Unbirthday Present instead.
A/N - 3: revised 8/30 after jedirita confirmed a certain plot detail could use clarification. Thanks again to aunty_marion for superb spot-beta-ing.
Inspiration: Vienna Teng’s Eric’s Song, for which I thank nsmom and gramarye1971.
10 March 2000
A man / that has the worst of all bad names…
Remus Lupin sat on an ancient sofa in the Lovegoods’ attic, a battered copy of W. B. Yeats’s The Winding Stair in his lap. As the March wind pounded against the panes of the lone window, wheezing through the gaps in its caulking, Remus stared at the words on the page, suppressing a sudden urge to howl:
The lot of love is chosen. I learnt that much
Struggling for an image on the track
Of the whirling Zodiac…
The whirl of the Blacks -- he had tried to be whom Sirius needed. He had tried to give Tonks some semblance of what she’d demanded. Even Narcissa had flirted with him once or twice, back when she had been a shy and subtly mischievous schoolgirl. Truth be told, he had never shed the sense of being the butt of some giant cosmic joke: there was no logical explanation for the magnetism he apparently exuded around the scions and consorts of that house. Nothing good had come from his presence in their lives: he had not managed to save any of them from themselves. In the third-to-last official skirmish of the Second War, Tonks had fallen through the veil -- but at least she had managed to take Bellatrix with her.
He supposed that could technically count as something good -- were one to take credit for driving one’s lover to suicidal recklessness. He shook his head. There were plenty of sins to his name, both of commission and omission, but he had in no wise encouraged Tonks’s dogged pursuit of him. After the scene in the hospital, he’d even forced himself to be blunt with her, to the point of crudeness: that he had no love to spare for her. That it would only be about sex. That he wouldn’t be faithful. That he wouldn’t give a damn how much that might humiliate her. That romantic declarations would continue to be wasted on him. That there were parts of his life he would never let her in. That -- as he’d argued all along -- she deserved someone young and whole and equally starry-eyed about capital-L-O-V-E.
She’d thought he was bluffing. She’d insisted she could live with his terms. He’d been too heartsick and angry to remain noble, and the sex during the first four months of their affair had been spectacular. There had even been moments he’d half-believed she’d truly understood his warnings -- that she’d genuinely cut her losses, and was merely enjoying what she could get from him before moving on.
Oh, how wrong he’d been.
She’d been right about one thing: it wasn’t in his nature to enjoy humiliating others. So he had complied with her desire to hold hands in public; he had not resisted her kisses in the foyer of 12 Grimmauld Place; he’d refrained from openly squelching Molly Weasley’s cheery hints that, at his age, he ought to hurry toward the altar sooner rather than later. But he hadn’t been lying about not loving her. He hadn’t been joking about his utter lack of interest in romance or fidelity, and he had easily dodged the books and blocked the curses she’d hurled at him whenever he'd come home rumpled and marked from his rendezvous with other men. The fact he had treated such attacks as casual, impromptu duels hadn’t helped: she had wanted so badly to be special to him -- to be the one woman to be different -- and he had been incapable of pretending she mattered that much.
Remus sighed and stretched out on the couch, mentally blessing the Lovegoods as he did so. Their house and property required far more maintenance than Luna’s father had ever been capable or willing to devote to it; in providing only room and board to Lupin, he clearly believed he was getting the better part of the deal. “Room,” however, was run of the entire house, and Lupin had little desire to go out: unlike the surviving members of the Order, the tomes and files populating the house seldom gazed at him with suspicion or pity. Unlike the rest of Wizarding society, Luna’s father considered him neither exotic nor especially threatening, given the other creatures the Quibbler sought to immortalise.
Luna stopped by once a week, bringing groceries, whisky, and conversation about things invisible to see. There was something to be said, Lupin reflected, for growing up accustomed to strange sights: although he still inwardly cringed at her dottier assertions, he also relished his glimpses of the gargantuan leaps of faith that allowed her to believe the unlikely and cherish the impure. There was no proof that Snorkacks and Humdingers didn’t exist; there was no proof that Severus Snape was dead.
Before I had marked him on his northern way…
There was also no proof that Severus was still alive. There had been no wallowing in dreams or exchanging of vows during the hours they stole from their other responsibilities. There had been no expectations of fidelity; they had not spoken a single word of love or romance or even friendship. They had merely touched and kissed and fucked, when they could, where they could, and it had not been the best sex ever. There was no reason for Severus to "save" himself for Remus in any sense of the word -- he was a dead man if he ever returned to Britain, at least as himself, and Dumbledore had had allies throughout the rest of the world. If Severus had survived the war, there was no reason to believe he would outrace the hordes of bounty-hunters and would-be executioners eager to spill his blood. There was no reason to believe Severus would not seize whatever offered itself to him whenever it appeared; there was no reason to assume Severus wasn’t cohabiting cosily with someone else entirely. Perhaps he’d found his soulmate amongst the Dark Lord’s minions. Perhaps he’d cozened some Muggle into a no-strings affair. Perhaps he simply patronised brothels.
