Thirteen Ways
In which I actually use a standard story header. Go me. A warning to the non-fandom people who read this: more so than usual, this story is slash, fan fiction about a sexual relationship between two adult men. If any part of that might bother you, the answer is simple: don't read it!
Title: Thirteen Ways
Author: Sinope
Rating: R
Pairing: Lupin/Snape (mention of previous Remus/Sirius)
Summary: Facets of a relationship of necessity. Too little is given and too much is wanted, but Lupin and Snape don't have the luxury of new beginnings. Post-OotP.
Disclaimer: The characters and events of the Harry Potter books belong to J.K. Rowling. What I write is only a fan work in tribute to her skill.
Notes: "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," as quoted throughout the story, is by Wallace Stevens. Other notes at the end.
Unfortunately, I'm three days late with it, but this story was intended as a birthday present for potions_master. Happy (belated) birthday, Professor, and I hope you enjoy.
I.
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
Month after month, it was never enough. Every night Lupin would lie on his bed afterward and almost-but-not place his hand over Snape's, though he never did and their hands never touched, just like they never kissed. Not that the relationship was merely shallow or purely physical - but Snape, evidently, had no interest in the messy exchange of saliva.
No, it was never purely physical, the sort of thing that Sirius would have understood. If that were all, Snape would never have allowed it to begin, though he never said as much aloud. The respect only emerged in the staff meetings, the halls, the library after students' hours: the clipped, quiet tone of Snape's voice, so different from his glossy-black sarcasm, told Lupin that he, at least, was bright enough to understand. Nothing was said of it - nothing ever was - but each memory of quiet approval provided just enough for the next day, and the next day, and the next.
The two of them talked about many things, Charms and Potions and Dark Arts theory, the indulgently intellectual banter that Lupin hadn't savoured since study groups with Ravenclaws. Talking, really, was most of what they did; sex came deep into the conversation, if at all. The only times they didn't talk were the quiet, tauntingly comfortable pauses when Snape would focus on his potions and Lupin would pretend to focus on his Dark Arts books, and the nights of the full moon.
For the first two months, on the night of the change, Snape gave Lupin his Wolfsbane Potion and left swiftly and coolly. In the third month, Lupin asked Snape quietly whether he would stay that moon. Snape looked at him and said nothing, not even his usual smooth, sarcastic deferrals.
The night of that full moon, Lupin found the Wolfsbane waiting in his bedroom without any note.
II.
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
This is how it began: everyone at Hogwarts found out that Lupin was gay. Sirius's will and accompanying letter, in which the Black estate passed to "Remus, my friend, companion, and love," made it impossible for the staff (and, therefore, every student, parent, and newspaper reporter) to ignore that the two men had been living together for a year, in every sense of the words.
The end result of all the publicity was that Lupin, who had anticipated a quiet, empty, heart-wrenchingly and cathartically lonely two months before Fudge reinstated him as DADA professor, found himself bustled into Hogwarts, begged to repeat the entire history of their relationship countless times, and inundated with well-wishers who gazed at him with unveiled mixtures of pity, fear, sympathy, and disgust. At any other point, such visitors would have received a short but pleasant cup of tea and a firm goodbye, but after the first dozen, it became easier to wearily repeat the tale than to say no.
Consequentially, when Snape delivered July's Wolfsbane Potion and said nothing of "that fool-hardy, flea-bitten idiot," as Lupin heard him call Sirius at meetings, the silence came as an odd relief, as did Snape's only comment. "Dumbledore reports that you haven't even begun the syllabi for next term. Do stop moping, wolf; Merlin knows the children learned nothing last year." Snape paused and shot Lupin a smug smile. "Otherwise I might have to teach your lessons myself, and we all know how much I'd hate for that to happen."
Lupin's first reaction was to run childishly after Snape and hex him. His second was a creaky, weak chuckle at how good it felt to be righteously and satisfyingly angry.
His third was a surge of gratitude that Snape cared enough to say it at all.
III.
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
October comes and goes. The week after every full moon, the sex hurts, and Lupin knows that Snape notices, but neither of them says anything. Part of the agreement is to keep silence: a quiet, controlled exhale as Snape enters Lupin, and most days Lupin can bite his lip for the rest of the time and manage not to wince.
Outside, Voldemort no longer hides in graveyards and bunkers. The Dark Mark rises above new houses every month, and Hogwarts now holds so many orphans that Dumbledore hires a school counsellor, a pretty, young Hufflepuff who holds the children when the Heads of House are too tired for another hour of tears. Lupin no longer teaches about Dark creatures; he teaches Defense, because every hour of every class he reminds himself that these countercurses could be the only defense that his children have.
Snape's dungeon, though, is always dark, and Lupin always has to hide when someone knocks at the door, because Draco comes by more often these days. Sometimes there's no time for Lupin to conceal himself more thoroughly than a quick invisibility spell, so Lupin has to stand there, muscles tensed in silence, while Draco preens and questions and flaunts his power to make Snape bend. (But not break.) Eventually he leaves, and Snape's eyes are unguarded and weary before Lupin mutters a finite incantatem and walks over to rub Snape's shoulders.
Snape doesn't acknowledge him, but that, too, is part of the agreement. A need for acknowledgement would be a sign of insecurity, and Lupin is not in this relationship out of insecurity. Insecurity would mean that he would have to watch Snape's eyes for each flicker of approval and pleasure, would have to spend his time pleasing Snape instead of thinking about Sirius, would have to worry about Snape's safety instead of ever worrying about himself - oh, insecurity would be easy, yes.
But it's not part of the agreement.
IV.
