Work Text:
"What do I care how 'e looks? I am good-looking
enough for both of us, I theenk!
All these scars show is zat my
husband is brave!"
--Fleur Delacour, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, p. 581.
In the rose gold of dawn, Fleur could be certain that she was enough.
The sunlight would brush aside the draperies in their bedroom and trace her husband's scarred profile, waking him. Bill would stretch, blink sleepily, then meet her gaze across the pillow. She would smile, he would reach for her, tangle his fingers in her hair and then...she would be certain. For the next hour or two.
In the glare of the noonday sun, Fleur's doubts would vanish again when they met in one of the cafés near Gringotts.
She would clasp his hand in hers or, daringly, run her toes up his trouser leg under the cover of the table cloth. She would chatter on about the fascinating curse she was researching or hexes that she'd dodged that very morning whilst dismantling yet another Dark artefact retrieved from Voldemort's cache. He would laugh, share his own tales of curse-breaking or bureaucratic woe, and it would be enough...enough to distract him, to distract them both, from the stares and the whispers and the sly innuendo; from the aftermath of the war. There would be enough warmth and good humour in his voice to call to mind the dashing young man she'd fallen for.
Weekends and holidays were best, of course. They would miss breakfast, roll out of bed late, well-satisfied and well-mussed, then share a more private luncheon in the garden of their cottage in Windrush. Just the two of them. No ill-mannered children to point and gasp while their parents did so more discreetly. No friends or former lovers to so-carefully ignore the ruin of his face while they made small talk. None of his insensitive relatives to joke about hiding the family silver or to make witty allusions to the late Alastor Moody.
Yes, in those cherished moments Fleur was certain that she was enough.
But always--workday, weekend, or holiday--as the day slid towards evening, her doubts would return. Once they were safely at home, shadows would creep across Bill's torn smile; his eyes would darken. And nightfall would bring with it more of the icy black silence that had seeped, almost unnoticed, into the gaps between her lover's now-rare smiles.
"Bill," she would say as they walked in the garden after dinner. "Is something bothering you? Are you well?"
After a pause, he would lie: "Never been better," then deftly turn the conversation to other matters. His mother's latest spat with the Twins, his sister's latest husband, his most recent assignment at work...anything at all but the winter-dark silence that was stealing him away from her one bit at a time.
Then, too, even if she managed to pretend in those moments that her willingness to do anything, to be anything for her lover was enough, the waxing moon would reveal the truth of the matter, beyond a shadow of a doubt.
As it had, yet again, tonight.
*
The full moon had set and, finally, her husband was asleep.
Carefully, Fleur eased herself from beneath his arm and crept to the edge of the bed. Behind her, Bill stirred. She froze, heart pounding, until he settled again.
Winter was approaching; the room was cold, despite the fire smouldering in the grate. But Fleur didn't pause to don a robe over her torn gown. Instead, she snatched up her wand and hurried, on silent feet, to the bathroom down the hall. There, she stood, in the near-darkness behind the closed and warded door, and willed herself to stop shaking. She carefully avoided catching sight of her reflection in the small mirror above the sink--the only mirror Bill allowed in their home, these days.
The pain was not so bad tonight. No sprained joints, at least, though the ache in her ribs and throat--and between her legs--hinted at hurts unseen. Surely it was no worse than having triggered some dormant, rather vigorous curse while categorizing an artefact. She was part-Veela, after all! Far stronger than her slight build might imply, certainly a match for a man with the strength and cunning of the wolf to draw upon.
Regardless, neither her voice nor her hands were steady as she tapped the wizard light in the sconce and then turned her attention to the most pressing of the injuries. Though her gown was beyond repair, if she hurried, she could fetch another from her armoire and be healed, dressed, and safely in bed again before Bill noticed she was gone. She would even have time to cast a cleaning spell over the bed linens.
But soon after she had begun, the lock clicked behind her and the bathroom door opened.
Damned curse-breaker training!
Fleur raised her head slowly. Bill's reflection was haggard, defeated.
"You weren't going to tell me, were you?"
Fleur said nothing.
"But why? Why, in Merlin's name, did you stay? You know what can happen--what did happen!"
"It looks worse than it is."
Bill clutched the doorframe so hard that it splintered. The wolf was still with him. "Damn it, Fleur, I hurt you!"
She took a deep breath and turned to face him. "Yes, you did," she said evenly. "And I say, it is nothing, Bill. Do you understand? Nothing."
"Nothing? How can you possibly say that, when I...when I can see what I've done." His voice broke and he swiped furiously at the tears in the corner of his eyes.
"I say it because it is true, you foolish man!" She grasped his arms and gave him a shake. "Do you believe dat dere is anything I would not do for you? A scrape or two and a few bruises, it is nothing!"
"It's everything," he shouted in return. "It's everything to me. Don't you understand?" He tried to turn away but she tightened her grip. "I not only look like a monster, but I am a monster. Only a beast would do--" he gestured helplessly, "--would do this to the woman he loves!"
"No, Bill, no. You are not a monster," she insisted. "You 'ave a bit of the wolf in you is all, a few days of the month. Pfft! And I am no 'ot 'ouse flower, you know." She continued more calmly. "I stayed because I am strong enough to bear whatever is necessary. Whatever it is that you need."
"A bit of the wolf," he echoed bitterly. "The face of a gargoyle and the temperament of a rabid crup is more like it. The worst of all possible worlds." Bill pulled away from her, shivering, and wrapped his arms around himself. He refused to meet her eyes. "Whatever it is that I need--whatever sick thing it is that the wolf needs--you shouldn't have to put up with it, Fleur. You shouldn't have stayed. You should have run as fast as you could right from the start."
O mon coeur, she thought in despair, Please, we cannot return to where we started!
Fleur wanted to throw up her hands, instead, she said, "It is not sick, and you do not think very much of me, William Weasley, if you believe that I love you less as you are now."
"You don't think enough of yourself, Fleur," Bill all but whispered. He stepped out of the small circle of light cast by the wizard light and huddled in the shadows in the hallway. "You shouldn't be shackled to the likes of me. You deserve better. You deserve--"
"I deserve to be with the man I love. You are that man!"
But Bill would hear none of it. He jerked away from her outstretched hand and slid down the wall in a heap.
Fleur fought back tears. She pulled the tatters of her gown around herself and knelt beside him. Though it was painful to admit, she was no longer enough.
In the early days, the wolf had not been so much with him. Around the full moon, Bill would become restless and irritable; the Wolfsbane provided little relief. Their lovemaking would be rougher--more passionate, she'd told herself. After all, Bill had always been an enthusiastic lover and had enjoyed games--in and out of bed. But in the years following Voldemort's defeat, the wolf in him fought harder for dominion during each encounter. It demanded greater acts of submission from its...mate. Bill began alternately to lock himself in the garden shed or to banish her from the bedroom several nights of the month. Edicts that she promptly ignored upon discovering the gruesome lengths that the wolf would go to satisfy its needs.
"Bill, listen to me," she said urgently. "We will get through this. Together we are strong."
He husband said nothing though his shoulders shook and in the dimness she could see the tracks of tears on his less-scarred cheek.
"Please, mon coeur, let me help you."
"No, no, no." Bill was shaking his head slowly. "This is the last time." His voice grew hoarse. "You need to leave, Fleur. Go somewhere safe. Find someone better. Someone who will love you, take care of you properly."
Bon dieu, but the man was impossible! Fleur fought the urge to shake him senseless. "You are that man, Bill," she said, wrapping her arms around him, somewhat heartened when he didn't pull away. "No one could love me better and no one ever will. You are stuck with me to the very end, mon coeur."
"Damned stubborn Veela." Bill's laugh sounded far too much like a sob.
She smiled. "Yes, I am stubborn."
"And damned, too," he sighed. "To love a monst--"
"Enough!" She covered his lips with her fingers. "No more of that talk. I say we will get through this and we shall." Fleur took a deep breath. She knew what she needed to do. Loathe though she was to admit it, she'd suspected that it would come to this the first time that the wolf had seized him and placed its paw on her throat; the wolf had not been in the least charmed by her Veela heritage.
"You cannot continue this way, Bill. Hating yourself, locking yourself away, allowing the wolf to tear you--to tear us--apart. You are a brave man, a hero of the war! You must hold your head high. You must take what you need, and--" she gathered her nerve, "--you must let the wolf take what it needs as well."
Bill was silent for a long time. When he spoke again, his voice was thick with emotion. "You make it all sound so simple, Fleur, but what you see isn't what everyone else sees." He raised his head and looked at her, his eyes glittering in the near-darkness. "There are laws against it, you know," he said with a humourless little laugh. "And even if there weren't, who but the most desperate Knockturn Alley whore would have me as I am now?"
Fleur set her jaw. Greyback and his pack had done their job well during the war: the Umbridge laws had yet to be fully repealed. Fortunately for Bill, the goblins were a law unto themselves; they refused to lose such a talented employee to Wizarding prejudice. Even so, life did not always run smoothly. Though he didn't undergo a change during the full moon, he was still tattooed and registered by the Ministry, and bound by their obscene werewolf laws.
France was far more civilized!
But Molly had taken the deaths of her husband and two of her younger sons quite hard. Whatever her mother-in-law might think, Fleur wasn't heartless enough to insist that they leave the country for more welcoming locales, certainly not while Molly was still in mourning.
Then, too, there were the antiquated laws governing how, when, and with whom British wizards and witches might have sex. Acts that were common-place in France--either for hire or between lovers--were engaged in furtively in Britain. Snickered about, cloaked in mystery. Hypocrisy.
Absurd!
Regardless, she knew very well who might be willing to have her Bill now in the precise manner the wolf required. Someone who was intelligent, discreet, and entirely trustworthy, no matter what the ignorant rabble might believe. A wizard who had mastered both the Wolfsbane and le jeu de puissance. A lonely man, now living in exile, who had loved her husband once upon a time. A man whom her husband still cared for, no matter how much he protested to the contrary.
"There is someone, Bill," Fleur said quietly, stroking his hair. "Someone who we both know will help."
"Who?" he asked hoarsely.
She took a deep breath. "You know."
Bill went completely still in her arms. "You can't mean--"
"I do mean it, yes." And she did. Whatever love demanded she was willing to give, no matter how difficult the giving. A Veela did not share, but a desperate woman, one who loved her husband well, most certainly would.
"It was a long time ago, Fleur," Bill said uncertainly, "and we didn't part on the best of terms. What makes you think that he will help me now, even if we knew where he is?"
Fleur ignored the quiver in his voice; she would be strong enough for both of them now. You spoke for him. That, if for no other reason, is why he will help, she thought to herself. Aloud, she said, "Do not worry, mon coeur. I will find him, no matter the hardship. I will find him and he will help us. That I promise to you."
In medieval days, he would have been dubbed the Wise and Terrible Wizard Atop the Hill, a fearsome eccentric living in a stronghold looming over a pastoral village.
His castle rooms would have been filled with creaky leather grimoires, carefully rolled parchments, and ancient spell books bound in iron and blood. The attics would have been packed with gleaming instruments and treasured knick-knacks from his travels abroad. The carefully warded dungeon rooms would have been stocked with jars of rare ingredients, and those plucked from his own extensive gardens, all bound for use in one of his many bubbling cauldrons. He would have kept a bevy of magical creatures on the grounds--a few unicorns and hippogryffs, perhaps a dragon chained the courtyard--the better to collect fresh spell components, of course...and add to his mystique.
