HARRY POTTER AND EVERYTHING RELATING TO THAT MAGICAL UNIVERSE BELONG TO JK ROWLING, WARNER BROS, BLOOMSBURY BOOKS ETC. AND I AM VERY LUCKY TO BE ALLOWED TO PLAY WITH IT ALL.

Man's Best Friend

Bill knocked on the dark front door nervously. He really hoped everyone was back from the hospital and that it would be someone from his family who answered. He had a small rucksack slung over one shoulder. Probably Molly had expected him to pack a trunk and shrink it into his pocket, but he didn't want it to look like he would be staying long.

The door eased open and Bill wanted the first sight it offered him to be of red hair. But all he saw was black: black hair, black clothes. The man inside glared at him, then smiled oddly. He swept away to the kitchen and Bill followed.

"Just the man I wanted to see."

"What are you doing here?" Bill asked resentfully.

"Come, come, Mr Weasley. That's no way to speak to me."

"I'm sorry. What I meant to say, of course, was what a delightful surprise it is to see you here, Mr Snape. Can I assist you in any way?"

"Much better," the Professor purred. "It would be a mistake for you to forget the duty you owe me. I have been entirely discrete regarding your ill-advised liaison. It would be a pity should I become disposed to behave differently." The look he gave was unmistakably threatening.

Bill lowered his gaze and forced his features into a mask of contrition. He knew he couldn't afford to lose his temper.

"You have ventured away from Hogwarts?" Bill asked as steadily and politely as he could.

"The Headmaster has requested that I obtain first-hand information on the health of your father. Have you seen him?"

Bill looked up. Surely Dumbledore was being kept informed by owl and Floo? Why would he mistrust the normal lines of communication? He was in no position to question the actions of the Order leader, so instead he replied simply, "I was with him all morning."

"Ideal!" Snape snapped, before striding across the room and taking a painfully firm hold of Bill's face. He forced it down until their eyes met. Bill's head raced with images from that morning. They flew uncontrolled through his mind. He did not dare to close his eyes. As he recalled leaving the hospital, Snape abruptly let go of him and walked back towards the fire.

Bill rubbed at his eyes, feeling violated and humiliated.

"Saves time, ensures accuracy," the greasy git sneered. "Don't worry, Mr Weasley, I was scrupulously accurate in the areas I examined. Many of your experiences, I am sure, would make for quite unpleasant viewing." His lips twisted even more nastily.

Bill clenched his fists. He stared at the floor.

"Such a shame your sordid adventures are at an end now," the Potions Master continued, leaning against the range, "Black was so much more malleable when he had an investment in my silence. Now he doesn't care how much trouble you could end up in."

Snape pouted with mock sympathy as Bill blinked back the red mist. Was it true? Did Sirius not care about him at all any more? Snape clearly had ways of knowing such things. The sallow face sank into a new expression, one of querying calculation. Bill waited.

"Poor Mr Black is quite isolated now. He has even managed to fall out with the lycanthrope. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

"What?" Bill hardly dared believe it.

"My erstwhile colleague, Mr Lupin."

Bill didn't bother to inform the superior sod that he knew full well what a lycanthrope was, it was the broken friendship of which he had been unaware.

Instead he asked, "Since when?"

"Dating from the same time as your own rift with Black. Surely you knew that?"

Snape's eyes narrowed with suspicion. He strode swiftly across the tiled floor, but this time Bill was prepared. He looked at the black range behind the sweeping black cloak and let it trigger a memory:

Leaning casually against the range, Sirius had shrugged one shoulder, the movement pulling the hem of his shirt out of his waistband and revealing a quick flash of white skin.

Bill had quickly darted away from the table and ducked his head down in the same movement, pulling at the worn, black material. He had put his mouth onto the warm flesh, then encircled Sirius in his arms, his face in the warm neck, breathing deeply.

"I just want to spend the rest of my life in bed with you," he had said.

