Severus should never have seen what he'd just witnessed. He had been in his room, sleeping, and had heard the raised voices though his closed door. He had stepped out to scold them for walking him up and to take their 'lover's spat', or whatever you could call the fight Lupin and Black were holding in their living area, somewhere else. But he had stepped out just in time to see Black swing at Lupin, and then Lupin fall back to the floor...
His feet seemed glued to the floor, god how Severus wanted to turn back to his room, close the door and forget about the mess unfolding in front of him – it wasn’t his mess. But try as he might his feet refused to move, and he was forced to watch it all, hear it all - damn his feet.
But now Black was gone and it was just him and Lupin - and even Severus couldn't deny that Lupin looked, justifiably, pathetic. Severus knew, from what he'd researched, the morning after the full moon was not kind for werewolves. However, that wasn't what started Severus moving forward towards Lupin.
Severus could not recall a moment spent in his father’s presence he did not associate with the smell of stale beer or the impact of a swinging fist. His social skill set was entirely too inadequate to be of much use to Lupin; but, the other boy had stood up for him when Sirius had first shown up, and before that, when it was just two of them for those few days they had reached some kind of peace, true they didn’t talk but they had not sought each other out to continue the nasty pranks and insults from school. And Severus knew what it was like to be struck down by someone that was supposed to love and care for him.
“Lupin?” Severus felt it was best to at least let Lupin know he was there before he was just upon the boy, “Are you alright?” Severus regretted asking as soon as the words left his mouth – of course Lupin wasn’t alright. But Severus didn’t know what else to say.