Tea and Chocolate

As she was wont to do to each of them from time to time, Molly Weasley cornered Severus Snape in the kitchen at Grimmauld Place and handed him two cups of dreadful-smelling tea. With an inward sigh, he resigned himself to evading her concerned questions about his well-being, and was taken quite by surprise when she brushed past him and said, "Take one up to Remus, would you, love?"

"To Remus?" Snape asked slowly, as if he couldn't quite remember which wizard was Remus. But when Molly only continued on her way, he snapped, "What makes you think I want anything to do with Remus Lupin?"

"I was only suggesting you go upstairs and see him," Molly answered with the same brusque annoyance she would have turned on one of her sons if he asked a foolish question. "It's been months, Severus. He hides upstairs unless Dumbledore sends him somewhere. He thinks he's alone."

If Remus Lupin felt alone, Snape wanted to say, it was only because it was true. With the exception of a few members of the Order who had had spouses or lovers before Voldemort's return, none had had the time or inclination to pair off. The fates of the Potters and Longbottoms had been enough to deter most, and if anyone needed a further reason, one look at Lupin's gray, sunken face provided it. Snape avoided Lupin whenever possible, not only because the man's grief was wearying, but because he could not find it within himself to mourn Sirius Black, and that fact made it difficult for him to meet Lupin's eyes.

"Send Tonks," he suggested shortly to Molly. "She enjoys Lupin's company."

"She's very young, Severus," Molly scolded. "She can't really understand what he's going through. Besides, she's tried. You, on the other hand, have known him nearly all his life."

"Only because he didn't successfully end my life when I was Mr. Potter's age," snarled the professor in a tone he usually reserved for very slow students.

"He had no control over that..."

"No, and now he is in mourning for the man who was responsible -- a man who couldn't be bothered to speak to me in a civil tone while I was teaching occlumency as a personal favor to his godson." Molly glared at this; speaking ill of Sirius Black was not tolerated within the Order, partly due to the nature of his sacrifice but mostly out of respect for his surviving partner. "What makes you think that Lupin would want to see me?"

"What would it hurt to try? Take some tea up to him. Tell him I sent you -- that I'm very busy, but I thought he would like something. Tell him I'm a very stubborn woman and wouldn't take no for an answer. He won't turn his back on you."

"He spent years turning his back while his friends treated me like something lower than a burrowing insect," Snape reminded her.

It was somewhat unusual for Molly to lose her temper with any adult who wasn't a family member -- she was more often the peacemaker at Grimmauld Place -- but now she snapped, "Maybe he was afraid to take the chance of losing them. And maybe he's grown up, Severus. Have you? I look at him, and I look at you, and I see two very lonely people. But I'm not pointing my wand at your head and making you do anything, am I?"

Then she did point her wand, but it was only to aim it at the cups and utter a spell to keep the tea hot. Without another word she stormed out of the kitchen. Severus stood for a few moments, staring at the two saucers in his hands, before he sighed and walked upstairs very carefully to avoid waking any pictures. Because of the teacups, he was unable to knock at Lupin's room, and was ready to give up and return to the library when he noticed that the door was cracked open.

"Are you in there, Lupin?" he inquired.

"Yes, come in, it's not locked," came the voice from inside. Snape was about to retort that a door that had been left partially ajar obviously wasn't bolted, but he couldn't help thinking that Remus Lupin was not careless enough to leave his door open by accident. Perhaps he had been hoping for company; perhaps others besides himself had failed to notice this on previous occasions.

"I've brought you tea," Snape said without inflection. "Molly was on her way out but thought that you might like some and ordered me to bring it upstairs." A half-smile crossed Remus' face, as if the full smile was too much effort to manage. "Don't thank me until you've tried it, however. It's noxious." That comment did not draw a smile from Remus either, though it did cause his eyes to widen in surprise; he took the cup with both hands, sniffing it and frowning before he sipped and promptly wrinkled his nose.

"Ugh. Last week it tasted like eucalyptus oil. Perhaps she thinks she's benefiting our health." He tried to drink the tea again, but couldn't manage it, and put the down on the table beside the bed.

"The only health benefit of which I'm aware from eucalyptus tea is to ease a head cold, which a simple spell can do," Snape mused. "Though it is often used in mouthwash...do you suppose that she finds our breath offensive, and is too polite to tell us?"

