Tea and Chocolate

Late to the Feast

The library at Grimmauld Place was quiet and still when Severus Snape entered well after midnight, his arms full of parchments he had brought from Hogwarts at the request of Hestia Jones. She had been the first witch back from the previous night's efforts, and was already working with Nymphadora Tonks to prevent a suspected infiltration of an obscure wizarding museum. None of the members of the Order was certain of which of the museum's possessions might be of interest to the Death Eaters, which of course meant that each of the items needed to be identified and studied, and the records from Hogwarts were quite thorough.

Snape was already setting the documents down on a table when from the edge of his fatigued vision he became aware of movement on the sofa. He had the impression of menace -- something with fierce claws and sharp teeth waiting to spring. Instantly alert, he pulled out his wand and would have uttered a spell to protect himself and sound the alarm at the same time, had a soft voice not interrupted him with a tired, "It's only me."

"Lupin, what are you doing awake at this hour, sitting in the dark?" demanded Snape in an irritated tone designed to cover his moment of fear. The full moon could not have set more than an hour before, and he had expected the wizard to be sleeping off the effects of his transformation -- and those of the potion that kept him tame -- until late the next morning. In a somewhat less aggressive voice, he continued, "I trust that there was not a problem with the Wolfsbane?"

"The potion worked perfectly, as always, thank you, Severus," Lupin replied with a strained smile. "I often feel uncomfortable, even ill, in the hours after the moon sets, and I thought I'd see whether reading might soothe the savage beast." Despite Snape's earlier impression of a monster lurking in the shadows, it was hard for him to think of the pale, sickly man on the sofa, wrapped in an old blanket and holding a book, as a threat. Snape waved his wand, charming the fireplace to illuminate the room, while Lupin reached out and picked up a teacup, pulling a bit of a face as he took a sip before setting the cup in its saucer again.

Under different circumstances, Snape might have asked what Lupin was reading out of politeness if not interest, but he did not wish to discuss the contents of the parchments he had brought from Hogwarts should the other wizard seek reciprocal conversation. He squinted to see whether he could determine the title of the book, but the worn spine revealed no visible lettering. "Are you enjoying yourself, or is that business?" he asked shortly.

"No, pleasure," Lupin replied, though it hardly sounded from his voice as if he enjoyed the book. With a bit of a wry smile, he added, "It's a history of werewolf cures through the ages, as compiled by a St. Mungo's Healer." Snape glanced at him, decided that there was no need to pry, and returned to the parchments he had brought with him, trying to put them into an order that would be useful to Jones. "The one combining oatmeal, honeysuckle and the blood of a virgin spilled at the winter solstice sounded particularly appealing, until I discovered that the base potion was made from wolf's urine and projectile vomiting is a common side effect." Snape was unable to keep the revulsion from his face, yet Lupin smiled with a certain satisfaction. "So you see, Wolfsbane is really a great improvement, and I thank you again for providing it."

With a sigh Snape gathered his papers into a single stack and locked it inside a wooden cabinet, where Jones and perhaps Dumbledore would pore over them, as they had planned, drawing their own conclusions no matter what Snape might suggest. Among the papers he had carried back, he was particularly interested in the listing of basilisk fangs kept at wizarding museums and the former owners of the relics. At one time he had begun a study on the relationships between parselmouths and their serpents, with a vague notion of disproving the ridiculous belief that there might be a connection between Tom Riddle's unusual talent, his House at Hogwarts and his eventual behavior. A majority of parselmouths became upstanding members of wizarding communities, just as a great many Slytherins became scholars and teachers rather than practitioners of the dark arts.

Yet there was suspicion of the House, and the ability to speak to snakes, and at one time Healers had thought to cure parselmouths of their abilities the way they tried to cure vampires and werewolves, whereas perpetual troublemakers like the current generation of Gryffindor youth were smiled upon benignly. "Am I to understand that to the best of your knowledge, it has been a quiet evening here?" he asked Lupin. "Our newest members have not seen fit to unleash any pranks upon the rest of us?"

