RETROFEST ENTRY Title: THE ADDICTION 03/14 Rating: NC-17 Author:countesszero Beta:schemingreader Pairings: SS/ES, SS/RL, SS/SB, RL/NT Genre: AU, Drama, Tragedy, Romance, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort Challenge: Retrofest 2009 Prompt No. 05 Canon: Compliant with PS, CoS and 90% PoA compliant. Wordcount: Approximately 3500 words
Summary: When Harry, Hermione, Ron stun Severus in the Shrieking Shack, they don't know there is a Sleeping Beauty Spell on the bed already. It interacts and Snape wakes up a woman. Remus who already is attracted to Snape finds this even more intriguing and begins to woo Snape.
Warnings: Incest, Heterosexual sex, (Child) Abuse, Drug abuse, Alcoholism, Mental illness, Non consensual sex, Sex with dubious consent, Gender switch, Attempted suicide, Character death (no main character)
A/N: At this point I would like to express my gratitude to schemingreader who has despite her very busy life supported me greatly in my first attempt of writing fanfiction.
Disclaimer: Severus Snape, Remus Lupin and all associated characters from the Harry Potter universe are the property of J.K. Rowling. The author is making no profit by this story.
As it was to be expected the ministry also sent a team to investigate the Shrieking Shack where Snape's transformation - according to the children - had begun. Within an hour the investigators detected Pettigrew's magic signature. The assumption so far was that Pettigrew had spelled the Shrieking Shack after Black's escape to change his own form into another Animagus form.
Unfortunately the spell had been designed for an Animagus and cast by one. Since Snape was not an Animagus the spell had affected him in an unforeseeable way. So far so ... unsatisfying.
Severus received a summons to appear as a witness at the MLE investigation but could not provide much information as he had been unconscious. He didn't mention Black or Lupin's presence at the Shack and to his relief nobody asked too many questions about this.
Later he and Dumbledore were invited privately to Fudge's pompous office. Since Pettigrew had been declared dead twelve years ago, and Black had been punished for a crime that supposedly Pettigrew was responsible for - without a trial - the ministry saw itself in a precarious situation. To admit their errors now - in such times - would do more harm than it would do any good Fudge assured them.
"You understand that the findings of this investigation have to remain confidential." Fudge said, unusually blunt. He looked strained and tired.
Dumbledore said nothing and so Severus remained silent, too. He noted that Fudge avoided looking at him.
"I will call all my teams who are currently working on the Black case back. We will also terminate the manhunt, but there won't be a public announcement. His innocence isn't proven by now anyway." Fudge continued.
Dumbledore considered this and said:"If Black is found he will remain under my supervision. I will take responsibility for him. What about Pettigrew?"
If they knew about Pettigrew and his animagus form it was almost impossible for them not to know about Black, too, Severus realized.
"Very well, take Black for all I care. But we want Pettigrew." Fudge said immediately. "His capture is ... crucial."
"Will Black ever be cleared of the false accusations that robbed him of twelve years of his life?" Dumbledore inquired.
Fudge looked at him and after a while he turned his back on them and said: "Severus Snape's case would deserve more public attention under different circumstances. After all this is an irreversible spell. In such a case Severus Snape would have to register anew with the Ministry, and we would have to put him under quarantine for at least six further months. After that every movement of his would be under constant surveillance, his Gringotts account would be periodically monitored, to prevent any illegal activities. After all he could have also be an accomplice of Pettigrew - both of them former members of the same terrorist organization - the gender transformation and removal of the Dark Mark could have been a ... step in an elaborate scheme. You know how the people feel about Severus Snape and his loyalties. We could rehabilitate Black now but maybe you can imagine how this scandal would affect the ministry's ability of protecting Mr. Snapes privacy in a negative way?"
He turned back to Dumbledore. "I hope that answers your question?" he inquired almost jovially.
Severus rolled his eyes inwardly but said nothing.
"Do you at least then acknowledge that the return of Voldemort is ... imminent." asked Dumbledore gently not even acknowledging the inanity of Fudge's threat.
"I do no such thing." Fudge replied frostily. He looked at both of them now, then he addressed Dumbledore once more.
"And by the way, Lupin has to go. The presence of a werewolf is not acceptable at Hogwarts."
Severus closed his eyes for an instant. So many times in this year had he tried to reveal Lupin's identity. And now here it was - the opportunity he had wanted so long - but he could not feel any sense of triumph or even satisfaction.
