Author:bonfoi Rating: PG Pairing: Remus Lupin/Severus Snape Summary: This story takes place in an alternate reality where Remus’ spine is a bit stiffer, Severus’ heart a bit tender, and they see something about the other that makes it worthwhile. Challenge: lupin_snape RetroFest 2009, Prompt #6 (see Part One for full prompt). Word Count: Part Five: 1,924 Genre: Alternate Reality; Romance; Angst; Humor Warnings: None Highlight for Warnings: * None * A/N: I wondered how Remus made contact with the werewolf clans, how Severus and Harry might interact when one of them wasn’t angry, and, now…I hope that I met the requirements of the prompt with what the Prompter needed, besides the Snupin Love! The speculations used are listed at the end of the fic.
Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter, its characters and settings are the copyrighted works of J.K. Rowling, Warner Bros., her publishing companies and affiliates. No profit was made from the writing of this story nor was any malice intended in any way, shape or form to the author or the actors/actresses who so brilliantly have brought them to life.
This author is not responsible for underage readers. Please observe the ratings, warnings, and age of legal consent for your country.
“I tell you, Molly, I think it’s a shame Remus Lupin is single!” Tonks splattered beef stew across the table as she gestured. “He’s sensitive, he is.” The look on her face—thin and sharp—was dreamy. Harry was revolted and shoved himself away from the table with a sigh.
“He’s older, Tonks. If he wanted someone, don’t you think he’d go and get them?” His green eyes were hard as he looked her over, her features changing back to the ones she normally wore. “Why don’t you go after Charlie or Oliver Wood? They’re always looking you over.” When she didn’t answer, he sighed and left for the Library. Tonks continued stating her reasons as the kitchen door slammed shut.
He found Remus dozing in a chair by the fire, tomes on curse-breaking and repelling hexes by his feet. Grinning, Harry Levitated the faded afghan from the sofa over the older wizard and left. He didn’t think on the book of poetry resting on Lupin’s chest, or the little golden beaker Lupin was clutching in his hand.
Harry shut the Library doors softly behind him—setting a timed Locking Charm on them for good measure—and went upstairs to his room. Glancing at the open door of the room Snape usually used, the young wizard’s eyes squinted in thought. He thought about Snape and Remus, the Dark wizard and the Dark creature, the strength of them, the fealty—twisted though some might consider it—that they both had to one of his parents…and the oblivious girl that was on the way to ruining something that might be between them. “I’ll never understand women” he muttered as he sauntered away.
Ω•≡•Ω♦Ω•≡•Ω♦
The cauldrons bubbled merrily as Severus went from one to the other. He’d spent the past two nights mixing Wolfsbane, enough for twenty adults and ten children. The Forbidden Forest resounded with hoarse cries and mysterious calls, but none of them were howls. Snape put both hands in the middle of his back and bent backwards, trying to work out the kinks from being bent over half a dozen large cauldrons. He turned back to the one cauldron that held an extra-strength bone-knitting potion, thinking about how Lupin would thank him: how he’d hold his hand out, how his blue-green eyes would shine, how he’d touch his….
“Professor Snape?” Hermione Granger—a bane of his scholastic existence if there ever was—stood shifting from foot to foot in the laboratory doorway. “We need…” She swallowed and tried again. “We need you as soon as possible. Something’s happened…” She brushed the back of her right hand over her eyes. “Can I do anything to help?”
Severus’ nose quivered as he inhaled sharply through his nose. His thoughts were a jumble. No, not Lupin! stood out amongst them all until he called upon his years of spying. He stood rigid, arms fisted at his sides. “The Wolfsbane potion in the large cauldrons, on the left, will be ready for bottling in…” he consulted his time spell, “eleven minutes. Douse the fires at ten and distill into the waiting flagons. The bone-knitting potion will be turning lavender as well. Douse that fire and leave it under stasis; I’ll be back for it.” He pushed her aside from the doorway and then turned to her.
“Where am I going, Miss Granger?” A muscle under his right eye was twitching, an involuntary tic that he hadn’t had since his schooldays. “Now!” he ground out through clenched teeth.
Backing away a step, she stuttered, “The..the…Grimmauld Place.” He pivoted smartly on his heel and flew down the hall, cloak flying behind him like the wings of a bat. She sneezed. “Dratted Twins and their pranks!” Hermione muttered.
A minute later, she thought, Oh, dear!I should have told him no one’s dead…yet.
Ω•≡•Ω♦Ω•≡•Ω♦
“I said keep her away from me! I’m not some toy to be played with! Arg!”
** Crash! **
Snape’s entrance into No. 12 Grimmauld Place was ignored as a chair flew through the kitchen door. He caught it on an outward swing and held it there, observing. Remus Lupin—bloody but unbowed—held another chair in his hands. He was using it to hold Nymphadora Tonks at bay as Molly Weasley screeched and the Twin Terrors leaned on each other and hooted with laughter. Albus Dumbledore twinkled to the side—by the biscuit tin, of course. The smell of burnt bacon and perfume mixed with the odour of dirt…and wolf.
“I mean it! Enough!” Lupin shoved the chair toward Tonks—much like a lion tamer in the cage at the circus—and Severus wished for a whip to throw to the man. “I just want to rest. I’m not to be pawed, petted, or stroked!” His lips curled back in a fierce snarl, his canines long enough to remind them of his lycanthropy. His eyes were wild, as untamed as the greying locks tangled with leaves and twigs.
“Stop!” Snape’s voice cut through the babble and everyone but Remus looked at him; Severus approved of his caution…and trust. “I have business with the werewolf. You lot can clear out or we will. What shall it be?” His wand was conspicuous in his hand, pointing at Tonks.