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
Snape's bones delineate his feet and toes, slender lines just covered by pale, waxy skin, lean and taut and suggestive. His ankles are thin and receding. Just as pale are his calves, thin as though stretched by some torturer's rack and specked with vividly black hair. Snape's knees disrupt the lines of his legs with dense, cobbled skin, toughened by hours of kneeling on flagstones, but the delicately sensitive underside of his knees is a secret for Lupin's hands alone. A hard valley between muscle and muscle climbs up the sides of his skinny thighs, narrow and articulate enough to guide a sliding finger.
Snape's hips jut out awkwardly, bruising Lupin when he leans too long on their extrusions, but his buttocks and stomach feel puffy-soft, like an aging mushroom or an overripe peach. In his stomach's center lies his navel, misshapen, purposeless, musty-smelling and secret. Two grooves between hip and stomach point down, angular, toward his cock, and the skin there is so white and virgin that the slightest fluttering fingertips elicit gasps. The base of Snape's cock hides in a mass of rough, kinky hair, a harsh contrast to the vein-laced member with skin that reminds Lupin of the soft-slick-solid feel of melting ice.
Snape's chest rises from his stomach in a battlefield of ribs and old scars, but when Lupin runs his lips over it with his eyes closed, all he feels is the sparse, mossy hair that converges in a wide patch between Snape's tight, wrinkled nipples. The firm curve of Snape's shoulders slides into the secret hollow of his armpits, dense with damp hair and tasting salty-sour when Lupin licks them to hear Snape's groan. His upper arms knot with unexpected muscles, sinewy from hours of cauldron-stirring, melting into his strong elbows. The forearms: Lupin cannot see Snape's forearms as a body part rather than a canvas, and he cannot examine the writhing snake-skull Mark on Snape's left arm for long before his eyes shudder and jerk onward to the slender, tightly-defined wrist. Snape's hands, like his feet, are elongated, seductive, and crackling with silent promises.
Snape's collarbones push out starkly, gliding from his shoulders to the round hollow at the base of his throat. His neck is strong and straight, with a large, jutting Adam's apple, and Lupin sometimes forgets that he flinches whenever it's touched. The back of Snape's neck remains veiled by the thin, lank hair that falls carelessly from his over-oily scalp. Snape's sallow forehead is divided by a deep widow's peak, the black angle pointing down to his protruding nose, hooked in the middle and dwarfing the narrow, pinkish lips below it. Snape's cheeks are high and hollow, shadowed with the stubble that he sometimes goes days without shaving away. A mole lies just above the outer corner of Snape's left eyebrow. His eyebrows and eyelashes are thin, precise, and dark.
Snape loves to stare at Lupin with eyes that shine black, black, glittering black, clothing him in arrogance even when nude, but Snape does not like to be watched.
V.
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
Snape has never said that he loves Lupin, and he has said it a thousand times.
He says it in the flash of his eyes when he subtracts points from Slytherin seventh-years for disrespect toward "the werewolf." He says it with the Ceylon and Earl Grey tea blend that he prepares every evening, exactly as Lupin likes it, even though Lupin knows Snape prefers Darjeeling. He says it in the stretched lines across his forehead as he warns Lupin not to get killed on his Order errands. He says it on the nights that Lupin is tired of the Howlers and the threats and the letters to Dumbledore, when he firmly holds Lupin's hand until Lupin closes his eyes and leans forward and feels Snape's arms tighten around his back.
Snape says it when he watches Lupin undress, and his eyes are dark and wide, and his lips are pressed to whiteness, and his breath catches hoarsely, and Lupin cannot help but whisper "I love you, Severus."
Lupin has said a thousand times that he loves Snape, and sometimes he doesn't mind that Snape never replies. Sometimes he thinks that if Snape ever said "I love you" outright, the words would leave Lupin breathless and speechless, because nothing he could say would be precious enough to reciprocate.
VI.
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
Christmas morning.
Snape's dungeon door opens, and Lupin steps into the chill, damp study lit by a feeble fire. On the mantle above the fireplace, a braided wreath of holly and silver sits where Lupin left it last week, still the only decoration in the room. Lupin is tempted to conjure some mistletoe for the doorway, but thinks better of it. "Merry Christmas, Severus," he says.
"Lupin," Snape acknowledges tersely. He is already dressed in his usual black robes, seated in a green-upholstered chair that faces the muted fire, but his eyes flash black and thirsty when he looks at Lupin.
"I have a gift for you," Lupin smiles, and he proffers a parcel neatly wrapped in bright crimson and gold.
Snape takes it with a dry, amused smile, then pulls out a heavy bundle in silver and matte green. "Merry Christmas," he adds quietly.
The humming hiss of bows untied and the rustle of paper unfolded. Within Lupin's package is a book - no, not a book, a pristine first-edition Matthews translation of Muju's Past Accounts of Tengu and Demons. Lupin opens it instinctively, running his fingers down the clean ivory paper and skimming through pages of grotesque, crisply inked images. "This is lovely," he murmurs to himself, a broad grin widening on his face, before looking up at Snape. "Thanks so much, Severus. It's a beautiful book, and I know it'll be useful when I start on Eastern Dark Arts with the upper years."
Snape is busy examining his own gift, a small, dark wooden box with patterns swirling like quicksilver over and around each side. "It's a transportation box," Lupin explains. "For gathering or buying delicate ingredients. Charmed to maintain a completely stable environment, and once you key the box to your blood, it won't open to anyone else."
"Thank you," Snape says in simple reply, but Lupin can tell from the way his eyes gleam at the quicksilver that he is pleased.
Lupin seats himself on one arm of Snape's chair, setting down the book and smiling at Snape's snort of annoyance. "Would you prefer I chose your lap, dear?" he says lightly, rewarded by another snort.
"Judging by the number of couples I passed last night snogging under mistletoe, I feared far worse," Snape says dryly, which from him, Lupin thinks, is as good as an invitation.
