Hi!
Title: Of Monsters
Pairing: Snape/Lupin
Rating: R
Part: 1/2
Summary: Severus is not afraid.
You think we can’t tell you’re listening?
Leave me alone.
Hear something good, did you?
Perhaps.
Look, whelp, if you’re that interested in what we get up to -
I’m not. The Headmaster might be.
Right. Well, there’s a black knot on the North side of the Willow that might be of interest. To someone.
You behave as if I care, Black.
Suit yourself.
The passageway was dark and humid, thick with earth scents: the spice of soil, the flat musk of decaying vegetation, the sour, morning-mouth tang of stagnant water. Now and then there was a hint of animal rot; just a hint, nothing fresh. Things crunched under Severus’ feet that seemed likely to be bones. He didn’t want to stop and check.
What the hell did Lupin do down here? And the rest of them? Of all the nooks and rabbit holes they must have found round the castle in their ceaseless quest to get themselves expelled, why this cramped, wet-smelling tunnel?
“Amplare,” he muttered, and the warm gold light at the tip of his wand glowed brighter. He cast it about, back and forth, sweeping the many uneven crannies of the tunnel, flushing the shadows out. They seemed to flee up the walls and hide in the pits and ruts along the ceiling. His eyes were beginning to play tricks on him. Now and then a root gave a startling wiggle, stopping the breath in his throat for an instant; the roots were no more than split, branchy hairs now but at the tunnel’s entrance they were thicker than a man’s arm. When the Whomping Willow had launched without warning back into its usual rage, the roots had reached out from the walls and snatched at him, tangled in his hair, sought and grabbed his hands and arms like the prematurely buried, while the Willow groaned and creaked sepulchrally all around. Severus had broken into a run, and not stopped until he couldn’t hear the moaning anymore.
There were still shiftings all around him, scratchings and little showers of dirt, trickles of water. Things didn’t echo in this tunnel; the walls were too soft. Instead the thick air and the many twists and curves distorted sounds, muffled and amplified weirdly, made distance impossible to judge. Like being buried under the bedclothes at night, blind and nervous, his own breath startlingly loud around him, a faraway creak seeming right in the room, the soft breathing of his roommates too distant for comfort, his heart pounding right behind his face. There in the tunnel he kept touching his cheek to see if he could feel his pulse through it, covering the movement by scratching an imaginary itch, as if anyone could see him, as if he needed to hide from himself the fact that he was frightened.
And what is there to be frightened of? he asked himself, an attempt at mental control. I have a wand. I know curses. How childish that sounded. It’s only dark, he told himself. I am not afraid of the dark. I am not that small.
He brightened his wand again. It flared so brightly that his eyes ached.
From somewhere ahead of him, there was a noise, gone before he could identify it, something low and sharp. He stopped walking.
It’s just Black. Fucking with me. Maybe Potter and Lupin too. I have my wand. I’m not afraid.
There was a hollow dripping behind him, and he hunched protectively, then relaxed.
“Black!” he called shrilly. “Black - Potter, I’m tired of this game, and I’m leaving. You can get your fun elsewhere.”
That sound again, louder - maybe closer, maybe not - and drawn out. Like a chair scraping against a wooden floor, a low, ragged roar.
“I’m leaving,” he called again, wondering if they could hear him. His voice sounded strangely muffled and close to his ears in this thick humidity, this tight and irregular space.
Another noise, a new one, and constant. Scraping, shuffling - something moving. Someone walking? Someone crawling? Crawling fast. Crawling hard, heavy, coming nearer - Black! Potter! -another roar, and oh it is a roar, it was someone, it was voice-but-not-voice, it was raw and savage and not human it’s not human is it? Black!
What have you done?
Grunting, low grunting, breathing, shuffling. Severus reached out and pressed a hand against the tunnel wall, still half-turned to go, now unable to stand on his own. He stared at the bend in the tunnel before him, his wand still raised and lit, staring at the spot where one wall eclipsed another, the spot where it (It? They? It?) would appear, daring it crazily to show itself and praying that it would not.
Something behind him, something, footsteps? Thudding, scraping - what have you done?
A voice, sticky-muffled and indistinct back behind him, round a bend, then again, and a word this time -
“Snape!”
- and he turned like a reflex before he knew what he was doing, and there was Potter, jogging toward him, and Severus’ back felt cold and tingling and exposed to whatever was behind it, and he was raising his wand like a sword, defensively.
“Snape, we’ve got to -“
And the roar again, from his other side, earthshaking, and he whirled with his wand now feeling useless before him, and there -
There were Potter’s hands on his shoulders, and there was a gleam of teeth, dripping - the walls dripping, cool trickle in the distance - hideous snout, hungry, monster, and there were his feet coming off the ground, and nothing else.
Hear something good?
I am not afraid.
* * *
Remus minced alongside Madam Pomfrey as she led him into the hospital wing, wrapped in one of the school’s clean-smelling terrycloth modesty robes. The scent of it, soap and starch and cedar, evoked a sort of tired comfort in him every time he caught it, even in broad daylight, coming off some student’s clothes or the fresh sheets in his dormitory. It meant the worst was over, for a while; it meant sleep. He was bleeding and sticky and sore.
There were only two torches lit in the infirmary, each jutting out at an angle over a bed, casting an impossibly sharp ellipse of light and bringing to mind interrogations, hot seats. One lit bed was empty, already half-embraced by a privacy screen; the other, Remus saw - with a bass note of resigned, expected dread - contained a still boy with a dark face.
Severus sat against the headrails of his bed with his legs held to his chest, the lower half of his face obscured by his knees, his eyes in deep shadow. He didn’t move as Remus was led around him and helped into the vacant bed; there was no flicker of eye contact or acknowledgement. Pomfrey pulled the covers up over Remus’ legs, pushing him gently back onto his pillow. She knew very well that he was cold, and his back was aching, and his ribs were sore. Like the mother of a sickly child, she knew all the pains and needs and comforts and tended to them silently, her face set in hard, inscrutable lines. He had years and years of memories of those lines on his own mother’s face, the dull, resigned eyes that went with them, the sad and comforting smile that made it only halfway up her face.
“There,” said Pomfrey absently, tucking the covers deftly under his arms. “Screen?” she asked, as she always did, and he snuck a glance at Severus before shaking his head. “I’ll be back in a few minutes to see to you,” she said, touching the screen with an automatic quickness and then bustling away. Remus wondered, as he often did, how perfunctory these nights must have been to her, how much maternal care he was projecting on her, how much was only practiced bedside manner, how much was genuine. As always there were no answers, only a vague feeling of shame.
“Severus,” Remus murmured after Pomfrey had left the room. Severus didn’t move. “Snape,” he said, louder this time. Nothing. Remus considered for a moment that Severus might be unconscious, but he doubted he could have held that tight fetal curl if not awake. Remus narrowed his eyes and held very still and studied him, finally detecting the slight, slow rise and fall of his shoulders and a muscle twitching frantically in his forearm. There was no voluntary movement at all.
Remus remembered what had happened; he always remembered. His wolf memories were always clear and distant, detailed but somehow incomplete; they were made up of sounds and smells and isolated rushes of movement with no thoughts behind them; there were hungers and compulsions but no words, no names, no decisions. He remembered the smell dripping up from the tunnel like a flood in reverse: old sweat, new sweat, many-layered pheromones, the bitter pong of stress, unwashed hair and dander, faint soap and food. Coming nearer, getting stronger. Going for it, wanting to bite, wanting flesh between his teeth and blood and heat. Mouth watering, dripping in cool strings over his lips and jaw, trotting faster faster down the tunnel. Smell of meat, smell of prey, want and hunger burning in him, tearing up his insides like a wild, caged thing. Then a more familiar smell, a comforting musk that meant companionship and safety, and his prey - he could see it now, a mess of sharp contrasts, blacks and whites - was getting away, its scent disappearing along with the one he could now name: James. Then a hot rush, mad hunger, and he bit his own haunches from fury, the familiar cordy flesh between his teeth as unsatisfying as ever.
Moonset had found him clammy and nude in a top bedroom of the Shack, facedown on the floor, in all the usual agony. He was halfway down the tunnel before he knew where the blood was coming from, itching down his thigh in trickles.
“Snape, are you -“ His voice split in his throat, and he coughed softly. “I know I didn’t hurt you.”
“No,” Severus said quickly. Remus blinked, stricken, and waited for more. It didn’t come. Severus was as still and silent as before.
