"Raise your arms," says Severus, and when Evans raises them straight above his head, he clucks his tongue and grabs his wrists, bringing them down so that his elbows point outward. Evans hisses in pain, but he raises his chin and grits his teeth, and Severus leans forward, examining the bruising across the side of his ribs.

He'd already tilted one of the lamps forward so that he had the best visibility, and now he runs a diagnostic charm.

"They're not cracked," says Evans.

"That doesn't mean there's not underlying damage," Severus says, so tired he feels like he could sleep for a decade, and simultaneously so wired with lingering energy he doesn't know that he'll ever be able to sleep again. "A blow as hard as the one you received today can damage the muscle, you know, especially without much fat to protect it."

"I've got more fat on my bones than you do," says Evans.

Severus scoffs, and retorts, "You and I both know that isn't saying much."

Satisfied that there's no strain on the outside tissue, Severus runs a few diagnostics on Evans' organs, and Evans lets out an impatient noise.

"Dumbledore already did half of those."

"Of the people that died tonight, I expect quite a few of them died of trusting Albus Dumbledore," said Severus coolly. "If it's all the same to you, I don't want you to meet the same fate."

Evans looks as tired as Severus feels, his eyes even more shadowed than usual, his cheeks grown over with stubble. There are other marks and injuries on him – a healed cut over one forearm, bruises over his throat, his waist, one of his thighs.

"You want to know a secret, Snape?" asks Evans.

"Always," says Severus.

"I've already died of trusting Albus Dumbledore," says Evans.

"Is that some sort of metaphor?"

"I was dead for at least a few seconds," says Evans. "Maybe a minute. I was lucky to get up again – and I tell you what. It was worth it."

"Perhaps for you," says Severus. "Of all the things I'd die for, that man isn't one of them."

"Well, what with Dumbledore's opinion of you," says Evans, and his voice is surprisingly bitter, "he'd get you to do something worse than die for him, wouldn't he?"

Severus laughs, and flattens his palm over the bruising on Evans' side, beginning to rub in the balm as Evans gasps in pain, and then relaxes, his sigh full of relief.

"I'm surprised you've still got some of that left."

"I barely used it today," murmurs Severus. "Only on the Lukas twins before I left. One of their potions masters has requested that I dispatch a list of my own recipes for what I supply the hospital wing, offered to give feedback, help me improve further, but I couldn't have used my own tinctures while treating anybody today. There might have been cross-reactions of my remedies with theirs, allergic reactions, not to mention the limited supply."

"Right," says Evans, and laughs. "God, sorry, I just… You're good at this, huh? Healing."

"My bedside manner, I'm told, is abysmal."

"I don't know, it suits me down to the ground," murmurs Evans. "But then, I'm biased."

"So you are," murmurs Severus, and rubs in the rest of the balm, watching the bruising on Evans' side begin to fade as the blood is rapidly cleared out of the area, as the blood vessels are knitted together by the work of the cream.

"I don't understand how you could become anything else," says Evans. "Than a healer, I mean. When you're so… I mean, you're a sixth year, and they just drafted you in to help, and you kept up. Healed people all fucking day, shouted orders, took control, and people listened to you."

"Most of them were bleeding, vomiting, or otherwise in the throes of agony or death," Severus says, uncertain of Evans' strange tone, the distance in his eyes. "I don't know that they had an option to do much other than listen to me."

"You didn't feel anything?"

"Evans, I haven't felt anything all day except stress, pain, and nausea."

"That's an average day for you, isn't it?"

Severus pinches his side, and Evans groans, but then laughs. "Can I put down my arms?"

"You could have put them down five minutes ago."

Evans does, rolling his shoulders in their joints as Severus pulls away, beginning to unbutton his robes to take them off. Evans watches him carefully, then says, "When I was fifteen, I started this club, it was… We weren't getting taught defence, right? It was a strategy, to basically make sure we wouldn't be able to protect ourselves, and so I started teaching people in secret, and for the first time in my life, I really felt like I was where I was supposed to be."

"And now you're a teacher, and all seems right with the world?"

"Not exactly," Evans says quietly. "You said you used that balm on the Lukas twins? What happened to them?"

"Black knocked their heads together."

"… What? When?"

"During breakfast," mutters Severus – it seems as though it happened days ago, although it was only this morning. He remembers how irritable he'd been with the way the two of them had tracked after him, asking all manner of stupid questions about how to keep from failing in their potions classes, about history. They'd been anxious about the war, really, and it hadn't been anything to do with Severus or what his expertise might offer them – he hadn't been able to understand why they'd bothered him instead of one of the friendlier upperclassmen or one of the prefects… Except, really, he did. "Don't spread this about, Evans, but the Lukases' stepmother is a Muggle, and they and their father live in a Muggle neighbourhood. They're not always comfortable talking about their homelife with the other Slytherins."

"But you're a Half-Blood," says Evans slowly. "You know what it's like."

"Black saw them speaking with me," says Severus as he hangs his outer robe on the back of one of Evans' chair. "Feral beast that he is, that was all the provocation he needed to assault the two of them."

"You tell someone?"

"Tell whom?"