"Well, far be it from me to let our students outstrip their professors," he replies smugly, then twists around so he straddles Snape and, before Snape can retort, leans forward quickly to kiss him full on the lips.
Lupin isn't sure whether the rumbling in Snape's throat is a laugh or a sigh, but it doesn't especially matter, as Snape is kissing him back and running his tongue over Lupin's teeth and wrapping his arms around Lupin, and kissing Severus Snape feels like being battered by briny waves on a moonless night at sea. The room is still too cold, and Lupin's legs are starting to cramp, and Snape probably doesn't like kissing any more than before, but it's Christmas, and Lupin is content.
VII.
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
Some mornings, especially as the full moon draws closer, Lupin wakes to an uneasy melancholy and finds Snape dressed and reading in his study. When Lupin pads over to the armchair and touches Snape's shoulder, Snape flinches and does not speak. After four months of these scattered days, showering and dressing in cold solitude, Lupin asked Snape whether something had happened during the night.
Snape paused before answering and did not meet Lupin's eyes. "Nothing important. You were dreaming."
Lupin searched his mind and discovered nothing but the hollowness of forgotten sensations. "I don't remember what I dreamed."
Snape's eyes darted sharply to Lupin's, searching, then returned to rest blankly on the text of his book. "You called out Black's name. It's not the first time."
Involuntarily, Lupin's hand clenched, so sudden that he was sure Snape could feel it. "I'm sorry, Severus," he whispered, and he hoped that Snape would not ask what he was sorry for.
VIII.
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
Just before the acrid bitterness of Wolfsbane Potion floods Lupin's mouth, Lupin always tastes an odd note of sweetness, something reminiscent of tangerine and pine-sap. For that one instant, when he tastes it, he thinks despite himself that this time, perhaps, the Potion will taste pleasant. It never does, naturally, and eventually Lupin cannot eat tangerines without wincing in anticipation.
Most days, when Snape gives Lupin his Wolfsbane, he stays to watch while Lupin drinks it, and the pained flicker in his eyes as he watches Lupin grimace is what convinces Lupin that there's absolutely no way to improve the taste. The third evening of January's regimen, Lupin was already exhausted from the moon's pull when Snape brought him his goblet. As the first hint of sweet-tang swept over his tongue, his throat rebelled and gagged, sending the entire goblet (and that day's dinner) pouring back up and onto the floor. In a swift flicker, Snape was behind Lupin, holding him while he retched.
Lupin pulled himself back into his chair, coughing and casting his eyes around for something to wash away the taste. "I'm sorry," he muttered.
"You hardly need apologize for a reaction beyond your control." A pause. "Would you like something to drink?"
"There's Butterbeer in the bottom of the large cabinet, I think, but I can fetch it," Lupin said, pushing himself up from the chair.
Snape shot him a withering glare. "You will remain seated. I don't fancy a repeat of that incident."
As Snape strode to the cabinet and pulled out a Butterbeer bottle, Lupin sank back down, a slight smile on his lips. Snape opened the bottle and gave it to Lupin, and without hesitation the latter washed the creamy, thick liquid down his throat, quaffing it silently for a few minutes. "Much better," he finally smiled wanly.
Snape nodded. "There ought to still be enough for this month's cycle," he said, almost to himself. "I'll fetch a new draught from the dungeons, along with an anti-nausea agent." His eyes focused back on Lupin. "Stay here."
Once the precise clip of his footsteps had faded, Lupin sank into his chair and thought of tangerines. Bitter-sweet rind and tart nectar within, and he still believed that if he ate enough of them, he could forget about the bitterness of association.
IX.
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
"Hello, Harry. What can I -"
"You're sleeping with Professor Snape, aren't you."
". . . Yes. Yes, Harry, I am."
"I thought you cared about Sirius."
"I did. I - I do, Harry, I miss him every bloody day, you know that."
"Well, Snape got Sirius killed! How can you just sleep with that ugly, greasy GIT when everybody knows that if he hadn't been so mean, Sirius would still be alive?"
"Professor Snape didn't get Sirius killed. Sirius chose to go, and I was the one who let him. Snape is a vital part of the Order, and he is also your professor, and he deserves a bit more respect than you're giving him."
"So you think that if you had died, Sirius could be having sex with Snape right now, and you'd be okay with that?"
"Harry, if I'd died, I would be dead, gone. Look, I loved Sirius as much as you did, maybe even more, but he's gone. He's gone. Nobody could ever replace him, but I can love someone else as well, and I do. I know that it's hard to understand."
"Oh yeah? I think I understand it pretty well - sir. Okay, you can't tell anyone this, all right, but there was this girl I used to like. She was dating Cedric when Voldemort killed him, and last year she went out with me a little bit, but every time we'd talk, she'd talk about Cedric and his death, and she'd start crying. Well, I think I finally figured out why she wanted to date me - I was Harry Potter, the boy who was there instead of Cedric, and that was it."
"That's not fair, Harry. Just because you don't see certain sides of Snape -"
"Well, what do you see?"
"Severus is very thoughtful, though he doesn't like people to think so. He's protective of the people he cares about. He's got a dry but amusing sense of humor. He's quite intelligent and well-read. Look, Harry, I know that whatever I tell you won't be enough. You two may not like each other, but at the very least, I'd like for you to respect my choice. I - I love him."
"No, you don't, and I don't think it's fair to Sirius to just replace him, like he's some old robe that got torn. But I guess that whatever I tell you won't be enough, anyway. Bye, Professor Lupin."
"Harry - "
X.
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
Lupin needs Snape like he needs to howl at the full moon, even under Wolfsbane: a tenseness that clogs his veins until every muscle shudders with the pressure, forcing its way out like hissing vapor from a kettle until he tilts up his wolf-neck and howls in defeat.
