The Marriage of Murder and Suicide Chapter 1/6
Author: Bitterfig
Title: The Marriage of Murder and Suicide Chapter 1/6
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Severus Snape/Remus Lupin, Draco Malfoy, Bill Weasley/Fleur Delacour Weasley
Summary: Post-war AU set three years after the events of HPB. A year after Voldemort’s defeat Remus Lupin traces down Severus Snape who is a fugitive living in Paris. Both men have been profoundly altered in body and mind by the war and its aftermath. Lupin is dying, his life being choked away by a dark secret he can not and will not reveal. Snape’s efforts to save Lupin’s life challenge all boundaries of morality. Violation, forbidden magic, betrayal, murder, obsessive and redemptive love will all come into play before the truth is revealed.
Beta Reader: Nzomniac
Word Count: 1327
Rating: R
Warnings: Language, somewhat unhinged m/m sex, references to violence.
Author’s Notes: Written for the lj community ficalbum as part of a series of Lupin/Snape fics based on the Leonard Cohen album I’m Your Man. The prompt for this story is the song “First We Take Manhattan.” The Progress chart for this series can be viewed here.
The Marriage of Murder and Suicide
Chapter 1
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
For trying to change the system from within
I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
I'm guided by a signal in the heavens
I'm guided by this birthmark on my skin
I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
I'd really like to live beside you, baby
I love your body and your spirit and your clothes
But you see that line there moving through the station?
I told you, I told you, told you, I was one of those
Ah you loved me as a loser, but now you're worried that I just might win
You know the way to stop me, but you don't have the discipline
How many nights I prayed for this, to let my work begin
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.
First We Take Manhattan
Leonard Cohen
Remus Lupin found what he was looking for in a dingy botanical in the Paris Wizard’s Quarter. Little bottles of perfect, shimmering Felix Felicis and Amortentia. Not look-alike potions charmed to pass but the real thing. And most telling of all, Wolfsbane--only a master could craft that.
“Pardon. Parlez-vous l’anglais?” he asked the man behind the counter. Do you speak English? He was sick. He’d been sick for days, and it was hard to think…harder still to deal with an unfamiliar tongue.
The man regarded him suspiciously. He was an older man, his head covered with tightly coiled white hair, his long, narrow face a deep brown. He seemed profoundly tired, beyond tired, weary.
“Cela dépend,” he said. That depends.
“I’m going to assume you do,” Lupin said. “I am also assuming your potion maker is English?”
“What do you want, pede?” the man asked. Lupin pretended he didn’t know the word.
“I’m interested in knowing how it is that a modest shop with a hand lettered sign can stock potions of this quality. Who makes them?”
“Are you Ministry or what?” the dark man spat.
“No,” Lupin said, his mouth twisting into a bitter grin. He held out his hands so the man could see that his palms were marked with undulating Latin script and shifting phases of the moon.
The man grinned back.
“You are a werewolf then?” he said. “So wicked you had to be marked. What did you do? Pass yourself off as human? Procreate with a witch?”
“Oui,” Lupin said curtly. He wasn’t smiling any more. Without the glee of bitterness illuminating his face, it was waxen, hollow.
“I’m surprised you got off with just a marking; usually your kind are locked away for such misbehavior,” the shopkeeper said.
“I was L’ordre du Phoenix.”
“I see,” the man said wearily. “Good enough for their wars, but when it comes to their work and their women, that’s a different story.”
“Who makes your potions?” Lupin said with equal weariness.
“The Prince. Tobias Prince. I call him the Prince because, seedy and flea-bitten as he is, he looks down his great big nose at everyone.”
“That’s him. Where can I find him?”
“How should I know?” The man shrugged. “He comes once a week; he brings potions. They’re good, they sell and no complaints. Why should I tell you anything to muddle up this arrangement?”
“I don’t intend to do anything to jeopardize your arrangement. I need to talk to the Prince. Nothing more.” He pulled a small, half empty bag of coins from the pocket of his threadbare coat. “I can give you money. Everything I have.”
“I believe that, scarecrow,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Keep your change, buy yourself a meal. You need it. The Prince comes in two days. He’ll be here just before sundown. Do me the courtesy of waiting till I’ve conducted my business with him before you conduct yours. And wait outside. I have nothing to do with this.”
