Author's Note: F my homework. F it to H. (The "F" means "forget." I swear.)
I found a typo back in Chapter Seven. Horrible. Horrible.
This chapter ended up being longer than I intended. I was inspired. Right in time to have to go to class. (See previous rants on college.) Snape decided he was done getting neglected. Very done. So this chapter's huge. I'd apologize, but you probably like it that way.
This chapter propels us past 40,000 words. Upward and onward!
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Rich
Remus and Lily were consulting her latest list. James was mostly consulting Lily—that was, memorizing every detail of her face—but had mastered the art of nodding and agreeing at the right times, so he made it look pretty convincing.
That was an unfair assessment, and Remus relented. James actually did care about all this Prefect stuff, and he earned his badge. Remus had been surprised how solemnly James had taken up the mantle, and it wasn't just a passing interest. He was really, honestly intent on helping to improve the school.
Remus looked up when the portrait swung open. Sirius stepped in through it, and there was something slightly… off about him.
"How are you?" Remus asked, trying to sound cheerful and conversational instead of concerned. He always worried that he seemed too anxious—which, of course, made him more anxious, but that was a different problem entirely.
"Eh," Sirius answered noncommittally. He tossed himself down on the couch next to Peter.
There was something in that "Eh" that prevented Remus from digging for details—some subtle note of strain. The last thing Remus wanted to do was push Sirius Black over the edge. It seemed like it would be all too easy.
Speaking of Sirius, he was looking down at his tie as if it was an abomination. Slowly, he removed it, and then he draped it over the edge of the couch and turned his gaze away. Remus was mystified.
He glanced again at James, who was pointing out to Lily something written on the parchment. James Potter had a good shot at Head Boy, Remus realized—a damn good shot, really. Everyone who boasted half a brain knew that Lily had been selected for Head Girl the day she set one authorized, even-tempered, dutiful foot on Hogwarts soil, but now it looked to Remus like James could very likely become her counterpart.
Faintly Remus smiled to himself. That was fitting, wasn't it? That James's gradual transformation from a spoiled, self-centered little boy to a balanced, self-assured young man would be commended in this way? It was an accolade he deserved, and one that he could share with Lily, drawing them even closer together. It was perfect, wasn't it?
They would never want a werewolf as a Head Boy anyway. Whatever his qualifications. Whatever his hopes.
Silently Remus watched the corner of the parchment crinkle as James reached over to correct something, and, considering the slight marring of the fragile paper as if it was the gravest matter in the world, he was reminded with a sudden jolt of the letter he'd received at breakfast. An unremarkable owl had deposited the twice-folded scrap of parchment into his lap just as the Marauder quartet had been maneuvering free of the table to run for class, and he had tucked it into his back pocket and forgotten its existence entirely.
Until now, that was.
The insatiable itch of curiosity coursing through him, Remus fought the note out, flattened the worst of the wrinkles with the heels of his hands, and opened it. A few terse lines of dense handwriting greeted him.
Remus—
3B's back in business. Got a window, at least. Rest should follow. Come at 7 on Weds.
Rosmerta
Remus looked at his watch. Six forty-five.
"Dang it," he said.
"Just say it, Remus," Sirius remarked from where he was stretched out on the couch, his eyes closed, ostensibly sound asleep. "Just say 'Fucking shit and hellfire.' It'll make you feel better. I guarantee it."
"Thanks for the suggestion," Remus replied dryly. He took to his feet, straightened his clothes a little, and glanced at James and Lily, who were looking up at him. "Work," he explained apologetically.
"What about the curfew?" James asked slowly.
He would make such a good Head Boy.
"Well, I am a Prefect," Remus noted. "If I'm a few minutes late, I don't think anyone'll really mind."
James shrugged and smiled. "All right. Have fun, and all that."
Remus smiled. "I'll do my best."
He made it to Hogsmeade by ten after seven, and, sure enough, there was a brand new pane of glass in the window at the Three Broomsticks. A bell jingled cheerily as he stepped through the door into the warm yellow light of the restaurant proper. Rosmerta was tending to a few lingering customers, and she thanked them and approached him as he entered.
"There's a lot of unpacking to do," she announced, wiping her hands on her apron.
Remus nodded obligingly.
"No," Rosmerta said. "I mean a lot."
