LINER NOTES:
I apologise right now for leading you lot on- the fact is, although BoI does have four drafts before it ever gets to your computer screen, sometimes there are simply problems I can't account for in paper first draft, and which don't materialise until I do third-draft formatting and proofing (ooh, PROOFING,that sounds so sophisticated . . . amazingly, it's nothing but a search for dropped commas and typos like "Snape" instead of "snap," one I make rather often -snort-). Therefore, I promised you guys THAT SCENE in this chapter, and until I had it in third draft in WordPad, I didn't have any idea just how far the rice gag (you'll understand when you read) was going to take me. In the original it was great, it stretched for about two and a half weeks, THAT SCENE would have been near the end of the middle of the chapter, and the chapter would have ended with Sirius, Remus, Severus, and Harry sitting down to eat dinner. Unfortunately, it occurred to me that sooner or later the rice would start to cause -ahem- problems, so I had to pare down the time, which gave me a two-week period that I still had to fill. In order to do so, I had to cut this (originally very long) chapter in half, and then reverse the two main parts of the second half (which will now be Chapter 25). That means that THAT SCENE is not in this chapter. Don't be too mad, please, though, because the scene is already completely written, I'm not copping out - and it WILL be in the next chapter, guaranteed - it just didn't work where I wanted it to.

RATING: Still at PG-13/T, mainly for language in this chapter.

REVIEWS: It's been confirmed that we ARE still allowed to answer reviews, so here you go:

Eleonora1: I decided not to block the anons, since several of my LJ friends read this story too, and it hasn't really been a problem. If it becomes one though, I will block. As to Ron: Do YOU think he'll ever learn? (I didn't think so either.) Plenty of Italian puns in this one, though nothing derogatory (I HATE that kind of thing). And, well . . . THAT scene . . . next chappie . . . read the note above before you kill me.

ThePurpleEmperor: Okay, wow, that's . . . um? -feels bad for making you cry- I hope this one is better!

Enjoy!
Haruka Lune

"I'll see you in three weeks!" Harry announced brightly, throwing his arms around Remus' waist enthusiastically. He waved at Severus and Hermione, nodded frostily at Ron (who had refused to apologise to Luna, citing "a right to my own opinion, mate"), slipped an arm around Luna's back, and boarded the Hogwarts Express. Inside, he felt a slight pang of loss - he'd never travelled on the Hogwarts Express without Ron and Hermione, and while Hermione was on his side, she also had obligations to her boyfriend (although Harry still couldn't understand how she could stand being with someone who had, as Hermione had once so excellently put it, "the emotional range of a teaspoon").

In spite of his slight discomfort, he was also excited - he was spending the entire trip with Luna, Sirius was meeting him on the other end of the line, he had a fortnight and a half with the Grim Animagus before moving up to Kent, and Severus had promised him the bedroom with the cherry tree outside the window. The idea of having a bedroom that was entirely all his own was excitement enough; the idea that he had a cherry tree, too, just like Remus had described having a pear tree outside of his window as a young boy (before he'd moved to the attic), was positivelythrilling to him.

"So, what do you think?" Severus turned to Remus expectantly. Remus considered.

The walk from the Apparition point (a wood on the other side of the village) had been close to three miles, though it was a pleasant three miles, at least. Remus had felt at home almost instantly as they passed a small market, a cinema, a bookstore, two or three other miscellaneous shops, a school so small that Remus could almost picture it as a one-room, a tea shop, another tea shop, and what Severus had referred to as "the ground shop" - which was to say, a shop which sold nothing but various kinds of ground coffee, ground tea, and ground tobacco. Now they were on the west end of town, looking at a house whose windows had been neatly covered in plywood to protect them from tree branches and young boys with stones. Some of the roof tiles were missing and the back porch was a complete mess (courtesy of late April thunderstorms), but for the rest it looked all right. Nothing a bit of paint and roof tile couldn't fix . . . or so Remus thought.

