Author: Bitterfig
Title: The Marriage of Murder and Suicide Chapter 4/6
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: 1242
Rating: R
Warnings: Slash, sexual situations, dub-con (?), language (Fleur Delacour Weasley has quite a mouth on her.)
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 “I'm Your Man". The Progress chart for this series can be viewed
here.
Chapter 1/6 Chapter 2/6 Chapter 3/6 The Marriage of Murder and Suicide
Chapter 4
Ah, the moon's too bright
The chain's too tight
The beast won't go to sleep
I've been running through these promises to you
That I made and I could not keep.
Leonard Cohen
I’m Your Man
When he woke, it was night once again. He had slept through the whole of the day. He dressed and left the bedroom. In the sitting room that adjoined it, Snape was slumped asleep on a chair. The Malfoy boy curled beside him, his golden head resting on his former teacher’s black clad shoulder.
Gently, carefully, Lupin touched Snape’s gaunt, ashen cheek. Malfoy’s eyes opened. They were red rimmed as though he had been crying.
“I’m sorry,” Lupin said again. Draco stuck out his tongue then flickered it obscenely. Lupin walked out the door.
He had brought nothing with him to Paris except his broomstick and wand. He left the broom. There was no way he could fly back to England. He would take the ferry with the Muggles.
As he walked through the garden, Draco’s vines reached out for him. This time he was ready for them. He cursed them and, blighted, they withered and died at his feet. He passed through the gate and was gone.
*
Severus Snape could not take his dead, silver-blue eyes off the woman. She seemed to shine, penetrating the shadows of his being.
“I remember your friend, Monsieur Snape,” she said, drawing on her cigarette. She paced the room in broad, agitated strides as she spoke. “He was always very good to my mother-in-law. He was very kind to my husband after he was hurt so badly. My Bill has often wondered what became of him when the laws were passed against the werewolves. That was when we left England.
“They wanted to mark my Bill,” the woman raged. “To keep him in a cage and watch him. They told me I should not have babies. That a child with Veela and werewolf blood would be a dangerous monster. I said, ‘Fuck England. Fuck the Ministry of Magic.’ My husband was infected by the werewolf fighting for them. If I have babies, they will be red and gold and more beautiful than the sun. No one tells me I can not have babies. No one puts my husband in a cage or marks him like in the Scarlet Letter. I do as I please, and I would like to help your friend but know it is a dangerous business.”
“I am aware, Madame Weasley, that Veela magic is forbidden and punishable by death,” he said. “I wouldn’t ask you to consider this if Lupin’s life wasn’t at stake.”
“The life of any man who encounters a Veela when her magic sings is at stake. Ask Orpheus,” she laughed and bared her teeth. He cringed. “I have only seen you, never your friend. Is he willing to participate in this ritual?”
“No,” Snape said. “He is not willing.”
“He prefers to die? Then why not let him?”
“You have your mutilated wolf to care for, Madame Weasley, and I have mine.”
“Well,” she sighed, “the ritual can be done without his consent. I can do it through you, by proxy, if you agreed, but it makes the risk even greater. He must be here and in his right mind. Each thing I do to you, to cast out this thing that is killing him, he must allow. If he refuses, you will die. If you die, he will die…and then my pretty head will roll.
“I am fond of my head, Monsieur Snape,” she said. “I am very fond of my life. I should not help you. You were a Death Eater, a very bad and evil man.”
“I was. I am.”
“Well, I am myself a very bad woman. Not evil, but bad. I am vain and selfish. I spend too much money, and I want my own way always. And yet I love. I love badly. I love selfishly and willfully. I made Bill leave England. He would have stayed and let them mark him, let them put him in a cage because it was the right thing to do, the honorable thing. I said, ‘Bullshit’. Maybe it would be right and honorable for you to step aside and let your friend die, but if it was me, I would do just what you have done. I would do everything in my power to see that he lived.
“I will do this for you,” she said. “I will need three days to prepare myself. At the end of that time, bring your friend here.”
“Merci beaucoup,” Snape said. “Thank you, Madame.”
*
He woke in the bedroom of the vine covered house in Paris in Severus Snape’s arms.
“How did I get back here?” Lupin asked.
“It was a spell, an illusion,” Snape said. “You never left.”
Snape’s mouth covered Lupin’s in a rough, awkward, and one-sided kiss.
“Don’t,” Lupin protested weakly turning his face away. Another kiss. Snape’s potion stained hands moved over his chest toying with his nipples, teasing them to hardness. “Stop.”
“Tell me, Lupin,” Snape said, “tell me how it is that the good and kind Remus Lupin has always managed to break my heart.”
“Let me leave, let me die. I’ll be out of your life forever.” His heart was pounding dangerously fast and unevenly. Snape kissed him again.
“You’re a hypocrite, Lupin,” he said. “You’re more duplicitous than I could ever be. You use by letting yourself be used. It makes you seem like an innocent victim, but you use none the less. You used Draco; you fed his madness. You use me. You use me to save your life.” His hand squeezed Lupin’s cock. The werewolf moaned and arched back against his lover.
“You came here because you knew I wouldn’t let you die,” Snape went on as he milked Lupin’s cock in slow, smooth motions. “You didn’t come to me because of love. There are plenty of people in England who would have loved you and watched you fade away. You came to me because you knew I would force you to live. You don’t really want to die. You believe you should, that whatever you’ve done or seen you need to die for it, but you don’t want to die or you never would have come to me.”
Lupin writhed in Snape’s embrace, struggling for breath. The muscles of his thighs and his stomach cramping painfully from the exertion of arousal. His heart felt like it was going to explode, but both his hands were around Snape’s now speeding him along…
“You went into my mind. You had no right…” Lupin gasped.
“I’m doing what I was meant to do: violating you, despoiling you, forcing you against your will. I’m giving you what you want while exonerating you from wanting it.” Another kiss. “You knew I wouldn’t let you go. I am a vile human being. I destroyed my parent’s lives. I was a bully as a teacher, a killer, and I have betrayed everyone who ever trusted me, every master and every friend. The only ways I have ever been able to redeem myself have been by protecting the children in my charge and by loving you. You’ve tainted both those things, werewolf, but the promise is still there. I can’t give up on Draco, and I won’t give up on you.
“You’re finally mine, Remus Lupin,” the Potions master whispered. “Not Potter’s, not Black’s, only mine. You don’t need to lie any more.”
Lupin came, shuddering violently. He lay deathly still in Snape’s arms.
“Don’t let me die, Severus.”
“You won’t,” Snape said. “I promise.”