AN: So I really wanted to do some serious Snupin, and I can't seem to quit with the soulmate fics. So here we are, at the longest story I have ever written. I'm breaking it down into three digestible chunks, though, so it should be easier to swallow.
Anyway, none of the characters/settings/shared plot are mine, no matter how much I love Remy and Sev. All belong to JK Rowling.
Anyway, enjoy my lovelies!
~Kiro
PS.- This is dedicated to all of the educators out there. Thank you for making this possible.
*Edit* Hey, so I just went in and edited the hell out of this. You may or may not want to retread it, it's just making it prettier, no big changes or anything.
Remus Lupin lived a lonely life. According to the laws of magic, he would never be alone, but he was never a person that anyone would want. He was Turned before his fifth birthday, and after he truly discovered what that meant six years later, he realized that he would never truly have a chance of changing that loneliness.
He was a werewolf. They were intrinsically different as the dark creatures, half-humans, the literal Other of the wizarding world. They did not mix, they did not get involved with the others of either the wizarding and muggle world. They were doomed to a life of social isolation and prejudiced abuse.
Remus was pitied by his parents. The only feelings that he saw in his father's eyes after Remus was Turned were guilt and pity. His mother tried to help all she could with his condition by giving him chocolate after a full moon and making sure he kept well away from civilization during his transformation. Still, he could see the pity in her eyes as she guided him to his specially warded bomb shelter far away from the house for the full moon, the pity again as she carried him back after. That was all that Remus knew up until his eleventh year.
When first Remus stepped onto Platform 9 3/4, he was overwhelmed. It was just a few days after the full moon and he was tired and oversensitive. The people, the noises, the smells, they assaulted his ears and nose in a tidal wave of overwhelming information and input. Remus ran away, he pulled from his parents grasp and ran thirty feet through the noisy, crowded station to cower behind a pillar. He pulled at his ears in pained frustration and tried to stuff his nose in his clothes to get away from the many new and pungent smells. The young werewolf ignored all the calls from his parents, trying with all the desperate naivete of a small child or wild animal to isolate himself from the outside world.
After a few vain attempts at convincing their son to come out from his hiding place, the Lupins called for an authority to try. It took twenty minutes and a large commotion for Minerva McGonagall to coax him into her arms. The professor and her charge only barely made it onto the train before it left the station, even though the Lupins had been almost thirty minutes early to the platform. McGonagall then carried Remus to an empty compartment, where she settled him in and left him alone to calm down.
When the train arrived at Hogwarts, Remus collected himself enough to make it off the train without help. He was one of the last students off, and it took him two minutes of searching to figure out where everyone else had gone. He followed the nervous chatter of first years to the dock, but just as he reached the last boat it pulled away. The students within merely chuckled at his predicament and continued to paddle away.
In the end, Remus was not able to catch a carriage to the castle, either. He was forced to walk all the way up the dirt drive, hauling his shabby luggage through the mud and becoming filthy in the process.
Remus was almost half an hour late for the feast and, as a consequence, the second to last first year was being sorted when he arrived. He quietly slipped into the Great Hall, attempting to avoid notice. Remus tried to silently slip up to the last student, but the boy saw him. With what looked like a practiced sneer, the dark-haired boy turned his black eyes away from the dripping werewolf. However, the next second Remus felt the tingle of magic skitter over his skin and he looked down to see his robes cleaned with what must have been a simple cleansing charm.
Remus looked up and met the other's eyes, smiling at the boy.
"Thanks. I appreciate it."
The other merely put on another practiced sneer.
"Don't. I just didn't want you dripping all over the clean floor."
And with that, the boy jerked his way over to the stool and waited as the hat was placed over his long dark locks. About ten seconds later, the boy's placement was announced with enthusiasm.
"...SLYTHERIN!"
The table with the green snake banners cheered lightly and the young boy picked his way over to it. Remus watched him go, but his name was called and soon he was sitting on the stool himself, screwing his eyes shut and listening to a murmuring voice.
'Hmm... A little wolf, I see. With a lion's heart and a ravens- Snape, really?Snape? I mean, yous not that the fumes radiating from the Slytherin table addled your brains?s head shot up and he glared ferociously at Sirius, who had made the comment.
s not like I had a choice, Sirius! I never meant for this to happen! I never told my magic ! It justt change it, no matter how much I want to.s shoulder.
s no changing it, is there? We're Marauders, and we stick together no matter what. Now what do we need to do to help you?"
They stayed in that classroom for the next four hours, scheming.
There were four new rules in Remus' life and, consequently, the Marauders.
1) Avoid Severus at all costs. That went for all of them, Remus because he didn't want to give anything away, and the others because Remus would likely maul them if they came back with Severus' scent on them.
2) No one messes with Severus. This was mostly prohibited by the first rule, anyway, but it was best stated outright. That went for the entire school, too. The Marauders gradually became the boy's unofficial bodyguards, though they could only deal with troublemakers after they had left Severus' presence.
3) Insult Severus in Moony's presence and be prepared for wounds. This seemed self-explanatory.
4) Full moons require extra wards, cushioning charms, guards, and an article of Severus Snape's clothing. This last qualification was the hardest for everyone involved.
The Shrieking Shack became a fortress of sorts. Every single hard surface was cushioned with enough cushioning charms to save a skydiver without a chute. The wards were escalated so that even if a nuclear explosion happened inside the shack, no one could get in or out of the area without the spoken password. There were guards at all three entrances every full moon. And that wasn't even the tricky part.