“Do you know what -“
“I’m not an idiot,” Severus snapped. He gave a huff of breath that may have been laughter. “Every full moon. I should have figured.”
“You’re going to tell, aren’t you.”
Suddenly Severus’ head turned, snapping violently to face Remus, eyes still in shadow, mouth a wide darkened gash. A yellowish bruise was creeping from under his hairline.
“How little does my life mean to you, Lupin?”
Remus lifted his head and shifted onto his side, frowning. “I don’t understand.”
“You would have killed me,” Snape said, hardly above a whisper. “Black would have fed me to you. My life would have amounted to dog food, do you understand?” He spat the words, his rage so evident it seemed to spray tangibly from his mouth. “And you. Are worried. About your reputation.”
Remus’ eyes widened, then shrank to slits. “Severus,” he warned. Severus’ lip curled resentfully, and Remus shut his eyes and said, “Snape. There’s so much more to this than -“
“- Than your reputation, yes. Yes, I’d imagine you’ve quite a bit at stake.”
Remus stared at him, waiting.
Severus bit down on his lower lip hard enough that pink faded to white. “The point, if you missed it,” he spat. “is that so do I.” His voice fell to a dull murmur. “So did I. But that hardly mattered to you, did it?”
Remus sat up swiftly, setting off rockets in his ribcage, feeling the hot points in his spine. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stared hard at Severus.
“You can’t think I had anything to do with this,” he said, a jagged edge of pleading in his voice.
Severus snorted.
Remus hung his head and shook it slowly, his mouth hanging open a degree. “Your problems with James and Sirius have never been any of my business, Snape. And I certainly - I certainly never - I would never.”
Severus’ lips undulated, pursing together and then stretching in a bitter parody of a grin.
“Of course,” he said archly. “Because werewolves are allergic to human flesh, aren’t they? Never touch the stuff, in fact -“
A rush of acid rose in Remus’ throat, stinging, and he choked it down. His voice, when it came, shocked him with its roughness.
“No, you’re right, Snape! Ever since first year I’ve wanted nothing more than to eat you up, haven’t I? ‘Mmm, Snivellus,’ said I. ‘What a tasty morsel, that one! A little greasy, perhaps, but then I’ve always had a weakness for junk food!’ I - ah -“
The pain in his ribs was flaring, webbing over his chest and back, spiking when he breathed. Chills crawled under his skin. He pressed his hands to his sides and eased himself onto his back. His head was at an uncomfortable angle on the pillow, but he didn’t dare move. The door to Pomfrey’s office creaked open, and there was the rustle of her skirts; Remus moaned gratefully, slipping back into the patterns of a sickly child, waiting to be comforted, given care.
He could feel Severus watching him.
* * *
Severus had never been cared for like that. Not by Madam Pomfrey, anyway. He had only dim, clipped memories of his mother bending over him, pressing the back of her hand to his forehead, his cheeks, the side of his neck, smoothing back his hair from his forehead while he let his eyelids droop, rubbing a cold and minty-smelling balm into his shoulder. Pomfrey’s body blocked most of the procedure from view but Severus watched anyway as she dressed wounds he couldn’t see (and what on earth could have so badly hurt a werewolf?), held Remus’ head at an angle and slipped a spoon into his mouth, wiped his face and hair with a wet cloth, made soothing nonverbal sounds at him. She hadn’t been as warm to Severus when Potter had dragged him in. She had clucked and patted his head and called him dear and given him a warm drink and a pill. He envied Remus’ bathrobe. His robes were damp-gritty like unwashed sheets and still smelled of the tunnel, and of his sweat.
Pomfrey moved to the trolley at the foot of Remus bed and began to prepare a syringe, shooting a little firework spray of silvery liquid into the air. A large rectangle of gauze covered Remus’ upper thigh, and Severus watched pinpricks of candy-red appear on it, one then two then three, spreading and staining, starting to darken to an earth shade and melting together, three then two then one long blot of blood. Then Remus flipped the corner of his bathrobe over his leg, and Severus looked up to see large eyes watching him before Pomfrey blocked Remus from view. A small hiss of indrawn breath, and then Pomfrey set the empty syringe down on the bedside stand with a hollow click.
“And how are you?” she asked, turning to Severus. “Do you need another…?”
He shook his head. She nodded and slid the screen around Remus. “I’m off to bed, then.”
Severus shot a nervous glance at Remus. “May I go?” he said gruffly.
“We’ll see how your head is in the morning, dear.”
“At least give me my wand.”
Pomfrey gave him a condescending smile. “Don’t be silly,” she said, flicking a glance at Remus, and disappeared into the back room.
Absolute quiet. Remus’ hand appeared above the screen, the bony wrist bare, and touched the base of his overhead torch. It flared blue, then died to an orangey, flameless glow. The hand retreated, and with a click, Remus’ bedside lamp went on, and Remus’ distorted silhouette was visible through the screen, sitting upright.
The screen held in all but a faint yellow glow, creating an eerie asymmetry, making Severus feel spot-lit. He reached up automatically for his own torch, then stopped. I’m not afraid of the dark; but he wanted his torch on. He was comfortable in the hard lines and glare.
Severus unfolded himself, holding in a groan, stretching out on the bed. Cramps shot through his calves and thighs; he felt made of wires.
“I’m sorry,” Remus said. “For shouting at you.”
It was hardly shouting, Severus thought. He wasn’t sure Remus was capable of producing a shout. Does he howl? Certainly he must howl.
“And - and for the other, obviously,” Remus continued, fumbling. Severus could see his head hanging at a sheepish angle, a shadow curtain of hair lifting away from his face when he spoke and breathed. A hand came up and raked it back, then fell away. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Not that it means anything to you.” The broken smallness was gone from his voice; he was talking fast, and there was an undertone of hyperactivity. Something rustled and his shadow moved: he was kicking off his covers.
“I don’t hate you, Snape.”
Severus narrowed his eyes and watched the silhouette, which was fidgeting rhythmically. The hands were moving up and down the shins.
“Do you hate me?” asked Remus. Severus turned his head, grimacing. Remus’ voice was plaintive and high, pathetic. “I don’t know if anyone’s ever really hated me before. I mean really hated.”
Severus sighed roughly. “Don’t embarrass yourself, Lupin.”
Remus startled him badly by laughing, loud and hard, for a long time. When he stopped - suddenly, like the needle skidding off a record - he cleared his throat softly and said, “Sorry.”
The bed creaked and Severus sat up quickly. Remus’ shape disappeared from the screen.
“What are you doing?” called Severus.
“Just walking.” A pause, and the quiet hiss of bare feet on the tile floor. “The stuff she gives me. Makes me a little, um, restless. I won’t come around the screen if you don’t want me to.”
Severus wished he had taken the opportunity to read Remus when his eyes were still visible. He wasn’t advanced enough to get anything specific, but he could get feelings, intentions - he could have recognized malice. He listened for a while to Remus’ indistinct shuffling, which stopped and started irregularly. Now and then he would hear a sharp ting of something hard on metal, or the low, gravelly scrape of fingernails on stone. It made him nervous that he couldn’t see Remus, but he could tell by the sounds that he was on the far side of the room. It occurred to him that this was intentional.
“What did she give you? In the needle?” asked Severus. The shuffling stopped.
“Why?”
“Curious.”
“It’s - uh, it’s kind of a cocktail, I think. It raises my blood sugar, it’s got some nutrients in it, I forget what exactly. And it’s got extracts of - something. Something with a long name. It helps me get my strength back. After.”
“Jack-In-The-Pulpit?”
“Pardon?”
“That’ll be the extract, I think. Probably steeped with Hellbore. A painkiller and a stimulant, respectively.”
“Oh.”
There was something subtly humiliating in the indifferent silence that followed. Severus’ throat constricted slightly.
“One would think you’d care to know what you were being injected with, hm? But I suppose your blood’s already polluted, so what’s another taint or three?”
There was a sudden violin-creak of springs from across the room, as if Remus had sat down hard on a bed.
“So fixated on blood, your House,” Remus mused quietly. “So morbid.”
“Unlike Gryffindor, of course.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Bleeding Gryffindors and your pretty little death fantasies, hm?” Remus made a soft noise. Snape pressed his lips together smugly. “You call me morbid. Lining up for Auror training, strutting about like you’ve just bloody arm-wrestled the Dark Lord - dreaming of your own photogenic corpse, aren’t you? The posthumous Order of Merlin? Like lambs to the slaughter.”
“And you know better, do you?”
“I’ll make it out of this alive.”
