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: Dark Creatures
Author: Isis
E-Mail: isis@windom.netrack.net
Rating: NC-17
Summary: In 1983, before the invention of the Wolfsbane potion, Remus Lupin is hired to teach at Hogwarts. Snape has an artifact that will prevent the Change, but the cost may be too high for Lupin to bear.
Warnings: Nonconsensual sex. A dark and unpleasant story.
Notes: This fic is part of the Roughside HP Slavefic Fuh-Q-Fest (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/roughside/ ) Challenge: 12. Hooray, someone's created an artifact that countereffects lycanthropy: as long as Remus wears it, he won't become a werewolf each month. But the artifact has been made in the form of a collar, and that's a REALLY, REALLY loaded emotional issue for Remus. Why? (Amanuensis)
Disclaimer: JKR owns them, I'm just playing with them.

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The final interview went well, I thought; Headmaster Dumbledore -- who insisted immediately I call him Albus, although it would take me some time to feel comfortable with that -- approved my proposed syllabi for the Defense Against the Dark Arts classes, and the Board of Governors asked me nothing I couldn't answer. More importantly, they asked me nothing I wanted to avoid answering. I suspected the Headmaster's hand in that, and my curiousity grew during the afternoon. When the school governors shook my hand, one by one, and left, I was not surprised to see him turn to me, a serious _expression on his face.

"There is one more thing, Remus."

"I have been wondering, myself. Am I to be locked in the Shrieking Shack each month?"

"If it becomes necessary, yes. But I believe we have a solution." He moved to the fireplace and tossed in a bit of powder. "Severus, we are ready." A moment later, the man I least wished to see stepped out.

I had known he'd been teaching Potions at Hogwarts these past few years, but I had hoped to be able to avoid him. He looked the same as in our school days, gaunt as a cadaver, his hair still greasy and his face still sallow. "Snape."

"Lupin." His mouth curved unpleasantly.

"Is it a potion, then?" I asked the Headmaster. I had heard that one was being developed -- naturally, I take an interest in these things -- but I didn't think it was ready yet. Or that Snape would be willing to brew it for me.

He shook his head. "The Wolfsbane potion has not yet been perfected, although I hope to see it within the next few years. No, Severus has kindly offered the use of a family artifact to control your lycanthropy." I winced at his words; Snape, of course, knew of my nature ever since the incident during our sixth year, but hearing the words spoken aloud always made me feel uncomfortable. And it was hard to imagine him being "kind" about anything.

Snape drew something black and silver out of his robes and tossed it in my direction. "Here. Mind you be careful with it."

I instinctively caught the object, feeling the wash of magic over my fingertips. And then I saw what it was, and the excitement I'd been feeling about finally getting a job, this job, abruptly changed into the deepest despair. It was a leather and silver collar. A collar. And it had been given to me by Snape. No, no, no, I can't, I can't.

"Of course you can, my boy," said Dumbledore, and I realized I'd spoken aloud. "Put it on. It inhibits the lycanthropic response. I'm told, though, that it's most effective if it's worn constantly, not just during the full moon. Isn't that right, Severus?"

Snape nodded.

"The full moon is in six days. That will give you a chance to try it out in private, as it were, before coming here." He gave me a benevolent smile. He thought they were doing me a favor, I suppose. "I'd like to see you back in two weeks, which will give you a week to prepare before classes begin."

I gulped. This was my chance, my only chance. I'd been working odd jobs in the Muggle world, trying to get by; this position would be a dream come true. I couldn't throw it away. I looked again at the thing in my hands.

Slowly, slowly, I raised it to my neck. Snape's black eyes bored into me as I reluctantly laced it on.

Oh please, oh please, I prayed. Let him not know what this means.

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Over the next several days I relaxed, as no unexpected owls came to bother me, but on the day of the full moon I became nervous again. This was a Dark object on my neck, after all; something that belonged to Snape's family couldn't be benign. And that was putting aside the deeper meaning that the wolf in my brain insisted upon.

As it turned out, the actual night of the moon was anticlimactic. I had locked myself in the cellar as usual, awaiting a Change that never happened, and by the time morning came I had finally fallen asleep on a pile of blankets. I woke with energy I'd never felt on the day after a full moon, excited and happy. No scars, no aches, no tiredness.

It was not as though I were not a werewolf, of course. I still felt the moon call to me, still heard the howl in the back of my skull. But I did not need to act upon it. My bones did not break and reform, my skin did not sprout fur. I did not feel the desire to jump on some small living thing and taste the sweet pulse of its life. The collar had tamed the wolf.

