Chapter 3

"Look in the mirror, Severus. The cure has progressed. Soon you will feel much better than you do now."

Tobias's hands were on his shoulders. Tobias's breath was in his ear. Severus shuddered with an instinctive revulsion, wishing he could flee from his body as he did under the physical torture, but Tobias would surely notice it now, as he didn't when he was preoccupied with his tools. His father's noticing his distance from the process of "curing" him was a step closer to his father discovering the truth.

Severus could not endure it if that happened, and to endure was harder than to live.

He lifted his head and gazed into the mirror at the ruin of his body that Tobias considered "progress."

He was so emaciated that Severus knew he would have fallen over if Tobias hadn't supported him. His skin was translucent in places, clearly showing the maze of running blue veins and the marks of sores and weals and scars and burns that Tobias had inflicted on him. And bites, from the rats three days ago, though Severus forced himself to look at those more objectively. His vision had trembled at the edges when he focused on them for too long, which was a sure sign that his astral projection was preparing to happen in spite of all the control he could exercise over it.

His shoulder blades stuck out of his body like broken bats' wings. His teeth were the most prominent part of his face. His ears lacked the lobes, his hair grew sparse, and his jaw trembled and hung loose constantly, no matter how often Severus tried to clamp it shut.

Severus gazed at himself as steadfastly as he could, privately glad that he could change his appearance to whatever he wanted when he was in astral form. Otherwise, though he might have got pity from people like Potter and his pack, it was very hard to imagine that they would ever take him seriously.

"So good," Tobias whispered to him, and stroked down one of Severus's legs, which was so thin that it looked like a chicken bone to Severus. There was a streak of dried blood on his knee. He looked at that instead of his father's healthy hand touching his skin. Severus's hands bore the swollen joints of repeatedly broken fingers.

And Tobias would have done worse if I defied him.

Tobias stood back upright, and caught Severus's eye, and smiled. The thickness of Dark magic crackled in the air around him, smelling like rotted fruit mixed with rotten meat, and Severus closed his eyes in pain and exhaustion and dread.

"Not long now," Tobias whispered, as if he were consoling a sulky child. "And then you'll be healthy, and we'll be free of this curse that plagues us."

He helped Severus limp back to his bedroom, murmuring tender words all the while, and then went to fetch the screws that he would drive into Severus's spine. Severus shut his eyes and leaped free.

One cold thought rode with him, like a heavy bolt of glass that was meant to rivet him to his body.

Even if I escaped, would my life be worth living?

The forest glade was a relief after that, even if the only person Severus could see in it was Potter, and even if Potter's eyes fixed on him the moment he arrived, giving Severus none of the pleasure of trying to sneak up on him.

And even if Potter half-rose to his feet with a startled exclamation.

"What's happened to you?"

Severus changed his astral appearance at once. He must have brought along some of the wounds that Tobias had inflicted on him, or perhaps come naked. It was one of the reasons he hated looking into the mirror; it always influenced his perception of the appearance his "body" took the next time he escaped from his prison.

He was especially regretful for this time, since Potter was staring at him with wide and startled eyes. Severus's only comfort was that it couldn't have been as bad as it had looked in reality, or Potter would have laughed and said something about Severus deserving it. No, probably it was only nakedness, to shock him.

Then Severus thought about the hunt he had seen the other night, and wondered whether it was really that easy to shock Potter any longer.

He shrugged off and buried the speculations, because Potter was waiting for him to speak, and he had no way of knowing if what Severus said was the truth or a lie. "Nightmares sometimes affect me that way," Severus said. "And it's easy to have nightmares when you've bowed to the Dark Lord."

He wanted Potter to step back from Severus casual mention of nightmares, eyes bright with respect at the tone. Surely it should make Severus look powerful if he disregarded his own pain. But it seemed that becoming a werewolf hadn't dimmed Potter's sense of self-righteousness, because he stepped closer instead, nostrils wide as if he were focusing those keen bodily senses he had talked about on Severus. "How often do you have the nightmares?" His voice was low.

"Every night," Severus said, curling his lip in disdain as if it were a minor annoyance like clumsy first years. For a moment, he wondered about telling Potter the truth, but what was Potter going to do? He'd said that he wasn't leaving this forest until his pack had all learned control of their wolves, and it wouldn't happen in the next few weeks, which Severus estimated was all the time he had until Tobias killed him. Nor could he tell anyone who would investigate and see the truth. Tobias would simply find some way to cover up and lie his way out of it. And then he would hurt Severus even more because of it. No, Severus was not so stupid as to believe in a rescue.