Every year the villagers would have sent him tribute. Silver, grain, milk and cheese, meat, wine, and perhaps a comely young maid in payment for his skills: charming the crops to grow, ensuring favourable weather, healing the sick, smiting various and sundry enemies, and making sure that the villagers' babes were born hale and hearty.
In these modern days, however, Severus Snape was known to his Muggle neighbours simply as That Crazy Bugger Down the Street. In wizarding circles, he was known alternately as That Bloody Bastard Snape, or That Lucky Bastard Snape, depending upon the speaker.
None of the epithets especially bothered him; he'd had worse spat at him, after all. No few from the late owner of this very house. And if his existence was far less luxurious than that of the Wise and Terrible Wizard, if the tribute arrived via owl or raven post in the dead of night, if said tribute had never once included a comely young...man, if he tended to do his business in wizarding Britain by proxy rather than risk an angry mob, it was still a damn sight better than the accommodations at Azkaban--even sans Dementors.
And more importantly, here at Spinner's End, he was his own man. Severus Snape was quit of masters, benign, malevolent, or otherwise.
Dumbledore was dead. Severus had made certain of that: he'd been successfully casting the Killing Curse since he was an angry youth of fifteen. That Albus Dumbledore had laid the task upon him with the irrevocability of a geis; that Severus had feared, hated, then come to love the canny old wizard over the years; that Albus could have stayed Severus's wand--thereby consigning him to a hideous death by a shattered Unbreakable Vow--with a single word; none of any of that mattered one whit.
Because Severus Snape could be counted upon to always do what needed doing for those whom he loved. If nothing else, the manner of his father's demise was ample proof of that.
"I want a good death, Severus, a serviceable death. That is my only desire," Albus had told him.
"A 'good death', ha! There is no such thing," Severus muttered, but Albus was facing away, gazing out the window at the children playing amongst the fallen autumn leaves on the grounds. Or, more likely, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever grand bloody adventure he was so damned certain lay beyond death's veil.
"Few men can choose the time, place, and manner of their passing." Albus turned away from the window. His blue eyes were serious, nary a twinkle in sight. "Few men can use their deaths to avert so much suffering, to serve so very many and significant ends."
"And you think that you can, Albus? That with one spell you can jiggle this damnable chessboard of yours 'just so' that in a few simple moves the blasted Boy Who Lived can declare checkmate? And you accuse Riddle of arrogance!"
Albus stepped close to him and clasped Severus's shoulders tightly. "The proper spell, cast by the proper wizard, at the proper moment in time. That is not hubris, Severus, it is simple strategy."
"Ah yes, of course. The true chess master has a deep sense of his board, its patterns, the temperaments of its pieces. The true master sees all moves in an instant. From the very opening gambit he knows whether the game has been won or lost."
Albus smiled and patted Severus on the shoulder. "Don't be bitter, my friend. Life, fate, and choice are the masters here. You and I, we merely share the same board--the Bishop and the King. With one bold move, you can cheat certain death, spare young Draco the burden of murder, and then roam the board at will, on my behalf. I have no moves left to make, Severus. My fate is sealed." He glanced down at his blackened, withered hand. "And sooner rather than later, unless I miss my guess."
"You ask too much, Albus," he replied, furious--with Dumbledore, and more importantly, by the visible evidence and price of his failure. What good were decades spent immersed in the Dark Arts if his knowledge could not save the life of one infuriating, if much beloved, manipulative old prick?
"Yes, Severus, I always do." Albus smiled. "And you always rise to the occasion. Honour my final request, my friend. Make this last, decisive move on my behalf."
"Not this time, old man," Severus snapped. "Not a chance in hell. I have been many things in my life, but will not be the agent of your death. Choose another."
Albus had said nothing at the time, but that damned twinkle of his was back.
Unsurprisingly, their argument had continued, loudly at times, for several months.
But Severus knew--as did Minerva--that their debates about choice, about death, destiny, and atonement, were but the closing movements of a lengthy, yet familiar ritual: the formal declaration of fealty.
"You are simply appalling at following orders, Severus," Minerva observed one evening after yet another 'vigorous discussion' in Dumbledore's office. "Why, after all these years as Dumbledore's man, must you always protest so much?" With a wave of her wand she righted the over-turned chairs and reconstituted a table from its pile of still-smoking ash. She sighed once then took aim at the fluffy white Pekingese that crouched atop the highest bookshelf, yapping its fool head off. "I do believe that, were the old ways still in effect, you would have made a very poor vassal. Dead within a month, I'd say, for disloyalty."
"Dissent does not imply disloyalty," Severus bit out stiffly. "Besides, Albus," Severus spared an upward glare for his now-furry and growling employer, "makes for an exceptionally piss-poor liege lord." Then he stalked from the room, slamming the door on its remaining brass hinge.
But in the end, Severus had bent his knee, reaffirmed his vows, and Albus Dumbledore had got his serviceable, damnably multivalent death. With the required pomp and theatrics, of course, atop that blasted tower with plenty of the appropriate witnesses on hand to advance his Bishop to the next, most favourable square.
"Courtesy of yours truly," Severus grumbled to himself, giving the potion in his cauldron a particularly vigorous stir. The liquid complained with a loud burp then subsided. "What's one death more to an already irredeemable Death Eater?" Though it'd been quite a few more than one death, given that the convenient 'disappearances' of Greyback and the other three Death Eaters had been none too easy to arrange under the Dark Lord's very nose.
From his perch in the corner, Fawkes trilled a sharp, dissenting opinion on the matter.
"Shut up, you dratted bird." Neither the steady supply of exotic ingredient for his more expensive potions, nor the companionship, nor the bird's compassionate, beady black stare were adequate substitutes for Albus's infuriating twinkle.
Fawkes subsided with a smug rustle and Severus continued working on his latest commission in silence.
Ten minutes later, a loud chime alerted him to an unauthorized use of his Floo.
Severus glanced at Fawkes; the bird had tucked his head beneath one wing and appeared to be asleep. The potion was at a delicate stage. He decided that his visitor could wait.
*
With the potion bottled, labelled, and packed for transport, hunger eventually drove Severus up from his workshop in the basement. Fawkes accompanied him, no doubt also wanting to be fed. One of the many reasons why he'd never before acquired a familiar. Damned greedy beggars!
Severus fixed himself a small meal, tossed the bird its portion, then decided to see to his erstwhile guest before dinner. His digestion wouldn't be improved by delaying the confrontation.
Wand at the ready, he assumed an offensive posture, and unlatched the Floo.
Rather than the bomb, the slavering monster, or the assassin he expected, a sooty, long-limbed, long haired, and vaguely familiar woman tumbled out.
"Merlin's hairy balls!"
"Indeed not," the woman said, between fits of coughing. "I am Fleur Delacour Weasley, Monsieur Snape, and I have come to ask for your help."
Severus scowled, recognizing the witch once she'd spelled away the worst of the soot. Blasted Minerva! He'd given her his Floo address for emergencies only. The so-called urgent needs of the current spouses of former...liaisons did not qualify.
"Ah, Mrs. Weasley," he said politely, then took her by the arm and dragged her across the tiny sitting room. "The front door is this way. Now, get out."
"Not until you 'ave 'eard what I 'ave come to say!"
"As if I'd care." A flick of his wand and the door opened obediently. He gave her a none-too-gentle shove. The blue scarf she'd been wearing fluttered to the floor. Severus trod on it deliberately. "Off you go."
"No!" She stumbled over the threshold then turned, mid-stride, and clung to his door frame like a tick on the backside of a fat, glossy crup. "I need your 'elp. William needs your 'elp."
Only the fact that she'd wedged her dainty shoe in the doorway gave him pause. Without an immediate buyer or the appropriate potion simmering, he was professionally loath to chop off both her hand and her foot. A waste of good, fresh Veela bits, that. "What makes you think I care?"
She tossed her head; the waxing moonlight gleamed on her silvery-blonde hair. "And I will not leave. I will stay 'ere, all night. I will shout at the top of my lungs until I 'ave made you listen to what I must say!"
Severus pinched the bridge of his nose. Already, here and there, lights in neighbours' houses had been turned on. Soon, the more nosy of the lot--not to mention the usual assortment of Ministry spies--would be peeking through the curtains.
"Do you truly wish to conduct our business on the doorstep, Monsieur Snape?" she challenged with an upward tilt of her chin.
Without another word, he opened the door and snatched her back inside.
Damned impossible witches!
He'd cast a few silencing charms, let her rant on for a while, then jam her delicate, lovely, very married, exceedingly Weasley arse back up the Floo as quickly as humanly possible.
If ever a man had been birthed who was entirely immune to Veela magic, over whom even a full Veela would throw up her hands, Severus Snape was that man.
He was tall and slender, but Fleur suspected a wiry build beneath those black, potion-stained robes. At least he wasn't bald, though his dark hair was long, stringy, and unkempt. He had piercing, incredibly dark eyes, sallow, unhealthy-looking skin, and an exceedingly hawkish mien. Or perhaps a battle-scarred raven was a more apt comparison. Of acceptable appearance had he bothered to take any time with it. Which, it was quite clear, he never had.
But, as Fleur well knew, good looks--or the lack of them--were only the smallest portion of likeability, attraction, and charisma. It was the 'everything else' that Snape had foregone, either out of ignorance or, most likely, to spite her deliberately.
He offered her neither food nor drink, despite his own full plate and the tea kettle set to warming on the stove. Albus Dumbledore's phoenix, Fawkes, greeted her with a trill when Snape brusquely ushered her into the tidy, if somewhat shabby kitchen. For a moment, she thought he might leave his perch atop the cold box and fly to greet her. Then Snape actually growled at him. The bird flapped his wings a bit, ruffled his feathers, and stayed put.
"So." Snape pushed aside an impressive stack of potions journals, set down his plate, and took his seat. "Talk. Then get the hell out."
It was to be that way, then. Not that she'd expected much else given his reputation and their few, brief, interactions after the war. Fleur took a deep breath and thought of her husband, Bill, as he had been before. Happy, charming. Always laughing. Surprisingly gentle for such a wild, fiery boy...
"Well?" Snape demanded, his mouth still full of shepherd's pie. How...charming. "You and your," his lip curled, "husband wanted my help. Out with it!"
She pulled out one of the chairs with a loud screech, shook out her robes, then sat down and crossed her legs. She didn't bother to lean forward to best display her décolletage; anything more than a flash of ankle was wasted on such a man. "Since he was attacked by Fenrir Greyback, Bill has taken the Wolfsbane."
"Yes, yes. I know." Snape waved his fork. "I am one of three British potions masters contracted to provide the Society for the Promotion of Werewolf Welfare with the potion every month. Your husband is on the list of recipients. Your point?"
"Then you are aware that for Bill, the potion does not fully suppress all aspects of the change."
"I was not aware, no." Nor did he appear to care, the snide, petty bastard. Perhaps he deserved his lonely exile in this lifeless, crumbling ruin of a Muggle house! "I do not have access to his records," Snape continued. "Another brewer supplies his potion. For me to do so personally," he smiled unpleasantly, "would be a breach of professional ethics."
Fleur held her hot temper with effort. The goal was everything, Bill was all. A Delacour always, always got what she wanted. "Consider yourself informed, then, Monsieur Snape. We have been told that Bill's case is unique, his condition unstable. That the Wolfsbane works best on a fully infected lycanthrope."
