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The Long Road	By : SinisterMe Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Snape/Remus Views: 63598 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 18
Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction using characters from the Harry Potter world, which is trademarked by J. K. Rowling. This story is purely for entertainment purposes, no money is being made from it.

Chapter List
- 56
- 57
- 58
Remus was stunned to watch Severus move towards the stairs leading up to the kitchen. He couldn’t help but follow, not able to believe their luck in his master cooperating with Draco like that. He noted that Snape’s shoulders were sagging and that the tremors in his hands were not subsiding but were becoming more exaggerated as time went on. He was favouring his strong leg and avoiding taking any unnecessary steps. Lupin was glad they were going upstairs without him having to be the one to urge them to do it. Severus needed more rest, but he must have been exhausted to agree to it that easily.
In the kitchen, something completely different must have shown on his face because Severus said, “I trust him to brew it correctly, unlike myself at the moment.” There was more than a little self-contempt in his voice.
“You don’t need to do everything yourself,” Remus told him. “We’re all here to help, and you walking out of that lab is the only assurance I will ever need that Draco is more than capable of brewing that potion. Besides, Teddy isn’t even going to be taking it, because he doesn’t need it.” The very idea made his heart overflow, but it seemed that there was always something to worry about. “You’re planning on using something in Teddy’s blood to manufacture this cure?”
Severus nodded. “That is one of the possibilities, yes.”
“If this works, are you going to need Teddy’s blood to cure… all of us? He’s such a small child, I don’t know how we could do that without hurting him.”
“If that were our only option, then we would never tell another soul what we have found,” Severus said seriously. “Not even for the sake of every werewolf in this world would I allow that to happen. Thankfully, that is now how it works. I will likely be able to be able to synthesize what is needed once we isolate it, and if that does not successful, we will find another way.” Severus noted that though his voice was not faltering, the scarring on the side of his mouth and face was aching in such a way that his words were coming out crooked and lazy sounding, as if he were speaking using only half of his mouth. He silenced himself instead of explaining further.
He went and found the small stack of newsprint on top of the refrigerator. Not trusting his luck, he opened the liquor cabinet above it, surprised to find six bottles of Ogden’s Old Firewhisky, aged eighty-five years sitting there. Reaching up, he took the front bottle down and looked at the card hanging from a string. “LM” was all that was written on it. Severus pulled it from the bottle and crushed it in his hand. Lucius always did know how to get his foot in a door. He closed the cabinet and rolled the newspapers up, tucking them and one of the bottles under his arm. He turned and continued up the stairs, positive that Remus would hover along behind him to be sure that he made it.
Snape went over to his chair by the fire and sat down heavily. Setting the cane aside and manually lifting his leg so that it stretched out over the ottoman, he rubbed at the limb roughly with a frustrated sigh. He tossed the papers on the nightstand and cracked the wax seal on the bottle, pouring himself a very generous portion and recorking it. He set the bottle aside and took a long sniff of the liquid in his glass, which must have met his approval, as he then took an even longer drink of it.
“Draco must have put that up there,” Remus said, looking at the bottle.
“Either he pilfered them, or Lucius sent them,” Severus agreed, flexing the fingers on one of his hands, seemingly enthralled by the bending of his knuckles. “It doesn’t matter how it came to be here, Lucius owes me a drink, at the very least.”
“He was quite…” Remus struggled for the word, “distressed about your continued lack of contact.” That would be putting it mildly, as well as much less oddly than what had actually occurred.
Severus let out an undignified snort of laughter. “He would be, I’m sure – now there’s one who is accustomed to getting his way. I’m glad that he decided to put that particular talent to use for us, though I rather wish that I had been there during your interactions. He is not someone I trust to act in anyone’s self-interest but his own.”
“I suppose if this one is on Lucius, then you’d better pour one for me too. I only had to talk with him for a few minutes, but I feel like he owes me at least that as well.”
“He didn’t do anything too inappropriate, did he?’ Severus asked, as if inquiring after a delinquent child – concerned and disapproving, but with a touch of fondness. It was not at all the tone of voice Remus would have used to ask after someone who had smashed his hands beyond repair with a hammer.
“Well, that depends, doesn’t it, on what you feel is ‘too’ inappropriate?” Remus quipped.
Severus let out a small chuckle, which Remus counted as a personal victory.
“He mostly seemed interested in speaking with you again,” Remus told him truthfully. “Though he didn’t come across as completely unthreatening while he did so. I feel as if I held my own.”
“Lucius hasn’t been completely unthreatening since before his balls dropped,” Severus said with a smirk and an eyeroll. “And I have no doubt that you did.”
Remus sensed that he had somehow amused Severus and wanted to continue doing so. “I may have told him that his brain was made of cabbage at one point and then reminded him of the contents of his Ministry testimony at another.” Remus took a sip of his drink and it went down more smoothly than he had even imagined.
Severus barked out a laugh. “I believe I would have enjoyed watching that.”
Remus shrugged. “I believe he also made up with Draco, in his own way.” Severus seemed to have the oddest history with this man, and he didn’t want to only tell half-truths.
Severus sobered immediately. “What did he say?”
“Something along the lines of that he may not be able to be his heir, but that he would always remain his son. Narcissa is pregnant.”
Severus nodded slowly. “If he says that and follows through, he is a better man than his own father and a better father than I have ever given him credit for. I also know that it would be a great weight off of Draco’s shoulders. For that alone, I am grateful, though I am sorry that you had to endure him when he has had the displeasure of not getting what he wants. On a separate note, I will have Fred send Narcissa something to express my congratulations, if that is the word that is considered appropriate.”
He took another long drink, almost pointedly not looking at the papers at his elbow. Before coming up here, he had felt that it was imperative that he read them, or he would somehow be a coward. He needed to be in the loop in order to help propel what they had started forward. But now, he felt a reluctance that he didn’t want to admit to but couldn’t avoid. “What else have I missed?” he asked in order to postpone the moment where he couldn’t put off looking at them any longer.
Remus thought, nursing his own drink. “I don’t know, not that much…” His mind was drawing a blank. It felt that everything had stopped for him from the time of Severus’ departure to his return home.
