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You Will Not Kiss Me	By : Prosperosdaughter Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Snape/Remus Views: 22836 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
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Chapter List
- 23
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Chapter 24: Seeking what is Lost

The weeks leading up to the end of term were torture for Snape. He remained wracked with guilt for what he had done and all too aware that the Break in his mind had yet to be healed. He did his best to keep up the meditation exercises he'd been taught previously and to try to keep his emotions in check. But, ah, that was the hard part.

He took Dreamless Sleep most nights because he had horrifying nightmares about his carving of Lupin's mind, but he was taking it too regularly, and he had become agitated during his waking hours and reacted badly to stressful situations or remembrances. The mere sight of the golden trio was enough to make him clench his fists alarmingly.

His bed was cold and empty without Lupin and he missed him desperately. Lupin's physical presence in Snape's life had been large and the hollowness he felt now was the more harrowing for it. When he had cleared out Lupin's things on the night of the full moon, he had done it thoroughly. Nothing remained of the man that Snape could draw comfort from. He would look at the fading bites on his neck and chest in the mirror and wonder, as the bites faded, if the Claim faded too.

He had no idea where Lupin was or means of communicating with him. Dumbledore remained resolute that he would not contact Lupin on Snape's behalf until Snape was fully healed. Snape understood he was still unwell and his mercurial nature could exacerbate this illness, but he just wanted some news. He had asked Dumbledore if he could provide Lupin's Wolfsbane Potion, but Dumbledore advised it was being sourced elsewhere.

He was under no illusion that Lupin would ever forgive him. Illness or not, the evil he had done to Lupin was of his own creation that the Dark madness drew from his own jealousy and spite. He knew this. He couldn't bear the thought that Lupin was out in the world, physically suffering because of Snape's cruelty and Darkness and hating him for it.

Snape alone could heal his vicious carving and make Lupin whole again, even if that would be the last he saw of him.

No sooner had the end of term arrived than Dumbledore escorted Snape to St. Mungo's. He was greeted by Healer Smethwyck and placed in the Spell Damage ward. The Healer and his assistants conducted intensive Legilimency on Snape over the course of a month. It was arduous and sometimes painful, physically and emotionally. He had to suffer it if he was ever to regain any semblance of his life. Dumbledore would never be moved from his resolution that Snape would not be discharged until he was fully healed.

Hospital was hellish. One's mind could not rest nor could it be properly engaged. The days dragged by with pitiless sluggishness. Every day that passed was a reminder that this was not how he had seen himself spending this summer – it certainly wasn't the holiday they had planned for themselves.

The revelation was instant: Cadr Idris, Lupin's place of magical solace - that was where Lupin would be! He could picture the place (although he did not revisit their intimate memories shared – he found those memories too painful) and it gave him his own solace that he could envisage Lupin finally. It energised him to have something positive to think about, and he worked more purposefully with the Healers thereafter.

It was late July when Healer Smethwyck pronounced Snape healed to Dumbledore, who then arrived to escort Snape to Spinner's End. Snape was not happy to be back in his childhood home. Another reminder of where he wasn't this summer.

He spent no more than two days on tenterhooks at Spinner's End, waiting to hear from Dumbledore but when there was no fire call or owl, Snape decided he could wait no longer. His mind was well, he should know the answer, whatever it might be. He found an old British atlas and plotted his Apparition to the exact point he wanted in Snowdonia. He packed some potions that might be useful and shrank them to fit in his robe pockets and then left.

He Apparated in the field where he knew the ruin to be and stood looking around himself in wonder for some time. It was a breathtakingly beautiful place and the air, after Spinner's End, was fresh, and full, and astringently pure. He spotted the ruin and walked around it. He could never access it without Dumbledore's invitation as Secret Keeper, but perhaps Lupin would see him and trust him enough to come to him. He decided to try sending his Patronus to the farmhouse. The Patronus could enter within the charm, because it had no corporeal reality and could do no harm. It took him many efforts to conjure his Patronus, and only finally managed it by imagining seeing Lupin whole and smiling again. The silver doe burst from his wand and he sent it to the farmhouse with the message in his own voice: "Remus – please let me see you. I'll surrender my wand to you, if you wish."