"I don't know, a teacher?"

"And say what?"

"Well, that Black knocked their fucking heads together."

"So Black gets detention, and being unhinged as he is, he fixates on the twins for the rest of his schooldays, makes their lives a living Hell, otherwise tortures, assaults, and abuses them, and they have no defence against him," Severus replies. When he turns, Evans' expression is set, his mouth twisted. "You want to argue with me?"

"No," he whispers. "No, I guess you're right. You're going to have to be careful with them this week. You know they're going to be worse than usual."

"Yes. Ought I take your injuries to mean you were out in the fray today? That while I was healing in the hospital, you were the dashing knight felling Death Eaters?"

Evans huffs out a low laugh, and shakes his head. "Nah, I was up to something else. We Flooed back into Hogsmeade, and everyone was just…" He clenches his hands at his sides, straightens his back. "It must have been hard on you. Knowing Malfoy was out in it."

Severus doesn't show his reaction, keeps it buried within himself, but he watches Evans' bitter expression as he leads the way into the bedroom, dropping his underwear to the floor, showing off his handsome, muscular arse, his heavy thighs.

"Did I know that?" he asks delicately.

"You can talk to me, you know," says Evans.

Severus shoves him in the centre of his back and watches him drop to the bed, his thighs open. "I don't want you for your scintillating conversation," he says, and shoves his knee between Evans' before he can close them.

ϟ ~ CHASING GHOSTS ~ ϟ

It's him and Remus that go mapping together late in the night, when everyone else is asleep. Sirius and Peter had been drunk as fuck, must have drunk at least one bottle of firewhiskey between them, and they're still asleep, but James hadn't had much of a stomach for drink.

"You think it's wrong of me not to go home?" he asks as they walk together down one of the hidden staircases toward the dungeons, and Remus exhales, slowly shakes his head.

"I don't think there's a right or a wrong in this situation, mate," he mutters, rubbing a hand over his jaw. "I know you care about your mum, I know you love her, but it's not as if she's going to be alone, staying with your grandparents. McGonagall said you can go home some weekends, right?"

"Yeah," murmurs James, trying to imagine what exactly that'll be like, being home at the weekend, and being at his grandparents' house instead of home – he can't help but wonder what the factory's looking like without his dad there, what any of it looks like, what any of it will look like. It doesn't feel real yet, doesn't feel like it can possibly be real life, that his dad is gone, that he'd had his fucking chest blown apart by a Death Eater's spell, and hadn't gotten up after. "Christmas is going to be…"

"Don't think about it just yet," Remus says gently, and squeezes his shoulder. James meets his gaze, the softness to Remus' sad smile. "And you know that any of us will go home with you, you know. Me or Peter, sure, but Sirius will in a heartbeat, and your mum already knows him, treats him as one of her own."

"He was talking about all four of us going out to Alphard's flat to clear up," murmurs James.

"He was talking a lot," says Remus dryly. "I'm surprised you could understand a word between the drunken slur and his old accent popping out to play."

"He's not as bad drunk as he used to be," James murmurs, but it is funny, when Sirius gets drunk and suddenly sounds so much posher, that effect only magnified by the way he slurs his words and lisps them, too. Peter had pointed out tonight – pretty unwisely, even for him – that Snape had done what Sirius had done but in reverse, and luckily, Sirius had been too drunk for it to register. "I— You hear that?"

Remus puts two fingers up to his mouth, and they crack open one of the doors into an empty classroom, pushing open the doorway behind a bookshelf. Most of the dungeon classrooms aren't used for much – Hogwarts used to offer way more classes in the 20s and further back, and they've always kept a lot of spare classrooms set up for emergency relocations and study groups, but the ones down in the dungeons are usually more like this one, messy and full of dust and cobwebs, used for furniture storage.

Outside is one of the edge dungeon corridors, the ones that barely anyone uses because they're cold and damp where they go the long way around the edge of the Slytherin common room, damp from the lake right above.

"Ah, ah, ah—"

"What would you do if someone caught us at this?"

James hadn't recognised the first man moaning, but he certainly recognises the second voice, and he has to put his hand over his mouth to keep from cracking up laughing as Remus' eyebrows raise, and the two of them creep over to the edge of the classroom to look through the crack in the door out into the corridor.

"I don't know," says the first man. "Dock Slytherin twenty points for a sta— art, fuck!"

James forgets to laugh he's so fucking stunned, and he leans his head to see Mr Evans shoved against one of the dungeon walls, his wrists pinned at the small of his back, Snape's mouth on the back of his neck. It was obvious that Snape would want to fuck Evans – everyone knew just to look at him that he was a queen as well as a slimeball – but it was another for Evans to actually let him, and seem to like it.

"Fuck is right," says Snape in Evans' ear, and then does something with the hand he has shoved under Evans' robes that makes Evans moan.

James looks to Remus, and immediately touches his arm, because there's something in Remus' expression he doesn't know what to make of, a sort of pained look, and he's not looking through the crack but back into the main classroom.

"Going to put this on the next staff meeting agenda?"

