WARNING: This is a slash story, which means it contains male/male erotic content involving consenting adults. If you're not of legal age or are offended by such material, please go find something else to read.

Title: Changing Moon
Author: Spydre
E-Mail: spydre@yahoo.com
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Severus Snape makes Remus Lupin an amazing offer that will change the werewolf’s life forever.
Warnings: None in particular. If you realize the implications of slash sites and NC-17 ratings, that pretty much covers it. On second thought, if graphic descriptions of sickness and radical cures aren’t your cuppa you might ought to think twice before proceeding.
Disclaimer: Severus and Remus aren’t my toys. I borrowed them for a few hours from the incomparable JK Rowling, whose property they are. As always, once I finished playing with them a bit I returned them to her unscathed with my deepest gratitude and appreciation. And I would never dream of charging you for the right to read this transcript of the games we played.
Notes: This Snape and Lupin are not the same Snape and Lupin as appear in any other story of mine, although they resemble some of them more than others. The Potterverse is a big, branching place and I just love exploring diverse possibilities. J

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I never say precisely what I think; still less do I volunteer information regarding what I feel. Indeed, so adept am I at concealing my emotions that my superiors, peers, and subalterns alike generally assume that I have none—apart, of course, from an impressive palette of angers and resentments, which I do not hesitate to employ to turn situations to my best advantage. By cleverly articulated speech and suggestive silences, I further cultivate the illusion that I am a wholly amoral creature, a proud, self-serving, Machiavellian, treacherous Slytherin to the core. Finally, I systematically refrain from actions that might give the lie to the carefully crafted persona that protects me as much as possible as I live out my life in the uneasy niche in the wizarding world to which the sins of my youth have condemned me. In short, I habitually live certain lies, which I find far less painful to bear than the truth of my well-to-do but stigmatised existence.

Which is why my response when Remus Lupin opened his door to me was, “You look like hell.” He did, of course, standing there in his shabby robe, darned pyjamas, and bare feet, gaunt, stubble-faced, dishevelled, splotchy-skinned, and red-eyed with fever. Nonetheless the factuality of my statement was at odds with my dismay, my carefully concealed compassion, my hidden desire to murmur, “Oh God, Remus! It breaks my heart to see you like this” and gather him into my arms.

“Why thank you, Severus!” he responded with a quirky smile and only the faintest trace of sarcasm. When I made no reply, he gestured towards the interior of his one-room cottage and asked, “Would you care to come in?”

I scowled. “Yes, of course, I want to come in. Surely you’re not so great a dunderhead as to suppose that I was just in the neighbourhood and decided on the spur of the moment to call on an old classmate. I have important business to discuss with you and I don’t wish to air it in your dooryard, despite the fact that you live in the middle of a bloody forest with no human neighbours to speak of for miles in any direction. Don’t be obtuse!”

Suppressing a frown, Lupin shrugged and bade me enter with the ironic words, “Be my guest then.”

“I plan to,” I answered him, stepping aside so that he, at last, saw the baggage that I had brought with me.

His hazel eyes widened in alarm. “Really, Snape! As you can see, I’m not presently up to playing the host. Discuss whatever it is that you need to with me, but then I must ask that you be on your way.”

“Don’t be hasty,” I retorted. “If you agree to the matter I want to broach to you, it will be necessary for me to stay with you for a few days. However, other than being allowed the dubious shelter of your inadequate roof, I shan’t require your hospitality. Indeed,” I assured him, slapping the largest hamper that I had brought with me, “I’m prepared to provide you with certain creature comforts in exchange for your tolerating my unsolicited presence. If—on the other hand—you refuse the offer that I’ve come to tender, I have no desire to remain. I’ll cheerfully brush the dust of your dirt-floored hovel off my boots and Apparate out of your lycanthropic existence forever. Be careful how you reply to my request, though, because I’m not going to beseech you again. Knowing that I plan to stay awhile, are you still willing for me to come in?”

He sighed. “Knowing that the full moon will rise in two more nights and that I haven’t enjoyed the luxury of the Wolfsbane Potion since the war ended, are you quite certain that you want to spend ‘a few days’ with me? As I recall, you have an intense aversion to my wolf form—to put it mildly.”

“That won’t present any problems,” I promised deliberately piquing his curiosity to enhance the probability that he would, in fact, tolerate me as his houseguest. “So. If you’ll be a good chap and extend an invitation for me to share your extremely humble lodgings until the evening following the full moon, you can make yourself comfortable on that broken-down travesty that you have in lieu of a decent sofa whilst I put my things away and prepare us a proper spot of tea.”

“So long as you don’t interfere with my observing the necessary precautions night after next, come right in. Knowing you, I’m certain that your stay will be quite an adventure.”

“You have no idea, my dear fellow,” I answered, glad of the opportunity to further tweak his zeal to unravel all things mysterious and unknown. Before he could remark upon my statement, I levitated my things and swept past him to insinuate myself into his quarters before he could retract his invitation, glad that he did not know that my heart was still pounding and my palms were still sweating from the keen anxiety that our interview had occasioned. My anxiety was slowly giving way to hope and even elation, but I was still less prepared to let Lupin know that.

“I’ve come to repay a debt,” I explained over a second cup of tea, after we had tucked away the sandwiches and other treats that I had set upon his rickety coffee table. “As a Slytherin, I don’t like indebtedness. Much less being indebted to a Gryffindor. Or a werewolf.”

“I wasn’t aware that you owed me a debt,” my host replied mildly.

“Don’t be coy. I owe you my life.”

He sighed. “I assume that you’re referring to the operation to release you from Voldemort’s dungeons that I took part in during the war.”

“The operation to release me that you organized and led,” I corrected him.

“That wasn’t…personal, Severus. It was Order business. Besides, Sirius Black and Harry Potter were as much your rescuers as I was.”

If Lupin had been planning to dissuade me from my stated purpose of repaying him for having saved me from an agonizingly slow death at the hands of the enemy and his servants, he could not have chosen a better bone of contention to toss my way than the memory of Sirius Black. I had no intention of allowing him to provoke me, however. After a very slow, deep breath, I remarked with feigned offhandedness, “Be that as it may, Black and Potter are both dead—and therefore cannot be recipients of my…gratitude. You, on the other hand, are very much alive and in sufficiently reduced circumstances that I frankly cannot comprehend your resistance to accepting whatever help I might choose to offer you. And, for the record, what I wish to propose will assist you nearly as much as your intervention assisted me!”

That assertion proved irresistible. “You’ve insisted that I saved your life, Severus,” he reminded me. “Are you claiming to have some means of saving mine?”

“More accurately I’m stating that I have the means of preserving your life. I’ve discovered the cure for lycanthropy.”

Not a sound escaped his lips, but Lupin’s eyes grew huge with astonishment and he silently mouthed the unspoken question “Cure?”

I gave him a curt nod. “I see that you are interested in my clearing my indebtedness to you after all,” I continued with what I hoped, in vain, was sufficient sarcasm to silence any further comments until I could state my case.

“Of course, I’m interested,” he admitted without hesitation, “and I have well-founded confidence in your skills as a Potions Master, but… I’ve been a guinea pig for more experimental cures than I care to remember, and some of them came close to killing me. As you can see, my current health is somewhat fragile; so for now I really must decline your offer of help.”

“Merlin! Don’t be such a fool,” I berated him. “It’s not an experimental cure. It’s been tested. Its effects are somewhat…harsh, which is why I want to stay with you until the full moon passes. However, I can confidently give you my word as a wizard that it won’t kill you, or even do you any permanent harm.”

He worried his lower lip with his teeth. I watched his desperate will to be rid of the curse of lycanthropy battle with caution born of repeated risks rewarded with nothing but bitter disappointment. Finally he offered me a compromise. “As I said, my health is not robust at the moment. Please, come back next month or even in a week or two…”

My reaction shocked both of us. His teacup and saucer rattled to the floor and chipped as I swiftly lunged to pin him against the sofa that we were sharing. I forced his robe off his shoulders and unbuttoned his pyjama jacket none too gently, exposing his emaciated chest and upper arms to the unheated autumn evening air that filled his cottage. “Pay attention!” I ordered. “You’re seriously undernourished. Your ribs aren’t supposed to stick out like this,” I continued, running my index finger along the length of a particularly prominent specimen. “Nor should your bicep be this wasted. Even allowing for the metabolic demands of your disease upon your body just prior to and during the full moon, it’s obvious that you haven’t eaten enough on a regular basis in quite some time. I’m sure that you could survive that for a few more months, because you’re still relatively young and were in excellent physical condition at war’s end; but you’ve aggravated matters by contracting a respiratory infection that, judging by your appearance and the coughing and wheezing that you’ve treated me to for the past hour, is already chronic. I’m not willing to come back next month, or next week, because I have no desire to be the lucky visitor who discovers your decomposing corpse!”

He remained as motionless as a rabbit in the shadow of a serpent poised to strike for nearly a full minute before he pushed me away and demanded, “Get off of me!” in a proud, cold voice capable of successfully delivering an Imperius. No sooner had I complied, though, than he was wracked with the most violent paroxysm of coughing he had yet displayed. Risking his further anger, I pounded on his breastbone and between his shoulder blades to help him bring up the rusty blood and thick yellow sputum that was clogging his chest.

He collapsed against the sofa as soon as the fit passed and pulled his clothing back into place. His hair and face were drenched with sweat, and his breathing consisted of short gasps and laboured wheezing punctuated with occasional dry, painful coughs. I longed to touch him, to wipe away the profuse perspiration coating his face or untangle the matted strands of hair plastered to his brow and cheeks, to rub comforting circles upon his back, or even dab away the sticky residue adhering to his dry, cracked lips. I dared not. Not yet. Like as not, never.

“It was not my intention to anger you,” I explained.

“Of course not.”

“Do you expect me to apologize?”

“Expect? No. Come to think of it, that would be the last thing I would expect of you.”

I sat blank-faced and perfectly still, despite my shame, despite my frustration, despite my growing fear that I had put my foot in it so thoroughly that he would continue to refuse my help…and perish. After what seemed an eternity, I heard myself murmur, “I do apologize. I…I’ve behaved very badly towards you, I’m afraid. But my offer stands. I can administer the cure for lycanthropy to you tomorrow night, and…and you’ll never undergo another transformation into a werewolf.”

He studied me intently for a long enough time that I wanted not just to squirm but to bolt and run from the power of his gaze. It seemed not to stop at the barrier of my skin but to somehow sink all the way through my body into some mysterious, hidden place containing the essence that is the sum of my experience and thus of my being. Finally, with a touch of awe in his voice, he announced. “You actually care whether I live or die—and more! You want me to have a pleasant life.”

“I… I want you to live, yes. But… I just want to repay my debt,” I lied as gruffly as seemed prudent.

He shook his head. “I don’t mean to offend you, but you’re not exactly a known stickler for justice. The Ministry won’t pitch you into Azkaban and throw away the key if you fail to assist me. Nor is there some…cosmic collection agency that will repossess your soul before your next birthday. If we’re honest about it, a sizeable number of wizards and witches owe me their lives because of actions I took during the war. But you’re the only one who’s shown up on my doorstep offering to pay the debt in full.”

I shrugged. “Well, I don’t suppose any of the others have discovered cures for lycanthropy…Remus,” I quipped dryly.

He laughed at my small witticism and (mirabile dictu!) did not rebuke me for my use of his given name. “No. I’m quite confident that they haven’t, Severus. What you’ve done is beyond the competence of any wizard that I’ve ever known, including the late Albus Dumbledore. But there are other ways that they could have repaid me if they’d wished to.”

I stared at the toes of my boots as though they contained the key to the secrets of the universe, just to avoid meeting his penetrating eyes. “I suppose so,” I conceded.

