Author's Note: Malfoy was dead, to begin with.
Hee hee, I always wanted to start a fic with that! No, there will be no supernatural activity in this chapter, I am merely reminding my lovely readers that this is a kind of sequel to my 'Salvage What you Can', in which Lucius Malfoy died in mysterious circumstances in prison, shortly before his execution was supposed to take place. And shortly after his final visit from Severus. Remus has always had strange, irrational feelings about the whole business.
There is a little sadness/angst mixed in with the fluff this time. I hope no one thinks I am dealing insensitively with a tragic subject, but this story is not about Harry, it's about Snape and Lupin. Harry only speaks the way he does because he's thought of every platitude under the sun and already drawn his own conclusions. This chapter is dedicated to my very brave friends H and G, who were third time lucky this summer! Yay!
Why do medical test results always seem to take ages to come?
…….
At noon on a glorious summer day, the normally turbulent seas around Lamorna were rolling gently towards the beach, as though crashing violently like proper Cornish waves cost far too much effort in this kind of heat.
A thin, bespectacled man, whose bright white hair was occasionally striped through with contrasting black streaks, was standing motionless about two yards offshore. His tailored black trousers were rolled up above one knobbly knee and one mutilated kneecap, though the cuffs of his white shirt remained formally in place at his wrists. At odds with the rest of his very correct attire - and his matching stern expression of concentration - was the faded and fraying Panama sunhat shading the strangely pale face from the midday sun. In his right hand was a sort of fishing net on the end of a long bamboo cane, which he kept fixed three inches above the surface of the water, held as immovably rigid as his body.
In a pink and white striped deckchair a little further along the sand, another man was dividing his time between dozing and reading short chapters from a paperback novel. His grey hair and moustache gave him a positively scruffy air compared to his silent companion, though the short-sleeved tee-shirt and khaki shorts were far more appropriate beachwear than the other's immaculate garb.
The second man, letting his book fall onto his chest so he could stretch out his arms until all the joints had clicked satisfactorily, cleared his throat and called out:
"Severus, I think you should have a break. Your knee might seize up."
The first man scowled and pulled a magic wand from the waistband of his trousers. One flick conjured a shape in the air like a cartoon speech-bubble above his head, and letters began to form inside it. In a fine copperplate script, they spelled out:
"Quiet, Lupin, you are scaring away the jellyfish."
"You've been out there for ages now and you haven't caught any at all!" The other man said with a sigh.
The first written message dissolved and was replaced with a second.
"That is not surprising, given the obnoxious din you insist on making."
"Din?" gaped Lupin. "I've been quiet as a mouse!"
"Hush," the word wrote itself in the air. "If you cannot control your…" The speech tailed off and the man in the water stared intently at something apparently drifting near his feet. His companion watched open-mouthed as his whole body tensed like a cobra on the attack.
There was a little 'sploosh' as the net plunged into the sea.
The bubble still floating above the oblivious black and white head spelled out "Gotcha!"
…….
Remus had been right about his lover's bad knee suffering from such a long period of standing in the water. Severus was leaning heavily on him as they made their way along the scorched and dusty footpath back to the Gatehouse, but his face bore the triumphant smirk of the successful hunter. A galvanised bucket hovered a few inches ahead of them, containing the squashy prey and a few inches of seawater; the deckchair trotting merrily behind.
They awkwardly slopped, clattered, limped and sweated their way around the last curve, relieved to be almost home, when Remus heard Severus snatch a sharp intake of breath. A man was sitting on the ground in the only patch of midday shade, leaning against the stone wall enclosing the house's front garden. The centuries-old deterrents which had protected the old Snape ancestral property normally kept all muggle passers-by at bay and, though the surly former spy had many more friendly magical connections now than ever before, even the closest of them would hesitate before arriving unannounced into his domain.
Remus felt his heart hammering like a drum-roll. Severus' wand was poised for action and both men tensed for trouble in the painful few seconds before the intruder turned to look in their direction, squinted beneath his hand for a moment then waved.
"Harry!" called Lupin, with palpable relief.
"Hello!" The young man jumped up and ran to support Snape's other side. Snape scowled and fussed for a second before permitting himself to be helped with a grunt which was half irritation and half gratitude. "What's in the bucket, Severus? Urgh, it looks really slimy."
"Really slimy and really deadly," whispered the invalid emphatically, not longer using the subtitle spell now he had finished stalking unsuspecting coelenterates. Harry glanced worriedly at Remus. Remus shrugged.
"There was an article in the muggle newspaper about the heatwave bringing all kinds of exotic marine life to the Western shores of the country," the werewolf explained dismissively. "There are lots of nasty, poisonous visitors swimming around out there this summer and Severus wanted to go and meet some of them."