Snape pushed aside his empty plate. Fawkes fluttered on his perch, at the corner of her vision. "Again, Mrs. Weasley, get to the point. Your Veela heritage provides you immunity to the curse. If you have a complaint, then take it up with Granger-Krum. No doubt she would move heaven and earth to provide your dear one," that sneer again, "with something of higher quality. Potter's pockets are certainly deep enough if coin is a problem. He has a well-known fondness for Weasleys."
Fleur did not take the bait. "Although he does not physically change into the wolf during full of the moon, his personality, it is still much affected."
"So sedate him."
Whatever had her Bill seen in this man? "We have tried that."
He frowned. "And?"
At least he was listening now. Perhaps Minerva had been right: present Snape with an intellectual puzzle and he would be intrigued, despite himself. "And the experts have found no sedative that the wolf cannot defeat that is not also fatal to a man."
Snape pushed back his chair and stood. "So lock him in a shed and have done with it. You're a curse breaker. Ward the damned thing with a password and a blood charm." Apparently, the promise of an intriguing problem to solve was not nearly enough.
Fleur stood as well and faced him across the table. Logic had failed, perhaps raw emotion would suffice. "Could you lock away your loved one, Monsieur Snape, three nights of the month, and listen while 'e tears at the flesh on 'is own limbs? Could you--"
For one moment, Snape's face went stark with grief, then his eyes narrowed and two spots of colour appeared over his cheekbones. "Do not attempt to presume what I would, or would not, do for those whom I love, Mrs. Weasley!" He slammed his fist on the table. The plate and fork rattled; Fawkes startled from his perch. "I could do much more than that. I have done more!"
"Ah, so you do have a heart then. I had wondered," she said with a curl of her lip.
Fawkes soared across the room and settled on Snape's shoulder, crooning softly. The furious wizard ignored him. "Get out of my house, you vile, bloody--"
"But I have not said what I came to say, Monsieur Snape." Fleur drew her wand with a flourish. "Perhaps I shall now dismantle those silencing spells of yours and scream."
In a movement too fast to see, Snape drew his own wand. Terror seized Fleur in its teeth: she had miscalculated. The hatred in his eyes, the loathing and murderous intent...mon dieu! This man was a Death Eater, a cold-blooded killer. This man had killed Albus Dumbledore!
But for some reason, he did not hex her, though the tip of his wand trembled and he looked sorely tempted. "Enough half-truths and coyness, Fleur Delacour Weasley," he hissed, as if her name were the foulest curse he could imagine. "What the hell do you and your miserable excuse for a husband want from me?"
Fleur raised her head and managed to firm her jaw. Time to fight for her Bill, to do what was needed to save their love, to thaw the winter ice that still had him in its grip. "Maybe you could lock your love away, Severus Snape," she said quietly. "Maybe you could stand outside his cage and listen to his howls, his screams. Maybe you could drag him out again the next day. Blood on his teeth. Long spikes of wood from the door shoved through his hand." Her voice rose, thin and cracked. "But I am not you, Severus. I do not have your courage. I cannot do it!"
"Then get a divorce, you simpering cow."
"Bill is a good curse-breaker and we are married, blood-bound. Whatever ward I set, he can break."
"Have Potter to see to it, he's got power enough to spare. Assuming you can pry him away from the bottle long enough."
"And when he gets free, he...roams the property. He cannot infect anyone of course, but still, people are not safe from him."
Snape gave no quarter. "You have a home in the countryside. Surely you have boundary wards in place."
Fleur fought nausea, but forced the words out anyway, in a hoarse whisper. "People are not safe, and neither are the...the animals."
He went completely still. "Explain yourself."
But Fleur could not; the words simply would not come.
Snape rounded the table and took her chin in his hand. Fawkes took flight. Though Fleur was shaking, she met his pitiless black gaze. Logic and emotion had failed, the truth was all she had left. She did not flinch when he touched his wand to her temple and said, "Legilimens!"
*
When he finally thrust her away, her head ached and her face was wet with tears. Her mind still reeled with images of them, together, in bed, of Bill atop her, his hand--the wolf's paw--on her throat. "So you see, Severus Snape," she said shakily, gripping the edge of the table with white-knuckled hands, "you see what Fleur Delacour Weasley is willing to do for her love."
"Yes, yes. I suppose that I do," he said, lowering his wand and looking away briefly. His voice was surprising in its gentleness. "Regardless, I do not understand what you want from me."
Fawkes landed on the table and Fleur stroked his bright feathers, needing to occupy her trembling hands. "You are the best potions master in Britain," she began. "If you will look into the problem, maybe you, above others, can find a way to--"
"To suppress the wolf's 'inappropriate needs'?" Snape broke in, shaking his head. "Consider this, Fleur." She thrilled at his use of her name. Maybe, just maybe... "The Wolfsbane potion puts the curse in temporary abeyance," he continued. "It neutralizes the werewolf's moon-induced impulse to attack humans and transmit the curse. When taken throughout the month, as your husband does, it weakens the curse sufficiently so that the werewolf cannot infect humans via saliva or...other fluids."
"I have read the literature, yes."
"Then, it must have occurred to you, by inference, that these needs you speak of may not belong to the werewolf. That, in fact, it is almost certain that they do not."
"But, the other potions master told us, he said that Bill's state was unstable," she protested softly. "That due to how he was infected, the potion might not entirely counteract the wolf's impulses."
"I believe Slughorn to be mistaken," Snape said bluntly. Fleur blinked. So he knew who was supplying Bill's Wolfsbane. She felt a wholly irrational surge of hope. He might still truly care! "I have studied this potion in greater depth than he has. Given that Bi--your husband was not infected during the full moon, while Greyback was in a transformed state, the curse was partially thwarted. He will never undergo the physical change, even if he stops taking the potion. He is substantially less infectious, in any case. However," Snape held up one long, stained finger, "the potion should effectively counter-act the curse's weakened effects. Your husband's dosage clearly needs to be adjusted, the proportions of ingredients changed somewhat, but that would not account for some of the...deviant behaviour I witnessed in your memories."
"Then why," Fleur said, anguished. "Why is this happening to him?"
For a long time, Snape said nothing. When he spoke, his voice was too calm and measured, by far. "Though its method of transmission is simple, lycanthropy is a sophisticated and very powerful curse, fuelled as it is by the lunar cycle. It is not a good candidate for a generalized counter-curse, hence, the potion instead. Most magical and mundane elements of the Wolfsbane act to inhibit the behaviour of the werewolf, rather than to counter the curse outright, to avoid the risk of a severe magical backlash." He paused and Fleur's stomach tightened unpleasantly. "But what is often over-looked in the analysis of the potion, and what is, in my estimation, the true measure of its creator's brilliance, are the ingredients and spells woven into it that fully unfetter the man, while simultaneously inhibiting the beast."
"Unfetter the man," she echoed.
"Meaning that--"
"Yes," she said wearily, "I understand the word." Fleur closed her eyes. It was as she had feared.
"Contact Slughorn," Snape told her. "Tell him the truth this time. The entire truth. Have him make the adjustments. Perhaps add in a few overlay spells for lucidity and awareness. With the instincts of the werewolf properly suppressed, it may be that the man will be able to better control or...divert his other urges."
Fleur rubbed her eyes. "But you don't believe that, do you?"
Snape said nothing.
She took a deep breath. Having come so far, she could see no reason to turn back. "Potion or no, you can still help us, Severus. You have the skill to subdue the wolf. I know that you know the ways of le jeu de puissance."
He frowned, apparently working his way through the translation. Then he blanched white and immediately brandished his wand.
Eh bien! Fleur thought with triumph.
"Who told you this?" he demanded.
"My husband and I have no secrets between us," she said, tucking her hands in her sleeves, presenting a more defenceless target. "It is no crime or cause for shame in my land, Severus."
"This is not France, Mrs. Weasley," he said stiffly. Fleur sighed inwardly. Mrs. Weasley. She hoped they were not back where they'd started. She was coming to respect, if not to actually like this odd, prickly wizard. "This is wizarding Britain," he continued. "Such things are punishable by law."
"When have you ever cared about wizarding law, Severus, when love was at stake?"
He clenched his fists. "How dare you!"
"Oh, I dare," she yelled back. "Of course I dare. In my position, you would dare!"
"And what, then?" Snape sneered. "Am I just supposed to agree to whatever terms you might set in order to ensure your silence on the matter?"
She gasped, appalled. "This is not about blackmail!"
"No? Did you, instead, think to 'contract my services'? Did you expect me to whore myself out in order to spare you a few bruises and spare your dear, precious Bill a bit of guilt?"
"No, I--"
"Ah, so you expected that I would do you and your husband this favour, gratis, because...I may have once felt something for him? Out of gratitude for his testimony on my behalf? Because I am so desperate for companionship and beset with my own inappropriate desires that, of course, I would take any scraps I could get?"
"No, no. Many times no!" she said. "Listen, Severus. Once upon a time, you loved him."
"I never loved him!" Snape spat.
"You cared enough to think that you could share a life with him, no matter what British wizarding society might have thought or done." When he shook his head, she held up her hand. "Do not bother to protest, I know this for truth. Your hope was dashed, yes. But do not ask me to believe that you stopped caring. I know you did not. I can see that you did not. So. I have come to you to see how much caring you have left."
Snape turned away and walked to the farthest corner of the tiny kitchen. He wrapped his arms around himself. "I have nothing left. I cannot help you."
She followed him. "I love my husband, Severus Snape. I want to keep my family together. I want to have a child with this man, I want for us to grow old together. None of my dreams will happen unless this situation is put to rest. So I ask you to please help me. To help us, to help Bill." She placed her hand on his shoulder. "You and me, we are reasonable people, Severus. We can make an arrangement, yes?"
"Put to rest," he echoed oddly. The muscles beneath her hand jumped as he turned. He looked down at her, seemed to stare through her, and, for a moment, Fleur felt light-headed at the intensity of his gaze. "I will say this: you have courage, Fleur Delacour Weasley, to come here uninvited. To drag up my past, to throw it in my face. To lay your problems at my feet. I don't deny that," he said evenly. "The question is, rather, if your husband has one ten-thousandth of the courage that you possess."
"Of course, 'e does! 'E--"
Snape cut her off with a sharp gesture. "'Of course', you say. Ha. Where was his courage seven years ago, when he turned his back on me? When he decided that I was not enough, that I could never be enough for someone like him. Do you mean to imply that when Greyback destroyed his prized good looks that that act somehow granted him the courage that he'd lacked before?" The bitterness in his voice made her heart ache. "No, Fleur, I don't believe that he has. Otherwise, he would be here in your stead. He would be doing the asking. His love for you would be enough for him to do whatever was necessary for you to realize your dreams."
She clenched her fists. She would not cry, not again. No, she would not cry. "So you will not 'elp us, then?"
His lips tightened and he swallowed once, as if her were in pain. "You tell your husband, tell Bill Weasley to come see me, himself. Assuming that he ever finds the courage to do so. Then, we will see."
Fleur nodded slowly and blinked her vision clear. Though it terrified her, his request made sense.
On the way to the sitting room she paused where Fawkes perched on the table. She brushed her fingers over his bright feathers. He trilled once and rubbed his cheek against her hand. One phoenix tear dripped over her fingers.
Courage.
She walked through the sitting room to the front door. Snape did not accompany her; she already knew the way out.
*
Days later, she realized where she must have left her favourite scarf. She feared that it was gone for good.
That should have been an end to it.
The moon waned, waxed to full twice and still, no Bill Weasley.
In a perfect world, the nethermost hell would have frozen solid before Weasley, or his ever-so-charming spouse, crossed his threshold again.