“Why does helping me mean so much to you? We were never friends, although I won’t deny that before you learned what I am we were well on our way to becoming more than friends.” I felt his body shift and cautiously looked up in time to see his own gaze fall to his hands, which were steepled about his knees and uncharacteristically motionless. “We’ve been at odds our entire adult lives,” he went on. “Why do you care about me now?”

I wanted to tell him. I wanted to tell him so badly that the pressure of my tightly constricted chest and throat muscles felt as if my heart had come unmoored and was rising painfully upward to explode somewhere between the notch between my collarbones and the bulge of my Adam’s apple. Yet I could not tell him. Not yet. Not until my debt was abolished. Not until his curse had been lifted. Not until… I was unable to bring myself to so much as think the words silently to myself. Instead, I asked him, “Isn’t it enough that I do care?” When he remained silent, I added, “I assure you that there’s nothing sinister about my motives.”

He nodded. “I understand that much. What do we need to do to effect my cure?”

I allowed myself the luxury of a very deep sigh of relief, which startled him momentarily but led him to favour me with a timid smile that almost tempted me to smile at him in return. “Well, I hadn’t counted on your being sick and half-starved. I need to return to my apothecary in Hogsmeade to get a few things…”

“Apothecary? Are you working as a Healer? I didn’t know that you were qualified!”

“There’s a great deal about me that you don’t know,” I reproved him with considerable restraint. “I am a qualified Healer and, as I prefer potions to spells generally speaking, I operate out of an apothecary that I purchased in Hogsmeade shortly after the war. I no longer drive myself half mad attempting to teach bored wizarding brats the subtle art and science of potion-making year after year which, quite frankly, not one in a hundred of them has the least inclination to master. Hermione Granger is Potions Mistress up at the castle now and a damned good one. I saw to that personally, so that the Regents would not be the least bit tempted to call me back. And before you think that I’m turning into a kindly wizard in my…more mature years, I should tell you that I purchased my shop with blood money from having turned in several of my former colleagues and I’m making money hand over fist. Which is why I can well afford to heal one inconsequential werewolf, free of charge. Have I satisfied that damnable curiosity of yours yet?”

He nodded and pressed his lips tightly shut lest he burst out laughing, but his eyes twinkled with suppressed mirth. “Mmm-hmm. Yes. Quite,” he averred as soon as he trusted himself to speak. “You were, ah, explaining some sort of, um, preliminary cure that you need to fetch back supplies for, I believe.”

“Indeed. I need to administer a potion to you tonight that, together with certain healing techniques, will rid you of your abominable lung ailment before tomorrow night. As I told you earlier the cure for lycanthropy is harsh, so you need to be in far better health than you presently are for me to administer it to you.”

He was naturally all too familiar with the less palatable properties of healing potions. We have a saying in the wizarding world: The more powerful the medicine is the fouler smelling and more evil tasting it’s bound to be. What I planned to prepare for him was not an exception to the rule.

“Well, it can’t be any nastier than the Wolfsbane Potion, I suppose.”

“No,” I told him truthfully enough, “but… It does contain just a trace of aconite…”

“Wolfsbane? God, Severus! Do you know any potions that don’t employ wolfsbane?”

“Quite a few,” I confessed half-apologetically, “but unfortunately the remedy you presently require does contain it. But it’s a Chinese aconite, Remus, carefully prepared and highly refined. I promise you that the formula is nowhere near as unpleasant as what I brewed for you every month whilst you were teaching at Hogwarts and later during your efforts on behalf of the Order.

He shuddered. “I should hope not!”

“You’ll manage.”

I heard a low growl in the back of his throat, but he refrained from complaining further about the potion that I intended to dose him with before I retired for the night. After a moment, he inquired if he might lie down whilst I returned to Hogsmeade to procure what I needed to prepare the draft that would cure his pneumonia, because he felt extremely tired.

“Yes, of course.”

“Would you mind Disapparating from inside my cottage and Apparating back into it so that I needn’t let you in and out? It’s cold tonight and… I’m exhausted. It’s tiring me out just to breathe!”

I took his pulse (which was quick, weak, and uneven), checked his tongue (which was desiccated and red), observed how his cheeks looked rouged compared to the waxy pallor of the rest of his skin, and felt the dry heat rising from his forehead (which not that long ago had been slick with sweat)…and I feared for his life. Without hesitation on either of our parts, I walked him to his bed and drew back the covers. “You do need to rest,” I agreed in my best and most soothing professional voice. “I’ll be back in less than half an hour, but it will be midnight before your potion is ready. There’s no reason in the world that you shouldn’t sleep until it’s time for me to give it to you.”

He nodded and squeezed my hand gently as he stretched out on the makeshift pallet upon which he slept. “Thank you, Severus. For everything.”

I pulled the bedclothes up to his chin. Impulsively I kissed his fevered brow and whispered, “Sweet dreams.” Eyes already shut he smiled and patted my hand but said nothing. I immediately repaired to the centre of the room to Disapparate.

Remus was hard asleep when I returned. For the first few moments that I stood at the heart of his cottage unable to move because of the vertigo that Apparating occasions in me, I was terrified that I had come to his aid too late. He lay quiet and unmoving upon the mattress of branches topped with bed sheets, pillows, thin blankets, and an obviously second-hand coverlet, which constituted his bed. Nor could I detect the faintest evidence of respiration coming from him: not a snore, not a snuffle, not a muffled cough, not the least whistling trace of a wheeze. Just as I mastered my dizziness and nausea to the point that I felt confident that I could reach his side without falling down or spewing the contents of my stomach onto his floor, at least half a minute of continuous hard hacking shook his thin frame, followed by several deep moans and the sound of him restlessly tossing about to find a posture more conducive to his breathing freely.

The relief that swept through me was so intense that I barely managed to reach the cold flagstones of his hearth before collapsing onto them clumsily. Unopposed tears coursed down my cheeks, spilling onto my (thankfully black) robes and trembling hands. I sat there weeping uncontrollably long enough to lose track of the time. I was astonished by the depth and intensity of my feelings. For a quarter of a century, I had feared Remus Lupin, distrusted him, blamed him, and even forced myself to hate him; but I had, until recently, buried the lust, the longing, and, yes, the love that I felt for him so deep inside me that nothing short of Veritaserum could have elicited my acknowledgement of it. Nothing, that is, until the events of Voldemort’s second rebellion threw us together again and again in circumstances that were, to grossly understate the matter, highly charged emotionally. The wizard once more sleeping peacefully across the room from me was blissfully unaware that I was sufficiently conscious and coherent following my rescue from the Dark Lord’s dungeons to know that he eased some of my torment by running it to ground through his own body and soul, or to realize that the parting kiss and wish for pleasant dreams that I bestowed upon him a few minutes ago knowingly echoed his own when (after a lively row with his champion Dumbledore and quite reluctantly) he left me to recover alone whilst he returned to battle. Never let it be said that Remus is less of a dissembler than I am; he is merely a far more charming and kindly liar than I will ever be.

I did not indulge myself in tears and reveries too long. I had work to do. In less than a quarter of an hour of my return to what passes for normalcy in the ongoing insanity of my existence, I had lit a good fire upon my host’s hearth with kindling and logs that I had brought from my woodpile in Hogsmeade and set up a work station on his kitchen table, which is sturdier and more reliable than the unsteady table in front of the sofa upon which I had served our tea. Not long after that, the ingredients of the Breath of Life Potion were ready to be added to the cauldron of spring water (from the well in my backyard) that I had set to simmer on the lowest bracket of his fireplace. As I sat beside the homey blaze and combined the ingredients of the draught in the correct order and carefully timed sequence, which the formula demanded, I cursed myself once or twice for not having simply bundled Remus up in his bedclothes and Apparated him to my apothecary and lodgings with me. Surely it would have saved time! And guaranteed that whatever supplies I needed as a Healer would be at my fingertips. Furthermore, it would have given me the advantage of encountering—what is he to me? Childhood sweetheart? First love? Only love? Lifelong enemy? Personal boggart? Ongoing obsession? It would have given me the advantage of encountering him on my home ground rather than his. Yet so powerful was my intuition that he must be met where he would be most comfortable that, for once, I stilled the ongoing chorus of my self-condemnation almost effortlessly. Besides, I rationalized, he might very well have been too weak and worn to bear the stress of even being passively Apparated. I convinced myself that not removing him from his home had been more of a matter of logic than an act of empathy. Some of the tension tightening my body into various aches and pains began to dissolve.

By a stroke of incredible luck, the contents of the cauldron were reduced by half and had been carefully strained through three layers of cheesecloth and returned to their bracket over the fireplace to be reduced yet again by half when Remus experienced a respiratory crisis. As before, a hard hacking cough beset him, but this time it did not pass. Soon he was gasping and wheezing violently as he struggled to catch his breath. He forced his exhausted body into a sitting position before I could come to his assistance and swayed unsteadily on the edge of his bed as he attended to the painful business of getting enough air in and out of his lungs to keep him alive. The guilty memory of my having told him a few hours earlier that he looked like hell flitted about my mind as I sat down beside him and braced his body against mine. His appearance had been unaccustomedly seedy and dishevelled at the time of my arrival, but now the agony that the simple act of breathing had become for him truly did make him look like one of Michelangelo’s damned souls adorning the Last Judgment mural of the Sistine Chapel.

“I know that what’s happening to you is frightening,” I told him. “Terrifying, really. I had asthma until my mid-teens. Do you remember?” I thought he nodded but was uncertain. Perhaps his head merely jerked from the incessant coughing that shook his whole body like a rag doll in the hands of a toddler throwing a tantrum. “But you need to relax,” I continued. “It’s like dealing with quicksand—or Devil’s Snare. The harder you fight for your next breath, the more intense the spasm in your chest will become that keeps you from drawing it. You can breathe without so much effort. I promise. I’ll help you. Will you let me help you?”

To my great relief I heard a choked yes in addition to observing another, steadier nod. I smiled, untroubled that my gesture might indicate any personal concern for his welfare on my part. If Remus decided later that I had gone “warm and fuzzy” on him and that he disapproved, I would simply counter that even I had been forced to develop some semblance of bedside manner when dealing with the very ill, for which he ought to have been grateful.

“All right. First I want you to sit facing me in the centre of the bed. I’ll tuck my legs into a lotus posture so that you can wrap yours around me and lean against me with your arms thrown over my shoulders.”

“Why not just lemme prop myself against the headboard?” he choked out on a ragged exhalation. “It would be less in…less personal.”

“True enough,” I replied without hesitation, “but I want to set the pattern for your respiration and that’s far more easily accomplished if you can feel the movements of my chest and allow my throat and heart chakras to regulate yours. If you find it that bloody distasteful to sit facing me, I can splay my legs out so that you can sit between them with your back to my chest!”

I watched the tears gather in his eyes before he squeezed them tightly shut. “It isn’t that, Severus,” he whispered, fighting back the tears he was too proud to shed in my judgmental presence. “I didn’t think you’d like it, because it appears to be so personal…” His thoughts trailed off into an exceptionally intense fit of coughing that brought up a great wad of almost grey sputum streaked with both dry blood and fresh, which completely covered the centre of his palm. Merlin! I had to keep him from crying, lest his next bout of hacking be even worse than the one just past

“You’ve nothing to worry about,” I promised him in the calmest and most professionally concerned voice that I could muster. I pulled my handkerchief from my robes and cleaned his hand. “However it might look to an outsider, what I proposed to you is simply pragmatic. It isn’t…personal. Not really. No more than my wiping your hand off just now was. It’s…impartial. Indifferent. Everything that I’m doing for you tonight is just good healing practice—and the means to the end of getting you well enough to be cured of your lycanthropy tomorrow.” Oh, how I layered lie upon lie to reassure him! Finally I concluded, “But it is necessary for you to relax, and I do need for you to lean against me one way or another and let me help you recover a normal breathing rhythm. If you don’t mind overly much, I had rather that you face me. It would make my work a bit easier. Either way, though, I can do what I need to do.”