By eleven, Remus had conceded that Rosmerta had been right. In fact, he had conceded that particular point many, many times, often under his breath in a vindictive mumble.
It was on the way back that the trouble started. Or, perhaps, that the trouble continued.
It started as an innocuous prickle at the back of his neck, another flicker of harmless paranoia. He pulled his coat tighter around him and walked a bit faster, consciously deciding to ignore it. He worried too much—that was what it was. He just worried too darn much, and he needed to grow up and learn to take things in stride.
Just think about something else, he told himself sternly. Obediently, his mind cast around for a subject and landed on the Defense Against the Dark Arts essay due on Friday. Yes. That was something to think about. He kind of liked DADA. There was something calming about it, something reassuring about being equipped with spells to fight against the wrong in the world. It was about studying the dark in order to better prepare the light to meet it head on—meet it and win. It made him feel stronger, more secure. Like everything wasn't hopeless after all.
But there was a catch. The chill in the wind whispered of it, grazing Remus's ears, numbing his nose, urging his teeth to chatter. They wouldn't need the defense if the dark wasn't so strong. They wouldn't need to write an expository essay if a man whose name you didn't speak wasn't out there making headlines, drawing buzzing, bewildered journalists to the blood he spilled with abandon—with childlike glee.
He wondered what Severus would write for his essay.
"Well, Professor, I would write you a clear, concise, and very competent treatise on the topic assigned, but, you see, I have this mark on my arm, and I really think it's pointless for me to pretend that I want to learn how to counter the kinds of things I'm going to do to people."
Christ, Remus thought. He didn't usually think words like that. But the idea of Severus performing Unforgivables on unsuspecting innocents made him feel physically ill. Whatever he said, whatever he claimed, whatever he wanted to believe, Severus was better than that. Or he could be, if he wanted.
There was a rustling in the bushes.
Squirrel, Remus thought firmly. Rabbit. Stray cat. Serial killer armed with kitchen cleaver and semi-automatic pistol.
He hesitated. He had two choices.
Fight or flight, Remus Lupin? his brain inquired almost bemusedly.
He picked the latter.
As he leaned against the wall of the castle, panting hard, looking up at the cold stars in the sky, he realized just how much he hated the way that he always ran. He ran from everything—from confrontation, from strife, from truths he didn't want to face and from the slightest hint of danger. It probably had been a squirrel that had sent him scuttling off homeward with his tail between his legs. What did he have to fear? He could have hexed that squirrel off the map. He could have hexed the serial killer off the map.
Maybe, he thought, next time will be different.
He paused.
"Liar," he muttered aloud. Then he slipped into the castle and started the trek up to the dorm.
He was only halfway there when McGonagall intercepted him.
"Mister Lupin?" she said, almost uncertainly.
"I—" he started.
"It's after curfew," she went on, as if he didn't know, looking at him as if there was some mistake.
"Yes, but—"
"You're a Prefect."
"Yes, but—"
"Of all people, you should be observing that curfew meticulously."
"I know, but—"
"I'll have to take House Points."
"I was working!" Remus burst out, louder than he intended. He snapped his mouth shut as if he could eat the words, but they were gone by now, fading into the empty air. Meekly, he added, "In Hogsmeade," as if that would fix everything.
McGonagall pressed her lips together. "Mister Lupin," she began.
It would have been polite to wait and let her to finish, but decorum was far too dangerous now. "Please," Remus cut in desperately. "I can't afford to come here if I don't work on the side, and I have to take any hours I can get around classes."
Steadily, if somewhat perplexedly, she looked at him. McGonagall was not easily perturbed, but he'd sent a wave rippling over the surface of her composure. She knew him, she knew his reputation, and she knew he was telling the truth.
Almost offhandedly Remus wondered if she'd pull out the cliché as a last resort. In the next breath, she did.
"If I allow you to break the rule," she reasoned slowly, "I will have to allow everyone to break it—won't I, Mister Lupin?"
"No," he insisted, hating the word's juvenile ring of disagreement for disagreement's sake. "I don't think there's anyone else in these exact circumstances—and if there is, then that person needs the exemption just as much as I do." As terrifying as it always was, he looked up at her and met her eyes. "Please, Professor," he repeated. "I just… don't have a choice…."