But, long before he'd first watched his father beat his mother senseless in a drunken rage, Severus had known that he lived in a vastly less-than-perfect world.
*
On the eve of the waxing crescent, as he was finishing up his last batch of Fontis Cruor, for shipment to a local Vampire enclave later that night, the Floo chime sounded, signalling another unauthorized visitor.
He glanced at Fawkes. The phoenix was agitated. He shifted restlessly on his perch, head weaving from side to side, squawking with distress.
Severus went to him at once. "Wrong again, was I?" he said, smoothing the bird's rucked-up feathers. "Weasley grew a spine after all. Or a reasonable imitation of one, eh?"
Fawkes calmed under his touch and began to hum softly. Severus smiled despite his bleak mood. "Stop trying to cheer me up, you old feather duster. I know you're just as sceptical about this as I am."
When he'd issued his challenge to Fleur, Severus had never once expected Weasley to take him up on it. Once a coward, always a coward. Or so he had believed.
He was certainly far too cynical to think that Weasley's presence tonight had aught to do with the settling of old scores or hammering out a new accord, even had Severus hoped for either. Which he most certainly had not!
These days, Fleur Delacour was enough for William Weasley. Seven years ago, Severus, himself, had not been, and what of it? Time had passed, they'd both moved on. And oftimes, the muck that settled to the bottom of a cauldron was best left undisturbed.
By the time the Floo chimed again, Fawkes had settled and Severus felt that his heart was less likely to pound its way out of his chest. He sighed. "Come on, then." He offered his arm, allowing Fawkes to walk up to his shoulder. "There's no sense wasting more time on this absurd, unpleasant business than necessary."
*
Weasley was far less sanguine about his time spent trapped in the Floo than his wife had been.
Once he stopped coughing, he glared at Severus through a curtain of sooty red hair. "Still giving Mad Eye a run for his Galleons in the paranoia stakes, eh, Severus? I suppose that some things never change."
"I disagree," Severus sneered. "You now outstrip even Moody's much vaunted ability to frighten small children and their pets to death with a single glance. I'd say a few things have changed, wouldn't you?"
Weasley's scarred face paled first, then reddened. "Still as charming as ever, I see. No surprise there."
"In that case, there is no need to pretend politeness." Severus crossed the room, tipped Fawkes off to his perch behind the sofa, then poured himself a drink. He didn't bother with a second glass. "State your purpose, Weasley, then get out. I am a busy man. You have ten minutes, after which I will remove you forcibly."
"Is that so?" From the jut of Weasley's chin, he was spoiling for a fight.
Severus ignored the attitude and eyed him with professional interest; Slughorn clearly hadn't got the dosage right yet. Either the old man was slipping, or, more likely the Weasleys had yet to tell him the full truth. He loosened his wand in its sheath--just in case--then took a seat on his favourite, much-battered chair. He set the bottle on his coffee table and took a sip of whisky. "Nine minutes, forty-seven seconds."
Weasley glared around and sniffed with disdain, apparently finding the decor wanting. He consumed another twenty-three seconds slapping soot off his robes with sharp, jerky motions. Finally, he said, "My wife said that you wanted to see me."
"I very much doubt that that is precisely what she said."
"Fuck you, Snape."
"Thanks, but no. I don't bottom."
"Doubt you've had much chance either way, lately, have you?" The sneer twisted Weasley's scars into a horrid mask.
"At least I haven't had to resort to spousal assault. Or pillaging the local fauna, for that matter."
Weasley clenched his fists and took a deep breath, quite obviously holding on to his temper tooth and claw. "Fleur said that if I came to you, you would help us."
"No, Weasley. I told her that if, by some miracle, you found the bollocks to come talk to me in person, then, I would see."
"Oh, so it's like that." A muscle bunched in his jaw. "I come here, spill my guts. You sit there, smirk, then tell me to bugger off, no matter what I say. Is that it?"
Severus glanced at the clock above the mantelpiece. "Eight minutes, thirty-two seconds. And you still have yet to tell me why you are here, let alone give me a single reason why I should help you."
For a moment, Weasley said nothing, simply glared. Then he turned on his heel and paced back in forth in front of the fireplace for another thirty-odd seconds, lean and loose-limbed, winter cloak a-flap, muttering, "Goddamned bastard. Knew I shouldn't have come. Fucking waste of time."
Severus had to look away briefly and swallow past the lump in his throat. Though years had passed, the memory of that honeyed voice roughened by passion, that lithe body beneath his hands, the nights spent together in vigorous debate, in experimentation--magical and otherwise--of writhing together in bed afterwards, still nagged at him like a weather-ache.
Finally, Weasley paused. He appeared to have stalked out most of his belligerence. "Can I have some of that?" he said, pointing to the bottle.
Severus shrugged and conjured him a glass. After all, it wasn't the good stuff.
He knocked it back then poured himself another shot. Severus noticed that his hand was shaking. "Look," Weasley began. He took a seat on the much-patched sofa. "I know that the two of us have a history."
Understatement of the century.
"But, I was hoping that we could get past that, somehow. Fleur and I need your help. I need your help."
"Is that so?" Severus said dryly.
Weasley put his head in his hands. His long hair fell over and through his fingers. There were new white strands mixed in with the red. "Yes," he told the floor. "Yes, it is."
All at once, Severus felt exhausted. And monumentally annoyed. His day had begun before dawn. The closing sequences of the Fontis Cruor were fiendishly difficult, each having to be tailored to the individual recipients' physiology, and he still had to arrange the deliveries. "You always were a stubborn fool, William Weasley." He set his glass on the table with a firm clink. "If you would simply tell Slughorn the truth, he could help you. You needn't have choked down your considerable pride to come here at all."
There was a very long silence after that. Severus nearly counted down the minutes aloud again, but then, Weasley spoke.
"The Wolfsbane isn't entirely the problem," he said, as if each word were being pried loose with red-hot tongs.
"I see."
Weasley's head snapped up and he looked Severus full in the face. "Yes, you bastard. I'm sure that you do."
"Bastard? Technically, no, although I've been called it often enough." For the first time, Severus got a clear look at the damage that Greyback had wrought. He felt as if a fist had squeezed his heart; a once fine work of art, now desecrated by one man's malice. It made him wish that he could resurrect the werewolf just to kill him again. And again. "As for the other, I told your wife: work with Slughorn. He can be discreet, surprising though that might seem. It may be a lengthy and difficult task, but I am certain that he can either reformulate or fortify the potion so that it will suppress the least desirable expressions of your," he curled his lip, "unsatisfied human needs."
"You're a better potions master than Slughorn is--"
"And if you continue to lie to me, I will throw you out, regardless."
"Listen. Severus." Weasley looked down at his hands. "Even before Fleur and I got together, even before Greyback", his voice shook for a moment, then steadied. "Back, after you and me...there was something missing. In me. Now, with the influence of the wolf, it's just harder to control the...the wanting of it."
Severus wanted to throw up his hands. Or to hex the self-absorbed idiot before him. "Welcome to adulthood, Weasley. We can't always have what we want. Adults learn to control their urges." Otherwise, I would have long since poisoned you and misplaced the antidote.
That barb apparently struck home. "And you're a paragon of maturity, is that it? Well, good for you. Not all of us can just excise an entire part of who we are--"
"Oh, for Merlin's sake!" Severus had had enough. "Hie your sorry arse off to Knockturn Alley and hire it done! Better yet," he continued, "Apparate to France once a month. According to your dear wife, le jeu de puissance is all the rage there. I'm sure that, between the two of you, you can purchase the skills of someone suitable."
"Pay for--!" Weasley choked and turned away.
All at once, Severus thought he understood; he discovered that he wasn't the least bit sympathetic. "I see. William Weasley is still too good to pay for sex, is that it?" He stood and sneered down his nose at the other man. "With just one snap of his fingers, one single glance, every witch--or wizard--in the vicinity will fall at his feet. Oh, except that they don't anymore, do they?" He didn't hide his bitter triumph when Weasley's hands clenched around his knees. "No, rather, they stop talking or change the subject when you enter a room. They whisper, or worse yet, they laugh behind your back. They avoid your eyes. They--"
"Shut up. Just shut up!" Weasley shouted.
"Good thing that your pretty little wife isn't put off by your 'battle scars', isn't it?" he spat. "At least you can still scratch most of your itches. Unlike those of us who are either too...how did you put it?--ill-favoured or socially stunted...to ever attract a sexy, well-connected permanent partner. Unless, of course, we're willing to settle for a quick fuck up against a wall." Severus grinned toothily and moved in for the kill. "Or to be an unacknowledged, insignificant dalliance. Filler between those important, formal liaisons that make the society pages of the Prophet or Witch Weekly. Why, then," he sneered, "people like me are just enough for people like you, aren't we?"
Weasley surged up out of his seat, wand out. But before he'd taken more than a single step, Severus had drawn his own wand and jammed it under the point of Weasley's chin. "Oh, yes. Please do give me a reason."
Eyes closed, Weasley said, "You can't do any worse than what I've thought about doing myself."
Severus snorted with disgust. Oh yes: once a coward, always a coward. "If you're expecting pity--or a mercy killing, for that matter--then you've come to the wrong place."
"I'd--" Weasley broke off, licking his nearly non-existent lower lip.
He twisted the wand; Weasley went up on his toes. "You'd what, exactly?"
"I guess I'd forgotten that there was quite so much history between us," he finished with a humourless little laugh.
With a growl, Severus snatched the wand away and deliberately turned his back on the other wizard. It was either that, or hex the man dead. Sirius Black, Lucius Malfoy, and Bill Weasley. Was it his fate to always fall for uncommonly attractive, self-absorbed bastards?
"I am sorry, Severus."
Heartbeat pounding in his ears, Severus crossed the tiny room and went to Fawkes's perch. The warm feathers somehow soothed his inner chill. "Seven years ago that might have meant something," he said roughly.
"Seven years ago, I was too--" Weasley cleared his throat. "Back then, I didn't know how to say it. I didn't even realize it needed to be said."
"Ah, but now, with your new found maturity, you do." Severus didn't temper his scorn.
"Yes. No. I mean. Fuck."
For a while, neither man spoke. Only the snap-pop of the fire and their ragged breathing fractured the silence.
Then Weasley moved. His footsteps came closer. Severus kept watch on Fawkes. When the phoenix extended his neck for a scratch and hummed softly, Severus sheathed his wand.
Another long moment passed then a strong, familiar hand gripped his shoulder. "Severus. I truly am sorry. I don't know how better to say it. You know that I never had to work for it, any of it. Not really. First-born son, and all that. Whatever I wanted was just there." The hand squeezed briefly then fell away. "They say you don't know what you have until it's gone. Whether you throw it away or it's ripped from you, missing it is horrible either way."
Severus turned back to him, nearly overcome with...fury, longing, and red-black resentment. The man had stormed back into his life, had dredged up the muck at the bottom of the cauldron, given it a good stir and now, he thought to wallow in regret and trite, sentimental rot?
"Your self-pity disgusts me," he scathed. "Yes, you threw away what we had, what we might have become. You were a short-sighted, weak little fool, too afraid of what his friends and family would think--too afraid of his own bloody desires--to stand up for what he truly wanted. Not that anyone noticed, what with your wild rebellion--long hair and an earring, ha!" Bill flinched, but still managed to meet his eyes. "Yes, Greyback ripped apart your life. War does that. Ask anyone. Ask your own mother, for Merlin's sake, if you have any doubt! But we hold tight to the good things we have left. We adapt and we move on."
