evegenia (evegenia) wrote in lupin_snape, @ 2008-03-16 12:02:00 |
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Entry tags: | fic: pg |
FIC: Dangerous People, Pt. 7.5, PG
Title: Dangerous People, Pt. 7.5
Author: Evecat
Rating: PG, a little bit of language
Pairing(s)/character(s): Snape/Lupin
Summary: The second full moon. November. Snape and Lupin are in hiding in Chicago, working temporary jobs around a potions research institute. They rent a two-room flat in a rather battered brick apartment building from Fatima.
Disclaimer: I've read from SF publishers that these don't really do much good--is that true? But in any case, these characters are original to Rowling, not to me.
Notes: (Please have patience if the cut doesn't work the first time--I have trouble with them for some reason and I'll go right back in and edit it until it works). I'm posting a single scene to try and kick-start my writing, since I seem to have been too busy to work on this lately. If you'd like to read the whole story from the beginning, it can be found at my old LiveJournal, here.
Snape stood in front of the closed door and waited. The door was thickly layered with white paint, lumpy over previous coats. He pressed his fingers to the cold surface and traced an irregularity, then closed his eyes and tried to relax his shoulders. So many people have lived in this room and where are they now? A room full of cold ghosts. He could hear nothing through the door, but he imagined Lupin waiting, crossing and uncrossing his arms, finally pulling off his shirt and shaking with the change...I will let this become commonplace. He was holding his breath, he realized, and made himself breathe out. At last there were sounds: a gasp (Lupin bending in on himself, Lupin falling), a weak scrabbling that went on and on (Lupin changing, jerking as his bones contracted)--he shook his head to clear the memory of the pained, hairless half-wolf--and finally wet, inhuman breathing.
He was standing perfectly still, his fingertips touching the door. How do I know...how long do I....There were clicking footsteps, then he felt--pressure--on the wood of the door. And that, he thought , that will be the wolf at the door. Will I calm down? He turned the doorknob.
The wolf had been larger in memory. On the other side of the door was a small, thin, doggish animal with skinny legs and a brown coat. The wolf looked up at him and sat back on its haunches. It had pretty, almond-shaped eyes. Three white feet and one dark one, Lupin has white feet. The wolf made an inquisitive little whine.
"Shall we go then?" he asked it, and turned towards the door. The wolf followed him. "Wait," he said, looking down the stairs. The hallway was dim and he could hear music from the students' flat downstairs. "You'll have to look leashed," he told the wolf, flicking his want to make an illustory collar and chain. "I'm sure you'd expect me to find it funny, but I don't, particularly.We'll have to be quiet. We can't have Fatima thinking we keep a dog,"
"Although anyone," he added as the heavy front door closed behind them, "Absolutely anyone, can see that we couldn't possibly afford to feed one. I suppose you're the nearest thing to our dumb chums that..." He shut his mouth. No telling how much Lupin can pick up. Not nuances, I suppose, but intent comes through. Nerves will come through.
Cold breathed up from the damp sidewalk and the remains of the snow. The close buildings on either side made the street seem like an enormous room, but he could see the curious roof ornaments dark against the luminous city sky. The wolf was sniffing the air, bouncing on its pads in its eagerness to be off. I'll never know what that's like, to lose myself like that. Like a death that you return from.
As they drew nearer the park, Lupin grew more agitated. Snape could see that it too an effort not to run. Everything seemed bigger and more remote in the dark, as if they were suddenly far from the city. The frozen lake shone dimly in the moonlight.
He looked down at the wolf. "Remember to come back," he said. "I know you're enough yourself to remember. Don't go near any people." The wolf tilted its head so that he could see its eyes very clearly, then ran away among the trees. "And for preference come back before I'm entirely frozen solid," Snape said to himself. He walked down to the very edge of the lake and tested the ice with his foot. I could walk out on the ice and fall right through, he thought suddenly, startling himself. He stepped carefully away from the pale surface. And what? And what? And leave Lupin here to freeze, I suppose.
