The Wounded

The Wounded

Chapter 5

It was still just before dawn. Along the eastern horizon, the sky was just turning from iron grey to the softest rose, while opposite, night still held, though the stars were fading.

If anyone at Hogwarts happened to be awake this early, and happened to glance out their window at just that moment, they'd have seen a huge, silvery grey animal racing across the lawn at an almost unbelievable speed. If they had very good eyes, they might have noticed that it carried a bundle in its jaws. But they would have had to look quickly, for within seconds, it was beyond the gate.

If any of them had been able to read its thoughts, they would have clearly heard the words, "Blast Hogwarts and its anti-Apparating fields!"

The moment he was outside the Hogwarts gates, Lupin returned to human form. He pulled on his clothes in a matter of seconds. He made sure he had his wand gripped firmly in one hand. In the other, he held the mirror. He gave it one final glance, but Snape hadn't moved, he was still standing in the clearing, staring at the mountain in front of him. Lupin took a deep breath; his heart was racing, but he didn't dare take a moment to rest. He gripped the mirror, feeling Snape's presence through it. Then he closed his eyes, and Apparated.

He found himself in the same clearing he'd seen in the mirror, a mass of grey and black shadows, only just dimly lit by deep rosy dawn light. Snape was standing, as he had been in the mirror, only now he had a look of surprise on his face, which changed, as Lupin watched him, to a glare. The iron bound trunk Lupin had seen in the room was beside him. Full of those things you couldn't give away, but couldn't bring yourself to destroy?

"What are you doing here?" Snape said. Rose light etched the outlines of his face, and picked out the edges of his robes.

Lupin held up the mirror and cocked his head. "Tracking spell." He gripped his wand in his other hand, not raised, not threatening, but ready, where Snape could see it. Snape's wand was nowhere in sight, Lupin noted, and his pale hands were plainly in view against his black robes.

Snape nodded. Then he turned and looked away, up at the mountain. "I am going to watch the sunrise," he said, calmly. He folded his long, thin legs and sat down on the ground, leaning back against a tree trunk. The entire motion spoke of familiarity, as if he'd done this before, at this tree, many times. It was an old tree, tall, bent, gnarled, with spreading roots tall enough to sit on, and reaching branches overhead. Lupin thought, he told me the mountain was near his home. Did he come here as a boy? Did he sit beneath that tree, and look up at the mountain?

Not knowing what else to do, Lupin sat down close by, beneath a neighboring tree, still holding his wand at the ready. Snape did not appear to notice. Lupin followed his gaze, careful to keep both the mountain and Snape in sight.

The mountain seemed huge, this close; it loomed high above the hills that surrounded it. He could almost feel its massiveness, smell it in the cool, moist air around him. It seemed even darker now than before, surrounded by a sky that was turning from soft pink to a brilliant rose.

Lupin looked at Snape, who was watching calmly. His pale face seemed to float by itself, ghostly and odd, with the rosy dawn lights reflected on his skin and in his eyes, his black hair and robes melting into the shadows beneath the tree. The very image of the evil wizard, the dark lord, in the children's books, except that dark lords were never shown sitting beneath trees, arms draped over their knees like boys.

"And after the sunrise, what then?" Lupin asked.

Snape smiled his ugly smile. "What do you think?"

"I'll stop you," Lupin said, raising his wand and pointing it directly at Snape.

Snape looked at him. "Why?"

"Because it's wrong."

"Again, why?" Snape said. "It is my life, my own existence. Finally, at long last. I can do with it as I please."

"Not this," Lupin said. "What you do affects other people."

"Who?" Snape said. "Who will care?"

"I will," Lupin said.

Snape nodded. The light was stronger now, not so red as before, and his face no longer seemed to float in the air. Lupin could make out the details of his robes now, could separate them from the tree. "Yes, I believe you will," Snape said. "But you're the only one."

"That's not true," Lupin said. "There's Albus, and Minerva . . ." his voice petered off.

Snape smiled. "A short list."

"The other teachers. Your Slytherin students," Lupin said.

Snape shrugged. "I am not a part of their lives, they will not miss me." He leaned his head back against the tree, eyes fixed on the mountain. "Albus and Minerva will feel some sadness, but it will pass." He closed his eyes. "As for everyone else who knows me, if they think I have merely left, that I'm still alive, they'll be glad I'm gone. And if they find out I'm dead, they'll feel some pity, talk about the 'poor bastard', but it won’t mean anything." He looked directly at Lupin. "There is no one who cares. No one but you."

"Albus cares about you," Lupin said. "He cares deeply. You will hurt him tremendously by doing this."

"Albus cares about everyone. But I am not special to him, not the way Harry is. Or you are. He dealt with me because he needed me."