That truth sank home for the first time. If the sight of his body had been a glass bolt in his spine, this was a lead chain about his chest. Severus closed his eyes.

There was an odd tingle in his left shoulder. Severus looked up in surprise to see Potter withdrawing his hand with an embarrassed look.

"Sorry," he murmured. "I would comfort my people by touching them, but I forgot that I can't do that with you." He stepped back and circled around Severus as if trying to look for the most solid part of him, reminding Severus of nothing so much as a wolf circling a locked barn. "It's no wonder that you use your magic to flee when you can. Is there—" He shook his head harshly. "No, of course there isn't."

"There isn't what?" Severus asked. He kept a sharp eye on the anxious, condescending expression on Potter's face. As long as it didn't grow too strong, then he could put up with it. It was—slightly pleasant to have someone ask questions about him as if they would have liked to aid him.

"There isn't anything I can do to help you," Potter said harshly, and settled back on the ground with a fluid motion that Severus never would have believed if he hadn't seen Potter move far more gracefully in the forest. "If I went back now, everyone would question me about where I'd been, and there would be people who could work out what happened, because my wolf is never far from the surface. I would need to persuade the Minister and the Wizengamot that you should be left alone, and I'm not sure that my voice is politically relevant anymore." He pawed a distressed hand across his forehead, his eyes turning yellow.

Severus bit his lip and stayed quiet. He wanted to say something about how Potter could get around that if he'd ever bothered to learn how to properly wield his political influence, but why should he? Potter would talk some mealy-mouthed moral rubbish about how he couldn't take advantage of his fame, and the situation would say exactly what it was now. Severus couldn't be disappointed because he hadn't expected anything less. Potter had no idea of the truth, and his first loyalty had always been to the people clustered around him—who had never included Severus.

Perhaps Potter could alert his friends, but even if he did, that would mean the Aurors would come clumsily sniffing about, and Tobias would punish Severus more in the end.

"I appreciate the sentiment," he said, because he could say that as an abstract statement and mean it. "I'd rather hear more about the pack and your part in it, to be honest. That's what I'm here for, not discussing my own situation."

Potter watched him with brooding eyes for a few more moments, and then nodded and climbed to his feet. His scar appeared briefly as his head shifted, and Severus started. Usually it was the first thing he stared at, to remind himself that this was Potter he was talking to and orient his mindset accordingly. This time, it hadn't occurred to him to look for it. Potter's aura of strength was a much better reason to stare.

"I understand," Potter said. "And it'll be interesting to tell this story to someone who isn't already part of the pack and doesn't understand it instinctively because of the presence of the wolf moving inside him." He grinned. Severus decided his impression of the other day hadn't been mistaken; Potter's teeth were longer and sharper than they had been when he was human. "When you didn't return after the hunt, I decided that you'd grown disgusted with us."

"No." Severus drifted after Potter and seated himself on the ground, legs folded, when Potter settled down in a crouch outside one of the houses. For a moment, his arse passed through the grass, but he readjusted before Potter could do more than raise an amused eyebrow. Severus lifted his head with assured haughtiness and asked a question that he thought would distract Potter. "When did you become so bloody good at killing?"

"It was bloody, wasn't it?" Potter murmured, misunderstanding the question because he was Potter. He examined his hands for a moment, as if he expected to see silver nails there, before he lifted his gaze to Severus. "When I took the wolf into myself," he answered. "When I decided that I couldn't become absorbed, either by the change itself and the hunger it produces or by the fact that the wolf existed."

Severus folded his arms and nodded to show that he was listening.

"It's hard to describe the wolf," Potter said. "It's not exactly a separate animal, or being, inside me—although it comes close to that for someone like Hyacinth, who has so much strength to control. It's more like—a need. A twitch in the muscles when they're not exercised enough. A taste for the right kind of food that obsesses you more the longer it goes unfulfilled." He smiled, and Severus saw the golden haze brighten and grow strong in his eyes again. "Yes," Potter repeated softly. "A taste for the right kind of food. Exactly like that."

Severus leaned forwards. "I'm surprised that you managed to come to that decision in the first place. I've always heard that werewolves are mindless before the change, before the day of the full moon, and all the restraints in the world won't keep the wolf back when it wants to come out."

Potter snorted. "What causes the mindlessness is the werewolves' attempt to ignore or flee from their fate. The wolf doesn't like being ignored. It'll surge up all the more destructively if one of us tries to pretend that they're just a normal human. It's like that taste I told you about. Ignore it and the food becomes all you can think about."

One of us, Severus thought in wonder. Potter has managed to become one of the monsters, and he seems comfortable being so.

