All at Once

A single night should not change patterns into which you settled years ago, and at first you convince yourself that it has not. If you ask Filch to supervise your House before dinner because you have business in Hogsmeade, if you impulsively contact Grimmauld Place to ask about security, it hardly counts as significant diversion. Nor is it so very strange for you to ask Lupin's help with the potion you never had a chance to discuss with him that evening, and it is only reasonable that you may have to meet regularly, given the suspicious movements among the Death-eaters. If your attentions have shifted, you believe it must be a cumulative effect of all the developments in the magical world.

When the headmaster stops by your office to let you know that your presence is required for a meeting, in seemingly innocuous words that only a member of the Order would understand, he pauses curiously as he passes your owl. A proud fierce bird, she has always preferred solitude even in the owlery, but she is tolerant of Lupin's spotted brown owl and you have heard the two hooting softly to one another. Now they sit side by side on a perch, and you suspect that Dumbledore recognizes the visitor. Before you can offer an explanation, he speaks: "How much calmer she seems than I had remembered. Yet still watchful." Lest you should give away any feelings that you do not wish to share, you choose not to disagree. Then, as he steps through the doorway to the corridor that will take him above, you realize that in trying to formulate a denial in your mind, you have admitted the possibility of an affirmation.

There has never been a precise moment at which you could say that you had fallen for someone. When you were much younger, by the time it occurred to you to worry that you might be doing it, you'd already slid so far down that there was no way to stop. You found yourself hurtling toward disaster every time, tumbling along a path of destruction that robbed you of dignity, self-respect and control. So you learned not to allow it to happen. Each time anyone got close to you for more than the briefest of liaisons, you broke off contact and regained your balance. Perhaps, over time, you grew too confident in your ability to hold yourself in check. If you'd managed not to end up in love, you reasoned, then you must never have started to fall.

But this time you feel as if you are riding a broom through a thunderstorm, unable to see the ground beneath you, flying much too fast, chilled to the bone, afraid even to stop because you have no idea where you can land safely. The electricity gathering around you makes your hair stand on end. You might find it just a bit exhilarating if you didn't expect it to be the cause of your demise. What's worse is that you have the sense of being in a stadium, with a crowd of people looking at you. It's what you loved and hated about Quidditch: the thrill of flying coupled with the terror that hundreds might see you fail.

When you arrive for the meeting, the only thing that keeps you from flight is the hand that brushes carelessly against your back as you approach the doorway. It reminds you that the ground is just beneath your feet, and moreover it reminds you how absurd would be to wish that the owner of the hand would lace his fingers between yours, which would bring about the very thing you want most to avoid. Everyone would see, everyone would know...including him.

"Ah, Professor Snape. You've brought Lupin with you." The headmaster greets you with a smile and you evade his eyes, cursing yourself, thinking: _Yes, he knows_. But that is unlikely. As you recall very well, not even Albus Dumbledore can penetrate your Occlumency. You do not believe that he can read Lupin's mind, either, or he would have known that Black was an animagus when the Dementors were looking for him. So your secret is safe -- not that it should be considered a secret -- not that it should matter enough to be a secret.

Molly Weasley gives you a curt greeting and offers a bright smile to Lupin, who answers her warmly. Like Lupin until so recently, they may simply accept that things are as they have been, unless you do something to give yourself away. They may not even notice that you're walking cautiously to compensate for the way the world has tilted since you last stepped into a room with the other members of the Order. The Weasley twins are present -- having left school, they have absurdly been deemed old enough to be members by most of the others, even though their failure to complete their educations and their puerile senses of humor make them a danger to everyone.

Sure enough, Fred bursts in and says, "Oh, Professor Snape, Tonks has a question for you about tracking potions. She's been looking everywhere for you, begging us to tell her if we saw you. If she wasn't an Auror, I'd think she liked you." You practically stumble over your feet. Molly chuckles, scandalized, and swats at her son. Lupin winks at you. You're still scarlet by the time you reach the dining room, but at least now you have an excuse for it.

At the meeting you listen to three of the younger generation of Weasleys argue exuberantly with their parents, McGonagall and Jones about a plan to spy upon potential young Death-Eater recruits, recent Hogwarts graduates from your own House. Their arrogance infuriates you, and the only reason you hold your tongue is because they happen to be right that the Dark Lord is seeking new allies. "Will you join us, Lupin?" George asks, but Lupin says that he would look far more suspicious at a gathering of young people, and you concur. Fred protests, disappointed, that the two of you are acting like old sods, perhaps expecting to provoke Lupin into distancing himself from you; so when Lupin agrees that yes, perhaps the two of you are old sods, George grumbles that then perhaps the two of you should date. With a roll of his eyes, Lupin tilts his head, pretending to ponder this suggestion, while Molly gasps again and threatens her son with dismissal from the table. You notice the headmaster's eyes drifting from Lupin to yourself and put on your darkest contemptuous glower.