Her hesitation lasted for a long series of moments jammed up against one another like derailed freight cars in a train wreck. At last she cleared her throat and folded her hands before her, the arch of her eyebrow alone speaking volumes.
"Remus," she said. "Don't let me catch you again. Is that understood?"
"Perfectly," he replied, breathless with gratitude.
She nodded his dismissal, and he tore off down the corridor towards the safety of the dorm.
He was going to punch the next person who said McGonagall was mean.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"You don't have to walk me to the bathroom, James," Lily told him.
He shrugged. "A lot could happen," he noted.
"It's twenty steps away from the door." No one else did wry amusement so well. No one.
"Twenty-five, at least," he scoffed.
"Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one." They'd arrived. "Closer to twenty," Lily pointed out, smiling a little.
James shrugged. "Twenty-one steps is a pretty arduous journey," he declared.
The smile that continued to toy with Lily's lips was an exquisite one. Not that they weren't all exquisite.
"You really don't have to take care of me," she said again.
James stopped resisting the black hole draw of her verdant eyes. "I want to," he responded.
Being brilliant—being Lily—she remembered the origin of the words, remembered that she had spoken them first, with her arm looped through his and the revitalizing scent of her hair wreathing him sublimely. Those words were a promise, a vow, a guarantee, as well as an explanation. They were a pledge, and James Potter knew for a fact that he would rather drown in sewage after being shaved bald and paraded through the Arctic than break that pledge.
Between the delicate illumination of the dancing candles and the gentle blush that claimed her cheeks, Lily looked like nothing less than a goddess. She should have been on display in some grand art gallery in France, pausing in thought, a red rose cradled in her hand, with that low light reaching out its luminous fingers to lay flame in the golden highlights of her hair; to carve wells in the expanses of her eyes; to brush her skin with feathery shadows and raise her from the level of an object inspiring joy to one inducing awe. Lily was always very pretty. At this moment, as James stood still and silent, not daring to breathe, she was absolutely beautiful.
It made him wish he had a photographic memory.
And then all wishing was superfluous, because everything disappeared as Lily Evans pushed herself up on her toes and kissed him.
In the swirling confusion of exaltation and disbelief, despite the paradox of feeling as if he was floating to the rafters and melting into a puddle at once, James recognized that she had most certainly kissed him. He would never have scrounged up the courage to sully something so entirely pure, to bring his corrupted shape into the proximity of her perfection. No, this was Lily's doing. And if that was the case, it had to be a wonderful thing. Lily was only capable of wonderful things.
Not reluctantly, James gave in completely, and in his head angel choruses sang and sunlight chased dark clouds to the edges of a bright horizon. It was probably for that reason that he didn't notice the choking sound of horrified incredulity that came from a shifting shadow not far away.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Severus hadn't cared about curfew. He couldn't work up much fervor over House Points in the first place—Slytherin would bully its way to the top with Quidditch anyway, if worse came to worst—and he doubted that anyone would bother to indict him for breaking the rules. It was expected of Slytherins. Why not fulfill one more prophecy of prejudice?
He had thought—stupidly; stupidly—that he needed to hear her voice. And perhaps it had been soothing, for a moment, marred as it was by the rejoinders emanating from the tumor at her side. He had hoped only for a parting salutation as she stepped out, perhaps; or a laugh loud enough to be audible from his side of the wall that separated them. He had thought that a murmur or two would be his reward, and that a murmur or two would be more than enough. Or perhaps he hadn't thought at all, and had simply acted on one of those wretched impulses that possessed him like malevolent spirits.
His mother told him every year before he left—"Think twice, Severus. Or three times." Why hadn't he listened? Wasn't this newfound hell little more than his comeuppance for disregarding the wisdom?
Fool. Utter, unconscionable fool.
The mere abstract contemplation of a horror like the one he'd seen—for of course he had considered the odious possibility—had set nausea to roiling in his stomach. The physical sight of it—clear, true, and incontrovertible—was something else entirely.
He tried to force it into perspective by thinking about starving children in Africa. This part was rehearsed: he had and had access to countless luxuries the likes of which his distant counterparts barely had the strength to dream. Beyond the ludicrousness of it was a bit of shame that might be transmuted into comfort. It was his reflex, and sometimes it worked, to a degree. Today, picturing the pleading eyes and distended bellies just made it worse. Today, it just made him seem like a glutton and an ingrate on top of being a miserable, misled, misbegotten fool.