“Oh?”
“Provided you don’t kill me.”
Remus chuckled throatily.
“Don’t think I’m not considering it.”
Severus smiled grimly.
“Make sure you finish the job. I don’t fancy being your monthly playmate.”
“Ah,” said Remus. “It has a sense of humor.”
Severus’ face darkened. There was something too open and chummy about this. Something had been overstepped.
“There is only one “it” among us, Lupin,” he snarled. Remus didn’t respond.
Severus wanted to know what time it was. There was a clock across the room, but he’d have to cross around Remus’ screen to see it. He listened to the ticking instead, the prolonged echo of it coming off the tile floor, the nightmarish instruments, the slightly embarrassing bedpans. It had to be after midnight, probably after two. He felt like he’d be safer after sunrise, though he supposed claws were just as sharp in daylight, monsters just as savage.
* * *
“I don’t suppose…” Remus began. He let it hang, a litmus test of the air between them. Severus had been quiet for what seemed like a very long time.
“What?” A grunt, indifferent.
“There was a potion I used to have to take. When I was younger. Thick, bittersweet stuff, taken orally. It was supposed to, uh, put me to sleep after the - the nights. So I could recuperate. It tasted like -“
“- the way cheap wine smells.”
Remus started slightly, then broke into a bewildered half-smile.
“Yes…?”
Severus’ bed gave a long groan, and his sheets rustled.
“Elderberries, stewed for a day with a drop of ethyl alcohol, pure. Chilled for four hours in an opaque container with seven whole leaves of Dog’s Tansy.”
“Ah.”
“Did you chase it with peppermint? The next morning?”
A fond smile fell over Remus’ face, and he nodded even though he knew Severus couldn’t see him. “My mother made mint tea, always.”
“To wake you up.”
“Yes.”
Quiet again, but more comfortable than the one before. Remus hated the kind of quiet that came after sharp words, the anger still hanging in the air like smoke.
Severus made a small noise, the stillbirth of a syllable, then paused. Finally: “When were you bitten?”
Remus drew a slow breath and cast his eyes downward. Quickly Severus added, “Academic interest. It’s an old drug, the elderberry mixture.”
“Right. Um, I was about three.” He crossed the room and sat down on his own bed, which had cooled. “I remember that day, before and after, but not much of the - event.” Severus did not respond. Remus lay down and turned on his side, facing away from him.
“And your first transformation?” ask Severus. His tone was clinical, as if he were taking notes. Remus sat up again.
“It was… a few weeks later. The moon rose while we were all asleep. I was in the nursery - a little room off my parents’ bedroom. I woke them up growling.”
“You were a fully grown wolf?”
Remus slowly, gingerly wrapped his fingers around the end of the screen and pushed it back until Severus was visible, sitting cross-legged on his bed, facing Remus. His posture straightened and he regarded Remus down his nose
“I was - basically a feral pup. I was little, but I had teeth and claws; I was dangerous enough. That first night I chased my mum and dad out the bedroom, and they grabbed my brother -“
“Romulus.” said Severus, nodding.
Remus smiled apologetically. “Milo.”
Severus’ face fell sourly and he averted his gaze. Remus leaned his forehead against the screen’s frame and closed his eyes.
“And?” Severus prompted.
“Um. And - and they grabbed him, and they left the house and went to the neighbor’s. Good thing, too, ‘cos I clawed through the bedroom door and had the run of the place.”
Severus stared at him, his expression unreadable.
“After that they were - cautious.”
Severus tilted his head quizzically. Remus’ mouth twitched at the corners, and he shook his head quickly.
“There was another potion,” he began, wanting to steer the conversation somewhere safer. “Uh, tasted like… sickly-sweet, sort of, like maple syrup with castor oil mixed in. Made me want to vomit. I had to drink a thimbleful every hour on the day before -“
“Dandelion sap, willow leaves, blood of a vole, and - it varied, but generally a small dose of Hemlock. Not enough to kill you. Sometimes Nightshade instead. The dandelion sap is what makes it so sweet. Ever tasted the milky stuff that comes out the stem when you pick one?”
Remus covered his mouth with one hand, struggling to blend the gesture in and make it look natural - he was hiding a faint, bemused smile. Severus picking a dandelion, touching the bleeding end to his tongue - no. Severus recognizing such things as sweetness - oddly difficult, for reasons Remus couldn’t quite pin down.
“It erased your memory of the transformations, didn’t it? Or rather, made sure no memory was made in the first place.”
Remus nodded slowly.
“How did you feel about that?”
Look at what you’ve done!
I’m sorry.
It’s not - it’s not your fault, love, It’s just - look how much you’re bleeding. Your brother won’t come out of his room. But it’s not your fault.
I’m still sorry.
I know.
Remus narrowed his eyes.
“It’s a rather controversial medicine,” Severus added hastily. “A few of… your kind lobbied for banning it. Unsuccessfully, of course.” He smirked. “The Terrifying Monster lobby is not a strong one, as you might imagine.”
“I didn’t… really… have an opinion on it then. I was very small, and it was my parents giving it to me - you know. But… I regret it, a little bit, now. I think I could have… learned to adapt better, had I been able to remember things.”
“Ah.”
Silence again. Severus was looking at the floor. Remus got up again and began to pace, still feeling restless and wired from the shot. His scalp tingled and his skin was slightly oversensitive; the friction of his bathrobe felt like spiders crawling over him.
Severus’ interest made him nervous. He had a small, frightening compulsion to say much more than he knew he should, spill his innards out on the bed, elicit empathy or sympathy or pity or whatever Severus was capable of - detached comprehension, probably, couched in terms of logos and pathos. Something very scientific. He remembered, with a strange lurch of regret, the skinny boy with subtly shabby robes and a defensive hunch to his shoulders who had stared with narrowed, suspicious eyes at everyone who passed through his compartment on the Hogwarts Express. This was not a boy who had once picked dandelions. What was the point in trying to make him understand?
“Did they cage you?” said Severus, startling him.
“What?”
“You parents. After you’d chased them out the house. Did they cage you up?”
“Um - not caged, no. There was a room. At the top of the house. They reinforced it, lined the outsides with silver.”
“Rich.”
“Not really.”
“Silver lining, Lupin?”
Remus padded timidly around the end of his bed, emerging from behind the screen and stopping well short of Severus’ bed. Severus watched him warily.
“My parents loved me, Snape. They found ways.”
Snape looked away very quickly, turning his face to the opposite wall.
“Yours?” said Remus.
“My what?”
“Your parents. Rich? No,” he guessed. Something in the way Severus had pronounced the word; as if it were an affliction, something humiliating.
“None of your business,” Severus snapped. “Have you ever bitten anyone? Hurt anyone?” Remus blinked in surprise. Severus wasn’t looking at him; he recognized this as deflection.
“Never bitten, no.”
After a moment, a small smile dawned on Severus’ lips.
“I see.”
Remus crossed to sit on the end of Severus’ bed.
“It’s not something -“
Severus scrambled off the bed, sending the covers hissing to the floor, and climbed onto Remus’ slightly rumpled mattress, pulling his knees to his chest and glaring back at him. The screen, which he had shoved out of his way, crashed against a row of cabinets across the room. A sudden tingling chill went over Remus’ overdelicate skin, making him shudder.
“Right, of course.” he murmured. “Sorry.”
Severus just glared.
“You should get some sleep,” Remus said, resigning himself to a night of bitter silence, feeling suddenly heavy and spent.
“I’m not sleeping with you here.”
Remus snorted. “If I’m such a big scary monster, does it really matter if you’re asleep or awake when I decide to eat you all up?”
Severus slowly crawled onto his side, his knees still bent protectively around his belly and his head resting on his bent elbow. His eyes remained open.
“I’m going to get some myself, if you don’t mind,” said Remus. “I’m told I don’t snore.” He killed his torch and lay down on his back, over the covers.
He felt sick and itchy. He wanted Madam Pomfrey back to soothe him, or better yet his mum, her tea, her callused hands, her tuneless hum. The pillow under him smelled of sweat and unwashed hair and just slightly of herbs: rosemary, menthol, and something bittersweet.
He fell into a heavy sleep.
* * *
The gray wolf walked alongside him, trotting to keep up. Severus’ gait was smooth and quick. There were no doors off this hallway, he needed a door. He couldn’t look up, but he knew there was no ceiling, either, only space.
I think I’m lost.
You’re not, said the wolf. You’re with me.
What are you doing here?
You know.
It’s too dark.