He chose to sit facing me. Another round of coughing, fortunately dry and far less deep than the one preceding it, shook his torso just after he positioned his arms across my shoulders. His chest rattled against my own, and I felt him tense against the pain and shortness of breath that he expected. “Relax!” I ordered him firmly but gently and tapped his back briskly with the tips of my fingers. “Can you feel my chest moving against yours?”

After a few seconds, I felt his head nod against my shoulder and heard him answer hoarsely in the affirmative.

“Good. Pay attention to its rise and fall. Fill your mind with nothing but the awareness of my breathing in and out. You concentrate on my breath, and I’ll keep track of yours. It’s easy enough to do, Remus,” I cajoled him hypnotically. “You’re a wizard. You mastered visualization, concentration, and breath control when you were 11-years-old. You mastered them even before I did, so this is a very easy task for you, yes? Just picture us breathing together effortlessly.” I felt the tightness of his jaw, throat, and chest begin to subside. “That’s it. Keep breathing with me. It’s easy. Feel how effortlessly the air is flowing in and out of our lungs?”

He was nodding yes when yet another volley of coughs caught him off guard, momentarily persuading him to tense his body against them. They were not as deep as their immediate predecessors, though, nor as painful. “Relax,” I reminded him as once more I tapped him from the tops of his shoulders to the bottom of his ribcage. “I promise that I won’t let…that I’ll see to it that you get enough air. Just let go and let me breathe for us. I can breathe for both of us for a while. You’ll be all right. It will feel so much better not to have to struggle to inhale. Just be mindful of my in-breaths and yours will match them. All the air that you need will slip right into you without a fight.” I kept on coaching him for another fifteen or twenty minutes, until he was snoring peacefully against my neck, at which point I reached behind him to plump up all four of his pillows into a single heap that I carefully lowered his head and upper body onto. I could tell from the fragrance of the potion simmering across the room from us that it was not yet ready to be strained again and sweetened with enough honey to mask the worst of its taste and soothe my patient’s throat, which was raw from so much coughing. Nor was it time to add the aromatic herbs that would ease his congestion and counteract the nausea that even the finest Chinese aconite causes a werewolf. I spent the few minutes of free time that remained to me wiping his face and hands clean with warm water that I had heated with mage fire and enjoying the spectacle of his relatively unimpeded respiration.

I finished the Breath of Life Potion around 11:30pm and set a stasis spell upon it to preserve its optimal properties whilst I completed the rest of my preparations. Just before midnight, I roused Remus from his sleep to accomplish his healing.

“So tired!” he protested. “Can’t you just bring me my potion? I’ll drink every drop, no matter how awful it tastes. You have my word.”

Other than groaning briefly, he neither protested nor resisted as I pulled him up from his bed into my arms. “You appear to be a bit wobbly, old boy. Shall I help you walk to the fireplace or had you rather I levitate you?”

“I told you. I’d rather have my potion in bed,” he grumbled. “Can’t you just get it for me, please?” I

stroked his hair soothingly. My fingers came away tacky with body oils and gritty with dried sweat. “Unfortunately, no,” I consoled him. “I need to give you a treatment in addition to your potion, and I can see what I’m doing better by the light of the fire. Besides, the fire will keep you from taking a chill while you’re naked.”

“Naked?” This time his groan was prolonged and ended in a deep sigh. “Why precisely do I need to be naked, Severus?” he asked with what I took to be an _expression of unmitigated disgust on his face.

“So that I can paint certain sigils on your body that will greatly potentiate the effects of the potion,” I told him with absolute candour as we made our way to the fireplace, only omitting the detail of my own discomfort at the thought of exposing him to my less than 100% innocent gaze so as not to alarm him. I knew bloody well that, short of becoming the decomposing corpse that I had objected to the possibility of discovering, there was nothing that could render Remus Lupin’s body too distasteful to hold a certain erotic fascination for me. “And also so that I can more readily observe and direct the flow of energy through your aura.”

“So since the sickness is located in my lungs, all I really need to do is remove my pyjama jacket. Right?”

“I’m sorry but no disease affects just one part of the body, Remus. You know that!” I added with a trace of petulance when the crestfallen look on his face piqued my guilt over the necessity of my treating myself to a peepshow at his expense. Damn it, it was not as if I was going to indulge in a full-blown masturbation fantasy! Why was he so unable to imagine that I would be far too hard at work saving his misbegotten life to treat him like a sodding harem boy who existed only to provide me with a bit of voyeuristic pleasure? “Not every mark will be placed on your upper body, and I really do need to see your energy field in its entirety. I… I hadn’t realized the necessity of your being nude would disturb you so. You… Well, we both know that sometimes… That is… You’ve been a werewolf for 37 years. Surely some Auror or Dangerous Creature Control Officer or even one of the doctors at St. Mungo’s has ordered you to disrobe for him. It won’t be that bad because…because I, ah…I’m someone you know. I won’t hurt you or do anything to shame you. Merlin! Don’t you know that? I’m not a stranger!”

“That makes it worse,” he answered quietly.

I felt myself blush and my anger rose with its intensity. “Oh, for fuck’s sake! If all I wanted was to rape your bony arse, I could have done so hours ago and left knowing that you wouldn’t live long enough to tell the tale. What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you trust me to act like any ethical Healer in the wizarding world would, whatever his personal feelings might be, and not subject us both to your ill-timed histrionics?”

“Has it ever occurred to you that it isn’t necessarily you who are the object of my distrust? It’s very close to the full moon and my body’s reactions aren’t always disciplined or reasonable at this time of the month. I wouldn’t want to embarrass you, or myself, by responding to your touch…inappropriately. All right?” When I stood my ground thunderstruck by the implications of his words and therefore mute, his own temper—so seldom seen—engaged itself. “Never mind! Why did I think you’d give a great bloody damn? Just do whatever the hell you have to and I’ll look upon it as one more reason that I hate being a goddamned werewolf!”

By the end of his speech he was beginning to choke and, given the circumstances, bringing his coughing and wheezing back under control was no easy matter. At first he batted my hands away but, as he weakened, he let me draw him into a loose embrace. My own anger was spent; it had died the moment he confessed his own fear to me. Had I condemned his admission of desire for me, I would have condemned myself. By forgiving him what he saw as objectionable in himself, I could forgive myself as well. Miraculously, for once in my life I chose to forgive. Perhaps I was simply too concerned with his well being to risk another tiff. Who knows really? Once his breathing was back under control, I explained to him that sometimes patients in general (and not just werewolves under the influence of the waxing moon) respond to caring touch sexually and that all a Healer does under the circumstances is disregard the patient’s arousal.

“I promise you,” I concluded, “I won’t say or do anything insensitive. Nor will I assume that anything other than the moon’s waxing occasioned it.”

He nodded and started to speak but thought better of it and instead busied himself with un-belting his robe and dropping it to the floor. A few minutes later, he was fully disrobed and resting supine in the pile of warm bedding that I had brought to his cottage from my unused guestroom. He did a good job of maintaining his composure as I painstakingly marked out the paths that I wanted his medicine to follow and the forces that I wished to guide it to them upon his bare skin. Only once did he succumb to his self-consciousness and, in all fairness, I think any wizard would have done the same. One of the two main transfer points of polarized energies in a man’s body rests upon the crown of his head, but the other lies midway between the base of his scrotum and his anus. In order to activate it, a Healer must press against it hard for many seconds. As he had predicted he might, Remus had gotten an erection earlier whilst I was still tracing sigils in less…sensitive areas. Almost as soon as I touched him there, he came. Twenty-five years later than either of us had dreamed would be the case, I unwilling brought my first lover to orgasm. How I wanted to weep and upbraid whatever unfeeling deity runs the universe for the travesty of that climax! I maintained my composure flawlessly instead and wiped Remus’s tears away and helped clean the moon-white gobs of semen from his belly and groin. Then I took the time to comfort him and reassure him that he had done nothing wrong before trailing more arcane symbols down his thighs and shins all the way to the soles of his feet. When I was done, I helped him sit up and offered him the draught that, for all the honey that I had stirred into it, was still unspeakably bitter to drink.

Remus knew better than to sip a medicinal potion, so he manfully downed a third of the goblet in a single swallow. He immediately gagged, and I reached out to steady the cup as he sealed his mouth and nose with his hand lest he vomit the medicine up and not get a full dose.

“You don’t have to do that,” I explained. “There are so many anti-emetics in there and I put so many spells to prevent vomiting on it, that you couldn’t puke if I paid you to.”

“Are you sure?” he asked dubiously. Pulling a face he added, “Dear God, that’s awful! It’s every bit as bad as gulping down Wolfsbane Potion on the night before the full moon, Severus.”

“I’m truly sorry,” I told him, brushing a strand of dirty honey-brown hair from the corner of his mouth as I spoke, in what I hoped was a casual, friendly gesture. “I thought that with all the honey and aromatics that I incorporated into the formula it wouldn’t taste all that rotten.”

His smiled apologetically. “How many times do I have to tell you that for a werewolf…”

“…there’s no such thing as an inoffensive quantity of wolfsbane,” we finished in unison. “I know,” I confessed, “but hope springs eternal. At least tomorrow is the very last time you’ll have to force any down as a werewolf. Speaking of which, you need to finish the potion you’re drinking now before it gets cold because…”

“…aconite is far more effective warm. I know! What do you suppose God was thinking when he made up that little law of nature?”

I laughed. “I like you better when you get a bit bitchy, Remus. Or rather I find you easier to get along with.”

He raised one perfectly arched eyebrow. “Truly? I was thinking earlier that I like you better when you’re willing to hazard being a bit kind.”

“Alas! My stock is going to take a plunge,” I quipped, “because I’m about to reiterate that you really need to drink up!”

He forced the contents of the goblet down in two more big gulps, followed by an enormous shudder. Handing the cup back to me, he remarked, “Your stock’s doing fine, Severus. I also like you better when you joke with me.”

He lay back upon the bedding beside his hearth. “Do your damnedest.”

“Not to worry. I already have.” I was right, of course. Having energy moved about his astral body whilst the Breath of Life Potion began to take effect was mildly pleasant and mildly boring. After less than five minutes, Remus Lupin was snoring away with a contented look on his face. When I was done, I covered him up and turned towards his sofa. I was surprised to feel his hand close over my wrist,

“Can I get dressed and go back to bed now?”

“If you feel well enough, yes.”

I only needed to help him button his jacket and steady him slightly as he walked across the room. “Sleep well,” I wished him as he settled onto his bed. “I’ll be on the sofa if you need me.”

“Why don’t you share my bed with me?” he inquired. “It doesn’t look like much, but it’s more comfortable than the sofa.”

“Are you sure that you want me to?”

“Yes. No matter what happens, it wouldn’t be worse than what happened by the fire. Or at least I don’t think so.” When I nodded and gave him an unsteady smile, he added, “Besides, how often does a werewolf get to curl up next to a warm, friendly body? If it doesn’t offend your sense of professional ethics too greatly, I would enjoy it. Assuming that is it doesn’t offend your aesthetics either. I’m a bit, um, ripe at the moment.”

I nearly wept with laughter. “Compared to approximately half the potions that I can concoct, including the one that you just downed, you smell like attar of roses—all right?”

He was still chuckling when he pulled me down on the bed beside him. To my great joy, all that had failed to trigger more coughing. “Oh, well! If that’s the case, have this pair of somewhat antique pillows, and sweet dreams to you.”

“Sweet dreams,” I replied, not daring to give him the kiss that I longed to. I turned my back to him. Once he thought that I was asleep, he kissed the nape of my neck softly and carefully draped his arm about my waist. Once I thought that he was asleep, I used his arm to pull him closer to me. Very soon thereafter our tired bodies actually did succumb to the blandishments of Morpheus.