And yet, Remus could not shake the sense that his bearings were now somehow permanently moored to Severus's: that a zodiac had locked into its rightful place the day he’d resigned from Hogwarts. Severus had not hesitated to plunge into his mind when he’d stopped by the Potions dungeon, mining every nook within reach for evidence of his failings and crimes. There had been ample pickings -- the First War had not been a clean war, and his spine had failed him numerous times since -- and he’d honestly expected Severus to deploy his most damaging discoveries at the earliest opportunity.
He hadn’t much cared about what might happen to him. Severus, however, had chosen to keep his own counsel. Instead, Severus had surreptitiously stared at him more and more often during the years that followed; to Remus’s bemusement, it began to feel as though Severus was deliberately seeding his mind with fragments of trivia.
A combination of cogitation and adrenalin had long since unfurled those fragments into choice snippets of Dark magic; they’d provided just enough of a boost to his own considerable repertoire to help him escape from several dire situations. There had been no reason for Severus to devise such assistance, or to pursue more conventional methods of sharing his knowledge: the afternoon they'd first kissed, they had gone into the library solely to consult a defence manual. That an accidental touch had ignited so much --
Lupin shut his eyes. It was pointless reliving that afternoon or any of the others, but there was a brightness to them that had been wholly absent from his time with Tonks or his current comfortable isolation. Perhaps I’ll indulge in forty-one memories instead of forty-one candles, he thought. And then I’ll still be forty-one and have nothing to show for it--
The click of Luna’s shoes against the rungs of ladder to the attic broke into his thoughts. He hastily sat back up and forced himself to smile in welcome.
“No need, Remus,” she said matter-of-factly. “I just thought you should have this right away; I didn’t recognize the owl.”
She held out her hand. On her palm lay a miniaturised telescope.
“Thank you.” Remus cautiously plucked it out of her hand and walked over to the window, setting the tiny instrument on the floor in front of it.
Luna smiled at him as he walked back to her. He braced himself for a round of daffy conversation, but she simply reached for his hand and firmly squeezed it. Then she released him and Apparated out.
Remus gazed at the spot where she had stood, and then continued on to the wall opposite the window. He flattened himself as best he could against the boxes lining it before murmuring the spell to restore the telescope to full size.
When nothing exploded or hissed or leaked, he felt somewhat silly, but there had been too many other suspect packages over the years for him to eschew such basic precautions. This, however, was a sleek, handsome contraption, in a burnished metallic green. Gliding an appreciative fingertip over one of the legs of the mount, he pondered who would have sent him such a gift.
Then he froze. His fingertip had detected a peculiar groove -- a long, deep, irregularly-etched scratch inside the leg. A scratch that happened to correspond in its exact shape and relative location to a scar he’d often traced on Severus’s body.
Remus snatched his hand away from the instrument. For a long, agonised moment, his mind raced through all of the ways one might incorporate a telescope into a vicious prank.
Finite incantatem, he whispered. The telescope remained stationary. The scar did not vanish from the leg.
Heart pounding, Remus crouched down so that his face was next to the eyepiece. He would position the lens properly in just a minute. Just as soon as the blurriness in his eyes cleared itself out. Just as soon as his hands stopped trembling.
I take / that stillness for a theme / where his heart my heart did seem…
11 September 2000
Six months and a day after receiving the telescope, Remus Lupin carefully folded it into the narrow, velvet-lined travelling case that Luna had devised for it. He then hoisted it over his shoulder and Apparated to the outskirts of Hogwarts, compulsively stroking the case from head to toe the instant they'd arrived: even though he hadn't splinched himself or any side-along passengers in years, he had never quite shaken the fear of inadvertently leaving something vital behind -- ironically, a fear that had intensified since the end of the War rather than going away. He felt constantly nagged by the sensation that he was once more committing some crime of omission or neglect, even though he had made a point of adhering to his unspoken promise to Tonks: he hadn't loved her, but he would honour her memory in the ways he was able, such as assisting her parents with their plans to establish both Wizarding and Muggle scholarships in her name.
Even if their relationship had been conventional, he would not have wanted to play the part of grieving almost-fiancé, and the stigma of being a werewolf would have cast him as a public relations liability in any case. Devoting an evening each week to her parents, however, cost him merely time and pride. He knew Tonks's closest friends disapproved of the gesture -- she hadn't been close to her family, and his current willingness to bestow attention on them seemed both peculiar and insincere given his refusal to reciprocate her feelings back when she was alive. Although he'd participated in the pseudo-romantic façade they'd presented to the world at large, not everyone had been duped. In particular, Ginny and Hermione had served as Tonks's confidantes after her duels with Remus, and he didn't care for the disapproval they continued to radiate whenever they encountered him, in spite of realising he was also well past the age where their approval or lack thereof should have mattered to him at all.
It was a sort of penance, therefore, to help Tonks's parents with their paperwork, and also with other chores as well. He knew his company mattered to them more than his expertise: he was a living tie to their dead daughter. Neither he nor they found it possible to speak of what could have been, which meant they certainly believed better of him than he deserved; seen in that light, he could understand Ginny and Hermione's implicit condemnation -- to a degree, he was indeed perpetrating a lie.