"Very quiet," nodded Lupin with a trace of amusement. "Perhaps too much so. I'm not sure whether to be worried what the Weasley twins are plotting."

A quick sweep of the room convinced Snape that no extendable ears were present, at least for the moment. "I do suppose that they will be useful, once they outgrow their present obsession with pranks and dirty little jokes." He paused to study Lupin. "I've heard that they asked you and Black to teach them to become animagi."

With a little smile, Lupin nodded again. "They did indeed. But since Sirius was...well, they have not brought it up with me again."

Severus was startled by the smile. To this day he was not certain whether Lupin had known what his friends were planning, back in fifth year when Sirius Black, James Potter and Peter Pettigrew had undertaken the very difficult task of learning to take the forms of animals -- something they did not tell Dumbledore until many years later. Snape had been under the impression that Lupin discovered the plan only after the fact had been accomplished, but given that Lupin had hidden his friends' secret for more than a decade -- while Black was considered a dangerous criminal and Pettigrew was presumed dead -- Lupin's claim might not have been strictly the truth.

"Do you really think it wise to encourage Fred and George? Their mother would plague you with Howlers if she knew," Snape mused. "And with those two, merely the knowledge that something is possible can be encouragement enough..." He recalled an incident from one of his classes, the sort of prank Lupin's friends would have pulled in their day, involving a coalescing potion and a clumsy Slytherin student who might have been himself at the same age...flinching, he forced his mind to other matters. "I don't suppose there are any more of those biscuits?" Snape nodded at the plate beside Lupin's tea. "I haven't eaten since this morning."

"Please, take them -- I'm not hungry," said Lupin quickly, leaning forward to push the plate toward Snape, who retrieved a teacup and sat down to pour himself a cup. The biscuits were hard, stale, and more than one appeared to have had icing flaked off the top by a fingernail. Snape ate three anyway, wishing that the other members of the Order had not been opposed to bringing house-elves from Hogwarts to help with the cooking.

Almost as an afterthought, he said thank you to Lupin, pushing the plate back in his direction. "You should eat; your strength will return more quickly if you do." Though they never discussed it, Lupin was just as aware as Snape that Wolfsbane potion was toxic, made from a mixture of deadly poisons in precise combination to suppress the werewolf's strength without killing the host body. In the hours of recovery, large quantities of fluids and carbohydrates were recommended, but most werewolves found it difficult if not impossible to keep so much food down.

Snape studied the one beside him in the artificially bright glow from the fireplace. He had known that Lupin would age more quickly than other wizards of their age, a result of his condition, but in the past several months the process seemed to have sped up. Lupin's face was gray and drawn, his shoulders hunched, and his hands shook at unexpected moments. "You seem very tired," noted Snape.

Looking away, Lupin agreed, "I haven't been sleeping well."

"I might have a draught that could help you with that." Snape wondered whether Lupin was simply too proud to ask him for any further assistance. "Otherwise, are you quite all right?"

"Oh, yes, Severus, but I appreciate the offer." Pulling the blanket tighter around himself, Lupin offered a smile, yet even the most unobservant person could have seen that he was lying. His pulse was visible in the pale skin of his throat, and Snape recognized that it was too fast, perhaps because of accelerated metabolism or perhaps as a sign of incipient illness. He was about to say so when Lupin bit his lip and turned his face away, making Snape realize that he was neither sick nor suffering the ill effects of Wolfsbane, but uneasy.

"Shall I leave you to your..." he had begun when Lupin's hand closed around his wrist, long fingers icy against his forearm, causing him to shiver involuntarily as if a Dementor's talon had gripped him. That association led to another, and he remembered something else he had brought from Hogwarts, hidden in a pocket during the evening meal. Gently he maneuvered his hand free to reach into his robe, as Lupin spoke:

"No, don't leave. I want -- please, stay."