Unfortunately, I was not the master.

But I could almost forget that as I traveled to Hogwarts. The Scottish countryside was green with the final flush of summer, and it all looked so beautiful to me. Old Filch grumblingly welcomed me to the castle, and set me up in a fine suite of rooms overlooking the lake. I was excited and nervous at once. Would the students respect me? Would they listen to me? Would they learn?

Most of the staff was the same as when I had been a student myself five years before, and they welcomed me with friendly words. With few exceptions, they had not known then that I was a werewolf, and I assumed that Dumbledore had not spread the word. Snape contented himself with a raise of the eyebrow toward the high-necked shirt I wore to conceal the charmed collar, and I gave him a short nod. I wasn't a fool. The only reason I'd been hired on was around my neck.

My week of preparations passed in a blur. I only saw Snape at mealtimes, and as we sat far from each other, we spoke little. I usually sat with Celeste, who was Professor Sinistra to me when I was a student, or with old Madam Cossette, the mediwitch who oversaw the infirmary and who remembered me well. She, of course, knew what I was; she had patched me up after each full moon, given me chocolate and healed the angry scratches I'd left on my own skin. She nodded gravely when I told her about the collar.

The only things that plagued me were ghosts. Not the ghostly inhabitants of the castle, who bothered me no more than anybody else, but the ghosts in my own mind. James, Lily, and Peter, all dead; and Sirius, who betrayed us all and who might as well be dead, rotting in Azkaban. I saw them around every corner, in every room, and I missed them all.

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Snape finally knocked at my door on the last night before the students were due to arrive.

"Come in," I said. I couldn't say otherwise.

"Well, Lupin. It has come down to just the two of us."

I nodded slowly. He had his own ghosts, I knew, his own friends who had died. But they had all been on the other side, and I couldn't muster much sympathy. Sometimes I still wondered if Snape truly had reformed, as the Ministry had decided. I remembered him from our schooldays as a malicious and cruel boy. I was hoping he had not grown to be a malicious and cruel man.

"Evan and Ian dead, and Marius in Azkaban," he mused. "A mirror to your precious Gryffindor friends." He looked at me and smiled, showing stained teeth. "Black was imprisoned for betraying your friends, while I escaped Azkaban by betraying mine. A twisted sort of mirror, don't you agree?"

"As twisted as the people involved."

"Perhaps. But now it is just you and I, and we are both here at Hogwarts, and alone. We have no choice, it seems, but to become friends at last." He looked not into my eyes but at my neck. He knew I had no choice.

"It's what you always wanted, Snape, isn't it?" I knew I sounded bitter. "You followed us around, trying to get us into trouble. You followed me and almost forced..." I couldn't finish.

"Almost forced you to kill me? So it was my fault, was it?" He stepped closer to me, his voice rising in rage. "That bastard Black betrayed you, as he betrayed Potter and Pettigrew."

"Don't speak about him," I shot back. I didn't want to think of Sirius. He had been my dearest friend, until he had become a monster.

"No," he said. He lifted a hand and traced the line of my jaw. "We have better things to speak about."

I trembled as he touched me. I wanted nothing more than to slap his hand away from me, to push him out of my rooms. I wanted to break his arm. I wanted to bite the long finger that slipped up to my lips, crack it between my sharp teeth and leave him screaming and bloody. That damned collar. Nothing was worth this. "Please leave, Snape."

"No," he said, again. "You and I are going to become friends."

"We will never be friends."

"We shall see," he said, and kissed me. It was a parody of a kiss, thin lips that tasted of strong tea and camphor pressed against mine, bony hands clamping down on my shoulders. With his black robes swirling around his thin frame, the dark hair clouded around his head like a hood, I couldn't help but think of him as a Dementor. Stealing my joy. Stealing my soul.

Assuming I had a soul in the first place, of course. Neither the Ministry nor the Church considers werewolves fully human, and -- speaking as a werewolf -- I have come to agree. For example, although the collar I wore used magic to suppress the Change, it was not magic that bound me to Snape's will. An ordinary dog's collar would have done the same. The wolf in me recognizes a collar as a domesticating device, and the master is the one who bestows it. Roll over, Remus, and present your belly.

I was obviously not presenting my belly properly, in Snape's opinion, because he pulled away, curling his lips in a sneer. "You have a pretty mouth."

