by SnapeRulez
Chapter Nine: "Snape's brother"
Even the darkest sky hides a bright sun.
This saying had once been one of Lupin´s favorites. He couldn´t remember when exactly he had forgotten about the wisdom in that sentence, and right now, standing in front of the large window, looking thoughtfully up at a grey, dull sky, he couldn´t believe he actually *had* forgotten about it.
It was raining. Thick, clear drops ran down the glass, blurring the world which lay in front of the window, and made Lupin feel terribly out of place. It was like being shut out. Locked away.
Sometimes Lupin had the idea that this feeling had always been there, somewhere deep inside of him, muffled by smooth layers of optimism and burried under a lie, a lie so strong and yet so simple that even a glimpse of truth, of broad daylight, had never been able to resurrect it.
Yet it was there now, a familiar tug into no particular direction, a soft but steady pain in Lupin´s heart, the most accurate description to a human being´s mind -entirely human being, that is- would have been:
Sadness.
But human sadness is very different from the sadness of a werewolf. No human being is able to feel a sadness as sombre, as overwhelming and as poetic as a werewolf´s sadness. A werewolf´s sadness inspires the werewolf to the same extent as it eats him up. And -most unfortunately- it never truly ceases to exist.
A non-wolfish person may frown and ask "Why do wolves howl?", a werewolf knows, for he feels it, too:
It is the dragging, heavy sadness on which each of them floats, endangered of drowning.
And when there is a tempest, the wolves hunt and slay...., Lupin thought, watching rain-drops falling from the leaves of a nearby tree.
He frowned absent-mindedly. Look, the trees are crying...
"Lupin?" Lupin jumped and spun around. Snape was standing in the door-way. Lupin gave a sigh of relief.
"Did I scare you?" Snape asked, a sneer just audible in his voice.
"Yes," Lupin said irritably, "you did. Do you always have to prowl about like that?" Snape snorted.
"Well, I didn´t mean to scare you."
He took a few steps forward, and Lupin suddenly realized that his prowling walk had much of that of a wolf.
Why had he never realized before?
"So are you feeling better yet?" Snape asked rather formally.
"Yes, a little," Lupin replied, trying hard to sound convincing. Snape didn´t seem to believe him, but to Lupin´s relief, he didn´t make further inquiries either. He slowly reached out for a chair near the window and sat down on it silently. Lupin hesitated. He felt that slightly too many surprising or even shocking things occured when Snape was around these days....
Snape looked up at him. "You´d better be well again soon", he said, a twisted grin on his face. And there is the next astonishing thing, Lupin thought. But Snape, however, went on:
"Because it is getting a little annoying, teaching two subjects at the same time..."
Lupin, finally, sat down on the window-sill and replied, giving a shrug:
"Dumbledore could hire a substitute teacher." Snape´s eyes gleamed maliciously. "I don´t reckon I´d like the fellow very much..."
Lupin grinned. Bet you wouldn´t...
"Well, I was referring to Potions, actually," he said firmly. Snape´s smile vanished.
"You´re not....you´re not saying you want to leave. Are you?"
There definitly was a trace of anger in his voice, and -as usual- Lupin did not know what to make of it and remained silent.
"Because if you are, that potion will never work properly."
Lupin blinked. "Are you saying you want to try to perfect it?" Snape nodded slowly.
"And for that you need a werewolf." Snape nodded again.
Lupin snorted angrily. "Well, you see what happened last time. Do you really expect me to volunteer after all that´s happened?" Snape said nothing.
"Well, Severus," Lupin said, deliberatly stressing the Potions master´s name, "you may not have realized, but I have serious problems myself at the moment."
"I did realize," Snape said furiously, "believe it or not!"
Lupin nodded. "Good!" Snape took a deep breath, and said:
"I think I realized it better than you did."
There was silence. Once again, Lupin didn´t know what to make of that comment, and looking at Snape thoughtfully, he decided that some things don´t need an interpretation. They speak for themselves.