"Goodness, Severus, didn't you leave anything useful here?" Remus picked gingerly though a pile of old newspapers called "Notizie di magia," (1) also known as the Italian answer to the Daily Prophet. The oldest paper dated back fifteen years and detailed the downfall of "Lui Che Non deve Essere chiamato." (2) Remus understood only one word of the entire piece: amava, Italian for "he loved." Remus wouldn't have known even that if he hadn't known some small amount of Italian grammar, which he'd picked up while trying to understand an exceedingly exasperated Severus, who enjoyed swearing in very long and ungrammaticalstrings of an unintelligible mix of Spanish, Italian, and Rom (3).

He flicked dispiritedly through the rest of the papers. One announced Harry's return to the Wizarding world, a few were folded back to stories Remus couldn't read, and one - stuffed right in the middle and the true oldest of them all - dated to August 1959 and listed the marriage of one Armando Snape and his English wife, Bronwen (4) Clowes. A small picture followed. They didn't look happy to be together. Another paper - the corner proclaimed it to be from the tenth of January, 1960 - had an announcement of Severus' birth the day before written in it, along with a lengthy commentary on something or other that Remus couldn't decipher with his limited knowledge. Remus, old-fashioned to the core, bit his lip as he counted backward in his head. December - November - October - September - August. Five months. He heard a slightly cynical chuckle behind him and turned around.

"Sometimes I wonder what people would think if they knew how right they are when they call me a misbegotten bastard," Severus remarked, pulling the newspaper out of Remus' hands and ripping it in half twice before throwing it in the fireplace. "And in answer to your question, there's a perfectly serviceable mattress upstairs . . . and I left everything in the kitchen when I abandoned the place eight years ago, so it should still be workable. Unless someone with faster fingers than brains decided to raid the place, of course."

"Good, so we can at least cook and - wait . . . a mattress, Severus?"

"I'm sure I can find some pillows in the closet."

"One mattress."

"Is that a problem?" Severus raised an eyebrow.

For answer, Remus picked up the entire pile of yellowing newspapers and dumped them in the rubbish bin.

Remus sighed and stirred the rice on the stove. Severus hadn't lied when he said everything in the kitchen was intact. Unfortunately, this meant that everything in the kitchen was also food that Severus liked or had been able to afford eight years ago. Remus had an appetite for very little of it. Hand-cured cheddar cheese (which could be spoilt by almost nothing short of nuclear war), a good deal of pasta (of the sort used for stuffed shells, ravioli, and chicken alfredo), a half-eaten jar of chunky peanut butter (complete with spoon marks where Severus had apparently eaten it straight out of the jar), and tins of just about every tomato product imaginable: peeled tomatoes, stewed tomatoes, tomato paste, salsa with tomatoes, tomato puree (for what? Remus wondered), several jars of spaghetti sauce that were all beginning to grow mold.

And, of course, the rice.

Remus had found seven big sacks of it, each sack weighing about five pounds. Severus had recalled getting them on sale. Because of this poor choice in money management and the need to get the old food out before bringing in anything new (except perishables like fruit, vegetables, and meat, of course), they'd found themselves eating rice every day for the last week; rice porridge for breakfast (courtesy of a frantic telephone call to Remus' mother, who had supplied the recipe), chicken and rice on several occasions, several kinds of rice soup, and - the one Severus had devoured happily while Remus munched on a peanut butter sandwich, refusing to touch the mass that came out of the saucepan - rice in tomato puree (well, that answered one question) with quartered peeled tomatoes and a liberal amount of oregano. To this he had added cubed chicken, and the whole thing had vanished into his mouth. Remus took his half of the cubed chicken and made a salad for lunch the next day, at which time Severus had grumbled about eating still more rice while Remus smiled serenely and ate his second rice-free meal of the week.

Severus skipped dinner and ate the rest of the peanut butter. Early the next morning he vanished and returned two hours later with a vast supply of fruit which he called breakfast while Remus suffered quietly through more rice porridge.Remus was beginning to wonder how on earth the two of them were going to function as a couple living together outside of Hogwarts - so far their days had been mostly cooperative, though there had been several explosive quarrels that usually ended with Remus sulking and working upstairs,and Severus sulking on the open sunporch while replacing old glass panes. One day it had rained and both of them had worked separately on different ends of the house by unspoken agreement, both knowing that if they were forced by the weather to be together all day, they would kill each other by noon. It wasn't that they didn't get along, Remus thought, nor yet that they didn't care for each other; it was simply that, when thrown together in close quarters, their opinions were different enough to cause problems.