Thanks to my chronic insomnia, I was amazed to discover upon waking that I had slept until just past dawn, when the morning light had begun to creep into Remus’s bed where he and I lay complexly tangled about one another. I withdrew from his embrace by stages, taking care to soothe him back to sleep each time that it seemed certain that he would wake. I knew that he would need his rest. He could not have slept soundly for days, perhaps even weeks, whilst the walking pneumonia that had weakened him so perilously close to the point of death had busied itself with looting his body of the energy that he needed to stay alive. Nor would he be able to sleep from moonrise tonight until moonset tomorrow morning. The cure that I had promised him would, to be sure, perform as advertised—but not without first subjecting him to the sufferings of the damned. The hours of the morning that lay ahead of us were the only respite from utter exhaustion that he could enjoy until the curse of lycanthropy had been lifted from him, so I bespelled the area surrounding his bed to block out daylight and the sounds of the day and got about attending to the first stages of making the potion that would liberate him and preparing our breakfast. The formula contains 39 herbal and other ingredients that must be decocted, thrice strained, and decocted and thrice strained twice again before being administered. Although I would have several opportunities to leave my cauldron unattended in the course of the day, I had waked with little time to spare if, as was necessary, I was to give him his medicine just as the moon was rising.

By mid-morning the first ingredients of my yet-unnamed cure for lycanthropy were successfully simmering in Remus’s fireplace and an enormous assortment of breakfast delicacies graced his coffee table, which despite its ricketyness I had pressed into service because the kitchen table was still strewn with potioning supplies and equipment. I left the food under appropriate spells to maintain the proper temperatures and freshness and went to rouse my host and patient.

He blinked at me owlishly several times before answering the question, “Are you ready to get up now?” Rubbing his eyes, he replied, “Uh-huh. Yes. I suppose so.”

I patted a lock of hair sticking up at a 60-degree angle to its fellows back into place, and a winsome smile briefly graced his still sleepy features. “I can see there’s no need to ask if you slept well,” I announced with mock severity. “Had you rather have a wash first or break your fast?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“Just how tousled I look and how strong I smell.”

“Ah, those famed social graces of yours are falling back into place!” I teased, encouraged by his remark of the previous night about liking it when I joked with him. “Charmingly tousled and not half as strong as the potion that I’ve been brewing for the past few hours.”

He groaned. “Oh, God! It’s not bad enough to make me peckish is it?”

“Just the smell? I think not. I haven’t added the aconite yet, or even unwrapped it and chopped it; and the things that are in the cauldron already are mild and really rather savoury once they’ve cooked down a bit. I take it that you’d like your breakfast before your bath?” “Yes, please.”

We fell to contentedly. I finished my victuals first, of course, because my appetite is…delicate. My physique is that of an ectomorph and my tastes are those of a somewhat finicky gourmand. My companion, on the other hand, is despite his current emaciation a solid mesomorph. Whilst Remus is not precisely strapping, he is a solidly muscled Yorkshire farmer by birth, athletic by inclination, and self-reliant by necessity. He is also a werewolf, which means that his metabolism is unusually high by human standards. Consequently, he can pack in vast quantities of food (when it is available to him) without going to fat. Nor is he a picky eater; had he been so he would have starved long before his forty-first year rolled around. Shortly before the full moon his ability to convert food into energy is almost frightening. I had cooked breakfast with all that in mind. Long after I had pushed my plate aside, I sat watching him eat with a mixture of relief and (for all my knowledge of his dining habits) astonishment. After a bit, he noticed my attentiveness and cocked his head slightly the better to observe me.

“You still eat like a 16-year-old,” I remarked with studied neutrality.

“Umm. I can be quite the glutton,” he agreed.

“That’s not what I meant!”

He set his fork down and sighed. “I know that, Severus. You were being very diplomatic. Sometimes, however, I’m not altogether thrilled with my habits. I’m every bit as much aware as you are that I’m bloody ravenous this morning.”

“That’s only natural!” I interrupted him. “You’re easily two stones below you your ideal body weight and the full moon is only one more night away.”

He in turn broke my chain of thought. “After tonight will the hunger stop?” he asked. “I can’t remember not being hungry, you know—except when I’ve been very sick indeed.”

I nodded. “You’ll continue to enjoy your food more than most of us do, I suspect; but once you’re cured it won’t seem impossible to you to get your fill.” I chuckled. “And you may discover, to your dismay, that if you dine too well you’ll get a bit plump!”

“I wouldn’t mind being a bit plump,” he reflected. “Prosperous looking. I’m far too old to be as skinny as a schoolboy, I think. What are your thoughts on the matter, Sev?” he inquired, falling for a moment into the intimacy that we had briefly enjoyed as secret boyfriends years ago.

I wanted to say foolish things, to tell him how much it had hurt to see his wasted body when I had arrived, to joke about hand-feeding him, a morsel at a time, until he was as plump as he could possibly desire to be. I wanted to tease him about cooking six meals a day, every day, for my favourite halfling, to stroke his well-fed torso, to pinch his abundant flesh and tweak him about what a middle-class burgher he had turned into in his later years. Of course, confessing to any of that would have been tantamount to professing my love for him, which I was determined not to do—at least, not until he had been freed of the curse that had beset him from early childhood. I shrugged instead and dourly informed him that I had no thoughts on the matter, that his appearance was a matter of indifference to me, and that it was foolish to give a great sodding damn about my opinion. I watched every bit of joy drain out of his face. I hardened my heart and bit back the deep swell of emotion that threatened to reduce me to tears. I turned away.

After several uncomfortable moments of silence, Remus forced himself to thank me for his breakfast and the pleasure of my company and stated his intention to bathe, dress, and read a book on magical ciphers until I was ready to dose him with my new creation. ~Curse me, you idiot! ~ I thought despondently. ~Scream at me. Tell me what a bastard I am. Ball up your fists and break my nose like your friend Black did. Merlin! Do something that I know how to respond to. Please! ~

He rose from the table and dragged a tin tub close enough to his sink to fill it without too much effort. Then he rolled up his sleeves and began pumping water into a bucket he had fetched from under the sink.

“I can do that for you,” I told him.

“No need.”

“I would like to.”

He did not answer immediately. He set the bucket down with a bang and leaned against the sink. He drew three deep, loud breaths before he faced me, which reminded me uncomfortably of a bull about to charge his rival or a stallion preparing to trample an enemy. I had managed to engage his anger again and found myself not relishing the thought of his getting “bitchy” in the least. I had forgotten the proverb about not stepping on a wolf’s tail unless one wishes to make the acquaintance of his teeth.

“What I would really like is for you to make up your goddamned mind whether or not it’s worth your while to be civil to me. I can deal with your being a full-time shit to me. No problem! All I have to do is remind myself that you’re not noted for your gracious demeanour and that I’m a werewolf, which is to say a lawful target upon which wizards and witches can discharge their resentments. I would like to get used to dealing with your being kind and respectful towards me most of the time, because… Oh, never mind! I don’t suppose you want to know why it matters to me. It’s none of your bloody concern, is it? You’re indifferent to me. Well, what I want to know is why, if you’re so fucking indifferent, do you bother to be kind or cruel to me? Indifferent is indifferent, Severus! The folks who could care less if I beg or starve or get put down on suspicion of having killed someone are indifferent to me. You are not. What are your feelings towards me?”

I cleared my throat but my voice came out thin and shaky anyhow. “I… I don’t have time to discuss that with you now, but I promise that once you’re cured I will. As for what I said a few minutes ago, it was cruel…and uncalled for. I… I beg your pardon. I really do. And I promise not to indulge in any more outbursts until we have talked about…what upset me. Is that good enough to go on for now?”

Remus let out a long, unsteady sigh. “I suppose that, for now, it has to be.”

“Yes.” I looked him in the eye for the first time since I had destroyed his moment of innocent happiness. “I really would like to help you bathe. Can you give me a few minutes, though? The potion needs tending again.”

“I can manage. I feel much better today, thanks to you. It doesn’t much matter who fills the tub, and I know how particular you are about your potions.” He started to turn back to the sink.

“No! Wait.”

“Yes?”

“I, uh… I’d like to make amends for my rudeness. I can draw your bath, throw in some herbs that are relaxing and protective and, except for one of them, smell rather pleasant…”

He smiled. “Tell me it’s not wolfsbane!”

“It isn’t, actually. Just valerian.”

“Ugh! The rotten sock herb.”

“Less than a twentieth of the formula is valerian, Remus. And there’s lot’s of lavender in it. You like lavender, don’t you? It has a very clean, soothing fragrance without being cloying and feminine.”

“All right. Yes. I like lavender, and I appreciate your offer. You may draw my bath.”

“Good! And I can help you scrub all those sigils off.”

“Really. There’s no need.”

I shrugged. “I made the mess, didn’t I? And it is a bit hard to remove.”

“For a man who doesn’t want to get personal…”

“Remus, please. I have to spend the day with you. I want to spend the day with you. Nor do I want it to be strained and uncomfortable. Can’t you just accept that, at this particular moment in time, it’s easier for me to show you certain gestures of caring about your well-being, about you, than it is for me to make pleasant small talk?”

He did accept it, because from the moment he whispered yes until the moment I finished towelling him off and sent him on his way to get dressed, he allowed me to communicate with him through the silent medium of my hands. Later he sat quietly by my side as I filtered the potion through finely woven linen for the second time. Once that was done, I squeezed his hand gently before telling him, “I have to add the aconite in just a few minutes more. Were you serious about wanting to spend the afternoon reading?”

“As a matter of fact, I was.”

“Do you feel well enough to sit outside until sunset? I’d just as soon that you not inhale the fumes from your medicine for hours. Would you be warm enough and comfortable?”

“Warm enough. I wouldn’t mind your company from time to time, if you can spare a few moments.”

I kept my composure, barely, without resorting to a harsh rebuke. “I can spare the time. You never cease to amaze me, you know,” I added in a voice so soft that only a werewolf would have picked up on it.

He gave me his trademark quirky smile, the one that I find endearing even when it infuriates me most. “Yes, well. You never cease to amaze me either…Sev. See you later.”

He saw me twice before the sun drew near to sinking beneath the horizon and the all but full moon prepared to rise in the east. Those times were good. The third time, when I came bearing his deliverance, I knew that I was setting chaos loose upon him.

“Best you undress, old chap, because very soon you’ll lose all control of your bodily functions, and later you’ll have the dry heaves for hours. I brought blankets from the house that we can wrap you up in once the incontinence passes, and I’ll build a fire to keep you warm.”

“Why can’t I go through this under my own roof, Severus? I’d feel less vulnerable.” He paused. “I wouldn’t expect you to help me clean up the mess in the morning.”

I placed my fingertips on his lips to silence him. “The ‘mess’ has nothing to do with it, Remus. Part of the cure is letting the moon’s light shine directly on you all night long. It will feel like it’s burning your skin away. It’s one of the worst sensations that you’ll experience. But it’s necessary.”

I had told him enough that his eyes were wide with full-blown terror of the ordeal awaiting him. “It’s worse than a moon change, isn’t it?”

Without even thinking, I stroked his cheek. “Yes,” I admitted. “What happens is that, as soon as you drink the potion, your body acts as if it was the night of the full moon and tries to change; but it isn’t the full moon, so the transformation can’t take place. All night it will try to change.”

“All night? Oh, my God! Severus, I’ll die. Even the few minutes it takes me to change when the moon is full are almost unbearable.”

“You won’t die,” I promised. “None of my experimental subjects died.”

He raked my face with desperate eyes. “Please. I don’t think I can do this. Can’t we wait? Just a few minutes. Please? I didn’t know it would be so terrible! Let me talk to someone you cured first. Please?”

