Snape Revealed Shorts, Story TWO:
Pure Romance
Part 8: The Bane of his Existence
AN: JK Rowling created most of these characters and the universe from which they hail…
I can't leave the house these days without some stay-at-home Mom trying to sell me some Pure Romance. I assume this type of stuff is sold worldwide, but I live in the town that started Pure Romance. Yes, a family in Cincinnati, Ohio came up with the idea years ago and it's grown into a monster. If you are unaware, it's a company that sells sex toys. Yes. So I'm going to write a story about it for no good reason. No, I don't work for Pure Romance, no, I've never been to any of their parties, but I'm invited all the darn time!
It goes without saying this installment is rated M for mature language and some graphic…um…depictions. Okay, it's just plain raunchy.
(This story begins during the first week of October, 1985. Rhys is long gone, as is Lily, and after four years of mourning, Severus is still deeply affected, however, he's slowly beginning to emerge from his self-imposed mental-exile.)
This story is not yet beta'd…
Severus spent most of Saturday trying to convince Kathleen not to accompany him to Damocles Belby's lab that evening. No matter what he tried, she remained resolute in her decision. He offered to pay her more than Belby would, but she insisted she was intrigued and wanted to see Severus's side-job up close.
Severus wore his plainest black robes and cloak and met Kathleen just at the doors to the castle, which would be closed and locked just before moon-rise. She was a good deal shorter than he, so she had to stride quickly to keep up with him as he marched towards the Disapparation point.
"You can talk to me you know," she uttered.
"I am aware," Severus said, looking forward as he spoke. "Now listen, tonight, please don't interrupt or behave in a...unprofessional manner."
"So, don't grab your ass then?"
"Correct," he replied, knowing she was smiling, but refusing to acknowledge her. "Don't grab anything until sunrise at the earliest."
"Will do, sir!"
The pair continued their walk in silence. Once at the point, he grabbed her and brought her directly in front of Belby's lab. Severus used a large brass key to enter the lab, allowing her to enter before him naturally. Once inside he removed his cloak, and hers, and hung them on hooks that resembled potion's stirs.
"Belby?" Severus shouted. He heard a muffled voice from the lower level. "He's down there already. Okay, for now, please wait upstairs in the living room. Do not leave that living room until either Belby or I come for you, okay?" he asked. She nodded and walked up the flight of stone stairs to the gaudy living room. Once he knew she was upstairs, he descended to the Belby basement.
Three of the four stone-walled cages had volunteers in them already, still in human form, clothed in the terry-cloth robes provided for them, but locked behind the reinforced iron bars. The first was an older gentleman Severus had never seen before. In the center was a middle-aged, red haired woman, who sat on the stone floor with her knees brought to her chest. The third volunteer had his back to Severus. He had shoulder length chestnut hair and appeared to be reading a book.
"Belby," Severus acknowledged. Belby turned and put down his quill and parchment.
"Severus! Did you bring the uh...test-subject?" he asked with a smile.
"Yes. Upstairs. We should not mention the subject in front of the volunteers."
"Of course, of course. Well, we have two hours still. Let's go and speak to the...subject...and then you can come back here and finish the questionnaires and get them ready."
"You're the boss," Severus replied as Belby smiled.
"Yes I am."
Severus followed Belby up the stairs to the main lab and then up the stairs to his living room. Kathleen was seated on the pink sofa with a hideous flower pattern. He could tell from her expression she was trying not to make a sickened face.
"Miss O'Hara?" Belby asked with an out-reached hand. She rose from the sofa and shook his hand. "You Americans, you love to shake hands!"
"It's part of our culture," she smiled. "Thanks so much for giving me this opportunity to help you and Severus."
"Yes, well thank you! I can't exactly place an advert in the paper asking for a menstruating woman," he said slightly red-faced. "I tried using House-elves but they only go into estrus internally, no bleeding. Quite fascinating."
"Quite...gross," Kathleen added. "I had no idea." Severus raised a brow. He assumed as a Defense teacher, she'd know some basic things regarding House-elves. An elf-in-heat was something to be avoided after all.
"Well she's here, what do you plan to do with her?" Severus asked.
"Well, I was thinking..."
"Wait, um, do you have a minute to tell me more about your experimental potion?" she asked.
"Oh, I assumed Severus explained it," Belby said condescendingly. "Well basically the potion would allow the werewolf to maintain their human brain while transformed during the full moon. Physically they'd still be werewolves but inside, in theory, they'd remain calm and not hurt themselves, or others."
"Severus mentioned that."
"Well what do you want? The formula?"
"No, no, I mean, why am I here exactly?"
