homo homini lupus

"You know..."

Remus found himself clinging to the last shreds of his dreams like Snape to the last shreds of his dignity--fiercely, and in a manner unwilling to face the facts.

Unfortunately, Snape's voice was a fact difficult to ignore at the best of times. It continued. "I believe it is customary for two men of dubious sexuality after a night of drunken debauchery to wake up together, naked, in the same bed."

Remus checked, one clothed arm snaking behind him to find a) an empty mattress, b) a narrow mattress, and c) a very cold room. "I don't think there was any debauchery, Severus."

A grunt answered him. It sounded suspiciously like 'pity.'

Remus forced himself to roll over, and arched an eyebrow at the black eyes peering at him from within a cocoon of blankets. "I appear to have been a perfect gentleman, Severus. What's your complaint?"

"It's too bloody cold for single beds. If I'm to have a hangover, I would prefer to have it somewhere warm and with something genuinely appalling to regret." Severus's voice sounded distinctly crabby, though lacking in its usual rich timbre. In fact, Remus could swear that the man had almost whined.

"You really don't do anything half way do you?"

"It saves time not to," Snape groused, and tightened the blankets around himself. "So are you getting in here with me or not?"

"No," Remus said, valiantly resisting the smile that wanted to tug at his lips for the first time in far too long despite the pang Severus's offer sent through his heart. No--there would be no crawling into bed with anyone, but- "But I will buy you breakfast--and a hangover potion."

"Aren't we feeling flush?" Despite the sarcasm lacing Snape's words, he shoved the blankets off himself with surprisingly steady hands, and sat up.

Remus snorted before he could help himself. "Severus, your hair-" Was standing out in all directions.

"I advise you to consult a mirror before commentary," Snape said with deep dignity, only slightly marred by the odd twisting shuffle with which he straightened his robes.

Remus's smile turned faintly wistful. Sirius would have taken his robes off and crawled into bed with Remus the night before, not complained the morning after fully dressed. He found himself pathetically grateful that Severus hadn't. "Gryffindors aren't known for their stylish vanity as Slytherins are," Remus said.

Severus snorted. It really was a rather impressive snort given the size of the nose involved. "I seem to recall your Mr. Potter and Mr. Black being the most vain twosome of the class."

The last of the smile, bitter or not, washed away from Remus's face, and all that was left was a soulless curve of lips. "Mostly James, Severus. Sirius didn't need to be vain--he knew he was irresistible."

"I resisted him."

"...excuse me?" Remus's heart pounded hard--once, then felt as if it had stopped, and he turned to face Snape completely.

"I resisted him," Snape repeated, though the look in his eyes said clearly that he knew Remus had heard the first time. "Seventh year. Prefects' bath."

"Sirius wasn't a prefect."

One inky brow arched, a perfect quirk of scepticism. "Do you call yourself his friend, then, that you were unaware of his predilection for utterly ignoring the rules?"

Remus chose his words slowly, a caution born of habit, and a habit held too long to easily break around Severus. "I was unaware of your knowledge of its extent."

"I'd hardly call using the prefects' bath the worst of his indiscretions. Given that he's always been a shameless nihilist, I would consider it the least--and the least surprising as well."

Only after their breakfast, and only as Remus was watching Snape stalk single-mindedly back across the Hogwarts grounds did Remus realize that Severus had entirely avoided giving Remus even one more detail of his resistance of Sirius Black.

Moments later, as Snape disappeared into a courtyard, Remus realized that he was very relieved.

He found within himself, rather quickly, that he was not ready to talk about Sirius Black--much less to Severus Snape.

***

Over the years, Snape had learned that if he moved quickly enough through Hogwarts, and made it to the private bath within his chambers in time, he could at the very least delay a summons from the Headmaster. Perhaps it was an instinctive connection for his mind to make, but it appeared that even Albus respected the sanctity of a man's private bath chambers in all save the most immediate emergencies.

As such, students threw themselves out of his path as Severus very nearly ran from the front hall down to the Slytherin dungeons, taking the steps at a very dignified three at a time.