“Merci, merci beaucoup.”
“Vas te faire foutre,” the man sighed.
Two days later, he waited outside of the botanical. Just after sundown, a man emerged from the shop. There was a slouch to his narrow shoulders Lupin could not help but recognize though his hair was cut short, and instead of robes he was dressed like a Muggle in jeans and a black t-shirt. Lupin stepped forward, catching the smaller man by the throat.
“Severus,” he said then gasped in surprise. The eyes that turned on him were a pale, cloudy blue. “You can’t fool me, Severus. You can’t trick me with your short hair and your Muggle clothes and your blue eyes. I know it’s you.” He gestured with his wand, trying to reverse whatever spell was over the other man’s eyes giving them their strange, almost luminescent paleness.
“Get your wand out of my face, werewolf,” the man snarled, confirming without a doubt that he was Severus Snape. “These are my eyes now. Voldermort took the old ones. You’ve found me, what now? Are you going to call the Aurors and have me extradited to England and tossed into Azkaban? It seems a popular place for your lovers to wind up.”
“Stop talking, shut up,” Lupin said, squinting his eyes shut, rubbing a hand against his forehead as if confused or in pain.
“Considering you’ve apprehended me outside his botanical, I suppose Monsieur Fanon told you where to find me,” Snape went on. “He’s originally from Martinique. He has a soft spot for exiles, and you must have struck him as more even more dispossessed than I am.”
“Quiet,” Lupin ordered. “I can’t think, let me think.”
“I’m under no obligation to make this any easier for you.”
Lupin dropped his wand, gripping the front of Snape’s shirt.
“I’m not arresting you; I’m not capturing you. There won’t be any Aurors, no Azkaban.” His words were slurring,
“What then?” Snape demanded. Instead of answering, Lupin kissed him with a ravenous greed, overwhelmingly aggressive, taking his breath, his words. It would have taken his whole body, his soul if such a thing were possible. Snape froze momentarily under the violence of it, and then he responded. His body responded without his consent, sucking Lupin deeper into his mouth, thrusting against his tongue like they were already fucking. Lupin sank to his knees, buried his face in Snape’s crotch, nuzzling against him.
“What are you doing?” Snape asked though it became obvious what he was doing when Lupin started unfastening his jeans. “Stop. I will not, will not copulate in a back alley like an animal.”
“Then take me somewhere where you will copulate like an animal.”
In a flash the alley disappeared, replaced by a garden walled in with high and heavy hedges and the front of a modest, vine covered stone house. Lupin already had the other man in his mouth when the vines dragged him off. Cursing, Snape gestured with his wand, and the plants released their hold.
“That paranoid little brat’s been setting traps again,” Snape hissed between his teeth. Lupin didn’t ask who, he only fell on Snape once again.
Something was wrong. There were so many questions to be answered, but Snape found he didn’t care to ask them quite yet. He hated it, but he was allowing himself to be ruled by physical needs and by neediness. He had last seen Lupin on the night he’d killed Albus Dumbledore, nearly three years before. During that time, he had never allowed himself to imagine that they would ever be together again. Now that it was possible, now that it was happening, he wanted it desperately.
Severus Snape had always been stronger than what he wanted, but Voldemort’s inhuman treatment of him, the war, and the stresses of the fugitive life had worn him down. He folded under Lupin almost obediently but gasped with pain as the werewolf penetrated him. It hurt…it hurt a great deal. Something was wrong--as if Lupin’s whole being was magically skewed. Pain or no, he came within minutes. They both did. Neither man made any pretense of control.
Afterwards, as Lupin lay sprawled on top of him, Snape could feel his heart pounding unevenly and hear his shallow, labored breath. He turned up Lupin’s palms and scrutinized the markings.
“Is this how they rewarded you for giving them your bloody life?” he asked.
“At least I still have my own eyes,” Lupin said. Snape stroked his hair.
“When did you stop being too good for me?” he whispered.
“When I became exactly like you,” Lupin said.
Thirty years they had been at this game, holding mirrors to each other, mixing desire and disgust, love and loathing, always scorned and always touching darkness.
Three years before, after a decade and a half at Hogwarts serving a term of repentance, Severus Snape had made his decisive move. Sometime since then, Remus Lupin had made his as well.
