Omni (omni_sama) wrote in lupin_snape, @ 2009-05-13 23:40:00 |
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Entry tags: | fic: pg |
Fic: Symbols of Rome (PG)
Title: Symbols of Rome
Author: Omni (aka rip_von_christ...ME)
Rating: PG
Pairing: Lupin/Snape
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, just the situation in which I'm placing them.
Warning: Another one written in the wee hours of the morning when I should be in bed, so there are probably many mistakes that I missed... I'll try to fix them later, but pointing them out will probably help that along.
Note: I hadn't intended to do anything to continue the short little fic Not a Wolf that had been done for Remus' birthday, but I felt like writing... So, instead of working on the next part of Maska Komodias or working on getting my Darkside challenge done, I do this. And it appears to have more to come. Yeah. -_-
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"A doe, huh?" Remus smiled blandly, and Harry would perceive any lack of enthusiasm as fatigue from having recently risen from the dead. The garish, knitted Weasley blanket did very little to bring Remus comfort, but he pulled it tighter about his shoulders anyway.
It had been only a week since he'd opened his eyes to find himself in St. Mungos, when moments before he'd been laughing with Sirius. Evidently he'd only been knocked comatose by the curse, and had his lycanthropy to thank for his life. The only time he was ever grateful for his disease, he supposed, if one could be grateful for being forced back into the physical world and all the pain that came with it. So, after a week of monitoring and forced bed rest, he had finally been allowed to escape. Harry, Ron, and Hermione had come to visit him, and were eagerly regaling him with all that he had missed while being...well...dead-ish.
"Yeah!" exclaimed Harry, his green eyes shining brightly behind his glasses. Obviously he found the whole thing terribly romantic and heroic and more than enough evidence to transform his image of Severus from total git to brave martyr. Remus just felt rather sick. "Because he was in love with mum, you see. Always was. That's why he did all that he did in order to protect me, because I was her son. Even had me look into his eyes as he died so he could see her eyes one last time."
"Did he?" The smile was becoming so difficult to maintain.
Harry nodded, pushing his glasses back up his nose as they threatened to slip. "Gave us his memories as he was dying, and they revealed everything."
"That right?"
More eager nods from Harry. Ron seemed to be bored, likely having heard this story countless times before, and was watching birds outside the window. Hermione was looking at Remus with such obvious pity that he wanted to throw the blanket over her head.
"Well," said Remus, forcing his smile to widen as he rose to his feet, "I'm glad to hear that he wasn't a traitor after all. Always thought he was a good man." Remus didn't miss the perplexed look on Harry's face as he turned away from the not-quite-children and started towards the kitchen. "Tea, anyone?"
Two pairs of feet could be heard following behind him, and sure enough Harry and Hermione appeared in the doorway with questioning eyes. "I thought you and Snape were like rivals or something. I mean, you guys had been fighting each other since your school days..." James would get that same scrunched-up expression whenever he was confused, and the memory made Remus smile wistfully. He had seen them, when he was trapped in that state of near-death. He missed them.
The tea pot was old and battered and had belonged to his grandmother, but he'd never felt the need to replace it. Staring at its smoke-stained, dented metal, Remus considered his words carefully. "I never fought him myself. Anyway, that's not the point... Point is that I always...respected him."
"Respected?" Harry's face relaxed from the scrunching, and he seemed to understand that. Remus knew that had he said the same thing to the boy in the past, there would have been no sliver of understanding, and only outpourings of hostile confusion fueled by adolescent hormones.
Nodding, Remus rummaged through his tins of tea, sniffing at ones that he couldn't outright recognize by sight. "He was intelligent and brave and far stronger than I. I respected him."
Though thinking about silver does made him almost hate the man. To think that he'd been pulled in by such romantic bullshit as Severus waxing poetic about patronuses. Of course Severus would never have a wolf patronus, but not because he loved Remus. No, it was because he already had a doe, just as he already had someone he loved. And what did Remus have? Nothing, now. Oh, certainly he had a son, and that was wonderful, but...he felt so...alone.