"Well last month, I was so close. In fact, I thought I'd finally figured it out!" Belby boasted as Severus grew angrier with his constant use of the pronoun 'I'. "I finally did it! But Mr. Gloom-and-Doom here said further testing was required. See, the last hour before sunrise, it wore off and they became violent again. Severus said we need an animal in heat and a human woman menstruating to see if they'll still remain calm. Werewolves are similar to wolves, which are similar to dogs; they cannot control themselves around another dog in heat."
"But, I'm not a werewolf, is it the same?"
"No," Severus answered. "But, there will more than likely always be an animal in heat or a woman like you in their vicinity once the potion is mastered, unless they were banished, like they should be," he stated as Belby rolled his eyes, "or imprisoned or better yet, killed off!"
"Yes, yes, yes, we all know you hate the little werewolves Severus. Now, Miss O'Hara..."
"Call me Kathleen," she said.
"Kathleen. I think we'll wait for them to turn and see how calm they are, and then introduce you so they can smell you..."
"Wait? What? No, I thought you'd just require an undergarment or something of hers? Besides, they will be able to smell her from up here; I thought she was to remain up here?"
"No they won't. I put a change to that last moon; I forgot to mention it to you. My living quarters now have heavy charms on them, they can smell nothing. I had that issue before, remember, where they smelled my food and went insane trying to break out and invade my kitchen?"
"Yeah," Severus sighed. "But magic does not work on them."
"True, but these wards are top-notch. I have a dog in heat here now, and I have four male dogs in my bedroom, they are smelling nothing."
"But the werewolves..."
"Well last month they seemed fine, I had a nice beef-stew on the oven, I smelled nothing down there, and they appeared not to either."
"But I think exposing her, her person, to those animals is..."
"They are people, Severus," Belby corrected.
"People do not have fangs and paws and lick their own asses," Severus replied.
"Well Sev, actually, regarding the whole ass-licking thing, I saw this guy in New Orleans...oh, um, never mind," she interrupted. "People don't have paws and fangs Damocles...he's right."
"Well it's only a few hours a month they have them!" Belby defended. "Listen, don't worry, your friend will be fine! The little doggie, I named her Brenda," he commented as Kathleen and Severus shared a perplexed glance at one another, "will be fine! She's a sweet little Beagle! Kathleen, I assure you, you will not be harmed in any way when you go to the basement later, okay?"
"Um, okay," Kathleen said, with a hint of hesitation. "Sev, do you think I'm really safe?"
"No..."
"Yes he does. Don't listen to him. I hired him to be my pessimist, you'll be fine. You have my word. I swear they cannot harm you. Besides, the potion will work this moon, I just know it, and the bars are the strongest bars ever, you will be safe...now, if you will just sign the waiver here, it basically says you and your family won't sue if you lose any limbs, oh um, or your life, just sign at the bottom here," Belby said handing her a massive parchment and a quill as Severus rolled his eyes.
"Oh-kay?" Kathleen asked, staring at Severus.
"Don't look at me; you want to do this foolish thing. Sign it."
"Fine, does it say on here how much money I'm to be paid?"
"Yup, right there, um, section twelve, sub-section four...paragraph nine...oh, just above where it says if you are turned I'll compensate you two-thousand Galleons."
"Oh gee, that's encouraging," Kathleen jibbed.
"What? You like money!" Severus scorned as she crinkled her nose at him. Kathleen took a deep breath and signed the parchment much to Severus's dismay. She smiled and handed it back to Belby who magically tossed it into a safe hidden behind a portrait of a flower on his wall.
"Wonderful. Severus, please go do the questionnaires for the volunteers down stairs," Belby said. Severus turned to leave as Belby spoke again, "Even for the ones we've worked with in the past." Severus didn't really know what Belby was talking about as he headed back down to the basement. He grabbed the first parchment and a quill from the desk nearest the third stone-walled cage and sighed when the volunteer turned around. Severus snarled, curled his lip, and tried to avoid hexing the crap out of the chestnut hair-colored man.
"Lupin."
"Severus," Lupin droned back. "Always a pleasure," he said in a tired and less cheerful tone than he normally had with Severus in the past.
"Why are you here? You stopped coming years ago," Severus spoke, making sure to keep his distance from the bars of the cage.
"Well, after what happened last moon, I thought it best to turn in a safe, enclosed place this time, and to try to help you guys with this potion...we so need it."
"We?" Severus asked with a raised brow.
"Werewolves, Severus...werewolves."
"Height and weight," Severus asked as Lupin paused and just stared at Severus for a moment. "Are we deaf now?"
"Still six-feet tall, I weigh one-hundred and eighty-two pounds..."
"You are certain? If you're off even by one pound the potion may not work."
"Yes, I weighed before I was locked in, like always!" he said sounding rather disgusted.
"Don't you snap at me, Lupin! I'm trying to help you..."