Severus took a deep breath, all too aware of his own hypocrisy. Adapt and move on, as if his meagre, empty existence could be considered to be either.
He managed to continue more quietly. "You have friends and family. You have an excellent reputation, a respected profession. You have a fine intellect, sought after magical skills. And, you have a wife who loves you," his breath caught for a moment, "who loves you enough to force her way into my home and practically beg me to dominate you." It was an effort to keep his voice even when he wanted to shout: You have all the things that I want for myself but cannot have and never will have, you damnable bastard!
"I don't deserve her," Bill said in a strange, small voice.
Severus snorted. "No, you don't. Thankfully, sometimes we do not get what we deserve."
Bill's lips twisted in a smile. "Good thing, that."
In the brief pause that followed, Severus allowed his eyes to trace the other man's features. What was once familiar terrain had been rendered nearly unrecognizable by scar tissue; curse scars rarely ever healed cleanly. A similarity they shared with those inflicted by unwise affection, Severus sourly thought to himself, only love-scars were rarely visible.
"Not much to look at anymore, am I?" Bill said, seeming uncomfortable, but resigned to the scrutiny.
"And my stunning good looks were what had you coming back to me, night after bloody night." Bill's mouth actually dropped open. "Oh, and yes, Dumbledore kept me around all those years because I was exceedingly decorative. Voldemort, too. A perfectly matched set, Lucius and I. Of course."
The other man blinked like a noon-struck owl.
Severus wanted to hit him.
In all this time, had he truly never grasped that what he thought he'd lost was nothing in comparison to what he still possessed? It would be far more than the idiot deserved were Severus to pitch him out the door, head first into the snow. Or jam him back up the Floo, naked and painted blue, perhaps.
Once he managed to close his mouth, Bill's expression became rueful. "I didn't realize I was quite that shallow. You never--Fleur never said."
"Yes, well. I suppose that we each tend to overlook the faults in those we care for...those we once cared for."
At that, Bill's eyes darkened. "I didn't go into it intending to hurt you, Severus."
Severus closed his eyes and exhaled on a long, shaky breath. "Yes, I know," he said. "Otherwise you would still be trapped in my Floo."
Oddly, the silence that stretched between them this time felt less strained. Perhaps a bit of the muck Bill's visit had stirred up had, at last, transmuted into something slightly less toxic.
"It just got so hard to fight them, you know?" Bill said, looking away towards the fire. "My parents, my friends. They were all convinced I was just--"
"--Experimenting," Severus finished tiredly. "With an older man of 'highly dubious character,' no less." What with chastity charms all the rage in certain circles, then, as now, parents (and teachers) turned a blind eye to what randy schoolboys got up to amongst themselves. Only, they were supposed to grow out of it once they left school. They were expected to get themselves good steady jobs, settle down with proper young witches, and spawn a horde of magically gifted children. The expectations applied most especially to first-born sons. "And running off--oh, pardon me, relocating--to Egypt took care of all that 'experimenting', I presume? Straightened you right out."
The corner of Bill's mouth twitched. "I guess it didn't entirely take, now did it? Seeing how here I am again, seven-odd years after the fact."
The clock chimed the hour. All at once, cathartic emotional alchemy notwithstanding, Severus wanted the entire evening to be over and done. He wanted the matter settled, for good or ill. But he didn't much relish the doing of it, the choosing either way.
"Yes, there is that, isn't there." He gave Fawkes a final scratch then walked back to his chair. "Seven years and here you are. But in the twenty minutes since you arrived--during which I have not thrown you out, I might add--you have yet to explain, 'Why here?' and 'Why me?'"
Bill's expression grew serious. He stepped around Severus's chair and sat opposite him atop the coffee table, their knees nearly brushing. "Tell me honestly, Severus," he said, clasping his hands. "Could you simply 'hire it done'?"
Caught off guard, Severus frowned. In truth, he wasn't certain that, even with an interested and willing partner, he would be eager to indulge those urges today.
Once upon a time, the intricacy of power games had held a visceral, sexual thrill. As a child and a young adult, he had been forced to grovel--publicly and privately--before those who had power: his father, his wealthy Pureblood classmates and their parents, his employers, Voldemort. He had witnessed power wantonly abused and benevolently exerted. He had craved it, had abused it when he acquired any measure of it himself, and he had struggled to learn to use it wisely, if only in an intimate context.
But now...he was no longer a teacher at the premier British Wizarding school; he had no unruly children to terrorize. His spite was responsible for Sirius Black's death, at least partially. He had slain Dumbledore. Potter had slain Voldemort. Lucius Malfoy had been Kissed. Draco was missing. And so many of his friends were dead, maimed, or in Azkaban.
A great deal had happened in the past seven years, and Severus had come to a new understanding about having, exercising, and living with the consequences of power.
"There are skills of mine that I will sell," he said, "that I have sold, but that one is not among them."
"Then maybe you understand." Bill leaned forward and their knees did touch this time. The contact made Severus's shins tingle. "As much as I want it, need it even, especially now, I can't just," he ran his fingers through his hair, "just give myself over to a stranger, Severus."
He nearly laughed aloud. Coaxing Bill to submit had always been a rather vigorous process. "As if you ever simply gave yourself to me."
"That's what I mean!" Bill exclaimed. "And now, I am, for all intents and purposes, a werewolf. How could I trust anyone--"
"--Not to turn you over to the authorities for a hefty reward for solicitation, snap a few photos for the Prophet, or to kill you outright. In a panic or on general principle. Yes, I understand." Though I rather wish I didn't, he appended mentally. "I take it that your wife is not strong enough, or does not have will enough to convince you to submit?"
Bill exhaled on a sigh. "She has tried but...she'd can't bring herself to..."
"To hex you with deadly intent. I see." Severus toyed with his glass. "And what little you've told Slughorn about the situation has been insufficient for him to tailor the Wolfsbane to address your human urges during the full of the moon."
Bill's silence and averted eyes were answer enough.
"Therefore," Severus snarled, allowing his annoyance to show, "given my unique set of skills, I am the most logical candidate for this...this task of yours." He felt old, empty, and used. "Assuming I am willing to disrupt my life, to overlook the unpleasant manner of our parting, to do this exceedingly large favour for an estranged ex-lover and his lovely wife. Of course."
"I told Fleur this wouldn't work." Bill was shaking his head. "I told her she shouldn't have come to you."
Severus stood and dashed his glass to the flagstones on the hearth. "Don't you dare dismiss Fleur Delacour's efforts on your behalf!" he roared. Fawkes trilled with surprise, then took flight, soaring about the room, dropping feathers hither and yon, until finally alighting on the back of Severus's chair with a disgruntled squawk.
Bill looked up at him, stunned. "But, you said you're not willing to--"
"You have no idea what I may or may not be willing to do because you have yet to actually ask me yourself!"
All at once, a strange expression settled over Bill's ravaged face. He seemed older in some indefinable way as he rose to his full height and looked Severus in the eye.
"I need help," he said clearly. "I can't bring myself to share everything with Slughorn. I know you say he can be discreet, but...if these details were to become public, it would kill my mother, it would ruin my life. Fleur's life. I can't take that chance. So I ask you: will you help me with the potion? And, if necessary, will you," his voice wavered, then steadied, "will you see to it that, on the three days of the full moon, the wolf--that I submit to you?"
The space between them was nigh to crackling with unvoiced emotion: hope, fear, and desire. Seven years had wrought some changes in his former lover as well. Somewhere along the way, Bill Weasley had grown a spine. Exactly how much of one still remained to be seen. "That greatly depends."
Bill's expression tightened. "On what?"
"Tell me Bill, how much do you love Fleur?"
He frowned and shook his head at the seeming non-sequitur. "What? What are you talking about?"
"Your wife Floo'd here and demanded that I hear her out. She made quite a convincing argument once she got to the point. She wants a life with you. She wants to have a family with you. She is willing to do whatever it takes to keep you with her. She loves you that much, William Weasley."
"I love her, too," Bill said. "Of course I--!"
Severus cut him off with a sharp gesture. "You claimed to love me too, once. Not enough, apparently." He felt a savage satisfaction when Bill paled at the reminder. "What will it be for Fleur, I wonder, since you went to the trouble of marrying her. Perhaps she'll get more than a note on the pillow: Sorry. Great opportunity came up. Good-bye, good luck, see you 'round."
"Severus--"
"No." He was quit of talking, of emoting, of trying to work through this mess. "If I do this for you, then what is in it for me, William Weasley? What are you willing to do for me if I agree?"
"What exactly do you want?" Bill asked, eyes narrowed.
"Oh, no, it doesn't work that way. You don't get to pick and choose, not this time." Severus swept round to the back of the chair and gave Fawkes a nudge. The phoenix hopped to his shoulder. "The question is quite simple and there is only one answer that I will accept."
"But I don't understand. What answer?"
"Ask your wife, she knows. When you discover it, when you can say it and mean it, then return and we will speak," Severus said. His shallow well of patience had run dry abruptly. "Now, I have given you far more than ten minutes. I have work to do. See yourself out."
He left Bill in his sitting room. The orange wash of the firelight softened his scars, transforming him, if only for a moment, into the young man to whom Severus had once lost his withered heart.
Anything, he willed Bill to answer, tell me that you will do anything.
But, though he strained his ears, Severus heard nothing over the rush of flames in the Floo.
Fleur sat in the darkened kitchen, untouched glass of wine in hand, facing away from the clock, with its innumerable hands and bizarre designations. She stared out into the snow dusted garden.
Waiting.
She'd shopped away her Saturday in Diagon Alley, to be certain she would miss Bill's departure. Or his lack of one. Then she'd filled the rest of the day with errands: tea with friends, neglected paperwork at the office, a stop at the Burrow to drop off some biscuits, chocolates, and a bright silk scarf for Molly--the woman dressed in such drab colors--before finally Apparating home. Only to find it empty. Whereupon she'd promptly flown into a rare domestic frenzy. Her mother-in-law would have approved.
She had reorganized her wardrobe, then tackled Bill's. She'd cleaned and de-cluttered both bedrooms, the bathroom, the study, sitting room, and the workshop. In a fit of desperation, she'd even scoured the kitchen--floor to ceiling--with Molly's much-touted household spells.
To no avail.
Watching Bill's hand on the kitchen clock shift from 'Confused' to 'Danger' to 'Imminent Peril' and back while she'd prepared dinner had only increased her anxiety.
Would Severus hear Bill out? Would he help? What would be the price of his help?
Variations on those questions had run round and round in her head all day, without answer. Perhaps, when Bill returned, she would know. Perhaps then, she could make plans. Perhaps...
And so, with every possible delaying tactic exhausted, she'd cast a stasis charm on dinner and had taken a seat at the table.
The orange of the afternoon faded to amethyst and then indigo.
Fleur waited.
*
The Floo in the sitting room flared and a body tumbled out. Bill's stealthy footsteps crossed the room. A whoosh and a snap suggested that he'd hung up his cloak. His steps came nearer the kitchen door. She tensed.
"Fleur, ma mie? Why are you sitting in the dark?"
"I was waiting for you."
"Incendio," he said, and the wizarding lights in the chandelier and the sconces on the walls burst into flame. "Well, I'm here." He kissed her cheek and then moved to the other side of the table.
She looked up at him and her stomach clenched. His face was so very pale and his eyes were shadowed and sad. "He was willing to speak to you, then," she said.