I cupped my hand behind his head and held him close. “There’s not time. You need to drink the potion now. And, besides, none of my subjects can talk to anyone.”

“What?”

“They’re all dead. They were to be put down for attacking wizards or witches, Remus. You… Even the Ministry won’t force a law-abiding werewolf to be an experimental subject; and I couldn’t get anyone to volunteer. My subjects lived up to a year longer than they expected to—and not as werewolves—but finally their sentences had to be carried out.”

“Oh, dear God! What if I lose my mind, Severus? I try to be brave, but…”

“Shh. Shh. I’m as sane as I ever was, and I wasn’t bolted down half as well as you to start with.”

He pulled away and stared at me in utter bewilderment. “What are you talking about?” he demanded.

“The potion cured people who already had lycanthropy; but, to get it licensed, I had to prove that it would prevent someone newly bitten from developing the disease. No one else was interested in chancing it, so… I was my final guinea pig. I got a couple of surprises that I don’t have time to explain just now, but here I am…not that much worse for wear.”

Remus cupped my face in his hands. “Why in God’s name did you do all that?”

I could neither lie nor tell him the whole truth, so I simply said, “For you.”

He quietly disrobed and held out his hand to me. “The goblet, please,” he bade me. When I passed it to him, he lifted it in salute and toasted, “To my deliverer…and my most loyal friend.” Then he drained it at a single go.

I wrapped the softest of the blankets around him as if it were the ceremonial cloak of a very great king. “You have a few minutes before hell breaks loose,” I told him. “Lay down and try to make yourself comfortable. I’ll hold you, if you like…”

“Yes!”

“Later you may not want me to, because you’ll be in so much pain; but my hand will be within reach all night long and you can lay hold of it as often as you like. If you can speak, I’ll do whatever you ask to ease your suffering in any way that I can, although… I’m so sorry, but I won’t be able to do much!”

“You’ll be here? All night? Of your own free will?”

“Yes. Of course!”

“That will be enough. I…”

The moon had emerged, unseen by either of us, from behind the trees. Remus howled as if every demon in hell was torturing him. In short order, he pissed himself and shat himself. Later he vomited more bile than one would imagine a human body could produce in less than half a day. He writhed in agony as every voluntary muscle in his body cramped hard—again, and again, and again. He screamed. He moaned. Sometimes he was able to curse. Even more rarely, he was able to look in my eyes, to seize my hand, to ask me to hold him, touch him, stroke his pain-racked body, and please, please, dear God, not leave him.

I never once left him, all night long. When the moon set, his writhing gave way to trembling and his screams, to barely audible moans. He took my hand in his, slowly drew it to his lips and kissed it. “It’s over!” he said a few moments later, when he recovered his powers of speech. “It’s finally over.” To my great joy, there was not only relief in his tired voice but satisfaction, even jubilation.

“Yes,” I assured him. “Would you like for me to get you inside now?”

He nodded and kissed my hand again, and I found myself somewhat incongruously wishing that he would never stop and might later choose to kiss me elsewhere as well. Putting that thought from my mind as greatly premature, I asked, “Would you like for me to levitate you this time?”

“Yes.”

A few minutes later, I had him cleaned up and tucked into his bed. Breakfast, I knew from experience, had better wait. I was about to head for his sofa when for the second morning in a row Remus seized my wrist. His grip was feeble, as was his voice; but his question, “Do I have to burn that damn sofa to get you to voluntarily share my bed?” made me laugh with delight.

“No,” I replied. “I’m slipping under the covers now and nipping a couple of your pillows.”

We made no attempt to wait until we thought that the other was asleep. I gathered him into my arms, and he wrapped his around me as best he could after all the hours that they had cramped. I knew that we would be dead to the world for hours. The night of the full moon promised to be very interesting.

Exhausted, we slept far into the day of the waxing moon’s culmination. Late-afternoon shadows were rapidly encroaching upon Remus’s bed as I returned to waking consciousness from triumphant, and I hoped precognitive, dreams of enjoying the fierce sweetness of his body. I thought, at first, to let my companion continue sleeping, I was certain that he needed the rest and I reasoned that, if he awoke to a world already gilded with the rich light of the harvest moon, he would be spared the anxiety of awaiting its rising and confirmation that he had indeed been cured of his lycanthropy. On further reflection, however, I knew that he would awake panicked, not realizing right away that this full moon was any different from the 493 preceding it, beginning with the night of his first moon change. I decided to ease him back into wakefulness whilst the last vestiges of daylight spilled their reassurance through the faded curtains of his small kitchen window. Still more than half hard from my dreams, I longed to rouse him (in more ways than one!) with sensual touches and insistent kisses, murmuring words of love and desire. Practical as always I settled instead upon shaking him by the shoulder and calling his name repeatedly.

The small frown that accompanied his initial resistance to waking gave way to the first hint of a smile. Remus’s eyelids began to flutter and finally he managed to open them for a second or two at a time. His smile broadened and came to fruition as his still drowsy gaze focused upon my face. Cupping my cheek with a slightly trembling hand, he murmured, “You’re still here. What am I to make of that?”

“That ‘here’ is where I want to be,” I answered obliquely, careful to assure him of my ongoing interest in him without leaving myself overly vulnerable to his rejection.

He extended his thumb down the side of my face and traced my lips with the satiny firmness of its pad. When a moment later he closed his eyes and reached behind my head to pull me to him, I gasped despite myself. For the first time in more than a quarter of a century, my long-lost love was about to kiss me!

The kiss never happened. My Cinder Lad belatedly took note of his surroundings or, more specifically, of the hour. With a cry of dismay, he pushed me from him and stared at the western window horrified.

“Help me!” he begged. “There isn’t much time, so we have to hurry. Bind me and gag me as you did the night that Sirius escaped from Hogwarts.” When I failed to do as he bade immediately he seized me by the arms and demanded. “Now! It’s almost too late already. You have to restrain me now!”

I shook off his hold without much difficulty. I am considerably taller than he is and, given his current state of emaciation, quite a bit heavier as well, despite my raw-boned build. Furthermore, he had not yet recovered from the previous night’s taxations, and he no longer possessed the superhuman strength of a werewolf. I was tempted to slap sense into him, as if he was a particularly flighty young witch giving in to an annoying propensity for hysterics; but I knew that, although his overwhelming fear was no longer necessary, it was fully comprehensible and grounded in decades of lycanthropic existence. As gently as his agitation permitted, I laid hold of his forearm and rotated its medial surface towards him, pushing up the sleeve of his pyjama jacket as I did so.

“Look at your wrist, Remus,” I insisted firmly but without harshness. When he complied with my command, I asked him, “Where is your Registry number?”

He stared dumbfounded at the unmarked patch of skin where the magical tattoo that identified him as a werewolf ought to have been. “It isn’t possible,” he whispered, struck almost mute with amazement because of what he did not see. “Only death is supposed to erase it. Severus…?” The blood drained from his face, and I hastily pulled him to me because I thought that he was going to faint.

“Breathe,” I reminded him, holding him so close that I could feel the rough pounding of his heart as I stroked his trembling body. “Being cured of lycanthropy effaces a registration number, too. It fades away within a few hours of the breaking of the curse. You won’t change tonight, Remus,” I promised him. “You will never again experience having your body and soul violently transformed against your will.”

He turned in my arms in order to look me in the eye. “That’s God’s own truth, isn’t it, Severus?”

Nodding I brushed a strand of honey-coloured hair that had fallen across his eyes back into place. He collapsed against my shoulder and cried himself hoarse whilst I held him and rocked him and kept on reminding him that the moon no longer had the power to do him any mischief. The latter point was extremely important, because Remus wept for a very long while and, when his tears finally came to an end, Luna was pouring the full flood of her light through the double window opposite the kitchen that fills his quarters with the sun’s brightness by day.

“I don’t suppose that there’s a lake within walking distance of here,” I remarked with studied casualness once he sat up in the bed again snuffling and began to wipe his face on his sleeve.

“No,” he confirmed, “although the creek just beyond my dooryard opens into a lovely little river less than a mile south of here. Why on earth are you asking about that now, though?”

I smiled. “I have my reasons. Be a good chap and get dressed for a short hike down to that lovely little river of yours, whilst I put on the rest of my clothes and locate our picnic amongst my supplies.”

“Severus! I can’t go out tonight.”

“Oh, why not? Are you expecting company?” I teased.

“I…I wouldn’t be comfortable,” he let his gaze fall upon the moonlight spilling ever more aggressively into his home. “In fact, I was just thinking of closing the shutters, lighting a few candles, and getting a fire going in order to cook supper. I have a good appetite tonight.”

I touched his face lightly, tentatively. “There’s nothing abroad in the night that can do you any harm,” I reminded him. “Humour me. Please? Twenty-five years ago I wanted to take you down to the lake at Hogwarts for a moonlit supper, so I asked your friend Sirius where I could find you and… And all of our lives were turned topsy-turvy, to say the least! Now I’m finally able to extend the invitation that I meant to all those years ago. It’s a small boon that I’m asking of you. Surely…”

“Not that small,” he countered ruefully. “I feel like a fool and a coward into the bargain, Sev, but well past her rising I’m as fearful of this moon as any other. There’s never in all my memory been a time that I wasn’t afraid, and perhaps there never will be.”

“There can be,” I insisted. I captured his hand and touched its palm lightly and then, with far greater deliberation, I stroked the creamy purity of his wrist. “You’re neither a fool nor a coward, Ray,” I assured him, using the pet name that I had given him during our brief sixth-year romance: “Ray, short for Remus,” I had told him; ~Ray, for the dazzling ray of sunlight that you are in the depths of my darkness~ I had left unsaid. “You’ve suffered more than I can imagine by the light of the full moon,” I acknowledged, “and I have a rather unhealthy knack for mentally conjuring up all manner of pains and horrors so that’s saying a lot. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t forge a new relation with the old girl, does it?”

After a few moments’ deliberation he admitted that it did not.

“I’m not asking you to go out all by yourself and let her light beat down on you relentlessly,” I continued. “I wouldn’t dream of that! It would overwhelm you, but… Have you never dreamed of being an ordinary wizard and going for a moonlit walk with someone who, ah, enjoyed your company—and the beauty of the night?”

“Of course, I have! Also of a steady job, a cosy house with an excellent library, and even things as humble as a really satisfying meal or a warm cloak, but…” He broke off abruptly and gave me an odd, excited, lingering stare. “Severus, there’s something that it just occurred to me that I need to ask you. We… We haven’t been schoolboy sweethearts hot for one another’s bodies and superheated adolescent affections in a very, very long time, but… Why, exactly, do you want to go down to the river for a picnic with me? And… Well... Were you trying to tell me just now that you would enjoy my company and ‘the beauty of the night’ in, um, a romantic way?”

“I can’t tell you exactly why I want the bloody picnic,” I answered more sharply than I intended, “because I’m not entirely sure myself. As for the possibility of my enjoying your company in a romantic way, if it offends your sensibilities all that much just pretend that I never said it!”

“I never said it offended me,” he protested, “and if I’ve presumed too much…”

“No, you…” the words “haven’t presumed too much at all” died somewhere betwixt my brain and my tongue. “Let’s just drop that line of thought, shall we?”

Eyes full of sadness that tore at my heart, Remus nodded.

“It’s a fine night, though,” I persisted, “and you need to get over your fear of the moon. And, besides, even if he is dead, I’ll enjoy belatedly getting the best of Black.”

“Severus!”