"I'm not snapping! You're snapping," he stated plainly. Severus stared into the man's blank eyes and felt and saw nothing. Severus wrote his height and weight down and took a deep breath.
"Where do you normally turn?"
"Last month I turned at the furthest edge of the Forbidden Forest, the part furthest from Hogwarts," he explained.
"That should not be a place for your kind to even think of transforming. What if a nosy student were in the forest.."
"You mean the forest that's...forbidden...Severus?"
"When the hell has that ever stopped anyone? Need I remind you of your so-called friends? And clearly you've never met a Weasley!"
"Fine, well, that's where I transformed last time. Never again, that's for certain."
"Why? Grow a conscious finally?"
"Always had one. No, after what happened last moon, I shant be returning there," he said with a lowered head.
Severus rolled his eyes and exhaled. "Fine, fine, I'll bite...what the hell happened last moon in the forest, that's supposed to be forbidden, Lupin?"
"Come closer and I'll tell you," Lupin urged.
"No, fuck no, and fuck you! Fuckin' tell me or not!"
"I don't want the others to hear."
"There are silencing charms on their cells; they hear nothing, for now, until moonrise when the charms cease to work."
"Oh, oh, um...well, I had a...encounter...last moon," he nearly whispered.
"Can you be more specific? And hurry, the moon will rise soon," Severus urged impatiently. Lupin took a deep breath and kept his head down.
"I had a...encounter...in the forest with...another werewolf."
"I swear to God and Satan if you remain this cryptic I'll magically kick you in the bollocks!"
"I raped a werewolf! Okay?" Lupin snapped.
"Oh, so that answers the next question, are you sexually active? Yes," Severus mocked while writing down Lupin's response. "If yes, please explain, and give names and dates, well I doubt you took her on a date, oh wait, they mean the date of the copulation, hmm...last moon...and her name...Was it Fifi or Fido?"
"How dare you mock what I did! I fucking raped a werewolf Severus!"
"Well, I'm not surprised; you are a filthy, disgusting animal after all."
"Fuck you Severus!"
"No, fuck Fifi it turns out. Why would you go and do a horrible thing like that?"
"Stop writing that down! The answer is no, I really had not sexual encounters in my...my...human life...I don't count what happened last moon as being sexually active."
"So you're not sexually active then?"
"No, I'm not! I have no names or dates to give you! I'm still a virgin! Okay?"
"A twenty-five year old virgin? I find that hard to believe, even for you, and by the way, rape may be an act of violence, but it still counts as sex."
"I was not myself when I did that! The...the animal side of me raped that poor girl, not the true me, the real me!"
"You are a werewolf, it is the real you, deal with it. And why the bloody hell did you rape her?"
"I didn't mean to! She was in heat and I simply could not control myself! It's like, I knew what I was doing, but I couldn't stop! The animal in me needed to mate with her."
"Uh huh," Severus said with a yawn.
"This is serious Severus."
"Don't say the word Sirius around me. Not that I mean to console you, you disgusting rapist from hell, but if she were in heat, then I'm pretty sure she wanted and needed to mate with...well, whatever werewolf fur-cock was nearest, which seemed to be yours...what I'm saying is, in the animal kingdom, what you did was consensual."
"Perhaps. But the next morning, at sunrise when we transformed back, she woke up naked, bleeding, cuts and gashes and bites all over, and she took one look at me...she remembered! She knew it was me! She was...mortified. She screamed and ran off hysterical."
"Any woman who wakes up in the morning next to your naked self is only in her right mind to be mortified and run off hysterical. Perfectly natural behavior."
"Even you can't be this cynical," Lupin remarked. "I'll never forget what I did to that poor girl. She couldn't have been more than...eighteen or so. She was horrified at the sight of me. No joking at that either!"
"Okay, virgin-rapist, I'll make a note of it," Severus replied, taking notes in very cramped handwriting.
"No, don't say what happened..."
"Have to. Don't worry, I won't inform the Ministry of your atrocity, we don't have to register your kind, at least, not yet."
"Fur-cock?" Lupin asked as Severus raised a brow in confusion. "You called me a fur-cock?"
"What of it?"
"That's kind of funny Severus."
"Fuck you, Lupin," Severus replied. He put the silencing charm back on Lupin's cell and then moved on to the woman in the cell next to him.
Severus returned upstairs to gather the vial's of potions, each customized to the different werewolf volunteers in the basement. He found Kathleen on the sofa, apparently laughing at something witty Belby was saying. Belby looked enamored with her. The last thing Severus needed was Belby falling in love with Kathleen...or worse, she with him.
"I'm ready," Severus stated, as Belby and Kathleen stopped their giggles and turned to look at him.
"Good, well tell them to prepare as always, thirty minutes to go," Belby instructed.
"How to they prepare?" Kathleen asked.