Bill nodded and gripped the back of the chair tightly. "We talked. It wasn't very pleasant at times. There was a lot of shouting. But yes, we did talk. He said some things that made me think."
"Well, what did he say? Will he help us?"
"He said--" Bill broke off and ran his hand through his hair, scattering a few flakes of soot that had crept under his hood. He looked as if he were grasping after the right words. "He said he might be willing, but only if..."
"If what?" she pressed.
Bill laughed, a tense, unhappy sound. "If I could give him the correct answer to a question that he asked me."
Baffled, Fleur shook her head. "Correct answer? As in a riddle, you mean?"
"No, an actual question, Fleur. It was so strange." Bill pulled out the chair and sat.
She took his cold hand in hers. "Tell me."
"He wanted to know what I was willing to do for him if he agreed to help. He said that there is only one answer he will accept. And," he met her eyes, "that you would know what that answer is."
Fleur bit her lip against a wave of despair. Severus Snape knew exactly what he was about.
Romantic tales aside, Fleur knew that love did not conquer all. She still had nightmares of clawing her way through a swarm of vicious grindylows to rescue Gabrielle, only to fail in the end.
Seven years ago, Severus had not been enough. Why would she prove to be different?
"Fleur, do you understand what he's talking about? I mean, what would I be willing to do...I asked him what he wanted. I thought something like, I don't know. A favour. Some rare potions ingredients. Something illegal. Our first born child, for Merlin's sake!" He waved his free hand. "But that wasn't what he was talking about, I don't think." Suddenly, his gaze sharpened. "Was it? He was right, you do know what he meant. Don't you?"
Fleur knew too well what Severus had meant. She also knew that giving Bill the answer outright was pointless.
It was one thing to put one's life and future on the line, impulsively, for an abstract ideal or even for the sheer thrill of it. It was quite another to do so, coolly, logically, for a more personal and much less noble reason: on behalf of someone you loved. She loved Bill dearly, but this was his blind-spot, his fatal flaw.
Was she enough, today, where Severus had not been?
Bill had to discover this answer in himself, or not at all. Only then would she know for certain.
"You love me, Bill, yes?" she asked, answering one question with another.
He frowned. "Severus asked me that, too. But yes, I love you tremendously, Fleur. You're the best thing that's happened to me. You're--"
She spoke over him. "And you want us to be together?"
"Of course, I do. You know that!"
She squeezed his hand and let go. "Then look into your heart and answer Severus's question."
"What?" He blinked. "Wait. You're not going to tell me? I don't understand. What's going on? I can't decide this for you too. What if he wants something that...that involves you? Something that we can't give him?"
Fleur rose slowly, feeling weary and old. She pushed her glass of wine over to Bill, even though he had no appreciation for a fine vintage. Wine could not help her now. Only time, luck, and love. "There is nothing that Severus Snape can ask of me that I will not give. Whatever his terms," she said, "I will meet them." Or I will force him to meet mine. she added grimly to herself.
"But what if I can't meet them?" Bill said softly.
Well then, Fleur thought to herself, I suppose that Severus and I will have something else in common, besides our love for a certain flame haired boy.
Aloud she merely said, "Dinner is on the stove. I am very tired. I think I shall go off to bed."
"But, Fleur, wait!"
She did not reply and left him sitting at the table, wearing an expression of hurt and confusion.
*
Later, while she was in bed, covers pulled up to her chin, and sliding towards a likely-to-be restless slumber, a very peculiar thought crossed her mind: Severus Snape was a potions master, a connoisseur of unique and rare ingredients. By some miracle, should Bill find the answer, Severus might well appreciate a very fine vintage, indeed.
Were he the Wise and Terrible Wizard in truth, such was his current mood that Severus would have sought to engage in some indiscriminate smiting. A contract to poison the enemy's wells, for instance, or to curse a few neighbouring warlords with impotency. Maybe even to arrange the assassination of a very public but unpopular figure. Or ten.
However, being merely That Bloody and/or Lucky Bastard Snape, his options for antisocial catharsis were limited. He had to settle for pulping four hundred and sixty-two hapless dung beetles, filling thirteen orders for illegal magical munitions--which he ordinarily would have referred to Weasley's Wizard Wheezes--and composing nine scathing editorials and rebuttals destined for various Potions and Dark Arts journals.
Fawkes was unamused. He disliked delivering Howlers, disliked the smell of gunpowder, and more importantly, he enjoyed snacking on dung beetles.
"You should have thought of that, you silly creature," he'd scowled at the bird, "before you picked me over Minerva. You could be decorating the perch in her office right now. Comforting terrified miscreants with your teary-eyed screeches. Playing the pampered sycophant, holding court among the portraits. Instead, you chose to moulder away here with me."
The phoenix puffed up his feathers, gifted him with a beady stare, then turned his back. But not before depositing a load of guano on Severus's desk.
"Damned bloody menace!" He shook his fist at the bird. If his "Scourgify!" also stripped the infernal bird of a few tail feathers, well then, accidents did happen.
Were Albus still alive, he would have shaken his head sadly, then counselled Severus to channel his anger into more constructive pursuits.
In his own defence, he had given that approach a try, too. Out of desperation, he'd spent several tens of tedious hours discussing with Slughorn how one might precisely tailor the Wolfsbane for use by a hypothetical patient who might have a somewhat indeterminate infection status and most definitely had repressed psychological desires.
To no avail; his foul mood raged on, unabated.
Distractions or no, the bare facts remained:
Bill Weasley and Spouse had ripped apart his quiet if rather arid life, had reopened wounds that he'd believe to be well-healed, and then departed, leaving the entire bloody mess--not to mention its resolution--squarely in his lap.
Had Bill been unmarried, Severus would have bet his last Knut that the man would never darken his doorstep again. But the existence of his spouse complicated matters. Delacour was canny, fearless, and fiercely intelligent. A Triwizard champion who had a deft wand with wicked, obscure curses, which she'd amply demonstrated during the war. She was also, quite clearly, a witch who was used to getting what she wanted.
Like unto a much younger, far more glamorous Minerva McGonagall, with truly spectacular...assets.
Her presence in the equation warped the odds significantly. Eventually, Bill Weasley was likely to decipher Severus's pathetically obvious riddle and come knocking. With such a fetching and determined source of motivation, what wizard wouldn't?
"And what then?" he said aloud. "What do I do if the bastard actually shows?"
Apparently still sulking, Fawkes did not deign to reply.
Having botched two preparations of Dreamless Sleep, Severus gave up useful lab work as a bad idea and decided to sort through the latest shipment of dried shrivelfig, a task requiring little concentration.
He coaxed Fawkes out of his sulk with a bowl of sunflower seeds, set up three sorting bins--Compost, Passable, and Not Bad--then turned his mind to the problem of Bill Weasley.
The most obvious answer was to tell him to piss off and good luck with those pesky sexual issues of his. His life might be dull, but after the 'excitement' of the past two decades, Severus had come to appreciate quiet days and the occasional night out at a Muggle club. Sex without affection or entanglement was not necessarily a bad thing.
But, though it was an exceedingly tempting option, he couldn't quite bring himself to choose it. Damn her insight, but Fleur was right: he still felt 'something' for Bill. Painful though it had been, it had felt good to see the rakish, pusillanimous prick again. To match wits with him, to trade insults, to listen to his voice, to watch him move, fluid and graceful as any jungle cat.
Severus shook the image out of his head and forced himself back to the topic at hand.
Alternately, he could always attempt to pick up where they'd left off. Attempt to conjure the spectre of the man he had been, to don that persona, and to bring Bill to heel in the bedroom, if nowhere else.
He'd been superb at what he did, back then.
"A natural," Lucius had grudgingly admitted one memorable evening, at least two decades past. Too many years of metaphorically--and literally--kissing arses and Severus had had enough. He'd seized the advantage during one of their bed games and forced Lucius to submit.
Lucius had been none too pleased, at least not publicly. Privately,
well...Lucius rather enjoyed being outfitted and ridden like a pony,
and every year since, Narcissa had sent Severus the most generous of
Yule gifts.
Bill had entered his life at a time when danger was still an aphrodisiac. He'd been weak: isolated, feeling helpless as the painful twinges from his Dark Mark increased. He'd looked around at his married friends, and despite his unpopular inclinations towards his own sex, he had wanted someone of his own. He'd believed Bill to be that someone. His own desire to control some aspect of his destiny dovetailed so neatly with Bill's private need to relinquish that control that Severus had almost believed that they were fated to be.
He couldn't help but snort at his younger self. "Even Trelawney would have laughed in your face, you pathetic, romantic fool."
Discreet though they'd been, his position at Hogwarts and his reputation, coupled with Bill's youth and beauty had made the rumours inevitable. At the time, it had added the spice of danger to their liaison.
Molly and Arthur Weasley had taken an extremely dim view of their association, with Molly constantly throwing eligible young women in Bill's path. "I know how men like you operate, Severus Snape," she'd shrilled during one memorable confrontation, "and I won't have you leading him astray. I won't have him setting a bad example for his brothers!"
And though Lucius had convinced the Board of Governors to look the other way, Dumbledore had still taken him aside and warned him sternly not to "toy with the young man's affections." Severus, though, had been the one to fall hopelessly in love.
But those days were past. Well past.
"And perhaps, better left unrevisited."
Fawkes looked up from his bowl of seeds and bobbed his head. Severus gave up on sorting the plants and rested his chin on his fist.
He didn't much like the man he'd been back then. Brittle, brutal, and desperate. Seven years, too much blood, too many deaths, and the brutal conclusion to a war begun a decade before had changed him, for the better he hoped. If nothing else, he refused to sell himself--his devotion--at any price, not ever again. Not even for love, or love lost.
Which left him where exactly?
He sighed, thoroughly disheartened. "Celibate, self-employed, and being urged yet again to accept second best, that's where." When Fawkes bobbed his head again, Severus glowered. "You don't have to agree with everything I say, for Merlin's sake."
The obnoxious bird had the nerve to cackle at him.
He had been the well-kept dirty secret of a married man decades before. It had been almost enough for him, then. But it was less than nothing to him now. Society's mores be damned, but he'd already had a bellyful of living a lie. First, while he was with Lucius and then, as spy during two wars. He refused to hide in the shadows again. To watch his lover marry, to have a child, to walk about freely with his wife, while Severus had nothing to savour but the rare afternoon or stolen weekend.
"Never again," he vowed. "I will never put myself in that position again."
Fawkes cracked a few seeds then cocked his head at Severus, as if to say, "Bold talk, no action."
"Oh, and I take it that you have a plan?" he snapped. Then he nearly smacked his forehead. "Merlin's Beard, I must be far gone to solicit advice from a mangy old chicken with delusions of grandeur."
With an avian huff, Fawkes abandoned the bowl, scattering seeds over Severus' worktable, and took flight. He circled the room once before landing upon the coat rack beside the door. He snatched something blue and silky from one of the pegs and shook it in his beak.
Severus blinked. Damned if the bird didn't have something useful in mind after all.
He stood and made his way over to the coat rack. He took the scarf from Fawkes and wound its expensive length over and through his fingers. "Delacour did imply that she was willing to do anything, didn't she?" he said slowly. He'd almost tossed the garment into the fire after she'd left and he certainly didn't remember bringing it down to the lab. When he glanced suspiciously at Fawkes, the phoenix radiated smugness; the damned bird was just as meddlesome as his former master!
Despite himself, Severus felt his annoyance give way to the barest tingle of excitement. "She seemed quite motivated, didn't she...?"