"You don't."

"Nothing about me is pretty, Lupin." His black eyes met mine. "I expect we will both be rather busy in the next few days. But I will visit you again soon."

"I can't wait."

He strode to the door. "You will not tell Albus."

I did not.

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Watching the Sorting from the teacher's table was an odd experience. So was teaching, and so was handing out House points and detentions. Suddenly I was on the other side of the divide I'd been on as a student. Snape had been at it for two more years, of course, and he had it down to a science. The students hated him with a passion. Looking at him swooping down the corridors, I couldn't imagine him ever being nabbed by Filch for violating curfew.

When he came back to my room it was nearly two weeks into the term. He strutted in like he owned the place, which in a way, he did.

"You are settling in, I take it?"

"Yes."

"Come visit me when you have a chance. I would be grateful for a game of chess."

"I don't play," I said shortly.

"Then you can join me for a drink one evening."

"I would be delighted," I said, but I'm sure he could tell from my tone that I would not be delighted at all.

He strode to the window and looked out at the lake, at the heavy moon which was three days from full. "You should thank me, Lupin, for disarming the moon."

I was not in the mood for his baiting and his scowling. "Why should I thank you? It's to your benefit. You're the one that would otherwise be eaten," I said, baring my teeth at him. "Yum, yum."

"Yes," he said. "I believe so." He walked back toward me and began to unbutton his trousers. "I believe so."

Bastard, I thought. It seemed almost ludicrous to think of Snape and sex in the same sentence. Of course we had joked that he must have been queer -- why else would he have been following us around, Jamie and Peter and Sirius and me, if not in hopes of catching one of us in a dark corner? And here I was, cornered at last.

"I see. You fancy me, then."

"It's not you I fancy."

"You trust me?"

He looked pointedly at the collar. "It's not you I trust, werewolf."

He was already half-hard, his pale cock looking almost ghostly against the black cloth of his garments. Like something that couldn't possibly belong to a human body. He put his hand around my neck, grasping the collar, and pulled me down to my knees. Pulled my face to his groin. "Snape, I --"

"Do it."

And I did it. Hiding my revulsion as best I could, trying not to gag, but I did it. I took his cock between my lips, licking at the head, sucking at the shaft, feeling his blood pulse along the veins as his erection unfurled into my mouth. I listened to his gasps and moans, felt his hands twisting in my robe and gripping at the hateful leather collar around my neck. Bastard, bastard, I thought. You unmitigated, utter bastard.

I tried to think of other things. Of Heloise, my last girlfriend; of grading the papers of my fourth-years; of fly-fishing for trout on the Moriston. Anything but this. Anything but Snape, bucking and thrusting into my mouth, making small noises that I tried to block out of my ears. None of it worked; it was too much, the musky scent, the smooth feel of his skin sliding over my tongue, and when he growled, "Harder, damn you," I had no choice but to comply.

But then he gave a small cry, and his fingers tightened at my neck as he came abruptly, helplessly, bitter in my mouth, and I thought: who has the power now, you bastard?

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I avoided him, or perhaps he avoided me, for the next week. Albus asked if I needed to go to the Shack for the full moon, and I told him no, it would not be necessary. I was still apprehensive, as I sat on my bed and stared out the window, but the moon came and went and left me as I was.

Sleep came slowly, that moonlit night, and when I slept I dreamed of Snape. He appeared at the window as a vampire, in my dream, his black cloak spread out like bat's wings behind him.

"Invite me in, Remus, my sweet," he said.

"Why should I?"

"I can't come in unless you invite me. Let me in, Remus."

"If I do, you'll suck my blood. I know you for what you are, vampire."

Snape laughed, a rich, dark laugh. "Yes, I will suck your blood. I will drain you dry. And it will be worth it, Remus, my sweet." And he reached his arms through the window, and pulled me out of my bed and over the sill, and I struggled to fight him off as he bent to my neck, and I was falling down the wall of the tower, falling, falling...

I woke up panting, covered in sweat. The moon still shone through the window, and I got up to look out at the grounds. No vampires that I could see. No Snape. I wondered if any werewolves roamed the Forbidden Forest this evening.

It was strange to look at the moon with human eyes. I had spent last month's Change in the cellar, and hadn't seen it then. I still couldn't repress a shudder at the sight; I felt as though the Change would start any moment now, it would have to start, my bones would crack and my hair would lengthen and my mind would go wolf.

