To Hope for Anything

To Hope for Anything

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Tell the Tale

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-2 days

~*~*~*~

There was a knock on the door, and Severus stilled. There were only two people who dared to even think about knocking on the door of his private chambers. These two were Headmaster Dumbledore and Sirius. And he knew for sure that the Headmaster wasn't coming for a visit today.

He went to the door and opened it. Sirius stepped in, kicked the door closed behind him, and drew Severus into a warm embrace that was soon followed by a kiss.

"You came, then," the Slytherin said breathlessly as they at last broke the kiss.

"I did," Sirius said, and grinned. "Harry and Remus were both there, so I figured that they'd do fine even without me. So, I decided to visit my favourite Slytherin instead."

"So you have other Slytherins also, eh?" Severus asked, raising an amused eyebrow.

"Only you, love, only you," Sirius laughed, then pulled him into another searing kiss.

"In for a late supper?" the Potions Master suggested as they again broke the kiss. "Or have you eaten yet?"

"No, I haven't," Sirius replied, shaking his head.

Severus nodded. "I'll ask the house-elves to bring something, then." Sirius nodded and sat on the couch, waiting more or less patiently when Severus ordered them some food.

It took only moments from the food to arrive. They put the meal on the table of Severus's little personal dining room.

Sirius watched closely as Severus took some food on his plate. The Animagus didn't take anything for himself until Severus had filled his plate. Then they started eating, Sirius following with an intent gaze every forkful that the other man managed to get to his mouth.

"Stop watching me and eat yourself," Severus snapped at last, annoyed. "Your food gets cold."

Sirius grinned sheepishly. "Sorry," he said. "Can you blame me if I'm worried, though?"

"Yes, I can," the Slytherin replied. "It's been over a year already after Poppy announced me to be able to take care of myself."

"Yes, with our bond keeping you under control," Sirius snapped back. He seemingly immediately regretted his words, since he said then, "Sorry, Severus. I shouldn't have said that. I am just worried, love. Is it really so bad to care about someone?"

"And very well you've cared," Severus said bitterly, his joy about Sirius's visit almost completely vanished. "Now you're here, but when was the last time you visited? Yesterday? Last week? No! It was a whole damned fortnight ago!" He jumped up, pushing his chair away from the table as he did so.

Sirius looked taken aback by the sudden burst. "But, Sev, you know I come as often as I can! But I can't always slip away, or somebody'll find out!"

"Whatever, but this can't go on anymore!" Severus snapped. "I simply can't stand this!"

Sirius looked surprised. "You suggested this yourself," he reminded his husband. "You said you didn't want to be known as my spouse. That no one would understand, much less approve, our relationship."

"I know I said that," Severus snapped, clearly annoyed. "But I don't want to share. Not anything, but least of all you! You are mine, Sirius, mine and mine only. You said that yourself when we got married. I don't want to live off whatever bits are left from Lupin and Potter."

"Remus and Harry," the Animagus corrected automatically. "And I am yours, just like you're mine. It's just that no one else can know but us two."

"Exactly," Severus said, and made a face. "I don't see my spouse if Potter is visiting. You don't visit me if Lupin is ill. I can't talk with you if Tonks is hitting on you. Everyone other has more right to my legally married husband but me!"

"What do you want, then?" Sirius asked, sliding his hands to the Slytherin's collar. "Do you want to wear this?" He pulled up a thin chain with a silver ring in it.

"If it is what I must do to have you only mine," Severus said slowly, "then yes, I do want to wear it."

"Right, then," Sirius said, and suddenly smiled. With a quick tug, he broke the chain, letting the ring fall on his palm. Then he took Severus's left hand into his and, his eyes never leaving the coal-black orbs, slipped the ring into the thin ring finger.

Severus also watched him in the eye. He slipped his own hands down Sirius's collar, bringing up a chain similar to his on. Then, still watching his husband, he broke the other chain, took the ring and put it into Sirius's finger.

There was no backing away now.

"So now you're mine," the Animagus said then softly, wrapping his arms around Severus's waist.

"I've always been," the Potions Master replied hoarsely, his own arms snaking under Sirius's. Then he leaned forward, meeting his husband in the halfway. Their lips met, hungrily yearning for each other.

Soon, the first clothes fell down on the floor.

~*~*~*~

- 1 day

~*~*~*~

"Sirius?"

"Mm-hmm?" he replied absently.

"Exactly where have you been? You weren't here at all last night," Harry said, slightly amused.

"I didn't?" Sirius blinked. Then he remembered. "Oh, that. I wasn't anywhere particularly."

Harry raised his eyebrows. "So you just walked around for the whole night? Or did you fly, perhaps?"

Sirius shrugged. "Sort of," he replied. "How did your talk with Remus go yesterday? Did you get anything out of him?"

