Fic: And Sometimes Darkness, part 9, SS/RL, R
Title: And Sometimes Darkness Author/Artist: undun Rating: mature/adult content, R Pairing(s)/character(s): Remus Lupin, Severus Snape, Nymphadora Tonks, Harry et al. Summary: After the War against the Dark Lord, some are left behind. Not forgotten by everyone, as Severus Snape finds out. Disclaimer: Not-for-profit fan creation. Warnings: I hate warnings. There may be unpleasant stuff in here. There, that’s it. Anything else would be a spoiler. Notes: A story that didn’t begin its life as an AU, but is now certainly in that category. Words: 2,726
9. Home Again
They arrived at Spinner’s End without incident. Remus stood gazing at the grim looking building. For a start, every pane of glass was gone. It gave the Snape family home the look of a toothless hag.
Remus shuddered slightly and looked at Severus. “Home sweet home?” he asked softly.
“Not now, not ever.”
The rest of their expedition party had arrived and had lost no time scouting the perimeter of the property for lingering spells or traps. They’d made very good use of the Notice Me Not charm and he was confident the Muggles in the area, what few he could see, would not be observant enough to suspect their presence. He decided it wasn’t necessary to cast the charm on himself or Severus; they would appear quite harmless and uninteresting – just a middle-aged bloke and his wheelchair-bound mate.
He’d dressed strictly muggle this morning, and no one could see that Severus was wearing a robe seated as he was.
Remus eyed the exterior walls and cast a few Aperio spells just to be sure the house itself hadn’t been cursed. The spells did reveal magical scars, but they seemed quite old; he could find nothing that had been placed recently.
“I hope the books are still there,” Severus murmured, though he didn’t sound at all hopeful to Remus.
“Let’s go in and see if we can salvage anything, shall we?” Remus suggested.
He moved behind Severus’ chair and took hold of the handles.
“I can bloody push it myself!” Severus hissed at him over his shoulder.
“Of course,” Remus agreed hastily, taking his hands off the chair and moving to walk beside the man. Severus shoved impatiently at the chrome circles that protruded from the sides of the wheelchair.
Remus studied the motion from the corner of his eye, striving not be caught staring. He’s going to exhaust himself in no time. He called out to Harry.
“The front is clear, we’re going in.”
There were three steps leading up to the door. Severus stopped and glared at them.
“Hold on,” Remus said, reaching for his wand. He looked down the street for any witnesses before he levitated the wheelchair up the steps, setting it as gently as he could in front of the weather beaten door.
“I’ll need to borrow that,” Severus stated. He held his hand out without turning to face Remus.
“Of course,” Remus replied, handing his wand over. He was ready for the sensation this time, half dreading it, in fact; despite the unrelenting pleasure of it, he felt exposed in front of Severus whenever it happened. Remus endured it without gasping or smiling sappily down at the man – he mentally awarded himself points and this time he noticed Severus’ reaction; his expression relaxed slightly, the tight frown easing. He even glanced up at Remus and nodded his thanks.
Severus performed a complicated sequence of movements with the wand and the door opened with a melodic sigh. He regarded the door as if it were a cobra preparing to strike. “It’s never done that before,” he stated with deep suspicion.
“Different wand,” Remus pointed out, moving to step into the house.
“Wait!”
“What?” Remus had one foot in the threshold, his body held awkwardly frozen. “What is it?” he repeated. He heard Severus exhale noisily.
“Step back. Now.”
He knew better than to argue. Carefully he pulled his foot back from the doorway and stepped back behind the wheelchair.
“And you call yourself a Dark Arts scholar,” Severus sniped at him as he pushed the chair into the doorway and performed another series of complicated wand swishes. Remus followed only half of the movements – he suspected the other half had been designed by Severus himself.
“Enter,” Severus called back as he rolled the chair into the house.
Remus followed Severus in, stopping when the wheelchair halted in front of him. The windows were small and allowed only small patches of light to enter the gloom of the main room. The smell of damp and neglect hit his nose like a slap. How long had the place been abandoned?
When Remus’ eyes adjusted he saw that Severus had halted in front of a wall of sombre looking oil portraits. With yet another complex wand movement the wall and its paintings altered before his eyes, assuming the shape of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with every conceivable shape and vintage of books.
“The books,” Remus observed a bit redundantly; Severus was already stroking reverent fingers across the spines of those on the nearest shelf.
“Unharmed,” Severus confirmed, “still under spells of protection, thank Merlin.”
“So, whoever took out the windows,” Remus began…
“Wasn’t from Voldemort’s camp,” Severus finished the thought.
“Vandalism.”
“Not the most salubrious of neighbourhoods,” Severus agreed.
“But why didn’t the Aurors come and take possession of… your possessions?” Remus wondered aloud.
