Author's Note: This fic wouldn't be possible without the dulcet compositions of Beethoven, Mozart, and A.F.I. Credit where it's due.
More props to swiftlystarlit for being this fic's unequivocal number one fan!
Now, if only I had a plot...
I'm really pleased with this chapter. I hope you are, too.
CHAPTER SIX
Infinite
"I told her I'd be more than willing to go with her," James was saying, "but she said she didn't want to do it like that. She said that'd be giving in." His eyes were unfocused, and he toyed almost compulsively with his Prefect badge. It was late, and they were doing one last patrol of the corridors to make sure that nothing was amiss. "She said she didn't need and didn't want a bodyguard." He paused, and there was a hint of an entreaty in his next words. "I guess it was just a matter of principle."
"It's nothing personal," Remus told him, partly because it was what James wanted to hear, partly because he was fairly sure it was true. "She just doesn't want it to seem like being Muggleborn should make anything different, even now--especially now."
James sighed. "I just... I feel like safety should come before pride."
Remus wavered. "I think 'pride' is too strong a--" He paused. He'd heard something.
"A wh..." James trailed off. He'd heard it, too.
Following the sound of the piteous cries at a run, Remus and James skidded to a stop in the bathroom just down the hall, gaping at the pair of grinning Slytherins watching a small girl writhing under what had to be the Cruciatus Curse. The two faces above the green and silver ties glanced up in surprise as the door slammed shut behind the newcomers.
"Take the left," Remus told James breathlessly.
He didn't wait for a nod, but they understood each other well enough to shout "Expelliarmus!" in perfect unison, wand arms outstretched, each with a different target.
The Slytherins, who had started to raise their wands to retaliate, found themselves weaponless.
His voice breaking, James cried, "Petrificus Totalus!"
When nothing happened, with a helpless anger darkening his face, James cleared his throat and tried again. This time, it worked. Jamming his wand into his belt, he grabbed a Slytherin arm in either hand and dragged the transgressors to the door, trying to keep his head low in an effort to prevent anyone from seeing the tears sparking in his eyes.
"Going to--gonna' get these two--two--" James shook them hard by their shoulders, as if they were making the words choke him. "--bastards expelled."
Remus nodded his assent and, as the door swung closed after them, tentatively approached the sobbing girl curled up under the sinks. Water dripped from the leaking pipes onto her huddled body, but she seemed to ignore it. Very gently, Remus put a hand on her shoulder.
"They'll be taken care of," he assured her softly. "It's over now."
She looked up at him, and he discovered a round, innocent face soaked with tears and a pair of big, watery blue eyes. A festive Hufflepuff scarf lay sodden and forlorn in a puddle of water on the floor.
"No," she whispered. "It's only beginning."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Even days later, even when the offenders had been cast out from the castle forever, even when order and quiescence had, at least outwardly, been restored, Remus had trouble sleeping. It was the faces that did it--the faces that swam before his eyes like phantoms in the night.
The older Slytherin boy was seventeen--fully legal, which meant he was looking at a comfortable stint in Azkaban for performing an Unforgivable. He had a long face, pale and a little secretive. His hair was dark and rather disorderly, his eyebrows bushy like overgrown hedges, his chin sharply-defined and somehow abrupt. He had wonderful eyes--beautiful ones, a marbled bluish-green with rings of faint yellow around the pupils.
The other boy was younger, making expulsion the worst punishment he could expect. He was shorter than his companion, and more strongly built, with the kind of accomplished smirk that spoke volumes of overconfidence. There was a roguish tilt to his features that would have left girls swooning, and when he walked, it was more of a saunter.
And the girl--Remus had quickly learned her name. Anna Blythe was a Second Year Hufflepuff--Muggleborn, and she had paid for it dearly.
The persistent memory of her face drenched in mortified tears was bad--but it was the calmness in her every feature when she had sat in a bed in the Hospital Wing, letting Remus hold her hand tightly, and explained precisely how the Cruciatus Curse had felt that haunted him nightly without fail.
Madame Pomfrey hadn't really known what to do with Anna when Remus had brought her in, loosing a current of hasty explanations even as he did. Hesitantly Pomfrey had arranged her in a cheery bed and given her a cup of tea and some chocolate. She had heartily encouraged Remus when he proposed that he might stay awhile to keep Anna company.
Anna hadn't wasted much time.