That acknowledged, it wasn't as though his dead girlfriend's allies themselves felt any obligation to Ted and Andromeda Tonks. No matter how impure his reasons, his presence at least provided a steady dose of solace: each visit was proof that someone still remembered their daughter, and that someone remembered they'd had a daughter. Remus occasionally allowed himself a few minutes of bitterness -- that he would never again be valued or loved for his own sake, but only as the remnant of someone else's life -- be it Nymphadora Tonks or Sirius Black or James Potter -- or for his utility as, say, a spy, a tutor, an informer, or a handyman.
He could never regard his yearnings so seriously for long, however -- it was ridiculous to crave more, given the outrageous odds he'd already outlasted. He'd outlived many of the werewolves and wizards of his generation, and he still had friends: young Luna continued to dispense liberal quantities of whisky and whimsy in her weekly visits to his attic, and sometimes Neville Longbottom or Kingsley Shacklebolt sought him out for nothing more than a round of beer and darts (Neville's physical coordination had improved considerably since his early days at Hogwarts; he had apparently amused himself the previous summer pitching unwanted courgettes at a greasy-wigged scarecrow). And, if the rest of the Wizarding world saw him as someone to be shunned, mistrusted, or used, was that in fact any worse than how he regarded many of them? It was not happenstance that it had taken him this long to seek out Giovanna Sinistra.
As he approached the Astronomy professor's rooms, he reflected on how little he knew about her after all these years. They had attended Hogwarts at the same time, but their paths had seldom crossed, and there had been little reason for them to interact during his tenure as the DADA instructor. She had seemed close to Severus -- if nothing else, she clearly shared his contempt both for Gryffindors and for the Headmaster's special treatment of Harry -- and Remus had never felt welcome in her presence.
It had been six months and a day, however, since he'd first touched the telescope he was currently carrying to her. He'd examined every millimetre of the long, jagged scar on one of its legs -- one that corresponded to an identical, strikingly ugly groove on Snape's left calf. He'd cast upon it every potentially relevant spell in his repertoire, and he'd ransacked his own mind for any remaining clues from Snape's rummagings-about. He'd lugged it to various meadows and rooftops and riversides, systematically training its lens across the sky in hopes of glimpsing whichever message or sign it had been meant to make visible to him. In all of their excursions, however, the telescope had remained unnervingly mute and ordinary, and Remus was convinced that its silence was unnatural, no matter how irrational such a belief would be with any other optical instrument.
The door to Sinistra's sitting-room was open, and he could hear the notes of a baroque aria cascading from her wireless: L'angue offeso mai riposa, se il veleno pria non spande, dentro il sangue all'offenso…
He lingered at the threshold, reluctant to interrupt. However, she looked up as his shadow grazed the edge of the chart in front of her. After sparing him a cool, appraising glance, she leaned back on her sofa, savouring the closing cadences of the aria before waving her wand to switch off the broadcast.
"Do you know that song?" she said, without preamble.
God damn, are you and Severus alike, Remus mentally fired back. Aloud, he merely admitted, "No. Enlighten me?"
"It says -- roughly -- ‘A wounded serpent will never rest until it poisons the person who caused the wound. Until I extract the poisoned heart, my soul will fail to be noble or great.'"
Remus considered the words, and then met Sinistra's glare head-on. "Nobility be damned. I prefer my heart intact."
"Too late for that," she sneered. "I hear you're still the Blacks' pet beast."
Stung, Remus shot back, "Since when has what you hear about anything have any relevance? I thought your job was to see things."
Sinistra rolled her eyes. "If you'd been any good at Potions or Astronomy, you'd know that any proper practice of science requires the full command of all of one's senses."
"Actually, I was good at Potions. And I managed an 'E' in Astronomy, too, even though I missed every full moon." Remus paused. "I just wasn't as good as you. Or Severus." He finally eased the telescope case off his shoulder, bringing it in front of him into Sinistra's view.
The professor caught her breath. She instinctively began to reach toward his prize, but then jammed her fists into the skirts of her robe instead, visibly biting back her next comment.
Remus took pity on her, quickly undoing the case's fastenings and setting the instrument on its mount. Sinistra stared at the scar on the metal, her mouth tightening; once Remus was finished, he stepped back, leaving Sinistra plenty of room to prowl around the telescope, studying it from multiple angles.
Without touching the actual surface of the aluminium, Sinistra lightly traced around its edges and puckers with her forefinger. Not looking up, she said, "What have you tried so far?"
Remus scowled. "You're willing to listen to me recite? For three and a half days straight?"
"Not really," Sinistra said. He was mystified by the sudden glimmer of humour in her eyes. She added, "I like to hope imbeciles know more than I think they do. Unlike our companion here."
Remus was torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to scream. Sinistra had the air of someone who believed the telescope was sentient, and he could imagine Severus's possible ripostes once he was restored to a form in which he could respond. At the same time, her instant acceptance of the telescope as a manifestation of Severus had flooded him with a hope so wild and raw he could barely speak. (Do Tonks's parents feel some of this when I visit them? That, when I'm physically there, she could walk into the room any minute, even though they know she won't?)
