CHAPTER 18

DO YOU THINK IT WAS SNAPE?

In the end, Sirius had sent Bill off on his journey with all their potions. He had been adamant about it. With his injuries nearly healed, albeit still sore, Sirius had little use for medicine anyway.

The Yarrow potion he had kept for himself, though, and was quite looking forward to gulping it down soon.

Now he was stuffing back into the first-aid suitcase everything he hadn't given Bill, which wasn't more than bandages, really, and a stray prank-potion that had somehow landed there by accident. "It's Fred and George's," Bill had explained, "no clue how it got here. Some sort of de-ageing drought."

The twins, according to Bill, had gotten their hands on about four of these — they had their ways, even Sirius was amazed — but the potion proved worthless for its intended purpose. The drought's effect didn't last more than an hour or two, and that wasn't even the trickiest part.

Apparently, the potion would revert someone to the age that they were most attached to emotionally. With Fred and George's targets being teenagers, living to the fullest for the here and now , the potion only managed to turn them younger by some two or three weeks — back to when they had held hands with that one girl of their dreams. Or to when they had passed that test that had seemed so important it had meant the world to them.

Or to that one time they had broken curfew with their best mate to seize for themselves the last summer night. Out by the lake, only them both, under star drenched skies and the breezy air that smelled of fresh grass — drinking beer and talking much, and thinking it would last forever. Just the two of them, side by side.

Sirius glanced up into the empty ceiling — and whatever skies he knew to be above it.

He envied them, those teens.

He let out a long sigh and returned the de-ageing drought to its place in the suitcase.

"Are you alone?" Remus poked his head through the door with a tired smile.

Sirius tried to smile back.

"Alone."

"Guess we'll stay here," Remus said, sliding into the small cabinet. "The kitchen's still occupied."

Sirius sank in his armchair by the desk and into the dull ache of his ribs to distract himself from... other things.

He observed Remus as he picked up the garments that cluttered the small sofa across from him, one by one, folding and placing each one on the armrest. A pullover, a shirt, a pair of pants, a sweater—

"I had warning, Rem."

"What?"

Remus stopped mid-folding, a moth-bitten sweater still in his hands.

"Dumbledore warned me."

"He—? Oh."

Remus let the sweater be, shoved everything else to the side just enough, and sat down on the sofa.

"Oh."

Sirius nodded. "He planned my escape from the ambush. I had to swear I wouldn't tell a living soul."

"How did he know?"

"He wouldn't say," Sirius said, staring at the floor. He had messed up Dumbledore's diversion, had been at Bellatrix's mercy, and at the receiving end of her Killing Curse — a fool's luck that he had managed to escape. "That's Dumbledore, I guess: always knows things… never shares the full extent of them."

Remus contemplated his words, his gaze at some point drifting to the door that led out into the hallway. "No... I suppose he doesn't."

They talked for a while about the ambush in Longmoon and Remus' coming mission in the same forest, to which Sirius refused to express any concerns. It wouldn't be fitting.

"I'm heading to the port tonight," Remus said at one point, rather as a side note.

"You're going with Bill?"

"No, only to the port, for a couple of hours," Rem said. "Patrolcho is there for the night — Dumbledore arranged for me to see him for the Wolfsbane."

"Patrolcho… You mean…?"

"Mm-hmm," Remus nodded. "Him. In the flesh."

"Well," Sirius arched his eyebrows, impressed. "What brings him to England?"

"The annual Symposium on the Application of Potions in Biomedicine," answered Remus with modest smugness. "It was held in Edinburgh this year."

"Did you attend?"

All modesty lost, Rem smiled from ear to ear. "I did!"

"Tell me!"

"It was fantastic! There was even a panel on endocrinological approaches to Lycanthropy — they're finally making advancements, recognising it as a field of study, at least. And the research team from Japan presented on —" Rem looked happy. More so, he was radiating. And Sirius, though he cared nothing for medicine and symposia, was finding himself nearly sharing Rem's ridiculous giddiness. "I'll drop by tomorrow," Rem concluded, "when we're both rested, and I'll tell you all about it if you want to hear!"

"Tell me now."

"It's late. It's really, really late. And we're both tired. Did you even sleep after Longmoon? You look like hell."

Sirius rubbed his face. "I couldn't — not really. Got in a couple of hours of sleep since returning home two nights ago — I don't know why. Feels like my brain is lapsing and won't shut down at times."

"Yes, brains tend to do that when they're frazzled," Remus said, surveying him, concerned.

"Bet I'll sleep like a log tonight."

"You need it. How long has it been? Two days since the ambush? I'd assume you haven't slept on the actual night of that." Remus chuckled, though a little sadly. "And the night before you spent training, you said. I don't know of any brain that wouldn't be lapsing after all that — four days without sleep on top of everything you went through."