“Was I…” Severus trailed off, taking a large gulp of his drink and thinking that maybe he should just put the newspapers back where he had found them if this conversation was preferable to looking at them. He cleared his throat. “Was I in my right mind when I spoke with you in Lanning’s basement?” He swallowed as though his mouth was dry. “As in,” he continued, hoping to clarify, “were you really there? You must have been, to give Daniel that Portkey.”
Remus took a large drink himself before answering. “Yes, I was there.”
“Where in the hell did you get a Portkey?” Severus couldn’t help but ask. It wasn’t foremost on his mind, but it was something he would rather like cleared up. “Do I now owe Lucius a favour?” he asked with distaste, rubbing at the ache in his leg.
“No,” Remus assured him, “I don’t believe you owe him anything at all. Although Imogene Bateman may no longer owe you anything and I can’t be sure that you’re not the tiniest bit in her debt.”
“How would you even know to…” Severus thought back. “You don’t miss a trick, do you Remus Lupin? I may have mentioned her one time.”
Remus shifted in his seat. “I was desperate, I felt as if I had to do something more than we were doing. She gave me the Portkey and sent Ackerley the largest donation in the history of The Academy of Brewers.”
“In that case, I am massively in her debt. You knew that this was only temporary, and I asked you to stay within the realms of what we discussed. What caused that to change?” He felt as if there was a large part of the story that he was missing, for Remus to have gone so far as to start calling in his old debts against his wishes.
“I- There were…” Remus emptied the last half of his glass by tossing his head back drinking until it was empty. “He was sending us… parts of you, by post.”
Severus took a moment to blink vacantly while he digested this particular piece of information. “I’m sorry that you had to deal with that,” he said sincerely. That was psychological warfare he hadn’t expected from a physician, no matter how crooked. If his and Remus’ positions had been reversed, Severus would have been dismantling Lanning’s house with Greek fire right now in order to force the man out of it to be ground slowly to death between his teeth. “I had hoped that you would have had some peace to find yourself again while I was away.”
Remus, who was in the middle of refilling his glass, made a broken sound as he replaced the cork in the neck. “Find myself?” he asked, almost angrily. “Severus, I felt like you took the most important part of me with you when you went. How could you expect me to treat this as if it were some kind of vacation?”
Severus reached over and put his hand on Lupin’s arm. Several emotions passed across his face before he began to speak. “The best part of you is your heart – the ease with which you love and forgive. There is more power in that than I think you know, and I’ve always thought it was the most astonishing thing about you, even when it made me want to throttle you completely. I doubt I had all of that in my pocket when I left the house,” Snape said with mild sarcasm.
‘My heart? How little you know,’’ was all Remus could think, though his mouth wouldn’t move to form the words.
Severus didn’t know how to decipher what he had just said, let alone Remus’ lack of response to it. He removed his hand from the other man’s arm so that he could refill his glass almost to the brim, drinking at least a third of it in one go, so that his eyes watered and his whole torso emanated warmth from his stomach. He glanced down at the newspapers and away again, wondering if Draco wasn’t right about him reading them just this second. His fingers were trying to press into the sore tissue on his thigh, but his hands would then begin to throb with pain, so he didn’t feel like he was accomplishing anything, though he seemed unable to stop the cycle.
“Does it still hurt?” Remus asked, feeling stupid for such a question while simultaneously trying not to think of Severus hanging there with his knee ripped open the way it had been.
“Yes, though not as badly as before.”
Remus nodded, finishing his drink, setting the glass aside and standing. He went to his side of the bed and opened the nightstand drawer, coming out with a half full bottle of the scar treatment that Severus had carefully applied to his skin every day while he healed. “Does this stuff work on regular people too?” he asked.
Severus nodded. He should be putting it on his face, at the very least. He was far from a vain man, but it only seemed fair to the people around him. He took another long drink from his glass and staunchly didn’t think about dealing with problems in the same fashion as his father.
“Alright then, stand up,” Remus told him.
Snape raised one eyebrow, otherwise staying still.
“I don’t think we can roll up your trouser leg that high,” Remus explained. “You’ll need to take them off.”
The second eyebrow met the first almost a third of the way up his forehead.
“Git,” Remus accused affectionately. “Come on, humor me.”
Severus sighed, but did as he was asked, leaving on his outer robe, shirt and pants but removing his trousers before sitting back down.
Remus sat on the ottoman, spreading the ointment thickly across his hands, drizzling some over Severus’ thigh. “If this doesn’t feel good for any reason, please tell me,” Remus implored, looking up at him. He wasn’t sure this was at all the correct thing to be doing, but he felt the need to try something. Severus seemed all too put together on the surface, but that still didn’t stop him from wanting to do something for him, knowing what was likely bubbling just beneath it. He moved his hands to touch Severus, pausing just before he made actual contact. “May I?” he checked, just to be sure.
Severus nodded, not trusting his voice. It was more than humbling that there was no need to ask Remus to assist him, that he would be thinking of ways to do that of his own volition. Even when he had been small, it was not something he had been accustomed to. His mother had tried, when and where she could, but his father had resented her for softening him up. Real men just let it bleed, had been his attitude. He’d scorned proper medical treatment for most things as well, once giving Severus a raw cut of meat to put on a horrendous shiner he’d given him. Rather than helping anything, it had brought on an infection that had almost cost him the vision in his right eye. It had been one of the only times his grandparents had intervened, getting a healer to go to the house and give him treatment. He supposed that even then they were assuming that he was their only hope for an heir, and already flawed enough as it was.
“Thank you,” Remus said genuinely.
He brought his slicked hands up, rubbing them lightly across his leg, first on one side of the thick, angry scar encircling his thigh and then on the other - to get him used to the sensation before bringing his hands across the scar itself. He ran his palms across it carefully, tenderly at first, feeling the wiry hair on either side of the blemish rasp against his skin. He repeated the motions, not wanting to really go for it until he knew that Severus was comfortable. He looked up to find his master’s eyes closed, his chin tilted up just a little, hand clenched too tightly around his glass. He was the picture of endurance instead of relaxation like Remus was hoping.
