My fic: Fishes Die Not of Cold, Chapter Three

[iesika]

 Fishes Die Not of Cold

Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairings: Snape/Potter, Lupin/Potter
Summary: Snape should know better than to form a working hypothesis without proper observation.
Warnings: This story will contain sexual scenes and depictions of gore and animal cruelty, though not at the same time. This is a work in progress.

Chapter Three

Potter appeared with a crack, two feet from where Snape sat at the kitchen table. He looked rather startled to find him there.

 

"Good morning," Snape bade him with a nasty smile. He sipped his coffee. It was cold by now, but it was good to have a prop when dealing with Potter.

 

"Er," Potter said, intelligently. He was carrying a large paper sack, which he clutched against his chest. "You’re up early. I’d thought-"

 

"You'd thought," Snape interrupted, "that you would surprise me from my sleep and have me wrong-footed."

 

"Er," Potter repeated. It was as good as a confession.

 

"I would offer you coffee," Snape began, and held up his mug, "but I have only been provided with the one cup. Likewise, I cannot offer you a seat, as there is only one chair."

 

"We could go sit in the library," Potter suggested.

 

"I am quite comfortable here, actually."

 

Potter just looked at him for a moment, and then turned away to set his burden on the counter, He began to unload the bag he'd brought. It turned out to contain quite a lot of food - some of it evidently still hot. The scent of sausages set Snape's mouth watering. He sipped his cold coffee and turned back to the notes spread over the table. The phrase "silver nitrate not tolerated" caught his eye, and he marked it in green. He'd forgotten that particular experiment, though with all the vomiting, he wasn't sure how.

 

"Didn't know what you'd like," Potter said. He sounded apologetic. "I've scones, most of a fry up, stuff for toast - I'd have brought more fruit if I'd known you'd eat it all."

 

Snape did not fall upon the feast like a man starved. Instead, he shuffled his papers together and retrieved one page. He held it out for Potter to take. "There are several volumes missing from my collection," he said. "This is a list. The items on it would have been left at Hogwarts when I fled. As they were all exceptionally rare and valuable, I imagine they were…" he rolled the word around in his mouth, "appropriated by Horace Slughorn, or, possibly but much less likely, by Irma Pince."

 

Potter predictably latched onto the paper as an excuse not to meet Snape's eyes. He was rather paler than Snape remembered. Whatever he'd been doing, it obviously didn't allow much time for quidditch. "I got everything of yours from Hogwarts and the house on Spinner's End," he said. "Slughorn didn't have anything else."

 

"I am sure he told you so. Nevertheless, the rarest and most useful pieces from my personal collection remain missing. A hand-painted copy of the Badianos Codex, for example, which he will find most useless as I know for a fact he does not read Nahuatl. There are also several Siddha palm-leaf text I should like on hand if I am going to be revisiting the lycanthropy problem."

 

Potter's head snapped up, his eyes guarded. "How did you-"

 

"How did I find," Snape waved his quill at the pile of books and manuscripts before him on the table, "my own experimental notes and theoretical précis, so carefully hidden in the topmost desk drawer? They were horribly disordered, by the way. It was easily apparent that you had at least attempted to read them, what with all the smudges and fingerprints."

 

Potter stared at him, gob-smacked.

 

"Oh come now, Potter. You wouldn't have wanted me for the job if I weren't of a proper deductive mind. I imagine that cur  told you of the experiments I'd done with-"

 

"Don't," Potter growled, suddenly animate, "Ever, ever speak of Remus Lupin like that in my presence." He shed his customary slouch to loom aggressively over Snape's chair, somehow taller than he had any right to be. Snape had a very strange moment, staring up at him, in which he abruptly remembered that this thin, drawn young man had utterly destroyed the Dark Lord. Snape swallowed. Focused. Pulled himself out of it.

 

"Shall I refer to him as Subject A, then?" Snape said, as pleasantly as he could manage. Potter scowled, but he stepped back a bit and ceased to look quite so dangerous. He didn't respond in words to the taunt - just stared at Snape. Snape, of course, returned the favor. Potter no longer seemed uneasy under his regard.

 

Now that he was looking - really looking - at Potter, he noticed what he hadn't before. The boy's clothes were inexpensive and not particularly well kept - not surprising, considering how little care he'd taken with his school uniforms. The glasses he wore were the same as ever, or so similar as to make no difference, but the face behind them was thinner and far rougher than Snape remembered. When Snape had seen him last, Potter would have been unable to grow a proper mustache. It was strange to see dark shadow at his jaw so early in the day.

 

If Snape was right about the length of his imprisonment, Potter would be in his early twenties. Perhaps he was wrong, for Potter looked a good deal older, particularly about the eyes. Then again, war had a way of aging people - particularly the young.

 

Potter was not wearing a wedding band. Hadn't married the Weasley chit, then, or at least hadn't yet. Good for Potter. Unless, of course, she'd turned him down, in which case Snape hoped it had been painful, public, and humiliating.

 

"The work you did," Potter finally said. His voice was calmer now. "With Remus."

 

"-Never went much of anywhere," Snape interrupted, "and ended quite abruptly."

 

"There you're wrong," Potter said, "On both counts. He was affected by your potions for more than a year after you… well, after the experiment stopped."

 

Snape sat up straighter in his chair. "Affected how?"

 

"He kept his mind, at least partly. Not quite like with the wolfsbane, but better than nothing. Enough to make some human decisions during the full moon, all the way up to the end of the war."