His voice thick, he said, "I'm here to find out what I haven't tried. Your assumptions can't kill me."
Her lips curved even as the humour fled her eyes. "You Gryffindors. What you assume won't kill you could fill a score of tombs. Why don't I see your blood on this?"
His jaw dropped. "Are you out of your mind? How have you forgotten I'm infected?"
Sinistra retorted, "Se non svelle l'empio cor." She let her hand too-casually brush one of the telescope's levers; Remus repressed an instinctive shudder. "Which do you think he would prefer, Lupin? To be infected with your curse -- but his heart beating once more -- or to remain like this, frozen into immortality?" Her smile was brittle as she continued, "There are Slytherins who would sell their souls for this, you know. Some Ravenclaws, too. Think of it -- think of forever possessing the power to magnify entire galaxies --"
Remus broke in. "Think of forever being a pawn -- forever being subject to anyone with the money or means to acquire you. Think of forever being used and abused by, say, 'dunderheads' -- people unable to appreciate your abilities --"
"Why, Lupin. Do you imagine he was sent to you like this as a gift, or as a revenge?"
Remus gritted his teeth. "Do you think I didn't try to find out? What does it matter? As long as I care for him properly, now that he's mine --"
Sinistra's brows arched up. "Yours? With your history, that's quite a claim -- "
And you even taunt like him, Remus mentally snarled. Forcing himself to maintain a civilised tone, he said, "Would you rather we waste time revisiting what can't be reversed?"
"Can't? Or is it won't? What would it take, Lupin, for you to bleed for him? Or will you cherish him more like this -- forever at the mercy of your manipulations --"
Remus lunged forward, dropping onto his knees next to her. "Basta," he hissed. He slashed his wand across his left forearm and pressed the resulting surge of blood against the telescope's scar. The metal instantly formed a seal around the gash in his flesh -- a sensation not unlike Severus's thin lips clamping down around older scars during their earlier trysts. It tugged on his skin, and he sensed the blood being sucked from his veins into the body of the instrument (All those rumours about Snape the vampire…). Sinistra's hands were on his shoulders, her voice chanting spells for warmth and hydration even as his body verged on surrendering to unconsciousness.
He reeled backwards into her arms just as the telescope flared into a bright green blaze. For a terrifying instant, all Remus could think was that Severus had somehow turned himself into an embodiment of an Avada Kedavra, and that both he and Sinistra were now going to die for their presumption.
Then the blaze subsided into the form of a naked man -- one without a mark on either of his forearms, but with the familiar deep scar on his calf. Severus collapsed on top of Sinistra and Remus, his mouth seeking the latter's even before their arms succeeded in wrapping about each other.
Sinistra gave them a gentle shove so that her wand arm was clear. Still supporting Remus, she floated a large, dark blue afghan toward them and dropped it over their heads, smirking at the duet of muffled invective that erupted. Emerging from its folds, Severus yanked the fabric around his body and then aimed his most baleful glare at her.
"Placing hope in imbeciles is a waste of precious time," he snarled.
"A good thing, then, that I squander my efforts on you both."
Remus's eyes widened, but he simply said, "Giovanna. Grazie."
She made a dismissive gesture and stood up. "It's time I checked on my tower. At least you're one couple I won't catch up there in flagrante tonight."
Severus reached up and seized her sleeve as she strode by. "What?" she said. Her voice was impatient but her eyes were suspiciously bright.
Severus hauled himself to his feet, and then pulled Remus up. Without letting go of the other man, he turned to Sinistra and pressed a chaste kiss to her lips.
"'Sinistra: the hand of the Serpent-Bearer.'" The words carried the inflection of a blessing.
Remus recognised the definition from the Astronomy textbook. "Also known as the Healer," he whispered.
Severus nodded. Sinistra did not smile, but she kissed him back, and then bestowed a salute on Remus as well before stalking out of the room.
Flustered, Remus turned to Severus. "Please tell me this is not a grand, grotesque conspiracy."
Severus pressed his palm against the fresh scar on Remus's forearm. "Do you think I actually would, were it indeed a prank?"
The last word triggered his memory of That Night their sixth year. He gazed down at the mark, his mind racing through their entire history of silence and pride and sorrow. Then he leaned into Severus, speaking against the other man's mouth.
"To owe Sinistra my life? To owe Sinistra you? I can't say I like her at all, even now. But I will live with that."
"I don't ask for more," Severus said.
"Because you know --" Remus's hands were unsteady as his fingers twined with Severus's.
"Yes. I do indeed know." Severus slanted his mouth across Remus's, engulfing the last word within their kiss.
Author: bronze_ribbons
Pairings: Snape/Lupin; ref. to past Lupin/Tonks & Lupin/Black
Rating: PG-13
Words: 3800 4100
Warnings: infidelity and ref. to character deaths
A/N - 1: Part One was originally posted to lupin_snape in response to the community's "Remus Lupin's Birthday" challenge; I've reposted it below with assorted edits. I finished Part Two this morning, and the marvelous aunty_marion beta'd it. What infelicities remain are all my fault, alas.