“Should I stop?” he asked, not quite letting his fingertips leave Severus’ skin.
Severus appeared to actually contemplate his question for a moment. “No, continue,” he said after a length.
He brought his right hand under Severus’ thigh where it wasn’t resting on the chair, holding his leg almost in an embrace. He leaned forward and brought his lips to the lightly puckered flesh, pressing a kiss into the seam that appeared to be holding the leg together. His purpose was to comfort, to show acceptance, to express his endless gratitude, the love his heart felt when Severus’ face came into his mind. He didn’t know what Severus was making of it all, though he watched the other man’s fingers flex one at a time over the side of his glass in a slow and even rhythm.
It wasn’t a direct sign that he should desist, not in Remus’ mind. Plus, he had just been invited to continue - as long as he was tenuous with his actions, he figured that he would be alright to proceed. Either Severus or the bond would let him know if he had overstepped any of the invisible lines that he was sure were still surrounding him at unknown distances. Also, Severus hadn’t said anything about the potion being unsafe for oral consumption, so he repeated the slow kisses across the jagged scar tissue. When he was done adoring every inch of it that he could safely reach, he sat back and brought his hands back into the equation.
He rubbed the scar tissue gently at ninety-degree angles, over and over again before moving on to the next section of flesh. He knew from therapy to the many scars he had given himself while transformed as an adolescent, as well as from his infection site from when he was young, that it was an excellent way to help break up and soften the malformed tissue. This would help with mobility, as well as with the tightening that had likely happened when they had healed him instantly while his brutalized knee was bent as he sat in that chair. He wondered if it would have made a difference if they had extended his leg first? Either way it changed nothing now – what was done was done.
He continued until he had tended to the entirety of the scar. He re-applied the ointment to his hands and went back to the start, massaging it all over again with the same patient care as he had the first time. Now, when he stole a look up at Severus’ face, the creases in his forehead had smoothed, the furrow between his brows had filled itself in. His eyes were closed, and his head was tipped back against the headrest of the chair.
Remus continued, using his thumbs to dig carefully into the muscles on either side of the scar, feeling alright to use increasing pressure the further away from the mark he went. He couldn’t help but try to memorize the feeling of Severus’ skin under his fingers, taking his time and enjoying the texture of it beneath his hands. He heard Severus let out a small, contented sigh, and he turned his head down slightly to cover the pleased smile that bloomed on his face.
He repeated the exact same pattern again, from start to finish, before taking his hands away. There were so many fresh marks, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to do them all right now. There was another one or two that deserved attention, however, they also deserved permission. Moving so that he was seated on the wide arm of the chair and praying it would hold his weight, he asked, “Would you allow me to do your cheek?” He tried to keep his voice as soft as his touch had been.
Severus tensed again before taking a visible breath, holding it, and letting it out slowly through his nose. He drank deeply from his glass and repeated his breathing exercise again before nodding once, sharply.
“Thank you,” Remus repeated. He moved from the stool to perch carefully on the arm of Severus’ chair. He re-oiled his fingers again and moved to tilt Severus’ face so that he was at a better angle to see and apply pressure. Unable to stop himself, he leaned over slowly and pressed his lips to this scar as well, right at the crux of where it turned from a straight line off the edge of his lips to the shape of a jagged and uneven ‘y’ on the meaty part of his cheek. He pulled back briefly, to judge his master’s reaction to this progression. When he found his eyes still closed, his lips slightly parted, he decided to continue.
This time, he traced the line of the scar with the pads of his fingers, moving slowly, cautiously. There was no way that this wasn’t intense on some level, more than one level, for Severus and he didn’t want to move things along too quickly. When there was no sign of discomfort, he kept onward, giving this scar the same treatment he had to the leg. It would see much more movement than the one around his lower thigh, Remus vowed it to be true. He had brought a low laugh and a half smile out of those lips more than once today, and he promised himself that he would find ways to continue to do so, whatever it took. He worked the scar, feeling the pliancy of Snape’s cheek beneath his thumbs as he did his part to loosen the tissue.
“May I do your neck as well?” he asked when his hands had retreated from his master’s face. He made certain to keep his hands in his lap as he spoke those words, afraid to find them shaking at the memory of the blood that had sprayed from the now smooth, alabaster column of his neck when it had been so brutally sliced open in front of his eyes. He felt impertinent for even asking, but someone needed to do it, and Severus couldn’t exactly be trusted with self-care, as far as he’d seen, anyway.
“I…” Severus trailed off into silence for a moment. He felt warm, his heart was racing, and none of it was in the pleasant way one might experience those symptoms when one’s lover offered to touch one. He cleared his throat, ashamed of his own reaction. “You may,” he said, though he wanted to say anything but. This was Remus, and he was always allowed to touch him freely, he had said so, and he had meant it.
Remus leaned in and pressed his lips to the scar over one pulse point and then the other. Severus’ chin lifted to accommodate him. He couldn’t help but press his nose to the place where the blood ran, safely encased in his master’s body. He felt his own breath go shaky as he did, so he closed his eyes hard and held his breath for a moment. This wasn’t about him, and he refused to make it so, even in such a fashion. If he wanted to cry, he would do it later. He wanted to remind Severus of joy and companionship, not of the agonizing, desolate sorrow that accompanied a slit throat and the rest of the miserable shite he’d been subjected to.
“I am so fucking happy you are home,” he whispered into the side of his master’s neck. Though that didn’t even begin to encompass his emotions, but it was all he felt safe to say. He kissed the pulse again before pulling back, coating his fingers one more time. He applied them to the scar, his caress spanning the entirety of it more gingerly than he had ever touched anything before in his entire life, other than perhaps his newborn son, the first time he had held him.
Severus had gone as still as if he had been turned to stone. Remus suspected he wasn’t even breathing. There was a rigidity to his posture that indicated alarm, or possibly a forced acceptance, endurance. Though he tried to remain silent, he heard his voice say, “It’s only me, Severus,” in a low and gravelly tone that showed that he wasn’t completely unaffected by this either. “All you have to do is say one word and I will stop this at any time.”
Severus nodded again, once, viciously, and his eyes slammed shut again, though his chin tilted upwards, giving Remus more access.