Harry smirked. "Don't you dare to try and change the topic. And no, he didn't say anything to me either," the younger wizard sighed, looking distant for a while. Then his eyes snapped back on focus. "Who were you with last night?"

Sirius blinked again. "Excuse me?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "Don't give that to me," he advised his godfather. "I've already got the birds and bees talk. Once from you, twice from Remus and thrice from Mrs. Weasley. I'm eighteen, Sirius. I know damn well what you were doing."

"Um... Well..." Sirius started, hesitant. He and Severus had already spoken about this. They both were to answer honestly to whoever might ask something. Now, however, he felt more than slightly uneasy, facing Harry's attentive eyes. He chewed his lip and raised a hand to wipe a lock of hair from his face. He was just about to try talking again when he noticed Harry staring at him.

"May I ask," Harry said slowly, "what is that?" The will-be-Auror stared at Sirius's hands, his eyes very wide.

Sirius followed his gaze and saw the ring in his hand. 'Damn,' he thought, 'this is getting out of hands.' "That," he said aloud, "is my wedding band."

Harry's eyes widened even more, if that was even possible. "You're married?" the boy blurted out.

"Yeah."

"But... How... When... Who..." Harry seemed to have lost his ability to form coherent sentences.

"The usual method. Last March." He hesitated for a moment, then took a deep breath and said, "Severus Snape."

Harry's jaw dropped somewhere near the floor.

"I know this sounds weird," Sirius continued hastily, "but it is true. Remember the big battle in June last year? Well, he was the one who brought me food and medicines. At first, he did it only on Dumbledore's request, just bringing the things and leaving."

"Then, little by little, he started staying for some time. At first it was mere minutes, and he only told the recent news. Then he started teasing me and snapping at me about little things. How you were doing. How Remus and Tonks were recovering from their own injuries. Then, when the full moon came, I persuaded him to help me to sneak out to Remus's, despite all Dumbledore's orders." In fact he had halfly bribed, halfly threatened Severus to do that. But maybe it could be called "persuading."

"Severus stayed with us for the whole night. He gave Remus something that eased his pain, all the time telling that he did it for Dumbledore only."

"When we went back, I forced myself to thank him for helping Remus. He shook my thanks away, unaffected, and left. He didn't come back until three days later, and when he came, he seemed to be hurt."

"No matter how much I despised him back then, he had helped me and Remus. Because of that, I asked what was wrong with him. He told me that nothing was wrong and that he was perfectly fine. I found it rather hard to believe, however, considering that his hands were trembling."

"I had to threaten to tell Molly about his obvious sickness before he admitted that he'd been hit with the Cruciatus. Three times in line. I told him to go to Madam Pomfrey, since he obviously wasn't in any condition to Apparate around the country - not that I'd cared back then, but he was on our side after all. He of course refused."

"Unfortunately to him, I knew that Remus would have got my hide if I let him go without further actions. So, I told him to at least stay for a while and rest. He said again, 'No,' and tried to get to the door. He was three steps away from it as he fainted."

"At that point, I was almost recovered already. So, I could easily lift him from the floor and carry him to the nearby couch. Then I just sat, waiting for him to wake up."

"When he woke at last, I told him I'd firecalled Madam Pomfrey and told her that he'd go to her for an examination as soon as he'd return from my place. Of course it was a lie, but he couldn't know that. Therefore, for all he knew he had only two options: He could either stay and recover over at mine, or face Pomfrey right then and tell her he'd wandered all around the country when he could hardly stand up. It isn't hard to guess what he chose."

"He informed Dumbledore of the situation. The Headmaster of course understood. I swear his eyes were damned twinkling back then."

"As Severus stayed, I noticed that he ate hardly anything at all - just about enough to live. He was also dangerously thin. I pointed that out to him. He told me to mind my own business and claimed that he was eating too much rather than too little."

"Well, I certainly know the symptoms of anorexia as I see them. We dealt with Remus more than enough to learn those."

Before he could continue, however, Harry, who'd remained in stunned silence all the time until now, decided to cut in. "Remus had anorexia?" Harry asked, obviously shocked.

Sirius nodded with a saddened expression. "It started on our fifth year," he sighed. "At least that was when we noticed it and started trying to heal him. It was a hell of a job, I might say."

"Remus is incredibly smart, and he certainly took a full advantage on that. Transfigurating his food to something else behind our backs was one of the simplest tricks he tried. When he was on his worst we had to strip him of his wand and watch him all the time during the meals. We put him into a body bind for the nights and never let him leave our sight at the day time so he couldn't do any extra exercise. The transformations alone took almost all the energy we managed to push down his throat, and still he tried to get rid of the rest."

"Around the time we graduated, he was almost normal. After that, he managed to retain his grip on reality."