And he did not slam the door to his quarters in his haste--it was merely caught by a rogue draft as sometimes happened.

Deep underground.

Where there was no wind.

The door to the bath--that, he slammed. With a vengeance, and reflected nastily that a side effect of having contributed to the downfall of the most powerful evil wizard in centuries seemed to be reversion to childish temper tantrums.

"Discuss past differences! The best for both of you! Madame Bloody Puddifoot's Bleeding Jam Fucking tarts!" With each word of invective, Snape wrenched at his buttons, flinging his waistcoat virulently at the mirror and only just avoiding slinging a hex after it. Instead, he leaned towards his reflection, eyes narrowed, and schooled his features into the glare that defied his students to survive class with dry pants. "Did I or did I not agree to go some place dark, private, disreputable, and involving alcohol with the werewolf?"

"Well how should I know, you greasy bastard?" The mirror grumbled back crossly. "I wasn't there. You never take me places."

Snape shot it a look of pure venom. "Believe me, were it in my power, I would joyously have sent you on that little tote a tote in my place."

"Well I wouldn't have gone and gotten myself rat arsed with him," the mirror went on smugly as Snape wrenched off the rest of his clothes, and filled the bath, every movement exuding contained fury.

"Of course not," Snape snapped, casting a heating charm until the water steamed and sinking petulantly up to his nose in lavender-scented bubbles, "the fact that you are unable to imbibe anything at all would have something to do with this."

"What's crawled up and died?"

Snape snorted, earning himself a houseful of bubbles in the process. After a thunderous sneeze and a passing thought that the mirror was too expensive to hex, he answered, burbling only faintly as the water came up to his lips. "Albus Dumbledore."

The mirror expressed a faint sibilance, as if drawing breath to speak, but stopped when Snape raised a hand sharply. "Make so much as one sexual pun regarding that statement, and I'm having you sent to Gilderoy Lockhart."

The mirror clicked, and when it spoke again, it did so with greater hesitation and as much thought as a magical object could reasonably be expected to possess. "Again?" Apparently, prudence did not offer many options when it came to discussing Dumbledore with his Potions Master.

"Meddling," Snape said, shaking his hair from his face and settling in a somewhat more relaxed position. He'd have to obliviate the mirror again soon if it remembered his last round of grousing about the Headmaster, the Headmaster's ideas regarding normal social interactions, and above all, the Headmaster's Machiavellian tendencies. "Meddling with dangerous combinations that should not be permitted alone in the same room together, much less with alcohol involved." Never mind, a traitorous little voice nagged in the back of his thoughts, that the alcohol had been strictly Lupin's idea.

"The werewolf turned you down, did he?"

"This was a meeting of co-workers, not a date," Snape spat, ignoring the implications of the mirror's question, however well-founded. He had not hit on the werewolf, merely made a -- gallows humour observation of their ironic shared situation. He slid deeper into the water, holding his breath, and letting it come up over his head so that he wouldn't have to reply to whatever inanity his mirror chose to spout next.

Only Albus could have manoeuvred him so thoroughly into that meeting with Lupin, and only jam tarts could have driven him into such a remarkably bad decision. Despite his complaints to the contrary before breakfast, before hangover potion, and before, regrettably, sobering up, he was relieved that there was no more to regret than -- he grimaced -- making an utter fool of himself.

His one consolation was a reasonable certainty that Lupin had done as well, and that there were no witnesses likely to have been sober enough to tell the tale themselves.

A small part of his oxygen-deprived brain admitted, quietly, that it had been nice having an excuse to make any kind of fool of himself at all with a temporary surcease of worry and dignified gravitas, sharing the impotent reality of life as post-bellum soldiers as freely as the drink. It had felt good sitting across the table from one of the few men in Britain possibly as bitter as Severus himself drinking themselves together towards oblivion.

Its sole taint, he realized, as he rose from the floral depths, gasping for air, was that it would not have happened save for Dumbledore's endless meddling, and loathsome jam tarts.