A/N - 2: catrinella's birthday is coming up, and Part Two was originally meant to be her present (hence its specific date, and the presence of Sinistra and Giulio Cesare), but it ended up not very birthday-ey, so it's an Unbirthday Present instead.
A/N - 3: revised 8/30 after jedirita confirmed a certain plot detail could use clarification. Thanks again to aunty_marion for superb spot-beta-ing.
Inspiration: Vienna Teng’s Eric’s Song, for which I thank nsmom and gramarye1971.
10 March 2000
A man / that has the worst of all bad names…
Remus Lupin sat on an ancient sofa in the Lovegoods’ attic, a battered copy of W. B. Yeats’s The Winding Stair in his lap. As the March wind pounded against the panes of the lone window, wheezing through the gaps in its caulking, Remus stared at the words on the page, suppressing a sudden urge to howl:
The lot of love is chosen. I learnt that much
Struggling for an image on the track
Of the whirling Zodiac…
The whirl of the Blacks -- he had tried to be whom Sirius needed. He had tried to give Tonks some semblance of what she’d demanded. Even Narcissa had flirted with him once or twice, back when she had been a shy and subtly mischievous schoolgirl. Truth be told, he had never shed the sense of being the butt of some giant cosmic joke: there was no logical explanation for the magnetism he apparently exuded around the scions and consorts of that house. Nothing good had come from his presence in their lives: he had not managed to save any of them from themselves. In the third-to-last official skirmish of the Second War, Tonks had fallen through the veil -- but at least she had managed to take Bellatrix with her.
He supposed that could technically count as something good -- were one to take credit for driving one’s lover to suicidal recklessness. He shook his head. There were plenty of sins to his name, both of commission and omission, but he had in no wise encouraged Tonks’s dogged pursuit of him. After the scene in the hospital, he’d even forced himself to be blunt with her, to the point of crudeness: that he had no love to spare for her. That it would only be about sex. That he wouldn’t be faithful. That he wouldn’t give a damn how much that might humiliate her. That romantic declarations would continue to be wasted on him. That there were parts of his life he would never let her in. That -- as he’d argued all along -- she deserved someone young and whole and equally starry-eyed about capital-L-O-V-E.
She’d thought he was bluffing. She’d insisted she could live with his terms. He’d been too heartsick and angry to remain noble, and the sex during the first four months of their affair had been spectacular. There had even been moments he’d half-believed she’d truly understood his warnings -- that she’d genuinely cut her losses, and was merely enjoying what she could get from him before moving on.
Oh, how wrong he’d been.
She’d been right about one thing: it wasn’t in his nature to enjoy humiliating others. So he had complied with her desire to hold hands in public; he had not resisted her kisses in the foyer of 12 Grimmauld Place; he’d refrained from openly squelching Molly Weasley’s cheery hints that, at his age, he ought to hurry toward the altar sooner rather than later. But he hadn’t been lying about not loving her. He hadn’t been joking about his utter lack of interest in romance or fidelity, and he had easily dodged the books and blocked the curses she’d hurled at him whenever he'd come home rumpled and marked from his rendezvous with other men. The fact he had treated such attacks as casual, impromptu duels hadn’t helped: she had wanted so badly to be special to him -- to be the one woman to be different -- and he had been incapable of pretending she mattered that much.
Remus sighed and stretched out on the couch, mentally blessing the Lovegoods as he did so. Their house and property required far more maintenance than Luna’s father had ever been capable or willing to devote to it; in providing only room and board to Lupin, he clearly believed he was getting the better part of the deal. “Room,” however, was run of the entire house, and Lupin had little desire to go out: unlike the surviving members of the Order, the tomes and files populating the house seldom gazed at him with suspicion or pity. Unlike the rest of Wizarding society, Luna’s father considered him neither exotic nor especially threatening, given the other creatures the Quibbler sought to immortalise.
Luna stopped by once a week, bringing groceries, whisky, and conversation about things invisible to see. There was something to be said, Lupin reflected, for growing up accustomed to strange sights: although he still inwardly cringed at her dottier assertions, he also relished his glimpses of the gargantuan leaps of faith that allowed her to believe the unlikely and cherish the impure. There was no proof that Snorkacks and Humdingers didn’t exist; there was no proof that Severus Snape was dead.
Before I had marked him on his northern way…
There was also no proof that Severus was still alive. There had been no wallowing in dreams or exchanging of vows during the hours they stole from their other responsibilities. There had been no expectations of fidelity; they had not spoken a single word of love or romance or even friendship. They had merely touched and kissed and fucked, when they could, where they could, and it had not been the best sex ever. There was no reason for Severus to "save" himself for Remus in any sense of the word -- he was a dead man if he ever returned to Britain, at least as himself, and Dumbledore had had allies throughout the rest of the world. If Severus had survived the war, there was no reason to believe he would outrace the hordes of bounty-hunters and would-be executioners eager to spill his blood. There was no reason to believe Severus would not seize whatever offered itself to him whenever it appeared; there was no reason to assume Severus wasn’t cohabiting cosily with someone else entirely. Perhaps he’d found his soulmate amongst the Dark Lord’s minions. Perhaps he’d cozened some Muggle into a no-strings affair. Perhaps he simply patronised brothels.