“I doubt they would have bothered engaging with the wards after the first couple of casualties.” Severus rolled the chair across the room, gazing up at the shelves. “Even if they had managed to get in, they wouldn’t have seen a single book. This lot were spelled to disintegrate in the presence of anyone not in my presence.”
Harry came in through the open door.
“Everything alright?” the boy asked them, turning in a slow circle. “That’s a lot of books,” he said in awestruck tones.
“It certainly is,” Remus confirmed. “Maybe you could help Severus shrink them down.”
“All of them?”
“Ah…”
He looked over at Severus who had been taking a selection of books from the shelves and was holding them in the manner of a dog guarding his precious bones. He looked up at Remus and shrugged slightly. “I can prioritise which books are to go first. We could always come back for the rest at another time,” the man suggested.
“Yes, that’s a good idea,” Remus agreed. “I’ll just go upstairs and see what I can find in the way of clothes and the like, shall I?”
But Severus was already pointing to a book out of his reach and Harry was obligingly taking it down for him. He heard Ron’s awed exclamation of “Wow! That’s a lot of books!” and Harry’s uninhibited laugh in response. Remus smiled at the infectious sound but quickly lost his upbeat mood. The place was oppressive in its darkness, not the almost welcoming darkness of Hogwarts dungeons where Severus had lived for so long. He wondered whether Severus noticed the difference.
As Remus climbed the staircase it seemed like the walls were crowding in around him. He came to a doorway and the hair on his neck stood straight up as he walked into the bedroom. There was a single bed with an uncovered mattress and a faded and ripped poster of the Sex Pistols on the wall.
Remus couldn’t stand still. He kept checking over his shoulder; the sensation of someone watching him was almost overpowering, someone with a large, bloody piece of wood and a crazed, furious expression. Remus shuddered and started to reach for his wand only to realise that Severus still had it.
“Damn.”
This was Severus’ room as a child, he was sure of it. But what had happened here? He backed out of the room knowing that Severus was not likely to have used it in the last twenty years, since he knew that the man’s parents had been gone that long at least. Remus moved along the hallway to the next room. It was sparsely furnished with a double bed and a wardrobe. Remus checked another room, this one had more furniture: another large bed, a wardrobe, a dressing table, and two matching bedside tables. Everything in the third room was covered in dust and even Severus’ absence could not account for the thickness of it. He returned to the second room, the one that looked unused.
This is where you’ve been sleeping, Severus.
He no longer believed that the man had lived here – he’d just spent some nights sleeping under this roof. He opened the wardrobe and found some black robes hanging patiently on the rail. Further investigation yielded a small collection of socks, underwear, trousers and shirts. He also found a worn pair of boots at the bottom of the wardrobe and stood staring at them, willing his heart to unclench. He bent and picked them up, rubbing the worn leather between his fingers and picking up Severus’ faded scent. He wondered at his urge to take them. It wasn’t as if Severus was going to need them after all. And what would Severus say if he saw him carrying them? But the impulse would not be ignored and he took a pillowcase off the bed, quickly shoved the boots into it, and then packed the clothes on top.
He surveyed the room one more time, but there was nothing more to be seen, nothing that needed to be saved. It seemed that the only belongings Severus possessed that were worth anything were either at Hogwarts in the form of potions and ingredients, or contained in his cherished book collection. He knew that Minerva had preserved the potions carefully, pending a thorough inventory, so that only left packing up Severus’ books and to all intents and purposes the man would be moved out. Remus was well used to living with few belongings, ready to pick up and move at a moment’s notice, but even he had possessed some photos, some mementos from his past – gifts from friends that he would never want to part with. Severus had nothing like that here in his room.
Remus suspected that the man’s life had been lived with single-minded purpose; the defeat of the Dark Lord. Even his teaching career had been subsumed by that goal. Severus hadn’t been a bad teacher, he mused as he walked back down the stairs, just a terrifying one. He remembered, with a surprising rush of pleasure, Severus sweeping about the dungeons of Hogwarts, scattering squeaking children in his wake. It was perverse to consider that time as containing happy memories, but there it was; a smile lifted the edges of Remus mouth.
He was on the bottom step when he heard the shriek.
He hurtled in the direction of the lounge room, again reaching for his absent wand – but Severus had it, he could defend himself, couldn’t he? Remus passed through the doorway, ready to duck and roll, headed straight for the wheelchair. But the wheelchair was spinning around and Severus had the wand trained–
–on Ron, who was still yelling himself hoarse and trying to pull his arm out of–
–a book?
Hermione had her wand pointed at the redhead, but she looked completely dumbfounded and hadn’t cast any spells. She was yelling to Severus to tell her what to do, and he was yelling at her to move out of the way. Remus could help here.