"And when you were in Azkaban?" Harry asked with a concerned voice.

Sirius sighed. "Andromeda and Ted," he explained. "They always kept him over at their place the few days prior and after the full moon - he's always on his worst at those days. They very much kept him on the right way all those years."

Harry nodded slowly. Then, he fixed his eyes again at Sirius. "You never finished telling your story," he reminded. "So, continue."

Sirius sighed. Obviously Harry wasn't going to let the topic drop. "So, I suspected that he might be anorexic," he started, returning to his previous story. "I hated him, true enough, but I also knew how Remus had been and what he'd hardly been saved from. I didn't want to let Snape starve himself to death, since I'd once vowed that I wouldn't let anyone get anorexia if I just could prevent it."

"So, I watched him. I forced him to walk around the house instead of running - he was still barely able to stand up, but he wouldn't let that slow him down. I forced him to eat, I practically poured all the anti-Cruciatus potions in the house down his throat. He, in turn, struggled against all my attempts to feed him, only confirming my suspicions."

"I hadn't realized just how far he'd taken it until the day I surprised him alone. Severus was Crucioing himself to get rid of the energy from the foods I'd shoved to his system."

Harry stared at him, his green eyes wide behind the round glasses. "He - he really -" the younger wizard stammered.

Sirius nodded. "Yeah, he did. It was, the whole anorexia was his way to control his body. He wanted subconsciously to prove that he could stay in control despite the pain, that he could do anything he wanted to his body and bear it until he decided to stop. That's how anorexic people are. It's all about control in the end."

"I, of course, was horrified. I took his wand away and said that I'd take him to St. Mungo's, since he was obviously even dangerously anorexic. Hell, not only 'even' - he was acting downright suicidally! He of course practically begged me not to tell anyone, but I had next to no options. All the time watching him, I contacted Dumbledore."

"The Headmaster, of course, was absolutely shocked. He demanded reasons from Severus, who of course could not give them - who could reason their mental issues? Dumbledore also agreed with me that he should be watched. Unlike me, however, he also had a plan as of how to accomplish that."

"The plan was rather simple: To temporarily bond his mind to another mind. That way, there would be two minds fighting back the illness. It was simple enough to work, at least with the right kind of a bond."

"We still had a problem, however. The question being, who he would be bound to? It couldn't be anyone working for the Ministry, since they could be questioned about it. Mundungus and Mad-Eye couldn't do that, either. They both have such harsh minds. Severus in general is mentally even unusually strong, being the superb Occlumenc he is and all, but in this certain issue he's so troubled and fragile that being bound to either of them, even temporarily, would have scarred them badly. Figg, being a Squib, couldn't be tied with that bond, and neither Arthur nor Molly could do that, since the bond would have crossed with their marriage bond."

"Remus was out of picture right away. Not because of his Lycanthropy, with the Wolfsbane Potion his transformations wouldn't have been an issue; it was because he'd had the same problems. You never fully recover from anorexia, it's always lurking behind your shoulder, trying to pull you back. If Remus had been bonded to Severus, it'd only have pulled him over the edge, too."

"Therefore, there was only one possibility remaining."

"You," Harry realized, and Sirius nodded.

"Of course, neither of us liked the idea at first. Albus, however, practically forced us to it. He came over to mine in half an hour and performed the binding spell. I and Severus had little but no say in the issue."

"It felt odd at first, to be bound to him. All the time I felt somebody else's presence in the background of my mind - we couldn't see to each other's mind, but we could feel the bond."

"It only took a couple of hours for the first effects to sink in. I felt too heavy, like my body was made of lead. I ignored the feeling and started cooking supper for us. When it was ready, however, another new thing came to me. It was a thought this time, telling that food was bad, that I should control myself and not eat it."

"Well, I was hungry, so I shoved the thought away. I put Severus sitting on the table and food in front of him, like I always did, then took my own portion and sat myself. The same thought hit me still a couple of times, but I put it down with rather little difficulty."

"I purposefully ignored Severus for some time. When I had about half way eaten my food, I glanced at him. I was shocked. Not only he was actually eating, but he was crying."

Harry's jaw dropped, and he stared at his godfather in disbelief.

Sirius smiled a bit. "Wouldn't have expected that, eh? But believe me, he did cry whilst eating. I was curious, so I asked him what was the matter."

The Animagus was quiet for a moment, his eyes wandering towards the ceiling. Then he continued, his voice hoarse, "He looked at me for a second. Then he said, 'I haven't been able to eat properly for three years. And now, I am. It feels so good to really eat...' And, Merlin, I was close to tears myself, his tone was so relieved as well as the feelings I received through the bond. And his expression... I don't think I'll ever be able to forget that."