Snape's black eyes glittered with a suppressed exhilaration which bordered on slight mania. Harry gulped.
The strange convoy went straight through the little house and out to the garden, where Josty the elf installed everyone in a shady gazebo with a jug of fresh lemonade. After flopping onto the benches and, in Remus' case, mopping their brows and taking deep breaths to dispel light-headedness, Harry cleared his throat.
"Severus, I'm sorry to turn up on your doorstep like this," he looked pensive. For the first time, Remus noticed dark circles underneath his eyes, which seemed smaller and duller than usual, as though he had been crying.
"What is it?" he placed a hand on the young man's arm.
"Should I leave?" asked Severus, in his quiet, damaged voice. He levitated the bucket containing his new pet and made as if to stand.
"You don't have to," said Harry. "I don't mind you knowing this, but you might not want to listen to me whinging." Snape put the bucket down again, firmly believing that the motto 'knowledge is power' was a good excuse for enjoying the latest gossip.
"Harry?" Remus prompted, hating to see his almost-godson upset. After clearing his throat again, Harry began.
"For about two years now, Hazel and I have been trying for a baby," he said flatly. Remus' eyebrows shot up, but Severus nodded as though he had suspected as much. "I know it can be a while before it happens, but it seemed to take forever and got really frustrating."
"Though not entirely unpleasant, I trust," added the potions master, with the ghost of a smirk.
"Well, yes, there are worse duties to fulfil," he smiled quickly, before becoming glum once more. "Then six weeks ago we thought we'd managed it. I've never seen her so excited, dancing around the room and just glowing with happiness. We both were, actually, I thought I was finally going to get to be part of a real family. To know someone I'm genetically related to who doesn't hate me. It was an amazing feeling - I'm sure we almost burst with joy at various times - but then, late last night…" He buried his face in his hands.
Snape silently bowed his head.
"She lost the baby," Remus finished for him. Harry nodded and his shoulders spasmed in a single sob. "Oh, Harry," Remus pulled him into a tight hug, as tears pooled in his own eyes. "I'm so sorry. So sorry."
They clung together for a long time before Harry was able to pull away. He accepted Severus' handkerchief, offered with wordless but genuine sympathy. He wiped his face and put on a resolute expression.
"I know it's not the end of the world, that we can try again, that these things happen and it was very early to be taking things for granted," he said quickly, "But no one else seems to have any problems. There are babies everywhere at the moment, for God's sake, even people who aren't ready are getting pregnant. Why not us? Why did ours die? It just doesn't feel fair!"
The older couple looked at each other, allowing Remus to read the unasked question on his lover's face and silently agree. Both knew that Snape was out of his depth here, for all the post-war goodwill he bore towards Harry and his muggle girlfriend. Expressing a degree of emotion when alone with Lupin was something he had learned over time, actively offering his services as counsellor or shoulder to cry on for an emotional young Potter was still way beyond his realm of expertise. He carefully levered himself up and made for his laboratory, clutching the bucket, pausing in confusion for a moment as he realised that some word or gesture was required before leaving. He frowned in thought, then leaned over and placed a kiss on the top of Harry's messy head, as he had seen Molly Weasley do a hundred times.
Despite his watery eyes, Remus smiled.
…….
Being the resilient, optimistic young man that he was, Harry refused to allow the unhappy incident to keep him down for long. Hazel girded herself with the support of her large family and an unexpected award for excellence in a research project at work, and tried to look to the future each time a comment about babies made in ignorance, or hormone imbalances upset her. It would be hard for them, Remus knew, but he trusted that their relationship was strong enough to see them through.
…….
By the end of the summer, the results of the latest worldwide lycanthropy test series were no closer to being made public, the punishingly hot weather showed no signs of abating, and Severus had assembled an extensive collection of alarming jellyfish.
Remus had slowly watched his lovely garden in Derbyshire shrivel and die, as even the professional irrigation spells he had learned from Neville stuttered and failed in the heat. Unable to bear the scene of destruction, he was spending more and more time at Severus' Cornish home. The sea breezes kept the air moving, even if he was too nervous of water-borne dangers to do much swimming, and disinclined to climb down the awkward path to the beach since he had tried it one afternoon and felt dizzy from the heat and exertion. He found it very refreshing to drag Severus away from his slippery friends and head out to the cliffs in the cool of the evening, to watch the sun set together.
Like some desert creature, Remus now came alive at dusk.
"What have you been doing today?" asked Severus as they sat on their usual rock, eating fish and chips straight from the paper, balanced soggily on their knees.