I sighed. “Sorry, I got carried away. Come on, you obstinate dunderhead,” I growled with mock irritation a few seconds later. “Cave in. I’m starving. You must be, too. Stop worrying, put on your robes, and let me take you out for a bloody picnic. You’ve no idea how I browbeat the house elves up at the castle to pack the perfect one. Minerva was absolutely apoplectic. ‘Severus!’ she sputtered. ‘How dare you terrorize my staff? And especially now that they’re free beings with civil rights equal to those of witches and wizards? You don’t even work here any more!’ So I ask you, my dear fellow, how can we waste all that extravagant melodrama?”

Remus dissolved into wave after wave of giddy laughter. When he had recovered enough to speak, he told me, “I don’t suppose that we can, in good conscience, waste it. Let me put on my robes and boots and grab my cloak and wand, and off we’ll go on our antic adventure.” He smiled shyly. “I’m sure that you’ll reel me back in if I get too loopy.”

I bowed to him gallantly, “Upon my word as wizard, sir! I shall combat any excess ‘loopiness’ that I encounter.”

My critics have long claimed that one of my chief faults is my persistent, obsessive demand that, sooner or later, I always get my way. As we trekked towards the grassy clearing overlooking the river downstream from my host’s cottage, I fretted that their complaint was perhaps not without merit. I chided myself, as Remus trudged along with tense body and downcast eyes, for the single-mindedness that had compelled me, after 25 years, to insist that he allow me to enjoy a moonlight supper with him. We moved towards our destination in uneasy, and yet oddly companionable, silence, carrying the requisite baggage with us as we went. Nor was our stress occasioned solely by Remus’s fear of the omnipresent moonlight. No clairvoyance was required to tell that both of us were excited, and troubled, by each other’s presence as well. Furthermore, I felt vaguely disgusted with myself that I kept using my companion’s hypervigilant agitation as a pretext to offer him many “reassuring” touches. Did he halt for a moment, rebelling against the very thought of pressing on? Why I would place one hand on his back and, passing my other hand through the crook of his elbow, silently urge him forward. Did the burden of moonbeams cause him to hunch over with fear? I would rest a comforting hand upon his shoulder before pressing his body upright by bracing it against my own. I was all too eager to hold his hand, to touch his arm, to physically strengthen and console him. I was, or at least I appeared to be, a paragon of supportiveness. But perhaps I was merely a pathetic middle-aged wizard covertly attempting to resurrect a long-dead passion.

Still, he was not disinterested. He reached out to touch me, too, from time to time as we covered the half-mile or so between his dooryard and the site of our picnic. But what if all he wanted was a bit of borrowed strength to help him cope with the ordeal that I had set before him? What if his hands’ constant seeking out of my bodily presence was strictly platonic? Yet earlier he had come so tantalizingly close to kissing me—and there was a desperate hunger to his touch that did not seem purely platonic.

“Have a seat,” I invited as we reached our destination, “and I’ll spread the feast.”

He shook his head. “Not yet. I want to look at her face to face first,” he confided, setting the tablecloth and hamper that he was carrying onto the last, lingering green grass of the summer just ended and pointing at the moon without turning his gaze upward.

I quickly deposited my burden upon the grass as well and stepped closer.

He lifted his eyes to mine but did not yet glance at the luminous sky. “I never would have thought this would be so difficult!” he confessed. “I thought I had mastered my fear of the full moon far better than this.” He ducked his head against my shoulder like a child burying his face in his mother’s skirts when confronted with a stranger he found menacing. “I’m a fool!” he muttered without warning and suddenly did two things, both of which profoundly shocked me: He kissed me full on the mouth and, pulling away from me afterwards, spun like a dervish with outstretched hands and upturned face, completely exposed to the fullness of Luna’s glory.

Breathless he dropped to the ground once his brief dance was done, pulling me down beside him. “I don’t know what got into me,” he told me in a hushed, almost reverent, voice, “but, God, I enjoyed it!” Unsure whether he meant that gazing up at the moon, whirling about in the clearing, kissing me, or some combination of those things had pleased him, I hesitated—fearful that returning his kiss would anger him. The momentary ecstasy that had blazed in his lovely eyes subsided. “Let me help you set out the food,” he offered. Cursing my timidity, I murmured my consent and he busied himself with giving me a hand

We had our fill of the delicacies that I had brought along but neither of us gorged himself on the provisions. When we were done, I quipped that there were easily two or three more picnics left in our baskets. We continued drinking the wine that I had packed and struggling to make the polite if pointless conversation that ought to follow a fine meal. “Fine” is an understatement, too! The kitchen elves had outdone themselves, as much for love of their friend the former Defence teacher as from fear of their occasional tormentor the former Potions Master. Stretched out on the grass with the man I love, I found myself growing morose as I reflected upon just how well-loved he was (despite his former affliction) and how wretchedly unlovable I was.

“Severus, would you do me a favour?” he asked without preamble.

“Name it first,” I insisted, ‘but I suspect that I will.” When he looked at me quizzically, I added, “It’s hard to imagine your asking a boon that I would refuse.”

He gave me a smile that would have made my legs weak had I been standing and leaned over to squeeze my hand and (surely this was wishful thinking!) bring his lips to rest lightly against my cheek for a single, incredible moment. “I want to lay on my back a bit and stare up at the moon,” he told me, “but looking at her still makes me quite dizzy. I feel like I might float off into space any second. That’s nonsense, of course, but it is what I feel. If you would let me put my head in your lap and take hold of your hand when I get light-headed, well, I’m sure I would find it more comfortable. Naturally, if you object to such silliness, I’ll quite understand; but if you’re prepared to indulge me…”

I could barely suppress my glee into a single, decorous chuckle. “Be my guest,” I invited, scooting back a foot or so to lean against the trunk of a venerable willow tree.

He lost no time taking me up on my offer. “Are you comfortable?” I asked solicitously, once he had rested his head and shoulders upon my thighs.

“Very,” he replied with a convincingly satisfied sigh, gazing upward at me, the tree that offered us shelter from the cool night breeze, the starry sky, and the Queen of the Night, Enchantments, and Fated Loves herself. Try as I might, I could not refrain from touching him periodically in small, intimate but not improper ways. Surely he had no difficulty discerning my feelings for him! Especially not when the tips of my fingers momentarily brushed against his lips again and again or I mindlessly twirled silky strands of his hair about my fingers. ~Why must you be such a pathetic cretin? ~ I berated myself as Remus pulled my hand away from his face and silently pressed it against his breastbone, pinning it there with his own hand that from time to time squeezed it or caressed it with a distracted tenderness. I have no memory of moving a single muscle after that for the half hour or so that we remained beneath the willow tree. I countered the slightest impulse to move with the fierce inner injunction, ~Don’t, you fool! Push your luck any farther and he’ll send you on your way with a ‘Thanks ever so much for the cure, Severus, but I need for you to leave now and never, ever, under any circumstances come back!’ ~

Eventually Remus asked, “Are you ready to head back to my place yet, Sev? I’ve genuinely enjoyed lying here like this, but I think I’ve absorbed enough moonbeams for now. The night and the wine and your indulging my longing to feel grounded and connected have somehow conspired to breed a few unruly fancies in odd corners of my mind that…disturb me somewhat.”

“Would it help to share them with me?” I queried foolishly.

He shook his head. With a small, wistful smile he informed me, “I think not.”

We moved back upstream in relative silence, carefully keeping our hands to ourselves. Oh, this was not going well at all! How, without simply spilling my guts to him, would I manage to tell my former boyfriend (for “former” was indeed the painfully correct adjective) that I wanted a second chance to win his affection? Why had I deceived myself for a single moment that he would grant me of all people so precious an opportunity? ~I gave him his heart’s desire! ~ I protested. ~I broke the curse. I cured his lycanthropy. I took away his shame. ~ To which a more bitter, cynical, knowing part of myself replied, ~Idiot! You broke his heart when he was 16-years-old. You deprived him of his one experience of meaningful employment and economic security less than five years ago. In between, every time that your paths crossed you belittled and humiliated him as thoroughly as that vicious tongue of yours knew how. How likely is it that anything short of an Imperius would persuade him to let you have your way with him even once, much less truly open up to your protestations of love? For that matter, how likely is it that you really do love the man? Love of anything or anyone other than yourself is hardly your forte, is it? ~ Yet, in the end, I had loved Remus enough to deliberately let a werewolf sink her fangs deep into my shoulder. Oh, why after James Bloody Potter had rescued me, Albus Meddling Dumbledore had explained my boyfriend’s unhappy plight to me, and Remus himself had tearfully insisted that he was not in on Sirius Black’s homicidal prank had I not given him the sort of second chance that I now longed for? And why, why, why had the love of my youth entrusted a prat like Black with his secret rather than me? But I already knew the answer to that! Remus had told me years ago in the Headmaster’s office, “I didn’t tell him, Sev! He found out, just as sooner or later you would have found out. As for telling you, how could I? Would you have kissed me and held me close and told me that you still loved me? I couldn’t risk losing you!” And so we had lost one another for a quarter of a century. What manner of madman was I to think that what we had felt for one another as boys was any likelier than Humpty Dumpty to ever be put together again?

When we reached his cottage Remus stated his intention of going straight to bed and perhaps reading for a while. Having no desire whatsoever to address the issue of whether or not my company was still welcome in his bed, I announced that I would like a bath before retiring for the night.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll help you draw it.”

“There’s no need,” I told him, by which I meant ~There’s no point! ~

“Let me be the gracious host just this once,” he protested.

“I… Remus, I need a bit of space right now, a bit of privacy. Do you mind?”

His eyes were rapidly filling with tears. Before he turned away, he added with the quiet dignity that he can unfailingly muster in the most difficult of circumstances, “But feel free to join me afterwards. I really wouldn’t wish that damned sofa on my worst enemy.” “Thank you,” I replied and pondered, ~Is that what I am, Ray? Your worst enemy? You’d never say so, but perhaps I am! ~

I dragged the tub into the kitchen, filled it with water from the sink which I warmed with mage fire, considered creating a curtain of some sort to hide me from view but rejected that possibility as needlessly rude, tossed in a packet of the same herbs that I had provided Remus with the night before, undressed with my back to his bed, and settled into the steamy bath to soak the tension out of my muscles and clear my mind of the romantic flummery that I had allowed to beset it. I lost all track of the time. The hot vapours rising from the tub dissipated. The water grew tepid, almost cold. I lay in it, eyes shut and head tilted against the rim, unaware of the change. What finally captured my attention was my growing certainty that I was being watched. I clumsily sat bolt upright and eyes wide open, displacing enough of my bath to turn a sizable patch of floor into a muddy puddle. Before I could offer my apologies, my host tendered his own.

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” he acknowledged sheepishly. He was sitting on his haunches just a few feet away, arms tightly wrapped about knees clutched to his chest as he eyed me with astonishing intensity. I flushed when I realized that my cock was twitching enthusiastically in response to his frank scrutiny. “I’m sorry,” he added as he rose, fussed over smoothing down the jacket of his pyjamas for a long moment, and started to turn away.

This time I seized his wrist. “Stay,” I implored him. “I know what I said earlier, but…” I broke off not knowing what to say. Despite his provocative behaviour, “I’m enjoying your company” seemed unspeakably awkward in view of my semi-erection. I had the presence of mind, however, not to release my hold on him.

With a nearly imperceptible nod, he crouched beside the tub, soaking the knees of his pyjamas in the mud surrounding it in the process. “Do you know what I’d like to do?” he suddenly inquired.

I shook my head but dared not make a sound.

“Bathe you like you bathed me the first morning that you were here; but, unlike you, I don’t have any rational pretext for doing so.”

“It’s all right, Ray,” I heard myself tell him. “You don’t need an excuse. It…at the risk of sounding like a bit of a perv… Well, I’d like for you to give me a good wash actually.”

“Is that what I’m being, a seedy little pervert?”

I fought down the impulse to berate him for his obtuseness. “No. You’re just a man who seems to fancy me somewhat. Which I find very pleasant, if the truth be told.”