"They drink the potion, use the loo in their cells, undress, and then remove all other items from their cells," Severus spoke plainly as he headed back down to the basement. First Severus served the potion the older man. He learned from his questionnaire that he was turned two moons ago. He gagged but Severus instructed him to consume every drop. Next, he served the middle-aged woman, who was turned when she was twenty. She seemed to stomach the potion just fine. Finally, he approached Lupin.
"Drink," Severus said, magically handing him the vial through the massively thick iron bars. Lupin foolishly sniffed the concoction and gagged instantly. "Why did you do that?"
"For the love of all things holy, what the hell did you put in here? Dog shit?"
"Yes, Lupin, I went to your domicile and removed your feces from your septic tank and fed it to you for my own pleasure."
"God, it smells like...filth mixed with...rotting meat and cabbage!"
"I think it smells more like a tannery. I'm exceedingly proud of this one. Stop stalling. Drink it."
Lupin brought it to his mustached lip and drank the entire contents. He gagged a few times and appeared to vomit into his mouth, but he dutifully swallowed that even.
"Nasty," he said putting the vial on the floor.
"I added some cauliflower just for you," Severus joked. He was unsure why he joked with Lupin and why of all things, he mentioned that from their childhood.
"How do you remember those things Severus? I forgot all about our mutual hatred of cauliflower," Lupin said as Severus glared at him, and then turned around as to not witness the man disrobe.
"I've removed the silencing charms. Now, everyone remove the robes we gave you and then use the loo and place everything on the floor. In ten minutes I'll return and gather up magically everything from your cells. Once you've transformed a large bowl of water will manifest into your cell. For tonight's experiment we are also testing the effects of food on the potion. Some meat will also manifest throughout the evening," Severus stated and then returned upstairs.
"But I'm a vegetarian," the old man stated.
"Not tonight you're not," Severus replied, and then wrote down the man's food preference on his parchment.
Severus found Belby upstairs; drinking what looked like scotch with Kathleen, who appeared to have a double. Severus took a deep breath and rolled his eyes.
"They are almost ready. All three consumed the potion."
"Good! So, Kathleen, are you ready?" Belby asked with a large smile.
"Sure, what happens while they transform?"
"Well last month since the potion almost worked, they transformed very well. I mean, it's painful so you hear some human groaning and grunting, then panting like a wolf or dog and howling. It's far better than it used to be where they'd scream and howl so loud I thought my ear drums would pop," Belby stated.
"Wow," Kathleen replied. She brought her glass to her lips and drank all of her scotch in a few, loud gulps. "Okay...I'm ready."
"You'll remain up here until I say otherwise," Severus said in a very serious tone. "Belby and I will be downstairs during the transformation..."
"No, I'll remain up here with her, in case she gets...frightened," Belby offered.
"Fine. I'll be downstairs monitoring them," Severus replied. He was growing angrier and angrier with Belby, until he realized one of the men he hated more than anyone was downstairs, about to turn into a monster capable of killing him, and Kathleen...he didn't care if Belby fell victim. Severus returned to the basement and put all of the parchments into a large safe hidden in the stone wall of the lab. He gathered his notebook and smaller quill and placed them in his pocket.
"We have five minutes until moonrise. Only one of you was here last month," Severus said turning his focus to the woman. "The transformation went very well last month. We're using the same potion as last moon, only stronger, since it wore off early last time. Any questions?" he asked. The three wolves just stared at him blankly. All three were seated on the cold, stone floor, trying to conceal as much of their nakedness as possible. Two of them looked scared and very uncomfortable, except Lupin who just sat casually, with his legs outstretched with one foot crossed over the other and his arms crossed at his belly.
Severus magically moved the robes, chamber pots, and toilet paper rolls from the cell. The items were taken to a tiny alcove in an adjoining room for Belby's newest assistant to clean the next morning. Severus removed his fob-watch from his pocket and saw the magical moon slowly beginning to rise over the cover. He took a deep breath and hoped his fear did not show. He grabbed for his wand and had it at the ready as he moved to the bottom step, ready to run out the door if he needed to.
"Ten seconds," he spoke aloud. He gave Lupin one more glance and hoped his facial hair was covering his shivering bottom lip. "Five seconds," he spoke in a softer tone. He took a deep breath and put his watch away. "Three...two...one," he spoke in a voice just higher than a whisper. The transformation was ready to begin.
AN: I meant for this chapter to be much longer, to include the entire evening, but I've not uploaded in so long, I felt bad, so I'll break it up into two chapters. I'm having serious computer problems. Mine died a month ago. The clunker I'm using is on death's-door and shuts down every few minutes, so writing has been difficult. My computer is at the shop. Let's hope it's not 'terminal.'
ENJOY! :-)