And he knew with depressing certainty that the moment he set foot outside his bath, his reprieve would end, and he would be summoned to suffer sherbet lemons, civility, and polite questions that left him exhausted, laid bare, and scoured of every last secret accumulated over the course of fulfilling the old man's request.

Then, he knew just as surely, he would agree to yet another request, and slink from the Headmaster's tower to lick his wounds in the dungeons until classes began.

The very thought was exhausting, and his shoulders stooped under the weight of the conversation to come as he left the tub, set the water to drain, and then, towel wrapped around his waist, looked tiredly into his mirror one last time, and quickly passed it by.

As soon as he was dressed, dry, and shod, his fire roared to life, and Dumbledore's head appeared in the fireplace. "Severus, if you have time, dear boy...?"

"Of course, Albus," Snape said, drawing his robes around himself, looking distantly into the flames. After all, it wasn't as if he had an appetite for lunch in the Great Hall. He felt the Headmaster's pleasantries wash over him, and turned to leave the moment Dumbledore's face vanished from his grate. In thirty years of serving two masters, Snape had learned the value of punctuality when summoned.

That Snape walked more sedately as he rose from the depths of the dungeons was noticeable, passing each step with a gait of measured dignity, and allowing the students more dignity themselves in getting out of his way. Whether swift or decorously unhurried, there was an element of inexorability to Snape's path.

When he realized who was emerging from behind the stone gargoyle, Snape's step faltered, and he stopped, two paces from Lupin, no nearer.

Black eyes met honeyed amber, and Lupin smiled tiredly looking rather as he had before their round of hangover potion and chasers of pepperup. "Best not keep him waiting, Severus." Lupin had spoken before Snape forcibly removed himself from their eye contact, and wrenched his gaze downwards, lingering on those pale hands that now hung limp, as exhausted as their owner. "He's expecting tarts sent from Hogsmeade any time now." Briefly, a hand rose, and rested on Snape's shoulder, leaving behind the ghost of a squeeze there as he passed. "But I'm relatively certain there's nothing in the tea but tea."

Snape snorted, his lips twisting in an involuntary smile of bitterness. He might feel better if there was--then, he wouldn't have cause to wrestle with himself later, and vow next time to be stronger in resisting Albus's god-complex. For the second time in as many days, he found himself being offered tea and sherbet lemons in his own fancily upholstered Hell.

"Lemon-"

"No thank you, Headmaster," Snape interrupted. One more offer of sweets would send him into a blinding rage--or at least a tantrum.

"-in your tea as usual, Severus?" Albus's eyes, of course, twinkled merrily.

"No thank you," Snape said, more quietly, but a great deal more sourly, accepting the cup and saucer more out of habit than a desire for tea in any form.

"You and Remus seem to have worked through some of your animosity, I see."

Anything to avoid jam tarts, frilly tea rooms, and knick knacks, Snape thought, but only said, "we have reached an agreement." He remembered their shared look in the corridor; he had no intention of telling Albus that what they were in agreement on was the Headmaster's tendencies towards meddling.

"Marvellous, my dear boy," Albus said with quiet joviality, the verbal equivalent of a fatherly pat on the back.

Snape schooled his features--and his flinch, and watched impassively. "Is that all you wanted of me, sir?" His heart threatened to lighten in his chest as a hope flared to life, however slight, that Albus might let him go without yet another request to bear.

"There was one other matter."

The hope died a swift and ignominious death. Good job he hadn't become attached to it, Snape thought. Hopes around the Headmaster had life expectancies akin to small furry classroom pets--brief and ugly.

"You are, of course, aware of our concerns over Mr. Potter's welfare, Severus?"

Snape bit back a good dozen retorts, and a good twenty vicious thoughts, instead nodding his head politely and answering with the least likely to invoke a longer discussion. "I'm hardly the professor of choice to offer him counselling. That's more Minerva's jurisdiction than mine. Or perhaps Lupin's?"

"Professor Lupin has already declined my request citing personal conflict of interest."

And it had worked? Snape made a mental note to try the conflict of interest defence at some point. Bloody clever for a werewolf.

