Strange Emulsion

September 5

Lupin showered quickly in the dingy stall of the third floor bathroom, no longer used, he had good reason to suspect, by anyone other than himself. Being on the third floor put it at a distinct disadvantage when it came to water pressure, but still he was grateful for any kind of bath that did not involve jumping into an ice-cold river or lake. As he arranged his robes back in his room, he had to remind himself to stop fidgeting. It was like that on the day of every full moon, knowing that in a few short hours what he dreaded the most would inevitably come to pass. Every time, he was seized with the irrational fear that the transformation would take place hours ahead of time, even a day ahead of time, and he would find himself trapped far from safety and privacy. Now his fears hinged on the potion. He performed a quick drying spell on his hair, and then pulled a comb through it, closing his eyes as he stood before the small mirror. What if the potion was not ready, or what if he could not get to the potion in time? Calm down, he told himself, Snape has the potion ready. You're going to see Snape tonight, remember? At that he froze, the comb poised over his head, as something hot and liquid blossomed, then exploded inside his chest, sending its strange message all through his limbs. The sensation was no longer of fear, but excitement. His blood sang in his veins, his breaths seemed deep and vital. Everything was going to be alright, and more than alright. He opened his eyes.

The sight of his graying hair, the small mirror, and the cramped room seemed to make his heart stop for a moment. "What?" he whispered, and the sound of his voice, so long unused, brought him back. For a moment he had expected nothing other than his face at seventeen, unlined, the hair evenly brown and the expanse of the Gryffindor dormitory room reflected in a large polished mirror. I was there, he thought, just for a moment. I was there. The cold shock of the present quelled the starburst of anticipation, but oddly some of it seemed to remain, tingling and pleasant, all across the backs of his arms. He decided to ignore it.

"Well then," he asked the mirror, "did I do alright? Shabby chic?" He stood before the well-worn mirror, hardly expecting it to answer. To his surprise it did, just as he was picking up his case.

"Sorry, dear," it wheezed at him, "just shabby." He huffed at it, and slammed the door as he left, hoping to hear a bit of broken glass hit the floor as he stomped down the corridor.

Snape leaned back against the sofa, utterly exhausted. From the bathroom came the sounds of Lupin knocking things over, then righting them in a show of maladroit nervousness. He's going to be a werewolf in fifteen minutes, Snape thought to himself, why did he insist on brushing his teeth? The tension in his head faded into a dull ache, and he pressed the junction of his skull and neck against the bowed back of the couch. Could get a headache potion, he mused as a clattering sound announced clearly that Lupin had just upset the toothbrush cup. He sighed, fighting the urge to look at the clock, where the hands were creeping with alarming swiftness towards eight. He pressed his hand to his forehead, but did not move, having had enough of potions that day to the point where he did not even want to swallow one.

It had been a long day, made even longer by the fact that the main event was just starting. If all went well it would still be a tiring experience. All day long it seemed he had been running back into his chambers, making sure that the potion was still in its upright position on the shelf in the cupboard. If it spilled, if the glass broke, if, if, if. It didn't even really bear thinking about, but he did, all day, and it had worn him out until he had personally supervised Lupin taking the last dose just before dinner. That wasn't even to mention how worn out his vocal cords were, the students having been particularly vexing all afternoon. He stifled a groan when he thought of the heights (or, rather, depths) Malfoy and Potter had reached in their little feud.

Then, to top it all off, Lupin had waltzed into the dungeons at half past seven! A mere half-hour before the transformation was supposed to take place! Snape had been steeling himself all day for Lupin's predictable demand that they finish their conversation, but he'd barely said a word, the strange nervous energy that had infected him all day having reached a peak that rendered him speechless, save for a mumbled request to use the bathroom. It had almost been a letdown, Snape admitted to himself. Being forced to finish that conversation was something that was bound to happen, and he was beginning to think the sooner, the better.

The door opened and Lupin stepped out, clearly, from the sound of it, walking like a drunk struggling not to reveal their condition. Snape didn't bother turning his head, but waited until the footsteps stopped before him to open his eyes.

"Lupin, what the hell are you wearing?" Briefly, Snape wondered if this strange attire could be considered one of the side effects of the stronger version of the potion. If so, the list was rapidly growing.

"Flannel bed sheet." His voice was clipped too, almost as if in anger. When Snape made no reply, he continued. "You said you wanted to watch me transform." Here he paused, a note of bitterness seeping into his speech. "I didn't think it would be terribly polite to come out here stark naked." He glanced at the clock with no discernable emotion crossing his features, and then sat on the rug before the fire.

"You can't transform in your clothes?" Snape asked. He practically kicked himself. Clearly, if Lupin was donning this ridiculous thing, wearing clothes was not really an option.