The Weasley Twins were the first to leave. “Trust Hermione to find you on a good day! Good on you, mate!” Their laughter almost made Snape smile, but he did nod them through.
“Severus…” Dumbledore bit his tongue and grabbed Molly Weasley by the arm. “Molly, my dear, I have a knitting pattern for socks that is just darling. Would you care to peruse it with me?” She was gulping as he pulled her out of the kitchen, her flustered “But, I was only helping” quickly overridden by some nonsense from the Headmaster.
“Auror Tonks!” Severus shouted. He shot a burst of sparkles over her head, startling the werewolf and Tonks from their staring match. She stepped back and slipped sideways into the stove, setting up an unholy clatter. “It ill becomes you to stalk a man, especially a man who seems to be on his last legs. Have you no shame, girl?” His infamous eyebrow was quirked as high as it could go, his dark eyes boring into hers. He pushed his mind at her, whispering Legilimens under his breath as he looked at the jumble she called thought.
Remus saw the pause as Tonks and Snape were caught eye-to-eye. With his enhanced hearing—especially under duress—he’d heard the spy’s spell. He took a gulp of air deep into his chest and let it out, the adrenalin slowly draining away and leaving him spent. Wavering where he stood, Remus put the chair down and sat on it, waiting.
Only a minute or two had passed. “So, you deem yourself strong enough to tame the wild beast, Auror Tonks?” Severus asked rhetorically. “Not for yourself, oh no, but to make him safer for the others, yes?” He was spitting as he spoke. “You’re nothing but a girl with spun confectionary for brains and hair! He’s a man! Infected, true, but a man! How dare you hound him for something he will not give freely?!” He pointed to the door with his other hand. “Leave now. You’re presence offends me.”
Tonks looked at him and a sneer worthy of Bellatrix Lestrange twisted her lips. “You’re nothing but a spy, old man,” she snarled. “I’m young, I’m female, and I can give him a family.” She looked him up and down, hands on her hips, hair a fiery red flame. “You’re a tool, a cipher, a nothing,” the witch practically spit the words into Severus’ face. She stood up straight, very much an Auror. Her features changing to reflect Sirius Black, the Metamorphmagus sidled up to Severus. “He’ll be mine.” She pushed past him and out the door.
Lupin’s head fell to his chest, the effort to defend his honour and then watch Snape’s rescue taking the last of his reserves. His body was crumpling to the floor as Severus approached him. “Bloody right, he’ll be mine,” he muttered as he cast Mobilicorpus on Remus’ limp body. A sound made him look up.
“They’re in the Library, sir.” Potter stood, wand at the ready, in the kitchen doorway, a battered portmanteau at his feet. “I’ve got Remus’ things, Professor. Can you take him someplace safe? If only for a little while?” His eyes, so like Lily’s, brought a lump to Severus’ throat.
“I’ll take him…”
Potter held up a hand. “Don’t tell me, sir. Can’t give any information I don’t know.” Harry’s cheeky grin was pure James Potter, but Severus nodded.
As Snape passed Harry, he awkwardly patted his shoulder. “You’re becoming a better man than I expected, Potter.”
“Had good examples…when I paid attention, sir.” Harry turned and went toward the back stairs as Snape and his charge quietly snuck out of Grimmauld Place.
Ω•≡•Ω♦Ω•≡•Ω♦
The emergency Port-key he always carried had worked as charmed. Severus sighed as he put Re-Lupin into the air once more. The fuming wizard and his unconscious guest had landed in the Elizabethan garden of the Snapes’ ancestral home in Suffolk, Wuffa’s Rest. He breathed deeply, surprised that the old place had let him in so easily after so long.
“Master Sev’rus is home! Home!” The tinny voice of an ancient house-elf broke his reverie and Severus looked down to see his mother’s favourite, Mimsy, clapping her hands at the sight of him. “Oh, we’s so happy, Master Sev’rus! Come, come, follow me’s!” She skipped, quite literally, down the garden path, toward the back of the majestic home. Eyebrows raised to their limit, Severus followed with Lupin.
A groan and then thrashing heralded Lupin’s return to consciousness. Severus set him down under the lemon trees bordering the wide veranda. He sat on the wide, shallow stairs as the lycanthrope worked out where he was. The air was still redolent with the small lemons his great-grandmother, Severina Snape, had planted after her wedding trip to Naples.
“Nguh…Nightbus got me goo’, eh?” Remus’ slurred words and his dazed glance had Severus up and on his feet. He dropped to his knees and cradled the lycanthrope’s head in his lap as he cast very intrusive diagnostic spells over him.
“Tick-tickles…” Lupin mumbled as he passed out once more.
“Good gods, man, what the hell have you been doing?” Severus’ words fell on deaf ears and he almost let Lupin’s head drop to the ground, but rethought his idea a minute later as he became aware of carding his fingers through that leaf- and twig-strewn hair. Thick…it clings to my fingers like a living thing, he thought as he plucked the detritus from Lupin’s locks. Resigning himself to it, Snape called out for the house-elf. “Mimsy! Bring me a pomme de lune, would you?” Tense minutes passed as the daylight faded and the manor’s torches flared to life.
Mimsy popped back with a gold platter and the requested fruit. Pressing the moon-apple to Remus’ lips, Severus recited an incantation in Italian. It drew out the silver poisoning that had been impeding the lycanthrope’s preternatural healing. The silvery fruit grew redder and redder, until its skin split. That was the sign the silver was extracted. “Here, Mimsy.” Severus handed it to the house-elf carefully, who set it gently on its tray. “Plant this by the light of the next dark moon, at its apex.” The house-elf nodded and popped away, very much used to the vagaries of its chosen family.