Whether it was received or not, Snape did not know. He certainly could not blame Lupin if he chose to ignore him. He may not even be here. After waiting for a long time, Snape walked towards the mountain range and decided to walk around the lake and to the summit, now he was here. It took a couple of hours, but he eventually reached the summit, breathing hard and exhilarated, and stood transfixed by the sheer beauty of it. Snape was pleased he had come.

The night was drawing in and he could feel the magic scintillating in the air. His eyes were inexorably drawn to the stone seat itself. He formed the resolution to spend the night on the summit. It was something they had planned to do, so he would do it (although, knowing Lupin, there would certainly have been a carnal aspect to that, and the thought made him smile). He walked about contemplatively for some time until he realised it was pitch black. He laid himself out on the rock to watch the starry firmament like the ancient giant used to. The summit got colder and he cast a warming charm over himself and slowly drifted off to sleep and, despite the stone under his body, had a more comfortable sleep than he had known since that fateful full moon, bathing in the ancient magic inherent in the stone and abounding in the air.

The sun rose spectacularly and Snape was awake to watch it over the next hour, his senses enervated with awe and wonder at the sheer beauty of landscape, enriched with ancient druidic magic. It was only when the sun was fully visible through the mountains that Snape noticed the small parchment folded in his hand. Someone had placed it in his hand whilst he slept. His heart leapt as he looked at Dumbledore's copperplate script.

Plas du, Minffordd, Snowdonia.

He originally thought of Apparating down to the farmhouse, but found himself so overwrought, he decided to walk down to expend his excess energy. He did not want to unnerve Lupin by appearing wild-eyed at his door.

He remembered the way down from his shared memory from Lupin. It was an arduous walk in reality, but it was one worth taking. He stopped by a stream to drink from it – the most refreshing, magically charged water that sparkled as he lifted it to his mouth. It was an hour before he stood before the ruin and read the parchment and watched the ruin become whole and inviting before him.

His heart hammered in his chest now. How would Lupin receive him? His mouth became parched in an instant. He had promised to surrender his wand so he took it out and turned it so the handle faced outward and he walked to the front door. It was ajar. He called Lupin's name tentatively and then walked straight into the sitting room.

Lupin was sitting in one of the armchairs, side on from him and not looking his way but out of the window, his wand held loosely in his hand. Anger, but also pain and fear, emanated from him. Snape swallowed hard to regain his voice and to try to steady his nerves, but feeling hot tears prickling at the back of his eyes. He willed them back. He had not expected a warm welcome; he had no right to tears.

He held out his wand and the parchment on his open palms and Lupin Summoned them both to himself and placed them in his robe.

"May I come in?" he said softly.

Lupin nodded and then got up and went to the kitchen, all without looking at Snape once.

Snape removed his robe, and sat in the other chair. He remembered how Lupin had conjured them spending their time here and felt an uncomfortable lump in his throat. He suddenly had no idea what he would say.

After some minutes, Lupin returned with a tray of porridge, toast and tea for them both. He placed it on the small dining table. He sat there himself and started to eat. Snape didn't move.

"You need to eat. You've become too thin," Lupin said matter-of-factly, still not looking at him. How would you know if you won't look at me? Snape thought to himself. Then he realised that Lupin must have looked at him as he slept last night when he placed the parchment in his hand.

He sat at the table and helped himself to both as well as tea, looking at Lupin, although Lupin kept his face averted from him. Suddenly, Snape understood.

"You have my wand, Remus," he said quietly. "I am not so accomplished a Legilimens to enter your mind without it." His face had flushed at the realisation that Lupin did not trust him not to enter his mind by force again. He looked at his own breakfast, knowing it would now taste of dust, and felt burning shame running under his skin to the tips of fingers. He put down his cutlery and placed his hands in his lap and closed his eyes to think how to start this conversation.

