InsaneJournal

FIC: Finding Time 2/? - R
Title: Finding Time
Author: Serpenscript
Category: romance/angst/drama/dark/smut/humor, a little of everything
Pairings: Snape/Lupin, others mentioned
Rating: NC17 for violence, dark, and smut
Warnings: m/m slash, allusions to rape/noncon, mpreg
Beta: the wonderful rakina
Summary: Severus is about to be sentenced, and Minerva decides Lupin should keep him company until the sentencing. But she also has a plan up her sleeve to make sure Severus escapes the death penalty...but as everyone knows, "The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley..."
Disclaimers: Definitely not what JK had in mind! The poetry bits ARE mine, not lyrics!

Chapter One is here.



See me badly broken
When I tumble to the ground
Watch me as I open
To the scorn of those around
Catch me as I crumple
In the face of their disdain
Understand my weakness
When I break beneath this pain


In the end it actually took him three days to get up his nerve and pay Severus a visit. And then only because Minerva paid him a visit. "Any later, Remus, would be too late," she told him acidly, when she showed up on his doorstep that morning while he was finishing his morning tea. "The sentencing is this afternoon. Severus needs you now, Remus!"

He swallowed and set down his tea; already gone lukewarm, it now tasted bitter. He felt terribly nervous; not the ‘butterflies-in-your-stomach’ type, but the ‘your-neck-on-the-block’ nerves. Inappropriate, as it was not his neck on the block...this time. Yet he couldn't help but feel as if he’d gone back in time, as if in some strange sense it was himself he was going to visit in Azkaban, when he'd been on trial for "werewolf crimes" after the war.

"Minerva, I -- " What was he supposed to say to a condemned man? I'm sorry, care for a pity fuck? Severus would curse the day he was born. "Minerva, what am I supposed to do? Just waltz in and say I --" He wiped sweaty palms on his trousers, tried to not think too much. He didn't even know what he wanted to say.

"Do? You want me to tell you what to do? " She raised her eyebrows in what seemed like genuine surprise. "What did you want most when you were in Azkaban, Remus?"

What he'd wanted was an end to the terror, the depression, and the loneliness, but he couldn't picture Severus ever wanting the easy way out. He always took the most difficult path and forced his way through. "Right," he muttered. "Do you really think he'd believe anything I have to say? We haven't exactly got on in the past." He flushed, remembering their kiss. It had given him ample food for fantasy for months -- no, years afterwards. Even Tonks hadn't managed to --

Minerva was already halfway out the door, but she turned around and fixed Lupin with one of those gimlet gazes that said quite clearly, I Am Running Out Of Patience. "Then I imagine it is up to you to prove to him how you feel, Remus," she said sharply. "Ready then? And off we go --" Together they stepped outside, pivoted in practised tandem, and Apparated to the path outside Azkaban.

"Minerva? Are you --" He wanted to ask, "Are you coming with me? " but he knew disconcertingly that it was an extremely childish thing to ask, like a small boy afraid of the dark. He was too old now to be afraid of the dark; it was all those myriad things that go bump in the dark that he was afraid of.

She understood immediately; her face softened, but she did not relent. "Am I coming with you? I most certainly am not -- I have tasks of my own to attend to. Perhaps not as pivotal as yours, Remus, but necessary nonetheless." Her mouth twitched upward into a grim smile. "Notwithstanding, I never earned any of Severus' confidences; he has no wish to see me, I assure you."

Lupin sighed and wondered if Minerva knew how to transfigure stomach-butterflies into courage. He felt he could use all the courage he could get.

She levelled a stern glare at him that was supposed to strap some steel to his backbone. "You're a Gryffindor, Remus; for God's sake, act like one!" She turned and looked up at the walls surrounding Azkaban, shielding it from the eyes of the rest of the world. "You have every reason in the world to have courage now."

He stared at her blankly. "Reasons? What reasons do I have?"

"Yes, reasons," she said firmly, a trifle irritated. "You are going in there a free man, and you are free to emerge whenever you like. You have dedicated, loyal friends, and you take their love with you wherever you go. And now there's someone in there who desperately needs a friend of his own. You have a chance to help someone the way you yourself were helped, and I believe that can help you --and him -- more than you know. If that is not reason for courage, Remus, then I don't know what is." Her eyes on him were frank and unyielding.