Are you afraid?
I have my wand. I am not that small.
It doesn’t matter how big you are.
Look, If you’re not going to help me then leave.
And the wolf grew smoothly into Remus, nude and bony on all fours, looking up at him. His fingernails were long and sharp. He opened his mouth - enticing, sexual, Severus thought, but then he saw the teeth. The lights went out.
“No one can hear you, you know.”
Severus opened his eyes, which felt sticky and clogged. Remus was somehow over him, very tall. The bedside lamp was off, and the sun seemed to be rising: diffused yellow light.
“Pomfrey sleeps under six feet of silencing charms” Remus continued. “Trust me, I’ve woken the dead in this wing. It’s useless.”
“What?” Severus’ throat was dry; it came out as a scrape.
“You were - making noises.” Remus grinned sheepishly. “Didn’t seem to be having a very good time of it. Look at your sheets.”
Severus became aware for the first time that he was uncovered. There were no blankets, and his robes had ridden up to his knees. He sat up, aching everywhere, and pulled them down. His sheets, he saw, were twisted into ropes and hanging over the side of the bed.
“You thrashed them off,” said Remus. Severus looked up at him.
“What are you doing here?”
Remus fell to Severus’ level, sitting on his heels. “Seeing that you don’t kill yourself.”
Severus blinked. His eyes felt swollen.
“And to be honest,” Remus continued. “you were quite entertaining. What with your incoherent mumblings and your interpretive dance.” He grinned impishly, exposing his teeth. They were long, gleaming, biting a gash in his face.
“Get away from me,” Severus whispered. Remus rocked back, then forward, bringing his face close.
“Come off it, Severus,” he said quietly. His teeth flashed, yellow light moving down them like a liquid. “You can’t -“
Severus shoved him away, hitting out clumsily, landing a hand on Remus’ face and another on his shoulder. His elbows and shoulders cracked, a painful spark. His thumbnail bit into the side of Remus’ nose, dragging a little, coming away with an uneven strip of damp flesh underneath it. Flash-quick, Remus snatched Severus’ wrist in his bony hand and held it tightly. Slowly he stood up, extending his free hand, ready to catch Severus’ other arm if he struck.
“Let go of me,” Severus said darkly.
“No.”
“Why?”
“I’m afraid of you.”
“Let go.” Severus’ voice cracked. I am not afraid. “Now.”
Remus split into a high-pitched, manic laugh, throwing his head back violently. “Don’t be so melodramatic, Snape,” he said, his voice incongruously calm and low. He tilted his head just slightly. “I believe I’m the one who’s bleeding.” With his free hand, he dabbed at the side of his nose, bringing it away with a smudge of bright blood on the tip. Severus eyes followed the little red dash as Remus held it out to examine it.
“Like this, do you?” Remus said softly. “There’s plenty more.” He snatched open the breast of his bathrobe, exposing a slice of his weak chest, the starving hollows and sharp bones. He was latticed with scars: long stripes, claw marks. Some had healed in sharp little concave valleys, some in smooth protruding hills. There were a few new scabs, red and brown and black, rough and jagged, skin just beginning to stitch itself over them. “Blood, Snape.”
Severus reached up and laid a finger on a scab, experimentally, like a child prodding at an earthworm, testing the texture, testing that it was real.
And what could so badly hurt a werewolf?
Now you know.
Remus suddenly shifted away and gathered up Severus’ free hand in his own.
“Careful not to mix it with your own,” he said bitterly. “Who knows what kind of - monster - you might become.”
Gently, he brought both of Severus’ hands down, laid them in Severus’ lap, and held them there. Severus squirmed subtly at the touch, and then froze, looking up at Remus. Remus was still staring into his lap, mouth slightly open.
He shifted his grip on Severus’ wrists so that the pads of his fingers were resting on Severus’ robes, at the joint of hip and thigh, where the downward slope began. Severus sucked in a hiss of breath.
“Hm,” said Remus. He sat down on the edge of Severus’ bed. Severus backed himself up against the headrails, displacing Remus’ hands by a few inches. Remus smiled faintly and let go of Severus, laying his palms flat against the insides of his thighs. Severus shuddered and laid his hands on top of Remus’ meaning to pry them off and failing. Remus edged one hand a little farther up Severus’ thigh, and the muscles underneath twitched violently. Flames were licking up his thighs, the crux of them; that sweet, nameless compulsion was tugging at his groin.
‘What an odd creature you are,” Remus whispered. He studied Severus’ face for a moment, looking amused, nearly mirthful; then he climbed up and knelt between Severus legs.
“What are you doing?” Severus hissed.
Remus regarded him coldly and began to pull away. Severus grabbed his hips and held them. Remus laughed breathily.
“What is it that you want, Snape?”
“What do you want?
Remus let himself fall against Severus, catching himself on the headrails and locking his elbows. Their faces were inches apart, their stomachs touched and fitted together. Remus was obscenely warm, and softer than Severus had imagined. He had imagined skin-covered glass, a bag of delicate bones.
“Have you done this before?” Remus whispered.
“Of course I’ve done this before,” Severus spat. Remus nodded thoughtfully and shifted against Severus, letting him feel for the first time the stiffness, the heat. There was an uncomfortable amount of weight on Severus’ pelvis, but he didn’t dare move. “Have you?”
Remus gave a vague half-smile, unreadable, and pulled his bathrobe open, shrugging it down over his shoulders. Reaching down between them, he pulled up Severus’ robes - the friction of the coarse cloth was nearly unbearable - and slid his hand down, over the pale, moist belly, down the dark, uneven trail of hair. This was just how Severus had imagined it, except entirely different. This was just how he’d done it himself, cloistered behind the bedcurtains, stroking his belly gently, teasing himself, pretending not to know exactly where his hand was going next, pretending to be explored. He had not imagined a cold dawn in the hospital room, nor the lithe, warm flesh of Remus Lupin - Severus’ fantasies had always been faceless, a collective of parts, fleshes, skins, heat. These were the same movements, the same grip and touch, but they came from someone else this time, they were the work of two. Severus hadn’t known how different someone else’s touch could feel.
He was shaking. He twitched and twisted at every new touch, every new piece of skin explored. Remus’ breath, right on his face, dissipating over his cheek, was broken and shuddery too. Remus deftly parted the slit of Severus’ underwear and brought it down over the head of his cock, pulling the foreskin down with it. His thumb brushed over the exposed soreness, rubbing the opening, flicking down the cleft. Severus squirmed violently and one hand flew to Remus’, stopping him.
“Too much?” murmured Remus. Severus shook his head and moved his hand to grip Remus. Remus groaned and rubbed against Severus’ belly.
They were both shivering intensely now. Their faces bumped against each other, noses hitting cheeks, brows grazing.
“This is ridiculous,” muttered Severus.
Remus chuckled and looked into his eyes. “Yes.” Severus stared into him, but he was in no condition to read. His vision was blurry. Remus bent and pressed his lips against the side of Severus’ mouth, where his lips met his cheek. Severus turned his face and his mouth opened under Remus, his tongue flicked out and met Remus’; a moist vacuum seal was made between them. Remus’ face was dry and clean; Severus’ was gritty and slick against it. The space between their faces was dark.
Remus rocked against him, rubbing, whimpering, stroking Severus in all the familiar delicate places, seeming to read his mind.
Severus came embarrassingly quickly, shooting semen all the way up Remus’ belly and giving a wordless, guttural cry. Remus pushed desperately against him, free now to finish as quickly and clumsily as he wanted. Severus felt Remus’ hand alongside his own, hurrying him along.
A knock sounded behind them, and Remus froze. Severus throat closed. Both of them looked toward the door.
“Gentlemen?” called a low voice. Dumbledore. Without warning, Remus was off of him, a cold void in his place. Severus pulled his robes down and sat up straight. In the other bed, Remus had buried himself under blankets.
The door opened.
“Ah, I see you’re up,” Dumbledore said brightly. He nodded at Remus. “All right, Mr. Lupin?”
Remus nodded and smiled weakly.
“Splendid. Now, Mr. Snape - a word in my office, if you’d be so kind?”
Severus nodded and stood. Dumbledore beckoned him into the hallway. The torches had not been lit yet, and the corridor outside was dark.
Severus glanced back at Remus, who was curled up in bed, watching him. Their eyes met, and Severus felt a jolt: fear, regret. Remus’ heart, he knew, was pounding. He felt it alongside his own.
What have you done?
You know. Is it too much?
I am not afraid of the dark.
