Of Monsters

Part two: Hallways

This is ridiculous, Severus had said.

And Remus had said, yes.

And Severus hadn't wanted it to stop, hadn't wanted the hands to go away, and the open, yielding, moving mouth, and the warmth, and the deep, half-stifled noises.

I'm sorry, Remus had said.

I don't hate you.

And Severus had said: monster. He had said: get away.

And Remus had touched him anyway.

Now (again, some more, no difference) Severus was afraid.

"Would you like to change your robes, Mr. Snape?"

A freezing of his chest, stopping the heart with a deathlike thud. Severus knew it must have still been beating, but it felt like it had stopped. Constriction of the throat. A cold tingle over the skin. He knows, how does he know? Unconscious creeping of the hand, whispering over the front of his robes, checking for wetness, a stain.

"You've been in them all night," continued Dumbledore calmly. "I think the passageway is a bit gritty, is it not?"

A flush, a flood of relief, like the heart starting again, the veins inflating and warming up. Still, a nervous nausea was rising up his throat. Does he know or doesn't he? Severus felt heavy with dread.

Dumbledore paused outside the antechamber of the Great Hall. "I will wait," he said, nodding at the open doorway, toward the stairs that lay just inside and twisted down into the dungeons. Severus nodded briskly and hurried down them, through the green-lit empty common room, and down the long, dripping, many-doored hallway of the dormitories. He crept into his room, cursing the creak of the door.

"And where have you been?" purred Evan Rosier, peeking out the slit between his bedcurtains. Severus stopped in the middle of the room.

"I -"

"- You'd be surprised how quickly news travels," Rosier said, letting the hangings fall back over his face.

Severus waited for more, terrified, but none came. The room was filled with snores, and he felt suddenly heavy, very sleepy. He got on with changing into his other set of robes, his heavy woolen winter ones, and wiped the drying tackiness off himself as well as he could with the hem of his bedsheet. He bunched the soiled robes into a tight ball and stuffed them under his pillow.

Upstairs, Severus followed Dumbledore into his office, where he'd never been before. It was filled with the gentle soughing of sleeping portraits, all of whom looked elderly and rich. Severus scanned them nervously.

"Have a seat." Dumbledore nodded at one of the plush, voluptuous chairs that faced his desk and waited until Severus was in it before sitting down himself. He pulled open a drawer on the inner side of the desk and produced from it Severus' wand. He placed it on the desktop, halfway between himself and Severus, and folded his hands in front of him. His face was neutral, his default expression, somehow open and closed at the same time. Severus took his wand and tucked it inside his sleeve.

"May I call you Severus?" Dumbledore said lightly.

"Yes, Headmaster."

"Good." The smile again. It put Severus on edge; smiles meant something was wanted of him. "Why don't you tell me what happened, Severus?"

Severus took a deep breath.

"I caught Lupin underneath the Whomping Willow. He's a werewolf - but you know that already, I suppose? He got - very close."

"And, if I may ask, Severus, what brought you to the tunnel underneath the Willow?"

Severus chewed the inside of his cheek.

"Sirius Black set me up. He told me where to go."

"Where to go - for what, exactly?"

"For... to find out about Lupin."

"Ah. And Mr. Potter?"

Severus scowled. "Must have gotten cold feet."

Dumbledore nodded and seemed to think this over.

"Is it possible, Severus, that Mr. Potter was not in on the joke?"

Severus stared at him coldly, boldly. "It is possible, Headmaster."

"You know what you owe him, don't you."

"Yes, of course I know," spat Severus.

"Hm," said Dumbledore, staring unreadably at Severus. "Were you able to speak with Mr. Lupin during your stay in the Hospital wing?"

Severus nodded slowly. Dumbledore raised his eyebrows.

"He claims he had nothing to do with it," said Severus flatly.

"And what do you think, Severus?"

Severus averted his eyes. "It... is possible."