He felt like a recalcitrant schoolboy. "I know, Minerva," he mumbled. "Right, I'm going in now; is there anything else I should know?"

For a moment she seemed undecided, but almost immediately she shook herself and mustered a warm smile. "Don't worry so much. You'll know what to say when you see him," she said, and then after an almost imperceptible pause, thrust a small package wrapped in nondescript brown paper at him. "You might want this, but don't open it until you're sure." A faint blush stained her cheeks, and he lifted an eyebrow in a silent question.

She shook her head. "I'm not going to explain, there's no time. I have to go and find Arthur, and talk to Scrimgeour if possible --" she offered him one more smile. "Hurry now, you've the morning, but not much time beyond that." She spun around smartly, her tartan robes billowing and the loud crack of Apparition followed her disappearance.

So Remus was left to enter the building alone. He'd never wanted to see this place again; it made him feel cold inside just standing outside the imposing gates. The towering, damp grey stone; the absence of sunlight; the spelled iron-worked gates; the scoured cement path to the door -- every inch of Azkaban was cold, forbidding, rebuking. Inside, the stone flags of the corridor somehow seemed multiply every sound each hesitant footstep made.

Scrimgeour trailed behind as two burly wizards dragged him down the hallway. "I think the 4th level would do," Scrimgeour said, almost conversationally. "All the lower levels are full, at any rate. Do we have a room left with containment wards? We've never had so many werewolves in here at once before... much less the dearly beloved Lupin." He filled the words with sarcasm, and drew out 'Lupin' like an obscenity; in the Minister of Magic's mouth, it was.

He clamped his hands to his temples, grinding his teeth. He didn't want to remember, but the walls of the hallway drew the memories from his mind with cold implacability: the pale skin of the prisoners; the stink of fear and sweat that no Scourgification could remove; the noise....sobbing, screaming, begging. They used to put silencing charms on the separate cells, but they found that created problems of its own... those who broke and confessed went unrecorded; riots happened silently, unremarked-upon; prisoners went mad and killed each other unheard -- not that the prisoners were mourned, but it was just not the done thing. So in the end, they simply hired people who were hard-of-hearing -- or hard-of-feeling, and suffered the noise. He wasn't sure which was better; the utter isolation of complete darkness and absolute silence -- or the terror and madness of thousands of prisoners all encroaching on his own struggle to keep sanity close and terror at bay.

The long entrance hall to the 'visitor's desk' seemed shorter than it had in Lupin's memory. Perhaps because in his memory, he had been dragged down this aisle as a prisoner, battered and ill and half-paralyzed with terror at the conclusion of the war. Now his steps dragged down the corridor under his own power, insignificant as it was. Gryffindor courage? Sirius would have laughed to hear 'Remus' and 'Gryffindor courage' in the same line; he'd always said that Lupin didn't need to be brave while he and James were there to 'take on the bogies' -- except that neither of them were there anymore. Bitter irony, that: the only Marauder still alive was a bloody coward.

Had he ever been courageous, had he ever done anything 'dangerous' or risky without fear? He had never understood what had prompted the Sorting Hat to place him in Gryffindor in the first place. Not that he minded, because he'd found life-long friends there.

And traitors, too.

He attempted to brush aside his dark thoughts when he reached the front desk, even managing a strained smile for the man at the desk; a thin, sallow, young wizard with a scraggly ponytail and a bored expression. "I'm here to see Severus Snape before the --" the word stuck in his throat and he swallowed and tried again, "-- the sentencing." Silently the man looked at him for a moment, eyeing his shabby robes, his shaking hands.

"You look familiar," he said abruptly. "Weren't you one of those werewolves brought in after the war ended?"

Lupin twitched, his smile disappearing. "Yes, I was," he said warily. "I was cleared though?" His stomach knotted itself bitterly at the way the statement came out sounding like a question.