And yet, Remus could not shake the sense that his bearings were now somehow permanently moored to Severus's: that a zodiac had locked into its rightful place the day he’d resigned from Hogwarts. Severus had not hesitated to plunge into his mind when he’d stopped by the Potions dungeon, mining every nook within reach for evidence of his failings and crimes. There had been ample pickings -- the First War had not been a clean war, and his spine had failed him numerous times since -- and he’d honestly expected Severus to deploy his most damaging discoveries at the earliest opportunity.
He hadn’t much cared about what might happen to him. Severus, however, had chosen to keep his own counsel. Instead, Severus had surreptitiously stared at him more and more often during the years that followed; to Remus’s bemusement, it began to feel as though Severus was deliberately seeding his mind with fragments of trivia.
A combination of cogitation and adrenalin had long since unfurled those fragments into choice snippets of Dark magic; they’d provided just enough of a boost to his own considerable repertoire to help him escape from several dire situations. There had been no reason for Severus to devise such assistance, or to pursue more conventional methods of sharing his knowledge: the afternoon they'd first kissed, they had gone into the library solely to consult a defence manual. That an accidental touch had ignited so much --
Lupin shut his eyes. It was pointless reliving that afternoon or any of the others, but there was a brightness to them that had been wholly absent from his time with Tonks or his current comfortable isolation. Perhaps I’ll indulge in forty-one memories instead of forty-one candles, he thought. And then I’ll still be forty-one and have nothing to show for it--
The click of Luna’s shoes against the rungs of ladder to the attic broke into his thoughts. He hastily sat back up and forced himself to smile in welcome.
“No need, Remus,” she said matter-of-factly. “I just thought you should have this right away; I didn’t recognize the owl.”
She held out her hand. On her palm lay a miniaturised telescope.
“Thank you.” Remus cautiously plucked it out of her hand and walked over to the window, setting the tiny instrument on the floor in front of it.
Luna smiled at him as he walked back to her. He braced himself for a round of daffy conversation, but she simply reached for his hand and firmly squeezed it. Then she released him and Apparated out.
Remus gazed at the spot where she had stood, and then continued on to the wall opposite the window. He flattened himself as best he could against the boxes lining it before murmuring the spell to restore the telescope to full size.
When nothing exploded or hissed or leaked, he felt somewhat silly, but there had been too many other suspect packages over the years for him to eschew such basic precautions. This, however, was a sleek, handsome contraption, in a burnished metallic green. Gliding an appreciative fingertip over one of the legs of the mount, he pondered who would have sent him such a gift.
Then he froze. His fingertip had detected a peculiar groove -- a long, deep, irregularly-etched scratch inside the leg. A scratch that happened to correspond in its exact shape and relative location to a scar he’d often traced on Severus’s body.
Remus snatched his hand away from the instrument. For a long, agonised moment, his mind raced through all of the ways one might incorporate a telescope into a vicious prank.
Finite incantatem, he whispered. The telescope remained stationary. The scar did not vanish from the leg.
Heart pounding, Remus crouched down so that his face was next to the eyepiece. He would position the lens properly in just a minute. Just as soon as the blurriness in his eyes cleared itself out. Just as soon as his hands stopped trembling.
I take / that stillness for a theme / where his heart my heart did seem…
11 September 2000
Six months and a day after receiving the telescope, Remus Lupin carefully folded it into the narrow, velvet-lined travelling case that Luna had devised for it. He then hoisted it over his shoulder and Apparated to the outskirts of Hogwarts, compulsively stroking the case from head to toe the instant they'd arrived: even though he hadn't splinched himself or any side-along passengers in years, he had never quite shaken the fear of inadvertently leaving something vital behind -- ironically, a fear that had intensified since the end of the War rather than going away. He felt constantly nagged by the sensation that he was once more committing some crime of omission or neglect, even though he had made a point of adhering to his unspoken promise to Tonks: he hadn't loved her, but he would honour her memory in the ways he was able, such as assisting her parents with their plans to establish both Wizarding and Muggle scholarships in her name.
Even if their relationship had been conventional, he would not have wanted to play the part of grieving almost-fiancé, and the stigma of being a werewolf would have cast him as a public relations liability in any case. Devoting an evening each week to her parents, however, cost him merely time and pride. He knew Tonks's closest friends disapproved of the gesture -- she hadn't been close to her family, and his current willingness to bestow attention on them seemed both peculiar and insincere given his refusal to reciprocate her feelings back when she was alive. Although he'd participated in the pseudo-romantic façade they'd presented to the world at large, not everyone had been duped. In particular, Ginny and Hermione had served as Tonks's confidantes after her duels with Remus, and he didn't care for the disapproval they continued to radiate whenever they encountered him, in spite of realising he was also well past the age where their approval or lack thereof should have mattered to him at all.