Yes you are.
Pairing: Snape/Lupin
Rating: R
Part: 1/2
Summary: Severus is not afraid.
You think we can’t tell you’re listening?
Leave me alone.
Hear something good, did you?
Perhaps.
Look, whelp, if you’re that interested in what we get up to -
I’m not. The Headmaster might be.
Right. Well, there’s a black knot on the North side of the Willow that might be of interest. To someone.
You behave as if I care, Black.
Suit yourself.
The passageway was dark and humid, thick with earth scents: the spice of soil, the flat musk of decaying vegetation, the sour, morning-mouth tang of stagnant water. Now and then there was a hint of animal rot; just a hint, nothing fresh. Things crunched under Severus’ feet that seemed likely to be bones. He didn’t want to stop and check.
What the hell did Lupin do down here? And the rest of them? Of all the nooks and rabbit holes they must have found round the castle in their ceaseless quest to get themselves expelled, why this cramped, wet-smelling tunnel?
“Amplare,” he muttered, and the warm gold light at the tip of his wand glowed brighter. He cast it about, back and forth, sweeping the many uneven crannies of the tunnel, flushing the shadows out. They seemed to flee up the walls and hide in the pits and ruts along the ceiling. His eyes were beginning to play tricks on him. Now and then a root gave a startling wiggle, stopping the breath in his throat for an instant; the roots were no more than split, branchy hairs now but at the tunnel’s entrance they were thicker than a man’s arm. When the Whomping Willow had launched without warning back into its usual rage, the roots had reached out from the walls and snatched at him, tangled in his hair, sought and grabbed his hands and arms like the prematurely buried, while the Willow groaned and creaked sepulchrally all around. Severus had broken into a run, and not stopped until he couldn’t hear the moaning anymore.
There were still shiftings all around him, scratchings and little showers of dirt, trickles of water. Things didn’t echo in this tunnel; the walls were too soft. Instead the thick air and the many twists and curves distorted sounds, muffled and amplified weirdly, made distance impossible to judge. Like being buried under the bedclothes at night, blind and nervous, his own breath startlingly loud around him, a faraway creak seeming right in the room, the soft breathing of his roommates too distant for comfort, his heart pounding right behind his face. There in the tunnel he kept touching his cheek to see if he could feel his pulse through it, covering the movement by scratching an imaginary itch, as if anyone could see him, as if he needed to hide from himself the fact that he was frightened.
And what is there to be frightened of? he asked himself, an attempt at mental control. I have a wand. I know curses. How childish that sounded. It’s only dark, he told himself. I am not afraid of the dark. I am not that small.
He brightened his wand again. It flared so brightly that his eyes ached.
From somewhere ahead of him, there was a noise, gone before he could identify it, something low and sharp. He stopped walking.
It’s just Black. Fucking with me. Maybe Potter and Lupin too. I have my wand. I’m not afraid.
There was a hollow dripping behind him, and he hunched protectively, then relaxed.
“Black!” he called shrilly. “Black - Potter, I’m tired of this game, and I’m leaving. You can get your fun elsewhere.”
That sound again, louder - maybe closer, maybe not - and drawn out. Like a chair scraping against a wooden floor, a low, ragged roar.
“I’m leaving,” he called again, wondering if they could hear him. His voice sounded strangely muffled and close to his ears in this thick humidity, this tight and irregular space.
Another noise, a new one, and constant. Scraping, shuffling - something moving. Someone walking? Someone crawling? Crawling fast. Crawling hard, heavy, coming nearer - Black! Potter! -another roar, and oh it is a roar, it was someone, it was voice-but-not-voice, it was raw and savage and not human it’s not human is it? Black!
What have you done?
Grunting, low grunting, breathing, shuffling. Severus reached out and pressed a hand against the tunnel wall, still half-turned to go, now unable to stand on his own. He stared at the bend in the tunnel before him, his wand still raised and lit, staring at the spot where one wall eclipsed another, the spot where it (It? They? It?) would appear, daring it crazily to show itself and praying that it would not.
Something behind him, something, footsteps? Thudding, scraping - what have you done?
A voice, sticky-muffled and indistinct back behind him, round a bend, then again, and a word this time -
“Snape!”
- and he turned like a reflex before he knew what he was doing, and there was Potter, jogging toward him, and Severus’ back felt cold and tingling and exposed to whatever was behind it, and he was raising his wand like a sword, defensively.
“Snape, we’ve got to -“
And the roar again, from his other side, earthshaking, and he whirled with his wand now feeling useless before him, and there -
There were Potter’s hands on his shoulders, and there was a gleam of teeth, dripping - the walls dripping, cool trickle in the distance - hideous snout, hungry, monster, and there were his feet coming off the ground, and nothing else.
Hear something good?
I am not afraid.
* * *
Remus minced alongside Madam Pomfrey as she led him into the hospital wing, wrapped in one of the school’s clean-smelling terrycloth modesty robes. The scent of it, soap and starch and cedar, evoked a sort of tired comfort in him every time he caught it, even in broad daylight, coming off some student’s clothes or the fresh sheets in his dormitory. It meant the worst was over, for a while; it meant sleep. He was bleeding and sticky and sore.
There were only two torches lit in the infirmary, each jutting out at an angle over a bed, casting an impossibly sharp ellipse of light and bringing to mind interrogations, hot seats. One lit bed was empty, already half-embraced by a privacy screen; the other, Remus saw - with a bass note of resigned, expected dread - contained a still boy with a dark face.
Severus sat against the headrails of his bed with his legs held to his chest, the lower half of his face obscured by his knees, his eyes in deep shadow. He didn’t move as Remus was led around him and helped into the vacant bed; there was no flicker of eye contact or acknowledgement. Pomfrey pulled the covers up over Remus’ legs, pushing him gently back onto his pillow. She knew very well that he was cold, and his back was aching, and his ribs were sore. Like the mother of a sickly child, she knew all the pains and needs and comforts and tended to them silently, her face set in hard, inscrutable lines. He had years and years of memories of those lines on his own mother’s face, the dull, resigned eyes that went with them, the sad and comforting smile that made it only halfway up her face.
“There,” said Pomfrey absently, tucking the covers deftly under his arms. “Screen?” she asked, as she always did, and he snuck a glance at Severus before shaking his head. “I’ll be back in a few minutes to see to you,” she said, touching the screen with an automatic quickness and then bustling away. Remus wondered, as he often did, how perfunctory these nights must have been to her, how much maternal care he was projecting on her, how much was only practiced bedside manner, how much was genuine. As always there were no answers, only a vague feeling of shame.
“Severus,” Remus murmured after Pomfrey had left the room. Severus didn’t move. “Snape,” he said, louder this time. Nothing. Remus considered for a moment that Severus might be unconscious, but he doubted he could have held that tight fetal curl if not awake. Remus narrowed his eyes and held very still and studied him, finally detecting the slight, slow rise and fall of his shoulders and a muscle twitching frantically in his forearm. There was no voluntary movement at all.
Remus remembered what had happened; he always remembered. His wolf memories were always clear and distant, detailed but somehow incomplete; they were made up of sounds and smells and isolated rushes of movement with no thoughts behind them; there were hungers and compulsions but no words, no names, no decisions. He remembered the smell dripping up from the tunnel like a flood in reverse: old sweat, new sweat, many-layered pheromones, the bitter pong of stress, unwashed hair and dander, faint soap and food. Coming nearer, getting stronger. Going for it, wanting to bite, wanting flesh between his teeth and blood and heat. Mouth watering, dripping in cool strings over his lips and jaw, trotting faster faster down the tunnel. Smell of meat, smell of prey, want and hunger burning in him, tearing up his insides like a wild, caged thing. Then a more familiar smell, a comforting musk that meant companionship and safety, and his prey - he could see it now, a mess of sharp contrasts, blacks and whites - was getting away, its scent disappearing along with the one he could now name: James. Then a hot rush, mad hunger, and he bit his own haunches from fury, the familiar cordy flesh between his teeth as unsatisfying as ever.
Moonset had found him clammy and nude in a top bedroom of the Shack, facedown on the floor, in all the usual agony. He was halfway down the tunnel before he knew where the blood was coming from, itching down his thigh in trickles.
“Snape, are you -“ His voice split in his throat, and he coughed softly. “I know I didn’t hurt you.”
“No,” Severus said quickly. Remus blinked, stricken, and waited for more. It didn’t come. Severus was as still and silent as before.