The desk wizard waved a thin hand dismissively. "You've not been dragged in here, have you? If you're supposed to be here, it’s hardly my business, I'm not on enforcement detail. Do I look like some kind of Auror to you?" He continued talking blandly as he pulled out paperwork. "Same rules. No wands or potions or charmed items down there, you've got to leave your wand here—" he took Remus' wand and weighed it, then tucked it away into one of several tiny, cluttered cubbyholes. He cast a glance over his shoulder at Remus, still talking as if nothing was really of any importance. "Any magical items? No? Right, then, your escort's over there --" he nodded towards a burly man with shaggy black hair liberally peppered with grey, great beetled brows over piercing grey eyes and a large, ruddy nose.

"That's Craiggan, not afraid of anything he is, now that Voldemort is dead," he rambled on, but Lupin wasn't listening. He nodded to Craiggan politely, who jerked his shaggy head in response and gave him a quick once-over.

"Come on, then," he said amiably enough, apparently finding nothing threatening in Lupin's person. "Nice day, eh?" he said, as if they were meeting up for nothing more than a smoke. Ludicrously, it reminded him of Minerva's brisk manner, and he tried to shake off the coldness that settled in the pit of his stomach as he followed Craiggan, who seemed to be talking for the same reason the desk wizard had -- to hear his own voice.

Just now he was waving a nightstick. "Muggle coppers have these, for whackin' thick’eads," he said, leading the way down a flight of stairs. "They're good for that, sure, but we only get one charm on ’em, so's we can see our way. Not them,” he explained, sweeping his arm in a vague circle supposed to denote the convicts held within Azkaban. "Lumos!" he growled, and a dim, wavering light filled the corridor. "Should be brighter, but yer get used ter no light, so a little's a lot down ‘ere." Lupin could see well enough in the dark, compliments of his 'monster' heritage, but he was grateful for the light all the same.

His escort continued on, words streaming out behind him as he worked his way deeper into the prison. "Yer know, we used ter have a lift in ‘ere, but the wheels kept breakin' down and the anti-magic wards’d always interfere with tryin' ter charm the bloody thing. Now we just use the stairs. Pain in the arse to get up but goin' down’s not so bad... ‘less you're the poor bloody bastard what's goin' ter spend the rest of yer life down there..." his laughter wasn't so much cold or cruel, Lupin reflected, as utterly detached from any pity for the unwilling inhabitants of Azkaban. It still made the hair on the back of Lupin's neck stand on end.

Down and down they went, to the bottom floor -- the dungeon? well below ground, at any rate -- and then down a long row past cells of various occupants. These were the 'hopeless', so dubbed because these were people who would never see the light of day again. Most of them were mad, or willing themselves mad, or willing themselves to die.

Once she'd been a mad killer. She'd killed at least a dozen Muggles before the Ministry caught up with her. She'd confessed -- proudly -- at her trial. But that was years ago. Now she was a pale, skeletal wraith, eyes staring unseeing into the evernight. She wished for death. He tried to talk to her, just once. "Do you regret what you did?" he'd asked her, when the need to speak and be spoken to grew too great.

"Remember what?" she'd said hoarsely; it'd probably been months since she'd last spoken. She turned away from him, he could tell by the muffled timbre of her voice. "What is there to remember? Nothing. Nothing is safer than nothing."

He didn't ask again, because he understood what she meant. She never spoke again; a little later, maybe a week, someone came to take her body away.

He shuddered; he -- and the Muggle-killer -- had been kept two levels higher. Still below ground -- but not with the hopeless, not without hope. Though even on that level, people still wished for death; death was the easy -- and often the only -- way out. He had clung to the hope that his friends would fight for his acquittal and release; how much bleaker were things on the Hopeless Ward? What did Severus have?

Then Craiggan slowed and peremptorily banged on the bars of a cell to his right. "Here, you sod, you've got yourself a guest, better get all prettied up!" he barked. Lupin could hear the sudden rattle of chains, abrupt, like someone had been startled.

Then he was suddenly facing Severus Snape's cell, and there Remus found his answer: nothing. Bleak shadows hung over the man’s face, his eyes were hopeless. The only man who had ever trusted him was dead by his hand, any friends he'd once had, had all abandoned him; he was chained in the bowels of Azkaban in the Hopeless Ward -- waiting in the dark for someone to come and drag him to sentencing, waiting for death. Minerva was right: Severus had nothing left. Nothing.