Dumbledore nodded thoughtfully and rested back in his chair. "Do you remember your first day at Hogwarts, Severus?"

Severus's eyes shifted around the room; where was this going? He nodded mutely.

"And the train ride?" Another nod. "So do I," said Dumbledore fondly. "It is one of my most treasured memories. On the train, everyone around me frightened, the older students telling us all wild lies about the pains and dangers that awaited us... the mix of dread and glee on everyone's face... children from every background, every ancestry, every class, Muggle-born and Wizard-born, old families, broken ones, all indistinguishable from one another, all feeling the same frightened joy..."

Severus narrowed his eyes. He saw the technique now, like the brush strokes in a painting, ugly and intentional from up close.

"... what were you feeling on the train, Severus?"

Fear, freedom. Frightful freedom (but he was not afraid, he told himself. There was nothing to fear; anyway he feared nothing). Physical separation, the links between here and there (himself and his parents, himself and his rotting house, himself and all the things that had happened inside it) stretching and thinning like taffy. Fear for his mother, fear of letting her out of his sight, regret that he had spoken nastily to her before the train had left, because she had made him feel small, smaller than he thought he was, and babyish, and humiliated.

Let me go. I have to go.

Are you scared, dear?

No. Let me go.

"Happy," said Severus, not really lying, because under everything he had been happy, crazily happy, like a Seeker in a desperate dive, spinning dizzy-lost toward the ground.

"Good," said Dumbledore softly. "You're wizard-born, yes? It was a given that you'd come here, that you'd be given the same chance as all your fellows..."

A hard lump rose in Severus' throat. This was truly unfair; this was worse than he had expected. Dumbledore kept using his name, he was playing with him, he was looking for soft spots. You assume I have soft spots, Headmaster. And with a jolt Severus remembered Remus' hands.

"I'll spare you the trouble," said Severus sharply, and Dumbledore fell abruptly silent, raising his eyebrows, clearly unused to being interrupted. "You want me to keep quiet? Fine. I've nothing to gain by telling, anyway."

Dumbledore smiled indulgently. "Impeccable logic as usual, Severus."

Severus stared at his hands. Soft spots. There was no logic to this.

He took the serpentine staircase slowly, dragging a hand over the stone walls, lowering himself into the ground.

How many mistakes had he made since sunset? How much debt was he in? He owed silence to Dumbledore - slick Dumbledore, pandering to him, holding this newborn life-debt over his head. Resentment was growing inside Severus like a bruise, filling and swelling, sore, vulnerable to the tiniest pressure.

And Remus. (oh, hands, belly, oh). Remus hadn't finished with him, he had still been groaning, frustrated, against him (warmth, half-stifled noises) when the knock came. Severus owed him, and the thought brought disgust, arousal; a sick feeling in his stomach and a warm comfort running up the insides of his thighs. He felt fluttery and unstable, and dragged against the wall of the long dorm hallway.

What do you want?

Too much.

Are you scared, dear?

No, let me go.

I don't hate you.

Severus wanted to vomit.

His roommates were all awake and lounging sullenly on their beds. In their good robes, Severus noted with a twinge of distaste. Those robes would be worn threadbare at the shoulders and hips within a year if they kept that up. Severus believed in taking care of the things that were his. Waste enraged him.

Rosier sat up smoothly as Severus walked in. He knows. Does he know?

"You in trouble?" asked Goyle.

"We heard you got beat up," said Crabbe.

"By Gryffindors," said Rosier, smirking.

"It was nothing," Severus said, shrugging and sitting cross-legged on his bed. He pulled a textbook - a random one, Herbology - off the bedside table and opened it on his lap, bending over it and resting his forehead on his fist. His usual technique, casual avoidance, nothing personal.

"The old man have at you?" Rosier asked, leaning into Severus's peripheral vision.

"He... there was a talk."

"Sided with the Gryffindors, did he?"