“Do you know what -“
“I’m not an idiot,” Severus snapped. He gave a huff of breath that may have been laughter. “Every full moon. I should have figured.”
“You’re going to tell, aren’t you.”
Suddenly Severus’ head turned, snapping violently to face Remus, eyes still in shadow, mouth a wide darkened gash. A yellowish bruise was creeping from under his hairline.
“How little does my life mean to you, Lupin?”
Remus lifted his head and shifted onto his side, frowning. “I don’t understand.”
“You would have killed me,” Snape said, hardly above a whisper. “Black would have fed me to you. My life would have amounted to dog food, do you understand?” He spat the words, his rage so evident it seemed to spray tangibly from his mouth. “And you. Are worried. About your reputation.”
Remus’ eyes widened, then shrank to slits. “Severus,” he warned. Severus’ lip curled resentfully, and Remus shut his eyes and said, “Snape. There’s so much more to this than -“
“- Than your reputation, yes. Yes, I’d imagine you’ve quite a bit at stake.”
Remus stared at him, waiting.
Severus bit down on his lower lip hard enough that pink faded to white. “The point, if you missed it,” he spat. “is that so do I.” His voice fell to a dull murmur. “So did I. But that hardly mattered to you, did it?”
Remus sat up swiftly, setting off rockets in his ribcage, feeling the hot points in his spine. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stared hard at Severus.
“You can’t think I had anything to do with this,” he said, a jagged edge of pleading in his voice.
Severus snorted.
Remus hung his head and shook it slowly, his mouth hanging open a degree. “Your problems with James and Sirius have never been any of my business, Snape. And I certainly - I certainly never - I would never.”
Severus’ lips undulated, pursing together and then stretching in a bitter parody of a grin.
“Of course,” he said archly. “Because werewolves are allergic to human flesh, aren’t they? Never touch the stuff, in fact -“
A rush of acid rose in Remus’ throat, stinging, and he choked it down. His voice, when it came, shocked him with its roughness.
“No, you’re right, Snape! Ever since first year I’ve wanted nothing more than to eat you up, haven’t I? ‘Mmm, Snivellus,’ said I. ‘What a tasty morsel, that one! A little greasy, perhaps, but then I’ve always had a weakness for junk food!’ I - ah -“
The pain in his ribs was flaring, webbing over his chest and back, spiking when he breathed. Chills crawled under his skin. He pressed his hands to his sides and eased himself onto his back. His head was at an uncomfortable angle on the pillow, but he didn’t dare move. The door to Pomfrey’s office creaked open, and there was the rustle of her skirts; Remus moaned gratefully, slipping back into the patterns of a sickly child, waiting to be comforted, given care.
He could feel Severus watching him.
* * *
Severus had never been cared for like that. Not by Madam Pomfrey, anyway. He had only dim, clipped memories of his mother bending over him, pressing the back of her hand to his forehead, his cheeks, the side of his neck, smoothing back his hair from his forehead while he let his eyelids droop, rubbing a cold and minty-smelling balm into his shoulder. Pomfrey’s body blocked most of the procedure from view but Severus watched anyway as she dressed wounds he couldn’t see (and what on earth could have so badly hurt a werewolf?), held Remus’ head at an angle and slipped a spoon into his mouth, wiped his face and hair with a wet cloth, made soothing nonverbal sounds at him. She hadn’t been as warm to Severus when Potter had dragged him in. She had clucked and patted his head and called him dear and given him a warm drink and a pill. He envied Remus’ bathrobe. His robes were damp-gritty like unwashed sheets and still smelled of the tunnel, and of his sweat.
Pomfrey moved to the trolley at the foot of Remus bed and began to prepare a syringe, shooting a little firework spray of silvery liquid into the air. A large rectangle of gauze covered Remus’ upper thigh, and Severus watched pinpricks of candy-red appear on it, one then two then three, spreading and staining, starting to darken to an earth shade and melting together, three then two then one long blot of blood. Then Remus flipped the corner of his bathrobe over his leg, and Severus looked up to see large eyes watching him before Pomfrey blocked Remus from view. A small hiss of indrawn breath, and then Pomfrey set the empty syringe down on the bedside stand with a hollow click.
“And how are you?” she asked, turning to Severus. “Do you need another…?”
He shook his head. She nodded and slid the screen around Remus. “I’m off to bed, then.”
Severus shot a nervous glance at Remus. “May I go?” he said gruffly.
“We’ll see how your head is in the morning, dear.”
“At least give me my wand.”
Pomfrey gave him a condescending smile. “Don’t be silly,” she said, flicking a glance at Remus, and disappeared into the back room.
Absolute quiet. Remus’ hand appeared above the screen, the bony wrist bare, and touched the base of his overhead torch. It flared blue, then died to an orangey, flameless glow. The hand retreated, and with a click, Remus’ bedside lamp went on, and Remus’ distorted silhouette was visible through the screen, sitting upright.
The screen held in all but a faint yellow glow, creating an eerie asymmetry, making Severus feel spot-lit. He reached up automatically for his own torch, then stopped. I’m not afraid of the dark; but he wanted his torch on. He was comfortable in the hard lines and glare.
Severus unfolded himself, holding in a groan, stretching out on the bed. Cramps shot through his calves and thighs; he felt made of wires.
“I’m sorry,” Remus said. “For shouting at you.”
It was hardly shouting, Severus thought. He wasn’t sure Remus was capable of producing a shout. Does he howl? Certainly he must howl.
“And - and for the other, obviously,” Remus continued, fumbling. Severus could see his head hanging at a sheepish angle, a shadow curtain of hair lifting away from his face when he spoke and breathed. A hand came up and raked it back, then fell away. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Not that it means anything to you.” The broken smallness was gone from his voice; he was talking fast, and there was an undertone of hyperactivity. Something rustled and his shadow moved: he was kicking off his covers.
“I don’t hate you, Snape.”
Severus narrowed his eyes and watched the silhouette, which was fidgeting rhythmically. The hands were moving up and down the shins.
“Do you hate me?” asked Remus. Severus turned his head, grimacing. Remus’ voice was plaintive and high, pathetic. “I don’t know if anyone’s ever really hated me before. I mean really hated.”
Severus sighed roughly. “Don’t embarrass yourself, Lupin.”
Remus startled him badly by laughing, loud and hard, for a long time. When he stopped - suddenly, like the needle skidding off a record - he cleared his throat softly and said, “Sorry.”
The bed creaked and Severus sat up quickly. Remus’ shape disappeared from the screen.
“What are you doing?” called Severus.
“Just walking.” A pause, and the quiet hiss of bare feet on the tile floor. “The stuff she gives me. Makes me a little, um, restless. I won’t come around the screen if you don’t want me to.”
Severus wished he had taken the opportunity to read Remus when his eyes were still visible. He wasn’t advanced enough to get anything specific, but he could get feelings, intentions - he could have recognized malice. He listened for a while to Remus’ indistinct shuffling, which stopped and started irregularly. Now and then he would hear a sharp ting of something hard on metal, or the low, gravelly scrape of fingernails on stone. It made him nervous that he couldn’t see Remus, but he could tell by the sounds that he was on the far side of the room. It occurred to him that this was intentional.
“What did she give you? In the needle?” asked Severus. The shuffling stopped.
“Why?”
“Curious.”
“It’s - uh, it’s kind of a cocktail, I think. It raises my blood sugar, it’s got some nutrients in it, I forget what exactly. And it’s got extracts of - something. Something with a long name. It helps me get my strength back. After.”
“Jack-In-The-Pulpit?”
“Pardon?”
“That’ll be the extract, I think. Probably steeped with Hellbore. A painkiller and a stimulant, respectively.”
“Oh.”
There was something subtly humiliating in the indifferent silence that followed. Severus’ throat constricted slightly.
“One would think you’d care to know what you were being injected with, hm? But I suppose your blood’s already polluted, so what’s another taint or three?”
There was a sudden violin-creak of springs from across the room, as if Remus had sat down hard on a bed.
“So fixated on blood, your House,” Remus mused quietly. “So morbid.”
“Unlike Gryffindor, of course.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Bleeding Gryffindors and your pretty little death fantasies, hm?” Remus made a soft noise. Snape pressed his lips together smugly. “You call me morbid. Lining up for Auror training, strutting about like you’ve just bloody arm-wrestled the Dark Lord - dreaming of your own photogenic corpse, aren’t you? The posthumous Order of Merlin? Like lambs to the slaughter.”
“And you know better, do you?”
“I’ll make it out of this alive.”