Lupin wants Snape like he wants chocolate after a Dementor, because you never really taste the velvety cocoa hues when your skin is trembling with despair; all you know is that gobbling down that chocolate bar so fast that it isn't even melted when it slides down your throat is the only thing that can let you start breathing again.
Lupin holds Snape like he holds his wand, gently and reverently, though when he's angry the grip tightens. He still remembers what Ollivander said twenty-five years ago about the wand choosing the wizard, but he never liked to think about it; personifying the wand made him into its master, and Lupin has never believed that he would use someone like that.
Lupin loves Snape like he loves the moon. Snape has seen Lupin's boggart, and he doesn't believe Lupin when he says he loves it, but Lupin does. Nothing but the waxing moon can paralyze him with such powerlessness, and nothing but the waning moon can overcome him with such relief.
XI.
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
The first night that Lupin touched Snape - really touched him - was September and chill. They sat alone in the staffroom, cold half-empty teacups between them, and Snape's fingers pressed hard against each other as he spoke swiftly about Celtic and Aztec blood magic, and Lupin played the game where he watched Snape's eyes until one of them looked away.
Then a shudder passed through Snape, and face turned faintly paler. Lupin didn't have to see his right hand clutch toward his left arm or wait for the muttered "I have to go," because he could see Snape's eyes, and he knew that look of fear-anticipation-despair from when his own mirror reflected the waxing moon.
So it was that, even as "I have -" emerged from Snape's lips, Lupin leaned over fragile teacups and muffled those lips against his shoulder, holding Snape in an embrace so tight he thought his arms would bruise on the other man's thin, bony back. Lupin felt Snape shuddering violently in his arms, and the spilled tea soaked his robe cold and wet. He realized that his lips were pressed desperately against Snape's lank hair and that Snape's arms clutched him tighter still.
They held each other in silence, until Snape's left arm shook so violently that Lupin whispered, "I'll be here when you come back."
"Thank you," Snape replied, but his limbs had already stiffened, withdrawing from the intimacy. He pulled himself backward and rose from his chair, muttering a drying charm at the tea stain.
When he reached the door, he turned suddenly on his heel. "I will return."
Neither of them needed to hear him complete the sentence aloud: "- to you."
XII.
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
Only once have Lupin and Snape had sex outside Hogwarts. Snape knew that a "cleansing" was planned for that Friday night, but the Dark Lord never said beforehand which family had been marked; always, Snape and a dozen others were sent to watch houses in pairs, waiting for a message that their house, their family, would be the one to go.
At eleven o'clock, Lupin found Snape with Crabbe at Leonard Lovegood's bungalow, concealed so well by shadow and spell that he had to track them by faint scent. He waited until he breathed the jolt of adrenaline-fear that meant the Dark Mark had signalled, then aimed his wand at the shadows and fired a Stunning Spell the moment he saw them move.
One thud and a breath of dust around invisible skin. The living one - he took another whiff - definitely Snape.
Both of them knew the drill: no words and no names outside Hogwarts, because words and names were so much easier to extract from memories. No messages. No mentions of spying. In fact, by a strict reading of the Order's code, Lupin should have hexed Snape and left them both in silence.
He didn't.
He didn't say "You would've killed him, wouldn't you," either, because both of them knew the rules, and it didn't matter that they'd known Leonard since he was a quiet Ravenclaw who drew fantastic dragons soaring around his homework assignments.
Instead, he pulled Snape back into the shadows and muttered a new Concealment Charm, then followed it up with a Silencing Charm and as many wards as he could think of - blocks against scent, movement, heat, Legilimency - in breathless succession. The spells blanketed their corner in quiet, and Lupin could neither see Snape's lips part for oxygen (though he remembered them) nor hear his suppressed, desperate groan (though he knew): and when they touched and fingers on sensitized skin became their only contact, when the familiar rhythms of thrusting and stroking became their only language, Lupin could cry into Snape's shoulder "I hate this, I hate this, I hate this," and he could know that Snape understood.
XIII.
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
Even Hogwarts' stone walls cannot insulate Lupin's bedroom from the chill March winds. The window's frosted glass glows with the setting moon, and Lupin is keening softly as his wolf-skin resists the reemerging man. On the other side of the room, Snape sits precisely where he sat all night. Though his shoulders no longer betray terror, his white, clenched hands keep Lupin from pacing any closer. He murmurs to himself, as he has all night, and Lupin hears snatches of reagent lists, prime numbers multiplied against each other, and curse-countercurse chains.
Lupin can feel the moon impact the horizon as a physical shock, a plunge into deep water, and he dimly feels his snout stretching in a scream that ripples his arching back before everything dissolves into tearing and breaking, the excruciating piercing of different bones and hair and muscle springing into existence, and with eyeballs that ripple as they remould he sees the moon still mocking him, and the agony feels everlastingly long, until - warmth.
Warmth.
Lupin's fingertips are the first thing to move, curling instinctively until he can open his eyes to a suddenly limited field of vision. He feels: Snape's arms around his chest, and Snape's body pressed against his back, and Snape's face bent to rest in the crook of his neck. Snape is kneeling on the floor by the window, cradling him, shaking.
With an awkward twist of his neck, Lupin can look up and into Snape's eyes, which are half-closed and broken. "Thank you for staying," Lupin says softly, but Snape shakes his head.
"I had to stay, fool. I cannot allow myself to continue fearing you if I intend to love you as I do."
And the words are so short and quiet and grudging that Lupin cannot believe how devastatingly they break him.
finis.
Notes: I don't have enough words to thank everyone who helped this come out. nancyrose, amaralen, hobaggins, rosesanguina, maybethemoon, bookofjude: your advice, corrections, and support were invaluable. peccavium, thank you for a fabulous beta WAY above and beyond the call of duty. potions_master and lupercus, you inspire me. S., this is because of you.