Title: The Marriage of Murder and Suicide Chapter 1/6
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Severus Snape/Remus Lupin, Draco Malfoy, Bill Weasley/Fleur Delacour Weasley
Summary: Post-war AU set three years after the events of HPB. A year after Voldemort’s defeat Remus Lupin traces down Severus Snape who is a fugitive living in Paris. Both men have been profoundly altered in body and mind by the war and its aftermath. Lupin is dying, his life being choked away by a dark secret he can not and will not reveal. Snape’s efforts to save Lupin’s life challenge all boundaries of morality. Violation, forbidden magic, betrayal, murder, obsessive and redemptive love will all come into play before the truth is revealed.
Beta Reader: Nzomniac
Word Count: 1327
Rating: R
Warnings: Language, somewhat unhinged m/m sex, references to violence.
Author’s Notes: Written for the lj community ficalbum as part of a series of Lupin/Snape fics based on the Leonard Cohen album I’m Your Man. The prompt for this story is the song “First We Take Manhattan.” The Progress chart for this series can be viewed here.
The Marriage of Murder and Suicide
Chapter 1
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
For trying to change the system from within
I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
I'm guided by a signal in the heavens
I'm guided by this birthmark on my skin
I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
I'd really like to live beside you, baby
I love your body and your spirit and your clothes
But you see that line there moving through the station?
I told you, I told you, told you, I was one of those
Ah you loved me as a loser, but now you're worried that I just might win
You know the way to stop me, but you don't have the discipline
How many nights I prayed for this, to let my work begin
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.
First We Take Manhattan
Leonard Cohen
Remus Lupin found what he was looking for in a dingy botanical in the Paris Wizard’s Quarter. Little bottles of perfect, shimmering Felix Felicis and Amortentia. Not look-alike potions charmed to pass but the real thing. And most telling of all, Wolfsbane--only a master could craft that.
“Pardon. Parlez-vous l’anglais?” he asked the man behind the counter. Do you speak English? He was sick. He’d been sick for days, and it was hard to think…harder still to deal with an unfamiliar tongue.
The man regarded him suspiciously. He was an older man, his head covered with tightly coiled white hair, his long, narrow face a deep brown. He seemed profoundly tired, beyond tired, weary.
“Cela dépend,” he said. That depends.
“I’m going to assume you do,” Lupin said. “I am also assuming your potion maker is English?”
“What do you want, pede?” the man asked. Lupin pretended he didn’t know the word.
“I’m interested in knowing how it is that a modest shop with a hand lettered sign can stock potions of this quality. Who makes them?”
“Are you Ministry or what?” the dark man spat.
“No,” Lupin said, his mouth twisting into a bitter grin. He held out his hands so the man could see that his palms were marked with undulating Latin script and shifting phases of the moon.
The man grinned back.
“You are a werewolf then?” he said. “So wicked you had to be marked. What did you do? Pass yourself off as human? Procreate with a witch?”
“Oui,” Lupin said curtly. He wasn’t smiling any more. Without the glee of bitterness illuminating his face, it was waxen, hollow.
“I’m surprised you got off with just a marking; usually your kind are locked away for such misbehavior,” the shopkeeper said.
“I was L’ordre du Phoenix.”
“I see,” the man said wearily. “Good enough for their wars, but when it comes to their work and their women, that’s a different story.”
“Who makes your potions?” Lupin said with equal weariness.
“The Prince. Tobias Prince. I call him the Prince because, seedy and flea-bitten as he is, he looks down his great big nose at everyone.”
“That’s him. Where can I find him?”
“How should I know?” The man shrugged. “He comes once a week; he brings potions. They’re good, they sell and no complaints. Why should I tell you anything to muddle up this arrangement?”
“I don’t intend to do anything to jeopardize your arrangement. I need to talk to the Prince. Nothing more.” He pulled a small, half empty bag of coins from the pocket of his threadbare coat. “I can give you money. Everything I have.”
“I believe that, scarecrow,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Keep your change, buy yourself a meal. You need it. The Prince comes in two days. He’ll be here just before sundown. Do me the courtesy of waiting till I’ve conducted my business with him before you conduct yours. And wait outside. I have nothing to do with this.”