His heart thudded painfully to see Severus squinting at them, his eyes unaccustomed to even the dim light produced by the guard's wand. The ex-Potions master was paler than Lupin had ever seen him; his dark shoulder-length hair was greasy, lank and tangled. His cheeks were sunken and he had great hollows under his eyes. But what tore at Lupin were Severus' eyes: they showed the soul of a man shattered and awaiting death; they were haunted, hunted, hurting.

"Have you come to condemn me?" Severus croaked, voice rusty with strain -- and, Lupin suspected, screaming when no one was there to hear. "You're too late --" he gestured awkwardly with one hand, chains rattling, to the cell around him. "I'm already condemned." He attempted to laugh, but it sounded too much like disagreeable old door hinges, and he stopped abruptly.

Lupin hung on to the bars of Severus' cell desperately trying to ground himself; guilt and terror warred with a sickening relief; guilt that he had waited too long, fear that he had waited too long; relief that there was none of the peculiar, heart-rending blankness found in the eyes of the death-willing. Instead he felt like he was being pulled into Severus' bleak eyes, eyes filled with more pain and despair than he could ever have imagined -- and his own experience was considerable. He felt Snape's pain crushing him like a physical weight, eyes burning into his. It took all his willpower to wrench his gaze away. "Let me in," he gasped aside to Craiggan. "I need -- I need to talk to him." His fingers gripped the bars with a white-knuckled intensity, both a reminder of the real, physical world, and a need to hold himself upright.

His escort looked at him worriedly, one shaggy eyebrow at half-mast. "Are you ok? ‘e's not -- Imperiusing you or anything, is ‘e?" It was a foolish question, since the cells were all warded heavily with centuries of re-enforcement, the wards preventing the use of magic, and all wands or magical paraphernalia were taken away before incarceration. What few spells a wizard could manage without a wand or magical item were mostly nullified by the wards.

Lupin shook his head, never breaking eye contact. "I need to be in there with him -- alone -- for a little bit. I was -- sent for," he said lamely.

A long pause, as Craiggan debated, then he shifted his considerable bulk and banged his nightstick against the bars; this time Lupin saw Snape flinching away. "Well, I reckon you can't do much ‘arm ‘ere. Things’re still the same as when you were ‘ere, same spell ter get in, but yer can’t get out 'til someone else comes for yer." He studied Lupin for a moment more, but Remus had already turned back to the cell.

He heard the rustle of fabric and the jingle of keys behind him -- no longer necessary since the cells had no locks to put keys in but it was part of the uniform now, a Muggle carry-over -- and he could imagine the guard shrugging before he left, footsteps echoing into the darkness, taking the light with him. He would return when they came to fetch Severus for his sentencing.

But for now, they were alone. In the darkness, he could hear Severus breathing -- raggedly, rapidly. And he remembered his own times in the darkness, waiting, panting sometimes in sheer terror, half-convinced he would remain there forever, forgotten...

It wasn't Azkaban; it was Greyback's prison camp. Cells little more than blocks cut out of frozen mud, spelled with containment wards. Half-starved, half-frozen, wands taken away, they waited for their fate. Somewhere a woman was screaming; her child, her only son, had been torn from her arms and taken to Fenrir. In the cell next to him was a boy, a young man with the first growth of hair on his face. He'd tried to resist Greyback and had been mangled for it. He'd tried to talk to him, to ease his suffering. He didn't remember how long it took for the boy to die.

But this time, it was someone else. Someone who had been alone long enough.

"Why are you here?"

For a moment he struggled for words; what excuse could he give? "I came here to right a wrong," he said finally. It wasn't enough, but it was a start. "May I come in?"

"As if I could stop you, Lupin, if you wanted to. It is not as if --" he moved in the darkness, the clink of his chains underscoring his words, "—I have any luxury of choice here." His words were bitter, but lacked the usual venom. Contained, restrained -- afraid.

Only one spell worked freely down here on the hopeless ward; it was enough. "Incarcerus," he said firmly to the bars impeding him, and they became incorporeal one-way, enough that he could enter. Hesitantly he slipped inside the tiny cell, no wider than the bed, built into the back wall. "May I sit down?" he whispered. Words sounded too loud in the dark; he'd forgotten how vast and at the same time how tiny a cell could seem in complete darkness. The dark had no boundaries, stretching on seemingly forever, but the unexpected loudness of someone's breathing -- even their heartbeat -- made the space they shared feel impossibly small.