"And Minerva has been unable to reach him entirely. The fact of the matter is, Severus, he's doing no wrong, appearing in class, doing his work as required, save for the obvious handicap in his lack of voice. However, there is great potential for him to go terribly astray." Steepling his fingers, Dumbledore leaned forward against his desk, fixing Severus with a particularly severe twinkle. "I let that potential go unchecked once, Severus."

Snape's fingers went cold against the hot cup, and he set it down quickly as if scorched. "Albus, he is Harry Potter, not Tom Riddle." Never had a conversation felt so wrong in so few sentences. "Surely you can't mean to punish the boy for potential." He resisted the urge to add that when that potential was opposing Voldemort, Albus had no qualms with feeding it at every opportunity.

"Oh, no. No. Not punish." The Headmaster straightened, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands across a stomach still lean beneath the deceptive foppishness of his robes. "Merely observe. And really, Severus, there is no one on my staff with greater observational abilities than you."

Two compliments in as many days, Albus. Don't strain yourself. "You want me to spy on Potter," Snape said bluntly.

"Just keep an eye on him, Severus. Really, it's what you've done for the past six years, one more shouldn't be a burden." Dumbledore smiled pleasantly, and Snape realized, once again, that Albus hadn't bothered to ask in any way that Snape could refuse.

He stood. "It shouldn't, should it?" He may not be permitted a refusal, but he didn't feel inclined, this time, to accept either. At Dumbledore's pleasant expression, a feeling that the Headmaster had taken his words as acceptance crawled across Snape's skin, and he felt the sudden urge for another bath. "Is that all, Headmaster?"

"Yes, of course, Severus. Thank you for your time."

Snape laid the cup and saucer on Dumbledore's desk, inclining his head politely. "My time, as always, Albus, is entirely yours." The words burnt as they passed over his tongue, and the moment the Headmaster nodded Snape's dismissal, he slipped quickly out the door, only stopping at the bottom of the stair, leaning his forehead for long moments against the cool stone wall. He recognized the chill nausea churning in his stomach and the light, fast beating of his heart, and laid a palm against the rock. It was the feeling he'd had after every audience with the Dark Lord, and every interview with the Aurors.

"Severus?"

Snape felt the muscles seize along his spine, though he held still, and spared a sickly amused thought towards prey instinct when confronted with a predator. Hold still, little sneak and the big bad wolf won't see you. "What are you doing still here, Lupin?"

"Thought I'd return the favour," Lupin said in that self-depreciating way he had, the ironic twist to his lips speaking more eloquently of empathy than his words. "You look terrible."

"Thank you, as always, Lupin." Snape was too tired to work more than a mildly amused sarcasm into his words.

"Gryffindor honesty," Lupin said.

"Something like that conflict of interest?"

Lupin chuckled. "No, that was an outright evasion." They walked together from the Headmaster's office until they reached the stairs where Lupin cast a glance upwards towards the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom. "Have you time after dinner tonight, Severus?"

Snape stopped, turning towards the werewolf with a measuring look, weighing his answers on the mental scale before replying with somewhat less caution than usual. "Has your suggestion got anything to do with the Headmaster?"

"Not a thing," Lupin said with conviction.

Snape nodded then, turning towards the dungeons. "It happens that I do have an opening in my schedule."

Behind him, Lupin laughed quietly, a roughened amusement. "I'll see you tonight, Severus." The words scratched down Snape's spine in an oddly pleasurable way, rebelliously loosening that knot of tension just a little.

*

The world did not end when Lupin sat next to him at the staff table that night over dinner. Contrary to Snape's long-held beliefs of his own activities' position in the school gossip mill, no one even seemed to take note of it.

Very well. If they didn't, neither would he. Studiously ignoring the pale hands that fluttered over the platters on the table, dextrously picking and choosing what the corner of Snape's eye recognized as a disgustingly nutritious meal, Snape wrapped himself in the comfort of routine. First, as they always did, his eyes skimmed the staff table, though it was a pointless exercise as the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor he preferred to glower at occupied the one chair he refused to glance at.