"That's not true--"

Snape's eyes flashed. "I had my own worth in his eyes clearly demonstrated to me a long time ago. When an attempt on my life was worth no more than a detention and a badly mumbled apology from Black. If I had done the same to one of you, I would have been expelled." He looked away again.

Lupin froze.

"Yes, Albus will grieve at my passing," Snape said, "but no more than any of the others we have lost. And less than many. What he'll feel, mostly, is guilt. And pity. The only emotions I can inspire."

Lupin shook his head. "You are absolutely determined to believe that no one could ever care about you."

Snape looked at Lupin, and his face softened. "I know this will hurt you. But you have many people who love you, and who will quickly fill any gap that I leave in your life."

Lupin thought of the times Snape had watched him while he was with Harry and the others, and felt a twinge.

It's not the same," Lupin said. "I love Harry, Hermione, the other students, but they're children. I'm too old, they're just discovering things I learned and mastered a long time ago. The gap is too great." He looked into Snape's cold, black eyes. "You, you're my dearest friend."

Snape looked away, for a moment. Have I reached him?

Then Snape looked up. "Poor werewolf, you have to be friends with me because there's no one else left."

"That's not true," Lupin said. "I'm friends with you because I genuinely like you."

"If James and Sirius were alive, you wouldn't even be here."

Lupin stopped, stunned.

"If James and Sirius appeared here, now, back from the dead," Snape said, "they'd laugh at you, and tell you to leave me. They'd be disgusted at you even being here."

"If they were here, now," Lupin said, quietly, "I'd tell them that you are also my friend, and that I will not choose between them and you."

"You never would have said that while James was alive."

"I'm a different person now. I'm not a frightened, weak boy any longer, afraid that my friends will leave me." He smiled at Snape. "Now I know that, if I had stuck up for you more, while we were at school, even if I had befriended you, they would still have been my friends. They might even have accepted you."

Snape stared at him. "No, Lupin. They would never have accepted me."

"Perhaps not," Lupin said, "but they would have accepted that you and I were friends. We could have been, you know. You and I have a lot more in common than I ever had with James and Sirius. We're book people, you and I. And I was always a bit on the outside, in that group. It was always James and Sirius, and then me." And Peter, trying to fit in, he thought.

Snape was quiet.

"Please come back with me," Lupin said. "Please at least try, for a little while. You haven't even tried to see what life can be like, now that it's over, and you're free."

Snape did not answer. Lupin felt a surge of hope, and went on. "You've enjoyed the times you and I have had together, haven't you? It can be like that all the time, now. You don't have to sneak around, and pretend to be something you're not--"

"It wasn't much of a pretense," Snape said. "I wouldn't have been able to survive if it were."

"No matter," Lupin said quickly, "you have a future now. You are talented, intelligent, there are so many things you can do."

Snape looked at him. "Is this where you tell me I can be anything I want to be?"

"No, of course not. No one gets that. But you're in a better position than a lot of people, with your abilities."

"Am I? You really think a Death Eater will be allowed in, everything forgiven and forgotten?"

"I think anyone who is so talented that they can brew the Wolfsbane Potion is going to find doors open to him."

"The back doors, perhaps, where I could be kept safely out of sight. Though I suppose even that sounds like paradise to you, poor werewolf."

"Isn't there anything you want?" Lupin asked.

Snape was still. "What I want," he said, quietly, "is to not be me, anymore."

Lupin stared at him.

"I want to be free of this ugly body," Snape said, "of my miserable spirit, of this unbearable life. Of people who look at me with loathing and contempt."

"No," Lupin said.

Snape stretched out his hand, and looked at it. "You know, I wonder if there's any piece of my body that hasn't been part of something vile. Either doing, or done to." He let his hand drop. "The memories are in my skin. Or deeper."

"You can have memories removed," Lupin said. "The Pensieve--"

"They'd have to take it all," Snape said. "Or nearly all. From birth. There'd be nothing left." He gave his ugly smile. "You have no idea, the memories I have."

Lupin thought, I've never asked about his home, what his life was like before school. Harry told me about seeing Snape's parents fighting, his father shouting, but that's all I know, really. Other than the stories about the Snape family history. And Merlin only knows what he saw as a Death Eater.

"You know," Snape said, "I'm not even capable of conjuring a Patronus."

Lupin frowned, "I don't believe that. You are quite powerful enough."

"But you have to have a happy memory," Snape said.

Lupin stopped, caught by that. "But I know you have had times when you were happy. I've seen them." But his heart sank as he said that. I've seen him content, he thought. But have I ever seen him experience a moment of real joy?