Severus raked a hand through his hair and looked up at him. Rosier wore a hungry look: a half-smile, sharp at the edges, his eyes narrowed and bright.

"Made you feel like you were the one in the wrong," Rosier continued. Severus nodded guardedly. "He doesn't understand us, Dumbledore. Don't you agree?"

Severus shrugged uneasily. Rosier had an evangelical energy about him, leaning forward with his angular and predatory face. He was scary in the way that evangelists are: something in their eyes, their devotion, their singleness and focus, a passion that borders on delirium. Severus spoke slowly, appeasingly, as he had to Dumbledore.

"He's the most powerful wizard in the world; I don't suppose -"

"The most powerful," Rosier said, a slow and dangerous drawl. "The most powerful in the world."

A smile split Goyle's broad face.

"Perhaps you should rethink that, Severus," said Rosier lightly, and he stared until Severus couldn't help looking away.

Pulling back inside his hangings, pulling back inside himself, Severus stretched out on his rumpled bed, still feeling sick. There was a hard lump in the middle of his pillow, and he reached underneath and met the cool, sticky damp of his robes. His hand jerked back reflexively. It was like afterbirth, a dead body, congealing blood: something final and irreparable, visceral and hopeless. Ordinary and terrifying.

I have soft spots. I have.

You know what you owe him, don't you? Don't you? Don't you?

Let me go.

He had his wand and he knew curses, but none of it was any good to him now. He repaid his debts. He hated them. He gave what he owed and no more.

* * *

The room was as lazily chaotic as it ever was; James and Sirius bantering loudly about Quidditch, laughter stuttering from them and hands waving in grandiose, unnecessary gestures; Peter bouncing on the bed and nodding along; ambient fidgety noise and voices running over one another. The usual sounds of Saturday mornings, of calm times. Remus, sequestered inside his hangings, hugging his knees to his chest, felt slightly embittered. He would have preferred a pall, he felt he deserved one. Some heavy air, some discomfort. Not that he was surprised.

Sirius was sorry, he knew that, and the pitch and speed of his chatter told him he was nervous too. When Remus had walked in just after dawn, making just enough semi-accidental noise to wake his roommates, Sirius had drawn back his bedcurtains and stared at Remus with eyes so huge and frightened that Remus nearly hadn't recognized them. They hadn't belonged on the square-jawed, laugh-lined face, they seemed to subsume it and float disembodied in the bluish half-light. They had stared until Remus granted them a sparing, strained smile, and then they had narrowed under that familiar half-moon grin and Remus had felt a rush of relief, as if he was off the hook, as if he was the one who had been forgiven.

Bare footsteps padded across the room, and Sirius inserted a finger between Remus' hangings and drew them ever so slightly open, enough reveal a narrow streak of his face: one eye, a nostril, the grim corner of the mouth.

"All right, Moony?" the mouth said. Remus nodded. The eye looked up, and the brow above it crinkled. "Yeah?"

Remus smiled tightly and nodded again. Sirius let the curtain fall and from outside it muttered, "Good. Okay."

But it wasn't, and Remus resented Sirius for needing it to be.

He didn't feel guilty, exactly. Fearful, nervous, regretful, yes, but not guilty. He hadn't been the one with the power, had he? Though Severus would undoubtedly argue (were he ever in a position to argue such a thing. But when and why would he be?) that Remus was the one with the claws, Remus was the monster, the It, the thing. The thing that devours, that soils and takes. Primal, and full of urges and wants.

But Severus wanted it as much as he had. Hadn't he?

What do you want?

Too much?

No.

Yes.

I'm going to go get ready for bed," Remus said, yawning genuinely - he was exhausted. His roommates nodded and watched him gather up his towel, his toothbrush, his comb. He eased the door shut behind him so that it wouldn't slam. He was too edgy for loud noises.

He was on the second stair when he heard quick footsteps behind him, and a soft voice saying, "Remus?" He half-turned, and there was James, hurrying toward him with something in his hand.

