NOTE
Warning for explicit mentions of rape, one mention of incest and suicide, and alcohol use.
7. desired one
Snape stood amidst the wreckage of the house in Spinner's End, panting heavily.
Everything in sight had been smashed, ripped, or otherwise ruined.
Although a simple reparo maxima could have cleared it up within moments, Snape surveyed the mess of broken glass and torn paper as though the damage were irreparable.
Stop it now, Sev.
Snape swatted the voice away with a flick of his hand, causing the broken pieces of a nearby vase to splinter into even smaller shards. This house was the destroyer of all illusions, and Snape knew–in this moment, at least–that the voice was a mere fiction, spun into existence by his own desperate mind.
He righted the toppled chair beside the black cold fireplace and sat down in it, surveying the disorder he'd caused.
Sweat uncomfortably heated his neck beneath the collar of his robes, even as his heart slowed down.
Once, he'd have been cowering in his bedroom while his father laid waste to the house. Now he was the man, the inspirer of fear.
But there was no-one here to be threatened by him.
He was all alone.
Snape summoned the list of war casualties, which he'd handled that summer more than any book, and repaired the ripped paper with a flick of his wand. He also summoned the decanter of wine which had survived unchipped and unspilled.
Yet again he read through the names, the old habit, taking deep swigs directly from the broad glass rim of the decanter. He read with great focus at first, as though really expecting to learn he was a ghost. But of course his name was not to be found.
Soon he wasn't reading, only staring; his eyes sliding over the printed letter as though they were of no more consequence to him than ants to a dragon.
It was impossible.
Impossible.
Alas.
If thirty-eight years as a wizard had taught Snape anything, it was that very little, if not nothing, was impossible.
Pomfrey's words had been echoing in his mind ever since he'd stormed from the hospital wing. They'd only been quieted for a little while by his infernal rage, and now they were growing louder again.
'Severus. I need to say something sensitive.'
Bloody understatement of the year.
Snape took another swig, hating the feeling of the alcohol, but it was better than being sober.
Everything the girl had said made sense now. About her being aroused. 'All the time.' About it being tied to her sense of smell. About it doing no good to achieve release. About it… hurting.
Snape remembered the terrible blackness of her eyes when she'd swallowed the failed suppressant. Had she been smelling him at that moment? Feeling… that way?
About him?
According to Poppy's hypothesis, the answer was probably yes.
He still couldn't fathom it, and he didn't want to.
The walls seemed to have shrunk in around him, and he tossed the list aside, carrying the decanter down the narrow hallway, past the shattered lamp and down the stairs.
The only room Snape had significantly altered after his parents' deaths, and the only room untouched by his anger tonight, was a little chamber at the back of the house. It had once been a small pantry, and was now his brewing room.
The moment he entered, the tight scowl on his face eased a little, letting his soul-deep exhaustion show around his dark brown eyes.
It was like a room in a sanctuary.
Precious annotated books filled a shelf near the low ceiling. Dried flowers with medicinal properties hung in thin bundles from twine. An oil lamp hung from a hook. Various glasses of ingredients sat on a wooden bench, the larger island beneath the window kept clear but for his preferred cauldron (thirteen inches, pewter).
The window looked out on the tiny back garden, which Snape had made use of, turning the barren ground of his boyhood into fertile beds, in which special herbs and ingredients flourished in spite of the unhelpful bad weather and soot pollution that plagued the place. The garden was complete with charms to shield it from the eyes of neighbours. Just now it was too dark for Snape to see his handiwork in detail. But his sharp eyes could still make out the shadows of the plants in the garden. Arches and tendrils and leaves.
Candlesticks, both tall and nub-short, were placed around the small room, and Snape lit them with a silent drumming of his fingers in the air.
Tension dropped from his shoulders as the winking jars of Calendula and Yarrow greeted him.
Snape never failed to keep his workspace clean, and the smoothness of the wooden worktop made his thoughts drift to what he could brew.
But the alcohol was already toying with his brain, and he ended up staring into the greyness of the cauldron instead.
Go back.
"You're still here," Snape observed lazily. He'd forgotten that alcohol had a way of inviting her in.
You should go back.
"And say what? Do what?" He gave a bitter bark of disbelief. "Fuck my student?" He hadn't said or even thought it so explicitly, and his expression twisted into a grimace at the very sound of the words. "No."
Not even Dumbledore, with all his powers, could have convinced him.
She needs help. She needs you.
"Like Hell she does." Miss Green's sweating, unconscious form flashed behind Snape's eyes. "She's a child. She needs… amity. Not another rapist."