Remus gave him the half-smile again, though it was rather more animated -- not from the mockery, Snape suspected, but from his own continued presence in Lupin's room, which was something of a mystery to himself as well, now that he'd done the task Molly had requested of him. "Perhaps the entire Order has been complaining about our breath behind our backs," Lupin joked. "Though it isn't as if we've spent very much time with any of them recently."

Molly's words came back to Severus; he pushed aside momentary irritation at the memory. "For myself, I'm not terribly fond of socializing," he noted.

For a moment Lupin looked at him. "You never were. I wasn't really, either. Just with a few."

Snape was tempted to make a retort that it wasn't as if he would have learned to become fond of socializing at Hogwarts, given the example Lupin's friends had set; that, however, would make it sound as if he cared far more than he ever would have suggested to this last member of their little group. "I rather thought that you did enjoy socializing," he said instead. "That it was fear of discovery, rather than disinterest, that made you avoid people."

"Touché." Lupin looked away a moment, then asked softly, "Do you hate me so much, Severus?"

It was not a question worth dignifying with a response, so Snape ignored it. "Everyone in the Order already knows what you are," he declared emphatically. "We're all quite familiar with one another's nasty little secrets, aren't we? Yet you haven't been willing to join in Arthur Weasley's tedious card games or Tonks' endless blather about whatever it is she blathers about."

Wearily Lupin rubbed at his eyes. "I don't want to," he replied plaintively. "I'm quite sure that they understand why. Molly is hoping..."

"Well, I don't want to either, but I can't always come up with a reason to avoid them," Snape interrupted. "Surely you've noticed that they worry about you -- honestly, do you think Molly would have sent *me* of all people up here if she hadn't been getting desperate? You look terrible. You rarely leave this room."

"How kind of you to notice." Lupin looked tired, defeated, yet at the same time his curiosity was piqued, wondering what Snape was doing there -- a question to which he still had no answer.

"If I've noticed, don't you think it's because it's impossible to miss? You haven't looked this terrible since...*he* went to Azkaban."

Lupin looked down at his hands. "I was used to being alone after a while. Then I took for granted that *he* was here and I got used to that. And now..." He closed his eyes to swallow, and for a terrible moment Snape thought he might weep. But Lupin only glanced up again, the question clear in his eyes: *Why are you here?*

Snape put down his cold tea beside the other cup on the table and paced the few steps to the back wall of the dark little room, where a fierce-looking cat in a painting was stalking something just outside the frame. "Is this actually worse, now," he asked Lupin, "than when you thought he had killed your best friends and betrayed everyone you knew?

"They're all gone now, Severus." Lupin's expression held studied bleakness. "It's just me, now." Almost as an afterthought he added, "Sirius promised me he wouldn't leave again."

"But I don't understand -- I don't understand how even his death could be harder than believing that he had betrayed you." It was a difficult admission to make, and Snape did not understand how that, either, could escape Lupin's recognition. "You have your memories. You don't have to make yourself forget him. Do you know what -- what some people would give even to have had such a promise from someone?"

The momentary hesitation had cost him. Lupin was staring, distracted from his own grief, in frank interest. He cocked his head, considering. "What would you give?"

My soul, Snape thought privately, remembering. Aloud he said, "It doesn't matter. I was never going to receive such a promise. Even the wish is ancient history. The point is, I survived."

"Yes, I suppose you did." From the werewolf, at least, Snape had no fear of being pitied, but something had changed; there was a spark of animation in the Lupin's features. "Severus, wouldn't you like to sit down?"

Snape very nearly said no thank you, but he remembered Molly's words and the door left ajar. There was only one chair, so Lupin settled on the edge of the large bed that dominated the room, currently half-hidden under books and parchments; Snape realized that Sirius Black had probably slept there more often than not, and felt his skin itch unpleasantly. He did not think that he reacted to the sensation, but the other wizard appeared to notice his discomfort.

"You don't really want to be here, do you?"

"I don't think Grimmauld Place would have been anyone's first choice."

Lupin waggled a finger, and a spark of the former Defense Against the Dark Arts professor returned. "You know what I mean, Severus. She sent you up here to talk to me. Didn't she?"

"She did suggest that I bring you the tea." At once Lupin looked both amused and embarrassed. "You should know by now that Molly Weasley could not force me to do anything against my will."

Mildly Lupin replied, "I do know that, though I did think it was an unspoken rule that we all live in fear of the anger of Molly Weasley." They shared a brief grin. "If not at her request, then, why are you here?"