Lupin's head was still bent, apparently in shame at the plea in his voice or the emotion behind it. He was, Snape could see, very close to breaking, and perhaps Molly Weasley had been right to ask Snape whether he had ever grown up, because a part of him exulted in seeing Remus Lupin brought to begging, brought nearly to tears. Another part of him was paralyzed with embarrassment, with the worst of it being his own inexplicable urge to offer solace to a man who had never done the same for him, despite the easy comfort Lupin had established with students where it eluded Snape. "Take these," he said in a rather haughtily, professorial tone, pulling from his pocket a handful of chocolate leaves that had adorned the dining tables at Hogwarts. "And eat them, as you are so fond of recommending to others."

Lupin's eyes flickered to the intricately carved sweets, then, red-rimmed and heavy, to those of Snape, who felt unhappily as if he was being compared to Sirius Black and found wanting. His voice was even harsher as he spoke again: "You said you had no intention of taking drastic measures or abandoning the Order, therefore it stands to reason that you must take care of yourself." He paused, the obscure judgment hanging over him, and added, "And you must stop living in the past."

"I am not," Lupin retorted in the harshest voice Snape had ever heard him use, "living in the past. I know he's gone. Do you? I had thought the only possible good that might come out of it was that perhaps you and I would finally be able to speak to one another without two decades of resentment in the way, but perhaps it's simply too long to..."

The chocolate leaves, kept fresh while in Snape's pocket by a spell, had been melting on his fingers as Lupin spoke; now they slipped suddenly to the floor, a pile of brown and tan in the false autumn of the firelight, and Lupin caught his breath as he looked down. "I'm so sorry. I had no right to say that. Thank you for -- " Lupin's arm twisted in a helpless gesture, as though he wanted to pick the chocolate up from the floor but was uncertain whether the offer of the gift remained. Instead he caught Snape's wrist in his hand again. "Severus, forgive me."

Something in the wretched tone unleashed a memory. Snape could hear his own voice stammering out the same words -- *Lucius, forgive me* -- just as he could recall without effort the contempt that had glistened on the older wizard's face, and his own understanding that while he might be pardoned for minor transgressions, someone as insignificant as Snape could never be excused for who and what he was. It was precisely the same feeling Potter and Black had left him with years earlier. Why they had chosen to love a werewolf and despise a skinny, unexceptional Slytherin might have remained a mystery, but it had made him stronger -- strong enough to walk away from Malfoy and the Death-Eaters, when that moment came.

Though Snape had to twist at an uncomfortable angle while Lupin was still holding on to his wrist, he bent to retrieve the chocolate, restoring it to cool cleanliness with a spell. Lupin accepted it from his outstretched hand, taking a small bite, swallowing with difficulty. "I'm sorry," he said again. "Please understand...I had grown accustomed to having nothing. Then I had Hogwarts, and Sirius, and Harry, and suddenly I had something to lose again. I know you must have been hoping for the Dark Arts post yourself, and I know you must resent having to make sacrifices for the son of a man who treated you as James did, and I certainly don't blame you for it..."

"Don't try to guess what I'm thinking, Lupin, and don't patronize me," replied Snape in a weary voice. "It's hardly your responsibility."

"I'm not patronizing, I'm trying to explain," Lupin cut him off with a squeeze to his forearm. "During those years when Sirius was in prison, almost no one knew about me -- what I am -- and I couldn't imagine trusting anyone enough to tell. I lived in terror that someone would betray me. I could never keep a job for more than a few months at a time; I would miss work, and I was certain that if I explained why I was too ill to work, I would be lucky to escape with my freedom."

"Yet Mundungus finds work," Snape noted, pronouncing the name as if it were a disease. "The most disreputable among us find work. Surely you aren't the only werewolf in the world to have received an education..." At the look on Lupin's face and the tightened grip on his wrist, he chose not to complete the thought. "How can you know how any other wizard would react, if you don't tell anybody?"

Lupin's eyes were dark and haunted. "Sometimes, Severus, I just enjoy my life too much. It's not much of an existence, but I'm used to it. If I were to tell the wrong person...it only takes one." Snape was about to comment that it was not as if wizards regularly gathered in mobs to chase werewolves when remembered reading about an incident in the *Daily Prophet*; such stories made him acutely uncomfortable, and he only skimmed them, but it was enough to make him remember what irrational fear could do to an otherwise reasonable group of people. "There is always that chance that I would be...put away. They would have, you know, if James hadn't stopped you, if Sirius' prank had gone any further..."