His tight shoulders relaxed noticeably and the set of his mouth grew less severe. He stripped off his jacket and set it on a patch of dry ground, fished the now soggy bar of soap from the bottom of the tub, worked its lather into my washcloth, and began to vigorously scrub my shoulders. “The night that you arrived I was feverish, Severus, to the point of delirium.”

“I know.”

He shifted his attentions further down my back. “And when you had me lie by the fire naked, its flames and your touch and the potion that you gave me made me more feverish still, in a completely non-medical sense. It was unbearable! Especially when I came all over myself. But it was also unutterably beautiful. From the first instant that your hands made contact with my overheated skin, I wanted to reach out and set you on fire, as well, with the touch of my own hand. And when I came and you were helping me wipe myself clean, I wanted to scoop a bit of it up with my fingertips and offer it to you. I wanted to tell you, ‘Taste me!’ and to beg the privilege of tasting you as well. But I was confused and ashamed and afraid, totally uncertain as to what your own feelings were, so I said nothing. Nothing at all. Except to ask you to share my bed.”

He paused and re-soaped the cloth before starting to wash my left arm. After a moment, Remus continued, “I thought, ‘He knows. He must know! He saw what his touch did to me. He knows that I want him here beside me on my bed, here in this oh so personal space.’ Then you told me goodnight and turned away. I didn’t know what to think! I despaired. But once I thought that you were asleep I chanced a small kiss, just where your neck and shoulders meet”—he rested his soapy hand on my nape—“and put my arm around you. You didn’t say anything, of course; but when you pulled me to you later, I thought, ‘Perhaps I do still appeal to him. Wouldn’t that be smashing!’ Only by the light of day that somehow seemed a silly conjecture. I’d invited you into my bed, after all—all but told you, ‘Take me. I’m yours’—and all you’d done was draw me to you in your sleep. For all I knew, you were dreaming of someone else when you did that. I decided not to mention it, lest I embarrass us both.”

“Remus, you don’t have to go on like this,” I objected, meaning (but not saying) “You don’t have to bare your soul to me. I’ve heard more than enough to want to carry you back to your bed and make love to you until I’m too exhausted to move.”

“Let me finish!” he protested almost petulantly. He leaned forward, resting his chin on my shoulder and his cheek against my ear and the side of my face. “Let me babble. Please! Just this once, just this one final time, let me speak my heart. When we were boys I never told you how much you meant to me. I was too much the proud Gryffindor to do so—not to mention far too much the frightened wolf boy who didn’t trust his happiness in the first place. Just till I’m finished washing you, let me speak.”

I felt hot tears mingle with the soapsuds trickling down my shoulder onto my chest. I wanted to let him know that I would be delighted to let him speak his heart for the rest of his days, given that its desires so perfectly matched my own. However, I was far too excited (not to mention unsure of the reality of my own good fortune!) to make a sound. I gave a slight nod and raised one slippery hand up to stroke his wet cheek. The sound that he made in response to my gesture was ambiguous: something between a harsh laugh and a profound sob. “Go on, Remus,” I encouraged him, not wanting that wretched noise to be torn from him again.

He renewed the lather on my washcloth and stretched across my back to attend to my other arm. I was troubled that, despite his plea, he did not speak again until he reached my elbow. “Am I mad, after all these years and all the grief that’s passed between us, to want to look at you, Sev, and to touch you? You looked. You touched. But, unlike me, you didn’t lose every shred of self-respect that you possessed in the process!”

My agonized cackle alarmed him as much as his had me. He broke contact as soon as he heard it, and I knew without looking that he had momentarily covered his ears with his hands. I was unwilling to face him, because the mental anguish that we both had undergone had failed to quell my cock’s enthusiasm for the intimacies that he had proposed. Whilst it no longer jutted jauntily against my belly at full attention, it was very obviously still pursuing its own prurient agenda. Still, something needed to be said—and quickly. “You’re being far too hard on yourself,” I insisted. “As you’ve said, I had plausible excuses for indulging in the sight and feel of you. You did not have similar grounds with which to justify your desire to touch and gaze upon me. So, um, well… You’ve had to be more direct. I don’t think there’s any reason that you should feel abased for expressing your desires, though.” I paused before annexing a sterling lie of omission. “Especially since they didn’t offend me.”

He said nothing but busied himself about washing the rest of my right arm. When he was done he instructed me to stand up so that he could get my legs (beginning, I felt uncomfortably certain, with the gluteus group). “Then if you’ll turn around, I can start on the front of you,” he concluded.

I swore savagely sub-vocally, glad that even a wizard who has listened with the attentiveness of a wolf since he was three-years-old could not perceive what I was saying to myself. Unless I came up with a plausible excuse to remain seated, Remus was moments away from either seeing, or hearing about, a very public display of my own affection. After a desperate search for inspiration, I heard myself blurt out, “The bath water’s cooled down completely, and the room temperature has been steadily dropping as well. I don’t want to take a chill, so I think I’ll just hop out and towel off quickly. Would you be a good chap and fetch my night shirt and slippers from the chair next to your bed whilst I do so?”

“I could just re-heat the water,” he assured me matter-of-factly, “if you’re too done in to do it yourself. I’m very good at handling mage fire.”

“No. You needn’t go to the trouble,” I replied. “I…”

Suddenly a sombre-looking Remus stood facing me, rebuttoning the pyjama jacket that he had hastily wrapped back around himself. “Sev, it’s all right.” A small shudder coursed through his body. “What a fool I’ve been! I never meant to embarrass you. You should have asked me to stop. I should have known that all this nostalgic mooning about, desperately striving to rekindle young love, which in all likelihood was nothing more than young lust in the first place, was…rubbish. Simply rubbish! Let me get your things.” For the second time, he started to rise and walk away from me. This time I stopped him not with my hand but with my voice.

“Don’t move!” I roared and he obeyed without hesitation. “~You~ stay put until I’ve had ~my~ say this time.”

He nodded.

“Good! I don’t consider you a fool, Ray. I never have. But if for the sake of argument I was to say that you had said or done anything foolish since my arrival, I would be honour bound to confess that I’d matched you idiocy for idiocy right down the line. Let me show you the latest example,” I continued, rising to display my silly cock, which greeted Remus’s bemused gaze by rising a bit more fully to the occasion. “I sincerely hope that it doesn’t embarrass you! As you can see, I really didn’t want you to stop. I, um… I just didn’t want to get caught in quite such flagrante delicto. I thought the neediness of it all might put you right off—or that you might suppose I was looking for one quick lay when what I really want is to have sex with you for the rest of our lives and to learn… How did you put it? Ah, yes! I want to learn how to be kind and respectful towards you most of the time, as improbable as that might seem at the moment.

“What we had when we were boys wasn’t rubbish, nor was it merely young lust. I loved you with all my heart, which admittedly was a bit cramped and niggardly as hearts go but was the only heart I had to love with. I still love you with all my heart, which may be an even punier specimen than it was 25 years ago but is still the only one I’ve got. The sad, sick truth of the matter is that I never stopped loving you. I just buried my feelings for you so deep in fear and suspicion and anger and guilt that I could pretend that they didn’t exist, so long as I didn’t have to deal with your presence day after day. And if you did happen to be inconveniently about, as during our seventh year at Hogwarts or the first year that Sirius Black had escaped from Azkaban, I knew how to vomit enough ugliness in your direction to make even you, the most loving and forgiving person that I’ve ever known, shy away from facing me. Nonetheless what I really want, what I want so desperately much that it hurts, is to ask you to forgive me for having withheld my love from you until you were cured and to take me back. It hurts beyond bearing to know that, unlike Black, I was too afraid to accept that aspect of who you are—were—and be your lover anyhow.”

“He wasn’t my lover,” Remus murmured almost inaudibly. “He was a staunch friend right up to the moment of his death; but, Severus, how could I have welcomed him to my bed? I’d already given my heart to you, and… He turned you against me.”

“Are you saying we’ve had a mating bond all these years?”

He laughed and there was a trace of bitterness at the root of it. “No, of course not! There’s no such thing as a mating bond. Not all wolves are monogamous, and werewolves… We’re men and women who become wolves as well, but we mate like ordinary humans. Sometimes wisely, sometimes not. I’m neither Sirius Black’s widower nor a coy virgin. I’ve taken six lovers in all. Only one knew that I was a werewolf, however.”

“Why aren’t you off some place with him then?”

“Not that it’s precisely your business, Sev, but he chooses to live in Romania for professional reasons while I opt to stay in the UK for personal ones. For all of their shortcomings British wizards and witches are far kinder and gentler to werewolves than their Slavic counterparts are willing to be.”

“You could go to him now.”

He patted me on the head like the slow child that I was insisting upon being. “That’s true,” he admitted, “but if you’re willing, I had rather stay with you. Now about the matter of my forgiving you for having held back from being my lover until I was cured of lycanthropy...”

“Ah, as I suspected you’re not able to forgive and forget. Perhaps you should reconsider the issue of joining Char…your lover in Romania.”

“You are giving me a migraine!”

“I can prepare a potion that will make it go away.”

“No doubt! Fortunately, short of giving me a lethal dose of poison, you can’t prepare one that will make me go away.”

“I beg your pardon?”

His features softened and a smile began to play its way over his lips. “As you’re so fond of saying, pay attention! I’ve already said that I gave my heart to you when I was sixteen. Never at any time have I said that I took it back. I’ve also told you that I’d rather stay with you than move to Romania. I’ll freely admit that it hurts to know that you didn’t exactly want me ‘in sickness or in health’, but it feels very good indeed to know the lengths that you went to to restore my health. One feeling isn’t more important than the other, darling! We’re both going to have to live with the fact that I’ve experienced both of them. I can promise that I won’t lash out at you because of ‘ancient history’, though, if that’s any consolation.”

“You called me ‘darling’!”

“Yes. As you may recall, I’m fond of endearments. If I hit upon any that you don’t like, let me know—and I’ll do my best to help you get over it.”

I sputtered with laughter. “I also like you better when you pointedly ignore whatever shite I’m spewing from moment to moment.” What I had to say next erased the smile from my face. “Ray, about ancient history. I can’t promise that I’ll never lash out at you.”

He sighed. “I’m aware of that, Sev. And if you’re about to invoke Romania again, do us a favour and don’t. I’ve already told you twice that I’d rather stay with you. Third time’s the charm. Now why don’t you hop out and dry off before your wand gets as wrinkled as a prune? I’m betting there isn’t a potion to fix that! And if you even think about heading for the sofa, so help me it will vanish in a spectacular display of mage fire so fast that you’ll miss it if you blink.”

When I joined Remus in his bed, I offered up yet another confession. “I hope that you won’t be disappointed, because—except for a bit of seventh-year experimentation with Lucius Malfoy and doing my ‘duty’ whilst I served Voldemort—I am a coy virgin.”

“How can that be? You’re handsome and charming…”

I chortled with genuine pleasure. “Well, in the first place, not everyone shares your tastes in that respect, my treasure, and”—I grew very solemn—“in the second and far more important place, few wizards who aren’t Death Eaters want lovers who are, or have been.”

He pressed a soft kiss to my forehead and continued to frame my face with his graceful yet powerful hands. “I hadn’t thought of that. Forgive me, Severus. Had I been your lover when you turned to the Dark, I… I think I would have turned away from you, too, at least until you returned from serving that bastard who cost me so many of my dearest friends.” He exhaled a long, slow column of air. “You see? My feelings about that are no more noble than yours were concerning my lycanthropy!”

“I’m not going to argue with you now, but they bloody are. And, for your information, had I been willing to be your lover I never would have let myself get sucked into Riddle’s nastiness in the first place.”