"Forgot soap," James said, and held it out, standing above Remus on the first step.

"There's soap in the Prefects' bathroom," said Remus, but he took the porridge-gray washed-thin bar anyway, and slipped it in the centerfold of his towel. James shrugged, and Remus was sure he knew very well that there was soap in the Prefects' bathroom.

"You know..." James began, scratching idly in his tousled hair and glancing around the stairwell. "You know, Sirius didn't mean - he didn't mean anything, I think. He didn't think. I don't think he really got what could have, um, happened with you until it was already done. And when he heard..." James' voice dropped to a deep murmur. "...he was just - I've never seen him like that, he was so scared. He threw up all over his bed, you know? After I told him what had happened. We had to do three Cleansing Charms to get it all out. He was an absolute mess."

Remus leaned back against the wall and ran one hand over his face, pressing the heel of his palm to one eye, which felt sunken and sore.

"Thanks, James," he said hoarsely, and it sounded a little more casual and indifferent than he meant it. He brought his hands down and nodded at James. "I know - I mean, I know Sirius."

James nodded gravely.

"Anyway," he said after a moment, closing the subject. Remus shifted his armful of toiletries and dropped one foot to the third stair. James reached down and patted him roughly on his bicep, which hurt more than it was meant to. "It's all okay, right?'

"Right, yeah."

James turned and ambled slowly down the hall, his hands clasped behind him. Remus didn't stay to watch him long.

The Prefects' bathroom was off a stubby side corridor, isolated from the main traffic of the fifth floor. Other Prefects found this inconvenient; Remus liked it. It was at a safe distance, and quiet.

Today, though, there was someone at the end of the hallway, outside the penumbra of torchlight, indistinct but recognizable: Severus. Remus stopped at the mouth of the corridor and watched him, wary with a quiet undertone of thrill.

Severus stepped into the light.

"Lupin," he said.

"Snape," said Remus, nodding once, slowly. "Did you - what do you want?" Blackmail, he thought. But we've both got a secret, haven't we?

Severus walked up to him, taking long, lurching strides. He stopped very close to Remus, leaving less than a foot between them. Remus' muscles tensed, his bones felt icy and fragile.

"I'm not afraid of you," he said. But in a small way, a way that he fought, he was.

Severus shocked him by chuckling. Not warmly, but dryly, mirthlessly, like a cough.

"Perhaps you should be," he said, looking off to the side. Then, taking a small step back, he said. "That's not what I'm here for." He reached up with both hands and brushed the hair from the sides of his face, advertising his wandlessness.

Remus relaxed, but only a little.

Then Severus' tongue flicked over his upper lip, quickly, strikingly, and he looked right into Remus' eyes. Remus felt an internal jolt, a rearrangement: relief, desire, fear. Severus' eyes flickered toward the bathroom door and back again. Remus stared at him a moment, then approached.

"Lukewarm," he said to the door, and it clicked and fell ajar. Remus discreetly slipped a hand inside his robes, laying the first joint of his fingers over his wand, tensed and ready. He slipped sideways into the bathroom, unwilling to turn his back on Severus. Severus turned his back, though, and shut the door quietly. Then he walked boldly up to Remus and kissed him, like an attack, a pounce, seizing him roughly by the shoulders, smashing their lips together painfully, and with a jarring click of teeth. Remus dropped his towel, and the comb clattered on the floor. Behind them, the mermaid giggled, and Severus pulled away abruptly, rearing like a threatened snake. He let Remus go and rounded the ridiculous bathtub, tilting his head as he approached the painting. The mermaid squealed indignantly as he lifted the portrait off the wall and set it on the floor, leaning against the wall, its subject facing inward.

He turned back to Remus.

"You never finished," he said.

Remus frowned for a moment before he understood. He shrugged uncomfortably. "Not your fault."