"The bond worked on full force right away. Severus still had the need to avoid eating and use energy, but, being the lazy and ever-hungry brat I am, I managed to always fight that down for him. In the end of August, Dumbledore sent Poppy over to examine us both. She told that I was just fine, and that Severus was, against all evidences from the usual cases, recovering greatly and gaining weight despite the short time of recovery. She said that he could very well return teaching, only the bond was not to be broken until all anorexic urges had left his mind."

"So, he returned to the castle, and I came back here. The bond still existed, we just didn't reside so near each other. After a week, however, I noticed something I would never have thought to be possible: I missed him. I, Sirius Black, missed Severus Snape of all the people! It certainly didn't help the case that I constantly received similar missing feelings through the bond."

"Then came the day when somebody somehow managed to conjure the Dark Mark on the Hogwarts grounds - I still say it was the Malfoy boy, he had already received his own Mark at that point. You know that Dumbledore then asked me and Tonks come to the school to keep order. So, I got into the same place as Severus."

"Unsurprisingly, I sooner rather than later found myself wandering towards his quarters. He welcomed me there, although rather hesitantly at first - we'd got used to each other, but he doesn't like people coming into his personal rooms. I've heard that even Dumbledore has only been there a couple of times."

"Soon, my visits became regular. At first we discussed only the War, like we'd done whilst he was staying with me. Little by little, however, we moved to more personal matters."

"One night, it was already late as I went there. We got carried away and just talked, sitting on a couch next to each other. Somehow, Severus fell asleep. He fell over until he was leaning against me."

"I knew I should have left, but I didn't want to wake him. I knew that he'd had hard time that day, when Sinistra'd offered him sweets and his anorexic instincts had hit in on full force. Therefore, I decided to wait till I was sure he was deep asleep and wouldn't wake up if I left. As you can guess, I just fell asleep myself."

"The next morning, I woke up with a warm feeling. I felt safe and comfortable, more so than ever in my entire life. I opened my eyes and saw that Severus had fallen down from my side and his head was now resting on my lap."

"At the same moment, Severus awoke. For a moment we just sat - or, in his case, lay - there, looking at each other. I didn't believe my senses at first as I felt my own emotions being reflected through the bond."

"I still don't know exactly what happened next, but the next thing I knew we were kissing. After that, things proceeded and then... Well, you just said yourself you've had enough about birds and bees."

"After that, it went rather smoothly. I proposed to him at Christmas, and Dumbledore wedded us in March - all in secret, of course. Only I, Severus, Albus himself, and Minerva and Filius, who were our witnesses, knew. That is, until yesterday, when Severus at last announced that he's fed up with having to share his husband's attention just because nobody knows about us. So, we decided to come in public."

Sirius remained silent for a moment. Then, rather hesitantly, he asked, "Harry?"

"This - this is kind of confusing," the young wizard said. "I mean, at first you hate Snape. Now, you don't only stand but love him! I just... I just need some time to think over things."

"That's okay, I understand," Sirius said. He didn't know whether he should be relieved or nervous over Harry's reaction to the news.

"Are you going to tell Remus now as well?" Harry asked then.

"I bet he already knows anyway," Sirius shrugged. "When have we ever managed to hide anything from him? I bet he knew even before we ourselves did!"

"Not quite," a familiar voice said from the doorway behind them, sounding slightly amused. "But I have to admit I have known for quite a while."

They turned around and saw Remus. The werewolf looked, if possible, even worse than the day before. The oncoming full moon was obviously taking a great toll on him. He was thin and sickly pale, and there was a fevery shine in his amber eyes. Neither of the other men mentioned any of this, however. They knew Remus better than that.

"You weren't really paying for my Wolfsbane, eh?" Remus asked calmly, sitting on the couch. "Or does Severus demand payment even from his..." His eyes flicked towards Sirius's ring, then he finished, "Husband?"

"Oh, in fact he does," Sirius said with a slight smirk. "He just prefers... shall we say, more satisfying means of payment than money from me."

"I figured so," Remus snorted. Then he chuckled tiredly. "You do realize that 90 percent of people will think that this is some kind of a twisted joke?"

"Yeah," Sirius said, and nodded. "I don't really care, though. They will eventually figure out that this most definitely isn't a joke."

"What isn't a joke?" Nymphadora Tonks asked curiously, stepping into the room.

"Sirius's marriage isn't," Remus replied, bemused.

"Sirius's WHAT?" the young witch shrieked. "Siri's got married? Why didn't I hear of it before? When? Where? To whom?"

"Last March," Sirius replied, preparing himself for what would definitely come. "At Hogwarts. To Severus Snape-Black."

Tonks didn't exclaim anything, didn't look disbelieving, didn't demand the "real" answer from him. Instead, she did the least Tonks-like thing possible.

She fainted.