Having made his point, Fawkes flew back to his seeds while Severus considered the possible implications of the scarf in his hands.
Admittedly, there were aspects of his life that were less than adequate. But he refused to address them by becoming a whore, or anyone's dirty little secret. However, Fleur had implied that she did not expect either of him. Whether she realized it or not--and it was likely that she did--she was offering him everything. Her husband--for sex, for companionship, perhaps for love. The possibility of a place, a family if he chose to fight for it. The reality of intimate association with intelligent people who knew and understood him. All he needed to do was to state his terms.
"And to be willing to walk away if they will not meet them." The thought brought with it an unwelcome lump in his throat.
Severus looked over to Fawkes. The bird tensed, his snack forgotten, as if awaiting Severus's answer.
"Well," he said, taking a deep breath. "What do I have to lose? After all, I have done far worse in the name of love."
He couldn't help but smile when Fawkes unfurled his wings, extended his neck, and uttered a triumphant cry.
The eve of the full moon passed, as did the night of the full moon, and the evening of the day after the full moon. And still, no Bill Weasley.
Perhaps his absurd humanitarian work with Slughorn had proved to be too effective.
Fawkes rustled his feathers pointedly and eyed him with open scepticism. Severus sighed. "No, I don't believe that either," he said.
The moon waned, then waxed, and again, the full moon passed without incident. Unless one counted assorted post from Slughorn asking for, "Just a bit of clarification, dear boy, if you don't mind," about this or that hypothetical point for their hypothetical patient.
"It's not as if I haven't been wrong before," Severus said, firmly squashing his disappointment. Then he yelped, "Ouch!" when Fawkes nipped his ear.
But on the eve of the next full moon, while he was working in the lab, at the worst possible alchemical moment, his Floo chimed.
Fawkes was looking quite ragged round the edges, given that his burning day was near. But he still managed a smug, superior chirp when he hopped to Severus's shoulder.
Nearly growling, Severus quenched the fires under his potions, cast a stasis spell, then left his lab. He strode up the stairs, paused in the kitchen to down a special draught in his cold box, then entered the empty sitting room. A familiar cloak hung on the peg beside his own.
He tried to tip Fawkes off onto his perch behind the sofa. "Go on, now. I don't need a damned voyeur for this!" But the stubborn bird dug in his talons and would not be budged.
"Bloody pervert," he muttered, then waved his wand to open the hidden door and quietly started up the stairs to his bedroom.
Time to see what answers Weasley had found within himself.
*
Inside his bedroom, Bill was pacing like...a caged wolf.
After the war, Severus had knocked out a wall and joined the two rooms upstairs to create a single, spacious master suite. Even so, the room seemed barely able to contain the restless energy and unfocussed hostility that Bill displayed.
Severus felt a long dormant, semi-feral part of himself rise up in response. He smiled and drew his wand.
"I'd very nearly given you up as a lost cause," he drawled.
Bill whirled at the sound of his voice, hand reaching for his wand. But upon seeing Severus's expression, he very deliberately let his hand fall at his side. Clearly, even with the wolf ascendant, he retained a bit of good sense. "Ha, ha. So had Fleur." His laugh had an ugly edge.
Moonlight filtered through the curtains falling across one scarred cheek and one glittering eye, the rest of him was in deep shadow. The malevolent effect roused a pleasurable shiver in Severus's belly.
Apparently, danger was still quite the aphrodisiac.
Fawkes launched himself towards the desk chair in the corner and Severus took one step into the room. He chuckled. "Kept you locked up in the shed, these past two months, did she?"
"Yes, she did," Bill snarled. "Even though Slughorn's new formulation is helping."
"Your presence tonight suggests otherwise. Although you could merely be annoyed that you've been without a bed partner for the past few months. No doubt she's also had you sleeping on the couch the other twenty seven days of the month, as well." Severus entered the room fully and raised his wand to ignite the lamps. "Lum--"
Bill flung up his hand. "No, don't!"
He paused. "Hm. Light sensitivity is not a side effect of the Wolfsbane. Therefore, I must conclude that you are either embarrassed to be seen in this state of agitation." Severus pretended to consider. "Or else you're afraid of my reaction should I happen to see you in your full, if entirely ravaged, glory."
"Oh, fuck you, Severus."
"All in good time," he replied, amiably, "assuming that you explain to my satisfaction why you are skulking around my bedroom in the dark."
"You know why I'm here."
"Ah, but I want to hear you say it," he purred.
"Damn it, why do you have to make everything so bloody difficult?"
"All a part of my charm." He grinned lazily. "Your answer, Weasley?"
Bill stamped over to over to the window, then turned to shout. "Anything, goddamn you. The answer is anything!"
Severus laughed outright. "Excellent, take ten points for Gryffindor. I expect that your wife forced you to puzzle that out for yourself."
"You knew that she would." Bill sounded deeply aggrieved.
"I suspected so, yes. After all, like me, she needed to know exactly where she stood."
Bill shook his shaggy head. The moonlight sparkled along the white strands in his hair. "You're both barking mad, you realize."
"Because we are willing to do whatever it takes, whatever is necessary, whatever our loved ones require of us? If so, then welcome to our exclusive little club, William Weasley, because you have just consented to do anything that I require of you."
Even in the uncertain lighting, he could see Bill blanch. "But...I'd just assumed that--"
"--That it would be like old times? That we would pick up where we left off?" Severus closed the distance between them, one deliberate step at a time. The old thrill was back and he could hardly wait for them to begin. "Well, you know the old saying about assumptions..."
All at once, Bill's wand was in his hand. "You can't make me!"
Severus didn't need Legilimency to sense the fear, lust, and longing in Bill's snarled declaration. "But I can, dear William." He settled into a slight crouch, to better respond to the impending mayhem. "You know I can. And you know that you will enjoy every single moment of it."
"The hell I will," Bill said, then tilted his wand and shouted, "Petrificus Totalus!"
Fawkes shrilled an alarm but Severus easily brought up his wand to counter. "Protego." He felt light, exultant, fully alive for the first time in years. "Is that the best you can do? Married life has made you soft," he taunted. "Sectumsempra!"
Bill dodged nimbly. The jet of lavender light scythed through the space he'd been and sliced into the armoire. "Try this, then, you murderous, anti-social bastard," he growled. "Eviscero!"
And so it went, curse after counter-curse, until they both were bruised, bloodied, sweaty, and panting.
Severus found himself grinning madly, excitement and arousal singing through his veins. There was no better foreplay than a duel, and no better, more enthusiastic, more devious duelling partner than Bill Weasley.
Especially when Bill desperately wanted to pretend that he didn't want to yield.
Fleur had no idea what she was missing. Severus was quite pleased to have this marvellous experience all for himself.
*
The room was a shambles. The ceiling was scorched, the bed in splinters, and curtains hung in tatters from two of the three cracked rods. Their singed and torn clothing was in no better condition.
Bill was breathing heavily, crouched behind the downed armoire. Nursing some bruised ribs, most likely. Blood dripped from a cut on his forehead and he looked as if he could barely lift his wand.
In contrast, Severus felt as if he could duel through to morning, and still fuck until noon. There were perks to being a skilled brewer, after all.
Goose down from burst pillows and phoenix feathers drifted through the room, coating the more jagged surfaces of shattered furniture with fluff. The scent of burnt wool and wood made his nose twitch. Fawkes had long since departed for a safer perch on a sconce in the hallway. "I thought that werewolves were reputed to have stamina. Even an First Year could take you, William, blindfolded and holding a broken wand, no less."
"Oh, sod off. You're older than me, you should be worse off." He broke off abruptly. "Wait a minute. You took a potion, didn't you, you miserable, cheating fuck!"
Severus laughed; it was so easy to provoke the wolf in the man. "Is ickle Billy tired? Is he ready to yield?"
"Not on your life!" Bill lurched to his feet, but was slow to bring his wand up.
Severus exploited the opening. "Expelliarmus." He snatched Bill's wand out of the air. "Incarcerous." Thick, shimmering ropes appeared and wrapped themselves tightly round the other wizard, who crashed to the floor, sending up a puff of loose feathers.
Even fatigued, Bill was still unnaturally strong. Severus frowned and said, "Adaugeo." The ropes tightened. He stood over Bill and glared down at him. His chest felt full near to bursting, so exhilarating was the sensation of power and control. "Do you yield, William Weasley?"
Bill spat out a mouthful of feathers. "No."
"I have bested you. I have your wand, I have you tied. You are at my mercy." Severus dropped down to straddle Bill's supine form. He pressed his wand to the other wizard's jugular. "I can do anything I wish to you, now. And so I ask you again, do you yield?"
After a very long pause, eyes narrowed and teeth clenched, Bill gritted out a single word: "Yes."
The hard ridge of Bill's erection pressed against the seam of his trousers; Severus smiled. "Why?" he asked pleasantly, wriggling a little. His captive's cheeks flushed bright red and his cock grew harder.
"Because, damn you!"
"Please elaborate."
"Fuck it, Severus, because you've won! You've bested me, all right?"
"All right, then," he said mildly, and shifted his weight to his right knee. Just enough to suggest that he was about to rise and let Bill up.
But he'd guessed his former lover's intentions correctly. Bill managed to get one hand loose from the ropes, grab the hand in which Severus held his wand, and incant the counter to the incarcerous.
In an instant, the damned wily curse-breaker was free!
Except that Severus still had far superior leverage. He pulled both their wands out of reach, grabbed a fistful of Bill's torn shirt, and rode the wildly bucking man until Bill lay in a limp, exhausted, and quite obviously aroused heap beneath him.
"Well?" he said, one eyebrow raised.
"Fine, fine. Yes," Bill nodded, breathless, unwisely thumping the back of his head on the floor. "Ow, damn it. I yield."
"In that case..." With a soft smile, Severus traced the slice on Bill's forehead with the tip of his wand. "Episkey," he said, watching the trickle of blood slow and the edges of the wound seal themselves. With a whispered, evanesco, the blood evaporated from the whorls and furrows of scar tissue left by Greyback's nails and teeth. A familiar, but long absent tenderness welled up in his chest.
Bill was no longer beautiful, but he was still entirely magnificent.
Severus pushed strands of long, sweaty red hair out of the way and stroked the racing pulse point beneath Bill's ear. He was pleased by the gooseflesh that rippled across the bared skin. "Tell me again, William."
Moonlight spilled through the torn curtains and across Bill's face; the wolf was still with him. Severus could see it in the yellowed eyes that met his, with their dilated pupils and muted defiance; in the faint snarl curving Bill's torn lip; in the cursed, now exhausted animal strength that would, all too soon, reawaken to fight free. Unless the wolf had accepted Severus as his Alpha.
"Say it, William," he demanded, pressing his thumb over the vulnerable windpipe, lightly at first, but with increasing pressure. He held the power of life and death in his hands, once again. The life of someone he'd once loved, for whom he cared for now. The exaltation was all that he'd remembered. But the wild emotion was now tempered with relief. In this room, this intimate place, he would never be required to exercise that power to prove the depth of his affection. "Tell me that you yield. Tell me that the wolf within you yields."
Bill swallowed hard, then deliberately broke eye contact. He turned his face to the side, fully exposing his throat. "I yield," he said roughly. "All of me, to you, Severus." He closed his eyes for a moment, then looked up at Severus again. There was a softness in his eyes, his face, his limbs, that spoke of eloquently surrender. "All of me, to you," he repeated.