Title: Thirteen Ways
Author: Sinope
Rating: R
Pairing: Lupin/Snape (mention of previous Remus/Sirius)
Summary: Facets of a relationship of necessity. Too little is given and too much is wanted, but Lupin and Snape don't have the luxury of new beginnings. Post-OotP.
Disclaimer: The characters and events of the Harry Potter books belong to J.K. Rowling. What I write is only a fan work in tribute to her skill.
Notes: "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," as quoted throughout the story, is by Wallace Stevens. Other notes at the end.
Unfortunately, I'm three days late with it, but this story was intended as a birthday present for potions_master. Happy (belated) birthday, Professor, and I hope you enjoy.
I.
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
Month after month, it was never enough. Every night Lupin would lie on his bed afterward and almost-but-not place his hand over Snape's, though he never did and their hands never touched, just like they never kissed. Not that the relationship was merely shallow or purely physical - but Snape, evidently, had no interest in the messy exchange of saliva.
No, it was never purely physical, the sort of thing that Sirius would have understood. If that were all, Snape would never have allowed it to begin, though he never said as much aloud. The respect only emerged in the staff meetings, the halls, the library after students' hours: the clipped, quiet tone of Snape's voice, so different from his glossy-black sarcasm, told Lupin that he, at least, was bright enough to understand. Nothing was said of it - nothing ever was - but each memory of quiet approval provided just enough for the next day, and the next day, and the next.
The two of them talked about many things, Charms and Potions and Dark Arts theory, the indulgently intellectual banter that Lupin hadn't savoured since study groups with Ravenclaws. Talking, really, was most of what they did; sex came deep into the conversation, if at all. The only times they didn't talk were the quiet, tauntingly comfortable pauses when Snape would focus on his potions and Lupin would pretend to focus on his Dark Arts books, and the nights of the full moon.
For the first two months, on the night of the change, Snape gave Lupin his Wolfsbane Potion and left swiftly and coolly. In the third month, Lupin asked Snape quietly whether he would stay that moon. Snape looked at him and said nothing, not even his usual smooth, sarcastic deferrals.
The night of that full moon, Lupin found the Wolfsbane waiting in his bedroom without any note.
II.
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
This is how it began: everyone at Hogwarts found out that Lupin was gay. Sirius's will and accompanying letter, in which the Black estate passed to "Remus, my friend, companion, and love," made it impossible for the staff (and, therefore, every student, parent, and newspaper reporter) to ignore that the two men had been living together for a year, in every sense of the words.
The end result of all the publicity was that Lupin, who had anticipated a quiet, empty, heart-wrenchingly and cathartically lonely two months before Fudge reinstated him as DADA professor, found himself bustled into Hogwarts, begged to repeat the entire history of their relationship countless times, and inundated with well-wishers who gazed at him with unveiled mixtures of pity, fear, sympathy, and disgust. At any other point, such visitors would have received a short but pleasant cup of tea and a firm goodbye, but after the first dozen, it became easier to wearily repeat the tale than to say no.
Consequentially, when Snape delivered July's Wolfsbane Potion and said nothing of "that fool-hardy, flea-bitten idiot," as Lupin heard him call Sirius at meetings, the silence came as an odd relief, as did Snape's only comment. "Dumbledore reports that you haven't even begun the syllabi for next term. Do stop moping, wolf; Merlin knows the children learned nothing last year." Snape paused and shot Lupin a smug smile. "Otherwise I might have to teach your lessons myself, and we all know how much I'd hate for that to happen."
Lupin's first reaction was to run childishly after Snape and hex him. His second was a creaky, weak chuckle at how good it felt to be righteously and satisfyingly angry.
His third was a surge of gratitude that Snape cared enough to say it at all.
III.
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
October comes and goes. The week after every full moon, the sex hurts, and Lupin knows that Snape notices, but neither of them says anything. Part of the agreement is to keep silence: a quiet, controlled exhale as Snape enters Lupin, and most days Lupin can bite his lip for the rest of the time and manage not to wince.
Outside, Voldemort no longer hides in graveyards and bunkers. The Dark Mark rises above new houses every month, and Hogwarts now holds so many orphans that Dumbledore hires a school counsellor, a pretty, young Hufflepuff who holds the children when the Heads of House are too tired for another hour of tears. Lupin no longer teaches about Dark creatures; he teaches Defense, because every hour of every class he reminds himself that these countercurses could be the only defense that his children have.
Snape's dungeon, though, is always dark, and Lupin always has to hide when someone knocks at the door, because Draco comes by more often these days. Sometimes there's no time for Lupin to conceal himself more thoroughly than a quick invisibility spell, so Lupin has to stand there, muscles tensed in silence, while Draco preens and questions and flaunts his power to make Snape bend. (But not break.) Eventually he leaves, and Snape's eyes are unguarded and weary before Lupin mutters a finite incantatem and walks over to rub Snape's shoulders.
Snape doesn't acknowledge him, but that, too, is part of the agreement. A need for acknowledgement would be a sign of insecurity, and Lupin is not in this relationship out of insecurity. Insecurity would mean that he would have to watch Snape's eyes for each flicker of approval and pleasure, would have to spend his time pleasing Snape instead of thinking about Sirius, would have to worry about Snape's safety instead of ever worrying about himself - oh, insecurity would be easy, yes.
But it's not part of the agreement.
IV.
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
Snape's bones delineate his feet and toes, slender lines just covered by pale, waxy skin, lean and taut and suggestive. His ankles are thin and receding. Just as pale are his calves, thin as though stretched by some torturer's rack and specked with vividly black hair. Snape's knees disrupt the lines of his legs with dense, cobbled skin, toughened by hours of kneeling on flagstones, but the delicately sensitive underside of his knees is a secret for Lupin's hands alone. A hard valley between muscle and muscle climbs up the sides of his skinny thighs, narrow and articulate enough to guide a sliding finger.