Lupin nodded and kept eating his own breakfast.

Then Lupin said, "I loved your eyes, Severus. I could have drowned in those eyes and died happy." Snape realised his breath was caught in his throat. "If I look in them now, Severus, I will remember the hatred that blazed in them as you slashed into my mind."

"Remus ... I ... I," Snape stuttered. The thought of never looking into Lupin's eyes again devastated him. Lupin always looked very directly at everyone. He had never seen him avoid anyone's gaze. He let his head fall in his hands, unable to form a sentence.

"I know you were ill, Severus," Lupin continued. "I felt the madness in your mind as you entered mine. It didn't feel like you at all. I've tried to forgive you, but to even sit here with you causes me pain – physical pain – where you carved me." Lupin cupped his hand to the right hand side of his skull as if nursing a headache.

"I don't expect your forgiveness, Remus. I don't deserve it." Snape's voice was barely audible. "It's true I was ill. I was released from St. Mungo's two days ago." He noticed Lupin's head turn a fraction to this news. "But, that madness fed on my own irrational jealousy and I carved your mind – there are few wizards who can do that – using the very skill I had pledged myself was sacred to you." He could feel the lump in his throat again. He struggled against it. "Those things were very much my own fault, and are my eternal shame."

"Yes," Lupin said simply. "But you underestimate what you were labouring under, Severus. The Mind Break was Dark enough – you had neglected its healing so it was unstable." Lupin was teaching again, Snape could hear it in his moderated and courteous voice and he loved him anew for it. "Think: where were you when the Break tore open, Severus?"

"Your office," Snape replied. Lupin waited for Snape to think it through for himself. "The Defence post's curse?" Snape's eyes widened.

"I believe so, Severus. That curse finds the weakness to exploit to oust the incumbent of the post. You were its tool on this occasion. Two curses to fight, Severus. What chance did you have?" Lupin shook his head. "I blame you, and yet I don't blame you. I am torn. I do know, however, that I'll never be able to address it rationally while I have this crippling pain in my head." He gave a small shrug and indicated Snape's plate. "I'd like you to eat please."

Snape turned his attention back to his cold porridge and toast and reheated them both with a warming charm. It didn't matter what it tasted like. He needed to eat. He realised he hadn't eaten since he was at Spinner's End early yesterday. So he ate it all, and he noticed that if he kept his eyes fixed firmly on his plate, Lupin would turn to look at him, so that's what he did, keeping his movements exaggerated so he wouldn't take Lupin by surprise.

When he finished, Lupin took the plates and cutlery away and sat back down with a heavy sigh.

"This is not how I pictured us being here," Lupin said sadly.

"Nor I," Snape admitted, keeping his eyes on his own hands.

"I've never seen your Patronus before. I would not have thought you would be a forest creature."

"Not really a caring, nurturing type, you think? More a bat, perhaps? Or a snake?" Snape said with a small smile. He didn't know if Lupin returned it. "What is your Patronus?"

"A wolf. Always. Nothing could make it change – it affixes to my nature." There was some sourness to the statement.

"Remus, please," Snape said, looking up as Lupin snapped his eyes away, "those things I said were the ravings of a madman. Please do not think they are my true feelings. Nothing could be further from the truth. I beg you to believe me!"

"They certainly used to be your thoughts on werewolves, Severus. And you said, it was your jealousy and rage..."

"Yes, jealousy of Black, even of Potter – you know I am not rational in this – it doesn't excuse it, but I loved you so, I couldn't abide the thought of losing you and I lashed out about those who I believed threatened me." Snape's shoulders slumped. "My rage – oh my temper. I've always struggled with it. You seemed to bound my temper so well. But that day, when the Break tore, everything I usually struggle to contain – my temper, my jealousy, my obsessive side – became so magnified. Every poor mechanism I usually use – lashing out with cruelty – magnified with it." His eyes were filling with tears now, hot fat tears of shame and loss, but he knew Lupin would not look at his face, so he allowed himself to shed them.