Severus stood and stared at him for a moment, looking oddly miserable. Then he advanced on Remus, laid both hands on his shoulders, and pushed his back against the wall. Remus ran a hand up Severus' arm, squeezing affectionately, experimentally, just below the elbow and at the hard, knotty shoulder. Severus dropped his hands and fell to his knees, startling Remus. He looked up at Remus briefly; his face was flushed and there was an uncertainty and discomfort about it that Remus recognized. An empathetic stab went through him; Severus didn't need to be on his knees for this, he didn't need to feel Remus looking down on him. Remus slid slowly down the wall, pushing Severus back with his knees, and sat on the floor. Severus crawled over him like a prowling dog, his sharp shoulderblades working under his robes. He slid his hands up Remus' thighs, pushing the fabric up around his hips. Remus watched, his chin pressed painfully to his chest, the face tilt down, the clumpy curtain of hair fall over it. The achingly warm breath on him, an unbearable tickling, and then heat, envelopment. A painful scrape against raw skin - teeth. Remus' hand flew to Severus' shoulder and squeezed. Severus pushed down, and Remus felt the hard, pebbled roof of his mouth, then the smooth, pliable soft palate. Severus gagged softly, and his throat closed around Remus. The teeth again, lower, a steady pressure this time instead of a nick. Remus pushed firmly on Severus' shoulder and the mouth left, leaving wet cold in its place. Severus looked up, licking his lips and frowning.

"Don't go - you don't -" Remus sighed shakily and wrapped his free hand demonstratively around his shaft. "Use your hands for - this. Don't go all the way down." He ran his thumb over the slimy head and shuddered. Severus' hand slid over his own, pushing it down and out of the way. Remus closed his eyes, and the damp lips met him, opened to him, and the tongue slid over and under, flicking and caressing, the smooth underside and the rough upper surface. Remus' hand went up the shoulder and around the back of the neck, which was smooth and moist. He had to stop himself pushing at the base of Severus' skull, urging him to disregard Remus' own advice and consume him, englut him, give him more and more flesh and suction and nervous movement and warmth. He noticed dimly the hard point against the fleshy side of this calf, and Severus' soft twisting, soft moaning. They twitched and shuddered together, and Remus stroked the side of Severus' face, which was alarmingly soft.

Ever tasted...

This was a boy who picked dandelions.

That's what makes it so sweet.

When Remus came, the cry echoed eerily off the bathroom walls and the mermaid giggled shrilly. Severus stood immediately and went to the enormous bathtub; leaning over the side, he spat into it, retching a little. There was a tiny, hollow splat. He stood and faced Remus; a dark wet spot was spreading on his robes, and his shoulders were heaving. Remus covered himself and got shakily to his feet, bracing himself on the wall. Severus watched him expressionlessly, his face backlit and full of shadows.

"You okay?" Remus said, feeling strangely sheepish and awkward, as if he had just witnessed something he wasn't meant to.

"I'm not going to tell on you," Severus said, a baffling anger in his voice, disgust. "This is done."

Then he walked steadily to the door, fumbled it open, and left.

"But you could get killed!"

"Oh, I could not, Peter. But that's the point, though; everybody on the pitch is looking at you thinking you've gone and done hara-kiri on yourself -"

"- Hara-kiri is with a knife, Prongs."

"Whatever; Kamikaze, then. Anyway, everyone thinks you're done for, and you just hover under the bleachers out of sight while the Chaser scores, 'cos no one's paying any attention to the goal, right? Then you bob up again and everybody cheers. Remus, you were there when Stephenson did that against Puddlemere, weren't you?"

"Right," says Remus, who was listening only peripherally. "Bloody brill."

It was a lazy, noisy Sunday breakfast. Only a third of the students had turned up, and there were gaps along the benches, and through one of these gaps Remus was sneaking glances at Severus, who did not notice him. Or pretended not to, and did it well. He was staring at his food, chewing rhythmically, listening to or being talked at by another Slytherin whose name Remus didn't know. A dark-haired boy, more attractive than Severus, and cleaner. It looked like he was speaking very fast.