Yet as far as you can tell, not a single one of the others appears to notice, which you can't understand because everything looks so different to you that you think it must show on your face. The teacup that you would never have looked at twice a week ago is now _his_ teacup, that's _his_ quill, that's _his_ chocolate. If you find yourself staring strangely, the others think you're just preoccupied with some Order business that you cannot discuss, or perhaps with ongoing alarm at having a werewolf in such close proximity; if you find yourself beaming stupidly, they believe you to be gloating about some Death-Eater secret which perhaps should worry them.

Lupin doesn't behave any differently -- asking you questions, encouraging the younger members to offer suggestions, competing with Arthur for the last piece of pie. When he laughs, you are helpless to hold back any reaction, but you soon realize that the others believe you are grimacing as a sign of dislike rather than trying to stop yourself from responding differently. You try to concentrate on little things like not spilling your tea, not fidgeting with your quill...not giving yourself away. To them. Or to him.

Because even as the cautious, careful part of you is lamenting that it had to be him of all men -- a Gryffindor, a werewolf, Sirius Black's onetime lover, your adversary of so many years -- you also notice that you're not seeing any change in him. Maybe you're looking too hard, too close to be objective, or maybe it's just that he's as well-protected as you are, an Occlumens accustomed to preventing others from learning his secrets and a person who has found it equally necessary to guard himself from those who might get too close. Is the world not as changed for him as it is for you? Or was he so much further along the curve than you were in the first place that by the time you were close enough to see what he really wanted, you had grown familiar with what he looked like in mid-fall?

You believe it is possible that, sometime in the past few days, you've hurtled beyond him.

This would not have happened to you a few years ago; you wouldn't even have entertained the possibility, which makes it quite disturbing that you have allowed it to happen now, when so much more is at stake for everyone. You wonder what other weaknesses you have developed, distracting you, leaving you vulnerable and by extension putting all the others at risk. For a moment you feel a deep spike of distrust, but when you look at Lupin and he offers you the tiniest of smiles, you find that you simply cannot sustain it. Or you will not. And in truth, at that moment, you feel stronger, not vulnerable; you tell yourself that you will destroy anything that threatens this. Him.

By the end of the meeting, you've gone from one extreme to another, from fearing that everyone will guess to wondering why they haven't. It might just be that you and Lupin have always been so distant that your refusal to meet his eyes makes perfect sense to them. If nobody sees, does that make it less real? How real is it to him? If you hadn't been overwhelmed by this, would the two of you ever become friends in the easy way that Tonks and Shacklebolt are friends?

_Stay in the kitchen when the others leave._ The small note which has appeared in a corner of your parchment startles you, sending a thrill through your body, as if Lupin had whispered the words in your ear and let you feel his warm breath against your skin. You nod fractionally, watching him respond to your reaction, smiling at you for the barest fraction of a minute before his head turns away.

It seems as though the others will never leave, and when they finally do, you almost don't make it upstairs because you want so much -- you want affirmation, you want him to need it as badly as you do, you want it right away. If you thought you could pace yourself, you would try, because you haven't forgotten what Lupin said about not wanting to miss anything, but it's so new and intense that you don't know how to stop rushing and he doesn't try to slow you down. You expect to be scolded afterward but he seems worried about you instead, as if your desperation might disguise some other need that you won't name.

"There may not be time for everything," you try to explain. Your world could turn upside down again at the next gathering of Death-eaters or the next day if someone was observing you more closely than you guessed. At first Lupin smiles and assures you in a husky tone that if he's forced to wait for pleasure like you've just shared, it will be worthwhile in the end, but his smile fades as he comes to understand that you're not speaking only of the physical pull between you. Again you see that expression of astonishment cross his face as it did the first night, when neither of you dared believe that anything between you could be so sudden and simple.

And you were right -- it isn't simple -- though you can name the moment this time, the instant in your hallway when you could have stepped back yet did not. You've been falling since that moment, falling hard, and the dangers are as great as they have ever been. But his fingers lace through yours, and as he tugs you closer you can feel the movement shift, so that even as you're falling he's pulling you upward, reaching toward a moment just ahead when you'll come flying back up again and soar. You've never been there before and you had never truly believed that it existed, the place where the world would right itself not for you alone but for you both. Now here it is, just waiting for you to grasp it.