Sliding away, his gaze skimmed up Gryffindor table. Once, in a rare fit of personal honesty, Snape had acknowledged that he very nearly teased himself with this pattern, though the fiery jolt of tangled emotions Potter provoked had dulled over the years, and almost vanished entirely since his session with Flitwick. He still enjoyed the routine, and it had become habit to note and record the changes in Potter each day with the air of a man perusing the daily news.

The news had been particularly riveting lately as Potter's voice faded from the picture, and his facial expressions took up the slack for it. He wondered if the boy ever realized how eloquently he displayed his emotions. On further consideration, Snape wondered, as well, just when Potter had ceased mooning over that Ravenclaw girl and turned his attentions to boys.

He hid a smirk, rather doubting that Potter had noticed himself. Not, of course, that Potter would have the gumption to take his burgeoning sexuality for what it was or make an advance if his pathetic past performance with perfectly acceptable dalliances was any indication of his seductive abilities.

Buttering a roll, Snape let his thoughts wander back down the mental list of Potter's dinnertime glances and staring contests, tallying the objects neatly as a soothing distraction from thinking about anything that involved werewolves, after dinners, drinks, or waking up in inns. There would, after all, be plenty of time to think about all of those later.

In his rooms.

Alone together.

Damn.

He set his knife down with steady hands and iron resolve, glaring still harder at Potter--or where Potter had been. Startled, Snape shifted his gaze just in time to see Potter disappear from the Great Hall with Draco, of all people, in pursuit.

Before he could help himself, he looked down the table and met golden eyes as curiously concerned as he himself felt.

Reaching sightlessly for his water goblet, Lupin shrugged faintly and lifted his eyebrows in an expression of absolute innocence before taking a sip and returning to his conversation with Sprout.

A small part of Snape was vaguely offended that Lupin didn't seem to be as studiously avoiding looking at him as he was looking at Lupin. He stabbed at a piece of meat, chewed methodically, and turned to give at least the appearance of interest in the conversation Hagrid was carrying on with Dumbledore that appeared to be about the benefits of doxy infestation. Within minutes, he found himself mentally, if not physically, leaning on one elbow and drawing patterns in his mashed potatoes with the tines of his fork, and counting the crumbs in Hagrid's beard. He'd never realized before just how dull the little beasts themselves were.

The venom was alright, he supposed, as was antidote theory, but it was apparently too much to hope for that his dinner companions might discuss either. He was mid-way through cataloguing the ingredients and timing necessary for brewing of the antidote when his left arm began to tingle, and he frowned, rubbing absently at the Mark through his robes--phantom pains, he'd been assured, would continue for some time after the Dark Lord's demise. He was already in the process of unbuttoning his sleeve at the wrist in a fit of morbid curiosity when it flared viciously to life, searing to the bone for one agonizing moment, then vanishing, leaving him white faced and clutching at the table.

Phantom, my pale arse.

Suddenly, he wasn't particularly interested in either dinner or doxies anymore.

Mercifully, only the staff seemed to have noticed as Lupin materialized at his side before Dumbledore could speak, laying a hand on his shoulder. "I left the book you asked to borrow in my office--I'm going there now if you're through?" He trailed off, not even glancing at Snape's barely-touched dinner plate.

Subtlety, clearly, was not a Gryffindor virtue.

Snape's forearm crawled with unpleasant sensation, and he decided that, for once, he could forego subtlety himself without adverse effect, stood, and then, against the tiny voice of his better judgement, sketched Lupin a briefly ironic bow and ushered him out through the staff door.

As the pair turned towards the dungeons without even observing the pretence of a visit to Lupin's office, he couldn't quite hold back a snort of amusement, and felt, more than saw, Lupin smile. "We could have been followed, you know," he murmured.

"We could have," Lupin agreed easily enough, walking beside him. "What's the worst that could happen now, Severus? A Jelly-Legs Jinx?"

Snape smirked. "Only Black would have dared."

For once, Lupin only smiled faintly. "You must feel much safer since he died."