"You know what it felt like?" she inquired. When he'd only shaken his head mutely, she'd nodded reflectively to herself. "They just say it's the worst pain you can imagine. I guess it's different for everyone." She had looked at him coolly, composedly. He felt horror plant itself in his heart, its roots beginning to push through every vein. "For me, at least, it was a few different stages. Every time I thought it was as bad as it could get, and then it would get worse." Her wide blue eyes blinked serenely and went on to contemplate the ceiling bemusedly. "First it was a lot of twisting and pulling, the kind of thing your brother'll do to you if he's in a bad mood--but magnified, of course. Yanking your arms off, all that. Then it was knives. If you'd asked me, I would have told you there were real knives, here, and here, and here and here--" She indicated places on her body with her unencumbered hand. She might have freed the encumbered one and used it as well if Remus hadn't been gripping it so hard. "And they stabbed and then twisted. But the last part was the worst. It would have to be. It wouldn't make sense otherwise, because you'd think, 'Oh, this isn't so bad as last time,' and that would ruin it. The last part was just like being burned alive. I knew I was lying in water, that there was water dripping from the sinks everywhere, but I couldn't even feel it." She paused. "I think being burned alive is the worst way to die."
With difficulty Remus overcame the knot in his throat. "I think so, too."
"Maybe I'll quit this school and go home," Anna remarked. "It seems like that's what they want from me anyway."
Remus wondered if the sudden vacuum in his chest, into which the cold surged with a vengeance, meant that his heart had broken.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
It was somewhat glumly that Remus trooped down to the fifth floor. When he reached the appropriate door, he mumbled, "Infinite wisdom." His forehead furrowed a little as the door continued to sit placidly, unmoving and unmoved. It was the right password. Placing a hand on the door handle confirmed, however, that it was locked from within, ergo that someone else was inside.
Absently Remus kicked at the carpet while he waited, pacing back and forth a bit. Everything just felt so... so...
The door opened, and Noelle Cook emerged, still toweling contentedly at her shining curls. To Remus's greeting, she returned a quick smile that didn't reach her bright eyes before striding off purposefully down the hall. He watched her go for a moment before setting his shoulders grimly and going in.
Remus didn't really like the prefect bathroom. It was big, wide-open, and kind of intimidating. Plus there was that mermaid--
"How are you this evening, dear?" she cooed.
"Fine, thanks," Remus answered, using his best Unerringly Polite Voice. "And you?"
"Lovely, lovely," she averred. "That friend of yours really likes the lavender."
That sounded very much like James.
"Hmm," Remus said, trying to sound interested. Skirting the wet footprints that clearly delineated the path Noelle had taken, he selected a towel and set it carefully at the edge of the massive sunken bathtub, which was currently emptying Noelle's water through three different drains, making tiny triplet whirlpools. That done, Remus turned a few faucets on at random--it really didn't matter, as far as he was concerned--and sat down at the edge to wait. Alternately he watched the flaring flames of the myriad candles in the great chandelier and the rising water in the tub, which flowed from a different set of pipes embedded in its walls. The bubbles were splashing down loudly enough to drown out any further advances from the mermaid. That was nice, at least.
Before long, the massive basin was full. Remus twisted the disturbed faucets' handles again, and the current of bubbles slowed and then ceased, leaving the room in almost cemetery-like silence but for the soft snapping of bubbles bursting at random and the hollow, distant sound of water running through the plumbing in the walls.
Hating his own stupid modesty, Remus had to hesitate a moment before he could muster up the courage to strip off his vest and unbutton his shirt. Procrastinating inexcusably, watching the coquettish mermaid suspiciously out of the corner of his eye, he folded his abandoned clothing meticulously and then sat down to remove his shoes and his socks. It was as he was arranging them that the flash of silver-white darted past at the edge of his vision.
Immediately he was on his feet, his heart pounding in his ears, a single droplet of cold sweat slithering insidiously down his spine. His eyes probed the dimness left by the fickle light, the shadows in the corners; frantically and futilely he cursed the unreliability of the candles in the chandelier--
"Oh," Moaning Myrtle said unhappily. "I thought it might be Sirius."
Remus stared at her, and then he sat down at the edge of the bathtub again, taking a deep breath and trying to slow the skittering of his heart before the unfortunate organ in question exploded from the undue strain.
"He's gorgeous, you know," Myrtle reported matter-of-factly.
"Hmm," Remus said.
There was a moment of silence broken by the dripping of one of the taps as Myrtle squinted at him as if there might be Sirius-like treasure buried beneath his ordinary exterior.