"Excuse me, Headmaster, but please allow me." Severus said suddenly, surprising himself. "I have been providing the Wolfsbane potion since Lupin began his assignment at Hogwarts. With his support I have been able to improve it considerably. To this point we are still conducting research to perfect the recipe and to reach our end goal."
Dumbledore looked at him from the side, surprise in his features, a very rare expression that Severus savored.
"What would that be? The end goal?" asked Fudge apparently intrigued against his will.
"Lupin and I are currently working on a Wolfsbane that reduces the transformation to only twice or three times a year."
"Interesting." Fudge mumbled. "Please do update me on the progress of the project. Very well," he said louder. "He may stay until the end of the term. Under strict supervision."
"It is only three more months until his term is finished." Dumbledore said. Their deal was done and sealed and there was nothing more to talk about. When they left Fudge cleared his voice.
"Any ... accidents ... will be solely your responsibility."
"Of course." Dumbledore said, then closed the door behind him.
"Severus." Lupin called out.
Without turning around, Severus said, "We are not on first name terms."
"Please call me Remus, by all means." Lupin said cheerfully.
He did not know why but he stopped and faced Lupin.
"If there is something you wish to discuss with me you can do so in my office hours." he hissed.
Lupin said nothing. He didn't stop smiling.
He pulled Severus' hand to his face and sniffed. Severus watched, fascinated against his will. Lupin inhaled, closing his eyes. Then he tentatively licked a pale finger tip and kissed it reverently as if kissing something ... sacred.
Whatever Severus wanted to say, remained unsaid. Inside his chest his heart was beating twice as fast.
Lupin dropped his hand and strolled back to the Great Hall.
Later the evening of the same day Severus took a long, hot bath. He told himself that he just needed to be clean after Lupin's touch and when he sank into the hot water he felt his mind clear up, the confusion melt away. Exhaustion overwhelmed him and he drifted off to sleep.
He woke up startled when he realized that he started touching himself. Sometimes when he was almost asleep his hands moved on their own volition. But he never allowed himself to climax - he woke up and he stopped. He could not and would not touch himself when he was awake.
Days, weeks, a month had gone by now and by the time he had his first period he had known that the transformation was irreversible. It started as an uncomfortable stretching pain in his lower abdomen first, then it had felt as if rusty nails were scraping his insides, and the outcome had been a ridiculously small amount of blood. Biologically he was a woman, with vagina, clitoris, uterus and a complete set of perfectly functioning ovaries as well.
All this unknown, alien, soft flesh. And inside, inside he was also different now.
He didn't touch himself.
Poppy had told him that theoretically he could conceive but practically there was a high chance of him losing the fetus in the first three months, or the child developing magical-genetic deformities or being stillborn. Of all male pregnancies four percent ended with the carrier bleeding to death during labor or an cesarean and thirteen percent suffered injuries they never recovered from.
Obviously not a desirable outcome.
She had scribbled a recipe for a contraceptive potion on a parchment.
"I have some of it in my own stocks, or I can give you a prescription but I assume you would like to brew it yourself."
"You assume correctly."
In the end he couldn't say why he had brewed and ingested the potion that had left him bent over his work table, gasping, as the liquid made its way through his body, magically poisoning the uterus and sealing the ovaries. It was not that he was planning to have intercourse. And the pain was excruciating.
Next time he promised himself to take it in bed after a meal and a nice little dose of his draught.
No fetus for him. At least, that was something. Of course if he were still male, he wouldn't have to worry about that at all.
Actually a pity. The ability to carry and create life was in his eyes the only advantage a female body had. He shrugged and suddenly amused himself with mental images of himself pregnant. And who could be the father? Maybe Lupin, who had suddenly developed such an interest in him. He could give birth to a litter of werewolf cubs, and then he would forever be dusting wolf hair off his worktable and his other furniture, maybe armed with a pink feather duster, wearing a starched, white apron over his robes, exchanging family recipes with Molly Weasley over the floo.
Severus shook his head at himself suppressing a giggle. (A giggle?) His medication had started to affect him differently. He needed less at once, but in shorter intervals. He had taken to carry a small vial with him and he had entirely stopped wasting time in diluting it with water. He put three drops on his tongue directly after the meals, and it stopped him from getting restless and irritated. Instead he was warm, and nothing got to him anymore, or at least not as much as it would otherwise. The voices in his head faded to a soft slow murmur in the background of his thoughts, like dead leaves rustling on the ground. The world lost it's sharpness and almost felt like home.