"It's not like being an Animagus," Lupin said, and Snape thought he detected a hint of sarcasm in his voice. "My clothes would be ripped to shreds if I left them on." He turned to look at Snape then, silently daring him to say "they already are," but no reply came.

"Will you be warm enough," Snape asked. "Or too warm? I can adjust the fire if you like." Snape cringed inwardly as he realized he was speaking only to fill the silence. Silence usually did not bother him under any circumstances, but with the clock nearing eight it seemed that the silence had an oppressive weight.

"I think I'll be fine, thanks." Lupin drew his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. Snape let his gaze fall to the feet sticking out from beneath the folds of the sheet. They were long and white, whiter even than Lupin's hands, and Snape wondered if he was simply inured to the cold.

"You seem calmer now," Snape said. "When did you start improving in that regard?" The extreme nervousness that the potion seemed to inspire in the werewolf had worried him, and he was relieved to see that it had somewhat abated.

"I am still quite nervous," Lupin admitted, "but the effects seem to all be inside me now. I still feel I'm shaking, even if I am holding still. But," he added, "that is somewhat normal for me, even without the potion. The potion seems only to have intensified it."

Snape reached for the small book he was using as a journal of this experiment and touched the cover, then decided to make that note after Lupin had transformed. It did not seem proper to let him know he was being viewed as a research subject. "It is almost eight," Snape said, trying to keep the apprehension out of his voice. "Is there anything you will require while you are transformed?"

"Water, perhaps," Lupin said, turning to him with a wry smile. "I promise, you won't have to take me outside." His smile faded as a muscle twitched in his cheek, and he turned to Snape, the panic in his eyes insufficiently repressed. "Must you watch this?"

Snape considered for a moment. Turning his head would probably be enough to satisfy Lupin's modesty, but then his own panic might get the better of him, if he couldn't see where the werewolf was. It was essential, too, that he be near while Lupin was transforming, in case something should go wrong with the adjusted potion. "I'm sorry Lupin," and he was surprised to find that his words were sincere. "I must."

Lupin had no sooner finished nodding when his face contorted with the kind of pain Snape had not seen since his days as a Death Eater. Lupin's head bowed down to the floor as if pushed by an invisible hand, while his hands reached forward towards nothing. His legs unfolded themselves until he was on his knees, his arms stretched before him along the floor. Snape had to look away from his face, now twisted in an expression that could only be partially due to the pain of his shifting bones, as his jaw was lengthening in a way that was clearly the source of most of his agony. He transferred his attention to Lupin's back, which was arching now in an arc that no human back could take without being broken, and then let his eyes wander towards his neck, now a single sinuous line with his back. The transformation of his face was nearly complete, Snape noticed with some relief, as he took in the high pointed ears, black, tipped with silvery white. Following the curve of his skull down to his nose Snape saw that most of his face was that same silver color, fading to black at his jaw and beneath to his chin. As he watched the last part of the transformation became complete, as the long canines typical to the werewolf asserted themselves from his gums. At this he whimpered, the first canine sound he had made during the entire ordeal. He paused, then, halfway between lying and standing, then sat up in the posture of a typical dog, sending the sheet to the floor.

As Snape reached for the diary he found himself taking a deep breath, the result of holding his breath as he had watched Lupin transform. Didn't expect it to get to me like that, he thought to himself as he added the most recent details to the entry on the potion, but he's obviously fine now. He began by noting the werewolf's markings. It was a most unusual pattern. His ears were tipped with a silvery white fur that also appeared on his head in patches, probably imitating the locks that had gone gray on Lupin's own head. The muzzle was highlighted in the same silvery color, and the underside of his chin was this color too, widening to a thick silver bib that Snape suspected continued down the center of his stomach in a broad stripe. The crest of his back was highlighted in the same way as his muzzle, as was the underside of his tail, but the rest of him appeared to be pure black. Snape hesitated before making that note, however, and as Lupin shifted a bit he saw why the black had appeared to be so bright--the fur was really silver, with black tips. "Well, I'll be damned, Lupin, an agouti wolf." Lupin actually lifted his head at that, as if in pride. Snape finished his entry by noting Lupin's request for water, and then walked to the sink to get a bowl.

As soon as he got up from the couch, the werewolf stood and began circling the sheet. Not this again, Snape thought as he filled the bowl. This restlessness needs to stop. "Are you going to be alright?" Snape asked, fully aware that the werewolf had no powers of human speech or comprehension. Still, it seemed to calm him, at least momentarily. Snape set the bowl of water in front of him, and he took a quick, sloppy drink, dripping water on to the rug. Snape sighed, wondering if werewolf drool stained. "Mind if I read the paper?" he asked as the wolf started circling again. As if in answer, Lupin dropped with a thud on to the sheet, arranging himself as if for sleep. "Very well then," Snape said, turning his attention to the front page of The Evening Prophet.