Sirius found himself feeling decidedly uncomfortable under Rem's worried assessment of his wellbeing.

"So the symposium was good?"

Remus smiled gently and accepted the abrupt change of subject. "It was, it really was."

"I bet if Snape learned you attended, he'd just about piss his pants in envy."

"He should have been there, actually."

"Really?"

"Mm-hmm. I saw his name in the programme — he should've presented a paper. Apparently, he withdrew on short notice."

"Presenting?" Sirius arched his eyebrows at that. "I thought he was a terrible professor. Harry always says so — well, Harry and everyone else."

Remus, of course, avoided confirming that, graciously.

"Teaching and research are rather different things," he said in a mild tone. "I was sorry he couldn't make it. Was rather looking forward to hearing his presentation."

"Say, was he on the same panel with Patrolcho?"

That did cause Remus to chuckle, a tad amused. "He may be good, but he's not a legend."

Sirius smiled slightly. He picked up the half-filled glass of water from the desk and leaned back in his armchair, staring into the glass, thinking of the Firewhisky bottle back in his kitchen.

"You've heard it a hundred times tonight, but..." Remus said on a serious note. "How are you? Really?"

Sirius, trying to bring his thoughts together, found himself smiling bitterly at the question.

"I'm good," he answered, eventually. "I am, really. It's just—" He rubbed his brow, staring at the floor and closed his mouth shut. It wasn't fitting.

Really, it wasn't.

"You're worried I'll be in danger in Longmoon. Aren't you, Pad?"

Sirius glanced up at him, neither nodding nor shaking his head.

The dark shadows under Remus' eyes ran deeper than the last time he'd seen him. And he was very pale, as if all colour was fading — not only from his complexion but from everything else about him, too. Save for his eyes, now glittering amber. Was the full moon approaching?

"For someone who's known me for so long," Rem said without reproach, "you seem to have quite little faith in me. I'm a werewolf, Pad."

Remus let his head fall back and tipped it slightly, to one side — to the other, as though to stretch the numbness out of his body.

He sat straight.

"If Voldemort's men are in Longmoon," he smiled a little, and a little too coldly, "guess who's going hunting."

Sirius flinched.

His heart was beating a bit louder as he took Remus in, sitting across him on the sofa: slim and pale, amber eyes glittering strangely. He looked fearless and sovereign, and every bit the beast.

This wasn't his little brother to shelter; Sirius should have known better by now. They had fought a war together. Remus was in every way a soldier and, once in a full moon, a freaking werewolf.

"Well then." Sirius bared his teeth in a grin of his own. Moony would tear those numskulls to rags. "Enjoy the hunt, my friend."

Remus, looking content, sank lower into the sofa and let his head lean back to stare into the ceiling.

The Friewhisky from his kitchen would have been fine right now, Sirius had to admit, as he touched the glass to his lips and, for the moment, pretended the water was just that.

"You think it was Snape?" asked Remus, head leaned lazily on the backrest of the couch.

Sirius considered it for a moment, gazing into the lazy twirl of water, as he tilted the glass in his hand slowly, slowly, back and forth.

He hadn't expected the question. Not from Remus.

"I don't know Rem; I never liked him. But in a way, I didn't believe he'd be capable of this. Maybe I still don't — not fully..." The water must have worked like Friewhisky because Sirius was rambling, and he didn't care to stop. "I guess I don't want to believe he's a traitor, despite everything. Maybe he's just too spineless to take the risk—"

"Pad," Remus said.

"Or he just hates us too much and does it all for the fun of it. To get back at us, you know, for twenty years ago, for—"

"Sirius." Remus sat straighter. "Do you think it was Snape who warned you?"

"What—?" Sirius stopped tilting his glass. "You're not serious."

Remus didn't answer. His face was straight, light brown moustache unmoving, not a smile, not a frown, not a shake of the head.

"You are serious."

Try as he might, Sirius couldn't keep the bitter grin from his face.

"You always want to see the good in people. Don't you, Rem?"

"I don't know… I guess I couldn't live with the regret if I misjudged them and was too late to realise."

Sirius had been misjudged. At the modest price of twelve years in Azkaban and probably a lifetime of nightmares and visions to remind him of it.

It changed nothing about Snape, though.

"You don't want to think he's a bloody traitor, I get it. I don't either," Sirius surprised himself saying. "Maybe I've known him for too long, and I wouldn't want to accept that he'd — I don't know. But you're outdoing even yourself, Rem, saying he'd risk his life to warn me. What are you trying to make him now — a bloody war hero?"

Sirius laughed without amusement, watching Remus cast him a very long and very cutting glare that read of disapproval. Or was that disappointment? He couldn't be sure.