He leaned back again, getting drowsy and sleepy and the warm water was lapping at his chest. His left hand started caressing his nipple again. He felt something sweet and hot and warm between his legs.
Lupin bent over his exposed chest in the infirmary. He took his nipple between his lips, rolled it gently before sucking it.
Please don't leave me. You are all I have.
Severus eyes snapped open. He removed his hands from his body and climbed out of the bath tub. Carefully avoiding touching his body again, he dried and dressed himself for the night. He looked for the vial and felt a stab of panic and anger when he didn't find it in the folds of his teaching robes.
Damn Dumbledore. Or Poppy must have taken it. Or Maybe Potter, hidden underneath his Invisibility cloak. Or Lupin.
Then he remembered that he had changed robes after lunch today. (But why had he forgotten?) And there it was, and he unstoppered the lid and quickly put three drops immediately on his tongue.
The taste was bitter and sharp not unlike orange peels, lingered in his mouth, then numbed his tongue and his gum.
His thoughts wandered off to Lupin again. He was afraid of him but he liked to think of him.
Lupin was the only one who could cause this strange twisted feeling in his chest, the pain in his chest that once awakened would not stop for days.
Everyone treated him differently no matter how they tried to conceal it. Even Dumbledore was confused about how to treat him now. Only Lupin embraced Severus' new gender with a readiness that was actually disconcerting, but also helpful.
And then ... Lupin had always been beautiful to Severus. There it was, the truth, and it didn't hurt at all to admit it to himself.
The first time he had seen Lupin, in the train he had smiled at him, a welcoming friendly smile, like Lily's, and he had felt this surge of hope that Hogwarts would change everything, that finally he would have friends. And then Black had raised his voice. Black's loud, obnoxious, mean voice had drained the warmth of Lupin's little smile, and Severus was alone again, an unwanted skinny child in mended, old robes.
Throughout the entire school years Black had overshadowed everyone in his proximity. The young, unscarred, undamaged Black had been a beautiful boy, like a Greek hero. Where Lupin's prettiness bordered on effeminate, Black was masculine, noble, striking. Even at fourteen, he had already looked grown up, and successfully dated older girls ("successfully" meaning here that he had gotten laid quite regularly) - while the other half of the female school population had fallen for James Potter's boyish looks.
And so nobody had bothered to look at Lupin's quiet beauty all these years.
But Severus had seen his beauty. And it was his luck really, in retrospect, that Black and Potter had been so much more popular in the schooldays. Lupin had grown up at the sidelines, never too sated, too arrogant, never too cocky - not like Black who had been accustomed to the finer things, to admiration, to girls following him around and not like Potter, who so clearly had exuded the air of someone used to being loved and fawned over and perpetually forgiven no matter which rules he broke. Potter and Black had been spoiled and damaged in their youth. Look, how they had ended up: one dead, the other on the run, a stray dog, after rotting in prison for twelve years. At their short encounter in the Shrieking Shack Black had looked almost as crazed as his cousin Bella.
As a boy he had sometimes caught himself wandering after Lupin, trailing after him, because merely looking at Lupin laughing with his friends, had alleviated his own loneliness. When Lupin was smiling at Black, Severus was bathing in the warmth of Lupin's smile. Sometimes he had wondered how it would feel if Lupin would look at him that way. But in those days Lupin never did. Whenever Severus passed him and his friends, Lupin's face turned into an impassive, neutral mask. And even when Lupin gave him his secret glances - when he thought Severus didn't notice - it was never affectionate, but full of cold curiosity.
Suddenly he found himself in the living room sitting on the floor. How did he get there? Lately strange things happened to him. Was he getting forgetful?
When he began to clean up his work table he felt the wards hum before he heard the knock. Still confused he opened the door, expecting Dumbledore.
It was Lupin, of course.
He didn't blink in surprise. He merely looked at him, as blankly as possible. It was not really a bad thing that the wolf was here. The way he was now thinking of him, almost constantly, he might as well have summoned him here. And Lupin looked more like an apparition. Maybe he was.
Lupin's eyes seemed darker than usual. When Severus moved to shut the door, Lupin's hand gripped the wooden door and kept it open. He never moved his eyes from Severus face, and Severus, usually on the giving not the receiving end of scrutinizing, dark glares found the experience uncomfortable.