I almost thought I could see the subtle difference between the light of the full and the almost-full moon, a fraction of a sliver of luminosity, of lambency. Would this alone be worth it? Maybe. But there was so much more to being a werewolf that I was glad to avoid: the pain of the Change, the lockstep march to the lunar cycle that sapped my strength as the moon waxed, the risk of taking innocent blood. The momentary terror that always struck just as the wolf took over. Compared to this, a few blowjobs seemed trivial.

The air was still, the surface of the lake a black mirror. From my vantage point in the castle it looked as though there were two moons out there, one in the sky and one reflected in the lake, and I wondered if the moon affected any of the underwater creatures. Might there be such a thing as merewolves? I imagined a mermaid being transformed by the lunar light, changing into something fearsome -- a shark, perhaps, or some magical water creature with sharp teeth and flashing scales, preying on her fellow mermaids until the moon set.

Then a giant tentacle thrust up and broke the shimmering surface, shattering the second moon into droplets of light. I took that as a sign to return to bed. But I lay awake for another hour, wondering if I had, indeed, made a good bargain. What I didn't realize then was that I was completely mistaken about its terms.

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When Snape came to my rooms again, a few days later, he seemed awkward and stiff. He made no advances, but he didn't apologize, either; we talked for a while about meaningless things, and then he left. I didn't see him again, other than at meals and staff meetings, for nearly a month.

Meanwhile, the school year ground on. I taught anxious first-years how to cast simple hexes, showed third-years how to handle inimical magical creatures, and lectured on Unforgivable curses to my sixth-years. I had put my seventh-years to work researching Dark artifacts. None of them knew, of course, that there was one around my neck; just as none of the third-year students knew that their lecture on werewolves stemmed from more than just book learning.

And I became better acquainted with my fellow professors. Other than Snape, they were all considerably older than I, and I felt something of a child around them. Not that they ever treated me as anything other than an equal, of course. But the knowledge that they were my former teachers inhibited me, so although we were all quite cordial, it only went so far.

So when Snape invited me to his dungeon rooms one evening, I accepted. He had phrased his invitation carefully, with no hint of a command, and I supposed I could have turned it down. Then again, if I had, he might have ordered me to come, and given me no choice. We ended up playing cribbage, which he sneered at for being a poor substitute for chess, but I didn't think I wanted to learn from him, and he made no offer to teach me, in any event.

He poured us good red wine, which looked like blood in the glasses, making me think of the dream I had on the night of the full moon. Snape could be a vampire, I thought, looking at his angular cheekbones, his hooked nose. Everything about him was all points and edges. I would not be surprised by fangs.

"What are you thinking about?" he said, startling me out of my musings.

Of course I was not going to tell him. I shrugged. "Why do you always wear black?"

"It suits me."

"Ah, matches your hair."

He gave me a sharp glance. "It matches my mood. It reminds me that in some sense I am a Dark Creature, too." He must have seen my reaction in my eyes, because his lips twisted in a harsh smile. "Not the way you are, werewolf. But I was a Death Eater. Twice a traitor. Sometimes I expect the Ministry to come knocking: 'Sorry, sir, but we made a mistake. It's to Azkaban for you.'"

I nodded, slowly. Who was to say that a Death Eater was any different from a vampire, after all? I raised my glass. "To Dark Creatures."

He actually laughed, a short, harsh bark that sounded nothing like his usual silky voice. "To Dark Creatures."

So there I was, drinking with Snape. James and Peter would have teased me mercilessly, no doubt. Sirius, well, who can say? When we were in school he would have been the first to make a rude crack. But now he was a Dark Creature himself, by Snape's standards at least. I was not sure I liked the company, but I suppose Dark Creatures can't be too particular.

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We had two more reasonably civil evenings over the next few weeks. Not exactly enjoyable evenings; oh, I liked the wine, and the card games were tolerable, but I remained uneasy around Snape. He brooded and sulked by turns, made overtures and then snatched them back. And I could not forget that our equality ended at my neck.

But the next time we met, in his quarters again, things were different. He was in a foul mood that evening, had been in a foul mood all day as far as I could tell, and sat slumped in his armchair, long fingers cupped around the bowl of his wineglass.

"Bad doings in the potions classroom?"

He scowled. "No worse than usual, which is bad enough."

"Fine." I started to deal out the cards, six and six.

"I'm bloody sick of cribbage."