"Rem, when you got the teaching position at Hogwarts" — the only good thing that happened to Rem in years of nothing but hardship and suffering since James' death — "Snape took it away from you without batting an eye — No. No, let me correct that: He took it from you and was so satisfied with it, he would have thrown a bloody banquet to rejoice."

Remus, having heard him out in silence, without the slightest frown darkening his face, spoke softly, as always, "It was unkind of him, that's true. It would have come out at some point, though, that I am a werewolf."

"Rem, he tried to put me up for the Dementor's Kiss!" Sirius was raising his voice. He wanted Remus to understand, to see beyond his fabricated veil of kindness, which he so fervently insisted on throwing over everyone else. "The Kiss, Rem! It doesn't get any more final than that."

"He thought you responsible for the deaths of James and Lily… the whole Wizarding world did."

"Bullshit, mate." Sirius laughed grimly. "Like he'd care anything for either of them."

"He'd been friends with Lily…"

"Right. Two decades ago. And look at him. He knows nothing of friendship. Or loyalty. Or having half a spine whatsoever."

This was pointless.

He was a good man, Remus. A good man who thought he could paint everyone in his own kindness and make the world around him a little better. Or a little less hurting.

It was tiring.

Sirius leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees, and let his head rest in his hand for a moment.

"You always tried to see the good in him, Rem. What if there is no good in him?" Sirius sighed. "Never was…?"

Having raised his voice earlier left Sirius feeling a bit inadequate. The fatigue was making him impulsive, more so than usual.

As much as he tried to deny, Longmoon had been brutal, and the sleep deprivation wasn't helping either to keep his feelings in check. Or his temper.

"You don't honestly believe it could've been Snape…?" Sirius asked, contemplating the liquid in his glass.

"It could have," came Rem's answer.

"And risk his life to warn Dumbledore?"

"I don't exclude the possibility. "

"Uh-huh," Sirius assessed, less than half convinced. "And return to sitting by Voldemort's side after having done that. He wouldn't do such a thing, would he?"

Remus looked to the door, pondering.

"Would he?"

"I don't know," was Rem's verdict. "Perhaps not. No one in their right mind would."

Sirius sighed, rubbing his tired brow.

The matter seemed to have sapped out whatever thin thread of vim they still had. A lazy silence spread listless between them, as they both sat sunken in their own thoughts or in the weary absence of them.

"I should go," Remus said after a while.

He pulled himself to standing without much elan, and Sirius followed suit, just as lethargic and with a slight frown at the nuisance of his cracked ribs.

They headed for the exit in silence, noting the light still burning in the kitchen and the voice of Shacklebolt humming low through the half-closed door as they passed by.

"I might stick around for a few more minutes," Remus said as they reached the front door, casting a glance over Sirius' shoulder.

"You have something to discuss with Moody?"

"Not him."

"Shacklebolt?"

Remus shook his head.

"Snape…" Sirius said. "Seriously?"

Remus shrugged, looking exhausted. "He didn't look that well —"

"Did he ever?" Sirius laughed. "So you want to check on him?"

"Someone should."

"Right."

Sirius sighed. He would come to regret this. There was no way in hell he would not come to regret this.

"I'll do it."

His proposal was met with one of Rem's suspiciously long, sceptical looks. "You?"

"You're late already, and you have somewhere else you should be right now. You should go."

Remus studied him for a moment, eyes flickering only slightly incredulous.

"What's the matter?" Sirius grinned devilishly. "Afraid we'll hex one another's head off,"

Rem smiled. "Just a little. Given the circumstances, if it comes to wands, I don't know who I should be placing my bet on."

"Frank as always," Sirius' grin widened, not taking Remus' remark to heart.

"You'd get bored otherwise."

"I would… maybe. Say, how come you're meeting Patrolcho so late?"

Rem shrugged with an amused smile. "He sleeps by the Bolivian time zone."

That did make Sirius stifle a laugh. "Then you should hurry. I bet it's early enough in Bolivia for the two of you to still catch a chat. You'd enjoy that, wouldn't you?"

"I would," answered Rem, his tired smile stretching wider.

"Well, go. Go. Don't worry about all this." Sirius gestured to the kitchen. "I won't be nasty, okay?"

Maybe the reckless grin that Sirius flashed to make the point didn't help to reassure Remus, but Rem said nothing and nodded, looking a bit amused.

"Get some sleep," he told Sirius before leaving.

"Trust me — I don't have anything else on my agenda for the rest of the night."

AUTHOR NOTE

Oh, Sirius, you have no idea what is on your agenda for tonight.

Well, Remus Lupin is a fascinating character, but he was such a pain to write! Much like Dumbledore. -.-