Severus slid over; more clinking of chains, the protesting creak of the sagging bunk. "If you must, Lupin."

There was none of the usual mocking disdain; it both pleased and worried Lupin. What were you supposed to say in a place like this? 'Nice to see you?' He sat down on the mattress and it sank down further in the middle, slumping them against each other. The wand dug into his forearm, and black magic danced over his pale skin, before they converged into pinpoints that seared the dark mark into his arm --

Snape shifted on the mattress, trying to balance on the precarious upslope of the mattress, breaking the contact.

"Sorry, didn't mean to—" Lupin said awkwardly. Why had he seen that? He was no Legilimens; Severus was the one trained in Legilimency and Occlumency. At his trial it had taken the concerted efforts of a trained quorum of five Legilimens to break into his mind, even after a mind-weakening potion.

"Why are you here, if not to curse a condemned man?" Snape's voice was more like he remembered it; snarky, rude, proud, condescending. Yet underneath it he could still hear a shadow of the man's uncertainty, his fear.

In his mind's eye, he could see Minerva, standing stiffly in front of him, saying, "What did you want most when you were in Azkaban?" He'd wanted someone to reach out to him, to care. To not be alone. So in the dark, Lupin reached out to Severus Snape; he slid his hand along the bed, found and covered Severus' cold hand in his own warm one. He bent over a parchment, already half filled with his cramped, slanted writing. His eyes were blurring, but he refused to stop. Exams were coming soon, and he'd be at the top. He had to, he had to -- These weren't his memories, and somehow he knew Severus didn't want him 'reading' them. But he didn't know how to stop them -- what had Albus told Snape in their Occlumency lesson? 'Picture an invisible wall'. He struggled to case his mind in a barrier, and after a moment, felt the other man's memories recede.

He sighed silently in relief when after a moment of tension, Severus' hand relaxed too. "I'm not here to -- to mock you, Severus." He struggled to find words to express what he felt, bought time by turning Snape's hand over in his, tracing the long thin fingers with his own. "I've been here before. Not on the -- the hopeless ward. But this --" he waved his free hand, forgetting that Severus couldn't see the movement, "this waiting in the dark, wondering if anyone cares, waiting for the end, wondering when you'll die, or how..."

Severus' laugh sounded no better the second time around. "There's no 'wondering'. No one cares, I will die here, and everyone else will finally be 'happy ever after'."

Remus slid around on the bed so he was facing Snape in the darkness. "No, Severus," he whispered, and then swallowed around a lump in his throat. "Someone -- someone does care. Someone -- won't be happy, Sev. I won't be happy -- at all --" and, greatly daring, he leaned forward and kissed Severus.

It was an awkward kiss: noses bumping in the dark; desperate, hungry lips crushed against each other, trying to impress the feelings of one upon the other; born through years of suppressed desires and shattered dreams. He kissed Severus fervently, putting all his heart in it, and after a moment Severus shuddered and opened his mouth to Lupin, silently. Lupin sucked on Snape's lower lip gently, before allowing his tongue to plunder Severus' mouth, twining tongues with him, tasting salt and fear and that dark flavour that was wholly Severus Snape -- exactly as he had remembered.

When he pulled back, both he and Snape were breathing heavily, and it was a moment before Snape managed, "Is this a perverse game of yours, to snog condemned men?" His hand trembled beneath Lupin's.

This time, Lupin flinched. "It's not like that at all, Sev. It's -- damnit, we don't have time. Can you -- can you still use Legilimency in here?" he asked desperately. The place was warded to the bloody eye-teeth, but if he could just show Severus that this wasn't a trick or a sadistic plan to break a broken man further -- if he could show Severus the feelings he'd kept locked away so tightly for so long --

For a minute Severus was silent, then he shuddered convulsively. "I don't know. I can't occlude anymore, obviously. I think -- they did something to me at the trial." His voice broke painfully. A memory broke through Lupin's crude attempt at Occlumency: A Severus in his early twenties paced the room in great agitation. Minerva watched him pace, a shadow of sympathy in her eyes. "Perhaps you should take some time to rest. You've been damaged by this—"

Severus turned on her, eyes blazing and teeth bared. "I am not damaged!" he shrieked, "I do not need your sympathy!" And he recoiled violently when Minerva tried to reach out to him. "Don't touch me," he hissed through gritted teeth. "Don't ever touch me!"