Snape's hips jut out awkwardly, bruising Lupin when he leans too long on their extrusions, but his buttocks and stomach feel puffy-soft, like an aging mushroom or an overripe peach. In his stomach's center lies his navel, misshapen, purposeless, musty-smelling and secret. Two grooves between hip and stomach point down, angular, toward his cock, and the skin there is so white and virgin that the slightest fluttering fingertips elicit gasps. The base of Snape's cock hides in a mass of rough, kinky hair, a harsh contrast to the vein-laced member with skin that reminds Lupin of the soft-slick-solid feel of melting ice.
Snape's chest rises from his stomach in a battlefield of ribs and old scars, but when Lupin runs his lips over it with his eyes closed, all he feels is the sparse, mossy hair that converges in a wide patch between Snape's tight, wrinkled nipples. The firm curve of Snape's shoulders slides into the secret hollow of his armpits, dense with damp hair and tasting salty-sour when Lupin licks them to hear Snape's groan. His upper arms knot with unexpected muscles, sinewy from hours of cauldron-stirring, melting into his strong elbows. The forearms: Lupin cannot see Snape's forearms as a body part rather than a canvas, and he cannot examine the writhing snake-skull Mark on Snape's left arm for long before his eyes shudder and jerk onward to the slender, tightly-defined wrist. Snape's hands, like his feet, are elongated, seductive, and crackling with silent promises.
Snape's collarbones push out starkly, gliding from his shoulders to the round hollow at the base of his throat. His neck is strong and straight, with a large, jutting Adam's apple, and Lupin sometimes forgets that he flinches whenever it's touched. The back of Snape's neck remains veiled by the thin, lank hair that falls carelessly from his over-oily scalp. Snape's sallow forehead is divided by a deep widow's peak, the black angle pointing down to his protruding nose, hooked in the middle and dwarfing the narrow, pinkish lips below it. Snape's cheeks are high and hollow, shadowed with the stubble that he sometimes goes days without shaving away. A mole lies just above the outer corner of Snape's left eyebrow. His eyebrows and eyelashes are thin, precise, and dark.
Snape loves to stare at Lupin with eyes that shine black, black, glittering black, clothing him in arrogance even when nude, but Snape does not like to be watched.
V.
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
Snape has never said that he loves Lupin, and he has said it a thousand times.
He says it in the flash of his eyes when he subtracts points from Slytherin seventh-years for disrespect toward "the werewolf." He says it with the Ceylon and Earl Grey tea blend that he prepares every evening, exactly as Lupin likes it, even though Lupin knows Snape prefers Darjeeling. He says it in the stretched lines across his forehead as he warns Lupin not to get killed on his Order errands. He says it on the nights that Lupin is tired of the Howlers and the threats and the letters to Dumbledore, when he firmly holds Lupin's hand until Lupin closes his eyes and leans forward and feels Snape's arms tighten around his back.
Snape says it when he watches Lupin undress, and his eyes are dark and wide, and his lips are pressed to whiteness, and his breath catches hoarsely, and Lupin cannot help but whisper "I love you, Severus."
Lupin has said a thousand times that he loves Snape, and sometimes he doesn't mind that Snape never replies. Sometimes he thinks that if Snape ever said "I love you" outright, the words would leave Lupin breathless and speechless, because nothing he could say would be precious enough to reciprocate.
VI.
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
Christmas morning.
Snape's dungeon door opens, and Lupin steps into the chill, damp study lit by a feeble fire. On the mantle above the fireplace, a braided wreath of holly and silver sits where Lupin left it last week, still the only decoration in the room. Lupin is tempted to conjure some mistletoe for the doorway, but thinks better of it. "Merry Christmas, Severus," he says.
"Lupin," Snape acknowledges tersely. He is already dressed in his usual black robes, seated in a green-upholstered chair that faces the muted fire, but his eyes flash black and thirsty when he looks at Lupin.
"I have a gift for you," Lupin smiles, and he proffers a parcel neatly wrapped in bright crimson and gold.
Snape takes it with a dry, amused smile, then pulls out a heavy bundle in silver and matte green. "Merry Christmas," he adds quietly.
The humming hiss of bows untied and the rustle of paper unfolded. Within Lupin's package is a book - no, not a book, a pristine first-edition Matthews translation of Muju's Past Accounts of Tengu and Demons. Lupin opens it instinctively, running his fingers down the clean ivory paper and skimming through pages of grotesque, crisply inked images. "This is lovely," he murmurs to himself, a broad grin widening on his face, before looking up at Snape. "Thanks so much, Severus. It's a beautiful book, and I know it'll be useful when I start on Eastern Dark Arts with the upper years."
Snape is busy examining his own gift, a small, dark wooden box with patterns swirling like quicksilver over and around each side. "It's a transportation box," Lupin explains. "For gathering or buying delicate ingredients. Charmed to maintain a completely stable environment, and once you key the box to your blood, it won't open to anyone else."
"Thank you," Snape says in simple reply, but Lupin can tell from the way his eyes gleam at the quicksilver that he is pleased.
Lupin seats himself on one arm of Snape's chair, setting down the book and smiling at Snape's snort of annoyance. "Would you prefer I chose your lap, dear?" he says lightly, rewarded by another snort.
"Judging by the number of couples I passed last night snogging under mistletoe, I feared far worse," Snape says dryly, which from him, Lupin thinks, is as good as an invitation.
"Well, far be it from me to let our students outstrip their professors," he replies smugly, then twists around so he straddles Snape and, before Snape can retort, leans forward quickly to kiss him full on the lips.