Severus's desire flared anew. It had been a long while since he'd last exercised his skills in...le jeu de puissance.
He slid forward, pinning Bill's upper arms beneath his knees, and unbuttoned his trousers. "Open for me," he commanded, then thrust his length into Bill's waiting mouth.
The pleasure was sublime.
For long moments, he plunged in, again and again, ignoring Bill's frustrated whines and squirming, all the better to take the edge off his own pressing needs. Sweet Merlin! It seemed like an eternity since he'd been sucked so well. Having sex with his wife hadn't dulled Bill's skills in the least.
Finally, with effort, he pulled back and released Bill. Severus rose up enough for Bill to move under him. "Turn over, and present," he commanded, pleased that his partner moved with such alacrity.
Either he still had the touch, or after years of fucking, Bill was desperate to get fucked.
Fawkes squawked and abandoned the room.
Bill dropped to his elbows, arse in the air. It was the work of a moment for Severus to strip him of his clothing, cast a hasty lubricus, toss their wands to the far corner of the room and then ride him with wanton abandon.
With his mouth free, Bill gave voice to what seemed to be seven years of pent up, desperate pleas to please thrust harder, or deeper, or longer. To please take him, to make him do things, to make him do anything. To open him and read him, to make him want it, to make him like it. To make him beg.
Severus was more than willing to do all those things, and more. On his own timetable, of course. To which Bill objected, though quite insincerely. Which Severus knew very well, since he'd reached round and grabbed hold of his partner's hot, hard cock and heavy balls and had looked within his mind to find the inner truth hidden behind the outer lie. "You'll do what I tell you to do, William, when I tell you. And you will like it," Severus said.
If the shouts, the sighs, the exclamations, and the images Severus could see behind Bill's closed eyes were any indication, his partner most certainly did.
*
Several hours later, Bill said into the darkness, "It's bloody freezing in here, Severus."
Languid and post-coital, Severus couldn't much be arsed to care about much of anything, even about the splinters poking him in the backside and the chill on his bare skin. "So conjure us a blanket. Hell, conjure us a bed."
"I would if I could. But you tossed my wand...somewhere, in all this rubble."
"Oh, for Merlin's sake," he said, but was secretly pleased; moonlight still streamed through the western-most window, though the angle was low and the wolf within still submitted to his Alpha. Severus leaned up on one elbow and held up his hand. "Accio wands."
Bill looked away and down when Severus returned his wand. "Thank you," he said in a low, rough voice.
Severus said nothing for a moment, savouring the sheen of moonlight on his partner's bowed head, the profile of his submission. Then he waved his hand imperiously. "Clean up this mess," he commanded with a wave of his hand. "I have no intention of sleeping on a heap of firewood tonight."
Bill immediately got to it.
Severus lay on the pile of their discarded clothing and watched Bill's slim, naked form as he moved through the room, casting reparo and evanesco, flitting between shadow and the silver moonlight.
For a moment, while Bill slipped through the lavender and blue shadows, it was as if they had travelled back in time, seven years. To another bedroom, on another night of illicit passion. Then the moonlight, the flare of spell-light, fell across Bill's face and the illusion shattered.
Now was not then. They were older, more battle-worn and care-worn.
And there were three of them now.
Irritated, Severus forced the uncomfortable thoughts away. Dawn was hours away. Time enough then to consider what their actions tonight might mean for the future.
Much later.
After they'd had a chance to use the bed that Bill had reconstructed.
*
When the moon set, the manic energy of the curse drained from Bill, like water flowing down hill. He lay bonelessly, sprawled over Severus's bare chest. Severus carded his fingers through the long, silky hair.
There was no fireplace in the room--intentionally so, as he disliked the idea of someone Floo'ing directly into his bedroom--but heating charms usually kept the place warm enough. Tonight, he found that he didn't even need a second blanket. An additional lean, hard body in his bed was a rare treat, but more than sufficient.
"I thought that it would feel strange to be here with you," Bill said quietly. "But it's not. It's like we never parted."
Severus sighed. "But we did."
"I know, but...I know." His arm tightened over Severus's ribs for a moment, then stilled. "Have you decided what you're going to do? What we're going to do?"
By way of answer, Severus pushed Bill to his side. He brushed back his hair, then traced Bill's distorted features with his fingers and lips. Feeling the uneven patches of scar, the smoothness of original skin, enjoying the rasp of stubble, the odd, sweet sensation of his torn lip. But despite the unfamiliar facial topography, Bill's scent, his taste, the slide of his tongue, the pressure of his hands on Severus's skin had not changed.
"Yes, yes," he whispered against Bill's neck, nibbling lightly over the ridge of a scar. Severus ran his fingers across his partner's ribs, into the hollow of hip and groin, over the muscular hair-dusted thigh, and then up to the heat and thickness of Bill's reawakening cock. "I have decided exactly what I will do."
Now that I have you, he thought fiercely, whatever it takes, I will never let you go again.
On the morning after the full-moon, Fleur awakened early and alone. After her bath, she lingered in front of the mirror. No bruises, no scratches, no cuts.
She bared her teeth at her reflection. Only time would tell if her smooth, unmarked skin was worth the cost. Of course, it might well be possible to influence the price, just a bit.
Her reflection's answering smile was positively devious.
Once dressed, Fleur gathered up a few essentials--her wand, a large bottomless basket that she'd packed the evening before, a handful of Floo powder, and a bottle of award-winning wine from her family's vineyard--then strode into the fire.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and Fleur had every intention of gaining her heart's desire.
*
The sun was well on its way towards the zenith. Gold mid-morning sunlight streamed through the now spotless, though frost-rimed, eastern windows of Spinner's End.
Fleur was strangely at ease in the small, orderly kitchen. For the first time since Bill had been bitten, she felt as if some off-kilter internal thing was on the cusp of inexplicably righting itself.
For the first time, the morning after the full moon was alive with possibility instead of worry and fear.
Although she'd been prepared to fight her way through Severus's Floo wards if necessary, they had admitted her without challenge. The sitting room had been neat, if still quite shabby. She might have to do something about that. No furniture had been overturned, there was no smashed glassware atop the drinks cabinet. Bill's cloak hung tidily beside Severus's on the coat rack in the sitting room. Her own favourite blue scarf hung on one peg. A bedraggled Fawkes, on his perch behind the sofa, had even greeted her with a quiet snippet of song, before tucking his head beneath one wing again.
Fleur had believed her ease of entry and the lack of property destruction to be auspicious. And now, having commandeered the kitchen in a fashion that would have done Molly proud, she sat at Severus Snape's table, Bill's favourite breakfast warming on the stove--with her best guess at Severus's beside it--fresh croissant and a draft copy of Severus's most recent submission to Potions Quarterly in hand, sipping a truly superb cup of coffee.
It had come as no surprise that Severus had a cupboard--heavily warded, of course--of exotic teas and coffees. Containers of Jamaican Blue Mountain, jars of Las Termopilas and Indonesia Malacca. Tins of Pi Lo Chun and Golden Monkey, nestled beside Tun Ting Oolong and Snow Geisha. There was even a tiny canister of rare and magical Century White Fire Tea, that had nipped her fingers rather nastily when she'd tried to pry it open.
Fleur closed her eyes to better savour the brew; she could easily get used to this.
"Well, well. I see that a rogue curse-breaker has raided my cupboard."
She looked up to see Severus leaning against the doorjamb. His long hair was damp and his robes, though casual, were surprisingly not black. The midnight blue warmed his sallow skin and his cheeks were rosy, either from his recent bath or his morning exertions. All together, the combination was not unflattering. "I do enjoy a good challenge from time to time," Fleur replied. "Bonjour, Severus. You have excellent taste in coffee and tea." She raised her cup in a salute.
He raised one eyebrow and gazed round, taking in the freshly-scrubbed room, the feast warming on the stove, and her choice of reading material. His eyes lingered on the bottle of wine in the basket on the table. "And a good morning to you, Fleur," he replied with a languid drawl. "Of course I stock only the best. Life is far too short to bother with inferior ingredients."
She hid a smile behind her cup and conceded his point with a nod. "Bill usually sleeps late on the morning of the full moon but awakens hungry. I have made the coffee, there is water for tea. There is also toast, bacon, some eggs, and black pudding. His favourites. But you, Severus...I do not know what you like. I made a few things."
"So I see." Severus filled his own plate at the stove. "This is acceptable. Thank you," he said, then sat down opposite her, draped a napkin across his lap, and began to eat.
Today, his manners were impeccable; Fleur hid another smile.
She poured him a cup of coffee. "This paper of yours is truly interesting. An undetectable counter to the Veritaserum. The Ministry will not be pleased."
"My house needs a new roof, I am outgrowing my laboratory, and the price of mandrake root has trebled." He shrugged. "The Ministry can pay me not to publish my findings."
"Continue to pay you, ad infinitum, you mean to say." She chuckled outright. "I trust you had a pleasant evening?"
Though he blinked at the swift change in topic, he met her eyes with a clear challenge. "I did."
"Good. As did I."
After a long, silent moment of staring at one another, Severus went back to his meal. Fleur set aside his potions article in favour of the Prophet. Scrimgeour was under fire for the rising crime rate, Rita Skeeter had been suspended without pay for plagiarism, and Madam Malkin's was having a sale on dress robes. With the holidays coming up, she could always use a fancy new robe.
When Severus picked up the editorial section that she had discarded, he casually remarked, "You do realize, Fleur, that I am not much inclined to share."
And so, without fanfare, the negotiations began. "You think that I am?"
He laughed softly at that. "No, I don't suppose you are. However..."
"Yes, however." She paused to sip her coffee and organize her thoughts. Time to do what she'd come to do; time to prove the depth of her love. Severus appreciated the truth, so she would give it to him. "Alone, I know I will lose him," she admitted. "He will insist upon his ridiculous nobility and leave me. Or force me to leave."
"Foolish Gryffindor that he is."
"You British wizards and your ridiculous sorting custom!" She tossed down the paper with exasperation. "Gryffindor, Ravenclaw. Pfft! What were you, Severus, a Pufflehuff, is it?"
"Slytherin," he growled.
"Whatever." Fleur shrugged. "Stupid child's rivalry, all because of a hat."
"Godric Gryffindor's hat. The hat of--"
"Oui, oui, je sais. One of the founders of Hogwarts. Mais, après tout, rien qu'un chapeau. But, it is still a hat, Severus."
He glared, snorted once, then went back to the editorials.
"In any case, yes, you are right. Alone, I will lose him," she
said. "But you, on the other hand, have already lost him once."
He lowered the paper. "So I did," he said evenly. "However, as you mentioned during your last visit, Fleur, we two are reasonable people." His eyes held a wicked glint and the corner of his mouth twitched. "No doubt we can devise a mutually satisfying arrangement. Wouldn't you agree?"
There was a noise in the sitting room and Bill walked into the kitchen a moment later. "Severus, I--." He stopped short on the threshold with a delectably sweet expression composed of equal parts confusion and dread. "Uh, good morning, Fleur. Sweetheart. Um."
"Good morning, Bill," she said, then looked back at Severus. "Indeed, mon noir. I do believe we that can come to an agreement, yes."
"What?" Bill said, looking from Severus to Fleur.
Fleur ignored Bill's question. All the better to savour the delicious thrill she felt when Severus met her eyes...and smiled.
Finis.
Corinthians 13:1-13
1. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
2. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
3. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
5. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
6. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
7. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
9. For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
10. but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.
11. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
12. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.