“That doesn’t…”

I pulled his face close enough to mine to silence him with a kiss. “Not now. We have the rest of our lives to talk things out. If you’re not afraid that my relative inexperience will put you off, I’d rather direct our minds into less intellectual pursuits just now until, um, the wee small hours, or perhaps even moonset.”

Ah, I would bet that the saints in heaven do not smile more beautifully than Remus Lupin did upon hearing that!

“Would you mind taking the lead tonight?” he asked unselfconsciously. “I’m still tired and achy from last night. I can’t tell you how much I would enjoy starting out a bit passively! Um, but I’m not always passive.”

I kissed him again. “I had reasoned as much from the ardour of your kisses when we were sixteen. A rain check will be quite satisfactory. Lay back and think of God and England, and I’ll do all the work.”

“Severus Snape! I said ‘passive’—not ‘frigid’.”

“So you did. Are you interested in letting me peel off your jammies this time then?”

He blushed an adorable deep pink hue and reached for the buttons of his pyjama jacket.

“Stop that!” I admonished him with a singularly wicked grin upon my face. “You obviously do not grasp the meaning of the word ‘passive’. If you do anything other than offer me words of encouragement, moan, groan, pant, wiggle, squirm, or thrust your hips up to meet me before you’re mere seconds away from gushing all over us both, so help me I’ll truss you up like the Christmas goose and suck you dry—and then I’ll flip you over and rim you till you can’t remember your own name and bugger you senseless before I get around to getting you off again with my highly skilled, potion-making hands.”

Remus giggled unabashedly. “Apparently coy virgins aren’t what they used to be!”

“Indeed, you lucky boy! We are not. We revel in rich, complex, nuanced fantasy lives and thick volumes of lurid drawings and purple prose. After all, some of us are accustomed to house elves to launder our sheets afterwards, no questions asked. Oh, and I’ll count what you just said as encouragement, but mind that saucy mouth of yours. If you can’t govern it properly, I’m sure that my tongue can—or perhaps something larger and more forceful by its very nature!”

I ‘threatened’ him with erotic discipline the whole time that I undressed him, to our mutual amusement and arousal; but when he was naked, a reverent silence overtook me, which he managed to misunderstand.

“I look like hell, I know. I’ve never been this thin before! If you want me to roll over now, my arse is nowhere near as bony as my chest and hips.”

I combed my fingers through his hair as I kissed every rib that I could reach. “I won’t pretend that you’re not far too thin at the moment, but that doesn’t make you less desirable to me. It only makes me want to fatten you up a bit, turn you into a plump, prosperous little burgher who can’t remember what hunger is.” I stroked his chest and the alarming concavity of his abdomen. “I lost track of you the whole time that I was running my tests at Azkaban. It’s not exactly a major communication hub, you know! Owls are forbidden. I had no idea how destitute you had become. Even before I found the cure, I promise that I would never wittingly have let you starve, though. I didn’t know what had become of you, Ray. I could have lost you because of my ignorance!”

“But you didn’t lose me, love,” he reminded me, “and this isn’t a fitting time to reproach yourself for your ignorance, which was perfectly innocent. Kiss me some more. Please? And find out what happens when you overwhelm my nipples with your tongue and teeth.”

What happened was that he moaned, groaned, panted, wiggled, squirmed, and thrust his hips against me as if the ghost of a singularly agile and good-natured nymphomaniac had possessed him. Oh, and his cock nearly doubled in size and got hard enough to momentarily make me regret being the active partner for the night. Apparently those nipples of his are the easiest means of awakening his penis. Ah, well! Sucking them and licking them, squeezing them and tugging at them, nibbling on them and lightly grazing them with my teeth did wonders for my resolve, too.

Finally, however, I left those beguiling, almost brown buds to their own devices and descended the line of ash brown hair bridging the midline of his body from sternum to pelvis. There I briefly nuzzled the thick and still darker curls surrounding his cock before haring off to pay my painstaking respects to his hips and thighs. On my return, I toyed with his balls for a moment before turning my full attention to his heavily engorged member. I tried to swallow him whole. My former master had seen to it that I knew how to perform such a feat. I had gone too many years without practice, however, and gagged. Remus’s fingers tangled in my hair as I pulled away.

“Don’t worry, Sev. I’m a well and properly horny git. You don’t even need to close your lips over the head. Just lick me for all your worth, as if I was your favourite sweet.”

“You are my favourite sweet!” I responded fiercely before proceeding to lick every last drop of crème out of the horn, share a few drops of it with him, and pillow my head on his chest. “Cat got your tongue, precious?” I purred as he lay panting beside me. “I was going to ask what you’d like for me to do next, but you seem…distracted.”

Groaning, he pressed my hand between his legs well past the seam where his scrotum meets the base of his torso.

“Hmm. Are you trying to tell me that you’d like for me to get you ready for a well-deserved sodding, you wanton creature?”

Remus rolled his eyes and gasped out a throaty yes.

“Shall I take you from behind?”

He shook his head. “Want to see your face!”

Neither Malfoy nor Voldemort had shown the least interest in my face, so I was deeply moved by his words. I cradled his face between my palms and kissed every bit of it over and over before returning to the business of preparing him for penetration. I fully understood the foreplay involved. The Dark Lord had had the nasty habit of having his servants finger and even rim one another before he, one by one, mounted us, telling us what despicable weaklings and loathsome perverts we were. When my bony digits failed to relax my lover’s anus, my skilled tongue did the trick in no time flat. However, when the time came to roll Remus onto his back in order to enter him face to face, I had to acknowledge a certain ignorance of mine. Like Lucius before him, Tom Riddle was far too concerned with dominating others to ever let himself be penetrated.

“Ray, I need to ask you something,” I began after getting him comfortably positioned amongst his pillows.

“Now?”

“I… As a matter of fact, yes.”

“’S good,” he breathed contentedly. “What would you like to know?”

“I don’t want to hurt you, either entering you or thrusting about once I’m inside; but I’ve never been the active partner in sodomy before, and there wasn’t much that I learned from either Malfoy’s technique or Riddle’s that I’d care to apply to you. How exactly do I do this properly?”

“It isn’t difficult, Sev. Sixteen-year-olds manage it all the time. As for us, you’ve gotten me loosened up so well and I want you so badly that I could let you bury yourself to the hilt in me on the first push and you wouldn’t hurt me. That might be best, in fact. Spare you the anxiety of a multi-stage entry. If I wince a bit, chalk it up to my having been involuntarily celibate since the year of the Tri-Wizard Tournament. I just need to bring my legs up over your shoulders so that you can readily work your way in. Once you are in, move slowly at first, but”—he assured me with a deliciously debauched grin—“by the time that I get around to begging you to screw me into the mattress for all you’re worth, it’s pretty much safe to do just that!”

I laughed. “Has anyone ever told you that, um, you talk like a fisherman’s friend?”

“My second lover,” Remus deadpanned. “He was my only one-night stand.”

“Mmm. I can see that you’re not the most romantic wizard in the world once you’re in the sack,” I twitted him.

He smiled apologetically. “I’m extremely nervous tonight and we took off bantering. Usually I’m romantic both before and after sex, but during it? Let’s just say that either I fall silent or my speech gets…randy. Very randy. And speaking of randiness, I would be ever so grateful if you would apply the skills that we just reviewed without any further discussion.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, indeed!”

“Very well, then! Legs over my shoulders and off we go.”

I came just after stroking him to climax. How could I not have? The waves of his orgasm bearing down on my cock were overwhelming. Sheathed in the confines of his flesh, I surrendered my body and soul to his embrace. Afterwards we talked and touched and kissed and cuddled for a very long time before we fell asleep. Ray was, as promised, thoroughly romantic. In fact, his pillow talk is in its way far more erotic than sex alone could ever be. I had never imagined anyone whispering such poetry to me! I wept. And this time Remus helped me navigate the maze of my emotions, as I had helped him deal with his earlier during the night of his changing moon. Made conscious of the depths of our non-physical intimacy, I realized with a sudden shock that there was at least one person in the world with whom I need not don my cumbersome persona. Oh, brave new world that has such a creature in it!

Eventually, as all beings must, we slept. When I awoke, my lover handed me a mug of tea and a plate of homemade scones spread thick with the butter and marmalade that I had brought him.

“It’s well past noon again,” I observed as I licked my fingers clean. “After breakfast, we’d best freshen up and get packed. Neville’s been running my apothecary for three days now.”

“Neville Longbottom?” Remus gasped incredulously.

“The same. He’s apprenticed to me. As a Healer,” I hastened to add, “not a potion-maker. He’ll do fine as long as my remedies hold out and for as long after that as a healing touch alone suffices. Those clumsy hands of his are unbelievably good at transmitting positive energy. But if he tries to stir up any nostrums on his own… I’ll be ruined! I won’t be able to keep you or me in the manner to which I’d like for us to become accustomed.”

“Severus, I never said that I’d move back to Hogsmeade with you—much less consent to being a kept man!”

I stared at him in utter bewilderment. “Then am I your second one-night stand? I thought…”

He sighed. “That’s the problem. You didn’t really. Or rather you took it upon yourself to do my thinking for me. You are not a one-night stand! Tonight I plan to park myself in that big, soft bed that you bragged about so much last night and fully enjoy the absolute bliss of letting you screw me into a properly decadent and sensuous mattress. Nor when I leave this cottage, do I intend to return to it. But I’ve never been able to make my way in the world in the ordinary manner, and I’d like to do that for a while at least before living under the same roof with someone else on a daily basis.”

“If all you need is a position, I could apprentice you to me as a potion-maker. And you could move in with me whenever you saw fit.”

“Tell me that you’re joking, Severus. Dear God! I’d get you run out of business faster than Neville would. I never could have squeaked through sixth-year potions without your help, and by the grace of Albus Dumbledore I dodged having to take the seventh-year course. All I can say is thank God that headmasters can offer discretionary curriculum substitutions to students they deem worthy of the effort! But hopefully I can get work close by. Once the Registry has provided written confirmation that I no longer suffer from lycanthropy, I can apply to teach at Hogwarts again. Defence teachers are in short supply these days, and everyone knows that Mad-Eye Moody would dearly love to retire. He’s almost as cranky about the average student as you were. If that doesn’t pan out… Well, I’m an educated wizard, the salutatorian of my class despite my struggles to pass Advanced Potions, and no longer a werewolf. I’m sure I’ll find something suitable quickly enough.”

“But you don’t have to work, Ray! I have enough money to support us both.”

He gave me one of his deliberately irresistible smiles. “So I’ve gathered. But, as I’ve already told you, I want to work. Just as much as I want to make love with you night after night until I forget how painful loneliness can be.”

“A worthy goal,” I remarked dryly, “to forget so distasteful an experience.”

“Quite!” he agreed, “And I hope that there’s something in it for you, too, kind sir,” he added with feigned innocence.

“Will you at least stay at my place until you do find suitable employment?”

“Insofar as looking for it permits, I will. Once I have a license to Apparate, that shouldn’t prove difficult, though. Your parlour is only one hop away from any city in Britain.”

“Bloody right you are!” I concurred. “So what are your immediate plans when we leave here today?”

“Visit the Registry. Say hullo to Minerva. Have supper with you and Neville. Turn in early. Set a really good silencing spell on your bedroom. Break in that fancy bed of yours.”

I drew him into a warm embrace and kissed him thoroughly before releasing him. “Nice plans. I could thrive on a schedule like that.”

He pulled me back to him for another kiss, a delectable, lingering effort that left me breathless. “And so you shall, my heart,” he promised, “and so you shall. We won’t live happily ever after. No one from the beginning of the world ever has, and I’m quite certain that no one ever will. But we can live out the rest of our lives in ordinary time, unafraid of the past and of the moon and all her changes; and until my dying day, I’ll do my very best to see that you do indeed blossom like the fairest of sweet-smelling roses with razor-sharp thorns!”