Something in the too-calm tone slowed Snape, and he stopped, watching Lupin until he turned to look back, an expression of pleasant inquiry on his face. "No," Snape said at last, feeling as if the word was dragged coldly from his gut.

"No?"

"I don't feel safer," Snape clarified.

"I would have expected you to feel most safe indeed," Lupin said slowly. "Come on, Severus. I know there was never love lost between the two of you."

Well, Snape agreed privately, not love at least. "No man should feel safe with that--thing--sitting in the Department of Mysteries fluttering its gauze and whispering at us." And he, particularly, did not feel safe in a world that had snuffed out two of the most tenacious and irritating lights in his life so suddenly and completely.

"I suppose not," Lupin said, and they began to walk again, silent until they reached Snape's chambers.

Deciding it would be redundant at this point to ask if he drank, Snape poured two snifters of brandy, passing one to Lupin before leaving his own on the coffee table, removing his coat, and rolling up his sleeve to examine the Mark.

He hadn't realized that Lupin had done the same until warm fingers rested over his pulse and turned his forearm to the light. "A little red," Lupin said. "Does it hurt?"

The words were casually spoken, as if examining a bruise or a burn rather than the Mark that terrorized the world; Snape forgot even to pull his arm away, and only watched the intrusion into his personal space. "No," he said hesitantly, and endured the gentle prodding of fingertips over swollen flesh. He shuddered as the sensation of not-quite-pain echoed along his nerves more pleasantly than he would prefer under the circumstances. "No," he repeated, rolling his sleeve back down. "It becomes much more sensitive after a summoning, but not entirely painful. Only sensitive." Very sensitive.

More than one young Death Eater had been seen surreptitiously massaging the Mark with heavy-lidded eyes after a call.

Fussing with the cuff, he left off trying to roll it back down into a semblance of propriety, and rolled the other up instead to match, absently flicking the top several buttons loose on his shirt and settling into the warmth of his couch. Lupin had seen him falling over drunk the night before--he was fairly certain that seeing Severus with his throat and forearms bare wouldn't offend any delicate sensibilities. Particularly, he noted, as Lupin seemed to have removed his own coat and waistcoat, loosened his tie, and neatly rolled his sleeves to the elbow.

At least he hadn't toed off his shoes and propped his feet on the furniture. But perhaps it was only a matter of time.

"Do make yourself at home," he said wryly.

Lupin slouched back into the wingback chair he'd claimed, and cradled the snifter between his palms, toasting Snape with both hands. "Ta, Severus."

Snape snorted, flicking a look of amusement in his direction and resuming his drink.

"So does it happen often?" Lupin asked, swirling the brandy. He'd never noticed Lupin's tendency to fidget with things before, but as the alcoholic warmth eased its way through his veins and the firelight reflected amber through the liquid onto those long fingers, he found himself unable to object to the habit. "Severus?"

"Hmm?"

"Does the mark still burn often?" Concern laced Lupin's voice, but Snape waved it away, chasing it with a long drink.

"From time to time. Both Albus and Moody are reasonably certain it has nothing to do with the late Tom Riddle, and I'm not about to live out the remainder of my days looking over my shoulder. As there's no compulsion behind the pain, I see no cause for concern."

"Don't you wonder where it's coming from?"

"Yes," Snape said simply, and then, because he didn't want to say more, took a drink.

Unfortunately, Lupin remained famously difficult to deter. "And?"

"There is no 'and', Lupin. It's one more thing to live with. I'm sure you're familiar with the concept." He knew it was a somewhat low blow to fling, but contented himself with the knowledge that his voice had been more offhand than snide, and Lupin didn't seem offended.

"Yes, but I also know and understand the origin of my own 'things to live with' as you put it. What's in the brandy, Severus?" Lupin--yes, yes, he did appear to be teasing. Snape narrowed his eyes. "'Things' is hardly up to your usual verbal standards."