The front page was covered, predictably, with articles speculating on the whereabouts of Sirius Black. Snape particularly enjoyed an Op-Ed piece regarding the heavy reliance on Muggle technology and bureaucracy. The author favored obliviating each of the officials currently informed of Black's true status, a position Snape found he could not really argue with, though Albus surely would.

Flicking the paper open he started for a moment, seeing Lupin's name at the head of a small article, then groaned inwardly when he saw Rita Skeeter's name fairly glowering at him from within the body of the text. Why couldn't the infernally presumptuous woman at least stick to a simple by-line? Before he could even begin to read, though, Lupin began fidgeting again; not at all unlike he had the night before. "Don't tell me I'm going to have to spend the night petting you," he grumbled from behind the paper. His mood improved slightly, though, when he realized Rita's piece was mere filler about the DADA position being filled, not even mentioning Lupin's connection to either of his deceased friends, or, heaven forbid, to Black. Snape didn't even want to consider what would happen if she got wind of his monthly "illnesses."

"Lupin, listen up," he said languidly as he reached for a Muggle-style pen. "If Rita Skeeter ever finds out about your little disappearances, we will have to perpetuate the rumor that you are really a transvestite with a raging case of PMS." He glanced over the paper as he folded it to the crossword, to find the werewolf leaning its lengthy muzzle across its paws. The aquiline face of the true wolf was more aesthetically pleasing, but the broadness of the werewolf's muzzle lent the creature an odd, almost human look that Snape found disconcerting as he met Lupin's gaze. "Right, you don't understand a single word I'm saying, do you?"

Still, Snape found himself murmuring as he did the crossword, paying only a peripheral attention to the shifting of the werewolf. It was only after a particularly silent stretch that he noticed Lupin becoming restless once more.

"I can't finish this, Lupin," Snape said. "It asks for a five letter dark creature from Japan. I know of no such thing." He set the paper down on the floor, and then brought it back up to the couch. "Don't want to be giving you ideas," he muttered at the wolf.

Snape stretched and looked at the clock. "Aren't you getting tired?" The wolf's eyes looked almost hyper alert in the light from the fire, and Snape despaired of ever going to sleep. He fell silent; his head against the back of the couch, and the wolf began to fidget again, stretching out, and then retracting his hind legs over and over. "When can I sleep?" Snape demanded rhetorically, and the wolf was still. Snape sat up, a grim realization making itself known. "It's my voice, isn't it," he said flatly. "A human voice." He swore silently to himself as Lupin settled contentedly, vowing to make the potion more effectively the next time. "Very well, let me get some water."

As he settled himself back on to the couch, Snape scanned the bookshelves, looking for a tome he could comfortably read until Lupin fell to sleep, or his voice ran out, one or the other. Sinking in to the comfortable cushions, he decided he was really too tired to read, but the werewolf's pacing put out of his mind the thought that he might actually just stay blissfully quiet.

"I suppose that now would be a good time to end our little conversation," he said, "considering that you have no sense of my words, and I am too taxed to really consider what I'm saying." Predictably, the werewolf quit his pacing and settled on to the now fur-covered sheet. Snape watched as he settled his chin across his folded paws, affecting a look that was almost sentient looking, and quite endearing, if you could get past the whole man eating monster angle. "Well," he began, his voice momentarily saccharine, as if he were about to tell the story of Hansel and Grettel to a particularly annoying child, "I think we were on about why your trust means what it does to me." He found himself continuing in a much more serious tone, as if Lupin were actually there to hear him. "Where shall I begin?" Snape closed his eyes for a moment and found himself immersed in the eerie sensation that he was, literally, once more in front of the fire in the Slytherin common room. Shaking his head, he continued. "I've already availed you as to why I hated your little friends so much. Clearly they held the same regard for me, except for James. His hatred of me surpassed anything I could have dredged up for him, and I was so afraid he would poison you with the same sentiments. Yet I wasn't surprised when it became clear that you were your own person, quite unlike Pettigrew, even unlike Black, though between him and Potter it was difficult to tell who was following whom. It's almost a pity that Potter the younger has no such rival." He paused for a moment, sighing as the werewolf lifted its head in what looked like alarm. He was going to have to continue, but it would be good for him, he supposed, a kind of purge. "Do you remember when you started breaking away from them?" The wolf shifted a bit, but only to settle his head more comfortably on his paws. "Do you remember seeking me? I remain sure that that was what you were doing." Snape was surprised to find his voice growing fond at this memory, instead of bitter. "Not that you need reminding." He paused only until the werewolf picked his head up again. "I had figured what you were long before that," Severus continued, "and I know I don't need to remind you of the night you told me. The same night upon which you assured me that you would never hurt me." At this the werewolf took the opportunity to stretch out upon the rug, apparently besotted by the soothing tones of the human voice. "I took you at your word," he said, "something I never should have done with such a young wizard, accepting a promise that a grown werewolf could not, in good faith, make. But I overestimated us both, I set my intellect and pragmatism aside for my," he paused long enough to inspire a bout of leg twitching from Lupin, "for my extreme regard for you." The werewolf settled with a huff.