Lupin closed his eyes against the pain, tried to strengthen the wall around his mind, spare Severus the indignity of involuntarily leaking his memories. "Maybe," he said carefully, grateful for the insight gleaned from the last memory, nonetheless, "It was more like an elastic band that has been….stretched too far, and needs time to regain its shape. Maybe it didn't affect your Legilimency. Can you try?" He held his breath; he risked a great deal, asking Severus to possibly reveal another weakness in front of him.

A long moment later Severus exhaled unsteadily. "Possibly -- yes. With enough  physical contact, maybe. Once I could have -- maybe." He trembled once, just once, then stilled.

Without hesitation, the werewolf leaned forward and pressed his forehead against Snape's. And again, Severus' memories thrust themselves unbidden into Lupin's mind. Lucius leaned in close and smiled; one of those closed, practiced smiles aristocrats liked to use on the 'common trash'. "I saw you snogging Remus," he said in affected casualness. "I had no idea you had such deviant… inclinations. Do you suppose your -- friends --" he paused a moment for effect, and unwillingly Severus felt a shiver of fear, "—would enjoy knowing you snogged their dearest friend?"

Severus stared in horror at Lucius. "They'd try to kill me," he said flatly, trying to hide the flash of pain that caused, trying to sound nonchalant. "They won't succeed."

"Won't they?" Lucius purred sweetly. "Wouldn't it be easier if they never learned of this… experiment?" He leaned in so his cheek brushed Snape's, and the blond Slytherin's breath was warm on his ear. "Perhaps you're aware of my… interest… in deviant boys?" he whispered…

Lupin braced his hands on Severus' arms; the ex-Death Eater was beginning to writhe in an effort to suppress his own memories. Aloud, he cursed; he would use Occlumency, but he couldn't rely on Snape being able to get through it if his Legilimency was so unstable. Could he be stronger than Severus? He struggled to pull himself out of the memories without withdrawing from Snape, tried to focus on his own memories and feelings. And succeeded, fastening on the memory that had precipitated Lucius' blackmail.

"Will this do?" he whispered hoarsely, and the next moment, he felt his own memories being pulled up, sorted through. 

Unfortunately, the first memory Snape accessed was that of Lupin watching the trial, his horrified pity as they raped his mind for the public. And right on the wake of that wave of memory came Severus' rage, his hatred of being a victim, being seen as a victim not in control of his own fate.

Severus flung him off. "What am I to you? Some kind of pity fuck? No, don't answer that," he snarled harshly. "I am not a victim, whatever you may think, should it occur to you to actually take that up as an occupation—"

Lupin cried out hoarsely, "Severus, wait—"

"I am not your lapdog, Lupin! I will never be anyone's pawn again, and in a few hours I would like the dignity of dying with that confidence, so stop playing your damn games with me!" He spat the words at Lupin.

But this time, Lupin could hear the underlying pain, the bitterness, the loneliness, the fear of what awaited him when he went above. He could not leave that pain unanswered, no matter the cost. He would sacrifice his own dignity if need be; was this what that fabled Gryffindor courage was? Was courage really an absence of fear -- or a willingness to do the right thing, regardless of the cost? And regardless of the pain, mental or physical, regardless of what others thought of you? And if so -- how had it taken him so long to understand?

He slid off the bed, knelt on the floor in the darkness, facing Severus, and slid his hands forward until they found and covered the Potions master's cold thin feet; he ignored Snape’s harsh, strangled cry, and bent forward until his forehead was pressed against those bare feet, before speaking.

"If you are not a victim, Severus, then what am I?" He fought to keep his voice calm, level; he almost succeeded. "I never chose to be a werewolf. But I did choose to be used by James and Sirius as their guinea-pig sidekick. I did whatever Albus told me to. I played a dual role in Greyback's army. I had to do -- terrible, horrible, hateful things. Things I still have nightmares about. Some things I had control over -- some things I couldn't stop at all. Sometimes I was a player, sometimes a pawn. That's life. Sometimes we're the victor, sometimes the observer, sometimes the referee, sometimes the -- the victim. Yes, Severus, a damn victim," he said, voice harsh under the tension of his emotions.

