Remus isn't even trying to get the Wolfsbane potion anymore, but he'll even be polite to Ol' Black(-Hole) Eyes if it might help him find a missing girl who hasn't even made it to her first full moon.

Warning: brooding over the lycanthropic oral fixation. Just brooding, though; all bitiness is in the past.

Reminder: the narrators know what they (think they) know and think what they think. Please consider the possibility that a given POV character might have been wrong, misinformed, or even lying before determining that it's the storyline/continuity that's inconsistent. Yes, I'm saying that now because Remus's lack of omniscience is varyingly glaring throughout.

Still St. Mungo's

"Remus! Back again?"

"Back again, Raj," Remus agreed ruefully, shaking hands with his former senior-prefect. He noticed a new face about the lab. "Oh, hullo! You're… no, wait… it's Chang, isn't it? You were a year below me, I think?"

"Chang as was," Ranjit said, when the witch only dipped her head with a smile. "She's gone and married Dr. Strangelove."

"I don't remember seeing that in the Prophet!" Remus exclaimed. Mingyay, that was her name, he thought. Ravenclaw.

Mingyay dimpled at him absently, and said in a low, musical voice, "Phil won't have anything to do with the Prophet. It was in his own paper, of course."

"Oh, of course," Remus said, trying to look as if he read the thing or even remembered its name.

"Yes," Mingyay said. He had the distinct impression she was answering his ignorance rather than his words.

"Well, congratulations, Mrs. Lovegood," he said gamely. The woman had to be insane, choosing to marry Xenophilius and work with Snape. Anyone new at the Wolfsbane Project (awful name, but it was the key ingredient... and made some of the more sadistic bureaucrats happy) was a gift horse, though.

"Please, call me Ming," she replied.

"Well, if you're sure…"

"Quite sure, Mr. Lupin," Ming smiled. "No one with such a distinguished nose can say Míngyùe* at all well."

He fingered his unremarkable nose. He wouldn't have called it distinguished, but his entire face was positively Roman compared to the soft curves of her own. "I see," he smiled. "And I'm Remus. When did you start working here, Ming?"

"Oh, Mingaling's still got the shine on," Raj said, dropping a friendly arm around her shoulders.

"Ranjit makes terrible puns," Ming said gravely, to Remus's complete lack of comprehension. "But yes, it's so. Snape made me promise last year to find out whether I wanted to work here, once Phil and I were settled. It seemed like interesting work, and so I came."

"You know Snape?"

"He wants to read the old Chinese herbals," she said replied. "The Shennong Bencao and so on. When he first began to study the Asian runes, he needed someone nearer by to help him."

"You tutored Snape?" Remus asked, a little awestruck. As far as he knew, Snape had never been on the receiving end of the tutor's stick. Not even in Transfiguration (as far as Remus knew), where he'd always seemed to be working harder than he usually had to, to make things come right.

She smiled gently, and said, "Professor Slughorn introduced him to my grandmother, so of course he could not escape tea. I think it was a relief to him to have someone there to talk potions with. But what is your interest in the project, Remus?"

"Oh, well, er," Ranjit, bless the man, was starting to flounder for him when a deep voice drawled suddenly from right between his shoulders, Merlin, making him jump.

"An excellent question, Lovegood. Lupin, didn't I tell you last time if I ever caught you wheedling around here again I'd chase you out with a pitchfork?"

"I believe you did, Severus," Remus said mildly, pulling on his special, polite, talking-to-Snape face. He didn't point out that Snape hadn't specified that the pitchfork would be silver, and could therefore be assumed not to have meant it much. Ming wouldn't know about his curse already. Unless Snape changed his mind and let Remus into the project (ha), she wasn't going to. "But I wanted to speak to someone at the project on another matter."

Snape made a skeptical noise, but said curtly, "Fine. In my office."

Remus followed the lean back and its trail of woody, herbal scent into the depressingly familiar office. He wondered whether Snape ever wore anything but wet-stone colors. Put the man up against the wall into Diagon, and he'd look like he was wearing Jamie's cloak with the hood down.

The office itself wasn't bad; all the rooms in St. Mungo's and the Ministry had airy enchanted windows on at least one wall, even if the other side of said wall was actually a broom cupboard. An expensive bit of magic, but anything to keep everyone at their desks. The walls were a pale, cloudlike blue that always made Remus feel swimmy, and there were some quite interesting illuminations on the wall in various languages, some of which he knew Snape spoke, or at least could read.

He hated it anyway. He must have been in here fifteen times, trying to persuade Snape to let him sign on to help test the potion. He knew they were still having problems with side effects, but he felt like a parasite and a coward, not being as much help as he could with something that was meant to help him.

But Snape kept listening to him reason and plead (or at least kept his eyes mostly open while he napped until Remus was done; hard to tell), and then fixing him an impatient glare and droning things like, "What were your NEWT scores, Lupin? Oh, you earned some? Get out." And "Describe your wand, Lupin. Yes, I thought you could, because you have one. What a nice resource for you. Goodbye." And, "Do you have a roof at night? A way of bathing and doing laundry that would allow you to show up at job interviews without reeking of unwashed werewolf? I see. The door is behind you." Most recently it had been, "Lupin, do—you—understand—words—spoken—in—English? How delightful for you: you still have half a brain to fry. Stop badgering me or I'll take out a restraining order. With a pitchfork."