It was true, and shocking to consider: if Black's prank had not been diverted, setting his best friend in the form of a werewolf upon an unsuspecting young wizard, it would likely have meant not only his own death but Lupin's permanent incarceration, or perhaps execution by an angry mob. Snape wasn't certain that twelve years in Azkaban was too great a punishment for the crime Black had tried to commit. Yet Lupin had continued to defend him, remaining his friend, staying loyal until he believed Black had betrayed one of their own.

"I had Sirius for a while," Remus was continuing. "I took jobs, here and there, but he helped support me with the money he'd inherited from his uncle. After that...I didn't want anyone's help."

"Whatever did you do, then, after I cost you your job at Hogwarts?" The words were cruel, intended for a different target than the man sitting with him, and Snape immediately bowed his head in apology. "It is regrettably that you left. Dumbledore offered me a teaching post when I left the Death-Eaters -- there must have been parents of students who knew, parents on both sides. I'm not sure how many people ever knew who I was, or would have risked identifying me after everything that had happened, but to this day I'm sure there are parents who would rather that I wasn't teaching their children." He glanced at Lupin. "Dumbledore would have fought for you, had you stayed. He fought quite stridently for you when I objected to your appointment in the first place. Hermione was likely not the only student to have figured you out."

"Dumbledore had risked quite enough on my behalf," Lupin insisted in the voice of a man reciting a rote answer to a question. His fingers detached at last from Snape's wrist, and he rubbed at his eyes. "You of all people should understand why I had to leave, Severus; I'd like to think it's why you gave away my secret, rather than pure spite. In my urgency to follow the trail to Peter and Sirius, I forgot what night it was. I forgot my potion. I could have killed any of you."

"Not spite," Snape agreed softly. "I had thought you understood the difference between hatred and fear. Though as I recall, neither Peter and Sirius, nor James, nor you ever needed a particular reason to despise me."

Lupin was quiet for a very long moment. "Severus...I did not despise you. As for Sirius and James, they never gave me a good explanation for why they treated you as they did. Not hatred, not fear, just -- I think they did it because they could."

Though this was not particularly a surprise, it hurt more than if they'd given a reason. If Severus Snape had said something, or done something, or stood for something that they resented, it would have been easier to accept their loathing. He had watched children for a generation now, and seen how the most popular among them were also sometimes the most insecure, but the knowledge came years too late to serve as consolation. Had circumstances been different, Snape could have taunted Sirius for having a mother who hated him, for living in a house of horrors, for preferring boys to girls; that was no comfort now. "It's hardly your responsibility," he muttered to Lupin. "As we agreed the other night, we were much younger."

"I'm still sorry you had to suffer."

"I wonder whether, of the two of us, you might have suffered more." Snape glanced at Lupin, whose eyes were fixed across the room. "It sounds as if you were lonelier than I was, those twelve years. I have always valued my privacy, but you were so devoted to your friends."

"They are the only people I have ever known to go out of their way to befriend a werewolf." The sound Lupin made was akin to laughter, but it was strained and bitter. "And for twelve years I believed that two of them were dead, killed by the third. Do I really need to explain the effect that had on my social interactions? I'll tell you the truth, Severus, I felt better after Voldemort's reappearance than I had for years. Sirius was back and everyone in the Order accepted him; I had meaningful work to do, and I was able to spend time with the children without being wholly responsible for their safety. Everyone who spends time in this house knows what I am and accepts it. If it hadn't been for..."

Snape waited, but Lupin did not finish the sentence. "I'm not saying it was easy," he said instead. "In fact, at times it was unbearable, with him trapped in this house, hating it, hating his situation..." Hating me, thought Snape but did not voice the thought. "It wasn't a very happy relationship but I was so focused on having him back, and having Harry to protect, that it was more than enough."