Now Severus was standing behind him, making him feel antsy and cramped. It had rained again today and Severus had spent the day in the greenhouse while Remus painted what would become Harry's room. Neither of them had seen each other since lunch (vegetable beef-and-rice soup), and Remus could feel the electric tension as surely as if he were about to touch a charged wire.

"Should you really be cooking when you're covered in paint?"

"Well, you were out in the greenhouse, so I thought I should -"

That did it. Severus knew (or, at least, thought he knew) when someone was implying that he'd shirked his duty, and he knew that in this case he most certainly had not. He had cooked lunch, he had cooked dinner the day before, it was perfectly fair for Remus to be cooking now without making a production out of it, and he said as much in as many words, ceasing only when he realised that Remus had tears on his face and and was looking in the opposite direction. As soon as he cut off - right in the middle of a sentence - Remus turned and left the room, hurrying up the stairs so quickly that his footsteps could barely be heard.

That gave Severus pause more than anything else ever could. Remus never cried - not because he was an emotionless drone; if that had been the case Severus would have found it far less shocking - but because he was perpetually cheerful, able to see good in the most dire of situations. So what the hell had Severus done?

He turned off the rice and sat for several minutes with a small glass mug of tea, trying to figure out just what in the name of Circe he was supposed to do next, before saying to hell with it and going upstairs.

Remus was laying on the mattress he refused to sleep on (he'd opted for several blankets on the floor instead, insisting that he was far more comfortable that way; Severus had rolled his eyes and chosen not to say a word), sobbing in a most un-Remus-like manner. Severus was stunned - his previous experience with Remus suggested that the blonde would have thrown himself, with a furious energy, back into painting or stencilling or something that was at least semi-productive. At least it would make his half-formed plan somewhat easier; he hadn't enjoyed the thought of trying to placate a furious Remus who was ignoring him better than anyone had ever done.

He ran his hand gently over Remus' shoulder.

"Remus?"

Sniff. Well, it was better than nothing.

"Remus, I . . . "

"You what?" Remus rolled over and inquired, some of his old fire coming right back as he sat up furiously. "You're just frustrated? You're tired? You didn't think? It never occurred to you that I'm working just as hard as you are, and I feel just as much as you do that for every three steps forward we're going two steps back? What?"

Severus sighed resignedly and closed his eyes. All of those things, of course, because he'd spent years not caring what anyone else thought and old habits died damn hard when you were under stress.

"I . . . look, why don't we go out tonight and just get out of the damn house? You've been working too hard and if you keep it up Harry's going to have a beautiful home and no parent to come home to. You'll kill yourself. You'll overstress yourself right into a heart attack, and I'd rather not deal with the sudden death of my loved ones when I'm home for the first time in eight years."

Remus looked somewhat stunned when Severus referred to him as a "loved one." It was a phrase the black-haired man had never used before, but . . .

"I've got to finish Harry's room tonight. I poured all the paint into the pan already."

"We can put a Preserving Charm on it. Go get in the shower."

Remus nodded in agreement, but instead of getting up to go get in the shower, he slid his arms around Severus' neck and laid his head on a dark shoulder. "I just feel so . . . like we're spinning our wheels, you know?"

Severus didn't - it was a phrase he'd never heard before - but he nodded anyway. Remus smiled a somewhat watery smile and pushed off for the one working bathroom in the house.

In town, Severus steered them toward a tea shop where they ordered a plate of sandwiches. Both of them had eaten enough rice to last them for a lifetime. They lingered for about an hour, both dreading the return back to the house - both of them agreed that it would be beautiful when they were done, but just now it felt like some kind of devouring monster. Finally Severus announced his intention of buying something from a nearby shop and told Remus to meet him at home. Remus dragged his feet all the way, feeling more than ever that he would like nothing so much as to use a few simple charms (which, while convenient, wouldn't produce nearly as good results as manual work) and get it over with.