Because that was what he would be. If he were to help her.
"Hello?" he said roughly.
But Lily didn't respond. Whatever seed she'd planted in his heart, it was enough.
Snape did need to help Miss Green, and he knew it. She was too similar to him, too injured and misguided to be ignored and neglected.
He couldn't be certain what needed to happen. Pomfrey herself hadn't seemed very certain. It could be as tame as him having a hand on her while she touched herself. (If that could be called tame.) But for some reason Snape doubted it would be that easy; require such little participation from his person.
He shook his head. He would not overthink before he gathered more facts. Poppy's story of Lupin and Black had only been one example. There had to be a historical record of such cases.
Perhaps he could find a way around it.
He would find a way around it.
He was Severus Snape.
That was what he did.
He was going to help her. But he certainly wasn't going to touch her if he had any say in the matter.
Decanter still in hand, Snape left the brewing room and returned upstairs. He didn't bother to set the place to rights, only started a fire and took a pinch of the floo powder on the mantle (which he'd had the good sense to let alone), tossing it in the flames.
Robes spinning around him, he ducked inside and intoned the special password for his Hogwarts office: "All the devils are here."
The first thing to catch his eye when he emerged, brushing ashes from his sleeves, was the melted bar of chocolate she'd left on his desk.
He'd torn through blindly on his way out and hadn't noticed it. But it irked him now, out of place in his otherwise orderly space, and he vanished it as he strode out of his office and towards the library.
Hidden behind the last shelf in the reserved section was a collection of some of the rarest documents and manuscripts in the Wizarding World. It was accessed by tapping one's wand on the spines of particular books in a particular order–as one tapped bricks to enter Diagon Alley–and only the professors knew the pattern.
The five shelves could not rival the hoard within the mediaeval Abbey of Saint Gall in Switzerland. But Snape sensed the Hogwarts collection would suit his purposes.
Stepping through the doorway the books had moved aside to form, Snape realised he was still holding the decanter. He took another drink before setting it down on the heavy oak reading table, and gave a wince as the secret entrance closed behind him.
"Perhaps no more," he muttered to himself.
Then he flicked his wand to illuminate the spine of every book containing information on werewolves. Despite the relative obscurity of the topic, this method produced far too much material. Snape narrowed the search to include volumes that included the word sex.
That term yielded only two books. Most of the texts were very old, so he tried replacing sex with more dated vocabulary. Intercourse. Copulation. Carnal knowledge. Act of darkness.
By then he had a manageable stack of books on the table.
Snape sat down and began to read by the light of the lamps that glowed to life. The books were dusty, as was the room itself, and Snape was often reduced to sneezing, which annoyed him very much. He had to get through multiple accounts of rape before he found anything useful–and even then, useful was too kind a term.
Most of the chapters on werewolves were steeped in stereotypes and paranoia, written by people who had a much different grasp on Lycanthropy than citizens of the modern wizarding world. Some wrote of them as though they had no human form at all, and existed perpetually in wolf form, prowling on the edges of human society. Snape's face was drawn in a firm scowl by the time he'd flipped through three separate descriptions of mating habits.
Just when he was beginning to wonder if he was wasting his time, Snape happened upon an entry in a very old book, which appeared to be a kind of journal. It was falling apart and lacked a proper spine, just the threads and the old glue showing how it had once been held together. The pages were flaking at the edges.
The faded calligraphy was in French, but that was no obstacle to Snape, who was fluent.
The relevant entry described a young Parisian werewolf who had exiled himself to Bar after the death of his sister under undisclosed circumstances. When questioned, he'd allegedly admitted he could only find release when he was with said sister. With any other woman it was pure torture. The reader was led to draw the conclusion that the misery of this circumstance had led the sister to commit suicide, and the brother to flee.
Snape was left in doubt as to whether it was a true account, or only a tale written for the entertainment of perverse readers. He set it aside in case.
After another hour he found something else.
This book was in English, and though also handwritten, much more legible. The author was a man who studied werewolves throughout the late eighteen-hundreds, and who dubbed himself a Lycanthropist in the opening pages. His writing style led Snape to suppose he may have met his end doing something idiotic, perhaps trying to get too close on a full moon. Regardless, the information he provided was pertinent.
From interviews of four men and one woman bitten before the age of complete bodily and intellectual development, I have drawn the conclusion that it is common for lycanthropes fitting aforesaid criteria to fixate on a desired one throughout late pubescence and early maturity, that one being the only one capable of satisfying their baser urges.
That was the end of it, Snape thought to himself, again partaking of the decanter's contents.
