ataraxionlogs | everything i love is out to sea

'Figure it out' is something he'll have to do and deal with it; even if it means sitting in there until he feels able to function, or waiting for someone to let him out. Severus would tailor the wards to let him in and out based on presence alone, but how much of the werewolf is Remus Lupin when he's the wolf itself? It can't be risked. Even if he thinks it might work, it's just a thought - very little study has been done on werewolves. And no matter how callous he is, Severus isn't going to suggest that they start playing lab rat about it.

"Of course. People still wear floor-length robes from the third century and think the way house elves are employed is an acceptable way to treat an entire species. As if a few years of relative quiet are going to dispel haunting rumors outside a castle that's got a ghost teaching history."

He could have probably just said yes.

But then he wouldn't get to be on the receiving look of the unguarded and gently intent look that Remus gives people—a lot of people, it's not uncommon, though never aimed in this particular direction—when instead of merely trying to survive a conversation with them, he's actually listening. Trying to understand them. Or, in this case, realizing that he might not know as much about them as he thought.

Not if Severus Snape gives even a fractional fuck about house elves.

He looks away quickly, back into the room he was examining, and when he steps back out of the doorway to resume their walk he keeps his hands in his pockets and his eyes straight ahead. A few seconds of silence are spent setting aside remarks on Lily's presence. Another few seconds thinking about ghosts and traditionalists—

"None of it gets better," he says, not asking, but wanting confirmation.

Severus Snape grew up poor. More than any of them realize - unless Lily told them, and maybe she did; maybe she sat in the Gryffindor common room in fifth year around congratulations that she'd done what she should have done years ago, and took her anger out on him by confirming every pathetic rumor. His hatred of the muggle world is independent from the other things he hates. He is perfectly capable of hating what is, in simplest terms, slavery perpetuated by bored rich purebloods, at the same time as hating people like his father. He is an exceptional multitasker and an exceptional hypocrite.

He is also not looking at Remus when he goes on his snippy little rant there, so he misses the way he's stared at after.

"What is 'better'?" Of course it's only better by degrees. Of course most of it is the same stupidity and hollowness, re-arranged to give survivors peace of mind and let the responsible parties get out of having to deal with any consequences. He doesn't bother hiding his resentment: "If better is a lack of cities being invaded by giants and whole families being murdered in their homes fortnightly, then yes, it gets better. If better is any kind of noteworthy political or social reform to prevent any of this shit from happening again, then no."

Remus would like to be wry, detached, cynical, and able to say of course not. He's tired enough for it. He could probably get the tone right. But he was ready to die for this—he stopped seeing any other possible end to it, after a while, until the universe proved him wrong in the worst possible way. He is and always will be an idealist, the sort who cares about goblin rights when he's unemployed and disapproves of the Dementor's Kiss when his friends' murderer is on the loose, principled and hopeful and a little bit stupid. And he's twenty-two years old. He crunches over shattered glass and frowns at the middle distance like it's wronged him.

"Why the fuck not?"

Three years is the blink of an eye. Three years is a lifetime. Severus has had three years to rage against why he didn't die, why things happened the way they did. He hasn't let any of it go, but he hasn't had the luxury of being able to lay around being depressed about everything. He has to get up every morning and mentor a hundred children ravaged by war, he has to go out every night and study and search at the headmaster's behest. His feelings have been grounder under his own heel, made toxic and insidious.

"How can you ask that?" is duller than before. Tired, maybe. He knows Remus is closer, still standing in the smoldering impact of it. But to Severus it's obvious. It was even then. The very morning after with Ministry hacks shaping press releases and sighing with relief. "Do you really want to talk about this?"

With me? is unvoiced, but somehow still present.

Remus doesn't take his hands out of his pockets, spreading his arms at the elbows as he shrugs, but the gesture means the same thing. Who else? Sirius and Lily can't know. Harry's whole generation can probably only know a sliver, unless they had the time and tenacity to dig past what will be discussed in polite company. And Severus has been unexpectedly tolerable, if Remus looks past the issue of his entire personality, so—

"I thought things would change. I told them things would change." Them, the skittish werewolves Remus convinced—though nothing would make them throw in their lot with the Ministry—to sit out the fight, to wait and hope. "There would be a backlash, they'd keep their heads down, and then..." Something. Specific guarantees were never his to make, but his education, his demeanor, Albus Dumbledore sent me—everything about him was a promise. He didn't have to give any speeches. "I lied to them."