Perhaps it was the brandy, or perhaps it was the knowledge that Lupin had already seen him blindingly, staggeringly, drunk, but rather than answer aloud, Snape flicked a lazy two fingered salute to his companion, and smirked at the bark of startled laughter it produced.

"Severus!"

Snape chased down the smugness with the remainder of his brandy and stood for a refill. "I feel no need to dedicate more of my time to the Dark Lord than he's already claimed. I will worry about it, as they say, when it happens."

"And what will you do in the meantime, then?"

"What I've always done, I suppose." Snape extended the decanter in Lupin's direction, offering. This time, the portions were more social than polite. "Wake up each morning, teach my classes, oversee detentions, cause my students to lose bladder control, come back here, and drink myself blind," he said with a perfectly straight face. "There may be a hangover remedy inserted at some point in the order of events."

Lupin shook his head, a smile on his face that, unlike Snape, he didn't try to hide behind his drink. "Don't you feel the need for a change?"

"No," Snape said. "I fully intend to enjoy the luxury of each day in which my greatest surge of adrenaline comes from diverting the consequences of Longbottom's failed experiments."

Lupin chuckled, a low rough sound, and raised his glass to Snape. "Here's to melted cauldrons then, Severus."

As they drank, the fire flared green, as if joining in on their toast, and Snape ached an amused eyebrow at the thought as a face materialized in the flames. "Draco?"

"A bad time, professor?" Draco's eyes flickered from Snape's mussed hair to his open shirt, a smirk to do credit to Snape on his lips.

Snape looked back at Lupin, hesitating a moment. "Do you mind?"

"Not at all, Severus. If it's private-"

Deciding that it wasn't, Snape shook his head imperceptibly. Best hanged for a basilisk as an egg. It was, after all, hardly a secret that Draco bore the mark himself. Who else would he come to? Dumbledore? "I shouldn't be long. No," he said to Draco, returning his gaze to the flames. "Is something the matter?"

"Are you alone, then?" Draco asked, the very picture of guilelessness--affectedly so.

"No," Snape's lips curled, just at the corner. Subtlety had never quite been Draco's forte, and for all that he had the colouring of an angel, looking innocent did absolutely nothing for him save make him look as if he wanted something. "But you may say anything you wish in front of him."

Draco muffled a snicker, though his fingers were busily worrying the hem of one sleeve--something on his mind then. "I've found out what caused the marks to burn," he said suddenly, and Snape stiffened, a flash of memory replaying in his mind.

"Oh?" Surely Draco wouldn't have concealed that knowledge from him. It had to have been a recent discovery. "Would this have anything to do with your abrupt departure from dinner with Potter?"

Draco sighed. "You could at least have the decency to act surprised, Severus." He said petulantly. "You knew about Potter's little childhood gift from Voldemort then?"

Snape nodded briefly. "Albus did hint at something quite like that rather often over the years."

"Well now he's gotten the rest, I think." A tingling spread through Snape's veins--Potter. Volatile, angry, Black-like Potter. With Voldemort's power? An itch of worry prickled the back of his neck. "He lost it a bit while we were talking and the scars flared up." Draco shrugged, lightly, and showed Severus his mark, already fading back to its more usual aggravated pink. "His scar did too. Nothing to worry about, I suppose. Nothing a few more occlumency lessons shouldn't cure, possibly meditation."

Snape drew himself up to his full height, and wondered, just briefly, if he'd helped to raise an idiot or if Potter's foolhardiness was somehow highly contagious. "I dare say," he said, his tone dripping ice. "Are you aware then that Potter is the living embodiment of a vial of exussum solution with a cracked seal?"

"Cracked something," Draco muttered, looking far more unconcerned than Snape felt. Behind him, he felt Remus's eyes, watching the conversation intently. "He doesn't seem to be an immediate danger.

Severus cursed under his breath, and then stopped, looking up at Draco with excruciating slowness, as just what Draco had said fully formed in his mind. Potter. Silent Potter. His brows drew together sharply. "He spoke to you?"

Remus's intake of breath was sharp.

Draco winced, then forced his face into a carelessly casual expression before answering. "No. I was trying to taunt him into it and only made him angry. I figured out the rest."