He walked slowly along the path beside the lake. There were boulders tumbled together, half on land and half in the ice. He leaned against one--bone cold--and put his hands in his pockets. Absolutely not. I have absolutely no intention of, of...when I've lived through so much worse. It would be so cold, though, it would stop my heart instantly...I will not be some ridiculous pathetic...I will not prove them right, I won't.
I have perfectly reasonable things to think of, the centrifuge in the big lab will have to be seen to on Monday for a start, and then Dr. Banks will be wanting the slides ready for Chen...
...It's rankly irresponsible to be out here. I truly cannot believe we are doing this, no matter what Lupin may assure me of. Anything could go wrong, anything...that orris could have been off, Lupin wouldn't know. Ha, wouldn't be able to tell me if he did know. But Snape thought of the wolf bounding eagerly across the ground towards the trees. Joy, that's what always surprised me with the others. So much pleasure. Our lyncanthropy, Lupin's lycanthropy--it must be some mutated strain, something gone wrong. It must have been a hunter's adaptation at first, must have been all speed and smell and pleasure...
I can't imagine why he thinks he'll be better off with those Americans and their no doubt ham-fisted attempts at wolfsbane. As if even now he thinks I'll top off his dose with something genuinely toxic, or as though somehow I don't know what I'm doing.
I suppose none of them ever trusted me unless they had something on me. Not even then.
And still, this lycanthropy, there must be a cure or a real treatment down at the cellular level, there simply must be. If I'd been a medical researcher I might have have solved it, I'm not stupid about those things. And it's not exactly as though it's a crowded field.
Wretched Lupin, racing about sniffing and killing things no doubt....For how much of the past two years have I been cold? Surely eighteen months out of the twenty four...
I think back and I wonder...I lie when I tell Lupin that I wasn't afraid of the wolf, that I was only afraid of those thuggish bullies he went about with. They were an ordinary daylight fear, sick-making enough, I suppose. But the wolf was...It wasn't Dark, they're all wrong when they talk about wolves being Dark. Might as well talk about the wizarding world being Light, and point at wonderful Umbridge and glorious Moody as shining examples...
...The wolf was strange. It could have killed me, but it was right outside all my categories. And to know that it was Lupin...It's so difficult. I told myself that I'd get right away from school and I would do something, I would learn how things worked, I would prevent...no one like me would have to go through it. And what have I done? Brought about the apotheosis of games-maniac fascism in the name of defeating the greater evil. The only good I'm sure I've done was predicated on seeing that thing, that wolf, and being afraid. I would never have been interested in the potion, I would never have learned to brew it or met my wolves. No one else would have done it, it's all always the product of wartime, war is the great forcing-house of technology.
Lupin is so different from them. Although now he's older, we're both older than any of them got to be. He saw Lupin lying in bed after the change, wrapped in the tatty charity shop blankets. Very pale, the werewolf had been, remote, gone away inside himself. Or euphoric later, cooking and joking. Not to me, not really to me. To some private audience. But not so guarded, not so much as if he has to be careful of me. As if I'll turn spiteful.
I don't suppose he'll ever forgive me. But then, anyone would say that what I did was unforgiveable, wouldn't they?
Pale. He is still after all a handsome enough man, as he was a handsome boy. Beautiful, rather. I remember quite well, although beauty of course increases in retrospect. And although Black was certainly the beauty of our year. Like goes with like, Eileen would have said.
So I would have to find someone truly ugly to care for me, he thought before he thought about it. Ridiculous and self-pitying, you'd think you'd outgrow it at some point, even you.
After a while he heard a little crackling noise and the wolf trotted over to him. It stopped a few feet away, looking up inquisitively. "Back, are we?" said Snape. The wolf's white muzzle caught the light, except where something dark had smudged it. Killing something after all, thought Snape, and felt suddenly dizzy. I am never used to this. "We don't have to go back yet," he said. "Run along, if you like." The wolf still looked at him. "I can stand it for a while yet," he said. "Go on." The wolf--Lupin--turned slowly and walked away. Snape had the feeling that it was looking at him from the trees.
