FIC: The story as Lupin tells it, Pt. 2, R
FIC: The story as Lupin tells it, Pt 2 Author: Evegenia Summary: Part two of this. Lupin and Snape, trapped, full moon, no wolfsbane. As you can see below, this part is all flashback and introspection. I'm thinking there will be four parts. Warnings: Part one is rather violent; this part has both a very little sex in it and has allusion to people being sixteen and having sex.
Severus cried easily, I 'd always known that about him. When I was a boy it frightened me and made me angry. I worked so hard not to cry, not to attract attention to myself, and this skinny pale boy with the ill-fitting clothes seemed to endanger me somehow, by proxy, in the ease with which he let himself make those noises in front of everyone.
Sirius and Jamie made a game out of it, our first year. They'd twist his arm hard or take his homework, then let him go or give it back as if it didn't matter, after they'd seen him cry. Purely about power, or something more unpleasant.
I didn't take part. And Peter hung back. We were both in a strange position, afraid that they'd start on us if they didn't have Severus. Peter...
After our first year, Severus would still cry--I don't think it's something he can control--but he was cold in spite of it. I'd seen him on his back, tears running down into the dirt, clawing and cursing at Sirius, who had him by the shoulders and beat his head on the ground.
I'm ashamed of those years. I didn't understand, since Jamie and Peter and Sirius were my whole world, and since our class was a small one--I didn't understand that there were other ways to grow up. I didn't understand how far we went. I thought it was normal, that you either beat or were yourself beaten. Our head of house was a strong, green-eyed, ruddy woman who coached Quidditch and was always telling us "buck up, old chap ", surely the last person in the empire to talk about playing with a straight bat and keeping a stiff upper lip. Boys would be boys, she must have thought, no matter what she saw.
When I taught I did not allow those things. Even so I wondered--what wasn't I seeing? Was there another Severus among my students, secretive and ashamed and unhappy?
I've seen him cry often enough as an adult, always in anger.
Although we don't speak much, we're often in each other's company. We keep the same hours. Arthur and Molly sleep like logs; Sirius can sleep through a drunken Moody-Charlie singalong. But both Severus and I sleep little and lightly, rising early when the house is cool and still, reading late until it's cool and still again.
At breakfast he drinks tea and reads journals. Potions, generally. I assume he publishes, although he's never said. He reads very intently, or perhaps he prefers to leave no possible openings for conversation. But on one occasion, one Monday in term time, he banged his tea cup into the saucer and slopped tea on the table. I looked up. He had pushed his chair back and folded his paper. He glared at me. His face was flushed and I could see that tears stood in his eyes. "I hate this bloody country," he said. "It just goes on and on." He got up, slamming the door and startling Molly.
I looked at the paper. It was a grubby little labor newsletter featuring an article on school-leavers up north. That was the first year the Ministry really cut the fees assistance scheme and there was a long article about people sending their children to Muggle council schools because they couldn't pay for anything else. Severus is from up north, of course. Sirius used to rag him about his accent.
"I wanted my boys to do better than I did." There was an interview with a man in a flat cap, a man with one of those deprived, post-war faces that you don't really see any more. "I say to myself that at least they're in work, there's many who aren't. But it wasn't what their mam and I wanted." I read the caption on the photograph--Albert Shunpike, pipefitter. His sons Stanley, a bus conductor; Frederick, storeman; Thomas, hotel clerk.
***
In a way I've liked Severus since we were children. At school I felt strange and ashamed about it, because if I liked him shouldn't I try to stop Jamie and Sirius from messing him about? Shouldn't I be able to pick one side or the other? It was treacherous to sympathize with him and say nothing; my school stories were very clear on that point. Honor required loyalty. Boys were either good or bad and it was obvious which was which.
I liked that he was brilliant--which he was, and which I valued. I liked that he would imitate Sirius's posh accent, something I sneakingly sometimes wanted to do. He'd say something obscene, something that sounded very witty to me at twelve, and he'd hit off Sirius's voice perfectly. "I say, old thing, is that your broom up your arse?"
