Summoned

Chapter 25: Full Moon

"I was terrified [my friends] would desert me the moment they found out what I was... But they didn't desert me at all."

"I've just been to your office, Lupin. You forgot to take your potion tonight, so I took a gobletful along."

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

July 27, 1995, night

Remus had graded every first year exam. He'd found, and graded, the stack of second year exams. He'd taken his final dose of the Wolfsbane Potion, and had then graded the second years' essays (and even he had to admit they were terrible).

It had gotten late and Severus had not returned. So, trying to keep himself useful, resisting the pull of the moon as much as he could, he'd scrounged through the remaining stacks of parchment on Snape's desk and had found another stack of examinations, these for fourth years.

The exams were multiple choice, for the most part. Nice, he thought. All he needed was to find the answer key and he'd have taken care of more than half the paperwork Severus had left behind. That should help pay his debt.

He searched the parchments on the desk, then began to look through the drawers. The top left-hand drawer was sealed with a spell: he guessed The Book was in there.

The rest of the drawers were open and he searched through them...

And he found what he would later think of as "the pictures from hell". A witch, who was clearly shrieking in agony; a wizard, huddled and blank-eyed, slumped against a wall; a third person, reduced to a bloody mass upon the ground.

Severus stormed into the room at exactly the worst moment, the moment he had the three pictures laid out before him, their enchantments causing them to move as he stared at them. Their owner looked first at them, and then at him, sitting behind the desk.

"Oh, you can't stop nosing around into what is none of your business, can you?"

"I was looking for an answer key," Remus answered calmly. His Wolfsbane Potion was working on his wolf-heart. He felt much calmer than he might have.

Severus swept through the room and grabbed the photos. He shoved them back into the drawer Remus

had pulled them from.

"What were those? Graduation pictures from becoming a Death Eater?" Apparently, the wolf inside him was still strong enough: he didn't think he would normally risk such a question, especially one that, again, made him sound more like Sirius than himself.

He watched Severus' movements as he cut a path through the room, fury and sadness so strong he could feel them.

He had, he thought, only about an hour before his wolf-heart took over. The moon would rise and until it set sometime in the early-morning hours, he would be another creature, with another heart.

"Who was she?" he asked quietly, knowing, somehow, that the tortured witch was the one Severus hadn't wanted him to see.

Severus finally stopped in front of his fireplace, staring into the cold embers. "You never knew her."

That wasn't the kind of answer he wanted to hear. It was the kind of answer that he thought was part of his reason for being here: part of his repayment for Severus' torture.

"But you did."

He was half-inclined to believe that he would be dead within seconds, and he put his hand on his wand, just in case. But Severus only turned burning eyes and a look of furious pain at him.

"Aren't you running out of time?" he demanded.

Remus got up from the desk, finally took his eyes off the man, and neatened the stacks of parchments in front of him. "First and second year exams are done. So are the second year essays. By the way, I think you ought to save discussion of wolfsbane for third years: there wasn't one essay here that made even a bit of good sense. - But I didn't fail all of them," he added, trying a half-grin. "That wouldn't look so good on your teaching record."

Severus continued to glower, and Remus was actually pleased to see that there seemed to be more strength in it than there had been several hours ago, or even when he'd first come into the room.

"Time, Lupin?" Severus asked again.

"Actually, about an hour." He left the desk and walked slowly toward the fire. "Hungry? I am, I confess. Mind if I order up some food? Having a full stomach seems to - help."

"I don't mind if you leave," Severus snapped, and took the chair Lupin had just vacated.

"Well. I generally don't like to be seen by now," he confessed, not believing Severus' statement. "You see, my - well, the wolf generally begins to come out at this point. It's not something I like others to be aware of."

Surprisingly, or maybe not, Severus' glower faded and he took his seat behind his desk. "As you wish," he said glumly, and then turned to the stacks of paper in front of him.

"Hungry?"

"No."

Remus tossed a bit of Floo powder into the fireplace. "Hello, Dobby? Anyone in the kitchen?"

Seconds later, the house-elf Harry had freed his second year at Hogwarts appeared in the fire, his large ears twitching in earnestness, is grin clearly visible in the flame. "Master Lupin! What are you doing here? Oh, Master Lupin, I am sorry to be asking, I have no right-"

"Thank you for asking, Dobby, I'm just visiting. But I wonder if I could have some dinner sent up?"

Dobby looked a bit nervous. "For you and - and for Master Severus, sir?"