“Oh?”
“Provided you don’t kill me.”
Remus chuckled throatily.
“Don’t think I’m not considering it.”
Severus smiled grimly.
“Make sure you finish the job. I don’t fancy being your monthly playmate.”
“Ah,” said Remus. “It has a sense of humor.”
Severus’ face darkened. There was something too open and chummy about this. Something had been overstepped.
“There is only one “it” among us, Lupin,” he snarled. Remus didn’t respond.
Severus wanted to know what time it was. There was a clock across the room, but he’d have to cross around Remus’ screen to see it. He listened to the ticking instead, the prolonged echo of it coming off the tile floor, the nightmarish instruments, the slightly embarrassing bedpans. It had to be after midnight, probably after two. He felt like he’d be safer after sunrise, though he supposed claws were just as sharp in daylight, monsters just as savage.
* * *
“I don’t suppose…” Remus began. He let it hang, a litmus test of the air between them. Severus had been quiet for what seemed like a very long time.
“What?” A grunt, indifferent.
“There was a potion I used to have to take. When I was younger. Thick, bittersweet stuff, taken orally. It was supposed to, uh, put me to sleep after the - the nights. So I could recuperate. It tasted like -“
“- the way cheap wine smells.”
Remus started slightly, then broke into a bewildered half-smile.
“Yes…?”
Severus’ bed gave a long groan, and his sheets rustled.
“Elderberries, stewed for a day with a drop of ethyl alcohol, pure. Chilled for four hours in an opaque container with seven whole leaves of Dog’s Tansy.”
“Ah.”
“Did you chase it with peppermint? The next morning?”
A fond smile fell over Remus’ face, and he nodded even though he knew Severus couldn’t see him. “My mother made mint tea, always.”
“To wake you up.”
“Yes.”
Quiet again, but more comfortable than the one before. Remus hated the kind of quiet that came after sharp words, the anger still hanging in the air like smoke.
Severus made a small noise, the stillbirth of a syllable, then paused. Finally: “When were you bitten?”
Remus drew a slow breath and cast his eyes downward. Quickly Severus added, “Academic interest. It’s an old drug, the elderberry mixture.”
“Right. Um, I was about three.” He crossed the room and sat down on his own bed, which had cooled. “I remember that day, before and after, but not much of the - event.” Severus did not respond. Remus lay down and turned on his side, facing away from him.
“And your first transformation?” ask Severus. His tone was clinical, as if he were taking notes. Remus sat up again.
“It was… a few weeks later. The moon rose while we were all asleep. I was in the nursery - a little room off my parents’ bedroom. I woke them up growling.”
“You were a fully grown wolf?”
Remus slowly, gingerly wrapped his fingers around the end of the screen and pushed it back until Severus was visible, sitting cross-legged on his bed, facing Remus. His posture straightened and he regarded Remus down his nose
“I was - basically a feral pup. I was little, but I had teeth and claws; I was dangerous enough. That first night I chased my mum and dad out the bedroom, and they grabbed my brother -“
“Romulus.” said Severus, nodding.
Remus smiled apologetically. “Milo.”
Severus’ face fell sourly and he averted his gaze. Remus leaned his forehead against the screen’s frame and closed his eyes.
“And?” Severus prompted.
“Um. And - and they grabbed him, and they left the house and went to the neighbor’s. Good thing, too, ‘cos I clawed through the bedroom door and had the run of the place.”
Severus stared at him, his expression unreadable.
“After that they were - cautious.”
Severus tilted his head quizzically. Remus’ mouth twitched at the corners, and he shook his head quickly.
“There was another potion,” he began, wanting to steer the conversation somewhere safer. “Uh, tasted like… sickly-sweet, sort of, like maple syrup with castor oil mixed in. Made me want to vomit. I had to drink a thimbleful every hour on the day before -“
“Dandelion sap, willow leaves, blood of a vole, and - it varied, but generally a small dose of Hemlock. Not enough to kill you. Sometimes Nightshade instead. The dandelion sap is what makes it so sweet. Ever tasted the milky stuff that comes out the stem when you pick one?”
Remus covered his mouth with one hand, struggling to blend the gesture in and make it look natural - he was hiding a faint, bemused smile. Severus picking a dandelion, touching the bleeding end to his tongue - no. Severus recognizing such things as sweetness - oddly difficult, for reasons Remus couldn’t quite pin down.
“It erased your memory of the transformations, didn’t it? Or rather, made sure no memory was made in the first place.”
Remus nodded slowly.
“How did you feel about that?”
Look at what you’ve done!
I’m sorry.
It’s not - it’s not your fault, love, It’s just - look how much you’re bleeding. Your brother won’t come out of his room. But it’s not your fault.
I’m still sorry.
I know.
Remus narrowed his eyes.
“It’s a rather controversial medicine,” Severus added hastily. “A few of… your kind lobbied for banning it. Unsuccessfully, of course.” He smirked. “The Terrifying Monster lobby is not a strong one, as you might imagine.”
“I didn’t… really… have an opinion on it then. I was very small, and it was my parents giving it to me - you know. But… I regret it, a little bit, now. I think I could have… learned to adapt better, had I been able to remember things.”
“Ah.”
Silence again. Severus was looking at the floor. Remus got up again and began to pace, still feeling restless and wired from the shot. His scalp tingled and his skin was slightly oversensitive; the friction of his bathrobe felt like spiders crawling over him.
Severus’ interest made him nervous. He had a small, frightening compulsion to say much more than he knew he should, spill his innards out on the bed, elicit empathy or sympathy or pity or whatever Severus was capable of - detached comprehension, probably, couched in terms of logos and pathos. Something very scientific. He remembered, with a strange lurch of regret, the skinny boy with subtly shabby robes and a defensive hunch to his shoulders who had stared with narrowed, suspicious eyes at everyone who passed through his compartment on the Hogwarts Express. This was not a boy who had once picked dandelions. What was the point in trying to make him understand?
“Did they cage you?” said Severus, startling him.
“What?”
“You parents. After you’d chased them out the house. Did they cage you up?”
“Um - not caged, no. There was a room. At the top of the house. They reinforced it, lined the outsides with silver.”
“Rich.”
“Not really.”
“Silver lining, Lupin?”
Remus padded timidly around the end of his bed, emerging from behind the screen and stopping well short of Severus’ bed. Severus watched him warily.
“My parents loved me, Snape. They found ways.”
Snape looked away very quickly, turning his face to the opposite wall.
“Yours?” said Remus.
“My what?”
“Your parents. Rich? No,” he guessed. Something in the way Severus had pronounced the word; as if it were an affliction, something humiliating.
“None of your business,” Severus snapped. “Have you ever bitten anyone? Hurt anyone?” Remus blinked in surprise. Severus wasn’t looking at him; he recognized this as deflection.
“Never bitten, no.”
After a moment, a small smile dawned on Severus’ lips.
“I see.”
Remus crossed to sit on the end of Severus’ bed.
“It’s not something -“
Severus scrambled off the bed, sending the covers hissing to the floor, and climbed onto Remus’ slightly rumpled mattress, pulling his knees to his chest and glaring back at him. The screen, which he had shoved out of his way, crashed against a row of cabinets across the room. A sudden tingling chill went over Remus’ overdelicate skin, making him shudder.
“Right, of course.” he murmured. “Sorry.”
Severus just glared.
“You should get some sleep,” Remus said, resigning himself to a night of bitter silence, feeling suddenly heavy and spent.
“I’m not sleeping with you here.”
Remus snorted. “If I’m such a big scary monster, does it really matter if you’re asleep or awake when I decide to eat you all up?”
Severus slowly crawled onto his side, his knees still bent protectively around his belly and his head resting on his bent elbow. His eyes remained open.
“I’m going to get some myself, if you don’t mind,” said Remus. “I’m told I don’t snore.” He killed his torch and lay down on his back, over the covers.
He felt sick and itchy. He wanted Madam Pomfrey back to soothe him, or better yet his mum, her tea, her callused hands, her tuneless hum. The pillow under him smelled of sweat and unwashed hair and just slightly of herbs: rosemary, menthol, and something bittersweet.
He fell into a heavy sleep.
* * *
The gray wolf walked alongside him, trotting to keep up. Severus’ gait was smooth and quick. There were no doors off this hallway, he needed a door. He couldn’t look up, but he knew there was no ceiling, either, only space.
I think I’m lost.
You’re not, said the wolf. You’re with me.
What are you doing here?
You know.
It’s too dark.
Are you afraid?