 

Snape made an abortive move to stand. He caught himself, and sat, and then changed his mind and stood anyway. He pushed past Potter into the library. "I gave Lupin a journal," he called through the door as he started digging through the desk drawers in case he'd missed it. "He probably still has it, if he hasn't thrown it out. It wasn't here with my notes." It hadn't been on the shelves, either. Unless he'd missed it. He began to examine them, just in case.

 

"Oh, he didn't chuck it, Potter said from the doorway. When Snape hurried past in his search, he held up a thin leather book. Snape stopped in his tracks and stared at it.

 

"He kept on," Potter said. "Even after…what you did."

 

"That's not the book I gave him," Snape said. He wanted to slap himself for the stupid way he'd said it, but it was true. The journal he'd given Lupin had been a cheap clothbound thing.

 

"This is a copy," Potter said. "The other's at home. This one shows anything written in the other. Faster, that way. You can get a report as soon as it's written, any time of day." He tossed the book to Snape, who immediately opened it and started flipping through. There were more pages than the book strictly ought to have held. Each entry was dated. They went on for years.

 

"I'll need time to review this," Snape said.

 

"Of course," Potter said. "I'll see about these missing books of yours and be back at supper time in case you need anything else. What would you like?"

 

"What?" Snape asked, not looking up.

 

"To eat. There's plenty in the kitchen lunch and tea, but I'll bring supper when I come back."

 

"Good, good."

 

The last entry was apparently for the previous full moon. It began:

 

17 April, 2003

 

No wolfsbane. Snape will want me off it for the tests.

 

"No other potions, right," Snape mumbled. He was pleased Lupin had remembered. The detoxification period before testing could be reduced. Potter was speaking. Snape tuned him out and read on.

 

Don't remember much. Good thing, too. Wolf was angry, I think. Dislocated my shoulder, probably at moonrise. Could smell Teddy. Must remind him he isn't to play in the cellar.

 

"Who is Teddy?" Snape asked, interrupting whatever Potter was babbling about.

 

"His son," Potter said. He looked at Snape strangely. "With Tonks. I just said."

 

Snape remembered now. Bellatrix had bragged for weeks after killing her cousin. He'd forgotten about the child. "Is he a werewolf?"

 

"No, no. Metamorphomagus, actually, like his mum. Hasn't been making faces much, though. He's only little, but he knows something's not right. Can't imagine what it's like, watching the only family you've got just waste away. And there isn't much time. I know you can't rush something like this," Potter said. Snape noticed tears in his eyes and immediately focused his gaze on the journal. "The Malfoys have made a claim on him, already, and they're technically family. If I can't get custody…"

 

Lupin was dying. It wasn't a surprise, really. He'd lived with his curse for something like thirty to thirty-five years. Four hundred transformations, or more. That was probably a record. There was only so much even a wizard's body could take. The literature was full of accounts of werewolves just… breaking down. I looked like premature aging, from the outside, and more like a degenerative disease, toward the end. Joints gave way, the heart failed. Wolfsbane had probably prolonged Lupin's life by making the transformations easier. He was lucky to have survived long enough to father a child, let alone raise him to such an age.

 

Stopping the curse would stop the degeneration. It might, just possibly, save his life. Maybe. Probably not, at this late stage, if arrangements were already being made for his child.

 

Potter raising a child. There was a scary thought. Almost as bad as the Malfoys' getting their hands on it. "Would you even know what to do with a child?"  Snape asked.

 

"I've had plenty of practice, haven't I?" Potter said, sounding peeved at having his parenting skills called into question, which was a far step up from weepy. "I've done half his raising so far. Not that the Wizengamot sees it that way. Bloody conservative judges."

 

And the lack of a ring abruptly made sense. Snape's mouth drew up in distaste. Potter and Lupin. Well, well, well.  "Playing happy family," he sneered."

 

"Not playing," Potter said. "We've been a happy family, if a little unconventional. Until this damned wasting came on, and the healers all say there's nothing to be done. This is sort of a shot in the dark, but I had to try."

 

Snape pondered this. He let the pages of the journal fan back as it shut, and felt the brush of cool, dusty air on his face. "You're paying for all of this out of pocket," he finally said. Potter just regarded him levelly. "You certainly didn't design that lab by yourself."

 

Now Potter grinned. "I guess that means I did a good job, then?"

 

Snape scowled and sat down at the desk. He opened the journal to the first entry and stared at it.

 

"Well," Potter said after being ignored for nearly a whole minute. "Supper?"

 

"Light fare," Snape said without looking up. "Soup of some sort. And Potter," he added when the boy was nearly to the kitchen door, "no more apples." 


tbc

Comments

[moonypadlover.livejournal.com]

Heheh...That's a great quote.

"...no more apples. " LMAO

[(Anonymous)]

I just stumbled over this. It's great! I'm looking forward to your updates. Thanks for a great idea. I'd really like to see some Remus/Teddy interaction, there's some to come, right??? (And please, don't go all JKR, don't let Remus die!)
Nic

[iesika.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you like the story, so far. How did you stumble in, if you don't mind me asking?

I've got to warn you though, neither Remus nor Teddy is actually going to make an "on-screen" appearance in the story.

Also, I'm sneaky and mean (as an author, that is), and absolutely nothing in this story is as it appears to be, right now.

[(Anonymous)]

starryskies advertised her(?) rec list on Accio Remus/Sirius and had '4 Things' on it. I liked it much, checked out your other writing an voilá ...
Don't scare me - no Remus and nothing as it seems, dear god!
Nic