Soft footsteps whispered across the tiles of his kitchen floor, and he was surprised to feel the gentle hand of Hermione touch his shoulder. She leaned in and whispered low enough so that Harry wouldn't hear. "Do you still... I thought, what with you and Tonks and all..."
Screw the tea. He slid the tins aside and braced himself on the counter, not wanting to believe that his eyes were stinging and his cheeks were wet. Remus was damned if he would mourn for Severus, especially after finding out how he'd been used. For a few glorious months he'd finally had a taste of what he had wanted for years. It hadn't mattered that Ragnarok was at their door; the wolf and the raven had put aside all differences and come together. God, it had been beautiful. Beautiful and frightening. Especially towards the end, when Severus had grown more and more anxious and haunted, turning Remus' insides into intricate knots with the way he paced and worried. Something was about to happen, he'd known that, but he had never expected it to be Albus' demise by Severus' hand. Sleeping with Tonks had been something he'd done out of spite, resentful of Severus and his betrayal. Somehow, though, everything had just gone so horribly wrong. Once he'd calmed down and thought about it, he couldn't believe Severus was a traitor. The realization had made him feel as though he was betraying his true lover by being with his wife, crazy as that sounded, even to his own ears. Now, he'd come to find out that those fleeting moments of happiness before the storm were just lies, that he was the only one who had cared. He hadn't betrayed Severus, after all, since there had been nothing to betray.
"It doesn't matter," he gritted out, hoping he was keeping his volume just as low as hers. She squeezed his shoulder and then proceeded to rub soothing circles, and he just wanted to shove her away and run. He didn't know where he'd run. There was honestly no place to go. In the bedroom, his son was sleeping in his bassinet, hair turning a myriad of colors as he dreamed. How could he leave that child, his own flesh and blood? Besides, what would he find out there that could possibly be any better? Everything worth while in the world was dead and gone.
On the stove, the kettle whistled, and Harry took it upon himself to remove it from the heat. "You alright, Remus? I thought they said you were well enough to come home, but if you need to go back..."
"Fine. I'm fine." Grabbing one of the tins at random, he pulled away from Hermione and went about preparing tea while keeping his face obstructed by the fall of his hair. "Sorry for the interruption. Please go on with your story, Harry."
Retreating to the other side of the kitchen, Harry gave Remus the space he seemed to crave, and continued on with significantly less enthusiasm. "Well, um, yes, where was I?"
"His memories," prompted Hermione, who also retreated, but not nearly far enough.
"Right. His memories while he died. Or, at least, when I thought he died."
The kettle hitting the tile floor made quite a racket, and the hot water scalded Remus through his shoes and where it landed on his robes. One of the tiles was now cracked, and a new dent had been added to the abused metal. None of that really mattered, though, and Remus was staring at Harry as if he'd just proclaimed that he was Voldemort himself. "What?" Choking, Remus swallowed and took a steadying breath before he tried again. "What did you just say?"
Harry seemed scared out of his wits, his wide eyes snapping between Remus' face and the spilled water. It was Hermione who answered, a slight curl to her lips even while her eyes continued to look so damn pitying. "He didn't die. Almost did, but he's a smart man and had been dosing himself with antivenom. The bleeding nearly did him in, though."
"Where is he?"
Hermione opened her mouth to reply, but in that moment Ron came thundering in, seeming far more enthused than he had been previously. "You will not believe what I just saw!" he yelled, freckled cheeks flushed with excitement and blue eyes bright as the cloudless sky outside. "This bloody great eagle just swoops down, right? Like, trust me, you've never seen an eagle this big, yeah? And it just kept on goin' past the window--back and forth, back and forth. Then finally it just seems royally ticked, and just turns tail and flies off. Only, it sort of vanished into nothing. At least, seemed that way, but it was pro'lly just on account of its color. Thing looked like a ghost, it was so pale and shiny!"
"Or like a patronus?" Remus was glad Hermione had delivered that sarcastic, deadpan retort, because otherwise he'd jeopardize his "nice guy" image by doing so himself.