Bill concentrated hard, kept control of the direction of his thoughts, not allowing himself to be fully aware of Snape's hand on his jaw, the dark eyes beginning to explore his own.

He had felt Sirius' arms come round his waist then the other hand stroking his buttock. They had kissed a slow, plucking kiss. Bill had slipped his hand down the front of Sirius' loose-waisted black jeans and wrapped his fingers round Sirius' stiff shaft.

Snape made a disgusted choking sound and released him. Served him right. He should be more careful who he snooped on.

"How dare you …?" Snape was shaking with rage and revulsion. He wiped his hand over his mouth and then his eyes as though he could rub clean his inner eye. "That's the most … filthy, perverted … I don't want to know …"

Bill gave him his best innocent look, one he'd watched the twins perfect over the years.

"What did you see?" he asked. He kept his gaze vacantly on the range. That was where it had happened, after all, it was perfectly natural that he should have been thinking those thoughts in this room.

"You know perfectly well!" the Legilimens spluttered.

After a moment's calm, however, he narrowed his eyes again. He harrumphed. Bill tried to look as guileless as he could manage in the expectation that Snape was calculating whether Bill would have been capable of such determined thought-work. When Snape straightened and sneered, Bill knew he had got away with it.

"One-track mind," he muttered dismissively, confirming Bill's conclusion.

At that moment there was a loud crack. Fred and George appeared on the table. Snape raised his eyes to heaven as the exuberant adolescents performed a bum-waggling, arm pumping victory dance. Without a word he walked into the fireplace.

"Something we said?" asked George, raising an eyebrow.

"On the table, on the table, on the table," Fred sang.

George joined in for a few repetitions before they both noticed that Bill was standing with his arms crossed, lips pursed and one foot tapping. The resemblance to Molly must have been unnerving because it stopped the song like a bucket of frozen water.

"Apparated directly onto the table without splinching," Fred offered sheepishly.

"How's Dad?" Bill asked acidly.

"Could be much worse," George answered with a sigh of relief.

"Bit giddy. Thought he was, you know, and he wasn't," Fred explained.

Arthur was in better health now than he had been when Bill had left him, then. But Bill maintained his fierce look.

"He up to dancing on tables, is he?"

"No, Bill," the twins chorused, defeated.

"How come Mum let you Apparate back on your own?"

Fred and George looked at each other.

"Erm," was all Fred managed before the front door banged open and Molly's frantic voice screamed down the stairs at them, "Are they here?"

Bill called up, "Twins in the kitchen!" and tried to catch the teenagers to clip their ears as they leaped from the table and scurried up the basement stairs.

"Been so worried, thoughtless devils, as if I didn't have enough on my plate, just disappeared in the middle of a Muggle street …" Molly lambasted.

The twins were trying to apologise, to cut her off before she got going. Mingling with the voices were the sounds of other people arriving through the front door. One ran noisily up the stairs. There seemed to be an awful lot of people.

Inevitably, the noise level disturbed Walburga Black's portrait. Her screeches were added to the general din: "Blood traitors and their brats! How dare they pollute the purity of the house of Black? Toujours Pur! Half breed! Foul maggots devouring the body of our family home!"

So Lupin was with them. Bill was suddenly overwhelmed with tiredness. He shied away from the chaos, tempted to skulk in the calm, empty kitchen. Then he heard another voice and it pulled his tired legs towards the stairs as surely as a magnet pulls a paperclip.

"Sorry, Molly, still haven't found the unsticking charm. Shut up you old cow! How is Arthur?" Bill was unaware of the reply, or of any other sound but that deep, well-bred, gravelly voice. "Glad to hear that. Sorry, can't get the bloody curtain across. Thanks, boys. You two in trouble again? No, no, don't apologise. You were worried about your father, of course you confronted me. Very impressive, it was, Molly. That's better, that's silenced the old hag."

Bill walked steadily up the winding stone steps. Any minute now he would get his first glimpse of black hair and black clothes.