"You're sure you're all right," Sirius said, hunching a little over the table, leaning across to Remus. It was not a question; it was a request, a demand. Be all right, so that I can be. Remus was feeling somewhat softer toward Sirius now that he knew he had at felt at least as guilty as Remus had. And anyway, he had never been one to let Sirius down.

"'Course," he said neutrally. Brightly wouldn't do; anything besides a reserved pleasance would give him away. Sirius knew him well.

Severus got up from the Slytherin table, then leaned down and spoke to his companion. With a slight sinking Remus realized that he might be more than just a fellow Slytherin. He hadn't thought of such things. He hadn't thought of Severus' life underground, in the Slytherin dormitories, which must be unnervingly similar to Remus' life in Gryffindor tower. Just a different height, a slightly different temperature.

"I'm going upstairs to study," Remus said. James scooted aside to let him get over the bench, and Sirius watched him solemnly, and Remus was glad to get out.

Severus was already halfway down the dungeon stairs.

"Severus?" Remus called. He leaned against the mouth of the stairway, trying to languish but too nervous and stiff to pull it off. Severus stopped, his shoulders hunched and he turned around slowly.

"What do you want?" he said quietly. Remus shrugged.

"To talk?" An accidental whine. He was no good at this.

Severus just looked at him for a moment, his face masked by the dim grayness of the stairwell, before coming slowly up the stairs.

"Not here," he said gruffly, when he met Remus on the top step. Brushing past him - a bit roughly, just removed from a shove - he let himself out the huge, heavy antechamber doors, stopped, looked up and down the corridor, then disappeared. Remus followed him down the left hallway, round a corner, down into a silent dead end.

Severus turned on his heel, sharp and militaristic, and laid one hand on the wall, nearly spanning the narrow hall.

"So," said Remus nervously. "How are you?"

Severus' eyes flared and narrowed. Remus smiled shyly.

"I mean - stupid question, I know. Just tying to make conversation, I guess. Not that I don't want to know how you are -"

"What are you doing, Lupin?"

Remus started, taken aback, then recovered. "Well," he smiled, he was being charming, he remembered how to flirt. His voice was honey-light, mirthful, promising. "I suppose I'm stalking you. You really should call the Aurors, you know. It'll take ten of them to..."

Severus pushed firmly past him and began to walk away.

Remus turned and jogged to catch up to him. He caught the sleeve of Severus' robe in his fist. "What are you doing?"

"I have things to do," Severus said, his voice stone-cold, stone-hard. "Let me go."

Remus blinked at him, boggling, baffled. After a long moment, he said, "You came back for me." It was weaker, more choked and fragile than he'd meant it to be.

"I repay my debts, Lupin," Severus said quietly, dully, as if it was a mantra, something memorized.

"Debts," repeated Remus, which no voice behind the words, only air, a hiss.

"Do you not feel... adequately recompensed, Lupin?" He enunciated the words clearly, cuttingly. As if savoring them.

Remus could feel his face twitching and changing, searching for an expression that was properly appalled, disgusted, broken, angry, humiliated. In pain, an inexpressible pain, so much worse because it could and should have been prevented.

He could think of nothing to say.

Severus turned and walked away, his heel ticking dully on the stone. Remus imagined that he was satisfied, though he couldn't see the expression on his face from here.

He had called him a monster. Terrifying, he had said.

There is only one 'it' among us.

Oh? Which is it?

Severus turned the corner, cut from view, his footsteps fading after him. Back to the dungeon stairway, underground. Like burrowing, or being interred. Tiny coffin dorms. But there weren't any dead bodies down there, only live ones.

I'm not afraid of you, Remus had told him.

Perhaps you should be.

Perhaps. Perhaps he was.

End.