Snape allowed his mind to wander, reliving the sweet, now bittersweet, evening wherein Lupin had made all his assurances with the rampant enthusiasm of a typical teenager, his only problem being that he was anything but typical. "When Black decided to play his little joke, I have no doubt that he had an inkling of what was between us. I even think that I might have survived with you, if his posturing hadn't delayed me from my original plan to meet you before your transformation. He never stopped to wonder why I was already on the path to the Willow that night when he came looking for me." Snape fought the urge to grind his teeth at the memory of Black's unctuous voice, his presumptuous challenge. "You know what happened next," Snape said again, barely remembering that he was talking to a werewolf and may as well have been reading the back of the shampoo bottle. "That is why your trust came to mean so little to me. Your promises, made too rashly, were not to be taken seriously." He glanced down at the wolf, who appeared to be, finally, asleep. "But I believe you wanted me to explain why it also means much to me," Snape said quietly, barely daring to believe that Lupin had finally drifted off. "I can hardly say. Except that even after that, I never gave up hope that you would see past your little circle of friends. I could never seem to reach you after that, you were never alone. And I admit I did not seek you quite as creatively as I might have. Still, I was sorely tempted to turn on all of you, but I did not, because I was waiting for you. Despite all that separated us that year, I was waiting for you." Snape felt a cold draft waft through him; the knowledge that he'd admitted his greatest incidence of weakness, even to a non-sentient animal, wrenched the warmth from his body. "And then seeing you this year." Snape felt as though he was speaking in a dream, his voice barely connected to his body. "There might still be some hope for us." He let his head drop against the back of the couch, then glanced with alarm towards the wolf. Lupin still appeared to be sleeping, and Snape didn't dare to disturb him in the slightest. He began to stretch out on the couch, preparing for another night away from his bed, but another glance at Lupin stopped him. The werewolf might roam, and in his exhausted state there was no telling what might and what might not wake him. Sighing deeply he heaved himself off the comfortable cushions and went to his room.

The sumptuous four-poster fairly beckoned to him, but he put the possibility out of his mind. He had an intellectual and moral responsibility to watch over the werewolf, at least for this one transformation. Rummaging in the back of his wardrobe he finally found what he was looking for--an absolutely ridiculous jester's hat that had come out of a wizard cracker the Christmas before last. Why he had kept it he couldn't say, but as he pulled off one of the jingle bells he was glad he had.

From a spool on his workbench he unwound a length of sturdy twine, and threaded it through the bell. "Now hold still," he murmured as he approached the sleeping wolf. Predictably, Lupin woke as soon as he felt the twine circling his neck, and whined feebly. "Just a moment," muttered Snape. The knot was not too tight or loose, but Lupin made a half-hearted attempt to get out of it anyway, endeavoring to thread a paw through the loop. "You will leave that on," Snape said in his typical threatening low tone, "or I will spank you." He felt the corners of his mouth twisting up at this unexpected caprice and pressed the offending paw into the rug. Surprisingly, the wolf settled again with only the slightest shake of the bell. Satisfied that he would wake if the wolf moved from the rug, Snape laid back on the couch, pulling the duvet over himself.

His eyes opened what seemed only seconds later, but the chamber was filling with the enchanted sunlight. He lay still for a moment; sure that something other than the thin light had wakened him. Listening carefully, he was sure he heard the faint ringing of the bell.

He turned his head, but the wolf was not on the rug. Slinging his arm over the back of the couch he pulled himself up, trying to ignore the stiffness in his back. Lupin was sitting in the chair next to the couch, human, dressed in shabby looking Muggle jeans and a navy blue tee shirt with paint splatters on it. He was leaning his back against one arm, his legs stretched across the other arm and the arm of the couch, with his still bare feet hanging over Snape's blanket covered ones. His mind still muddled with sleep Snape wondered, why do shabby Muggle clothes somehow manage to look better than shabby robes? Then he heard the bell again, and realized that Lupin was dangling the thing off the end of one finger. He turned his palm toward the floor, inclining his fingertips down. He gave it a particularly vehement jingle and grinned at Snape as they both watched the loop of twine slide over his fingernail. The bell gave one last jingle as it slid off, crashing to the floor.

"Oops," he said quietly, his canines still looking more prominent than usual, "I took it off." He looked to the floor, then back at Snape, and his eyes crinkled in what was fast becoming a familiar manner. "Are you really going to spank me?"