When the Shadows Cry

When the Shadows Cry

**

In the still of the night,

When there's no hint of light,

You tell me that the shadows cry.

*

Severus Snape lay on a couch in the Grimmauld Place, number twelve. It had been a long day, and he was simply too tired to go back to Hogwarts. Fortunately, it was Friday; nobody would require his presence at school too early the next morning. As much as he despised the house of Black, which was as much as he hated the current owner of the building, he found that resting there for the night was the simply best option.

At first, he kept his eyes shut as he heard somebody enter the room. He kept his breathing light and regular. He was not consciously trying to act asleep; it was more a habit he'd never quite got rid of. A habit brought to existence with too much spying, too much fear, too much hiding. He could look to anyone like he was sleeping when he was wide awake, and he could catch noises when he was sound asleep. Now, he was acting asleep.

He heard someone rustle through some papers. Most likely the parchments left on the table after yet another Order meeting. It had taken place in the kitchen as usual, but afterwards they'd spent a whole lot of time in this room going through all the tiny details and suspicions.

After a moment, he opened his eyes just enough to see through his lashes to see who was in the room. He immediately noticed that even if he'd purposefully wanted to act asleep, the person who'd entered was the only one who he couldn't fool by acting. Lupin was examining the papers and organizing them into neat piles.

Suddenly, the door opened again. He could just hold back a sneer when he saw his old archenemy, Sirius Black, walk into the room. He lazily let his gaze follow Black as the Animagus walked to the table as well.

Black shot a glare towards him, then stood behind Lupin. He carefully snaked his hands around the other man's waist, smirking slightly. "Moooo-nyyy," he whispered huskily.

Lupin gasped and dropped the few papers he had in his hand. "Sirius!" he exclaimed. "You frightened me."

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Moony," Black said, not sounding the tiniest bit sorry. "What are you doing?"

"Just looking through these papers," Lupin said absent-mindedly. "Albus asked me to check something."

"But you don't have to do that right now, do you?" Black moaned hoarsely. His hands slid down to the werewolf's thighs, then backwards to cup his arse. Severus saw as he squeezed slightly Lupin's buttocks. "You know what I want," he heard Black's lust-filled words.

"Sirius," Lupin said warningly, "stop. Severus is on the couch."

Black glared again at him, then snorted. "The greasy git is sound asleep," he observed. "And it's not like I was going to do it here anyway. There are a lot better places to have sex in than some old meeting room."

"Sirius," the werewolf said, obviously exerting a great effort to control his voice, "I'd prefer if we didn't do it at all tonight."

"Why not?" Black asked, sounding hurt and angry.

"Try to understand, Sirius," Lupin sighed, sounding nervous and frustrated at the same time, something that confused Severus a great deal. "It's not that I don't love you or anything. I do love you, more than you can ever understand. But I just - I just can't. Not tonight."

"You have somebody else, don't you?" Black accused, his voice rising now quite a bit. He turned Lupin around by shoulders and spat, "You're cheating on me!"

"No, I'm not," Lupin said weakly. "I would never even dream of cheating on you. I love you, and you only. It's just, Sirius -"

"You are seeing someone," Black insisted, with a jealous glint in his eyes. "That's why you don't want me anymore. You're getting satisfied elsewhere!"

"No, it's not that! Siri, I love you, I really do. I just -" Lupin tried to say, but Black cut him off with a fierce kiss. The dark-haired man seemed to be so deep in his heat that he didn't even notice the utter lack of response or Lupin's practically frozen body. Not frozen by surprise, but by shock and terror.

At last Black released him and said huskily, "If you really love me," another kiss, "then you'll sleep with me."

Lupin was quiet for a moment. Then he said resignedly, "Fine," then followed Black out of the room.

Severus lay still for a moment, shocked. Had what he'd just witnessed been true?

*

Your eyes dwell with sudden tears

As you whisper what you hear,

You see, you hear all your fears

And I hold you near.

*

The next evening, Severus strolled through the corridors of the Grimmauld Place. He had a steaming goblet in his hands with a non-spilling charm placed on it. He'd come to bring Lupin his Wolfsbane.

The Slytherin hesitated for a moment in front of Lupin and Black's bedroom. The scene from the previous night was still disturbing him. He'd hardly slept a moment the night before, being too full of questions and suspicions to actually calm down and fall asleep.

Then, he collected all his Slytherin pride and courage, raised his chin, and opened the door.

He was relieved to find that it was just Lupin in the room. He couldn't have faced Black after what he'd seen.

Severus laid the goblet on the nightstand, just like he always did. Lupin muttered his quiet thanks and emptied the goblet, grimacing as the last foul-tasting drops slid down his throat. He then gave the goblet back to Severus, expecting the Potions Master to leave like he always did.

When he was still there after a moment, Lupin frowned. "Was there something else you wanted, Severus?" he asked, his tone just as polite and gentle as always.