Remus sighed. "Yes, for both of us. Thank you."

"You do not need to thank Dobby, sir. Dobby is happy to serve Master Lupin and Master Severus!"

"Thank you anyway."

Curious, he thought: Dobby referred to everyone by their last names - except Severus! He wondered if he could get away with asking about that! He glanced at Severus, but the man was simply going through the papers on his desk. Remus began a bet with himself as to whether Snape would thank him for his efforts.

A few very long minutes later, food appeared on the Potions master's desk, right on top of the stack of first-year exams. Silently, but with a glower, Snape moved the platters of beef and potatoes and beans and pudding aside and returned to his examination of the parchments Lupin had already graded.

Remus took a plate from the desk and brought it back to the chair by the fireplace. He relit the fire - it had been ready to go out - and then dug into the food. He was, as usual at this time of the month, ravenous!

And he was, after he'd put half the food away, beginning to feel a bit bold. Again.

He turned in his chair and saw that Severus, though apparently working on the papers in front of him, was actually staring into nothingness. His eyes weren't moving: his pen was poised above the parchment before him, but as Remus watched for ten seconds, it didn't move.

The pictures, he decided. It had to be the pictures.

"So what did Dumbledore want?" he asked.

"To discuss a few things."

Remus nodded to himself: that wasn't the right topic for now. He cleaned the plate he'd taken, then, still hungry, he asked, "If you aren't going to eat anything-?"

Severus glanced up. "I said I wasn't hungry. - Go ahead."

Remus did, laying into the food on the second platter as if he hadn't eaten for weeks. He was aware of Severus' occasional glance, but didn't let it interfere with gorging himself. It was while he was demolishing that plate of food that it occurred to him. And when it did, he found his appetite immediately doused.

He swallowed a mouthful of wine and then looked at Severus. The man was still shuffling parchments around in front of him, in an attempt to look busy. But his concentration was gone, Remus knew.

"Your mother?" There was a very slight movement of Snape's head, but that was the only reaction. "How long was she in Azkaban?"

There was no fury, no anger, none of what Remus had half-expected. There was, instead, a slowly rising gaze that finally fixed on him. "Not long enough."

Remus felt his stomach twitch. Paying for Orestes' death and Snape's most recent punishment was going to be this: being trusted. Again. Apparently, this was an exercise in learning to forgive that Severus was embarking on, though it was a strange way to go about doing it.

Severus sighed, and with his quill poised unmoving above a parchment in front of him he said, "She pled self-defense and got five years."

"Was it? Self-defense?"

Severus considered that for several very long seconds, his glassy gaze fixed on air in the middle of the room. Then, looking back at the parchment, as if he were actually paying any attention to what was written on it, he said, "Not by the time she got there."

Remus wasn't sure he wanted to know what that meant. Severus was fresh from a morning with the dementors. How much of what he said could be considered willing? But he decided to press ahead.

"Did you - have relatives? To stay with, I mean? To live with?" He was re-evaluating a lot of his memories and beliefs from those years, and he was thinking, for some reason, of Harry and his terrible summers with the miserable relatives who had taken him in for the last thirteen years.

Severus didn't answer right away: he actually put his quill to the parchment and made some kind of mark on it, then set that one aside and pulled another toward him from the stack. "No. The courts appointed a guardian. Mostly, I stayed with him."

"Oh."

For the next few minutes, Severus actually did seem to read and grade another two papers. But he was doing everything with almost painful slowness, as if movement itself hurt.

"Decent chap?"

Severus looked up. "What?"

"Your guardian. Was he - well, better than your father?"

"Almost anyone would have been better than Tobias. But yes, he was - a decent chap." He went back to his papers. He made another mark, put that paper aside, and started the next.

He'd really never given any thought to the fact that Severus Snape had not simply sprung into being as an eleven-year-old boy. "Is he still alive? I mean, do you keep in touch?"

"Yes." He looked up, apparently considering a further comment. Then he turned back to his parchments.

The answer surprised Remus: Severus Snape had a guardian somewhere? Well, a former guardian. Someone with whom he kept in touch? He really couldn't imagine it. He couldn't imagine Severus sending owls to someone, or - receiving them?

"Where's he live? Do you - visit him?"

The Potions master let out a long breath and said, "He lives at Hogwarts. His name is Albus Dumbledore." He looked up. "You are probably the only person alive, aside from Hagrid, who knows that."

