InsaneJournal

Nipped in the Bud

“Snivellus, just admit it already and we’ll leave you alone.” He stepped on the side of the face that he could see, pressing the other side into the stone.

“N-no!”

“Dammit!” said James, knocking Sirius off of Snape to give him a good kick in the side himself.

“Fine!” They relented; a broken Snape curled up in on himself. “I’m a pouf!” he choked out.

Sirius and James spat on the ground near him, cackling, leaving Snape and a horrified Remus behind. Remus helped him up and said, softly, “I can’t believe them.”

“Oh can’t you?”

“I’m a p-pouf too!”



Severus Snape vowed to never look at another boy in the shower again, even on accident. He would claw his own bloody eyes out if he did it again. He would not have more episodes like the one in the corridor.

He wrapped his arms around himself and moaned, terribly, terribly unhappy. Always ostracized for this, or that, or the other.

“I’m just a boy,” he said, muttering shakily into his knees, “I’m not doing anything. I’m a p-pervert, but n-not a demon like them.” He wanted it to be true. That was his only, only wish at the present.



Many times he would think about Remus’s admission, when he admitted his weakness, that he, too, was a pouf, a bloody pouf. Snape was angry because that created a bond between them that he had no desire of being there.

“Hey,” said Remus quietly, in the library, Snape’s library, Snape’s spot.

He did not even dignify that with a response. He did not look at the other boy. That pathetic, openly homosexual boy could do whatever he pleased. It was no matter to Severus who, too, was a pouf. So bloody what? Remus Lupin’s presence was a worse disease still.

Remus failed to relent or die, so Snape almost felt he could start to appreciate him. There were a few days, full moon days, when Remus wouldn’t show up at all, and he wouldn’t be able to find him, not even in the hospital wing. He figured maybe he had a lunar-induced curse on him and was holed up in his dorm for those nights. It would not do to ask him, though. That would mean he cared.

Thanks to Black, he found out exactly where Lupin had been.

Then he didn’t like Remus anymore at all. Monsters weren’t datable.