I liked that he so resolutely followed his own course, although I wonder now whether that was because he felt he had no choice. Or because he had no choice--what would have changed if he'd been different? We wouldn't have let him be different. He seemed very brave to me, although he was tall and spindly. He always hit back, even when it made things worse for him. He was much braver than I; he stood up to Sirius and I knew I never could.
I liked him even when we were sixteen and the rumor went round that he was queer, that he'd actually been seen doing something with an adult, a grown man. Who, or whether the story was anything more than malice, I never knew. I knew he was queer, though, because after that he'd say so if asked.
"Fancy me, then, do you?" he'd say. "Can't do any better, I suppose, old thing." That was purely his style, contempt and self-loathing.
Everyone minded that he was queer, and made it known that they knew, and made it known that they minded. No one minded that I was, and no one said anything about it. Jamie and Sirius and Peter all knew. They were nice to to the one boy I brought round, all the while pretending that they didn't notice anything.
Then we left school and there was the war. Jamie and Lily and Peter were dead, Sirius in prison. I hardly knew what to do, and I couldn't find real work. I traveled, did odd jobs for Dumbledore's connections, lived with my family. I heard a little from time to time about James and Lily's son, and I knew that Severus had been a spy for our side and was teaching at Hogwarts.
When I came back he was not friendly, but he brewed wolfsbane for me and that was a great kindness. He did everything well along those lines. I'd had wolfsbane from other brewers which left me sick and unable to eat for days; his was, comparatively, easy to swallow.
I was curious about him and we talked a little, occasionally. He was bitter, and all his courage seemed to have settled into stubbornness. But there was still something in him, something almost of optimism in the way he brewed and studied, the way he'd talk awkwardly but eagerly about a book or the paper. He had opinions. It was as if he was preparing himself for something.
But he was a bad teacher. He was cruel and he was afraid, I saw it. And then there was Neville and my terrible judgment. I had hated to see the boy so afraid; I wanted passionately not to see my students trapped by self-doubt. And I was angry with Severus. I felt, obscurely, that he'd let me down by doing something so petty to a child. He shouldn't need to bully a student.
I'd been thinking of him quite a bit, you see.
After that came all the rest, and he never spoke to me. In passing, perhaps. He brewed the wolfsbane and gave it to me, perfectly polite and impassive. It continued to arrive wherever I was, foul-smelling and effective. He refined it, too, so that the transformations hurt less from month to month. I didn't thank him.
****
I was letting a room from a niece of Dumbledore's. Sirius was back, nothing like the boy I'd known, and I was glad enough of that. I'd grown to dislike that boy, and to dislike who I'd been when I was his friend. The man was...uneven. Feverishly bright, joking and dancing with Rosmerta. Quiet, closed-off, angry, insomniac.
Dumbledore's niece had only one guest bedroom, which we shared. I'd offered to sleep on the sofa, but Sirius told me he'd be just as happy with a camp-bed---told me in such a way that it was clear he didn't want to be left alone. He had nightmares. The first night, I woke to see him lying wide-eyed in the dim room, the blankets on the floor. They get round me, Moony, he said, like ropes. The second and third nights he tipped the camp-bed over fighting something in his dreams. I suggested that he come in with me since the bed was a double, and he made the sort of jokes you'd expect, but made them flatly and half-heartedly. In the middle of the night he'd put his arm around me and fall deeply asleep; in the morning he'd be carefully stretched out on his side of the bed.
One night we both woke at the same time. He looked at me and tightened his arm around my shoulders, resting one hand unmistakably on my hip. "All right, Moony?" he said.
He wanted someone to touch him, someone he could trust. It was strange. A casual affair is one thing, but sleeping with a friend another, an off-kilter thing. But of course I hadn't had--anybody--in quite a time, and he...even marred by prison Sirius is very handsome.
We talked a great deal about school and even a bit about Severus, and he told me something uncomfortable.