Lupin isn't sure whether the rumbling in Snape's throat is a laugh or a sigh, but it doesn't especially matter, as Snape is kissing him back and running his tongue over Lupin's teeth and wrapping his arms around Lupin, and kissing Severus Snape feels like being battered by briny waves on a moonless night at sea. The room is still too cold, and Lupin's legs are starting to cramp, and Snape probably doesn't like kissing any more than before, but it's Christmas, and Lupin is content.
VII.
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
Some mornings, especially as the full moon draws closer, Lupin wakes to an uneasy melancholy and finds Snape dressed and reading in his study. When Lupin pads over to the armchair and touches Snape's shoulder, Snape flinches and does not speak. After four months of these scattered days, showering and dressing in cold solitude, Lupin asked Snape whether something had happened during the night.
Snape paused before answering and did not meet Lupin's eyes. "Nothing important. You were dreaming."
Lupin searched his mind and discovered nothing but the hollowness of forgotten sensations. "I don't remember what I dreamed."
Snape's eyes darted sharply to Lupin's, searching, then returned to rest blankly on the text of his book. "You called out Black's name. It's not the first time."
Involuntarily, Lupin's hand clenched, so sudden that he was sure Snape could feel it. "I'm sorry, Severus," he whispered, and he hoped that Snape would not ask what he was sorry for.
VIII.
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
Just before the acrid bitterness of Wolfsbane Potion floods Lupin's mouth, Lupin always tastes an odd note of sweetness, something reminiscent of tangerine and pine-sap. For that one instant, when he tastes it, he thinks despite himself that this time, perhaps, the Potion will taste pleasant. It never does, naturally, and eventually Lupin cannot eat tangerines without wincing in anticipation.
Most days, when Snape gives Lupin his Wolfsbane, he stays to watch while Lupin drinks it, and the pained flicker in his eyes as he watches Lupin grimace is what convinces Lupin that there's absolutely no way to improve the taste. The third evening of January's regimen, Lupin was already exhausted from the moon's pull when Snape brought him his goblet. As the first hint of sweet-tang swept over his tongue, his throat rebelled and gagged, sending the entire goblet (and that day's dinner) pouring back up and onto the floor. In a swift flicker, Snape was behind Lupin, holding him while he retched.
Lupin pulled himself back into his chair, coughing and casting his eyes around for something to wash away the taste. "I'm sorry," he muttered.
"You hardly need apologize for a reaction beyond your control." A pause. "Would you like something to drink?"
"There's Butterbeer in the bottom of the large cabinet, I think, but I can fetch it," Lupin said, pushing himself up from the chair.
Snape shot him a withering glare. "You will remain seated. I don't fancy a repeat of that incident."
As Snape strode to the cabinet and pulled out a Butterbeer bottle, Lupin sank back down, a slight smile on his lips. Snape opened the bottle and gave it to Lupin, and without hesitation the latter washed the creamy, thick liquid down his throat, quaffing it silently for a few minutes. "Much better," he finally smiled wanly.
Snape nodded. "There ought to still be enough for this month's cycle," he said, almost to himself. "I'll fetch a new draught from the dungeons, along with an anti-nausea agent." His eyes focused back on Lupin. "Stay here."
Once the precise clip of his footsteps had faded, Lupin sank into his chair and thought of tangerines. Bitter-sweet rind and tart nectar within, and he still believed that if he ate enough of them, he could forget about the bitterness of association.
IX.
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
"Hello, Harry. What can I -"
"You're sleeping with Professor Snape, aren't you."
". . . Yes. Yes, Harry, I am."
"I thought you cared about Sirius."
"I did. I - I do, Harry, I miss him every bloody day, you know that."
"Well, Snape got Sirius killed! How can you just sleep with that ugly, greasy GIT when everybody knows that if he hadn't been so mean, Sirius would still be alive?"
"Professor Snape didn't get Sirius killed. Sirius chose to go, and I was the one who let him. Snape is a vital part of the Order, and he is also your professor, and he deserves a bit more respect than you're giving him."
"So you think that if you had died, Sirius could be having sex with Snape right now, and you'd be okay with that?"
"Harry, if I'd died, I would be dead, gone. Look, I loved Sirius as much as you did, maybe even more, but he's gone. He's gone. Nobody could ever replace him, but I can love someone else as well, and I do. I know that it's hard to understand."
"Oh yeah? I think I understand it pretty well - sir. Okay, you can't tell anyone this, all right, but there was this girl I used to like. She was dating Cedric when Voldemort killed him, and last year she went out with me a little bit, but every time we'd talk, she'd talk about Cedric and his death, and she'd start crying. Well, I think I finally figured out why she wanted to date me - I was Harry Potter, the boy who was there instead of Cedric, and that was it."
"That's not fair, Harry. Just because you don't see certain sides of Snape -"
"Well, what do you see?"
"Severus is very thoughtful, though he doesn't like people to think so. He's protective of the people he cares about. He's got a dry but amusing sense of humor. He's quite intelligent and well-read. Look, Harry, I know that whatever I tell you won't be enough. You two may not like each other, but at the very least, I'd like for you to respect my choice. I - I love him."
"No, you don't, and I don't think it's fair to Sirius to just replace him, like he's some old robe that got torn. But I guess that whatever I tell you won't be enough, anyway. Bye, Professor Lupin."
"Harry - "
X.
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
Lupin needs Snape like he needs to howl at the full moon, even under Wolfsbane: a tenseness that clogs his veins until every muscle shudders with the pressure, forcing its way out like hissing vapor from a kettle until he tilts up his wolf-neck and howls in defeat.