For this Snape had no reply, and after a moment Lupin nodded, as if that, at least, he could understand. "Would you like me to leave?" Snape inquired. His colleague shook his head -- far too quickly, it seemed -- and Snape frowned suddenly, leaning close to look at him. "Lupin, why *don't* you despise me? I forced you from a job at Hogwarts that you loved. Young Mr. Potter blames me for everything that happened at the Department of Mysteries, I was a Death-Eater..."

"I...I feel partly responsible." Lupin bowed his head, and at the tremor in his voice there was no question of the sincerity of his words. "After what happened at Hogwarts, and the things James did, and Sirius..." Snape was about to interrupt, to point out that he made his own choices and did not need Lupin's pity, but the other man continued, "I never did anything to stop them. If they hadn't -- maybe you wouldn't have made the choices you did."

They were both haunted by the same understanding. Snape spoke it aloud -- the words Sirius Black had never said to him, perhaps had never dared even to joke about, but he certainly must have considered. "If I'd stayed with the Dark Lord just a little longer, I would have known that Sirius was innocent, and that it was Peter who was working for him. I could have spared you and Sirius both those twelve years."

"The thought has crossed my mind," Lupin admitted. "But, if you had stayed, you might not have been able to leave. They might never have allowed it."

"And yet they let me go. Perhaps because I did not know, and that served their interests." There had been a single moment of suspicion, at one time, Snape recalled: Peter Pettigrew in an unexpected place, with his usual look of startled fear. Snape had asked about it, but Lucius Malfoy had only glanced at him with the incredulous disgust he always used to silence Snape's doubts, and he had never inquired again.

"Lucius Malfoy," Lupin said as if he had been reading Snape's thoughts; instantly he brought all the power of his occlumency training to bear, but the other man's expression showed only the same curiosity it had reflected earlier. "You and he were close, once, weren't you. Mightn't he have had you spared?"

"Lucius Malfoy has never done anything that did not serve his own best interests," Snape answered, the same reply he had given Dumbledore when asked the same question years earlier. "There is no friend he would have spared, based on any notion of personal loyalty -- nor his family, nor other Death-Eaters, and certainly not me."

Lupin studied him for another moment, then reached into a pocket of his robe. Stiffening, Snape closed his fingers around his own wand, but when the hand was withdrawn it was holding a chocolate bar, which Lupin broke in half and offered.

With a bemused smirk, Snape accepted it. "Is there any form of suffering that you do not believe can be cured by chocolate?"

"Perhaps not cured," Lupin admitted, matching his smile. "But can you honestly say that it does not improve nearly every situation, save perhaps an upset stomach?" He bit into the bar enthusiastically, and a moment later Snape did the same. The bittersweet taste made his mouth water pleasurably, and he did not notice that the other wizard had stopped chewing and was studying him again. "I heard some things," Lupin said softly. "People talked, once Sirius was back and it became clear that we had made at least one mistake in our assumptions about the Dark Lord's allies. There were rumors about you."

Snape tensed all over. No one had ever suggested to him that anyone knew...he had been certain that Lucius had made sure no one would ever know. "People talked?" he asked, attempting to sound idly curious rather than urgently so. "Who? What did they say?"

"I suspect that there are people on his own side who would pay dearly to see him fall," Lupin said, ignoring the question. "Would it ruin him, among that sort of wizarding crowd for whom breeding pureblood children is so important?" Lucius had always said that no one must know of their relationship, but his reasons had had to do with the possibility of exploitation by his enemies, and Snape had not stopped to consider that while such liaisons were tolerated even among purebloods so long as a wizard produced offspring, Lucius might have thought that his friends as well as those who opposed the Death-Eaters might have taken advantage of his lover.

"Narcissa Malfoy," Snape said, thinking aloud. "She was the one who..." Then he paused, looking at Remus through narrowed eyes. "Sirius was her cousin," he said quietly. "And Bellatrix would have been jealous of Lucius' position among the Death Eaters...Bellatrix could never stand for anyone to have anything she wanted. Did you hear this rumor from Sirius?" Remus nodded, looking down at the bed. Crossing his legs, Snape rested his elbow on his knee and lowered his head to consider. "It doesn't make sense. She *killed* Sirius; she's the one who had Kreacher lie to him. Why would she cast aspersions on her own husband, the father of her son and heir? I suppose that she might want to distance herself from him, now, if the Dark Lord blames him for failing to recover the prophecy and for getting himself put in Azkaban, but that all happened afterward. I don't understand."