Remus felt the soft tissue of his neck, the hollows by his lymph nodes, the firm ridges of his esophagus, the tender flesh under his chin. He noted the quickened pulse, the many swallows that indicated nervousness. He continued carefully until he was done. His eyes met Severus’ and he was sure that there was no way the Legilimens wasn’t able to read ‘I love you’ directly from his gaze. He blinked and looked away, wanting to keep the burden of his emotions off of Severus’’ shoulders until he had had a chance to recover, at least.
In some respects, Severus felt like he was across the room, watching the ugly body of someone else be kissed and adored, coaxed carefully into a state of relaxation that penetrated their very bones. He bit his tongue to keep from making a sound as hands and lips enfolded the areas that had been the most mangled, the most brutalized. There was too much care, too much tenderness in those actions for him. When the moist pressure of Remus’ fingers touched the place where his pulse hammered in his throat, he had to fight to keep control. When those gentle words slipped from his lips and curled inside of his ears, he felt that control spin out of his reach. Remus met his eyes in that moment, and Severus heard the broken sob that escaped his own lips as if it had come out of some other person. He shook, almost startled by the sound.
“Oh love, no,” Remus murmured, his arms snaking away from his neck and slithering around his shoulders, holding him close even at this awkward angle. He said the spell to cleanse his hands and was pleased to find that it worked perfectly.
Severus tried to keep his breathing deep and even, to trace his eyes around the frame of the painting at the opposite side of the room in time with the movement of his breaths. In – along; out – down. In – across; out – up. Still, he couldn’t silence his sniveling, couldn’t distract himself from the emotion driving it all, even with everything behind a wall of ten-foot glass in his mind. Then Remus called him ‘love’, a common expression of fondness even between near strangers, and still its effect on him was impossible to ignore. He made that same, empty sound again, this time it was accompanied by wetness across his cheeks. He had not ever felt this mortified in his own home before as he began to weep like some maligned maiden in front of another person.
Remus made an echoing sound of sadness and tightened his arms around Severus, letting his hands travel in long soothing paths up and down the long expanse of the other man’s back.
Severus exhaled, hearing himself and thinking that the noises he was making were very similar to the ones he had made when Lanning had sliced that first strip out of the skin of his leg. Everything suddenly felt as if it were too much: the pressure of his clothing against his skin, the heat coming off of Remus’ body, all of the emotions that were churning within him, the memories he was desperately trying to keep penned up. He couldn’t take it anymore, not with the continuous pressure of everything that had happened grinding endlessly against the wall he had put up in his mind. How he had done this during the war without giving Riddle a thousand reasons to execute him, he couldn’t have said. Now, with the Remus’ calm embrace, he felt like every molecule, every individual atom in his body might just spin out of its orbit at once and fly screaming off into space in opposite directions.
“I’m here,” Remus spoke into his ear. “Don’t worry, love, I’m here.” And for some reason that only made him cry harder. He could have laughed at himself, what was going to happen when he let his shields down? Surely, he’d ruin their entire cause. There was so much being contained, such a horrible weight pressing against them, that he didn’t know if he’d survive letting it all run free, not right now, but he was unsure how long he could keep it all back.
Remus stood from his place on the armrest, but instead of retreating, he took Severus’ hand and pulled him from his seat, walking with him over to the bed. He removed his outer robe and unbuttoned his shirt, urging him down onto the mattress and covering him up with the blanket before crawling in beside him and pulling him into his arms. His hands travelled Snape’s back over the thin material of his shirt, and Severus had never felt so completely tied down and unmoored at the same time.
He tried to wrestle back his self-control, but Remus must have noticed something change in the way he held himself, because he pressed his face into his neck and said, “Nowhere safer than letting it go with me, darlin’.” There was another ridiculous endearment, but it made his heart pump double time. He forced himself to relax.
Even with his shields up, he couldn’t stop the torrent of feeling that was flooding from him. The harder he tried to clamp down on it, the harder his body shook with sorrow. Remus was there through it all, whispering careful words of encouragement and compassion and acceptance, and whether he believed them or not, they pulled everything he was trying to keep stamped down out of him as easily as iron filings went to a magnet. When it was spent, so was he, feeling nearly ill with exhaustion and empty of almost everything. He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s gotten into me,” he apologized, embarrassed. Even as he said it, the hair stood up on the back of his neck, though he couldn’t exactly say why.
Remus just carded his fingers through his hair and made a noncommittal sound against his shoulder. “Don’t ever be sorry, not to me,” was what he said.
Severus shrugged, still not sure what about his previous apology had set him on edge, other than the fact that he’d felt the need to say it in the first place. He allowed himself to sink into the warm embrace just a little, telling himself that he wasn’t fighting it off in order to make Remus feel better, but it felt like a lie even as he spun the idea in his mind. If so many intense emotions welled up at a simple gesture, how was he to get through coupling with Remus three more times before the next full moon? Suddenly, the reason for his apprehension about his earlier comment made complete sense to him. He let out a bitter laugh and, unbearably, felt another round of tears spill from his eyes. Though he dashed them away and thankfully, no more followed. Pitiful.
“What is it? Is there something I can do?” Remus’ voice came from the area near his ear.
He sounded so damned hopeful that Severus felt guilty for having to say, “No.” He’d been going to leave it at that, but the words, “Nowhere safer than letting it go with me, darlin’,” played themselves over again in his mind and his mouth continued without his explicit consent. “No, there is nothing you can do. I’ve just realised that I need to analyse a sample of my own blood as well.”
Remus’ forehead wrinkled itself. “What for?” He stroked his hand lightly down Severus’ arm, feeling as if he wasn’t going to like his reply.
“In order to be certain that I do not have any sexually transmitted diseases or infections before you and I are intimate again.” It didn’t sound so bad when he said it out loud, but his heart was thundering in his chest and his hands were shaking where they lay against the mattress. It was what wasn’t being said that was the damning part.
It was Remus’ turn to make a mournful noise from behind him, and his hands retreated uncertainly. Severus couldn’t want him pawing at him after whatever he’d been forced to endure in that basement. What was he thinking? He’d been hesitant, but he hadn’t felt like he’d been doing anything Severus didn’t consent to, but how absolutely daft of him, all the same.