Snape looked at him. "I have had a few, rare moments. But they do not last. I can remember that I was happy, but I cannot recall the feeling. I cannot conjure it within myself."

"Well," Lupin said, "now you have the opportunity to learn." Snape's face sneered, but Lupin went on, "You are done with it, you are leaving your horrors behind you, it's in the past."

"You speak as if it's like moving from one room to another," Snape said. "These are not things to close behind a door." He shook his head. "Wherever I go, I bring it all with me."

He turned to Lupin. "Yes, I have had brief times when I could forget, for a short while. Those times with you, during the full moon," he looked down again, "I have treasured those, I think they are all that kept me alive, these past few years." He stared at the ground. "But, in the end, I have to return to myself, be with myself." He closed his eyes. "I don't want to be alone, with only myself, anymore."

"So don't," Lupin said. "I offered yesterday, I offer again. Come stay with me. There's a part of you that wants to, I know."

"I was tempted, yes," Snape said, softly. "To live in your little house, to read your books, to listen to music."

"Yes," Lupin said.

"Yes, it would be very nice," Snape said. "Until Harry showed up to visit. Or any of your other friends. You have a life of your own, Lupin, and I do not fit in it. I wish I could, but I don't."

"You could learn."

"I'm near forty, Lupin, I think I'm past learning by now."

"I disagree. I have a high opinion of you, Severus. I think you can learn to do anything you want to."

"I could learn the semblance. To appear as if I fit. But I cannot change my heart. I do not like people. I like you because it is impossible not to like you, and yet look how long it took before I learned to do so."

"You won't let anyone in."

"Because they'd be horrified at what they'd find if I did." Snape suddenly looked like an old man. "Even you, I have told you next to nothing. I don't want you to know. And you don't want to know."

"No, I just don't ask you. I know enough, I think. Although if you ever want to talk, to tell me more, I'd listen."

"And lose the good opinion of the one person who thinks well of me?"

"Whatever sins you may have committed long ago, Severus, I think you have more than made up for them, by now."

Snape did not reply.

Lupin took a deep breath. "I see a man who has suffered more, has endured more horror and misery, than any human being should ever be asked to. And yet, now that the happy ending has come, and you've done as much as anyone to bring that about, and suffered more than anyone for it, you choose to run away."

"Happy endings are not for Death Eaters. Or dark wizards." Snape looked up at him. "Remus, please let me go."

Lupin looked back at him, at his long, thin, pale face, with its beak of a nose, the unkempt hair falling to either side. And saw there, the face of the boy who had followed them, spied on them, who had done everything he could to trip them up, all the while consumed with the desire to be them, to be one of them. No chance of that now, my friend, I'm all that's left. The bright stars burned themselves out. And you were the greatest hero of any of us, in the end.

"No, Severus," he said. "I won't. I won't let you go." He held his wand pointed full at Snape.

Snape turned away, stared at his knees. Lupin watched him. I'm sorry, he thought.

"And just what are you going to do?" Snape said, still staring at his knees. "Lock me up at St. Mungo's? Put me in the cot next to Lockhart?"

"Of course not," Lupin said. "But there are healers, who can help. You know that. I'm sure Albus will be able to find someone, the right one, who can help you--"

"Petrificus Totallus!" Snape's wand darted out, quick as a snake, and a flash of light hit Lupin before he'd even heard the words of the spell. His legs locked together, his arms clapped to his sides, and his back stiffened straight as a board.

Snape was by him in an instant, catching him as his body straightened, pulling him away from the tree, and laying him gently down on the ground. "I'm sorry, Remus," he said, as he unfastened his cloak. "The spell will wear off in a few minutes." He rolled the cloak up into a ball, and placed it under Lupin's head.

Lupin tried desperately to speak, but his mouth was frozen shut. He could only blink his eyes. Snape looked down at him. He opened his mouth, as if he were about to say something, but stopped, and simply stared for a moment. Then he stood up, still looking into Lupin's eyes.

Then Snape turned away. He waved his wand at the trunk, and it floated over beside him, and he put his arm over it. He looked ahead, to the mountain. Lupin watched, helpless, fighting against the spell, knowing it was useless, cursing himself for being taken off guard, as he watched Snape take a deep breath, and close his eyes.

Then Lupin heard a voice, from outside the clearing, and a blast of light burst through the trees. Snape turned at the sound of the voice, and the light struck him full in the chest. He went down like a felled tree, out of Lupin's line of vision. What happened? Lupin wondered.

He heard someone coming through the brush. And then he saw, in the now bright morning light, as Hermione stepped into the clearing, her wand still raised. Her face looked stricken. And in her hand, she held a mirror, twin to the one he still held in his own paralyzed fingers.

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TBC