Remus had just uncovered the paint when he heard Severus downstairs, rummaging in the kitchen. Several minutes later found him staring as his partner came into the room, rubbing his hands and looking exceedingly pleased about something - and then picking up a paintbrush. Severus seemed to have a mortal fear of painting; it was for that reason that Remus was now goggling at him like he'd just done a handstand with sparklers sticking out his ears. Both events were equally remarkable coming from the man in question.

"Let's get this knocked off tonight, and then tomorrow we can clean up the floor and lay the carpeting, and then we'll be done in here until we move the furniture in, right?" Remus just nodded.

He scrubbed red paint off his skin with a fervor; Remus hated the feeling of drying paint. It made him feel like his skin was being pulled on in the most annoying way. Finally he was able to rinse off and get out of the shower. The master bathroom, at least, had also still been in working order along with the kitchen - in fact, it was rather nice - so Remus had not had to give up the luxury of a hot shower. He wrapped his dressing gown around himself and stepped out of the bathroom - and right into Severus' arms. Severus embraced him for several seconds before saying anything, and when he did, he spoke so softly that Remus almost didn't hear it.

"I'm sorry."

Remus snuggled closer, smelled the dust on Severus' dressing gown, and sneezed slightly. Then he laughed. Severus pulled him back into the bedroom, where Remus promptly started rummaging through his trunk, looking for night clothes. Finally extracting a pair of rather ugly cotton pajama bottoms (and making Severus wonder why, exactly, Gryffindors seemed to be so obsessed with red-white-and-black tartan plaid), Remus tugged them on and made for his blanket nest several feet from the mattress.

"Remus Lupin, if you insist on sleeping on the damn floor one more time, I'm going to be sleeping on the floor with you."

Remus turned around and had to fight the urge to laugh long and hard. Severus was wearing a disapproving look so reminiscent of Minerva McGonagall that Remus almost expected him to start taking House points. Then the reality of what Severus had said began to sink in, and the urge passed almost immediately. Severus intended for both of them to sleep on the mattress. Together.

Shit.

Remus stood with his mouth open, trying to formulate a decent response, and finally gave up when Severus closed the bathroom door and the water went on one more time.

"Er - what's this for, Severus?"

Remus eyed the bottle of wine Severus had picked up in town. He didn't doubt his partner's taste - on the few rare occasions that they'd gotten a bottle over dinner, Severus had proven that he was perfectly capable of choosing a decent wine, even if he was no expert - but he was wondering what on God's green earth could have compelled Severus to bring a bottle of wine into a mostly disordered house.

"We're celebrating."

"Celebrating what?"

"We only have one room left to paint, and since it's our own, we can take as much damn time as we feel like." Severus offered him a glass, which Remus accepted and tasted cautiously (Severus did have good taste in drinks, but Remus simply couldn't stand dry wine).

"Severus, why does this taste like strawberries?"

"Because it's strawberry wine (5). You told me you liked it."

"I do. I just didn't know you could get it around here."

Severus snorted. "We're in a small town, Remus, not the middle of nowhere."

Remus sighed and smiled to himself. This, he enjoyed. This might make all the repetitive and mind-numbing work worth his time.

He snuggled down into the sheets on the mattress.

"Good night, Severus."

REFERENCE NOTES:

(1) "News of Magic" in Italian.

(2) "He Who Must Not Be Named" in Italian. This refers to Voldemort.

(3) A more common but less correct term for the Romis "gypsy" or "gipsy."

(4) A Welsh name meaning "dark, pure." Bronwen Clowes is, obviously, a pureblood since this story was started before HBP and Severus is a pureblood in this fic. Armando's name means "of the army."

(5) When we moved into our new house and finally got the kitchen unpacked, my mom and I pulled out a bottle of strawberry wine to toast the new place (and all our hard work!). I've had champagne and sips of a few mixed drinks (NOTE TO PEOPLE WHO'VE NEVER HAD ALCOHOL: you're really not missing anything), and didn't really like them - but strawberry wine is quite good. Not something I'd drink every day, but not half bad, either. I don't see Remus enjoying "strong" tasting drinks, so this would be something he'd like.