Severus took a shaky breath, reaching behind his back to find and take hold of Remus’ wrist, bringing it back to rest at his hip, where it had been before his announcement. “Nothing between you and I has changed,” Severus said. As soon as the words had been uttered, he knew them to be a lie. Everything had changed, Remus was now taking care of him and it was horribly uncharted territory. “I will tell you directly if I am in need of space.” It sounded formal and uncomfortably like an order to him, but he felt Remus nod and his fingers curled over the flesh he was touching.
“Please do,” Remus told him, “the last thing I would want to do is upset or unsettle you.” He let out a nervous laugh. “I’m starting to appreciate how tenuous your position was when our bonding was just beginning. Thank you for being so tactful about it and my apologies if I don’t manage half as well.”
“I did the best that I could, and knowing you, I expect you will do the same.” He let out a strangled sound that may have been a yawn. There was so much to do and here he was, wrecked and wasted, sleeping and sobbing the day away like some hormonal adolescent. “Don’t twist yourself up about it, I’ll tell you if something bothers me.”
Remus reminded himself not to feel hurt by some of these off handed things that Severus said. He was used to pushing people away and doing things by himself. In his own way, he was telling Remus not to worry about him or his needs. Instead of giving Remus a straight answer or laying out rules for what was acceptable and what wasn’t, he was saying that it was alright for Remus to do as he pleased, trample right over him and that they’d deal with it once it was done. That sat poorly with him, and he vowed to himself that he would do better than Severus’ expectations of him.
“Alright,” he said. If this meant that he had to ask every step of the way, then he would. He tensed his fingers over Severus’ hip. “I’d like to hold you again, would that be alright?” He felt Severus nod and moved his arm so that it was around his waist. He tried to bite his tongue, to keep the question that was burning a hole through his mind, but decided that he couldn’t, that it wouldn’t be fair to either of them. “Would you like to talk about it?” He just hoped that he didn’t get kicked out of bed for it.
Severus took a breath as if he were going to speak and then released it silently. He was quiet for a while, and Remus didn’t think that he was going to receive an answer. Finally, he said in a tired voice, “No.”
“There is nothing wrong with that,” Remus assured him. “I didn’t mean to push. Come on, close your eyes, even if you don’t get to sleep, you can rest.”
Quiet answered him. Severus was noiseless for so long, that Remus thought he may already be sleeping. He forced himself to stay awake, wanting to make sure that Severus’ would be able to rest peacefully, without dreams.
“Ask me again, later,” Severus’ voice filled the room briefly.
“I will,” Remus answered. He began to trail his fingers over Severus’ collarbone, lightly, back and forth in metronomic motions, until eventually, he felt his body untense and his breathing steady.

Remus did his best to remain alert, he really did. He managed to soothe Severus through three nightmares that had him moaning and pawing at his eye, but eventually, he found himself dozing off. He must have fallen completely asleep at some point, because he was roused to awareness by the sound of urgent knocking on the door, which opened a crack.
“He’s awake,” Harry’s voice was heard from the gap between the door and the frame.
Severus was already sitting up with his feet over the bed, rubbing pointlessly at his eyes. Remus stood hastily, collecting Severus’ clothing and bringing it to him before getting dressed himself. Severus was already at the door, barely sparing a look back to make sure that he was following, which, of course he was.
Harry was still standing nervously in the hallway.
“He’s fully conscious?” Severus asked, walking past Potter and down the hall.
“Yes,” Harry said, “though it’s hard to tell if he’s in his right mind or not. He isn’t making a lot of sense and he still thinks that he’s dead.”
“All things in time,” Severus said, reaching the door and heading through with no hesitancy.
Fred was standing by the bed, wringing his hands. The boy was half laying, half sitting in the large bed, the covers tangled and strewn about him. He was sobbing and clawing at his face and Fred was having very little success in making him stop.
“Daniel,” Severus’ voice came, sonorous and powerful, through the spiraling chaos before him, a command in and of itself.
The boy went motionless, his hands still up over his face. He was pale and sweating, every muscle in his body tight and trembling with anxiety, his eyes wild with fear.
“Daniel,” he said again to the panic-stricken child, much more softly this time. He went over to the side of the bed and sat on the edge of it. His leg was doing better even than the last time he woke, but he didn’t think it would improve upon kneeling. “My name is Severus; do you remember me?” He set his cane to the side and turned his whole attention to the boy in front of him.
The child nodded, though he didn’t look any more comfortable or less terrified than before. He was edging away, closer to the wall, his breathing hard like he’d been running.
“Good,” Severus soothed, “that’s good. Daniel, do you know where you are?”
That pulled an agonized sound from the child, who nodded out of obligation. It was like they were the only two in the room as Harry, Remus and Fred watched, silently.
“Alright,” Severus agreed, “and can you tell me where you think that is?”
“Hell, sir,” the little boy answered with all honesty and belief. “It’s the bad place where they send slaves that nobody wants, sir.” His arms had moved to wrap themselves fiercely round his middle and he started to rock back and forth slowly.
Severus swallowed his own grief at receiving such an answer. “Why do you think that, child?”
“Because!” the child said shrilly in his fear. “Because he made me drink the juice, just like Timothy, sir, and then I was on fire and that’s what they do when they want to be rid of slaves that aren’t good anymore. And you’re here and I watched you die!”
Severus nodded as if all of this was logical, reasonable. “You did drink something that was very bad, and it gave you a terribly high fever,” Severus agreed. “But while you were sleeping, I gave you a potion that would stop it from hurting you further. How do you feel right now?”
“Sick, sir,” Daniel answered pitifully.
“Do you feel better than before?”
The child nodded and shrugged at the same time.
“Given more time, you will feel better yet, we will make sure of it.”
“I can’t, sir,” the child argued, “I can only hurt, because that’s all there is in Hell.”
“I will tell you right now that that isn’t true, you are nowhere near Hell.” Though he suspected he had just escaped from a close proxy of it, using an illegal Portkey. “Right now, you are in my home, and you are perfectly safe. No one is going to hurt you here, I promise.”
