The List

1.

Snape's face is strangely smooth in the firelight: as pale and glassy as the Blacks' old china, stained and yellow with age. It is in the midst of this silence, wary rather than companionable, that Snape glances up - and Remus is caught looking at Snape's hands, at the way they curve around his cup of tea.

Remus doesn't bother looking away.

"You're a fool for wanting this," Snape murmurs, as though they haven't done this before.

"And you're a fool for indulging me."

They aren't alone in the house. Shacklebolt and Tonks have left, but the children are still upstairs: Harry and his friends in their respective rooms, huddled under musty sheets.

Snape's eyes are cold, but his hands are tea-warmed, as is his mouth - tongue rough and slightly unpleasant, slightly sour, curling a heat in Remus' belly that is almost unwilling.

"Not here," Snape says unnecessarily, and Remus pulls away - wipes a hand across his lips and leads Snape to the pantry, where they pull the door closed behind them and ward it.

It's too close here for either of them to step away; too dark for them to see each other, not that they need or want to.

2.

Morning's as cruel as the night was. Arthur brings them news of more Muggle killings, with the Mark left on each body; the Muggle authorities appear to be chasing a serial killer, and Arthur's team is near-mad from trying to stay one step ahead of them, disguising or eliminating the evidence before the Muggles discover it.

Strange, protecting Voldemort from justice. Protecting the Death Eaters.

"Protecting ourselves," Snape says quietly, and Remus remembers that Snape's a Legilimens - isn't as disturbed as he used to be, to have Snape pick out his thoughts when they're sitting this close.

"They're sending us a message," Tonks says blithely over Snape's near-whisper; Bill Weasley, at the other end of the table, shakes his head.

"They don't need to send us messages." Bill makes a face over his morning toast. "We already know they hate Muggles. They're trying to keep us distracted."

"I'm afraid you're right," comes Albus' weary voice. "Severus, have you heard anything?"

"No," Snape mutters, then pauses. "Not quite."

"Not quite?" A sharp, young voice this time - Harry's - and Remus turns to give him a warning look, trying to remind him that they're only letting him sit in on these meetings if he stays quiet - but Harry's face is already red, his hands already white where they clench the arm-rests of his chair. "What the hell does that mean?"

Snape gives him a cold, level stare. "It means," he drawls, "that I am unsure of the information I have."

"It means that you're lying."

"Now, Harry - " Albus tries to interrupt, but Snape speaks up before he can. Or rather, Snape laughs - a short, abrupt bark of laughter that reminds Remus of what Snape sounds like after the Cruciatus - grating, jagged and dull at once.

"Little fool." Snape bares his teeth. "Have you not learned that half-truths are more dangerous than whole ones? If I tell you that I don't know, then I don't know. Enough. And that is all."

"I think you'd better leave, Harry," Remus says when it looks like Harry's going to explode - and Harry darts a hot, shocked glance at him, betrayed, before shoving his chair back and leaving the room.

"Oh, my." Albus raises his eyebrows when Harry slams the door.

Snape's jaw clenches. Surprisingly, he doesn't start on one of his tirades against Harry; instead, his face appears to have paled even further, and his fingers look thin when they curl on the table's scarred wood.

"Severus?" Arthur, this time, hesitant.

"They're testing me." Severus looks up at Albus then, and his eyes are curiously blank. "He's testing me."

"What?" Tonks frowns across the table.

"They're..." Snape flexes his hands. "They're keeping this hidden from me. This new spate of attacks. The targets, the locations. I know nothing. I've heard... hints... from Nott, about special deliveries for our Lord, but they carry no real information."

"You mean..." Bill's eyes widen.

"They're calling meetings without me."

"They're hoping," Albus clarifies, "that Severus betrays himself. When they do call him and tell him locations, they'll know that he's reporting to us if we meet them at those locations to stop the murders."

"But if no one stops them, they'll know that I can be trusted, because the pattern won't have changed after their telling me."

"A controlled experiment," Remus finds himself saying. "They're testing the success of their operation without you, and then they'll be testing it - "

" - with me. Unless I find a cover."

Remus realises, then, what Snape had meant by "not quite"; the only way to save Severus' life, once Voldemort calls him, is to let the Muggles get killed.

Opportunity cost. One spy for many innocent lives.

"Yes," whispers Snape, closing his eyes. "Yes."

Remus almost touches Snape's shoulder, then, before he stops himself - but Albus' eyes, ever-sharp despite his deceptively mild voice, catch the movement of Remus' hand anyway.

"It's been a tiring day," Albus says gently, smoothing his beard as he stands up. "Severus, why don't you stay here tonight?"

3.

The shelves dig into Remus' back, the scent of wood, spices and whiskey all around him - Snape's scent, too, up close and bitter, potions and musk and iodine.

"You're hurt," he says, almost blankly, realising what the iodine must mean. "Where - "

"Shut up," Snape hisses, hands busy on Remus' shirt - and then he's touching Remus - fingers cool on hot skin, smooth on rough scars - sloping over Remus' chest and down to his trousers, tugging at them, and Remus is too dizzy to think. An eternity of panting, of scrabbling against the shelves, before Snape finds what he wants.

"Look at me," Snape says harshly when Remus' head lolls back, when Remus' hips arch to the stroke of Snape's dry hand. "Look at me - "

So Remus does, meeting the glint of Snape's eyes in the dark - black glass - but then Snape's grip jerks and Remus' vision sparks white, his mouth gasping, throat burning - and it's only when he's aware again that he notices Snape pressed wetly against Remus' own waist, spent, Snape's mouth open and vicious against his throat.

Snape's robes rustle, crow's feathers, under the clench of Remus' fists.

Remus wins his own bet, as usual, when Snape pulls away first - but it is much later than it should be, and Remus is somewhat surprised that he has to loosen his hands to let Snape go.

4.

Remus dropped Harry off at the station this morning, with the protection of Tonks and five other Aurors under glamours, of course - so it's something of a shock to return to Grimmauld Place and find it buzzing with activity, Arthur Weasley talking excitedly in the kitchen, spectacles askew, holding a crumpled scroll in his hand.

"We got it," Arthur's telling the Order when Remus steps in. "We got it!"

"Got what?"

"The list," Shacklebolt explains. "Snape's list."

Remus freezes, one hand still on the chair he's about to pull out for himself. "What?" he asks again.

"The Muggles." Arthur unrolls the scroll and lays it out: long and wide, Snape's spidery, ill-tempered scrawl black across the yellowed parchment. "Each one of You-Know-Who's targets, over the next four weeks..."

A murmur of appreciation from around the table - but Remus' own face is strangely stiff, strangely numb. "Has Snape found a cover?"

"'Course he has," Tonks smiles. "He wouldn't have done it otherwise, would he?"

5.

The pantry remains unlocked. Unwarded. One, two, three nights in a row - Remus sits by the fire, waiting, but there is no tread of boots behind him, no waft of bitter, black tea.

His own cup of tea grows cold.

This is familiar, really, too familiar - Snape had discovered him in the pantry more than a year ago, exhausting Sirius' supply of firewhiskey, when Remus had finally grown sick of tea. Had taken to breaking the crockery, even, after Harry'd left for school.

But Remus won't venture in there now. Not to the thickening silence, dust on glass jars and shelf after shelf of preserves - not to that scent of wood and spices, no, not anymore.