“Hermione, move away, now!” he ordered, using his teacher’s voice. She stepped back reflexively, giving Severus a clear shot at the book attached to Ron’s arm. He fired off a spell at the same moment that Harry pelted through the door straight into Remus’ back, sending them both crashing to the floor.
It took some moments for Remus to untangle his limbs from Harry’s and get his wind back (he’d broken Harry’s fall nicely), by which time Ron was seated on the dusty sofa, looking pale and holding a glass of brandy. Hermione sat beside him with the offending book securely tied with magical rope.
Remus looked across at Severus and found a faint smile on the man’s face.
“It hardly seems possible that you lot managed to defeat Voldemort. If it hadn’t been for me I’m quite sure we would be living in a pure-blooded dictatorship right now.”
Remus sat up, wincing as his bruised ribs twinged. He saw that one pile of books had already been shrunk for transport and was tucked in an aging grocery box. Another pile that hadn’t yet been spelled down in size was teetering precariously near the old sofa. Those must have been the ones that Ron had been working on. Harry was holding a hand out to help him to his feet.
“Sorry about that, Remus.”
“Don’t worry,” Remus reassured the boy, “no permanent damage done.”
“For future reference and your continued existence,” Severus addressed a still pale Ron, “it’s a Dark Arts library,” he stressed the words sarcastically, “please check the books for curses before opening them,” he finished with a glare.
Normally Remus would have expected some kind of retort, Ron being the Weasley that he is, but the redhead was unexpectedly quiet, giving Severus a nod of acknowledgement.
“Thank you, Professor,” Hermione added.
“Any chance of tea, Severus?” Remus inquired, feeling a deep and sudden urge for a sit down and a drink.
“Ask the mice,” Severus replied in a far off voice. He used Remus’ wand to pull down some of the books on the higher shelves, obviously giving up on help from any of the more able-bodied. Remus thought Severus was amassing quite a large collection, considering these were only the books that deserved first priority for transport. Organising the storage of them once they were back home would keep Severus busy for days, but that was all to the good, he thought. Severus needed work to recover – he had had never been a creature of leisure.
“Come on, Harry,” Remus gestured at the doorway, “you can fight off the vermin while I make a pot.”
“Yeah, sure,” the boy smiled and followed him to the kitchen.
As Remus was batting away the cobwebs and searching for the kettle, he asked, “Harry, why are you working for the Ministry? Doing that kind of work for the Minister, it has to cost you too dearly – more than he’s compensating you, I’m certain.”
Instead of answering him right away, Harry looked down and started to wrestle with the ancient cooker’s knobs, trying to get a burner working. Finally, a ring of blue flame shot from the jets.
“I’m doing it for you,” the boy eventually replied, scuffing worn boots through the accumulated dirt on the floor.
“What?” The floor seemed to spin slowly under Remus’ feet and he noted absently that there were indeed mice in the kitchen. There was tiny whiskered snout protruding from the small space beside the oven.
“I do it so that I can change things for you. Eventually. Working from the inside, right?”
“Harry–”
But really, what could he say to that?
~~~^~~~
Remus sipped at the mug of tea, hoping for a respite from the whirling mess that his mind had become. He looked around the room. There wasn’t much left to do now, Hermione had taken the first load of books back to his flat and the next two loads were almost shrunk and packed. Severus, Harry and Ron were working quite amicably and that was yet another weirdness that contributed to Remus’ sense of not really being on the same planet.
“Are these ready to go?”
Harry’s voice jolted Remus out of his disaffected reverie. Harry was pointing at a large box with a peeling label on it that might have said potatoes.
“Yes. These will be as well in a moment,” Severus replied.
“Right. I’ll go ahead then. See you at the flat, Ron.”
The redhead gave a short wave and Harry Disapparated with a subdued bang. Remus got to his feet and collected the used mugs from various points in the room.
“I hardly think you need to bother yourself with that,” Severus observed dryly.
“No need to make it any worse than it already is in here,” Remus countered, “particularly if we are planning to return.”
Severus made no response beyond a slight curl of the lip before he turned back to the remaining six books and watched as Ron shrank them.
From the kitchen Remus heard Ron say a goodbye before he Apparated out with the last box. He checked his watch while the tea mugs were washing, having retrieved his wand for the purpose. He felt twitchy and his skin itched. Or was it his mind that itched? He cancelled the washing spell on the dish mop and starting scrubbing out the kettle by hand, desperate for some physical outlet for his unsettled nerves.
“Are you finished in there yet?” Severus called.
Remus rinsed the kettle out and left the mugs draining.
“Yes. It’s time to leave now. I need to be at work soon,” he replied as he walked back to the lounge room. He took a worn glove from his pocket and held it out to the man. Acting entirely on impulse he picked up the dusty framed picture – the only one he’d seen in the entire house – from the sideboard next to his hip, seeing Severus frown a second before they were pulled home by the portkey.