Having dropped that small explosive, he lowered his head and read through another student's essays.

Dumbledore? Severus Snape's guardian had been Dumbledore? Remus felt his mouth hanging half-open with shock. How did that never get out? he wondered.

But worse: how would Dumbledore ever do anything but trust Severus, at this point, if he'd raised him? How could any of them trust Severus if they knew Dumbledore's trust was based on that, the fact that Snape was almost a son to him? He pulled himself away from that subject. There was still another that he hadn't quite touched.

"Are you - did you get back in touch with your mother, then? After she -"

He made his way halfway through another student's paper, then dipped his quill in his inkwell and looked up. "She left Azkaban the year I left Hogwarts."

And he was staring at the parchment. Again. He was going to make Remus work for it. But there was no doubt in his mind that this was the woman in the picture. That Severus needed to tell the story, needed someone to hear it, to listen.

Last time he'd boil water where he wasn't supposed to!

"So did you - did she know where you were?"

He felt badly for the students whose papers Severus was grading: he had an idea that none of them were being graded on their own merits, but on whatever was consuming their professor's thoughts at the moment.

"No."

He waited. Severus continued marking the parchments in front of him. Four of them by the time Remus came up with the next question.

"But you got in touch with her?"

There was a long pause and then the words, "In touch," slid through the air. Severus aimed the tip of his quill at the paper before him but didn't let it land. "I had no contact with her until her death." He looked up. "The Dark Lord found her when she left Azkaban. He and Lucius Malfoy tortured her for hours. Then I killed her." He met Remus' eyes steadily. "She was the first person I killed as a Death Eater."

He felt cold. The fire in the fireplace seemed to have no heat. He felt a draft and thought he could hear flies buzzing in the air.

"And - your father?"

Severus Snape smiled. "I was not a Death Eater when he died," he said quietly. "I have never lost a moment's sleep over Tobias Snape."

* * *

The hour slipped by much more quickly than it usually did, thanks in part to the riveting and deeply disturbing conversation with the Potions master. All too soon, he felt the pull of the moon, felt his hackles begin to rise - literally, this time - and got up from the chair.

Severus moved his eyes and looked at him. "Did you take the other potion?" he asked quietly, and Remus remembered that he had not.

"If you don't mind - I really prefer not to transform in front of - anyone." He drank about half the liquid in the small vial then placed it on the desk near Severus' wand.

Severus looked at him then raised an eyebrow. "As you wish. I have already enjoyed the sight, I have no desire to see it again." He looked back at his parchments, and Remus headed for the door to the bedchamber. He stopped with his hand on the knob.

"Severus." He waited for the man to look at him. "I really am - very sorry about the Weakening Solution. I'm - sorry for what you had to go through."

The Potions master gave him an unreadable look and then said, quietly, "Your ears are sprouting fur."

He nodded and went into the other room. With the door locked, he began to strip off his clothes, even as he felt the bones and sinews in his arms and legs begin to elongate. It was much easier to strip before the clothes got torn than to spend the time repairing them later. They never really fit the same way, in any case.

He'd delayed getting into the room just enough that he barely had time to toss the clothes into a pile by the floor before the rest of his body began to shift and then his thoughts began to change, and his last, compelling thought was that he was glad he had eaten so much already that the 'hunger' would be much abated.

Then he curled up on the floor near the fireplace, put his head on the clothes he'd dumped there, and closed his eyes.

* * *

Severus listened carefully, but heard nothing from the other side of the door. He finished grading the fourth year exams and, still listening carefully for any sounds of agitation from the next room, he put aside all his parchments, grabbed his cloak, and went to sit by the fire for some warmth and to try clearing his mind.

The Deletrius "treatments" were helpful, he admitted, but they were also unpleasant. Dumbledore had indicated that he'd continue them in the morning, and while there was logic and good sense to the plan, there was also a deep revulsion as he thought of it.

Secrets he'd kept for decades, secrets he'd never even let Dumbledore see, had been pulled out by the dementor attack, and now the Headmaster knew things about him he'd never expected to reveal: that he had, almost assuredly, cast in full the spell that killed Tobias Snape. That he had, after that horrifying summer, been seduced into regarding Lucius Malfoy as a kind of protector.

And then the stupid, irrational confession to Lupin about having used the Cruciatus Curse on Malfoy to find the Potters, to try to stop the Dark Lord. It had been that memory that Lucius had broken through in his own mind for which he had avenged himself in the cemetery.

"This is for 'giving' you the information to find the house in Godric's Hollow oh, so many years ago, Severus. This is for your torture of me." He leaned his face in close and whispered, "And be glad I have never told the Dark Lord what you did. - You are still in my debt, Snivellus!"

"And your son is still in my classes," he thought to himself, but that was a threat he would never be able to make: no matter what Lucius did or had done, he could not harm his son to avenge himself. In fact, he would probably do more to try to save Draco's soul than the soul of any other of his students. Draco had every strike against him already, just as Severus had had as a student: he was almost destined to follow Voldemort. And if he did...

He spent about an hour in the chair, ridding himself of the strongest emotions, calming himself, trying to leave the memories in the past, not to dwell on them. But Dumbledore was right: if he had to face the Dark Lord right now, his Occlumency skills would be - as they had been each other time recently - nearly useless.

He thought about trying to sleep, but the sleep he'd had earlier had left him feeling rested. And he didn't want to be at all off guard while Lupin was in form. Which thought made him decide to check on the wolf. After all, he'd taken the new potion as well: he should make sure the creature wasn't having any ill-effects.

He opened the bedchamber door carefully and as quietly as he could. Lupin was on the floor near the fireplace (which was unlit), his chin resting on the pile of clothing he'd discarded. His eyes opened when Severus looked in on him. His brows leapt upward from the center, his nose twitched, trying to sniff the intruder's identity, as if he'd be able to recognize it, which Severus was nearly certain he couldn't.

"You are drooling on your clothes," he said, and the wolf cocked its head and made a small whining sound. He didn't move from his position, though.

Severus looked at him carefully for a few minutes, studying his expression, checking for any spasms in the extremities. The animal looked both comfortable and placid. And, Severus did know for sure, that he could understand nothing Severus said while he was in this state.

"I told you a lie earlier," he said quietly, holding the wolf's attention. "I dearly wished to have had you as friend. Back when it might have been - possible. Sadly, your 'true' friends were always in the way."

The wolf thumped his tail. Severus left the door cracked and went back to sit in front of his fire, and to practicing thinking about nothing.

Halfway through the night, Lupin began to scratch and bite himself, the effects of the second potion having worn off. Severus, who had finished grading the first-years' essays and third-years' exams, noticed and brought the second dose from the vial on his desk to the creature in a bowl he transfigured from a spare piece of parchment. The wolf lapped up the potion and within minutes fell asleep.

Severus went back to his desk and unsealed the charmed drawer and took the children's book from its new hiding place. He took it to his chair by the fire and read it through from cover to cover, reminding himself that it was through his own efforts that Lily Potter was dead.

Just before the hours of earliest dawn, Lupin came loping out of the bedroom, still in wolf form, and curled up in front of the fireplace in the study and went back to sleep at the Potions master's feet.

* * * July 28, 1995, morning

In the morning, Minerva McGonagall risked looking at herself in the mirror as she dressed for the day. She was disappointed with what she saw. Lily's eyes looked back at her. She turned away from the mirror and wished desperately that she could assume her Animagus form.

In the morning, Albus Dumbledore sat at his desk and stared at a pyramid of forms and parchments and other work that he had still to complete. He couldn't stop thinking about Abraxas Malfoy. He had to find out how the man had known to get Severus out of Azkaban. He already realized, thanks to yesterday's sessions with the Deletrius Charm, that Lucius Malfoy's influence on Severus had been far more insidious than he had believed. He was sure that he would learn yet more complications as he continued the work with the Charm. And neither he nor Severus would be eager to face those memories.

In the morning, the household at number twelve, Grimmauld Place came to life with Molly and Ginny in the kitchen preparing breakfast and Sirius scouring through old family relics in the bedroom where he was keeping Buckbeak, the hippogriff. Hermione and Ron were arguing loudly about Dumbledore's instructions to tell Harry nothing of what was happening with the Order. Arthur Weasley came down to breakfast with a strange grin on his face, followed immediately by Fred and George who had similar grins on their faces. All grins disappeared when Molly demanded to know what they meant.

In the morning, the fire in the dungeon office went out and Remus Lupin went back into the bedchamber, where he transformed back to his human nature, sore and exhausted, and yet not as worn or bedraggled as usual. The new potion Severus had cooked up for him had certainly helped.

In the morning, Voldemort had a meeting with Lucius Malfoy at the old Riddle House, and began to finalize his plans to obtain the hidden prophecy about himself and Harry Potter.