"I don't either," Lupin said. "I'm sorry, Severus."

"If they'd wanted to discredit him that way," Snape replied softly, half to himself, "they had only to ask me."

Lupin looked up at him again. "Would you have told them?"

"Would I have told the truth?" he asked. Then he realized that he had never answered Remus' question. "Yes," he said, and shivered at the sudden recognition that he had never discussed this with anyone, never spoken it aloud. "Malfoy and I...for many years. I never said so in so many words to Dumbledore because I couldn't imagine what possible relevance it could be to the Order. If Lucius is the reason that I was spared, it is only because he believes that he could win me back, at some crucial moment. He is quite mistaken."

"I couldn't imagine what..." Lupin held out another piece of chocolate. "What he must have done to you, to make you walk away. You worked at St. Mungo's before going to Hogwarts. No one knew how you'd managed to get that job. He must have been able to get you anything you wanted, and yet -- you walked away."

The Mark on Snape's arm burned faintly. It always burned when he thought of that time, and had even during the years when the Death Eaters were scattered and believed their master gone for good. No matter what any of them might have believed on either side, the Dark Mark had never bound him to the Dark Lord. It had been a symbol of his allegiance to Lucius Malfoy, and was now a symbol of his betrayal. Snape stared at Lupin. "I walked away...from *Voldemort*," he spat. "And he let me live. Sometimes I have wondered if he did something to me, and made me forget it, because otherwise I can't fathom why I am still alive."

"Yet here you are." Lupin did not seem to fear that Snape might be an agent of evil hidden among them, either consciously or unknowingly. He smiled faintly, and repeated, "Here you are."

A strange, painful scent assaulted Snape's nostrils. He thought at first that someone must be concocting a poison somewhere in the house, but after a moment he recognized it as the stench of the polish that Tonks insisted on painting onto her fingernails. A moment later Lupin lifted his head as well, and sniffed, looking very like an animal, reminding Severus in a sudden and visceral way of who and what he was sitting with, spilling his secrets as though he and Lupin were old friends.

Quickly he cleared his throat, just as Lupin spoke: "Perhaps we should go down to dinner."

"Perhaps we should. But I must stop and retrieve some items first." He knew that Lupin would not ask what he needed, nor invite himself to come along, and he knew further that the conversation that had passed between the two of them would remain between the two of them. If there was one thing he was certain he could trust in Lupin, it was his discretion -- a recognition which aroused in him faint glimmerings of shame.

Lupin rose as Snape stood, reaching out a hand as if he would touch him, or call him back; but a moment later he let it fall. "Thank you for bringing me the tea," he said.

"Such as it was," Snape added wryly, with a glance at their almost-full cups on the table. "We had better empty those out or Molly will be unhappy." Snape was more certain than ever that Molly had not sent him up to deliver tea. He cocked his head. "Did she say anything to you, about me? Ask you to draw me out, as it were?"

Lupin had the grace to look embarrassed. "I've been something of a project of Molly's, you know," he said. "For awhile it was Tonks she sent with the tea, then Moody -- who delivered it and left without a word, which I must admit was a great relief." Snape could not hide the amusement that tugged the corners of his mouth, and was surprised at the warmth with which it was returned. "I don't think she'd dare ask anyone to draw you out, Severus...she's just trying to keep me from taking whatever drastic measures she thinks I consider available to me. If that is why you're here as well, you can spare me the pep talk about how the Order needs me; I've no intention of abandoning the Order, not while I can do anything to help the children."

"Then this was merely an effort to pair off two grumpy old men," Snape said in mild disbelief, prepared to shake his head and say farewell, but something unexpected happened: Lupin began to laugh, an uncontrolled cackle that filled the room. Remus had not often laughed even when they were boys, no matter what pranks Sirius and James might have pulled, and Snape was hardly known for his sense of humor. He found himself smiling helplessly.

"I'll see you at dinner, Severus," Lupin said. It was too late to fret that the werewolf might perceive a connection between them where none was intended, though Snape nodded as shortly as possible and departed at once. He had told Lupin about Lucius, and worse, he had made him laugh. The connection was already there.

He supposed he was lucky that Molly Weasley was on his side.