"Fine." I swept the cards back into the deck and shuffled them again. "Not many other good games for two, though. We used to play bridge, up in the common room. Jamie and Sirius against Peter and me. Jamie was a terrible player, could never keep track of the trumps, but Sirius was such a --"

"Shut. Up." His voice cut harshly through mine. When I looked up from the table I saw that his face was set in anger, staring straight ahead, and I realized that he had started drinking long before I got there.

"Shall I go, then?"

"No."

I sighed. "Look, Snape. If you don't want me here, and you don't want me gone, what do you want?"

"I want them back."

"The Potters?" I asked, unthinkingly, and he rose from the chair and backhanded me across the face.

"Fuck your Gryffindor friends."

I pushed myself to my feet, angrily. "Now, listen --"

He grabbed me by the shoulders and slammed me hard against the wall, panting heavily. His face, inches from mine, contorted in rage. Red wine and sweat. "Do you know what day it is?"

"Enlighten me," I gasped, trying to will myself boneless under his painfully hard grip.

"They killed them today. Three years ago."

I blinked. No, it was two years, I thought, and not for another week, and surely he wasn't talking about...

He must have seen it in my face. "Not your stupid friends, you Gryffindor prat. Mine."

"I'm sorry."

"No, you're not. Nobody was sorry. Just a couple of Death Eaters, nobody important."

I remembered, then. Two of Snape's Slytherin crowd, Evan Rosier and Ian Wilkes. Old "Constant Vigilance" Moody had got them, ended up a bit worse for the wear, but everyone hailed him as a hero for it.

"Right. Rosier --"

"Don't say his name," Snape hissed at me. "You haven't the right."

This was a Snape I had not seen before, and I did not like it one bit. The look in his eyes, more feral than my own at the full moon, sent shivers through my body.

He dropped his hands from my shoulders and I began to edge away slowly.

"Stop."

I stopped.

His hands went to his trousers. Oh God, I thought. The bargain.

"Strip."

I undid my buttons with shaking hands. He watched me dispassionately, but his eyes burned. "On your hands and knees."

Footsteps as he moved away and then back. Cold dungeon air on my bare skin, flagstones hard under my knees. I started as I felt a finger trace my spine, following the path all the way to just behind my balls before it pulled away. I smelled lavender. And then he was pressing a cool, wet finger inside.

"Please don't."

"Shut up." His fingers stabbed inside me, savage and impersonal. A knee shoved my legs farther apart. I felt the cloth of his trousers rough against my skin as he moved closer behind me. His hands moved to my hips, and the blunt head of his cock nudged at me.

"Severus. Please don't do this."

"Silence, werewolf." He punctuated his sentence with a thrust.

God, did it hurt. Like being ripped apart from the inside out; like the Change, in a way. The burn spread across my body, pulsing outward, like the wolf bursting from my belly to my fingertips, turning skin into long fur and teeth into fangs and fingers into claws. Except that instead of being raped by the moon, I was at Snape's mercy. If I had had those fangs and those claws, I would have turned on him then and ripped him to shreds. If I had not been wearing his collar.

He came into me with a cry that was someone's name. Not mine.

And then he collapsed on top of me, his chest pressed to my back, and I felt his heartbeat, his hitched breath. Not quite sobs. I didn't say anything, just waited until finally he drew himself back, put himself together. When he spoke, his voice was even and controlled, as usual.

"You will not tell anyone."

I gathered my clothes and pulled them on. The act of dressing calmed me, dissipating the rage, and after I judged myself to be human again I glanced at my tormentor. Snape's face was almost green; he looked as though he were about to be sick. He did not meet my eyes.

"Why are you doing this to me?" I asked, quietly.

He continued to stare into the distance. "I don't know." He turned to face me then, closed the distance between us, and as he raised his arm I flinched, but he only touched my cheek. "I don't know," he repeated. "Go back to your own rooms, Lupin."

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We did not play any more card games, after that. He ignored me at mealtimes and staff meetings, and I returned the favor. But once a week, sometimes more often, he knocked at my door, or called me to come to his; and he commanded my mouth or my arse, and I would do it, because I wore his collar.

In retrospect it sounds horrible, and at first it was, but it soon became more like a disliked chore. Like taking out the garbage, or kicking the gnomes out of the garden. In time I cultivated a calculated indifference. I'd been serving Mistress Moon for fifteen years now, I could serve someone else for a while. The winter nights were long; there would be fourteen hours at the November full. Those were fourteen hours of wolf I was exchanging; Snape wasn't taking even that much time. And there was nothing of myself in it. He just took my body, while the moon took my soul. If I had a soul.