The flush that ascended his face might have been spurred by rage and might have been born of hopeless love. Weren't they the same thing, really? At the least, two sides of a coin.
Mankind should have melted that coin down for scrap eons ago. Both faces were useless.
Oh, this was rich. This was delectable. Hadn't he known this was going to happen? Hadn't he predicted and prepared for this contingency? Hadn't he resignedly accepted that his advice wasn't going to take hold and played this scene in his head to soften the edges when reality came?
Oh, this was rich. He was jealous of James—James Potter, the lowest of the low. Envying scum—what exactly did that make him? Sub-scum? Filth?
Why couldn't the world leave him one damn thing? Was that really too much to ask?
When eventually the worst of the horrors ended, Lily bit her lip, blushing hard, and slipped into the bathroom without a word. James Potter stood staring for a moment, an idiotic, dreamy smile blazoned on his features, before wandering back towards the Gryffindor common room. After he disappeared through the portrait hole, Severus slid to the floor. He didn't even care that James had just brazenly announced the password. Any Slytherin worth his salt would linger here until all motion ceased and then proceed to wreak havoc in the enemy dormitory, but Severus didn't think he had the energy to stand, let alone wreak any havoc.
He hadn't moved by the time Lily emerged from the bathroom, her sopping hair draped over her shoulders, smiling to herself—that sweet half-smile that whispered of dozens of little secrets dammed behind her lips. Severus wanted to hear them. He would have listened to them all. He would have listened to her talk about James, just to have something to listen to. Just to be acknowledged. Just to know that she needed him a fraction as much as he needed her.
With his eyes he followed each of her twenty-one even steps back to the portrait at the door. She belonged only to his eyes now. And only in secret. In hiding. In the shadows. The more he hacked feebly at the hydra heads of his shame, the greater the beast became. Had he done this to himself, or had she done it to him?
"Severus?" came the tentative prompt.
"Sev?"
"Yeah?"
"Um…"
"What?"
"Well, just—just that my mum—she… doesn't like you."
How much courage it had taken. "Well… well, do you like me?"
"Of course I do! Tons and tons!"
And how richly his fortitude was rewarded. His joy redoubled, feeding upon itself. "Then I don't care what your mum thinks."
"I don't either."
Severus looked up. It was Lupin. "What do you want?" he demanded. He might have stayed in that memory awhile. He relished that one in particular. He could have clung to it, trapped it between his hands, watched it play over and over until he knew every inflection. He had before.
Remus blinked. "I was… just… kind of curious… why you're on the floor."
"Don't you have a curfew to observe?" Severus sneered. How easily that sneer came to him. At the nadir of his existence, he could still abuse a Gryffindor with the best of them.
"So do you," Remus replied equably.
Severus thought he was going to be sick, but what came out were words. "She kissed him," he heard himself say faintly. "It wasn't even his idea. She did it. Her own volition." He stared up at Remus, who blinked at him. "And," he concluded, "they lived happily ever after."
Lupin sat down next to him and wrapped his arms around his knees. Severus was too tired to be mortified that there was a werewolf so close. Imagined peril couldn't compete with veritable desolation.
"You want to talk about it?" Remus asked after a little while.
"No," Severus answered.
"Okay," Remus said. But he didn't leave. He continued to sit there, looking placidly off into space.
"You wouldn't understand," Severus muttered after a few minutes. Jejune at best, he knew.
Thinly Remus smiled. "Sirius Black is one of my best friends," he commented. "Believe me. I understand."
"I don't even want to kill him," Severus realized dazedly.
"That's probably a good thing," Remus decided.
"I just want it… to go away. Never to have happened. Another nightmare." He looked at Remus, who nodded.
No more of this. He couldn't take it anymore. The sympathy, the understanding, more than the recollection of the incident itself, was going to tear him to pieces. He staggered to his feet, his head spinning.
"Take care of yourself," Remus said quietly.
Severus stared at him for a moment. It really just didn't make sense. After all of it—after everything—there Lupin was, still offering up little snippets of consolation and concern like so much confetti thrown into a crowd.
"You, too," he returned numbly. Then his feet functioned properly again, and he went.