It was a sort of penance, therefore, to help Tonks's parents with their paperwork, and also with other chores as well. He knew his company mattered to them more than his expertise: he was a living tie to their dead daughter. Neither he nor they found it possible to speak of what could have been, which meant they certainly believed better of him than he deserved; seen in that light, he could understand Ginny and Hermione's implicit condemnation -- to a degree, he was indeed perpetrating a lie.
That acknowledged, it wasn't as though his dead girlfriend's allies themselves felt any obligation to Ted and Andromeda Tonks. No matter how impure his reasons, his presence at least provided a steady dose of solace: each visit was proof that someone still remembered their daughter, and that someone remembered they'd had a daughter. Remus occasionally allowed himself a few minutes of bitterness -- that he would never again be valued or loved for his own sake, but only as the remnant of someone else's life -- be it Nymphadora Tonks or Sirius Black or James Potter -- or for his utility as, say, a spy, a tutor, an informer, or a handyman.
He could never regard his yearnings so seriously for long, however -- it was ridiculous to crave more, given the outrageous odds he'd already outlasted. He'd outlived many of the werewolves and wizards of his generation, and he still had friends: young Luna continued to dispense liberal quantities of whisky and whimsy in her weekly visits to his attic, and sometimes Neville Longbottom or Kingsley Shacklebolt sought him out for nothing more than a round of beer and darts (Neville's physical coordination had improved considerably since his early days at Hogwarts; he had apparently amused himself the previous summer pitching unwanted courgettes at a greasy-wigged scarecrow). And, if the rest of the Wizarding world saw him as someone to be shunned, mistrusted, or used, was that in fact any worse than how he regarded many of them? It was not happenstance that it had taken him this long to seek out Giovanna Sinistra.
As he approached the Astronomy professor's rooms, he reflected on how little he knew about her after all these years. They had attended Hogwarts at the same time, but their paths had seldom crossed, and there had been little reason for them to interact during his tenure as the DADA instructor. She had seemed close to Severus -- if nothing else, she clearly shared his contempt both for Gryffindors and for the Headmaster's special treatment of Harry -- and Remus had never felt welcome in her presence.
It had been six months and a day, however, since he'd first touched the telescope he was currently carrying to her. He'd examined every millimetre of the long, jagged scar on one of its legs -- one that corresponded to an identical, strikingly ugly groove on Snape's left calf. He'd cast upon it every potentially relevant spell in his repertoire, and he'd ransacked his own mind for any remaining clues from Snape's rummagings-about. He'd lugged it to various meadows and rooftops and riversides, systematically training its lens across the sky in hopes of glimpsing whichever message or sign it had been meant to make visible to him. In all of their excursions, however, the telescope had remained unnervingly mute and ordinary, and Remus was convinced that its silence was unnatural, no matter how irrational such a belief would be with any other optical instrument.
The door to Sinistra's sitting-room was open, and he could hear the notes of a baroque aria cascading from her wireless: L'angue offeso mai riposa, se il veleno pria non spande, dentro il sangue all'offenso…
He lingered at the threshold, reluctant to interrupt. However, she looked up as his shadow grazed the edge of the chart in front of her. After sparing him a cool, appraising glance, she leaned back on her sofa, savouring the closing cadences of the aria before waving her wand to switch off the broadcast.
"Do you know that song?" she said, without preamble.
God damn, are you and Severus alike, Remus mentally fired back. Aloud, he merely admitted, "No. Enlighten me?"
"It says -- roughly -- ‘A wounded serpent will never rest until it poisons the person who caused the wound. Until I extract the poisoned heart, my soul will fail to be noble or great.'"
Remus considered the words, and then met Sinistra's glare head-on. "Nobility be damned. I prefer my heart intact."
"Too late for that," she sneered. "I hear you're still the Blacks' pet beast."
Stung, Remus shot back, "Since when has what you hear about anything have any relevance? I thought your job was to see things."
Sinistra rolled her eyes. "If you'd been any good at Potions or Astronomy, you'd know that any proper practice of science requires the full command of all of one's senses."
"Actually, I was good at Potions. And I managed an 'E' in Astronomy, too, even though I missed every full moon." Remus paused. "I just wasn't as good as you. Or Severus." He finally eased the telescope case off his shoulder, bringing it in front of him into Sinistra's view.
The professor caught her breath. She instinctively began to reach toward his prize, but then jammed her fists into the skirts of her robe instead, visibly biting back her next comment.
Remus took pity on her, quickly undoing the case's fastenings and setting the instrument on its mount. Sinistra stared at the scar on the metal, her mouth tightening; once Remus was finished, he stepped back, leaving Sinistra plenty of room to prowl around the telescope, studying it from multiple angles.
Without touching the actual surface of the aluminium, Sinistra lightly traced around its edges and puckers with her forefinger. Not looking up, she said, "What have you tried so far?"
Remus scowled. "You're willing to listen to me recite? For three and a half days straight?"
"Not really," Sinistra said. He was mystified by the sudden glimmer of humour in her eyes. She added, "I like to hope imbeciles know more than I think they do. Unlike our companion here."
