Disclaimer: please refer to previous chapters.
A/N: Enjoy! And if you do, please think of my poor ego and leave a nice little review.
Chapter eight – "Electricity"
It was Wednesday morning and Remus' features were grim. It had been a little over a month since his bizarre encounters with the Snape fellow and he couldn't stop pondering.
He had slept in Narcissa's room until mid-morning and upon waking, had had the foul sensation of having an old sports sock in his mouth in place of his tongue and a neck ache vicious enough to make him see little moving spots. He had nevertheless hurried out of the flat without leaving so much as a note. Remus had assumed that he would the just get on with his life, find another subject for his thesis and forget about the strange young scientist altogether. Blessedly, the latter hadn't made any effort to contact Remus, who had resumed his classes at university, gone out with his mates and spent hours in the information centre, poring over registers containing information about big pharmaceutical companies. So what if he didn't have insider information on innovative new experiments in the field he was studying? He would just get basic information on legal, over-the-counter drugs, and that would be that.
It wasn't until about a week earlier that Remus started feeling decidedly confused. He had had dreams again. He knew that these were just like the hallucinatory dreams he had experienced after inhaling some of the powdered Lovex: They were dark and violent, and he ended up doing serious damage to his one-room apartment. The worst part was waking up: he was starving, parched and aroused. This phase lasted three nights, and on the third, Remus had managed to wake himself up as soon as his dream-being – yes, a werewolf, he grudgingly admitted- started tearing wallpaper of the molding wooden walls of some kind of shack.
He got up, and went to the window, entered the required code that would prevent the alarm from going off, and opened it. He breathed in the damp-smelling air. It was raining very lightly, and he could hear the drops shattering on the pavement six stories below. He looked up at the sky and saw the moon wreathed in a halo of woolly cloud. Was it full moon? It was hard to tell, as its outline was blurred, but it was plain to see that it was quite round. That was what had shocked Remus the most. Was it really just a coincidence that he dreamed of being a werewolf at full moon? He had then thought of Snape, wearing his superior and slightly jagged smile. Remus' gut seemed to welcome the image by clenching in a nastily pleasant way. He had slid his hand in his hair, gripping it and pulling it taut, so as to hurt his scalp just enough to distract himself. He was no stranger to waking up semi-hard, in fact he had never given it any thought, but this was ridiculous.
So now, Remus went about his daily business in a grumpy sort of half-concentration. His friends said it was just a phase and bought him extra drinks. He carefully avoided drinking any wine, thinking that it would remind him of what he already constantly thought about: there had to be a way to get answers to his questions. He knew that the Lovex he had taken accidentally had triggered the dreams by acting as a stimulus. This meant that they weren't related solely to the use of hallucinogenics, but were somehow rooted in his subconscious. This haunted him. He had started studying psychology in an effort to recover some knowledge of his past, before the blackout, as he had no recollection of having any relatives. He had of course contacted the two other Lupins in London, but upon meeting them it had been clear that they were not related. So here he was, isolated and curious. And now, in the light of recent events came the questions: Could the werewolf be a metaphor? His dreams were about destruction: Could this be a veiled image of some crime he had committed in his youth? Could he possibly have murdered his kin? Was that why he had been alone for as long as he could recall, which admittedly was only a small part of his life?
And of course, the fastest way of finding out, was Snape.
Severus, having found, upon waking, that Remus was gone, had in fact, felt rather relieved. He was quite sorry to have lost touch with someone with whom he knew he had some kind of past in the "Lovex reality", but he was beginning to think that, since he had seen Lucius and Remus in that alternate reality, it would only be a matter of time until he met someone else he recognized. And then, of course, there was the shame. What really HAD been going through his head when he had accepted the possibility of… no, he wouldn't even think the word… with… by… nevermind. He knew that it had been the first time that he had let his lust get the better of his rationality. Then again, it had been the first time that he hadn't been alone when it happened… In any case, this was a whole new realm of questions that needed to be put "on the backburner", to use one of Severus' favourite culinary metaphors.
