azure_rosa (azure_rosa) wrote in lupin_snape, @ 2011-09-01 19:01:00 |
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Entry tags: | project: a decade of ssrl |
The Answer Was Love
Title: The Answer Was Love
Summary: "This isn’t magic — it’s logic — a puzzle. A lot of the greatest wizards haven’t got an ounce of logic; they’d be stuck in here forever." What if Remus, who has being trying and failing to befriend Severus for several years, learned of Severus’ affinity for logic puzzles? What if after befriending him, he fell in love and decided that maybe the only way to Severus’ heart was through his brain?
Timeline: Post war, both lived, the Tonks train wreak never happened and thus no Teddy.
Pairings: Friendship and eventual Snape/Lupin Pre-slash so far, but it might eventually become full blown slash. Background Harry/Hermione.
Disclaimer: If you think any of these characters are mine please tell me what world you live in so I can move there posthaste! Also all of the puzzles in this story are real and actual logic puzzles that I have solved in various computer games with the obvious exception of the Rubik’s cube which I played in reality. None of the puzzles mentioned hereafter are my intellectual property and at the end I will give credit where credit is due for each in order of appearance.
Puzzle: The Bishop Swap originally came to my attention in the computer game "The Seventh Guest" though I suspect they didn't invent it. Should you wish to play the puzzle yourself you can find it here: (http://www.pothoven.net/bishopPuzzle.h
Rating: pg?
Warnings/kinks: none yet unless mind games, both literal and metaphorical, count. Sneaky Remus, sneaky Severus, courtship, drama. Also I switch POV between the boys; hopefully it will be simple to tell whose head you’re in. This is a WIP, but I have most of the beginning and about half of the end done, I just need to do the middle and the very end. I suspect I will post a section a month without any real breaks as I've quite the backlog. :)
Author: azure_rosa
To part four
If I wasn’t so tired I’d feel like dancing. That had gone better than I had ever dared hope! Severus and I had got on swimmingly for hours! Granted no sticky topics had been brought up, but that was a reason to celebrate in and of itself. Severus’ favorite way to show displeasure was to bring up a painful or embarrassing topic until you left him alone, so the lack was telling.
I had missed talking to someone my own age. Harry and his friends are enjoyable company, but they are all still young and active enough that they would rather go out and do something than spend a quiet evening at home chatting. If I can do half as well as I did tonight in the future I think even Severus wouldn’t object to my company on a semi-regular basis.
As much as I appreciated having someone my age to talk to I suspected Severus was nearly as desperate. Granted he had a built in group of adults to speak to should the fancy ever strike him, but he had the same problem I did except in reverse. He was too young for them. I’m sure they were more than willing to chat with him if he was so inclined, but it is difficult to talk to people intimately who distinctly remember what you looked like as a spotty teen under their care as if it was yesterday.
It is probable the only reason I wasn’t tossed out on my ear is because he is every bit as lonely as I have been. Maybe even more so. A sad thought, but likely. Well, my company had been accepted, eagerly even by Severus’ standards, so we could both benefit from the company as long as we both wished.
Satisfied with my reasoning and truly tired I prepared for bed quickly. Sleep came almost as soon as my head hit my pillow, but my mind turned the evening over as I slept providing me with thought provoking dreams throughout the night. Ideas were hatched and discarded or kept according to their merit, though I did not recall most of them when consciousness returned to me.
My week passed productively, though it did seem longer than usual as I actually had something to look forward to for once. I worked on translating an old Greek play into English during the week. It was a slow and pain-staking process and often I had to change my translations after re-reading them to make the content and intent of the author clearer. It was a hard job. The two languages, while related, were quite different when it came to nuance as so much was communicated in shades of meaning using distinctions between words that existed in one language but not the other.
It was slow going and would likely take at least a month to translate the collection of parchment rolls before going back to revise and clarify the language and flow of the play. It could turn out that there were parts missing or it could be a complete piece, it was hard to tell prior to translation, though the length was promising.
As Friday approached, my nerves returned. We couldn’t very well talk about puzzles forever, sooner or later we would run out of known ones to challenge each other with, so what would we talk about? I tried to picture the two of us sitting around talking about the weather, but it just didn’t work aside from making me laugh to myself.
Maybe Severus would come up with something to talk about and maybe he wouldn’t, I’d just have to play it by ear. It might be that without puzzles to talk about we had nothing in common aside from our ages and living through two wars. I hoped not; I had greatly enjoyed Severus’ company.
For the meantime I took to reminding myself of some of my favorite word puzzles, they were easiest to challenge Severus with as they needed no props, though I suspected I would want to toss another, more hands on puzzle, into the mix sooner or later. Maybe one of the chess puzzles I had encountered?
Some of them were quite challenging and many had more than one solution for all they felt like unanswerable conundrums when one attempted to solve them for the first time. My two favorites immediately sprang to mind so now there was only one question: how evil did I want to be?
The Queen’s Dilemma was a classic of course; placing eight queens on a standard chess board without any of them capable of attacking any of the others was tricky, but do-able. Yet it had twelve entirely unique solutions and a grant total of ninety-two solutions when you accounted for board rotation. It was difficult, but not exactly mind bending. Maybe if I required Severus to find more than one of the unique solutions it would work, but The Bishop Swap was more what I had in mind.
Severus had tried to make it sound like the rubiks cube had given him no trouble whatsoever, but I could tell that was more a matter of pride than reality. If he really had no problem with the puzzle he wouldn’t have been nearly as shocked to hear I could solve it so quickly, nor would he have relaxed so much after I told him it took me hours to solve it the first time I tried.
Hidden complexity was the way to go. A simple looking puzzle is often harder than a hard looking puzzle simply because people underestimate them. Giving Severus a four by four chess board with two sets of four bishops and telling him all he had to do was switch them using their normal movement, the only limitation being he couldn’t move one color into an attack by the other was bound to earn me that little superior look he tended to make when he was convinced he was cleverer than you.
Yes, The Bishop Swap would be the puzzle. Now the only question was should I stick around to watch Severus get more and more frustrated and risk getting hexed if I so much as smiled, or should I just drop it off at the end of his visit and leave Severus to solve it in peace. As entertaining as watching Severus’ smug expression melt into frustration would be I quickly realized the second option was much safer, both for my person and the continuation of our puzzle nights.
Decision made I transfigured my chess set accordingly and set about preparing for round two of my attempt to befriend my former classmate. As I changed from my jogger, ah the benefits of working from home, to my proper company robes I wondered if I should push a bit further today or if I should keep my company casual and non-threatening for a while longer.
Severus was rather skittish in his own way and being too demanding too soon would likely drive him even further into his shell instead of drawing him out. Yet playing it safe and not challenging him could allow him to become bored which is nearly as dangerous to my hopes of befriending him as having him withdraw from me. Maybe playing it by ear would be best, if Severus even mentions another topic in passing I could attempt to direct the conversation away from the known safe topics and possibly learn more about him while not prying enough to be truly irritating.
To part six