"Oh, same old thing," he answered vaguely, watching a handful of gulls bobbing apathetically on the waves. "Sleeping, reading, sleeping some more."
"I see," he precisely skewered a pair of mushy peas on the prongs of his disposable chipfork. "So I am to expect another night of unrelenting sexual demands upon my person as you burn off all that excess energy."
"Indeed you are," Remus grinned charmingly and waggled his eyebrows. Snape rolled his eyes and impaled more peas. "And you, Severus. How was your day?"
"Unproductive. I spent most of it endeavouring to repair a leak in Isabel's tank."
"Isabel?" Lupin paused, a piece of haddock stalled on his fork halfway between lap and mouth.
"Yes, Isabel. My Physalia physalis," the same blank stare forced Snape to translate. "Portuguese man o'war. The one with the extremely long tentacles. I ought to check on her when we get home. It would be a setback if anything untoward happened."
Remus ate his fish, amused that the stern scientist had named his gloopy invertebrates. None of the former Hogwarts students who had fallen foul of his temper would be able to rekindle the old myth that Professor Snape had no heart. As if to reinforce the idle thought, Snape stopped eating and looked intently at him.
"Would Harry consider it improper if I suggested some potions for assisting conception?" Remus recognised the tone of that echoing whisper at once. This question had been debated long and hard in the privacy of Severus' head before being brought into the open.
"I honestly don't know," he answered. "It's only been a few weeks since the miscarriage, so maybe it's a bit soon. Hazel's not a witch, would that stop a potion from working?"
"There is one I remember being mentioned in my first year at the Institute, which focuses on the inherent magic of a wizard rather than the more common fertility draughts which target the witch," he grew thoughtful. "Perhaps I could find it and make the suggestion in a few months' time. After Christmas, perhaps. Or do you believe it is none of my business?"
A bark of laughter from his partner intensified the concern on his face. Despite all his achievements during the war and beyond, the fear of mockery remained very near the surface of Snape's fragile self-esteem. Remembering this, Remus hastened to explain himself.
"Whoever would have expected it? You actively helping to produce more Potters!" he teased. Snape visibly relaxed and stuck his tongue out.
"Another generation of the little dunderheads will not affect me. Just don't tell Minerva I was in any way responsible for bringing more chaos into her castle," he added conspiratorially.
It was almost dark by the time they returned to the Gatehouse.
The repairs to Isabel's tank were holding up when they went to check. Remus had hoped they would be able to go straight to bed, but the sight of the creature bobbing around in his precious laboratory proved too great a temptation for Snape.
"I should like to make one last try at extracting the essence of the poison," he decided.
"Severus!" sighed Remus in annoyance. "You already have!"
"Not in its entirety," he had moved to the work bench and was already donning his apron. "Before the crisis with the tank happened, I found a long-lost spell by a Portuguese witch which should preserve the venom in its original state, without depreciating its magical properties."
A little voice inside Remus' head was demanding to know why this was necessary, but experience suggested that he ought not to ask, such questions earning him either a glare or an in-depth, Gold Standard explanation of the entire discipline of Potions involved, taking anything up to two hours.
"Do you need help with the spell?" he asked at last, hoping that he could at least hurry the process along.
"Yes, actually," came the surprising reply. "It would be a great help if you went to the library and fetched my Portuguese dictionary of magical vocabulary."
Remus made his way to Severus' magically extended library, which he liked to keep well away from the laboratory in case of accidents. The place was so well warded against theft, summoning, flood and fire that it took him fifteen minutes of passwords and counter-charms before he even dared touch the doorknob. Eventually, the wards grudgingly granted him entrance and the door slowly opened with a menacing rattle. The uplifting smell of books hit Remus in the face, making him smile.
This place completely enchanted him. Leather, dust, paper, wooden shelves and the very slight white-noise buzzing of preservation spells from wooden floor to artificially high ceiling never failed to leave the impression that knowledge lurked all around him. A battered manuscript with engraved metal corners and sharp decorative studs all over the cover began shuffling towards him and he watched it with amused interest until he realised that it was the 12th century Bavarian masterwork on the vanquishing of dark creatures, and that the decorations were all pure silver. It also smelled faintly of garlic. Not sure how to protect himself without damaging the book, he looked around for another volume which he could use to threaten it with. Nothing in the vicinity looked helpful.
"Ridiculous," he murmured to himself. "This is the Snape library, there should be hundreds of Dark Arts books here!"
The manuscript was sliding closer. The werewolf caught himself cowering and laughed, straightening up. The thing was only eight inches long and about five thick. It had no business trying to 'vanquish' an adult male werewolf on its own, even if full moon was days away. He squared his shoulders, clenched his fists, took a deep breath and growled.