But was that comment such a thing? Did it speak for itself? And did Lupin dare to believe it did?
Snape looked out of the window.
"It´s raining hippogriffs and nifflers," he observed quietly.
Lupin watched him, wondering what to say. But before he could think of something, Snape looked up at him again.
"Lupin, do you have an idea why all this is happening to you?" His voice was very serious.
Lupin didn´t answer. Snape got to his feet. "I think you do." Lupin looked at him, a weary, tired expression in his eyes.
"Do you?"
"Yes."
Suddenly, Snape smiled weakly and leaned against the window.
"Do you know how surprised I was?" Lupin blinked.
"I mean, can you imagine how surprised I was when Potter pulled me back?"
Lupin gulped suddenly. Snape? Volunteering information of that kind? To HIM? What was going on? There was the feeling again, the feeling of being in the wrong world...
"It was the first time someone did something really...nice for me. Apart from" -he hesitated, but found his voice again quickly- "apart from my brother, that is."
There was a long silence. Then, without really being aware of the words coming out of his mouth, Lupin asked, his voice low and calm:
"What happened to him, Severus?"
Snape looked directly into Lupin´s eyes for a few seconds, probably considering whether he should answer or not.
Then, and it gave Lupin a funny feeling of both triumph and relief, Snape said very slowly:
"I was ten. Aureus was twelve, about to start his second year at Hogwarts. Like I told you, our father had always thought he was a squib.
" Still can´t forget the look on his face when the letter came. But it was his fault Aureus never showed signs of magic when he was around."
There was a pause in which Snape looked out of the window.
"He hated our father too much. He was quite disappointed in his sons, one being a werewolf, the other a squib. Didn´t think it was good for the family´s name. And didn´t want to leave the family´s fortune for two brats like us to spend it." Snape smirked suddenly.
"You know, 'Aureus' is Latin for 'golden'. My father gave him that name because he, as the first-born, would inherit the family´s fortune. I had hoped it would be getting better once it was obvious that my brother was not a squib at all, but I was wrong. Very wrong.
"You see, my transformations at that time were terrible -I don´t need to tell you- I was locked away in the basement, alone. But Aureus always managed to get in there somehow. Still don´t know how he did it, and he managed to persuade our father to let him stay with me.
"Nobody knows why, but I never harmed my brother in any way. No one could go near me once I was transformed, except for Aureus. I never even scratched him. Well, we were very close, as you can imagine. We did everything together and he would always defend me and protect me from my father.
"Our father was very strict. He gave me the name 'Severus', it´s supposed to mean that my up-bringing was, well, 'strict' and that my life should be that way, too. Aureus was the only person I trusted. He spent every full moon with me, calming and stroking me. But when he was at Hogwarts, I was left alone with my father, which means nobody was there to protect me.
"You see, Aureus didn´t take the path which my father had had in mind for him, so I was his last hope, so-to-speak. But, my close relationship to my brother was in my father´s way. Aureus had to much influence on me. My werewolfness was in his way, too.
"So, the Slytherin that he was," Snape smirked, "my father decided he ought to take action."
Snape turned and looked at Lupin very seriously.
"How likely do you think it is for a magical child to simply drown in a lake?"
Lupin gulped heavily. He had feared Snape´s story would lead to this.
"And he was a good swimmer, my brother. My father must have done his research on werewolves very carefully, for his plan worked. I was no longer a werewolf." He snorted.
"It hadn´t been implied, of course, that I would find out. Now that my father had a free reign over me, it actually took me quite some time to figure it out, and I didn´t say what was on my mind for years.
"But shortly after my graduation from Hogwarts, I -finally- confronted him. The result was my repudiation from the family and my disinheritance, of course."
Snape gave Lupin a look that -for a short moment- increased the distinct pain in Lupin´s heart.
"I didn´t care, though. It didn´t bring back my brother."
And suddenly, Lupin saw it, he saw it in Snape´s eyes, clear and unmistakable:
The solitary, solemn sadness of a werewolf.