Though the requirements of said desired one remained uncertain, the essence of their role had been outlined plainly enough.
He would resign.
He would go very far away, where not even Miss Green's hypersensitive nose could track him down.
Snape was going to stand and embark at once. But in the following moments the alcohol caught up to him and he lost consciousness.
Madam Pince found him there in the morning, and woke him with a sharp clap of her hands. A short, owlish woman with big glasses, she was not so much an intimidating as a disorienting sight to wake up to. Snape stood with notably less control than usual, hiding the nearly empty decanter behind his back lest he incur her wrath.
The librarian approached the table and pulled the books towards her, examining them closely as though checking for drool. She fixed him with a disapproving look, then sent the books back to their shelves with a sharp flick of her wand.
"Sleeping on the books!" she said to herself in wonder, as the perpetrator slinked from the library. "What next?"
Snape looked like the dead as he made the long journey back to the dungeons.
He entered his office and went through to his bedroom. Fighting a blistering headache, he forced his magic through his wand, summoning a black carpetbag.
There wasn't much to be packed.
He felt like he was watching a bad mime act as his shaking hands shoved clothes and books into the bag. He tried to take his mind off his reason for going. But of course it was impossible. The words from the books trailed through his mind.
What could a man like Snape have done to provoke such a fixation?
Perhaps he had been there for her in a moment of insecurity? It was true that she depended on him to brew the Wolfsbane–
And who would do that when he left? It took Snape a moment to remember that the new legislation made the potion freely accessible. The girl had no need of him–
But she did have need of him, according to Pomfrey, and according to the historical accounts.
What exactly would happen to her if the only person capable of satisfying her sexual needs was far away? Would she run mad? Would her reproductive organs suffer damage?
A Victorian image of a young lady locked away, wasting away in a small room, loomed into Snape's mind like a cautionary tale.
He threw down the clothes he was holding and pulled at his hair, growling with anguish.
He'd thought the world would leave him alone after the war ended. Clearly, that thinking had been wishful.
Someone knocked on his office door then, and Snape went out to answer it, leaving the door to his bedchamber open behind him.
It was McGonagall, and from her grave expression and the pity in her eyes it was clear she was aware of the development.
"Headmistress," Snape droned, full of his old bitter irony. "I was just going to inform you of my resignation."
"Severus. May I come in."
Snape scowled, but stepped aside to allow it. His eyes watched the emerald-robed witch as she rifled freely through his cabinet for a hangover cure.
Though the relationship between the two professors had been turbulent for many years, Minerva had always fundamentally seen Severus as the young boy with big dark eyes she'd taught in Transfiguration. She would never tell him this. But it was apparent in her actions that she knew he had no-one to care for him, never had, not really. And though this was to be a meeting concerning the well-being of a student, she couldn't stop her usually battened-down maternal side from emerging for his sake.
Snape took the cure begrudgingly, his features relaxing by a degree before settling into their usual uninviting mask.
"You are not going to resign," Minerva said.
There was an earnestness in her tone that made her much easier to argue with than calm and dreamy Dumbledore. "Oh, but I am."
"Please, Severus, consider the girl."
"That is precisely what I am doing."
"You ought to do what you can for her. She needs to remain at Hogwarts and complete her studies. It's her only chance at any kind of career."
"She will remain. That is why I am leaving."
Snape returned to his bedroom, the carpetbag swallowing his arm up to the shoulder as he set in his books. Minerva followed, standing in the doorway.
"You must stay. If you were to leave… No sexual release, for a girl her age? And who knows how long?"
Snape looked up at her, eyes flashing. "Are you honestly asking me to assault a student? An abuse victim, no less? There is a limit, Minerva, to what I will do. And this is beyond it."
The headmistress stood her ground, concern and resignation in her eyes. "You're not going to leave. You know it. You are her only…"
Snape was through packing but as he stared down at the carpetbag he knew she was right. He'd begun before the cure had brought cool clarity to his mind, before he'd been able to think rationally.
He was not going to leave.
For a long moment Snape was as still as if all his joints had been cased in ice. Then he seized the bag and threw it to the floor. Minerva removed herself from the doorway and he stormed through to the classroom, his lack of any particular destination leaving him to stand in front of his desk, hands clenched into fists.
"I will work to devise a suppressant. Something to immunise her to my scent…"
Anything. Anything to undo this bond which had been formed without his consent–or the girl's.
"And I will not discourage you from doing so. But Severus. You must be prepared to act if it becomes necessary."
Snape wheeled around, his features contorted with hostility. "And what about her! What of her opinion!"