"When I cut at you in that madness, I believed you had not told me one truth since we had met, I believed you and Black were in league against me and I wanted to hurt you as much as I was hurting and, unfortunately, I had the means to do so. I did it. What I did was foul but it was not the truth of what I feel about you.

"I have never loved the way I have loved you and look what I did to you! Oh Remus, I wanted to come here with you this summer so badly and I wanted to ask you when we were here to bond with me. And yet here we are and my own self-destructive rage means you cannot abide to even look at me." He let his head fall into his hands once more and steadied his breath.

"You would have asked to bond with me, even though I'm a werewolf?" Lupin asked softly.

"Remus, until that night, I thought no two people could ever have shared themselves and their magic in a more perfect way than we. Your being a werewolf was part of what we were. I even researched whether we could bond. I mean, I wasn't sure if we could, as two men. It wasn't Lycanthropy that stopped the idea of bonding in its tracks though."

"What then?"

Snape placed his left arm out. "This," he held the Dark Mark with his right hand. "No blood bondsman can perform the wizard's soul bond without the permission of his blood master." He snorted.

"Somehow, I don't think Voldemort would consent if I asked," Lupin said, and Snape fancied he heard a small chuckle in this voice.

"Quite."

"I would have said yes," Lupin said quietly and left the table with his tea and stood at the largest window, looking at the dramatic mountain range as Snape let the words wash over him, partly in pleasure, mainly in pain.

"I thought ...," Lupin continued. "I thought you had learned to trust me. The very things you thought made us perfect for bonding, well, they all included high degrees of trust between us. How did it disappear so quickly, Severus? How did we go from sharing the Wolf's Kiss to your threatening me with the Dementor's Kiss?"

Snape screwed his eyes shut in misery at the contrast Lupin had just highlighted. "I was just swallowed up in madness," Snape said quietly. "You recall how you were with me when Malfoy touched me and you struggled to come back to me from your possessiveness even though you hurt me?" Lupin nodded. "My madness was like that, but I couldn't get back – everything about us was twisted and perverted by the madness. Albus had to enter my mind to bring me back. Believe me, Remus, that I have never had trust in anyone the way I have trusted you, nor have been so trusted as you trusted me." His voice had become very small and shamed. "I understand if you hate me now."

Lupin said nothing for a long time. "Albus offered to heal the carving, but he did say that you would yield a better result as it is your casting. But I have to trust you with my mind again. I'm not sure I can."

"Albus could be here to oversee it, if you wish," Snape offered. "I don't expect you to trust me on my own, but I can heal it. I want to heal it, Remus."

Lupin nodded again. For a long time, he gazed out of the window, and Snape watched him with sadness and longing.

"What do you need to do it? Anything, other than your wand?"

Snape shook his head. "Shall I fire-call Albus then?"

Lupin turned and looked Snape straight in the eyes.

The blue of his eyes was fractured like shattered coloured glass and the whites of his eyes were blood-shot. Snape gasped loudly. He had not known the pain would be so manifest.

"No," Lupin said firmly. "You and I will do this now. I will trust you to rid me of this, and then you will prove your trust in me. Do you agree?"

Lupin offered Snape his wand, which Snape took with a trembling hand and nodded his agreement to his terms. No greater trust could Lupin show him than he was doing now, here in this isolated cottage with no other wizard or witch to oversee them. Snape knew what it meant and his heart was so full, he wondered if he would be able to take his next breath at all.