Remus was torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to scream. Sinistra had the air of someone who believed the telescope was sentient, and he could imagine Severus's possible ripostes once he was restored to a form in which he could respond. At the same time, her instant acceptance of the telescope as a manifestation of Severus had flooded him with a hope so wild and raw he could barely speak. (Do Tonks's parents feel some of this when I visit them? That, when I'm physically there, she could walk into the room any minute, even though they know she won't?)
His voice thick, he said, "I'm here to find out what I haven't tried. Your assumptions can't kill me."
Her lips curved even as the humour fled her eyes. "You Gryffindors. What you assume won't kill you could fill a score of tombs. Why don't I see your blood on this?"
His jaw dropped. "Are you out of your mind? How have you forgotten I'm infected?"
Sinistra retorted, "Se non svelle l'empio cor." She let her hand too-casually brush one of the telescope's levers; Remus repressed an instinctive shudder. "Which do you think he would prefer, Lupin? To be infected with your curse -- but his heart beating once more -- or to remain like this, frozen into immortality?" Her smile was brittle as she continued, "There are Slytherins who would sell their souls for this, you know. Some Ravenclaws, too. Think of it -- think of forever possessing the power to magnify entire galaxies --"
Remus broke in. "Think of forever being a pawn -- forever being subject to anyone with the money or means to acquire you. Think of forever being used and abused by, say, 'dunderheads' -- people unable to appreciate your abilities --"
"Why, Lupin. Do you imagine he was sent to you like this as a gift, or as a revenge?"
Remus gritted his teeth. "Do you think I didn't try to find out? What does it matter? As long as I care for him properly, now that he's mine --"
Sinistra's brows arched up. "Yours? With your history, that's quite a claim -- "
And you even taunt like him, Remus mentally snarled. Forcing himself to maintain a civilised tone, he said, "Would you rather we waste time revisiting what can't be reversed?"
"Can't? Or is it won't? What would it take, Lupin, for you to bleed for him? Or will you cherish him more like this -- forever at the mercy of your manipulations --"
Remus lunged forward, dropping onto his knees next to her. "Basta," he hissed. He slashed his wand across his left forearm and pressed the resulting surge of blood against the telescope's scar. The metal instantly formed a seal around the gash in his flesh -- a sensation not unlike Severus's thin lips clamping down around older scars during their earlier trysts. It tugged on his skin, and he sensed the blood being sucked from his veins into the body of the instrument (All those rumours about Snape the vampire…). Sinistra's hands were on his shoulders, her voice chanting spells for warmth and hydration even as his body verged on surrendering to unconsciousness.
He reeled backwards into her arms just as the telescope flared into a bright green blaze. For a terrifying instant, all Remus could think was that Severus had somehow turned himself into an embodiment of an Avada Kedavra, and that both he and Sinistra were now going to die for their presumption.
Then the blaze subsided into the form of a naked man -- one without a mark on either of his forearms, but with the familiar deep scar on his calf. Severus collapsed on top of Sinistra and Remus, his mouth seeking the latter's even before their arms succeeded in wrapping about each other.
Sinistra gave them a gentle shove so that her wand arm was clear. Still supporting Remus, she floated a large, dark blue afghan toward them and dropped it over their heads, smirking at the duet of muffled invective that erupted. Emerging from its folds, Severus yanked the fabric around his body and then aimed his most baleful glare at her.
"Placing hope in imbeciles is a waste of precious time," he snarled.
"A good thing, then, that I squander my efforts on you both."
Remus's eyes widened, but he simply said, "Giovanna. Grazie."
She made a dismissive gesture and stood up. "It's time I checked on my tower. At least you're one couple I won't catch up there in flagrante tonight."
Severus reached up and seized her sleeve as she strode by. "What?" she said. Her voice was impatient but her eyes were suspiciously bright.
Severus hauled himself to his feet, and then pulled Remus up. Without letting go of the other man, he turned to Sinistra and pressed a chaste kiss to her lips.
"'Sinistra: the hand of the Serpent-Bearer.'" The words carried the inflection of a blessing.
Remus recognised the definition from the Astronomy textbook. "Also known as the Healer," he whispered.
Severus nodded. Sinistra did not smile, but she kissed him back, and then bestowed a salute on Remus as well before stalking out of the room.
Flustered, Remus turned to Severus. "Please tell me this is not a grand, grotesque conspiracy."
Severus pressed his palm against the fresh scar on Remus's forearm. "Do you think I actually would, were it indeed a prank?"
The last word triggered his memory of That Night their sixth year. He gazed down at the mark, his mind racing through their entire history of silence and pride and sorrow. Then he leaned into Severus, speaking against the other man's mouth.
"To owe Sinistra my life? To owe Sinistra you? I can't say I like her at all, even now. But I will live with that."
"I don't ask for more," Severus said.
"Because you know --" Remus's hands were unsteady as his fingers twined with Severus's.
"Yes. I do indeed know." Severus slanted his mouth across Remus's, engulfing the last word within their kiss.