"And sometimes, of course," Potter continued in a soft, grim voice, "you get someone like Fenrir Greyback, who revels in causing damage and pain. He'll invite the mindlessness in and run with it, until the wolf takes over most of the time. It's why he looked like a wolf even when he was in human form—the yellow fingernails and the long teeth." He shook his head and looked away.

"How was he able to bite you?" Severus asked, giving in to his curiosity, though his mother would surely have called it vulgar. "I would have thought the Ministry would keep you locked up like a virgin bride until all the Death Eaters were dealt with."

Potter sighed. "He sent me a note saying that he was ready to surrender, but he would only surrender in my presence and on the night of the full moon. I could bring all the Aurors I liked and all the silver I liked and—and everything else. I went because I was a young, naïve idiot."

Severus was startled into laughing. "It's good to see you recognize that."

Potter turned his head quickly, and Severus recoiled in spite of himself at the sight of those teeth champing together and the eyes focused on him—and maybe the sheer swiftness of the motion, too. Potter's swaying head left afterimages in his vision. "I was," he said. "What I am now is better than that, despite all the pain I've gone through. I know what I am and accept it, and I can protect other people from me and my pack members from dying because of their wolves. That's worth it."

Severus had to look away, because he wasn't sure what Potter would see in his eyes if he kept returning his gaze. "And of course Fenrir managed to slaughter the Aurors that you'd brought along, and evade the weapons."

"Of course," Potter said dryly. "He acted as if he wanted to kill me, too, then ended up biting me. He was howling when he did it, but I'd swear he was laughing." One hand rose to his right shoulder to touch the bite Severus had noticed before. "He ran away after that, and left me to explain myself.

"I concealed that I was bitten from everyone except Ron and Hermione, and told the Ministry that they needed to take Greyback seriously as a threat. They did. Meanwhile, I started studying how to control my wolf."

Potter paused reflectively. "Except for my first change."

Severus raised his eyebrows. "You let yourself have one night of howling in misery and pacing up and down in a small room? I can't imagine that that made your wolf very happy." Of course, given Potter's innate nobility, it was also impossible to imagine him doing anything else.

Potter smiled at him. His eyes were glinting, and his head tilted to the side, and Severus suddenly felt as if Potter were considering the angle he would need to get to Severus's jugular. "No. I made sure that I knew where Greyback was—those senses I told you about are useful for tracking other werewolves, too—and then I warded the forest so that he couldn't get out and neither could I. I made sure I was close to him when I changed." His fingers rose in front of him, clenching, and once again he seemed to be testing the strength of invisible claws.

"I tore the bastard's throat out."

The sound of the growl in the back of his voice would have made Severus's hair rise and his heart beat faster, if it could have. And it did something else. Severus felt himself close his eyes and tilt his head back in sheer reaction.

This was Potter the way Severus had sometimes daydreamed he could be, when he allowed himself to forget about Potter's stupid fucking heroics and focus on the pranks he pulled on Slytherins instead. This was Potter acknowledging the full force of his strength and using it. He was one of the monsters, but he hadn't become like the Dark Lord or Greyback. Still, he tore people's throats out.

Severus knew he would have gone hard if they were in the same room.

"And after that," Potter went on, in a gentler voice, as if he knew that Severus needed time to absorb what he'd just heard, "I started to look out for other werewolves who were still struggling to cope with what they were instead of sinking hopelessly under their burden, or using it as an excuse to run mad. I found Celia, and Josh, and Leila, that way."

Severus opened his eyes and tried to do something else other than to stare at Potter in avid lust. "I know who you're leaving out, having met the pack," he said with some difficulty. Potter shot him a curious look, which suggested he didn't know how he'd affected Severus after all. Severus cleared his throat and hurried on. "How did you find Hyacinth?"

"I heard rumors about her," Potter said, settling back in the grass so that now he was sitting with his legs crossed beneath him, like a normal person, rather than on his buttocks, like a wolf. "That she'd been changed and her family was desperately trying to keep her from murdering anyone—and that they'd failed. When I found her, she was near to committing suicide out of despair. I did what I could to protect and help her. It wasn't until I transformed and fought her and won that she started to think I could help her control her wolf, though."

"I understand why," Severus said. "She's incredibly powerful."

Potter nodded, with compassion and pity stirring together like water and mud in his eyes. "If she was a real wolf and born with that amount of strength, she could lead a pack, no question. If she was a human woman, she could be a politician. But werewolves aren't natural creatures, and unless she learns to dance with it like a partner, then there's nowhere for that strength to go." He lifted his head, and Severys saw the same determination that had been in his eyes when he howled at the moon. "There's no place for us. So we're going to create one."

Severus wanted to shiver. He had never imagined that that would be the action he would miss being able to do the most when he was astral, but it seemed that Potter had made it so. "No one but you could do it, Potter."

Potter gave him a quick smile, but shook his head. "No. Someone else couldhave come up with this strategy. I just happen to be the one who did." Severus nodded and said nothing else. If Potter wanted to persist in his little delusion, then Severus wasn't going to contradict him.

"Now." Potter sprawled forwards and settled his elbows on the grass and his chin on his hands. "Why did you stay away for three days after the hunt if you weren't disgusted with us? I thought the timing no coincidence."

Because Tobias hurt me so badly that I spent most of those three days unconscious, and the rest with him watching me too closely, wasn't an answer that Severus could give, given the careful web of lies he'd spun about himself by this point. He shrugged instead. "I got busy. I was slightly less bored. I was able to talk to my father, which isn't always the case; he's always scheming to get me out." Severus was proud of how level his voice remained on those words. He could still lie well. He still had power of a sort.

It's the only power you'll have soon. You should tell Potter the truth and let him do something to help you.

But Severus dismissed the idea. Potter had stated his limitations all too clearly. What could Severus expect him to do? And besides, he thought he should be able to choose how much he revealed and to whom. It would be rare enough that he got to make choices in the rest of his life. If he wanted to die with his mouth shut on the words that would expose him as weak and contemptible to Potter, then he should be able to do that.

"Acceptable," Potter said, tilting his head to the side and watching Severus with wild eyes that wavered between gold and green. "And yet, I think, not quite the whole truth."

Severus shrugged, glad that he couldn't sweat in this form, and that any nervous fidgets he did on reflex were probably absorbed in the general flickering and flashing of his unstable limbs. "If I don't want to retell every boring detail of my closed-in days, Potter, I personally think that you should find that reassuring."

Potter, thankfully, laughed and sat upright again, this time with his legs sprawled around him in a pose that struck somewhere between wolf and human. He tries to incorporate the balance even into his gestures,Severus thought. I can see why the others would find it difficult to imitate him. "You're probably right about that," he said. "Well, I hope you continue to visit. You're the first non-werewolf I've told about this, other than my friends, who would trust me if I told them I needed them to follow me into a giant's lair. And if you took it this well, then maybe the Wizengamot will, too. Someday."

Severus winced. "Potter, I took it this well because I like power, and I don't mind blood," he said. "What you showed me in the hunt was beautiful. I don't think many other people would see it the same way."

Potter winked at him. "Ah, but you grew up with the tales of werewolves as monsters, not to mention almost being killed by one in school, and you still managed to overcome your prejudices. I think that someone who's lived outside the wizarding world, like a Muggleborn, might be more sympathetic."

Severus snorted. "And there's so many of those on the Wizengamot."

"Well, then there might be pure-bloods who think we're beautiful," Potter said with determined optimism. When Severus rolled his eyes, he said at once, in a challenging tone that made Severus understand how a wolf could roll over and show its belly, "Well, what do you think is beautiful about us, then?"

"You're wild," Severus said. "And that's something a human can admire, but it's not the same thing as thinking you're harmless. I know you can't hurt me even if you try. If I were in front of you in the flesh, I'd no doubt feel differently."

Potter sighed and ran his hand down his face. "Yes, perhaps you're right. But I still think we should try, and use as many advantages of both wolf and human as we can to—"

"Get away from him."

Potter sprang up and away from Severus, landing on all fours and growling from deep in his chest. Severus vanished and then reappeared facing the one who had spoken from the woods.

It was Hyacinth, walking on her hands and knees, her eyes fixed on him and her nostrils so wide that Severus could see the red inside them. They were flaring and sniffing, and she seemed uncertain whether she saw or smelled him most keenly. She had a better growl than Potter did.

"I can smell him," she said. "Blood, pain, death-stink. He comes from a place of torture and madness. He hasn't told you everything, leader." She turned her gaze towards Potter, and it grew briefly reverent, but the next moment she was looking back at Severus with no loss of suspicion.

"Snape?" Potter asked.

It was all there in his voice—the old hatred, the old uncertainty as to whether Severus was good or evil, the doubt that he should have shown him any attention because Severus wasn't worth such attention.

He must think that I'm the one torturing people.

Severus leaped without answering. He had only a few weeks left to live. He wasn't about to spend them with people who insisted on turning him into a person he hadn't been—mentally or physically—in years.

Your pride will choke you to death.

Then at least I don't have to swallow it, Severus answered the voice in the back of his mind, and swam away through the astral world.