Lupin wants Snape like he wants chocolate after a Dementor, because you never really taste the velvety cocoa hues when your skin is trembling with despair; all you know is that gobbling down that chocolate bar so fast that it isn't even melted when it slides down your throat is the only thing that can let you start breathing again.
Lupin holds Snape like he holds his wand, gently and reverently, though when he's angry the grip tightens. He still remembers what Ollivander said twenty-five years ago about the wand choosing the wizard, but he never liked to think about it; personifying the wand made him into its master, and Lupin has never believed that he would use someone like that.
Lupin loves Snape like he loves the moon. Snape has seen Lupin's boggart, and he doesn't believe Lupin when he says he loves it, but Lupin does. Nothing but the waxing moon can paralyze him with such powerlessness, and nothing but the waning moon can overcome him with such relief.
XI.
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
The first night that Lupin touched Snape - really touched him - was September and chill. They sat alone in the staffroom, cold half-empty teacups between them, and Snape's fingers pressed hard against each other as he spoke swiftly about Celtic and Aztec blood magic, and Lupin played the game where he watched Snape's eyes until one of them looked away.
Then a shudder passed through Snape, and face turned faintly paler. Lupin didn't have to see his right hand clutch toward his left arm or wait for the muttered "I have to go," because he could see Snape's eyes, and he knew that look of fear-anticipation-despair from when his own mirror reflected the waxing moon.
So it was that, even as "I have -" emerged from Snape's lips, Lupin leaned over fragile teacups and muffled those lips against his shoulder, holding Snape in an embrace so tight he thought his arms would bruise on the other man's thin, bony back. Lupin felt Snape shuddering violently in his arms, and the spilled tea soaked his robe cold and wet. He realized that his lips were pressed desperately against Snape's lank hair and that Snape's arms clutched him tighter still.
They held each other in silence, until Snape's left arm shook so violently that Lupin whispered, "I'll be here when you come back."
"Thank you," Snape replied, but his limbs had already stiffened, withdrawing from the intimacy. He pulled himself backward and rose from his chair, muttering a drying charm at the tea stain.
When he reached the door, he turned suddenly on his heel. "I will return."
Neither of them needed to hear him complete the sentence aloud: "- to you."
XII.
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
Only once have Lupin and Snape had sex outside Hogwarts. Snape knew that a "cleansing" was planned for that Friday night, but the Dark Lord never said beforehand which family had been marked; always, Snape and a dozen others were sent to watch houses in pairs, waiting for a message that their house, their family, would be the one to go.
At eleven o'clock, Lupin found Snape with Crabbe at Leonard Lovegood's bungalow, concealed so well by shadow and spell that he had to track them by faint scent. He waited until he breathed the jolt of adrenaline-fear that meant the Dark Mark had signalled, then aimed his wand at the shadows and fired a Stunning Spell the moment he saw them move.
One thud and a breath of dust around invisible skin. The living one - he took another whiff - definitely Snape.
Both of them knew the drill: no words and no names outside Hogwarts, because words and names were so much easier to extract from memories. No messages. No mentions of spying. In fact, by a strict reading of the Order's code, Lupin should have hexed Snape and left them both in silence.
He didn't.
He didn't say "You would've killed him, wouldn't you," either, because both of them knew the rules, and it didn't matter that they'd known Leonard since he was a quiet Ravenclaw who drew fantastic dragons soaring around his homework assignments.
Instead, he pulled Snape back into the shadows and muttered a new Concealment Charm, then followed it up with a Silencing Charm and as many wards as he could think of - blocks against scent, movement, heat, Legilimency - in breathless succession. The spells blanketed their corner in quiet, and Lupin could neither see Snape's lips part for oxygen (though he remembered them) nor hear his suppressed, desperate groan (though he knew): and when they touched and fingers on sensitized skin became their only contact, when the familiar rhythms of thrusting and stroking became their only language, Lupin could cry into Snape's shoulder "I hate this, I hate this, I hate this," and he could know that Snape understood.
XIII.
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
Even Hogwarts' stone walls cannot insulate Lupin's bedroom from the chill March winds. The window's frosted glass glows with the setting moon, and Lupin is keening softly as his wolf-skin resists the reemerging man. On the other side of the room, Snape sits precisely where he sat all night. Though his shoulders no longer betray terror, his white, clenched hands keep Lupin from pacing any closer. He murmurs to himself, as he has all night, and Lupin hears snatches of reagent lists, prime numbers multiplied against each other, and curse-countercurse chains.
Lupin can feel the moon impact the horizon as a physical shock, a plunge into deep water, and he dimly feels his snout stretching in a scream that ripples his arching back before everything dissolves into tearing and breaking, the excruciating piercing of different bones and hair and muscle springing into existence, and with eyeballs that ripple as they remould he sees the moon still mocking him, and the agony feels everlastingly long, until - warmth.
Warmth.
Lupin's fingertips are the first thing to move, curling instinctively until he can open his eyes to a suddenly limited field of vision. He feels: Snape's arms around his chest, and Snape's body pressed against his back, and Snape's face bent to rest in the crook of his neck. Snape is kneeling on the floor by the window, cradling him, shaking.
With an awkward twist of his neck, Lupin can look up and into Snape's eyes, which are half-closed and broken. "Thank you for staying," Lupin says softly, but Snape shakes his head.
"I had to stay, fool. I cannot allow myself to continue fearing you if I intend to love you as I do."
And the words are so short and quiet and grudging that Lupin cannot believe how devastatingly they break him.
finis.
Notes: I don't have enough words to thank everyone who helped this come out. nancyrose, amaralen, hobaggins, rosesanguina, maybethemoon, bookofjude: your advice, corrections, and support were invaluable. peccavium, thank you for a fabulous beta WAY above and beyond the call of duty. potions_master and lupercus, you inspire me. S., this is because of you.