And then, as if the wolf's return had been a signal, he thought of--he had begun to dream about Albus again, the same dreams he'd had right after the war. In some of them, he discovered that the headmaster was still alive, that the death been a misunderstanding or a trick. Or even that he'd been too incompetent to bring it off, casting the killing curse again and again to no effect in front of a horrified audience. In others, he killed Dumbledore over and over, full of such rage and hate that he woke exhausted. In the worst ones he didn't use magic at all--a knife or a cord or a stone sufficed, or his hands. He'd strike with desperation and anger, sick, only wanting the act to be finished. The dreams had stopped when he began to look for Lupin, and he'd hoped that they were gone for good.
It was exactly like him, his final act to put me in the wrong for good. Gratitude. As if I ought to obediently, thankfully give over my entire life...The worst thing, it was the worst thing....He made me do it, I had so little control, I let myself...I am not, I am not, I am not...Snape closed his eyes and leaned back against the stone.
He was starting to shiver, deep shudders that he couldn't seem to stop. He wrapped his arms around himself. The damn wolf is probably a mile away chewing on a squirrel...Bloody November, damn and blast...It seemed as though time had stopped. The late night was very still and the air so cold that it felt wet on his face. He tilted his head back and looked up at the moon, tracing the tiny crennelations that were the mountains on its surface. He concentrated on their barely visible outlines until the whiteness filled his eyes.
The wolf had been there for a moment--he thought it had been only a moment--before he noticed it. "Ah," he said, and was surprised by how stiffly his jaw moved. "You'd better...you'd better be done with your rambling." He took a few steps toward the path, then remembered the leash charm. The wolf was following him obediently.
The wolf lifted its head. Beyond the trees were two shapes. Snape tensed and reached for his wand. Two small shapes and then two quick red flares. Cigarettes. Girls out at night, smoking. Lupin was walking closer to him. Two girls in short pale puffy coats and jeans, one holding a bottle that she first tried to conceal and then apparently couldn't be bothered about, the other twisting her braids around her fingers.
Not that I care for adolescents, but at least they're girls. And best of all not my students.
One of the girls was giggling. "--am not! You been drinking more than me, you brought the bottle!" They both looked at Snape.
"That's a big dog," said the girl who had been giggling, half to her friend. "What kind of dog is that? Is that a wolf dog?"
Snape smiled in spite of himself. "A german shepherd," he said, and kept walking. Hardly want to look as though I have unpleasant designs, and I remember being out late and drunken quite well, one doesn't need attention from the grown-ups...
"You from England?"
"Yes. From London." Why not make it up? Tell them what they want to hear, no one really wants to hear about Berwick.
"Our English teacher is from England," said the gigglier girl tipsily. " He's--"
Her friend elbowed her. "Don't say that!"
"He is too," she said. "What's your dog's name?"
"Remus," he said. Oh, brilliant.
"That means wolf," said the first girl carefully. "We're doing Latin this year."
"Latin?" he said. "Really?" Did Muggles do Latin?
"It's boring," she said. "But we saw that show about Rome. Can we pet your dog?"
Lupin was sitting very close to him; suddenly the wolf's side was pressed against his leg. The wolf was looking up at him, and to his intense surprise the furry muzzle and cold nose were pushed into his hand. "Better not." Snape said. "He might bite." He paused. "He was feral when I found him. He's had a rather rough time of it."
"Oh," said the girl.
There is no reason for me to feel apologetic because you can't pet a werewolf. "He gets a bit nervous, I'm afraid. He isn't good with strangers." Or with me, really.
"So he's like a wild animal?"
"A little bit like that," said Snape. There was a pause. "I'm going to take him back inside before his feet freeze." Good lord, that really can happen to dogs, can't it? That would be absolutely the last thing--
As he walked away, he could hear the tipsy girl saying, "Call Isaac! Call Isaac on your phone! You know he said he'd be there!"