That seemed to give Daniel pause.
“I don’t make promises lightly. Do you remember that, Daniel? This isn’t the first time I’ve given you my word,” Severus said, and his voice shook, only a little.
Tears spilled down Daniel's cheeks. “You promised… You promised that you wouldn’t let him take out my eye!” The boy hunched in further on himself, shivering in the warm room.
“I did,” Severus agreed again, his voice breaking fully this time. “And now I am promising that you will feel better again soon, with rest and proper care.”
The boy continued as if he hadn’t spoken, “I know, and I had to… and he made me… I couldn’t look away!” The child folded in half, wailing and retching into his knees at the memory. “Your eye! I’m so sorry!” he was almost shrieking into the otherwise silent room. Severus vaguely hoped that someone had thought to put up a silencing spell.
“It wasn’t your fault, Daniel,” Severus told him solemnly, putting his hand on the mattress near where he was hunching, leaving his palm stretched up to the ceiling. “I kept my word then, and now I need you to trust me when I tell you that you are not in Hell, but in a guest room of my house, and you are going to be alright. I promise that you are going to be alright.”
Daniel looked like he was going to crawl out of his skin, but he reached over and took hold of Severus’ hand. “You’re warm!” he said in wonder, discordant emotions playing across his face.
“And you are very cold,” Severus said in return, moving his free hand to cast a Warming spell over the bed. “I can fix that.”
The boy made a relieved sound and sank a little into the pillows, still clasping Severus’ hand.
Severus moved his hand over the inside of the boy’s wrist, holding it there and saying a spell. A glowing orb appeared between them, red like blood. It expanded and contracted at a steady, rhythmic pace.
“That is your heartbeat,” Severus told him, and everyone in the room watched the orb pulse a little more rapidly as Daniel's pulse sped up. Severus put his hand on his chest over his own heart and gestured for Daniel to do the same. “There, do you feel it?”
Daniel did as was suggested, wonder flashing over his face. “You- you really stopped the fire? I’m... still alive?” The boy asked, shaking his head as if he could barely believe it.
“There was no fire, Daniel. You were very ill, and you had a fever, but I swear to you that you were not killed by what you drank, nor was your body burned in an incinerator. You are a child that isn’t well, and you are a guest here. I’d like very much to use my wand to make certain you are not in need of anything else. You can keep on holding my hand if you want, but I’m going to scan you. It won’t hurt, not even a little.”
“Slaves don’t have wands, sir.”
“I was only a slave for a short time,” Severus said. “Would you permit me to scan you now?”
Daniel looked at him strangely, shrugging as his reply.
Severus brought his wand from out of his pocket and made some complex motions near Daniel, eyes closed as if he were reading the information from the back of their lids.
“So, if we’re not dead and you’re not a slave, then… are you my master?”
“No, child, I’m not that either,” Severus said, not elaborating as he was concentrating on his task. When he was finished, he knew that they’d be calling for that Healer sooner than later. It was likely only fear and adrenaline that had given Daniel so much energy as to move out of the bed. His kidney and liver were in distress, and his heart hadn’t escaped unscathed. He might have been able to do something about it himself, but the likelihood of him having the endurance to cast the spells needed wouldn’t be high and it wasn’t something he would risk having done improperly.
“Then, does that mean… that I get to go home?” the boy appeared almost afraid to ask.
“That is an answer that I do not have,” Severus said sadly, running his thumb over the boy’s small fingers where they clasped his hand. He brushed minds with Daniel, finding anxiety and panic shrouding everything in a thick electric fog. He navigated deeper, only a little, to find that blurred images of places and people were all that could be seen before he was taken to the clinic by a group of Wizards wearing similar robes to the one’s he’d witnessed in the pediatric lycanthropy ward. Not one place or thing before that was clear, though the memories were still intact, just blurry and distorted past recognition. It was obvious that this child had undergone some form of Obliviation, or at the very least Obfuscation. Either could potentially be reversed, given enough time and skill. Whether any of these places or people were still out there and waiting for this child’s return, he couldn’t say, though he could hope.
“Oh, okay,” Daniel said in the smallest voice, his face wrinkling into misery as tears sprouted from his eyes again.
“We will do everything in our power to get you home, Daniel,” Severus said. “But now, I need you to get back into bed for me.”
The boy thought this through. A series of progressively more complex expressions wove their way across Daniel's face as he did, before finally settling into a mask of nothing that was somehow more upsetting to see. His gaze settled on their hands, still intertwined. “Of course, sir,” he said, voice dead and monotonous, “I’ll do anything, if you’ll try to help me get home, sir. Will they,” here he paused to take a strangled breath to work up his courage. “Will they want to watch, or are they… are they going to want to…” his frightened eyes were darting between Snape to Remus and Harry where they were still standing in the doorway.
The room resonated silence as the meaning of his words permeated everyone’s brains. Severus had to fight every natural urge in his body to keep himself from wrenching his hand from the boy’s just to put distance between them. Though what he was implying was abhorrent, he didn’t want Daniel to feel rejected or in any way repellant because of his reaction. He smoothed his thumb over the boy’s fingers again as he said, “No, child, nothing like that is going to happen to you here. Has anyone asked that of you before?” he asked gently.
Daniel was pulling into himself, shaking his head. He was beginning to struggle to breathe, his chest rising and falling with shaky gasps. “No, sir. They wanted me for other things,” he answered while rubbing the inside of his elbow. His words were punctuated by his rapid, labored breathing. “But I saw…” he trailed off.
“All I am asking of you is to sleep, Daniel. While you are here, your body is your own and no one will put their hands on you, of that, you have my word. If I can help you to get home, I will, but you do not owe me anything, dear child, and you never will.” The image of the empty cage beside the one Lanning had locked Daniel in entered Severus’ mind and wouldn’t leave; he was sure Daniel had witnessed more than his fair share of atrocity even before he’d entered the scene.
Daniel seemed to come to life again, pulling his hand away and using the blankets to cover himself, to shield his body from view. His breath began to speed up even more. “How can you say that?” his voice was rising. “Your eye was ripped out of your head!” the word sounded like it was wrenched from the acidic pit of his stomach. “You did that for me!” he bawled.