"Is something wrong?" she asked eventually.
"Everything," he corrected in a mumble, feeling pathetic and ungrateful even as he heard the word come out of his mouth. "This... Dark Lord... going around killing defenseless people... All the Slytherins in on it... Just..." Helplessly he lowered his head into his waiting hands. "I can't..."
Myrtle patted his bare shoulder with an icy hand. Goosebumps rippled down his arms. "Well, on the bright side," she remarked airily, "you're not dead."
He looked at her. She smiled back complacently.
"Um," he said. "Thanks."
Myrtle nodded at his pants. "So, are you going to take a bath or not?"
Incredulously he stared at her. "I'd rather not have an audience," he responded slowly.
"Well," Myrtle replied haughtily. "I can take a hint, you know." Miffed, and making quite a show of it, she floated off through a wall, head held high.
Remus sighed.
About twenty minutes later--he made it quick; the mermaid was unnerving him--Remus crept through the castle, his hand on his wand just in case, seeking his favorite place in the entirety of the school.
He reached it, soon enough--the long hall with the wide windows that looked out on almost endless expanses of lawn. Moonlight streamed down, lighting a star in every drop of dew, frosting the windows, bleaching the color from the carpet, shining on his face.
It wasn't long before he heard whistling--somber, stately, and impossibly accurate.
Turning partway, Remus considered leaving. It wouldn't be too difficult to flee before he was even sighted. But at the same time... No. He wasn't going to run. He was tired of running.
When Severus saw him, the whistling broke off.
"'Russian Easter Festival Overture,'" Remus noted. "Rimsky-Korsakov."
"Werewolf," Severus replied, characteristically venomously.
Apparently it passed for a salutation. Then again, it wasn't as though Remus's had been too much better.
"Yes, I know," Severus hissed, seeming to think that was why Remus paused. "I was there. And I suspected for a long time. I wondered. I'd have to have been a complete fool not to wonder. Do you think I'm a fool, Remus? Deep down, do you?"
"No," Remus replied quietly.
"What I can't believe," Severus seethed, almost to himself, "is that Dumbledore let you come here in the first place. It's his job--his duty--to protect us, to protect his students, protect us from things like you." It stung. It always stung. But it also ached dully like an old war wound faintly aggravated. "Evidently, he has failed at that. Senile, likely. Unleashing something like you--But what no one sees," Severus interrupted himself insistently, the frustration and the righteousness sonorous in his every word, "is that that's what I've been trying to do all along--to protect the people who don't even see the threat."
Remus looked out the window at the lawn, bathed in moonlight. It was waning, the milky orb suspended among the sprinkled stars, but it called to him. It beckoned. It whispered his name in a voice like a sword scraping against silver. "Protect Lily, you mean," he said.
He didn't turn. He knew, with certainty, that Severus would be livid, that his eyes would narrow to ebony slashes in his white face, that his contempt would explode outward unrestrained.
"How dare you even imply--"
"She's perfectly safe from me, Severus," Remus told him softly. "We were prefects together last year--without James, back then. Nothing ever went wrong. I've never hurt anyone. And you know James will keep her safest of all, just as you would."
The silence was complete for a full minute. Then Severus Snape spoke.
"She's the only beautiful thing I've ever had. You have to understand that."
Remus turned then, turned and met the foreign supplication in the black eyes. "I do, Severus," he said.
The wells deepened; their pleas lapped helplessly against the stone walls. "He wants me, Remus."
A concerned line appeared between Remus's eyebrows. "Who does?"
With nauseating speed, impatient anger mingled with the implorations in Severus's eyes. "He does, you fool," he snapped.
And Remus understood. Slowly he shook his head. "You can't do it."
Severus's face hardened quickly--always quickly; his emotions flickered like candle flames and replaced one another almost too rapidly to follow. "And what would you have me do, Remus Lupin?" he spat. "Refuse him? Him? Send my condolences that I have to decline and then wait until he kills my family in recompense?" Then a mad hope was lit in his eyes, sweeping aside the spite before it. "He wants your kind, you know," Severus went on, urging, pressing. "He could do with more of you."
It was a wild hope, a strange one, and if Severus had not been so desperately afraid, Remus knew, that hope would not have existed at all. It wounded him to kill it.
"I'm not going with you, Severus," he declared quietly.
The light went out, and the darkness rushed in hungrily. "Idiot," Severus snarled.
Remus turned again and watched the shadow of a drifting cloud play across the glimmering lawn. "I know," he responded.