tetsubinatu (tetsubinatu) wrote in lupin_snape, @ 2008-07-16 19:14:00 |
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Entry tags: | fic: pg13, prompt: fantasy fest 08 |
That boy - Part 1 of 5 - fantasy fest '08 - REVISED
Title: That Boy - Part 1 of 5.
Author: Tetsubinatu
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount (this part): 800
Pairing(s)/character(s): Snape/Lupin
Challenge: Fantasy Fest 2008
Summary: Long-fic Challenge 25 -- Post-war, plausible survival scenario, established relationship (either new or long-standing). Somehow R finds out that Sirius left a child, and wants to adopt it. I like my S snarky, but not cruel. Any rating. Happy endings are best! :)
Disclaimer: Not mine. Just for fun.
Warnings: none
“It’s not what you are thinking, Severus.” Lupin dropped his head, the picture of guilt. “Really, it’s not,” he muttered hopelessly.
Severus stood very straight, his face set into the unreadable mask that Remus had hoped was left behind forever after Voldemort’s defeat. “Then ease my mind, Lupin. You are not making regular ‘shopping trips’ to Diagon Alley to meet another man?”
“No!”
There was a slight pause before Snape offered, “...or woman?”
“No!”
“Sentient being?”
Remus’ mouth opened automatically to deny it, but then a frown crossed his forehead and he closed it again. “Sort of...” he admitted grudgingly. “I am meeting a boy.”
Severus face eased slightly, although you would have had to be watching very closely to notice. “Then it is indubitably not what I thought,” he conceded graciously. “Nevertheless you are hiding something from me regarding these meetings, and it is giving you a guilty conscience. You had best tell me now, before things get worse.”
Remus sighed. “How do you feel about adoption?” he asked his lover of two years.
“It is a fine institution,” Severus replied flatly, his blank stare giving nothing away.
“How would you feel about us adopting an eight-year-old boy with no education and appalling manners?”
Remus’ face was screwed into an expression Severus had never seen upon his face before. It seemed to be composed of one part bravado, four parts misery, two parts dread and one lonely part of hope. The words were ridiculous. The idea was ridiculous. The way Remus had blurted them out was idiotic, and yet... he meant it. Somewhere there was an eight-year-old boy with no education and appalling manners who had managed to secure so deep a hold upon Remus’ heart that Remus was seriously considering adopting him, even in the face of what he must surely know would be high to total resistance from Severus.
Severus needed more information. “Tell me about the boy.”
Remus gasped, clearly having anticipated an explosion before this point. “He’s eight,” he faltered.
“Yes, I heard that. Eight years old. Appalling manners. No education. Nothing there to suggest adoption.”
“Um. Black hair. Grey eyes. Not too tall, I think. His name...” Remus took a deep breath, “... his name is Reg.”
“Reg. As in rhymes with egg.”
Remus looked at the ceiling.
“Unusual name. Is it short for anything?”
“Regulus. Regulus Cuttle.”
The silence stretched out between them. Remus’ mouth was set, and Severus face was made of stone.
“And who is... was? Mrs Cuttle?”
Remus’ eyes closed briefly, his demeanour giving away the fact that this was the crucial question. “She was a guard in Azkaban from 1992 until her death in 1999.”
“I... see.”
Remus shivered.
“Is there a father listed upon the birth certificate? A Mr Cuttle?”
Remus shook his head. “No birth certificate, as far as I can tell. No known father. Reg lives with his mother’s brother. There was a grandmother who died in the Troubles,” he explained, using the euphemism that the Wizarding World had taken up to refer to the time when Voldemort openly controlled the Ministry.
“You think he’s the Mutt’s, don’t you?” Severus’ voice was too even and casual to be believable, but Remus seized eagerly upon the question, too grateful to be past the hurdle of revelation to be suspicious.
“He looks like a Black, and he has a Black family name - and all the Blacks but Sirius were dead by the time he was conceived. He has no idea, but every time I meet him I become more sure!”
“You want me to adopt Black’s child with you?”
Remus’ heart was in his eyes, damn werewolf. “Yes?”
Severus wanted to shriek; to throw a tantrum worthy of Lucius, of Voldemort himself. Over the past two years he had built a life out of the ashes of his youth: a man - well, werewolf - who loved him; a small, cosy cottage; a mail-order potions business. Strangers still spit upon him, but in a drawer by his bedside he had an Order of Merlin, second class, and Harry Potter, Saviour of the Wizarding World (TM) regularly came to dine with him. (No-one had to know that Severus hated the dinner parties and endured them purely for the sake of his partner.)
The words “Over my dead pulsating body!” hovered unspoken on his lips. Finally he forced out “What time are you meeting the boy?”
“1 o’clock at Fortescues. I was planning to pick up some groceries at Greenslades on the way.”
Remus looked hopeful and Severus wanted to ram the heel of his hand into the end of that pig-ignorant Gryffindor nose and force bits of cartilage and bone into his deluded brain. He waited a moment for the red haze to clear before he gritted out, “I’ll meet you there.”
TBC...
Part 2 at: http://asylums.insanejournal.com/lupin_