"Staff meeting agenda? Raise your ambitions," Evans gasps out against the wall, "I'm going to write into the editor's column at the Prophet. Tell them all about the wunderkind sixth year who healed a hundred people after the attacks today, and then fingered my brains out."

James furrows his brow, sees the same confusion on Remus', as Evans makes a noise like he's finished, and he hears Snape mutter some spell, makes Evans hiss.

"Cunt!"

"It's your cunt," retorts Snape. "Why, you wanted to walk back with lube dripping down your thighs?"

"Maybe I did." There's a slap, and then Evans laughs, turns, kisses Snape like Snape is halfway fucking human. "You sure you don't want me to try again?" he asks quietly. "That's three you've given me tonight. I'm gonna have a debt to repay."

"I can't," says Snape. "Everything, I just…"

"It's okay," murmurs Evans. "Just seems like you're a dangerous man to owe a debt to, that's all."

"Very dangerous," agrees Snape.

"Rest tomorrow. Really, seriously rest."

"I doubt I'll have a choice about that," says Snape. "I feel wrung dry."

"And I didn't even finger you." Snape slaps his arse again, and Evans chuckles, but then says, "I won't be around tomorrow night."

"Same business as today?"

As today? Remus mouths at James.

"Mm," says Evans. "We'll see what comes of it."

When they break apart, Snape walking one way and Evans the other, Remus steps forward like he wants to go after Snape, but James catches him, shakes his head.

"He's not going to expect us now," says Remus.

"I know," says James. "But… Not tonight."

Remus softens, and says, "Come on. We'll map around Evans' rooms, get that stuff on record. If they're fucking…"

"Can't he get expelled for that? Fucking a teacher?"

"If any of them gets kicked out, I'd expect it to be Evans," says Remus. "What the fuck do you think he meant, same business?"

"I don't know," murmurs James. "What do you think Evans meant, talking about Snape healing?"

It's hours later, when they're trekking back up to the common room, both of them a lot tireder, when Remus says, "He's fucked with those Purebloods, isn't he?"

"Who?"

"Snape."

James glances at Remus' face, at the way he's looking forward as he leads the way up the stairs, his mouth set, his gaze far away. Sometimes, James thinks that Remus secretly likes Snape, that he thinks it's wrong, the way they gang up on him – other times, he thinks Remus would rip him to pieces if he only had the chance.

Now's one of the moments where it could go either way.

"What do you mean?"

"Well," says Remus. "He's gay, isn't he? Everyone takes the piss about him wanting to shag Lily, but no one really believes he ever did except maybe her. He's bent as anything, and Purebloods don't stand for that. You can fuck a man, can't you, but not… not ever be with one? Marry one?"

"Why would someone want to?" asks James, not quite following. "Muggles don't do that, do they? Have marriages with two men?"

"Not in churches, maybe, but there's men who are together, publicly together. They treat it like love, a partnership, it's not just… not just secretive sex."

James opens his mouth, closes it. "Huh," he says. "I never knew that could… I guess it makes sense. Not every bent guy has to be like Sirius' uncle." He regrets it as soon as he says it, knowing that Alphard is dead as of tonight, and he'll never hear the old man grin at James and tell him a dirty joke or to look after Sirius for him, keep him out of trouble. "But Snivellus would never have that anyway, you know that. It's not the Purebloods that'd stop him – it's his face and his personality."

Remus doesn't say anything.

"It would, uh," says James. "It would be okay, you know. If that was… if you ever wanted to be with a man."

Remus' head whips around to stare at him, his eyes wide, and there's so much pain in his face that James almost wants to start crying, but he's all cried-out already today. "Mate," he says softly. "What else would I tell you? You want to shag every man you can find, that's fine – you want to pick one and put a ring on him, that's fine too. I don't pretend to get the attraction, but there's nothing wrong with it."

"Yeah, well," murmurs Remus. "Me and Snape have one thing in common, I suppose. I'm not ever going to be able to settle down with a man, am I? Not with what I am."

"Your marriage vows can be making him become an Animagus, if he's not one already," suggests James, and when Remus laughs, it's almost tearful. He reaches out, smacks his shoulder, is uncomfortable with it – Sirius is better with Remus than he is, and he wishes it was Sirius with him now, because Sirius would grab him in one of his bear hugs, make a dirty joke, make it better.

James just pats Remus' arm, until Remus exhales only a little wetly.

"Bet you could nick Evans off Snape," says James. "If you wanted. That'd put a fucking frown on his face."

Remus laughs, shaking his head. "Nah, I don't want his slimy seconds. Evans isn't my type, anyway. I prefer dark hair, dark eyes. No glasses."

"Wow, thanks, Moony," says James. "What's the point of having a gay friend if he thinks you're ugly?"

"There there," says Remus sarcastically, patting James' shoulder. "I'm sure there's plenty of homos out there who want you to ravish them."

"And who want to ravish me," says James.

"Whatever you want, Prongs."

There's something that Remus is holding back, and James doesn't know what it is, doesn't even know how to ask what it is. He wishes he understood Remus better – he wishes…

Ha.

He wishes he could ask his dad for advice, what to say to help him.

Heart panging, he checks that the coast is clear, and they step out from the hidden staircase and head back up to the dorms.