Snape rolled up his shirt sleeves and set the two dining chairs to face each other and removed and enlarged some mind healing potion he had brought from his robe to place by Lupin's chair. Lupin removed his own robe and rolled up his sleeves likewise. They took their seats opposite each other. Snape wanted to touch Lupin's face as he had done before the fateful full moon, but didn't think the gesture would be welcome. He went to raise his wand, when Lupin took his left hand in his own and raised it to his face. Snape managed a small smile, and tenderly took Lupin's chin in his left hand as he raised his wand in his right, locking with those strangely fractured blue eyes.

"Legilimens," he whispered.

Waves of sharp, tearing pain hit him immediately. He knew Lupin dealt with a great deal of pain, but this was at a debilitating level. It was no surprise Lupin chose to hole up in this place with its restorative magic. He travelled gently to the site of the carving. If it could be seen, it was be the deep blood red of a deep wound. It had searing heat to it, and the Darkness was palpable. The searing pain travelled out in threads from the carving, affecting all aspects of Lupin's mind. Snape spent time tracing its trails through Lupin's mind and then took each and every one to cauterise it from the source, and excise each thread, soothing each tentacle's path as it became free. He worked on each and every tentacle and thread until all had been removed, turning his attention then to the carving itself. The pain was lessened now, with only the main site now to be dealt with.

It was a foul and odious thing; a thing wrought from malevolence and spite. It vibrated with dissonance and discord. With the greatest of care, Snape began to excise his own carving, excising up to the very boundary of the slice, removing no healthy mind, only his own vicious work. It was intricate and lengthy. When the last of the excision had been done, he then smoothed and salved the area of the mind until it was pristine once more.

Snape could feel the mind was clear now, the pain was gone. There was the after-ache that follows when pain has left, but that was all. He left Lupin's mind quickly and gently. He looked at Lupin's eyes anew. The whites were clear and the irises pure blue once more. He closed his eyes in relief and let his hands drop, only to have them scooped up by Lupin and held firmly in thanks, as Lupin bowed his head, clearly savouring being pain-free for the first time in many weeks.

"You should take the Potion now, one dram, and every day for two weeks. I brought enough," Snape said, his voice rough with emotion, wishing he had the nerve to kiss Lupin's head that was bowed before him but certain it would be unwelcome, until he found himself grabbed around the waist by Lupin and brought onto his lap. Lupin nestled his head into Snape's neck as he held him tightly around his waist. Snape wrapped his arms around Lupin's shoulders and kissed the top of his head, his heart beating too fast.

"I am so very sorry, Remus," he whispered to him. He felt wetness on his neck and knew that Lupin had shed tears, probably of relief. Snape Summoned a glass from the kitchen and measured the Potion for Lupin to take.

"Come, Severus," Lupin said at last. "Let's get some air." He manoeuvred Snape to stand on the floor, and they walked to the door together. Lupin flung open the door and breathed in the air in huge lungfuls like a man reprieved. They walked in the small ornamental and herb garden, only visible under the Fidelius Charm.

"What happens now, Remus?" Snape asked gingerly. Would he be sent away? What was this test of trust that Lupin mentioned? Lupin did not avoid Snape's gaze now; in fact, he could barely take his eyes away from Snape as they walked. It made Snape's head spin.

"When you entered my mind now, Severus, I could feel your mind was cured," Lupin said. "All the rage and Darkness I felt at the full moon were gone. I never realised how attuned I had become to how your mind felt on those occasions when you shared my mind. Now I realise, I know it as well as I know your face or your scent. You are cured, and it warms my heart, Severus. You are still my Severus." He was smiling hugely at Snape now.

"What happens now?" Lupin repeated rhetorically. "I need to know that you trust me Severus. Whether we can continue – well, it all comes down to trust, doesn't it?"

"How can I show you?" Snape asked breathlessly. Lupin might take him back if he could prove himself. He was being offered another chance. Yet another chance. It was more than he could believe; more than he deserved; it was everything he wanted.

"Just a test of trust, Severus," Lupin said, still smiling as he picked some herbs. He told Snape the herbs and flowers he was looking for and Snape helped him to pick them and they then returned to farmhouse.
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You Will Not Kiss Me