Further research on crows, and Lucius' unwillingness to sell him more Lovex had confirmed that there was certainly, if not a parallel world, at least some kind of underlying structure that could be accessed, whilst under influence. So Severus had made an appointment with Riddle. He had nervously chewed his thin lower lip while he stood in the foyer of the hotel Riddle had appointed as their meeting place. The décor was striking, with its high ceiling, marble floor, shiny black walls and the sunken fireplace which was in the centre of the lounge and caught the eye the way a fountain or zen garden normally would, but with an added dimension of class and power: Financial power. He had stepped up to the desk and the receptionist had told him that Riddle was already waiting for him in the smoke-room. Severus had followed her directions and come to a giant alcove of sorts, separated from the hall by a tall glass wall. By the looks of it, the atmosphere inside must have been unbearable, thought Snape, as there was an opaque curtain of smoke on the other side of the glass, making it impossible for him to see who was inside. He had placed his hand on the touch-sensitive panel in the centre of the glass door, and it had opened to reveal that the smoke was actually trapped between the outer pane of glass and a second one, leaving the interior of the room clear. There Riddle had sat. He had simply beckoned for Severus to sit on the armchair opposite him and looked at him for a while. He had first drawn out a white box and then a green one. He had then asked whether Severus had any unfinished business and upon confirmation, handed him the white box. He had then told Severus to get his affairs in order and come to him when he felt that he had the time to go on a prolonged journey with him. Severus, awed by Riddle's aura of power, had summoned up his courage to ask the questions Riddle was making plain he didn't want to answer, when suddenly he had frozen: there had been some sort of intrusion into his mind. He hadn't been able to think much after that. He had left the room and then the luxurious hotel in a cotton-legged daze and gone home. He had been so far out of it that he hadn't even noticed that the walls had remained white, instead of adapting to his mood.
That had been two weeks earlier and now Snape had a hard time concentrating. The box from Riddle contained ordinary lovex and Severus suspected that the other one must have contained Bliss, and that his blank state of mind must be a challenge. It seemed that he had to deserve his dose of Bliss, although he couldn't quite figure out how being brain-dead like Narcissa was a reward, rather than a punishment. He had decided to try the "octopus" on her.
He set up the contraption and opened the quartz lid on the alabaster case that he "kept" Narcissa in. He rubbed his eyes. He had just seen a flash of her in a long black garment. He focused on her face to keep his concentration from lapsing further. As he made to touch her, he paused. There was something static about her features. He placed his hand just milimetres over her neck. There was no body heat. He lowered his hand to her breast and gently placed it where he knew her heart should be and recoiled: she seemed to be made of stone. He felt her cheek, hoping the flesh might give way under his touch, but here too he was met by the strangest feeling: it was like touching hard wax through a layer of fine leather. He thought that if he warmed her she might "melt". He went to the bathroom and soaked a towel in hot water. As soon as he entered Narcissa's room, he knew that something was amiss. He went up to the coffin and found it empty. He shuddered and buried his face in the hot towel, to assure himself that he was really conscious. He looked at the coffin again and then, ever practical, switched the power off.
'That should make my electricity bills less of a nightmare.' He mumbled to himself.
An hour and a glass of wine later, Severus left his flat. It was a rainy, dark evening and he didn't much like bad weather, but it was worth venturing out: he had decided that sensory stimuli were the best way to stay calm and keep his mind from drifting. He was on his way the his usual delicatessen, watching the bent shapes of other men heading in the same direction as him, though doubtless on their way to other pleasures of the flesh. His regular trips to this delicatessen, which was located in the red-light district had made Severus accustomed to guilty-looking individuals in search of a prostitute or a decent peep-show. Now he registered how, they looked somehow dazed. He paused to look at his reflection in the window of a darkened storefront. There he was, skinny, hook-nosed and dark, his eyes sunken into grayish-looking, deep-set eye sockets. Yet his expression and bearing, he noticed with some satisfaction, bore dignity, which these desperate men did not.
A block away from his destination, something caught his eye: a new strip joint had opened and the stage was clearly visible through a floor-to-ceiling window-pane. He stood there for a while, watching the gyrating hips of the barely clad strumpet, read the price list 'how shameless' which was set in a case, like a menu in front of a fancy restaurant, and then went on. He felt pride at the fact that the woman on display had not affected him.
A little later Severus left the deli, laden with all sorts of expensive ingredients: a black truffle, a white truffle, tropical ginger, Mexican chillies, garlic from the south of Italy, snails, wild-boar meat, grilled eel, astringent shiso-leaves, chestnut flour, ground bitter almonds, a beet so dark it was almost black, tagliatelle made from the finest French flour, wine from Australia and absinthe from a place the shop-owner had said was called the Crooked Valley, somewhere in the mountains of Switzerland. He had bought everything that looked good to him, spending two months' pay in one desperate spree. He felt somewhat ashamed for having judged the lechers on their way to the brothels, once he had reflected on his own sin of choice was gluttony. He turned the corner at the end of the block and glanced in at the stage where a brunette, this time, was slowly succeeding in the feat of gliding down the pole and discarding her g-string from the end of her foot simultaneously and froze. There, among the faces looking hungrily up at her, was that of one Remus Lupin.