A small dead thing quivered in its glass jar.
Minerva was silenced for some moments. But not by the sound of his raised voice.
She was trapped by it too, Snape realised. She was merely doing what was necessary to protect one of her students. Even if the means to that protection were deeply questionable. Snape stared down at the decanter on his desk.
"I hope…" Minerva began, her voice wavering with contained emotion. "I hope you understand I never imagined a scenario like this one. And I would never make this request of you unless I held you in the very highest esteem and trust."
There was something else she wanted to say, but she did not say it. She only looked at Snape for a moment longer, then went out the door, closing it quietly behind her.
Snape considered throwing the decanter to the floor. But he'd got all that out of his system the night before, and only went through to his bedroom again, unpacking his bag.
Snape spent the morning doing what he'd promised, bent over his cauldron attempting to brew a functional suppressant.
He made an appearance at lunch. Then, as the potion had to sit for some hours, he sat at his desk and made cuts to the Shakespeare plays.
He kept thinking he ought to go. Step into the fireplace again and have the floo connection severed.
But he didn't.
He just kept sitting at his desk.
Even when he took a walk around the lake, frightening away the students there, he did not take the path to Hogsmeade and away.
Instead, he returned to the castle and continued his work on the potion.
Evening fell and soon the hour came for Miss Green to take her final dose of Wolfsbane. Snape unlocked the small black door of the brewing room where he stored the silver cauldron, and filled the goblet with what remained of the bitter potion.
He climbed the stairs to the hospital wing, holding the goblet in both hands, and walked through the archway to see Poppy talking to a student. The student had his back turned, but Snape recognised him as Dennis Creevey. He cast a wordless spell to conceal the goblet and its smoke.
Poppy looked over the boy's shoulder at Snape, her expression one of surprise that he was there. Her eyes softened with relief, then darkened with deep concern. The Creevey boy noticed this change and turned around, staring at Snape with a look of suspicion, his face already tight with disappointment.
"There he is now," Pomfrey said, continuing an explanation to the boy. "Miss Green will be all patched up within a couple of days."
"But what's wrong with her?" Dennis insisted, looking at Snape as though it were his fault.
"As I said, Mr. Creevey, she has dragon pox. But she'll be just fine. She's in very capable hands."
"And I can't see her?"
"Not unless you want to risk contracting it yourself. And trust me, it's unpleasant."
Snape stared daggers at the young man. He had certainly made himself available to the girl, what with carrying her bag, defending her mistakes in the Veritaserum lesson and so on. Why hadn't it been him?
"She'll come round very soon," Poppy said to Snape. "She'll be groggy, but awake enough for the treatment. I'll be in shortly."
Snape gave a terse nod and strode past them, stepping through Poppy's office door and into the small private room where Miss Green was being kept.
No candles or lamps were lit, the only illumination provided by the dusky blue light from the window.
Poppy had bathed her and changed her out of her revealing undergarments into a white nightgown. She was sleeping on her side now, her lips parted against the back of her hand. Her face was flushed and the blankets had been pulled off her sweating body. The fever must have been unavoidable, now the moon was so close.
Snape shut the door behind him and stood there looking at her.
Over the course of the day, his predicament had become compartmentalised. Angering and complex, yes. But more conceptual than real.
Seeing her now changed that.
It struck him just how small she was.
She was what the dark lord would have called a little thing. One of the poor girls, barely women, that met their end screaming, dwarfed by the crooked men who broke their faces against the long black table or the marble floor as they raped them from behind. Those nights were carved permanently into Snape's memory. Man after man growling, cursing, thrusting with absolute disregard for the small human being underneath them.
Snape had never partaken. It had been assumed by some that he preferred men. An abnormality that was forgiven among the highest echelon of Voldemort's followers.
To test this theory, the dark lord had brought in a boy. Snape had still refused. It was then assumed he was asexual.
Snape had no complaints about that assumption, if it protected him from becoming more of a monster than he was already.
He shivered, nausea coiling around his body as he looked at the girl in the bed. He set the goblet on the small table and opened the window, drinking in the cold, fresh September air. It was already late dusk, purple clouds streaking the sky over the dark green forest. Poppy would be taking her out to the Shrieking Shack soon.
As Snape stood by the window, Fay stirred.
The moon had a pull on the girl even in her sleep. Her muscles and her bones and her blood were preparing for the transformation, her heart fluttering as it attempted to balance and rebalance the contradictory forces within her body.
In her sleep, she heard another heartbeat.
A safe and steady rhythm.
And she smelled it. The safe scent.