For a moment he couldn't speak further, but struggled to regain control of himself. He turned his face, finally, and pressed a tentative kiss against the top of Snape's right foot, ignoring the muffled sound Severus made, before he spoke again. "I'm not an… elegant or eloquent person, you know that. I can't say things as well as I want to. But you need to understand something, something very important," he said forcefully. "Someone who doesn't understand what you're going through and feels badly for you -- that's pity. But someone who -- who understands what it's like --" his voice faltered, and he swallowed once before continuing, "Someone who understands -- that's not pity, it's empathy. I can't understand everything you've done or survived, but I know why you did them."

Severus could feel the corners of Lupin's mouth curving up into a tremulous smile, still pressed against his feet, his voice rising to him muffled in the dark. He raised shaking hands to push Lupin away, pushed his own hair away instead, shackles rattling loudly. He tucked his tangled hair behind his ears, but his hands remained there, gripping fistfuls of the black strands, gripping tightly as if by this manner he could somehow keep the foundations stable beneath his feet. But the foundation he craved was bending over his feet. "Why are you saying this to me now?" he rasped, "I'm a dead man -- what is the purpose of this?"

Because I didn't want you to die with too many regrets. But that was only part of the truth. Because I didn't want you to die alone. But that wasn't enough, either. "Because I care about you," he said simply, hoarsely, and slowly sat up, lifting his face to Severus, knowing the man would sense the gesture he could not see. "Because it was something I needed, and something you needed." He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. "Can you use Legilimency again? If I had the time --" If you had the time --

It wasn't spoken aloud, but it was understood. For a moment, all Lupin could hear was Snape's ragged breathing, then hands were pulling at him, tugging him up onto the bed to sit along side him, the sagging mattress throwing them together. And then Snape's thin hands were bracketing Lupin's face, and Snape's forehead was pressed to his, and his voice whispered raggedly, "Legilimens!"

Lupin struggled to keep his own mind open, hiding nothing, not even his own shameful secrets: his secret, exultant joy when he roamed as a werewolf at full moon, unchecked and powerful; his stranglehold suppression on his lust for human prey -- especially prey of the type that persecuted his kind; his terror of spending the rest of his life alone -- and the fear that he deserved nothing better; his sometimes-hatred for his family, who tried to love him still after he was bitten, but often failed and showed more fear than love. And Snape saw those memories and secrets and bypassed them dismissively. They were purely human weaknesses.

And then he reached Lupin's cherished memories: his furtive glances and secret longings for the teenaged Severus; sharing his anguish when James and Sirius tormented him, but too cowardly to fight, afraid of earning the ridicule of the first friends he'd had who weren't afraid of him; his guilt when Sirius had tried to lead Severus to the Shrieking Shack on a full moon; his terror when he'd learned how close he'd come to hurting Snape -- and the truth, that he’d had nothing to do with that 'prank'; how he hadn't eaten for a day after the one time Severus had kissed him, unwilling to let anything else touch his lips, pleading weakness to the Marauders to escape meals; his numerous fantasies since then -- his admiration for the tormented teenager who had become a brilliant, albeit feared, Potions master, Slytherin Head, and skilled Legilimens.

All of his secret feelings had been laid out for Snape to see, and then Severus pulled back and Lupin found himself in the present. He was mildly surprised to find his heart racing as if he'd run a very long footrace; he was also shaking and his hands were clammy, afraid that -- after everything -- Severus would scorn his feelings.

Snape pulled away from Lupin; for several moments, he sat very still. Finally, "What about Nymphadora?" Severus' rusty voice asked.

"She liked me, and I liked her, but not enough," he answered honestly. "She found someone else who needed her more, and who would love her more than I could. Maybe she knew I was never really cut out for dating girls; I could never tell when she'd cut her hair." He laughed, a sort, barking laugh that sounded too loud in the tiny cell. "However, I think it was because my heart never gave up hoping, however unrealistically." He fell silent then, for several moments, before sighing. "You know, Sev, I should have told you this before." He clasped shaking hands between his knees. "Even before Minerva told me about the trial, I should have asked you what happened, given you the benefit of the doubt. I'm sorry, I --"

This time it was Severus cutting Lupin off with a kiss -- no less desperate, but more passionate -- that left them both breathless. "How much time do we have?" Severus husked into the werewolf's ear.

"Enough," Lupin whispered back, and raised shaking hands to Snape's chest, fingers curling in the ragged fabric. "If you only knew how long I've wanted to do this, be with you like this..." Slowly he removed Severus' clothing -- as much of it as could be removed, since his hands were in chains -- his shirt had to be left on, but he could unbutton it and push it to Snape's shoulders, and he did, but the baggy prison trousers and pants were pulled off and tossed to one side. Then it was Snape's turn, urgently pulling off Lupin's patched and faded clothes and tossing them to the side.

It was the muted clink of glass hitting the ground that reminded Lupin of Minerva's mysterious package, and he stopped Severus long enough to retrieve the parcel and open it, sliding two small glass vials into his hands. Unstoppering the first one he sniffed, then smiled.

"Looks like Minerva anticipated us -- this is a scented oil. What's this, though?" The vial had the word "POTION" embossed on it; his fingers could barely pick out the letters in the darkness. Removing the stopper and sniffing left him no more enlightened. "Sev, who should drink this, you or me?"

A clinking of chains told Lupin that Severus had sat back down on the bunk while considering. "You drink it," he said at last. "I doubt it's poison, and quite probably it's just an aphrodisiac of some kind -- Minerva's way of making things a little easier. I --" he swallowed audibly, "—no matter the outcome, I want to be myself at the sentencing."

Lupin understood; Severus wanted to face his sentencing with whatever he could salvage from his tattered cloak of pride. So he unstoppered the potion, raised it to his lips and upended it. It tasted faintly of blueberries, that was all. "Well, if it's poison, it tastes uncommonly good for that," he said lightly, and moved to join Severus on the bed.

There was no need to ask who would lead this sexual dance; Severus had seen it all in Lupin's fantasies. Urgency drove them, their feelings for each other guided them. With a groan, Severus pushed himself on top of Remus, rubbing himself against the werewolf's skin, feeling the heat building between them. "Gods, Lupin, just feeling another person is... but you, you're...." he groaned again as Lupin arched under him and dug his fingers into the werewolf's shoulders.

"I'm going to bite you if you can't do any more than that," Lupin growled beneath him, and licked his shoulder. "Don't think I'm not tempted..."


Snape growled, and bit lightly at Lupin's throat, before squirming backwards to end kneeling between the werewolf's bent legs. He anointed his fingers with Minerva's gift, and sought out Lupin's entrance. His finger pressed gently against Lupin’s puckered opening before the ring of muscle relaxed marginally, allowing his flinger to slip in. The finger slid in and out, then curved inside him, probing to reach that spot -- Remus arched his back and gasped -- and Severus played him like a violin making him beg for another finger. Another finger was added and the stroking continued until Lupin was making inarticulate noises. When Severus withdrew his fingers, Lupin whimpered in disappointment.

"Surely you were hoping for a more substantial shagging?" Snape growled, and that growl made Lupin's heart race. It was -- gods, it was sexy. He'd heard Severus furious, malicious, smug, scared, shattered, even drunk -- but never had he heard the man like this, with lust lacing through the ruined voice.

"Fuck," he gasped, and his heart leapt again when Severus actually chuckled. "F-fuck..."

"I wouldn't want to disappoint you," Snape grated, and then the blunt slicked head of his cock was pressing against Lupin's entrance. But he stopped there and leaned in over Lupin, and whispered in his ear, "Is this what you want? Even if they sentence me to death?" His voice held a warning, and Remus swallowed hard.

"Even more," he answered. "If -- if you -- if they -- I'd regret it, Sev. I'd regret it forever, and I don't want to lose this chance!" He licked his lips and added, "And if you dare stop now, I will kill you myself, Severus!”

"Would you believe me," husked Snape, "if I said -- I regret it?" He didn't mean their lovemaking; he meant the years they had spent building walls between them. But Lupin understood.

Their loving was a frantic hasty affair, two lean lovers desperately consummating a lifetime of desire, grasping at their last hopes on the Hopeless Ward. But the heights reached were no less high, and perhaps all the more glorious, for having been reached in the darkest times.