The book froze. Remus watched as it considered its next move. When it stayed still, he took a step towards it and growled again. It slid back by almost two feet. Feeling in equal parts silly for threatening a book, and smug for frightening what was obviously a rather tough and Moody-esque volume, he hurried over to the language section to get on with his errand.
Enormous dictionaries sat next to smaller grammar texts; compendia of Potions terminology in French, Swahili, Malay, Mandarin, Japanese, Danish, Cornish and a score of other idioms nestled next to their counterparts in Charms, Runes, Arithmancy and Dark Arts. Remus couldn't help but stare open-mouthed at the world of words stretching upwards before him. He spotted the Portuguese magi-dictionary without too much effort, just above the limit of his reach on the sixth level of shelves. He fetched the ladder from its home near the entrance, throwing out a growl as he passed the place where he had last seen the Bavarian manuscript, just to make sure.
He didn't much care for the creaking wooden ladder, in fact, lifting it had reactivated the old familiar twinge in his upper arm, so he only climbed the bottom two rungs and stretched up to pull the book down. It was so tightly wedged into place that it took a sharp jerk to dislodge it. As he did so, another book slipped from the shelf and landed with a papery splat on the floor, its pages splayed loosely in the dust. Remus put the dictionary down and picked up the smaller book, swearing at his own clumsiness.
Oddly, the book had no cover. It was a rather small Magyar to English Potions dictionary, with a lot of loose leaves. He shuffled them together, hoping that the damage wasn't a result of the fall, when he noticed a sheet of writing paper tucked inside. It wasn't until after he read it that he wondered whether he had any right to read the items of correspondence in Severus's house, but it was too late by then. The elegant but somehow rushed script said:
S,
Here you go, 'borrowed' from the Old Man's library. I sliced off the cover and filled it with newspaper, so there's no gap on the shelf. He'll never notice it's missing.
For God's sake be careful! I mean it.
L.
L. Lucius, obviously. Remus slid the letter back inside the dictionary and pushed it back onto the shelf, feeling the slight tremor he always did when Malfoy was mentioned. It was not that he was jealous of a dead man, exactly, especially as he had no reason to believe Severus was ever the wealthy wizard's lover. It was probably more to do with the thought of Severus being close friends with such a deadly, ruthless, cruel and murderous villain for so many years. Though perhaps 'friends' was the wrong definition too. There were many things which the alumni of Slytherin house liked to keep secret, not least the complicated system of alliance and hierarchy that lasted into adulthood and often right up to the highest levels of Ministry life.
Not for the first time, Remus found he was grateful for being a Gryffindor, where life was usually quite simple, honest and open. If you liked someone, you hung around with them. If not, you didn't. Peter Pettigrew's face then swam before his eyes, crazed and deadly, wrapping his silver hand around his old friend's neck the night Harry killed Voldemort and he forced his brain to stop thinking about Gryffindor.
"Not black and white," he reminded himself. "Never black and white."
He left the library with the Portuguese dictionary under his arm, carefully resetting the wards, though Severus would probably come down before bed and re-do them, not trusting him to get it right. Breathing heavily, possibly due to a combination of unpleasant memories and dust, he made his way to the lab and deposited the book on a bench, earning a grunt of thanks from the potions master, leaning intently over his jellyfish tanks.
"I'm off to bed," he said. "Don't be too long, will you?"
Another grunt.
…….
Remus lay in bed and stared at he ceiling, unable to dislodge the memory of Malfoy's scribbled note.
He had taken, 'borrowed', the book from his father's, 'the Old Man's', library. Then he had skinned it, put the binding back so as not to leave a telltale gap, very cunning, very Slytherin. Lucius must have held Snape in high regard to rob his own father on his behalf. Or perhaps they had been working on a very important project and such underhand methods of finding books suggested it was nothing to do with Hogwarts or the Institute of Master Potioners. Remus knew he would never be able to ask.
His eyelids drooped and his thoughts became more random, swirling around jellyfish, mushy peas, the fierce dark creature text, Malfoy Manor, the Magyar language, which ought to mean something but who knew what?, Severus was going to help Harry and Hazel have a baby, he had never visited Portugal, Magyar Magyar, what was it?, Magyar Manor, when was the werewolf investigation group going to release the test results, jellyfish, babies, jelly babies, mmm sweets.
'For God's sake be careful! I mean it.' Malfoy was concerned for Severus' safety over whatever it was they were working on.
The last thing which occurred to him as he drifted into the land of nod was how very, very unexpected it was that Lucius Malfoy had believed in God.
…….