It came closer, and fell over her like a downy coverlet.
She knew that whoever it belonged to was her protector.
Snape had gone to her when he'd heard her murmur. Fay reached out blindly and touched his hand, her fingers closing around his like a child's. The gesture was so affectionate that Snape found himself looking down, his eyebrows furrowed.
There went his damned heart, beating out of time again.
She let out a little moan, undeniably sexual, and Snape couldn't fail to notice the stirring in his trousers.
Hissing to condemn the response, he disengaged her fingers from his and pressed her hand back into the pillow where it belonged.
It was impossible for him to stay now. The girl was too close to consciousness, and he had a feeling it would be unsafe for him to be there when she came around.
Disgusted and afraid, Snape left the room. Poppy was just stepping into her office after dismissing Mr. Creevey.
"The Wolfsbane is on the table by her bed," Snape informed her, barely pausing as he passed.
"Severus."
He turned, shoulders rigid, but Poppy didn't address the hippogriff in the room, keeping her tone detached and professional. "Would you please brew some more Dreamless Sleep, when you get the chance. My stores are short, and a lot of the students need it this year."
Just then there was an agitated moan from within, and the sound of shattering glass.
Miss Green was sitting up, her hair falling over her trembling shoulders, and had swept empty potion vials from the bedside table in her delirium. Poppy rushed in to make sure the goblet wasn't next, supporting the girl under her arms and helping her lean against the headboard. Snape could bear the sight for only a moment before he turned and made his escape.
Poppy helped Fay drink the Wolfsbane, one sip at a time. Then she laid her down on her side and cast a cooling charm on her. "I'll give you another sedative before I take you outside. It won't work once you've transformed, but it will ease some of the pain leading up to it."
Fay was in no state to comprehend what was being said to her. The only thing she knew was that she was in pain, and that the sheltering presence from before had gone away. Poppy always preferred to get consent for any treatment, but in this case she had to make the decision according to her judgement.
She helped the girl swallow the sedative, and was relieved when she sank back into a deep sleep.
Night was on its way.
Under the protection of invisibility charms, Poppy took Fay out of the castle on a floating stretcher, and went through the old earthen passageway that let out in the battered sitting room of the Shrieking Shack.
She set the girl down on the floor behind the torn sofa, and laid out a nest of thick blankets.
Soon the girl was writhing in her sleep, panting and whining from the inescapable agony of her boiling blood.
Then moonlight cut through the broken panes of the window.
Poppy kept her distance, turning around out of respect as the girl's body shook violently, and the transformation began.
As the sedative was overpowered by the pain, the house was filled with terrible shrieks and screams. Which, after a miserable minute, gave way to the low groans of the wolf.
Poppy turned around.
Lupin had been a grey wolf, always. But Fay's soft coat was the russet brown colour of her hair. Her legs were trembling as she stood in the nest of blankets, her pink tongue panting out whines of exhaustion. The potion was no longer working and she was fully awake, though still a bit sleepy, the lids drooping over her large hazel eyes. She noticed Madam Pomfrey watching her and hung her head, ashamed to be looked at.
But Poppy wasn't judging her. Though Fay would never believe it, there was something beautiful about the wolf.
Fay whimpered and turned away, her mind adjusting to the new size and shape of her body as she went to the wall and eyed the torn wallpaper, rubbing her forehead against it.
The broken-down house was full of the faded smell of another werewolf. And also…
Could it be?
She followed the scent into the adjacent room and found an old bloodstain, low on the wall and the floorboards, with dark red specks spraying outwards. The scent was so sharp that she could practically see the attack.
Yes, this was where Snape had been nearly killed by the snake.
Fay sniffed the stain and uttered a low cry. And then, despite her better judgement, unable to control the instinctive emotion burgeoning inside her, she lifted her snout and gave one long, deep howl.
Snape heard it from the forest, where he was harvesting Moly. A core ingredient of Dreamless Sleep, it had roots as black as midnight, and white flowers that reflected the light of the full moon falling through the pine trees.
His hand paused in his small cloth bag when he heard the howl, and the hairs on the back of his neck raised. Snape couldn't shake the feeling that the howl had been a kind of message, intended only for him.
He remained silent for a minute longer, but the girl did not repeat herself.
Snape continued his work, but with less focus than before. The sound had left no question. This night did not mark the end of a nightmarish week, but the beginning of a very unstable time.
NOTE
Thank you so much for your reviews! I cherish each one of them!
The quote Snape uses as his floo password (all the devils are here) is from The Tempest.
The Abbey of Saint Gall is a real place. The photographs of its library are quite something.