That's a long, indirect way of answering the first question, how can you ask that, but meant to be an answer nonetheless. He believed in what he was selling. He still wants to. He can't see what's so bloody complicated about being decent to people, or at the very least not kicking the ones you'd prefer not to turn around and bite you.

As if Severus finds Lupin's personality any more appealing.

"The Ministry was not in the process of making life better for anyone before it began," Severus says, and makes no effort to temper the unkindness in his voice. "None of us were authorized by the Ministry to make promises to anyone."

He's not sure, exactly, what the other man means, but he can guess. And that is why he finds such ignorance unbelievable: Lupin knows the Ministry's cruelty better than anyone, doesn't he? "What did you think was going to happen after? Dumbledore didn't become Minister."

"He should have." Remus drags one foot against the ground as he steps forward, like am emphatically irritated underline. He should have. Short of that—"I thought Bagnold might understand basic cause and effect."

"Bagnold? The woman who authorized the use of Unforgivables by Aurors? Who permitted mass celebrations by our kind in the presence of Muggles, because we had a 'right to party', choosing instead to send clean-up crews to Vanish or Obliviate the hundreds across the country who saw?" Severus grinds out a brief, low laugh. It's bitter. "Don't be a fool. The only thing that's changed is how many students at school are now orphans."

"Everyone was a bit mad in the end," Remus says, but quietly, more plaintive than combative. He isn't trying to argue. He isn't interested in defending the Ministry.

Defending his own hope, on the other hand, and his ability to go on hoping—it's what he has left.

So maybe he shouldn't ask. Maybe if he'd had another six months at home he would know better. But there were eleven-year-old werewolves in 1969 and eleven-year-old werewolves in 1971, and certainly a few in 1981, and Remus still wakes up half of the time feeling like the air has been knocked out of him, and he wants his loss—and his sick joke of a life—to matter for something. Anything.

Maybe it's selfish as well as stupid. But he asks.

"Are any of them werewolves?"

"No."

Severus did not warn Remus about discussing this - but he did ask. As good as, in his book. He's not going to try and comfort him or soften the edges. No one's ever pulled any punches for him.

"Greyback is the only association anyone has for werewolves. They are the Dark Lord's supporters who've died or gone into hiding, and that's all I've heard of it since the end of the war. I don't know where you are, either. Albus has never said."

The stretch of silence—it's hurt, palpably, while Remus scrambles to collect reasons why it doesn't matter. He's the one who withdrew from the Order; he can't fairly blame any of them for letting him. Given the atmosphere, Remus is more trouble than he's worth to anyone. Dumbledore wouldn't have a reason to mention him to Severus anyway. He's busy. He's done more for Remus than anyone else has or ever will, already, and not being able to do more doesn't mean he doesn't care.

It's all true. It also all hurts, but in a way that's familiar, dull, and easy to disregard. Nothing like the first unexpected stab of feeling discarded by the only living person he has any unqualified faith in.

"I'm sure he wouldn't have any trouble finding me if he needed to," he says eventually. He's all practiced levity, then all horribly transparent subject change. "Do you like teaching?"

There's an awful little catch, but it's one that Remus - fortunately - isn't aware of. Severus is now one of the Headmaster's only confidants. Dumbledore would have plenty of reason to mention Lupin to him.. if Lupin were at all relevant.

He lets the silence lapse and doesn't comment on it. Awkwardness is coldly ignored, because Severus would have to give a damn for it to be awkward. And he really doesn't. Lupin may be the Marauder he has the least hate for, but nothing about their collective aftermath will ever be anything but well deserved from his perspective.

"I haven't decided yet," he answers flatly.

"Explaining things you don't usually have to think much about can't be easy," Remus says—flattery? A passive-aggressive dig about the undetectable extension charm? Both, most likely, but also primarily an effort to keep talking about anything except Professor Dumbledore, who taught his father, who heard a rumor, who cheerfully played a game with a ten-year-old even though a letter would have done the job just as well and said I see no reason why not.