The tricky part was Remus's Mate's scent. No matter how hard they tried or what spells they experimented with, it always seemed to get in. The only way that they could keep the wolf from going crazy was by bringing something of Severus' into the shack.
Getting this something was not an easy task, not at all. They couldn't sneak into the Slytherin dorms without a password and they couldn't exactly bodybind him and steal his shirt, then obliviate him. Well, they could, and that was the plan that Sirius favored, but Remus forbade it. So they scrambled for a plan.
It was three weeks after the beginning of the cease-fire, one week before the full moon, when the Marauders finally put a plan into action. Only one person would be in contact with Severus and his things for minimum wolf-maulage. It seemed perfect- but things never worked out as well as all the boys planned.
Sirius snuck through the library, as silently as was possible while carrying one cloak and wearing another, invisible, one over his entire body. He spotted his prey, who was silently reading some DADA textbook and not paying attention to the world around him. And there, slung over the back of the boy's chair, was his cloak. Perfect!
Sirius crept forward, readying an identical Slytherin cloak in his left hand and stretching out his right arm for a quick grab-and-run. He came close, closer, so close, just reach out his hand and-
Pale, potions-stained fingers wrapped around his wrist.
"Black," came the gravelly voice, "what do you think you're doing?"
The invisibility cloak was whipped from his back, leaving a quite visible Sirius-and-cloak standing behind the chair, one arm outstretched.
"Uh... Just thought I'd say hi. How's it going, Snape? Enjoying your reading?"
The other boy stared at him incredulously.
"What did you just call me?"
Sirius gave a blank look.
"What, Snape? That's your name, isn't it?"
The other boy's eyes narrowed into a suspicious glare.
"I knew something was wrong. First you stop teasing and pranking me, going so far as to avoid me, then you come up to me alone in the library with the lame excuse of 'saying hi' and neglect to call me Snivellus? What is wrong with you, Black? Have you and your posse all gone insane? Or are you finally doing me in? That's it, isn't it, you were going to replace my cloak with one soaked in deadly poison."
Sirius winced, looking down at the cloak in his hands, then back up at Snape.
"No, Snape, there's no poison on this. Not even itching powder. Look, it's on my bare skin, see?"
Indeed, the cloak was splayed along his bare forearm.
"Perhaps you just have a protective spell on your arms. I'm not stupid, Black. Why else would you steal my cloak and replace it with another? To curl up with it on a bad day?"
Sirius cringed at the surprisingly accurate description of the cloak's purpose. He had told Remus that it would be less suspicious to simply steal the cloak, but the damned overprotective Gryffindor had insisted that if they take anything they should replace it. And Sirius wasn't even allowed to switch the cloaks and obliviate Snape, either. This was close to unsalvageable.
"Look, Snape, we want a truce. All of the Marauders, all we want to do is stop fighting and be civil. Okay? And we thought that we might at least provide you with a new cloak as peace offering, but we knew you would just get suspicious, like you are now, if we wrapped it up with a bow and set it on your doorstep. There. Happy?"
With that, taking advantage of the other's shock, Sirius switched the cloaks and ran from the library. Time for a good, long scrub. Hopefully he could get most of the Snape's scent off him by dinner.
Life settled into a rhythm from then on, for Remus. Wake up, eat, think about Severus, go to class, sit on the other side of the room from Severus, keep head down to avoid staring at Severus, try not to think about Severus, go to lunch, do NOT stare at Severus, go to class, avoid Severus, study somewhere far away from Severus, go back to the common room and try to keep busy and not think about Severus, go to bed, fall asleep thinking about Severus.
Remus's friends were worried about him. He kept quiet in class, he read a lot more than he used to, he never joined in conversation, he stared off into space constantly, and he hardly ate at all. The werewolf slept fitfully and, when he finally settled down into sleep, the others checked on him to find his nose stuffed into Snape's cloak. Whenever Remus joined in conversation, he would somehow work his Beloved into the exchange, then sharply truncate speech when he realized what he was doing and stare desolately off into the distance. It was horrible for his friends to watch the poor boy fall apart inside.
The rest of the Marauders went on pretty much as normal, with the exceptions of Snape Avoidance and the full moon. Sirius went on his usual hijinx with girls and booze, convincing Peter to join him and, occasionally, James as well. James was caught up in his own life, though. At the end of sixth year he managed to cajole Lily Evans into a date and, a month after they first started going out, they confirmed each other as SoulMates.
The Marauders kept close even over the summer, and when they came back for seventh year they went on much the same as before, though this time with the stress of their NEWTs hanging over their heads. They were forced to take another clothing item- this time a shirt- from Snape early in the year, but that was the only change. James proposed to Lily in the spring and, of course, she said yes. Life went on.
At graduation, with one last prank, the Marauders parted without parting. They left Hogwarts for good and joined the Order of the Pheonix in the fight against the up-and-coming Dark Lord. The war escalated, Voldemort becoming more violent, and a prophecy was created. The four grew together, yet seperate, and poison infected the group.
Peter started to share his doubts with others in the group after the Potters went into hiding. He was so sure that Remus was a Death Eater, that Sirius had joined the Dark Lord. Sirius even started to believe him after everything that had happened with Remus, and it all went downhill. The debacle with the Secret Keeper lead to one dreadful night leaving one Marauder and wife dead, one in Azkaban, one with nothing salvageable but a finger, and one to fade into the background unnoticed.