Severus decided to go right to the problem. "Lupin," he said snappishly, "what was that scene with Black last night?"

"It was nothing, really," Lupin said quietly. He didn't try to deny that some "scene" really had taken place in the house the night before, however.

"Really?" Severus asked, narrowing his eyes. "It bloody well looked like something to me. It looked like something called 'a rape in marriage!'"

Lupin flinched like he'd been hit. He didn't say anything, however. He merely lowered his eyes to the floor and fiddled uneasily with the simple golden band in his left hand. His wedding ring.

"Don't you dare try to tell me it wasn't," Severus said sharply. "It's only two days to full moon. You can't have any kind of sexual need or pleasure the few days prior and after the transformation. Perhaps you didn't stop him, but it bloody wasn't anything other than a downright rape, for Merlin's sake!"

"Yeah," Lupin said, still with the same quiet tone. "But Sirius doesn't know."

"Doesn't know?" Severus echoed, shocked. "He's been married to you for Salazar knows how bloody many years and doesn't know about that? You must be kidding!"

"I wish I were," Lupin said, raising his now teary eyes at Severus. "But he won't listen to me. I think that even if I presented him ten books all stating the same, he'd only say that I'm lying and cheating on him behind his back!"

"Then why do you put up with him?" the Slytherin demanded to know. "If he doesn't trust you, why should you cling on him?"

"You don't understand, Severus," the werewolf replied quietly. "He loves me. He loves me enough to have married me. No one else could do that for me - and no one else would. It may pain me, but I'd do so much more for the love he's giving to me."

Severus stared to the teary golden eyes. For about the first time in his life, he found himself lacking all words. He simply couldn't say anything, anything that wouldn't sound cruel or completely unfeeling, at least.

He turned on his heels and left the room quickly.

*

You asked: 'Don't you really hear

When the shadows cry?

Don't you see a silver tear,

Do you even try?'

*

Severus was on a bad mood. The Order meeting was getting longer and longer with no signs of ending any time soon, he'd have to check the homework of his sixth-year Gryffindor-Slytherin class, and Black had done something to Lupin, again.

It was so obvious that he genuinely wondered how nobody other noticed it. Every now and then Lupin flinched slightly as in pain, then shot a careful glance to Black's direction. Yet nobody other but the Animagus and Severus, seemed to even pay attention to this.

Every time Lupin flinched, Black gave him a smug grin. And every time Lupin would give him a smile in return, but it was always forced and pained, never genuine. The others didn't seem to notice this either, or if they did, they ignored it.

Severus, however, noticed it very well. And it bothered him a great deal.

After the meeting, he purposefully lingered back, saying that he had to look at some Dark artefacts in one of the rooms. He was readily believed; after all, he had told Albus he'd some day look at some of the objects in the house.

It didn't take long before he heard somebody enter the room. He raised his eyes from the charmed silver knife he'd been examining. He wasn't at all surprised as he saw Lupin enter the room and sit on one of the chairs.

However, he also saw how Lupin flinched in pain as he sat.

"Well," Severus asked sharply, "what did he do to you this time?"

Lupin bit his lip and kept quiet for some time. Just as the Slytherin thought he wouldn't say anything, and prepared to try to coax the information from him, the werewolf spoke, shocking him.

"No lubrication this time," Lupin said through clenched teeth, his eyes fixed on the floor, "no preparation. I told him to stop it. I told him I didn't like it, that it hurt too much, but he wouldn't listen to me. He said I'd learn to enjoy it, but, Severus, I don't think I can ever like it." Tears filled the golden eyes. "It hurt so damn much, and he laughed as I screamed..."

"Oh, Salazar," Severus muttered to himself, horrified by what he heard.

"But afterwards he kissed me, kissed and caressed me. He apologized for hurting me, said he'd thought I'd like it, and he said he loves me." Lupin didn't even try to hold back the tears. "I want to believe him, gods, I have to believe him!"

"He's lying," Severus said simply. "If he truly loved you, he'd stop as you say no."

"He has to love me," the werewolf said quietly. "Why else would he be with me?"

"Because he craves sex," the Slytherin snarled. "And you are always available for him. You won't deny him anything he asks for - or anything he doesn't even bother to ask for."

Lupin flinched again, then said, "But he could have sex with anybody. I know that. You know that. No matter how much you despise him, you have to admit that he is good-looking. Why'd he sleep with such a freak of nature like me if he didn't love me?"

"A freak of nature?" Severus echoed. "Merlin, Lupin, where you lost your self-respect? Where's the man who spent a whole damn year trying to tell me that you're just as human as anybody else?"

"Maybe the man realized that you lot were right," Lupin said, and sounded suddenly very tired. Not tired as in sleepy sense, but as... Tired of life. Tired of everything. "Maybe the man realized that there was no use to fight against the truth, no matter how cruel and unfeeling it might be." With this, Lupin stood. "Goodbye, Severus," he said briefly, then left before the Slytherin could reply with anything.