“Potter, go see Draco in the lab. Tell him I need a lycanthrope safe Calming Draught, and don’t dawdle,” Severus said in an unhurried, relaxed voice without looking over his shoulder to the door, where Remus and Harry were still standing as if struck dumb.
To Daniel, he replied, “I did do that for you.” He tried to look levelly at the boy, using a great deal of his strength to keep memories of the cruel sensations he’d forced himself to endure while trying to remove his eye, before having to let Lanning gleefully do it for him because in the end he just couldn’t. To be safe, he started to build another mental shield over the one that was already in place. “I would do that for you again,” he said, hating the way his voice sounded to his own ears, croaky, broken and on the verge of tears. He would not remember the removal of his eye, not now.
He tried to form his face into a smile. “It’s alright though, don’t you see? It’s grown back, just like I knew it would. I can see perfectly from it.” His voice sounded pained to his own ears and if he was fighting to keep his memories back so hard that spots were dancing at the edges of his vision, so be it. He turned his head away slightly, catching Harry’s silhouette in his peripheral vision. “Now, Potter!” he snapped, watching the young man jump and start to move. This wasn’t an afternoon soap opera for him to watch, it was this young man’s life, and he was going to injure himself further if he didn’t calm down.
“How, sir?” Daniel asked, his hands raked their way up his face to tangle in is hair. “How is that possible?” He somehow seemed to be working himself up more. His small chest was heaving his face twisted in anxiety.
“Magic healed me,” Severus told him, still giving the boy his complete attention, “but you don’t need to worry about that, Daniel. I’m just fine now, and so are you.”
The boy was taking in huge, gasping, desperate breaths that didn’t appear to be helping. His hands clawed down his face. “I’m not fine,” he wailed. “I want my mum!” he then made a more pitiful sound than they had heard yet. “But I can’t even remember what she looks like!” his hands had moved lower, clutching at his chest like he thought his heart was exploding. His breathing was now shrill on every struggled inhale. “Now I’m dying, sir!” he choked out in between gasps.
“You are not dying, Daniel, you are having a panic attack. I need you to breathe deeply for me… imagine that you are filling a balloon with your breaths,” Severus instructed in a calm, metered voice. “Take in one breath and hold it with me, then let it out slowly – if you exhale too quickly, the balloon will fly away and you will have to start over again, but that is fine, we can try this as many times as we need to.”
Daniel was trying to do what he was being instructed to do, but his breaths were still quick, uneven and full of shuddering gasps for oxygen.
“That’s good,” Severus encouraged in the same steady voice. “Let’s try it together, inhale, one, two, three, four,” he counted slowly and evenly, breathing in as an example. “Hold it in… Good, now exhale into your imaginary balloon, slowly as you can.” They repeated the process six times, each time becoming more of a success, before Harry came rushing back into the room with a bottle in hand. He gave it directly to Snape.
“Daniel, I have something here that is going to make it easier for you to relax,” Severus told him, turning his attention back to the child.
Seeing the vial, Daniel's breathing stopped completely for a second, his eyes wide and his face twisted in fear, confusion and betrayal.
Severus mentally cursed. Great idea, what could the child possibly fear from an unknown potion after being nearly poisoned by one? Really well thought out. He went over the ingredients in his mind quickly, finding that it would be acceptable for him to consume it as an example. Hell, it might even help him get though the next few hours without melting his brain.
He uncorked it and drank two large swallows himself. “There, see?” He held out the bottle to the child, who appeared to be struggling to breathe all over again. “I need you to drink two mouthfuls of this, Daniel. Please,” he added with emphasis.
Daniel reached out a shaking hand and took the vial, lifting it to his lips and drinking twice. He held still, maybe waiting for whatever had occurred initially when Lanning had fed him the poison. The only thing that happened was that his hand fell to the mattress, still holding the upright potion, his shoulders slumped a little and he sank back against the pillows, breathing even and his eyes hooded a little. “Oh,” was all he managed.
Severus completely agreed. His muscles were also loosening, the edges of the world fuzzing a little as negativity fell away, water from a duck’s back. “That’s better, isn’t it?” Severus asked, nodding along in answer to his own question. Perhaps he had eaten too little and drank too much for an entire dosage to have been recommended.
Daniel's hand was over his chest again, as if he needed to actually feel his heart rate slowing down. “I feel…” he began mildly, then shut his mouth with a click, his face openly reflecting his fear in even starting that sentence.
“Go on,” Severus urged gently, “how do you feel right now, Daniel?”
The boy mulled it over before turning his grey eyes directly on Severus in a way that might have been uncanny if he wasn’t forcibly relaxed. “Like you might not have been lying when you said I was fine,” he finally admitted.
Severus nodded. “May I help you get back under the covers, or would you prefer to do that yourself?”
Daniel brought his hand up to rub at his eyes, looking back uncertainly at Severus when he was finished. “I…”
“Here,” Severus offered, taking hold of the corner of the blankets nearest to him and pulling them slowly back. Daniel scooted so that he wasn’t laying on the portion he’d previously been covered with but was now rumpled beneath him. Severus drew them back until the boy could extend his legs under them and shift the rest of his body down until his head was again on the pillow. Snape then took the edge he was hanging onto and used it to pull the covers up over his thin form.
Daniel wriggled under the quilt, trying to warm himself now that he was calm and sweat dampened. Severus cast a light Warming Charm over the bed, ignoring how energy ebbed from his body as he did so. The child was tranquil, but again he extended his hand, over the blankets, palm to the ceiling. “You are not alone here, Daniel,” he told the child somberly. “When you feel alone or afraid, I want you to reach out and tell me, to tell one of us.” Severus paused, his hand still held out, and though Daniel looked at it with both trepidation and longing, he didn’t reach out for it. “Do you think that you can do that?”
“…I will try, sir,” Daniel said, and Severus could tell that if he hadn’t just had a dose of that Calming Draught, he would be crying quite inconsolably.
“That’s alright,” Severus gentled, glad to be aided by the potion himself. “We’ll be there all the same. Do you think that you could sleep, child?”