“Merci, merci beaucoup.”
“Vas te faire foutre,” the man sighed.
Two days later, he waited outside of the botanical. Just after sundown, a man emerged from the shop. There was a slouch to his narrow shoulders Lupin could not help but recognize though his hair was cut short, and instead of robes he was dressed like a Muggle in jeans and a black t-shirt. Lupin stepped forward, catching the smaller man by the throat.
“Severus,” he said then gasped in surprise. The eyes that turned on him were a pale, cloudy blue. “You can’t fool me, Severus. You can’t trick me with your short hair and your Muggle clothes and your blue eyes. I know it’s you.” He gestured with his wand, trying to reverse whatever spell was over the other man’s eyes giving them their strange, almost luminescent paleness.
“Get your wand out of my face, werewolf,” the man snarled, confirming without a doubt that he was Severus Snape. “These are my eyes now. Voldermort took the old ones. You’ve found me, what now? Are you going to call the Aurors and have me extradited to England and tossed into Azkaban? It seems a popular place for your lovers to wind up.”
“Stop talking, shut up,” Lupin said, squinting his eyes shut, rubbing a hand against his forehead as if confused or in pain.
“Considering you’ve apprehended me outside his botanical, I suppose Monsieur Fanon told you where to find me,” Snape went on. “He’s originally from Martinique. He has a soft spot for exiles, and you must have struck him as more even more dispossessed than I am.”
“Quiet,” Lupin ordered. “I can’t think, let me think.”
“I’m under no obligation to make this any easier for you.”
Lupin dropped his wand, gripping the front of Snape’s shirt.
“I’m not arresting you; I’m not capturing you. There won’t be any Aurors, no Azkaban.” His words were slurring,
“What then?” Snape demanded. Instead of answering, Lupin kissed him with a ravenous greed, overwhelmingly aggressive, taking his breath, his words. It would have taken his whole body, his soul if such a thing were possible. Snape froze momentarily under the violence of it, and then he responded. His body responded without his consent, sucking Lupin deeper into his mouth, thrusting against his tongue like they were already fucking. Lupin sank to his knees, buried his face in Snape’s crotch, nuzzling against him.
“What are you doing?” Snape asked though it became obvious what he was doing when Lupin started unfastening his jeans. “Stop. I will not, will not copulate in a back alley like an animal.”
“Then take me somewhere where you will copulate like an animal.”
In a flash the alley disappeared, replaced by a garden walled in with high and heavy hedges and the front of a modest, vine covered stone house. Lupin already had the other man in his mouth when the vines dragged him off. Cursing, Snape gestured with his wand, and the plants released their hold.
“That paranoid little brat’s been setting traps again,” Snape hissed between his teeth. Lupin didn’t ask who, he only fell on Snape once again.
Something was wrong. There were so many questions to be answered, but Snape found he didn’t care to ask them quite yet. He hated it, but he was allowing himself to be ruled by physical needs and by neediness. He had last seen Lupin on the night he’d killed Albus Dumbledore, nearly three years before. During that time, he had never allowed himself to imagine that they would ever be together again. Now that it was possible, now that it was happening, he wanted it desperately.
Severus Snape had always been stronger than what he wanted, but Voldemort’s inhuman treatment of him, the war, and the stresses of the fugitive life had worn him down. He folded under Lupin almost obediently but gasped with pain as the werewolf penetrated him. It hurt…it hurt a great deal. Something was wrong--as if Lupin’s whole being was magically skewed. Pain or no, he came within minutes. They both did. Neither man made any pretense of control.
Afterwards, as Lupin lay sprawled on top of him, Snape could feel his heart pounding unevenly and hear his shallow, labored breath. He turned up Lupin’s palms and scrutinized the markings.
“Is this how they rewarded you for giving them your bloody life?” he asked.
“At least I still have my own eyes,” Lupin said. Snape stroked his hair.
“When did you stop being too good for me?” he whispered.
“When I became exactly like you,” Lupin said.
Thirty years they had been at this game, holding mirrors to each other, mixing desire and disgust, love and loathing, always scorned and always touching darkness.
Three years before, after a decade and a half at Hogwarts serving a term of repentance, Severus Snape had made his decisive move. Sometime since then, Remus Lupin had made his as well.