He could not break into Lupin's mind. When Severus left off, frustrated, Lupin actually grinned.
Lupin leaned casually against the door frame. "I'm not good at Legilimency but I am not bad at Occlumency. I thought you knew that."
He paused, studying Severus enraged face with amusement. It seemed to Severus that he could hear the other man's heartbeat. Maybe it was his own.
"The Wolfsbane will be ready by tomorrow night," Severus said, somewhat at a loss.
"Splendid," Lupin said.
"Excuse me, I am quite busy," said Severus and moved to close the door again.
"Thank you."
"Excuse me?"
"Thank you for convincing them, at the ministry, to let me stay another three months. Dumbledore told me."
He reached out and touched Severus' neck. Severus could not move away. He could barely breathe.
Lupin put a hand on his shoulder and kissed him, and his kiss was almost chaste. Only in the end Lupin sucked a bit on Severus lips.
"Let me in." he said simply.
All playfulness was gone. There was no teasing, no hidden smile, not even the pretense of the gentle politeness that Lupin usually cultivated.
And just like that Severus let him in.
There were days when his real mother emerged from underneath the layers of bitterness and alcohol-induced self-pity. This, Severus decided early on, was Eileen Prince, the person she must have been ... once when she had been still young. Before she met Tobias Snape.
Eileen Prince rose early and took a long time in the bathroom, humming to herself, taking her bath, washing her hair and curling it. She emerged from the bath, with red lipstick on and painted cheeks and kissed Severus awake, smelling of damascus rose. She opened the curtains of his rooms to let in the gray light of morning, but when she did the room seemed to fill with the brightest sun rays.
She took some time to spell his trousers clean (He had two pairs, grey and dark blue) and even ironed them so for a while he was dressed in his own - fitting - clothes. Then she ruffled his hair and smiled and sang, tunes from a world he hadn't come to know yet.
Eileen Prince never screamed at him. Her voice was soft and sweet like liquid chocolate and her kisses were motherly and not tainted and twisted.
He thought - or preferred to think - that Eileen Prince had no recollection of what the Other did to him, in the nights. The Other was an impostor, a stranger stealing his mother's body. Eileen was an imprisoned princess in a dark tower guarded by The Other and one day he would be strong and powerful enough to free her.
He liked it when she sang, or baked her disgusting, much too sweet cream puffs and forced him to eat them. Only for her he endured the sticky-sweet taste of the cream puffs because he reveled in her delighted looks.
"Are they alright?" she always asked, wiping her hands on the apron she was wearing.
"The best." He lied not taking his eyes from her so he could remember this moment, capture her smile and it would keep him sane during the other days.
She usually laughed in a delighted girly way, a little too happy, a little too excitedly (he knew that, heard the slight edge of her madness) but that was alright with him. In these moments he was happy too.
After lunch she read to him while he practiced spells with a wood stick. He was looking forward to the day he would do the spells with a real wand. Nobody would laugh at his skinny, tiny frame after that.
She liked to read fairy tales to him, Oscar Wilde, Hans Christian Andersen and now and then even the dark Grimm fairy tales. Sometimes she read the romance novels she loved so much to him, novels about young girls growing up with an evil stepmother and falling in love with a handsome knight or lord. It didn't matter to him as long as long as she was reading to him.
But very often the dreaded moment arrived where she closed the book and stared out of the window, her gaze suddenly dull and black in the fading afternoon light. After her third glass of vermouth or yellow sweet liqueur or wine the Other would emerge again and slowly take over. In these moments he knew Eileen Prince was retreating and he let his wand sink and tried to leave the room without her noticing and hide in his room until she - not his mother but The Other - came upstairs.
Very rarely though Eileen would even stay until evening. These were the best days. She cooked dinner. He set the table. She was a horrible cook but he loved watching her cook and hum meanwhile because he thought that was how it should be. If there would be no Other, no wine or liqueur, no Tobias Snape, that was how his life would have been instead, and then it didn't matter that she salted the roast for the upteenth time, forgetting that she had already salted it four times before. Every tiny moment of one of these peaceful evenings was worth all the worst, salty food she could come up with.
Or she took him to a restaurant. He was giddy with happiness then, almost skipping, but of course he knew how she liked him to be serious and grown up and so he impressed her with new words he had learned from the dictionary and clever questions about the Wizarding World and Hogwarts and he smiled inwardly when she beamed at him with motherly pride and love.
Nobody could take these moments, and this Eileen from him, not even The Other.