That strain had shown on Lupin. No wonder he had aged so visibly during his time in Grimmauld Place, despite having Black nearby and many of his former colleagues gathered once more. Snape's own former colleagues, the Death-Eaters, were likely gathered this early morning, now that the moon had set, plotting their next incursion, perhaps the expected assault upon the museum. In spite of everything that had happened, he felt a pang of nostalgia -- a recollection of working beside Lucius Malfoy, if not as a cherished colleague then at least as an insider accorded a certain status by the others.

"I have spoken to Dumbledore about how unwise I find it to have married couples and partners in the Order," he admitted to Lupin. "When Arthur Weasley was injured, and the work of his entire family came to a standstill, it was apparent that this little group might perhaps be too close. If things do not go well, and any of us are taken by the other side, the likelihood of hostages being used against us is very high indeed. If we must witness suffering and death in the coming conflict, it will be easier to face among people with less personal attachment to one another."

"And yet we know that we can trust one another," objected Lupin. "There is no question of unequal risk or sacrifice. If I must die, I find it easier to face with the knowledge that I am protecting the people who matter most to me, personally, as well as to our community."

Quite suddenly Snape found that he was drained, exhausted and chilled in the fading heat from the fire. The spot on his arm where the Dark Mark had once glowed was aching. "I have not been afraid to die for many years, not since I came to understand the alternative," he murmured. "But that is not the only concern. I have seen the price others have paid for their attachments...the Potters, the Longbottoms, the Weasleys. You."

Lupin appeared as tired as Snape felt, but he managed a smile. "I don't regret that price," he insisted. "I would rather have had Sirius for the time I did than live regretting what never was. And I won't live a prisoner of fear, either, I've done so for too long. I saw what it did to him, and whether you know it or not, I can see what it's done to you." A defiant look appeared in his eyes, intensely focused on Snape, who expected Lupin to say more, but after a moment the other man sat back slightly, and his fingers, which had nearly loosed their hold on Snape's wrist, brushed over his hand as he picked up the chocolate to take a bite.

Sitting very still, Snape contemplated the possible meaning of the words. No one who had known him intimately had ever made the mistake of real attachment, and Lupin was a stronger man than anyone involved in the pathetic encounters to which he'd surrendered after Lucius Malfoy. Still, Snape had paid for his own weakness, and he had no desire to see Lupin suffer, out of guilt or a misguided sense of loyalty. "If you are concerned about myself, I must tell you, Remus, that you need only remind me of who and what we are -- perhaps it would be enough to remind you of what *you* are. You need not believe that my bringing you chocolate signifies any connection or obligation, and I trust that you will not expect..."

A nudge at his shoulder made him stop and shiver. He thought that the other man must be touching him, embracing him even, but in the moment that it took Snape to gather his wits and turn, he realized that Lupin had not heard his last words. Lupin was asleep, unable to hold his head upright; his chin had sunk to his chest, and his forehead had swayed against Snape's shoulder. At this proximity, even by firelight, Snape could clearly see the gray roots becoming dominant in Lupin's hair and the lines that even in sleep furrowed around his mouth and eyes. Soon he would look like an old man -- not ageless wizard like Dumbledore, but a scarred, sunken being like Filch, consumed within and without by the creature that controlled him.

Yet Snape remembered the brightness of Lupin's eyes and the smile that had covered his entire face when Snape had brought him chocolate from Honeyduke's, and he thought that despite the obvious signs of aging, Lupin still had a certain charm. He was not handsome like Malfoy, as few would ever be, but his easy smile was appealing, and unlike his old friends Black and Potter, his pleasure had never been drawn from the wickedness or suffering of others. Lupin's pale lips were parted in slumber and continued to shiver faintly. As Snape reached to pull the blanket more tightly around his shoulders, he found that he was pressed close, drawn to the warmth and a need for contact that would remain unmentionable in the daylight.

"The only way I know to lose your fears entirely," he murmured to the sleeping man, "is to reach a state where you have nothing left to lose at all." Lupin slept on, his face resting along Snape's collarbone. And although it would have been prudent to wake him and suggest that he take his rest in his own room, they sat together through what was left of the night, until the sounds of morning in Grimmauld Place began to emerge around them and the smell of brewing cocoa brought Lupin to awareness with a smile on his lips.