For a Slytherin, Draco was an appalling liar. "What was his reaction to you?"

Draco half shrugged, and wrapped his arms around his knees. "Already said. He got angry at me, then he calmed down again."

No vigilante justice then? "I can't imagine, Mr. Malfoy, just what you might have said to calm down Harry Potter."

"Agreed with him mostly." Draco's tone softened with laughter. "Gryffindors seem to like being agreed with."

Snape couldn't quite resist a glance at Remus, who had, at least, the good grace to look abashed and toast Snape with his half-empty glass, though he, too, seemed remarkably interested in what Draco had to say regarding his conversation with a supposedly mute young man. "Indeed they do."

"Do you think we should tell Dumbledore?"

"After what happened to Sirius, I don't think any good would come of Albus interfering." Remus spoke, little more than a murmur against the rim of his glass, and Snape glanced back at him.

"Oh?"

"We're not entirely blind to our own up in the towers, Severus," Remus said mildly, perhaps too mildly, staring into the fire.

"Yet you did nothing to intervene?"

Remus's eyes shifted, narrowed, and held. "I suppose you'd willingly put yourself between Albus and an angry Harry, then? Forgive me if I'd prefer stepping between a dragon and its lunch."

Snape thought briefly of the firestorm that had been Harry Potter at the end of his fifth year, and had to agree. He very nearly smiled. "How self-preservationist of you."

Remus inclined his head. "I thought you would approve."

Turning back to Draco, Snape said, "I think, perhaps, it would be wisest simply to watch. Our connection to him may fade in time as he grows accustomed to his new abilities. The headmaster," Snape spoke with the same care Remus had shown. It was, after all, unwise to express explicit disloyalty in Hogwarts itself, "may not be quite the stabilizing influence Potter needs at this moment. I suspect that their sessions have not been going as well as Albus believes."

Draco snorted, softly. "Funny, and I thought I was the only one who noticed that Potter looks like he wants to kill something every time he comes down from the Headmaster's office."

Severus returned a measured look. "Indeed. You may, however, be the only one who sees it for what it is."

"Aside from you?"

"Of course. I suspect that you and I have, perhaps, more in common with Mr. Potter in this regard than the rest of the school."

"So what should I do?"

"Keep watching," Severus replied, and then, his lips twisted in a moment of wicked amusement, unable to resist an open opportunity. "Constant vigilance."

Draco all but growled. "I don't need a Moody reminder, Severus."

Still smirking faintly, Snape watched him. "Moody or no, Draco, there is merit in watching. Continuing to do so will not, I think, do us any harm."

Slowly, Draco nodded. "I'll tell you as soon as anything changes."

"Do so. Is this all?"

"Yes. Thank you, Severus." His eyes flicked in Remus's direction, unseeing. "You too," he said as the fire flickered back to normal.

Remus looked amused. "Is he always so polite in such a rude way?"

Snape snorted, softly, and poured them both another drink. He needed one. "You have no idea."

"Are all of your Slytherins in the habit of fire calling your private rooms at all hours of the night?" Nothing but a note of mild curiosity betrayed Remus's emotions.

"Only my godson," Snape said, watching Remus startle out of the corner of his eye and smiling inwardly. "A boy needs a role model after all."

"Forgive me for saying it, Severus, but I hardly expected Lucius Malfoy to choose you as a role model," Remus said, picking his way politely around the question he wasn't quite ill-mannered enough to ask directly.

Snape snorted on quiet laughter. "He didn't. The arrangement is one of Draco's making."

"Is that legal?"

"Not strictly speaking," Snape said, draining half his glass in one go. "But you have clearly never tried to tell Draco Malfoy 'no.'"

"You're fond of the boy, aren't you?" Remus leaned forward.

"So help me, Lupin, if you twinkle at me-"

"Admit it," Remus insisted, "you are."

Snape sighed, and maybe it was the liquor, or maybe it was just that earnest teasing grin on Lupin's face, but he smiled. "Perhaps a little. Someone has to be."