"I don't mind explaining things to eleven year olds," he says, only a little imperiously. To the twenty-something year old werewolf who couldn't figure out an undetectable extension charm without a map drawn for him. "I can make lesson plans in my sleep. I have more work than that. Horace Slughorn was an awful teacher and a worse head of house, and I've been undoing his damage for years."

Severus can't keep the bitterness wholly out of his voice. Oh, well, the Blacks and the Malfoys and the Lestranges had money and influence! Of course Slughorn permitted them to visit whenever they liked! At the time, Severus was thrilled to be receiving such attention. Now he knows what a recruitment drive looks like. And also what a weak-minded and neglectful fool looks like, Horace.

For a moment Remus wonders, mutinously, if he's meant to feel sorry about how difficult Severus's job is. But that's only his own bitterness, quickly recognized for what it is, tagged as unreasonable and unkind, and shoved away where it can't reach his face or his tone.

"That's good, though," he says, though he'd never known enough to bear Slughorn any ill will at school. Remus would have been dismal at potions regardless of who taught it, and he worked so hard not to be noticed by anyone that he was relieved, not slighted or jealous, when Slughorn never bothered to learn his full name. His last name, sure—Lyall Lupin had been somebody, once, before suddenly and determinedly becoming nobody—but not his first.

He stops walking to look down a hallway.

"Good they have someone willing to do it, I mean," he goes on, "not that you have to."

Severus is not complaining about his job. He's complaining about Slughorn. Still, it's a little funny that Remus decides to shove away something unreasonable, given who he's speaking to-- who might as well be Professor Unreasonable Jackass.

"I do have to." Severus stops a few paces ahead of Remus and turns to face him. This is not spoken as another complaint, just a correction. While he might not have to put the degree of protective effort that he does into his work, he does have to be there. Flatly: "Albus has been adamant about me staying."

And he is in no position to argue.

"Albus," Remus echoes, mostly entertained but also a little longing, maybe, underneath. He never aspired to be on a first-name basis with the headmaster. It's a bit weird, honestly. Still, he didn't need that extra help feeling like an outsider. He keeps peering down the hallways for a moment, then smiles vaguely at Snape. "Is there something else you'd have rather done?"

What? his irritated looks says. He's still in that stage where half of it is all the other professors constantly insisting he use their first names, and the other half is white-knuckled determination to be a peer and not a student anymore. He still loses it often enough and reverts back to calling him 'Headmaster' in person, and is very frequently the victim of having a candy bowl shoved at him while an over-pleasant old man says Oh, Severus, do call me Albus.

"Why the hell would you care?" is snapped out instead. "This area is fine." A prickly gesture at the hallway they're stopped at.

"Just being friendly," Remus says, unruffled and already moving again. He glances into the first room down the hall and then vanishes into the second.

He'd been hoping for an area with a storage room; instead, this one has an observation area separated by thick windows and a line of control panels. But he isn't going to try to be picky. Somewhere to put on some pants and bandages and take a nap before dealing with Snape's wards would be nice, if it's feasible. If it's not, he'll still be fine.

"Do you think you could ward all of it," he asks, turning back to face Severus when he hears him and circling a hand to indicate the outer walls "and let me put up something weaker on the partition?"

"Why, so you can break them and wake up surrounded by smashed objects?" 'Friendly'. Eat a dick, werewolf. Severus rests his hands on his hips, side-eying the area. It is fine, but he's highly skeptical about Lupin's own wards holding him. Protective magic, in his experience, tends to be sympathetic, and Lupin is still himself as a wolf.

"I don't 'wake up'," he says, which is pedantic as fuck, but only idle chatter.

He prods indiscriminately at the controls—if it's a giant operational electric oven or anything more harmful, he'll pass—and doesn't repeat I've done this before. He's only done it alone three times with anything he'd call success rather than narrowly averted disaster, and never on a space ship that seemed personally invested in screwing with them.

Which is why he's here being friendly with Severus.

"If you're worried about me choking on a pillow, I could leave it empty the first time and see what happens." None of the buttons he presses do anything.

"So you can have every bone and muscle in your body snap apart into a dozen pieces to forcefully reform and recall your human mind surrounded by smashed objects?"

There. Is that better? Severus gives him a flat look. Yeah dude he knows - he's not a werewolf, pointedly not for lack of trying on someone's part, but he does know what he's doing, thanks.

"You can try it with the room empty."

everything i love is out to sea

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject