Sharon Hawkins (![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} alwaysasnapefan) wrote,@ 2007-10-01 00:55:00 |
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| Entry tags: | hp, nc-17, snupin |
Of Bubbles and Flidglets
NC-17 Remus comes back to life on the full moon after his death, and figures out that Snape's soul is trapped in the Pensieve. References to past Lucius/Snape. Warnings: Non-con, semi-necrophilia.
Of Bubbles and Flidglets
The full moon shone. The change was painful. He was stiffer than usual. He tried to open his eyes, but he couldn’t see. He didn’t think he could breathe either, for that matter! There was a Bubble-Head Charm in place around him—was he supposed to be dead? The charm was fading, he could tell. There was fabric above him, and with the change of his body, the—coffin?—seemed to be getting smaller and smaller.
Panicking, he started to flail, to claw, anything. He was desperate. In his raw, emotional-magical state, the ground seemed to part above him and his coffin. He howled and whimpered and the coffin burst open. All of a sudden Remus was lying on his back, staring up at a sky. He whined and stood up properly, dizzy, lupine, coughing and choking and frightened.
He stared up at the sky once more and howled. He was lonely, so lonely, and he knew somehow that he wasn’t supposed to be alive. He tried to climb out of the hole, but he couldn’t get a grip on the dirt. He couldn’t do anything, not even pop the Bubble-Head Charm that was getting quite stuffy. He licked at it, tried to bite at it, but it wouldn’t come off. He huffed through his snout. Then he curled up and laid there for what felt like forever.
He saw the light of the sun shine through the bubble that distorted his surroundings. He moaned in pain when he sat up, trying to rub at his aching muscles. Then he felt around for his wand. “Finite Incantatem.” Much better. He closed his eyes against the brightness of the morning sun. He raised his wand and produced a patronus before collapsing, exhausted of his strength.
So, that was how they found him, the mediwizards, and they were careful with his weak, stiff body, and intrigued at the same time. Sometimes, no one quite knew why, werewolves would come back from the grave on the full moon after their death. It was one of the things that made the Ministry and the magical community in general so wary of werewolves.
“Yes, I’m fine!” Remus snapped, tired of this question. “Can I go now?”
Healer Benson’s lip curled. “You’re a werewolf last I checked, sir, so it might be in your best interest to show a little respect to this institution and its workers,” she said.
“I don’t wish to be studied,” he said quietly after a moment. “I just want to go find my family and get on with my life.”
“You’re lucky we took you in at all!”
“Look. Whatever you did, thanks, but I’m alright now, and I really just want to go home. ”
She looked at her clipboard, then looked up at him again, frowned, and then looked at her clipboard and refused to look back up. “Fine,” she said after a moment. “We’ll send you your bill in a few days’ time. Get out.”
“Thank you,” he said with a sigh, the lines on his face smoothing a little. He moved to the door, his hand on the knob, and glanced back at her. He took a deep breath and left.
This new lease on life was, well, oddly like a second life. He almost wished he had never come back, but through his long years fighting depression he had learned better. Though even still, had it not been for Harry and Minerva’s strong protests against it, he would have been tested on, mentioned in the paper, and altogether even less left alone than he was now. He wasn’t sure if it was a good or a bad thing that he was getting so many visitors.
Tonks was dead—dead. He felt awful and relieved at the same time. He wanted to spit “Fuck you!” in the face of anyone who offered their condolences. They just simply didn’t understand. Understand what, he didn’t know, had no idea what was so singular about his situation, really.
So, well, the issue of Nymphadora. He would never see her heart-shaped face glow with amusement, with innocent, pleased laughter, or her toned body beneath him, or her eyes light up, tear up, flare up with anger—any of it. Tonks was a nothing, a no more. But it worried him, a bit, that his feelings of anger at the situation were not about her dying and him coming back, but about people who could not seem to understand, because there was something to be understood after all.
Nymphadora Tonks was happy. He realized this with a jolt one afternoon with Harry, nearly spilling his tea into his lap.
“Remus?”
He simply ran a hand through his greying hair. “Not now,” he said after a moment, thinking. Harry occupied himself with a biscuit as Lupin thought. Nymphadora had been fine. They’d made it to the afterlife together. She’d been fine, even happy. She was okay! He wasn’t being a terrible husband, he just understood, understood what no one else did. She was happy.
“Thanks for tea, Harry, we should really do this again,” he said distractedly. “Sorry to leave so soon, I just need some time—”
“—to yourself?” finished Harry. “Yeah, I understand.” He gave a wave gesturing that Remus should go if he really needed to.
“A later time, then,” he said absently.
“Sure. I know where to find you—and you me,” said Harry with a soft grin.
“Yeah.” He returned to his home, a home which he was only starting to get used to again.
He brooded a bit that night, about life, the afterlife, the cruelty of Fate—or was it kindness? He was pretty tired of living at this point, wanted to go back. Though, there was the issue of Teddy. He hadn’t been offered him yet, really, but he figured once they realized he was here for good (or at least that had been the case with the other instances of Werewolf Post-Mortem Revival, or WPMR) and all that rubbish, he’d probably get Teddy back. Right?
He drew in a breath. Did he . . . did he even want him? He let the breath out slowly, methodically. He really, really did not deserve his Order of Merlin. Nope. What kind of a father would abandon their child? Though, he supposed that maybe it wasn’t abandonment if it was taken from him and he just didn’t ask for it back.
“I think I’ve seen the whole Order by now—that’s not including Severus,” he said with a laugh. “Wouldn’t expect him to show up no matter what I’d done—coming back to life should be no different.” He smiled at Harry, who didn’t smile back.
“Oh, Remus, I guess no one’s told you,” said Hermione sadly.
“Oh God. Snape?” The color seemed to drain from his face. “Severus Snape, dead? I’d pictured, many times, what a post-war, free—mainly free—version of Snape would be like. I guess now I’ll never find out,” he said, still sounding a bit stunned.
“Did you meet him up there, do you think?” said Hermione.
He paused and thought, long and hard. It was a matter of minutes, eyes closed, fingers tapping, before he turned to address her again, eyes reopening. “No.” There was a lump in the back of his throat. “You don’t think he went . . . elsewhere?”
Harry shook his head vehemently, after a moment’s pause. “Come on, Remus, I want to show you the memories he gave to me.”
Intrigued already, he followed the two into a room of Grimmauld, the new home of Dumbledore’s old Pensieve. “Is that a Pensieve?” said Remus, leaning forward toward the shimmering substance in the bowl.
“Yes,” said Hermione, “Dumbledore’s old one. The memories should be wherever Harry put them last.”
“We’ve made sure most people don’t look at them,” Harry said, rummaging in the room’s closet to find the bottle that held the memories, which he had buried beneath some random, old artifacts of the Black house. He found that sometimes messes were useful. “There were a lot of memories. It was, well, a little creepy, the way they came out of him. They left through his nose, his mouth, his eyes . . . it was just . . . weird.” Hermione nodded in agreement.
“I’m glad you respect his privacy, Harry.” There was an unspoken “now” after “you respect his privacy”.
Harry said nothing, just nodded and moved back over to the Pensieve. He dumped the shimmering contents into the stone bowl and gave Remus an unsure look.
“My God,” said Remus, looking shell-shocked as he returned to the room. “Flidglets.”
Hermione stood. “In the Pensieve? You weren’t, you know, seeing things?”
“Flidglets?” asked Harry, looking from Hermione to Remus. “What’s a flidglet?”
Hermione sighed. “A flidglet, Harry, is a small, white, spider-like creature that lays eggs in an unprotected soul.”
“That sounds disgusting!” said Harry after a moment.
“Well, yes, but they’re also quite useful, aren’t they? They’ve alerted many people to the presence of souls left on earth, which has, many times, resulted in bringing the body back to life—well, because it never really deteriorated, of course, what with the soul missing.”
“You mean . . . Snape’s still alive?”
Hermione nodded, “That’s what you think, isn’t it, Remus?” He nodded slowly. “Sometimes the soul just gets eaten away by the flidglets and ends up in the afterlife. It’s only a matter of time before that happens.”
“Ew!” said Harry.
Hermione smiled sadly. “Yes, it is quite gross, I suppose. Well,” she said, turning to Lupin, “now I guess we’ve got to inform the Ministry to get permission to bring the body back.”
“Permission?” said Harry, frowning.
“Well, yes. You don’t want us to accidentally turn him into an Inferius, do you?”
Remus shuddered at the image. But he said, quite clearly, “Don’t tell the Ministry.”
She stared at him. “Remus, we have to try! We at least owe him that much.” Her tone was even sterner than his.
“Oh, we’ll try alright. We just won’t have the Ministry on our tails.” The determined glint in his eye made her believe it was the safest choice to just let him have his way. No Ministry, then. Nope.
Arthur Weasley was a man whose politeness outstretched even Remus’s. He wasn’t about to refuse to stand guard for his old friend in the graveyard. He supposed there were some folks who wouldn’t save Snape, even still, but leaving men behind was never his style.
“Yes . . . I’ll go with you and stand guard,” he said quietly. He dearly hoped they wouldn’t be caught. Even with the youngest nearly out of the house, he needed to keep his job to keep him and Molly in the Burrow, didn’t he?
“Thank you,” said Remus, and Arthur understood that it was a need Remus had, to try and find a way to give someone else a new lease on life, even if he hadn’t really wanted his at the start.
So here he was, at a small graveyard somewhere in the wizarding world.
“I’ve never seen a real live flidglet before,” said Arthur.
“Most haven’t,” said Remus. “They aren’t that common a sight.”
They found the site, an ornate, black marble grave marker, and Remus read out loud, “Severus Tobias Snape; 1959-1998; ‘Principled, selfless and ingenious.’ – Lucius Malfoy.” Remus raised a brow. “Lucius?” He stared at what he had just read off.
“They really were friends, you know, from what I learned,” said Arthur quietly. “Must have been hard to have to turn on his friends, don’t you think?”
“Maybe,” said Remus, wanting to drop the subject as he thought of Peter. “Anyway, let’s get out our wands and start digging.”
Arthur nodded and they set to work. It wasn’t long before Remus could draw the coffin up out of the hole in the ground. He tapped it and cast a Disillusionment Charm as well as a Feather-Light Spell, and then he floated it alongside himself carefully as he told Arthur they could leave now.
He’d read about what he had to do, and . . . it, honestly, made him want to gag. Because it was sex, because it was Snape, because he was dead . . . and that amounted to necrophilia. Well, he’s not dead yet, Remus, said his brain. Oh, yes, what a consolation, he shot back.
He went into the Pensieve again to ward off any flidglets from around the images of Snape. Most had left the last time he tried to purge them from the soul. He guessed that he really was one of the few people to see the memories if no one else noticed the flidglets. Then again, he knew a lot more about magical creatures than most people he’d ever known, and Hermione had never seen a flidglet in real life before.
So . . . it was time. Arthur went with him into Grimmauld, into the room, and sat down in a conjured chair. He watched Remus take the coffin with him into the mysterious, swirling depths. He crossed his arms across his chest and decided to nap. He really didn’t want any part of this. Especially if it all went wrong. Though, he didn’t really think it would. Remus had proven a very capable wizard.
Remus bit his lip like a child might as he landed on the grass of some clearing. He remembered how young Snape looked in this memory. Nice . . . he was going to fuck the man to the soundtrack of his own memories, and feel like a pedophile besides.
Remus performed a spell to unlock the casket, cringing for the smell of death to come, but surprised when all he smelt was an unwashed body. He reached for one of the hands. A bit stiff, but not completely, and at least not terribly cold.
So, here—he almost gagged—was his moment. Any innocence he had left, werewolf, unemployed, dirty, was going to leave him, he knew, of that he was most sure. The body was a bit disgusting. There were hastily-healed bite wounds on the side of his neck—a snake bite, Remus thought. It looked as if the poison was still in the body, biding its time, giving it an unnatural hue. Remus wondered if the poison would get into his own body through the “procedure”. It probably would. Lord help him.
He cast a quick Scouring Charm and sighed, getting his bearings. This was one of the only restorative procedures that almost certainly would not make an Inferius out of Snape’s body—not even an intentional one, he didn’t think. He stared at the body again. By now he had nearly bitten down all of his fingernails. “Breathe, Remus,” he admonished himself, ignoring the fact that Snape sure didn’t seem to be breathing either.
How Remus despised the potion making it possible! He wetted his fingertips in it and coated his decidedly limp penis, watching in part fascination, part horror as the potion did exactly what it was meant to and got him hard, and even so hard he was thrumming with magical energy for the spell. He wetted his fingers again, stripping Snape from the dress robes he had been buried in. He shook as he parted the unmoving legs. The fact that he wasn’t too stiff for the legs to part was little consolation.
One finger pushed into the arse and he cringed. It was still tight. Remus had to steady his breathing so he would not hyperventilate. He drew it in and out, wanting nothing more than to give up. But he held strong and fucked this corpse—no, not a corpse, he reminded himself—with his live fingers. Necrophiliac, his mind screamed at him, even if it was essentially untrue.
He had to perform at least two large Calming Charms on himself so that he would not just faint dead away as he pulled his fingers out. He pushed into the body, grimacing, with a dog-like whine the only thought, emotion, sound he was capable of. This was so wrong. If he’d ever thought of having the man in his bed it was not like this—in so many different ways, it was not like this!
He fucked him. He fucked Severus Snape. He fucked the corpse—no, not a corpse!—, he fucked it like it were his own hand, like this were natural and necessary, or at least that was how he wished he were fucking it. He could see Snape start to move and felt a new wave of nausea. He wrapped potion-covered fingers around Snape’s prick until he was forced into hardness like Remus had been.
More fucking, his hips were as disgusted as the rest of them, even his cock almost was. But he kept going. When he felt himself start to get close, he started to weave a complicated pattern of Sticking Charms from the soul to Snape, fucking slowly, so slowly until he thought he had it right. Then he was back at it again, angry, intense this time, wishing Snape had not gotten himself killed. Hazy black eyes opened and Remus came, the spell forcing Snape to come as well. The black eyes closed shut tight again and the man beneath him groaned.
He pulled out, cleaned them up, put Snape’s robes back on, and pulled him back out of the Pensieve with him. He gave Arthur a salute, leaving Snape on the floor of the room.
It wasn’t long, unfortunately, before Remus and Severus had both been treated for poison and Snape was back to being able to form questions of any sort.
“Who brought me back to life?”
“Well, you see, I’m not actually very sure how these things go,” said Arthur, trying to keep his reddening ears to a minimum.
“Well, I for one, am not stupid, not unobservant, and nor am I ill-informed!” he snarled. “Just tell me which Ministry employee fucked me back to life. I know you know how these things go by now.”
Arthur was a bit taken aback at this sort of language coming from Snape. “I don’t know, alright? You’ll have to ask Remus.”
He turned to Remus expectantly.
“Do you really want to know, Severus?” Remus said quietly. To a slow, angry nod, he said, “It wasn’t a Ministry employee at all. It was me.”
Snape’s expression was one of shock, and then of emptiness, and then of rage.
“No need to say it—your lack of hexes will be thanks enough,” said Remus with a small smirk.
Severus wanted to draw his wand, but he refused to give Remus the satisfaction. He stormed toward the door, but then paused, turning to Arthur. “Do I still have my home?”
Arthur nodded softly, which left Snape looking so relieved he almost didn’t appear angry anymore—until his gaze turned upon Remus. “Rapist,” he hissed.
“What?! I saved your life, you ponce!”
A cold sneer. “Did I ask you to?” A pause in which he received no answer. “Then it wasn’t consensual.”
“I bet you secretly felt everything and you remember it,” said Remus quickly, searching for anything to use against him at this point, “And you secretly liked it because you’re just as bisexual as I am and you’ve probably always had a crush on me—just like on Lily.” It really did not surprise him much when he was hexed.
“Is this really necessary, Severus?”
“You’re daft if you think it’s not.”
Lucius placed a hand on his shoulder. “It’s your life; I’m not going to tell you how to run it.”
“Yes you are,” he said, leering at him.
He brushed the accusation off with a sweep of a hand. “Regardless, Severus, why don’t you just embrace life and drop all the charges? No more Voldemort means no more spying, right? You’re more or less free to do as you please. Little consolation if you’re going to insist on wanting to die. Drama really does not work for you.”
If looks could kill, Lucius Malfoy would have died five times over.
“So did you see your grave? I paid for a marker and the quote on it is from me. It says, ‘Principled, selfless and ingenious.’ That’s you to a t—leaving out, of course your stubbornness, your dramatics, your suicidal tendencies—”
“I get it,” he growled.
“You know,” said Lucius with a wicked grin, “I wanted to put ‘He gave great head,’ but Narcissa seemed to think it inappropriate.”
Snape choked on his sip of wine.
“I saved a friend,” said Remus, “and if the Ministry is going to prosecute me for that, their priorities are in even worse shape than I feared. What if it went wrong? What if he became an Inferius? Gentlemen, life has taught me that playing the “what if” game only brings sleepless nights and no solutions. As for trying it as rape, that’s ridiculous. If anything, it would be necrophilia.” Snape sneered at him from across the room.
Apparently the Ministry wasn’t in even worse shape than Remus feared. He got off. Snape was furious. Lucius came to visit him at Spinner’s End only to find that Snape in a rage was akin to a small tornado in destructive capabilities. In a bored manner, he followed his old friend around, repairing all the damage wrought. Eventually Snape stopped.
“There,” said Lucius, casting one last Reparo. “Now are you quite finished?”
Severus shot him a withering glare and was tempted to break something or other right into those sickle-colored eyes, but refrained from doing so. He did not actually want to hurt Lucius.
“Good. Come and have some tea,” said Lucius, making his way into the slight kitchen to prepare tea for Severus and himself, regardless of the fact it was not his house.
Severus sat down in a chair and sipped quietly at the tea after it was brewed. He said nothing.
“Have you talked to him yet, the werewolf?” He could tell he was being ignored and persisted. “Well, you should. How will you know things when you refuse to ask questions? Severus, look at me. Ask the werewolf why he did it. He probably wanted to avoid bureaucracy or publicity or some such noble pursuit, you know what Gryffindors are like. Although, if that was his goal, you smashed it to a pulp, I daresay. Everyone deserves a chance to explain themselves—thus is civilization. Finish your tea and then owl him—don’t give me that look! Owl him about some time where you can sit down and talk. Merlin’s mustache, Severus, you really are a menace.”
“A restraining order?!”
“To ensure it does not happen again.”
“Trust me, Severus,” he said coldly, “Given the chance, I would not save you again. Did you once, even once, think of how I felt doing it?”
“You’re a pervert, a flesh-hungry werewolf.” He shrugged.
“Stop it!” snapped Remus. “Read my mind, why don’t you? I’ll show you what it was like.”
There was a long moment in which they stared at each other and then Snape raised his wand. “Legilimens!” Then he saw. He saw the way Remus had had to calm himself, the way he’d forced himself to do it for Snape. Remus received a scowl Snape typically reserved for Albus or Potter. Then Snape left, taking the restraining order along with him.
Remus J. Lupin was not surprised nearly to the point of fainting very often in his life, but there were some exceptions, including finding Lucius Malfoy at his doorstep, wishing to speak to him about Severus.
“What about him?” he asked, trying to calm down after such an out-of-the-blue visit.
“I think you should ask him to go to a museum or something equally academic.”
“But not for knowledge’s sake?” he could see where the blonde was going with this.
“No, for romance’s sake.”
“Romance! Bah!”
“It was a mere suggestion,” Lucius said silkily. “But did you know that one of the reasons the method you used is so antiquated is that it forges a bond between the caster and the body?”
Remus frowned in thought, trying to recall if that were true. To be honest, he didn’t know. He shook his head.
“Well now you know, don’t you? That cub of yours is probably going to need a second parent. It’s not a secret that both of you are lonely. The courtship will be tedious and long—trust me.” He rolled his silver eyes. “You might want to get your son back as well.” With these words he left, just as gracefully as he had entered. He’d told his lie well enough. Hopefully, by the time they realized the spell forged no such bond whatsoever, the two would be together. Werewolf or not, he was Snape’s savior. And, werewolf or not, it took something rather special to fuck a corpse back to life. While the werewolf was not perfectly worthy of Severus, at least he was marginally acceptable.
“No, no! Teddy, those are Daddy’s important potions notes!” he flushed, pulling the giddy toddler from the mess of parchment and ink. He washed the tiny hands in the sink and then pulled him to Snape to have him apologize.
“Sorry about potion notes, Daddy.” Even at such a young age, Teddy had the decency to look sad.
Snape shrugged.
“I . . . wait, I thought they were important.”
“They are, Lupin, which is why I would never keep only a single copy of any of them. Theodore, how did you get into my office?”
“Oh! I must have left the door open!” Remus’s face flushed.
“No harm, no foul. Although first, isn’t there something you have to say to me?”
“Pologize!” ordered Teddy.
Remus sighed and shook his head before beginning. “Severus, I’m sorry I left the door to your office open.”
“Forgiven.” He waved them away with a hand. “Now go occupy yourselves, the two of you. More specifically not anywhere inside of my office.”
“Severus! He’s broken his arm, Severus! No!” Remus said, frantic as he held his child.
One eyebrow raised. “Really? I couldn’t tell.”
“We . . . we have to do something!”
“You are a wizard. Your wand is in your pocket.”
Remus continued to awkwardly dance around as Teddy cried out, tears streaming down his small face.
A sigh, the scrape of a chair, and the slow, dramatic walk over to the other two. “Teddy, your father is useless.” He healed the arm with two swishes of his wand.
Remus sighed, putting Teddy down on the ground now. “Thank you, Severus,” he said, sweat beading on his forehead.
Snape pocketed his wand and pointed toward the door silently until the other two got the message. He did not admonish Remus for wasting time by hugging him very briefly.
Remus was right. Tonks had been happy. But if she had been happy before, now she was perfectly ecstatic. Her little boy was finally reunited with her husband. Teddy was happy, and so was his father, and, in fact, his other father as well.
It wouldn’t be perfect. No, that was already clear. But there was an odd sort of balance between Snape’s apathy and Lupin’s intensity. Each of them, even Teddy, knew things would always work out. It was inconceivable to think that things would not work out, after all, because while their guardian angel may have been pink-haired and clumsy, she always got the job done.
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