Ron's jaw fell slack and then clicked shut as his brain processed this possibility, until finally he nodded slowly. "Yeah... Yeah, now that you mention it..."
"We don't know anyone with an eagle patronus," said Harry, and his voice held that serious, dangerous quality he'd adopt whenever they were facing danger. Hearing it in that moment, after all the danger was supposedly gone, made Remus feel strangely uneasy.
"I'm sure it's nothing," assured Remus with conviction he didn't have. "Could be anyone's, considering how the forms aren't set in stone. In any case, I wouldn't worry that it was a Death Eater or anything, since Severus once told me that they don't often even know how to perform one."
Now all eyes were fixed on him, each with a different emotion. Ron, bless him, was looking relieved. Harry was starting to get that scrunched-up look again. Hermione looked like he might as well have told them all that he and Severus had been sleeping together. He'd say that was strange pillow talk, but the truth was that it was a discussion about patronuses which finally brought them together.
"Maybe someone should stay here tonight, just in case," said Harry, easily brushing aside his confusion. Or maybe he just realized that the two had been colleagues on multiple levels, which would explain Severus' revelation.
"I'll be fine." Grabbing a tea towel, Remus bent to start mopping up the still very hot water.
"Yeah, but you've got Teddy to think of, now, too."
A muscle in Remus' cheek twitched and his fingers gripped the damp terry cloth painfully tight. He knew it was too much to ask for Harry to forget about his mad plea to join them, effectively abandoning his wife and unborn child. "I'll protect him. We'll be fine." When he stood, he faced away from them, and set the kettle in the sink. "Speaking of Teddy, it's nearly time for his nap to be finished, and he'll want food. I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to come again another time. We'll continue our discussion then."
He didn't turn to see their reactions, but busied himself with rinsing the pot. Harry's mumbled "alright" seemed packed with pain, but Remus couldn't bring himself to care. Remus listened to them leave, but miscounted the footsteps over the roar of the running water. When he shut the water off, Hermione's voice in the still kitchen startled him and made him spin around.
"Snape's gone," she said, her brown eyes reflecting age and wisdom beyond her years. Remus had always heard that expression, but he'd never seen it until he'd met Hermione. "One moment he was in a hospital bed, and the next he was gone. No one's seen or heard from him since." She looked away, and Remus thought she was finally going to leave, but then she was turning back slowly, hesitantly. "I don't know what went on between you two, if anything, but... I have this feeling that when he shows up again...if he shows up again...you'll be the first who knows."
A laugh staggered from his throat and fell to its death on the tiles. "Why do you say that?"
Her eyes weren't looking at him, but were staring out the window over the sink, studying the sky like a fascinating painting--or puzzle. "Eagles were a common symbol used to represent Rome. Did you know that?"
Remus was quite sure his face was doing a decent James and Harry scrunched-up impression. "Yes?"
Slowly a smile came to her lips, and she almost looked her age. "Wolves were used, too, of course, because of the she-wolf that nursed the twin founders." Sliding away from the sky, her eyes landed on him, and they seemed to be trying to transmit some sort of message or knowledge. The problem was that the message was transmitted in code, and Remus lacked the means of translation. "I thought your alias for that Potterwatch program was quite clever."
Oh. Romulus and Remus. Of course. The twin founders of Rome. So, she was implying that...um...that... She was implying... Oh, bother, he still had no idea what her point was.
"But, you don't like wolves very much, do you?" She searched his eyes, and he wondered if she could read minds. To his knowledge, she'd never been taught legilimency, but that didn't mean she hadn't taught herself. Hermione was, after all, the brightest witch of her generation. "Yes," she continued, a little hum to her voice, "I think it would be more appropriate to associate you with the eagle. It's still a symbol of Rome, and connected with your name, yet doesn't have any of the negative connotations a wolf might have." Smiling brightly, she turned and made her exit, leaving Remus standing alone in his kitchen with hope budding in his chest.
From that moment on, he remained close to a window whenever he could, and watched the sky for ghost-like eagles.
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To be continued