Remus supposed it was sort of sweet that the project was rejecting test subjects that weren't already sleeping under bridges and getting all their calories out of bottles, or living rough in some forest or other. It made him feel absolutely foul, though. More, although it might be self-centered, he couldn't quite get past the feeling that Snape was refusing him this, something that would make him safe to be out of his cage every month, largely out of spite.

He hadn't let his friends take him running since '76, when waking to silver-burns around his mouth had made him face the sheer enormity of the risks they'd been taking. It mattered for at least a week after the Full how thwarted his moon-maddened changeling-self had felt, and staying in the Shack was only moderately better than being caged. When no one could make it, or only Pete could, he sometimes wasn't fully healed until the next time. Soon Prongs was going to have a baby to keep him home, too. Padfoot was good company, but he wasn't the whole pack. Anyway, Remus didn't want to have to rely on Frivolous Black being reliable every month for the rest of their lives.

The Ministry's changing cells would give him company, but only his family and friends and a few of the teachers knew what he was, among the uncursed and outside the Project. He hadn't been able to find independent work as it was, and what if Jamie got fed up with funding their little company? Marauder's Moon products were a hit at the DMLE and with the Order, but those were limited markets that usually got charged reduced prices. The joke line wasn't doing as well. Oh, Zonko's kept them in stock, but didn't run out nearly as fast as Jamie and Sirius had confidently expected. They were almost always in the red. He'd get a glowing reference, of course, but grows hair and cannibalism regularly wasn't a job skill in high demand. Not with anyone he'd care to work with.

No, he had to keep off their radar. Even coming here was a risk, but he couldn't live with himself if he didn't try. Ranjit and Belby wouldn't give him away, though, and Snape (thank Merlin and Dumbledore) couldn't. Remus thought he (probably) wouldn't have anyway, honestly. But it was best to have insurance, and Severus had only been anything like Remus's friend for a few eggshell months before he'd somehow gotten too much information out of Sirius. Cunningly, Sirius insisted, although Severus had taken a poker-faced, commiseratingly unsympathetic I-won't-pry-if-you-don't attitude to the monthly 'sicknesses.'

Remus had barely felt he knew Severus even then, although he'd picked up enough to have a vague and uncomfortable idea about why he'd stayed at school that winter. He certainly didn't know Snape now, except that ceasing to be prey had only made his snappishness more coherent, hadn't eased it. Or his contempt. Which wasn't fair, because although Sirius was definitely hedging about what had happened, he hadn't been lying about its having been an accident. Remus knew when Siri was lying, didn't even need enhanced senses.

But those two never gave each other the benefit of any doubt, and Remus wouldn't have felt inclined to be fair to the mercenary bastard who'd bitten him. He certainly wouldn't have sat quietly (if irritably) in a room alone with Greyback with nothing but a desk between them and asked what the stinking hyena wanted.

"What, then?" Snape asked, drumming his long fingers on the desk. He looked as though he was trying to do too much. Remus thought he might be a little bonier than usual, and there was the kind of smudgy bruising under his eyes that one got from neglecting sleep rather than annoying people with quick tempers.

"There's a girl gone missing," Remus said. "Last seen a little over a week ago. I met her and her parents last time I came here, in the waiting room. I'm the only wizard they know who isn't assigned to their case. They asked me to ask around, and I know she wants to be in the study, too, so—"

"So you felt a kinship with a young idiot as self-destructively mental as you are?" Snape finished for him helpfully, turning around with tight, disdainful lips to pull a mug off a shelf behind him. He tapped its rim, and it filled with water.

"So I came by to ask if she'd been in," Remus said patiently as Snape drank. The cup stayed up in front of his thin mouth. It left only the beaky proboscis and black eyes visible, heavy-lidded with distance and distaste. "Her mum said she was worried about the transformations ruining her hands, so we thought she might still come by to try again here even if she wanted to get away from home for a while."

"Her hands," Snape repeated, eyes dropping broodingly to his own fingers.

He was silent for a long moment, during which Remus swallowed down the fervent desire to try telling him just one more time that he'd never had anything to do with Sirius's fit of whatever that had been. That he was, speaking personally, extremely glad that Snape had escaped without more than a clawing and dented gauntlets (no one had ever explained those to Remus. Sirius had tried to say Snape's wearing silver armor to the Willow proved he'd been after proof of Moony's secret, but he'd reeked of guilt. Remus was heartstoppingly glad Snape had had them, whatever the reason and despite how incredibly unpleasant that rash had made eating and talking for weeks), and wouldn't have to worry about things like that and worse.

He'd tried before. It never did any good. Quite the contrary. Reminding Snape about that night was always a very loud disaster.

"I think I do remember a girl fussing over her fingers," Snape said after a long, frowning moment. Maybe Remus had misunderstood his silence. He always smelled edgy and intense under his very herbal soap; it was only a matter of degree. That and eyes so dark Remus couldn't see the pupils made him hard to read. "Blonde, muggle before the curse, bitten very recently, still at school? Musical." Remus nodded. "I haven't seen her here since she applied. Do you know her name?" Remus opened his mouth to give it, but Snape waved him silent. If he'd been anyone else, Remus would have called the motion too hasty, but from Snape it was, of course, just impatiently imperious. "Don't tell me; I've already told you all I can. But feel free to ask the others; I hardly pour tea and sit down for a heart-to-heart with every lost werelamb that bleats its way lostly through the door."

Remus believed him. Without reservation.

Snape went on, "Being rather busy. On the subject of which, I have some proposals to screen."

It was a dismissal, and Remus got up. He also, though, curiously asked, "Proposals?"

"Proposed variations on the potion to screen for problematic interactions," Snape elaborated, with a bored shrug. He stood, too, in baseline politeness, but didn't make any move to see Remus out. "Lovegood's an inexhaustible garden of ideas, but she isn't very discriminate about them. I'm not risking my third pair of hands letting Belby see some of these." He shuddered a little.

"I see. Well, goodbye, Severus." He shook his head slightly as Snape waved an absent hand at him and, sitting, bent to his work. That had been downright civil, for Snape, but it would still be a relief and a pleasure to go down the hall into warmer company.

"Lupin!"

Remus turned, privately cursing. He'd been so close to getting out without a quarrel.

Snape was looking indecisive, in a way that would have spelled Really Big Trouble on Sirius or James's faces, although not the especially nasty kind. He tapped his fingertips rapidly on the desk again, and said, "You like things quiet. Peaceful, that is."

"Er… yes?"

Some more finger-tapping. "Were you planning to mention to anyone that you came by today?"

"Is there a problem, Severus?"

Snape appeared to come to a decision. He gave a little grimace and the wickedness went out of his eyes, chased off by a sardonic look oh look how adult I'm being expression. "That's down to you. There probably will be, if Potter finds out that you were here today at about this time and I wasn't already in the office when you arrived."

Alarmed, Remus asked, "What have you done?"

Snape looked at him for a long moment, mouth twisted in bitter amusement. "What do they say about assumptions, Lupin? I saw him publicly embarrass himself. That's what I've done. He doesn't know it—thus far. So: as to whether there'll be trouble, it's entirely your decision."

Remus blanched. "I won't say a word," he said fervently.

"Won't deny I'm just as pleased," Snape said, turning back to his work. "It'd be a toss-up whether the building would survive, although one might hope for an interceding apoplectic stroke." It was as close to a thank you as Remus had gotten from him since the end of '75. That had been a Christmas like one of those nested balls of carved ivory: a beautiful, fragile, soap-bubble impossibility that had made the following spring even more of a Bludger to the balls by contrast, undoubtedly for them both.

Then he made a noise like he was grinding teeth that were in his throat, and demanded of no one in particular, "Fenugreek and clauricorn bicuspid?! Does she want to turn you all weightless?!"

Remus fled.

Questioning revealed that Ming did, indeed, want to turn them all weightless. She thought that nullifying gravity's pull might ease some of the soft-tissue tearing a transforming body was put through. Remus didn't think it was nearly as bad an idea as it was silly, and might even be a good one. He'd let her have the joy of explaining it to her senior apprentice, though.

And no one else had seen Claire since she'd been turned down as a test subject, either.

*明月 = Míngyùe = bright moon

Those of you who've read the backstory know that Chang (as was) is downplaying her history with Severus to the Marauder. It's hardly his business, and besides, it's more graceful not to sabotage people's chances to prove they've grown up, she feels.

ETA: Having been asked why Luna looks like she does if she's that closely related to Cho: I had the idea in the first place because of her 'bulging' eyes (Harry does not think about how people look in flattering terms. You get described with maybe a hair color and height or you have bushy hair and buckteeth or a pointy chin or whatever. I blame Petunia). There's a certain Asian eye-phenotype that would look out-of-place enough to be remarked on in a mostly Western-looking face.

While there's also a more English type of eye that could be described that way (Xeno may have it, although he may also just goggle at everything very hard, with Lamarckian effect), the people I've seen with the latter haven't had eyes that I personally would have called anything so dramatic as bulging while they were still kids. Also, the Asian-derived type of convex eyes might, I thought, be more noticable to someone who grew up somewhere as whitebread as I assume Privet Drive is. Maybe it's just that I imagine Petunia with big goggle-eyes to go with her craning-over-garden-fences neck, and feel Harry wouldn't notice eyes like hers as unusual. Although he might notice them as unpleasant.

Luna has Xeno's hair, blond having dominance over black. It might not work quite that simply for muggles, but Xeno has what looks like (less tidy) Malfoy hair, which seems to be as dominant as Weasley/Prewett red among wizards. I really don't think coloration works exactly the same way for them. We've got four major characters with green eyes (Lily, Harry, Minerva, and Horace), which is a pretty high concentration of green-eyed people for a relatively small population, and then there is the whole Harry's Hair Acts Like James Wanted His To thing.