I have my wand. I am not that small.
It doesn’t matter how big you are.
Look, If you’re not going to help me then leave.
And the wolf grew smoothly into Remus, nude and bony on all fours, looking up at him. His fingernails were long and sharp. He opened his mouth - enticing, sexual, Severus thought, but then he saw the teeth. The lights went out.
“No one can hear you, you know.”
Severus opened his eyes, which felt sticky and clogged. Remus was somehow over him, very tall. The bedside lamp was off, and the sun seemed to be rising: diffused yellow light.
“Pomfrey sleeps under six feet of silencing charms” Remus continued. “Trust me, I’ve woken the dead in this wing. It’s useless.”
“What?” Severus’ throat was dry; it came out as a scrape.
“You were - making noises.” Remus grinned sheepishly. “Didn’t seem to be having a very good time of it. Look at your sheets.”
Severus became aware for the first time that he was uncovered. There were no blankets, and his robes had ridden up to his knees. He sat up, aching everywhere, and pulled them down. His sheets, he saw, were twisted into ropes and hanging over the side of the bed.
“You thrashed them off,” said Remus. Severus looked up at him.
“What are you doing here?”
Remus fell to Severus’ level, sitting on his heels. “Seeing that you don’t kill yourself.”
Severus blinked. His eyes felt swollen.
“And to be honest,” Remus continued. “you were quite entertaining. What with your incoherent mumblings and your interpretive dance.” He grinned impishly, exposing his teeth. They were long, gleaming, biting a gash in his face.
“Get away from me,” Severus whispered. Remus rocked back, then forward, bringing his face close.
“Come off it, Severus,” he said quietly. His teeth flashed, yellow light moving down them like a liquid. “You can’t -“
Severus shoved him away, hitting out clumsily, landing a hand on Remus’ face and another on his shoulder. His elbows and shoulders cracked, a painful spark. His thumbnail bit into the side of Remus’ nose, dragging a little, coming away with an uneven strip of damp flesh underneath it. Flash-quick, Remus snatched Severus’ wrist in his bony hand and held it tightly. Slowly he stood up, extending his free hand, ready to catch Severus’ other arm if he struck.
“Let go of me,” Severus said darkly.
“No.”
“Why?”
“I’m afraid of you.”
“Let go.” Severus’ voice cracked. I am not afraid. “Now.”
Remus split into a high-pitched, manic laugh, throwing his head back violently. “Don’t be so melodramatic, Snape,” he said, his voice incongruously calm and low. He tilted his head just slightly. “I believe I’m the one who’s bleeding.” With his free hand, he dabbed at the side of his nose, bringing it away with a smudge of bright blood on the tip. Severus eyes followed the little red dash as Remus held it out to examine it.
“Like this, do you?” Remus said softly. “There’s plenty more.” He snatched open the breast of his bathrobe, exposing a slice of his weak chest, the starving hollows and sharp bones. He was latticed with scars: long stripes, claw marks. Some had healed in sharp little concave valleys, some in smooth protruding hills. There were a few new scabs, red and brown and black, rough and jagged, skin just beginning to stitch itself over them. “Blood, Snape.”
Severus reached up and laid a finger on a scab, experimentally, like a child prodding at an earthworm, testing the texture, testing that it was real.
And what could so badly hurt a werewolf?
Now you know.
Remus suddenly shifted away and gathered up Severus’ free hand in his own.
“Careful not to mix it with your own,” he said bitterly. “Who knows what kind of - monster - you might become.”
Gently, he brought both of Severus’ hands down, laid them in Severus’ lap, and held them there. Severus squirmed subtly at the touch, and then froze, looking up at Remus. Remus was still staring into his lap, mouth slightly open.
He shifted his grip on Severus’ wrists so that the pads of his fingers were resting on Severus’ robes, at the joint of hip and thigh, where the downward slope began. Severus sucked in a hiss of breath.
“Hm,” said Remus. He sat down on the edge of Severus’ bed. Severus backed himself up against the headrails, displacing Remus’ hands by a few inches. Remus smiled faintly and let go of Severus, laying his palms flat against the insides of his thighs. Severus shuddered and laid his hands on top of Remus’ meaning to pry them off and failing. Remus edged one hand a little farther up Severus’ thigh, and the muscles underneath twitched violently. Flames were licking up his thighs, the crux of them; that sweet, nameless compulsion was tugging at his groin.
‘What an odd creature you are,” Remus whispered. He studied Severus’ face for a moment, looking amused, nearly mirthful; then he climbed up and knelt between Severus legs.
“What are you doing?” Severus hissed.
Remus regarded him coldly and began to pull away. Severus grabbed his hips and held them. Remus laughed breathily.
“What is it that you want, Snape?”
“What do you want?
Remus let himself fall against Severus, catching himself on the headrails and locking his elbows. Their faces were inches apart, their stomachs touched and fitted together. Remus was obscenely warm, and softer than Severus had imagined. He had imagined skin-covered glass, a bag of delicate bones.
“Have you done this before?” Remus whispered.
“Of course I’ve done this before,” Severus spat. Remus nodded thoughtfully and shifted against Severus, letting him feel for the first time the stiffness, the heat. There was an uncomfortable amount of weight on Severus’ pelvis, but he didn’t dare move. “Have you?”
Remus gave a vague half-smile, unreadable, and pulled his bathrobe open, shrugging it down over his shoulders. Reaching down between them, he pulled up Severus’ robes - the friction of the coarse cloth was nearly unbearable - and slid his hand down, over the pale, moist belly, down the dark, uneven trail of hair. This was just how Severus had imagined it, except entirely different. This was just how he’d done it himself, cloistered behind the bedcurtains, stroking his belly gently, teasing himself, pretending not to know exactly where his hand was going next, pretending to be explored. He had not imagined a cold dawn in the hospital room, nor the lithe, warm flesh of Remus Lupin - Severus’ fantasies had always been faceless, a collective of parts, fleshes, skins, heat. These were the same movements, the same grip and touch, but they came from someone else this time, they were the work of two. Severus hadn’t known how different someone else’s touch could feel.
He was shaking. He twitched and twisted at every new touch, every new piece of skin explored. Remus’ breath, right on his face, dissipating over his cheek, was broken and shuddery too. Remus deftly parted the slit of Severus’ underwear and brought it down over the head of his cock, pulling the foreskin down with it. His thumb brushed over the exposed soreness, rubbing the opening, flicking down the cleft. Severus squirmed violently and one hand flew to Remus’, stopping him.
“Too much?” murmured Remus. Severus shook his head and moved his hand to grip Remus. Remus groaned and rubbed against Severus’ belly.
They were both shivering intensely now. Their faces bumped against each other, noses hitting cheeks, brows grazing.
“This is ridiculous,” muttered Severus.
Remus chuckled and looked into his eyes. “Yes.” Severus stared into him, but he was in no condition to read. His vision was blurry. Remus bent and pressed his lips against the side of Severus’ mouth, where his lips met his cheek. Severus turned his face and his mouth opened under Remus, his tongue flicked out and met Remus’; a moist vacuum seal was made between them. Remus’ face was dry and clean; Severus’ was gritty and slick against it. The space between their faces was dark.
Remus rocked against him, rubbing, whimpering, stroking Severus in all the familiar delicate places, seeming to read his mind.
Severus came embarrassingly quickly, shooting semen all the way up Remus’ belly and giving a wordless, guttural cry. Remus pushed desperately against him, free now to finish as quickly and clumsily as he wanted. Severus felt Remus’ hand alongside his own, hurrying him along.
A knock sounded behind them, and Remus froze. Severus throat closed. Both of them looked toward the door.
“Gentlemen?” called a low voice. Dumbledore. Without warning, Remus was off of him, a cold void in his place. Severus pulled his robes down and sat up straight. In the other bed, Remus had buried himself under blankets.
The door opened.
“Ah, I see you’re up,” Dumbledore said brightly. He nodded at Remus. “All right, Mr. Lupin?”
Remus nodded and smiled weakly.
“Splendid. Now, Mr. Snape - a word in my office, if you’d be so kind?”
Severus nodded and stood. Dumbledore beckoned him into the hallway. The torches had not been lit yet, and the corridor outside was dark.
Severus glanced back at Remus, who was curled up in bed, watching him. Their eyes met, and Severus felt a jolt: fear, regret. Remus’ heart, he knew, was pounding. He felt it alongside his own.
What have you done?
You know. Is it too much?
I am not afraid of the dark.
Yes you are.