Daniel's head shook passionately. “It’s too quiet in here, sir,” he said. His eyes begged Severus to understand.
Somehow, he did. The boy had been locked down in the dungeon beside those lycanthropes that had all been waiting for Lanning to use them for living research. He wondered what the child had seen and heard, what he had suffered. He was sure the quiet of this room was almost unbearable with only the memory of that misery to clearly fall back on.
“Fred?” he asked, withdrawing his hand from the bed.
“Yes, sir?” the elf asked eagerly, stepping once towards the mattress.
“Would you please go collect the record player, records and the kunzite crystal that powers them from Remus’ and my room and bring them in here?”
Fred gave a singular nod and disappeared from the room.
“I have something that might help with that,” Severus told the boy. “It will play music for you while you try to sleep. The records need to be flipped or changed periodically, but I know that Fred would happily do that for you.”
“It will make it noisier in here?” Daniel asked, trying to understand.
“It will fill the silence with something pleasant for you to listen to,” Severus told him.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” Daniel asked outright. “Why am I even here, sir?”
“Because you deserve to be treated nicely,” Severus told him without having to think about it. “And you are here because Remus had a means to get you out of that basement and couldn’t stand the sight of you locked in a cage. I wholeheartedly agree with him.”
Daniel's eyes were drawn directly to Remus’.
“Hullo,” Remus offered, feeling less eloquent than he would have liked. His mind was whirring with everything that had just transpired before his eyes, there was so much to process.
“I remember you too,” Daniel offered.
“You do?” Remus asked. They hadn’t spoken and he’d barely made eye contact with Daniel while handing him the Portkey in the envelope.
Daniel nodded. “I could hear through the door, when you went to visit him,” his eyes darted to Severus.
Snape shuddered at the thought of this small child being able to listen to what was happening to him from inside the cage that Lanning kept him contained in. No wonder he couldn’t stand the thought of sitting here in the quiet.
“You could?” Remus asked, feeling his palms start to sweat as he spoke with this child.
Daniel nodded. “You sounded so angry when I could hear you in the other room. It took me a while to be brave enough to look at the paper.” He swallowed, toying with the blanket bunched in his small fists.
“I’m glad that you did,” Remus told him honestly.
Fred appeared again where he had been standing previously, record player, crystal and box of albums floating behind him.
“Ah, perfect,” Severus told the elf. “You remember how to turn and change these, correct?”
“Fred is remembering,” the elf said, levitating everything over to a small table by the window and putting it down.
“Perfect,” Severus told him, watching the elf set everything up a safe distance from the bed. His ears drooped as he looked at the albums.
“Fred is not knowing what to play,” the elf said.
Severus left his side at the bed to flip carefully through the vinyl. “Start with this one,” Severus said. He held out a lovely recording of Claude Dubussy’s Arabesque No. 1 on piano.
The elf nimbly removed the record from its sleeve, setting the vinyl down on the turntable and setting the tone arm to move and play. There was a scratchy pause before the first light, melodious notes of the piano were heard.
There was a large intake of breath from Daniel, who, if he was of a Wizarding family, may have never witnessed anything like what he was seeing. The sound was scratchy and a little tinny when it came out of the horn of the old record player, but it didn’t subtract from the relaxing beauty of the piece it was playing. “That is amazing!” he blurted out, likely uninhibited by the potion, as he obviously wanted to retract the words as soon as they had tumbled from his mouth. “I mean, you really didn’t have to do all of that, sir, not for me. I’m sorry I asked.” He amended with much less confidence.
“Do not apologize,” Severus told him kindly. “It was no trouble, right Fred?” Severus asked, not a trace of coercion or pressure in his voice.
“That is being right, sir,” Fred smiled.
The boy relaxed into the pillows further, sinking down into the mattress as if it had been made of stone up to that very moment. His eyelids fluttered, but he fought to keep them open, seeming reluctant to take his eyes off everyone in the room, something he likely didn’t do without reason.
“We are going to go so that you have peace and privacy while you sleep,” Severus told Daniel softly. “Fred is going to stay here with you while we are gone. Will that bother you?” Severus asked.
“No,” the boy answered tiredly. “Are you going to give me the needle now?” he asked, still struggling to maintain consciousness, his hand rubbing at the crux of his elbow.
“Why would we do that?” Severus asked, keeping his voice calm.
The boy shrugged with effort. “He put one in my arm every night and I’d always feel sick after, tired, weak.” He was fighting to keep his eyes open and failing.
“No, Daniel, no one is going to give you a needle. You will be able to sleep as long as you like, and there will be breakfast for you when you wake up.”
“That sounds… thank you, sir…” Daniel said, sliding off into sleep, the Calming Draught finally taking over.
Severus sat there while the boy’s breathing evened out and his thin form relaxed. When he was satisfied that he was sleeping, he carefully lifted his arm by the wrist and slid the material of his loose-fitting shirt up just past his elbow. The tissue there was covered in sores and bruises underneath the skin. Looking intently at the mass of scar tissue and open, infected sores, he deduced that Lanning had likely been syphoning blood rather than injecting the boy with something – the bore holes were too wide. It was easy to tell that they had been put there regularly and unfailingly, over a length of time with no regard for what that would do to the body they were being inflicted on. He replaced the sleeve with a wince that went unseen to the rest of the room. Upon further investigation, Daniel's other arm was in a very similar state. The wounds would require treatment and he would need to be dosed with something to fight infection.
“Severus?” Remus asked over the sound of recorded piano.
“You will let me know when he wakes?” Snape asked Fred, unsure what Remus was asking or how to answer him.
The elf nodded solemnly. “Fred will be letting sir know if there is being any problems or if the youngling is waking.”
“Thank you,” Severus said, standing with even more creaking and cracking than usual. After so long bent and inactive, his regrown leg felt about as mobile as an appendage made of concrete. Still, he made his way out of the room, nodding as Lupin closed the door behind them.

Sorry for the length between updates, RL is a cruel, demanding mistress.
Thank you for reading! All of your thoughts and comments are appreciated more than you know!
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The Long Road