And against the deliberate power he wielded, I had my own small triumphs. The noises he made, gasping and sighing. The tremors in his body as he shuddered his climax, the convulsive motions of his arms, his fingers. Sometimes, afterward, he would reflexively press his lips to my neck, and I'd think: don't try to pay me in your own coin, you bastard, I've already taken my due.

But I noticed, at the edges of my indifference, that Snape seemed to be in a worse mood with every passing week. In his rooms or mine, he treated me with increasing roughness; in the hallways he lurked like a black cloud, threatening lightning and thunder at the slightest provocation. The students were terrified. I would hear them talk in awed voices, comparing points taken for petty violations, going on about how he'd given someone detention for sneezing during class -- merely sneezing!

And then Albus fell in with me after a staff meeting one afternoon in the middle of December, as I walked to my classroom. "How goes it, Remus?"

"It goes." It had actually been a trying day; one of my fourth-years had made an error on a complex hex and the resulting mess had entirely disrupted the class. And it was the night of the full moon, which still made me tense. Sixteen hours of full, tonight; it was nearly the solstice.

"Severus seems a bit out of sorts these days, don't you think?"

"I wouldn't know."

He looked surprised. "But you're his friend, yes?"

"No."

"Ah." We walked in silence for a few moments. "Maybe you should be."

What you don't know, old man, I thought. What you don't know. But Snape did not come to the Great Hall that evening, and Albus looked at me meaningfully across the table.

After supper, damning myself for getting involved in Things That Should Not Be My Concern, I went down to the dungeons. At the door I rapped twice.

There was no answer at first, but just as I turned to leave, the door opened. "Oh. You."

Snape's robe was loose on his shoulders, his collar undone and unbuttoned to mid-chest. His long hair was mussed; I smelled alcohol, something stronger than the wine he'd offered me, back when he still offered me wine. Cognac, perhaps.

"Albus missed you at supper."

"I am not required to attend." He held himself stiffly; his voice seemed carefully neutral. "This evening I am entertaining a guest." Through the crack in the door I noticed a flash of golden hair.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to intrude." I made as though to leave, but he shook his head once, quickly. I thought I saw a plea in his eyes.

From inside the room came a cultured male voice, the low tones of an aristocrat. "Severus. If you're quite finished with your caller?" It was clearly a command.

Snape looked almost apologetic as he closed the door. But that look in his eyes stayed with me on the long walk from the dungeons to my tower rooms, and that night, I dreamed of him again. This time we were sitting across a table from each other, drinking cognac in the moonlight. When he lifted his glass and said, "To Dark Creatures," his robe shifted across his neck, exposing a leather and silver collar identical to the one I wore. "We are both Dark Creatures, you and I."

"Some of us," I said, "are darker than others."

He leered at me across the rim of his glass. "Yes. But who is the darkest?" And he set his glass down on the table, and tore away the collar he wore; and as I watched his hair grew long and his skin turned to fur, his hands sprouted claws and his features reshaped themselves into those of a werewolf. And he sprang at me.

I woke screaming.

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The school term was winding down toward the Christmas break. I assigned essays and prepared exams, and wondered whether I would be required to stay for the holiday. In the two days since I'd gone down to the dungeons at Albus's request, I had hardly seen Snape, and I didn't feel inclined to seek him out again to ask. If I just left, surely he wouldn't call me back. He'd have his use of me again when school began again in January.

But he appeared at my doorway that second night, looming like a vulture with a bottle of firewhiskey clutched in his talons. "You have glasses, Lupin?" he said as he swept past me into the room.

"Probably," I said, and went to search for them.

He paced my room. "You have a chessboard?"

"I don't play."

"Right. Cards?"

I turned from the cabinet where I'd found the glasses, one in each hand. "Snape. What the hell do you want?"

He stopped abruptly, and his robes swirled around him. His eyes gleamed oddly; he looked feverish, I thought. "At the moment? A drink. Give me a glass."

"Wait, they're dusty." I set the glasses down and rummaged for a cloth.

"For Christ's sake." He strode over and grabbed one, wiped it out with the corner of a robe. I stared as he poured himself a generous slug and drank it down in a single gulp.

"What? Oh, here." He sloshed several fingers into the second glass -- not bothering to wipe it first, I noticed -- and handed it to me.

"Snape. Is something the matter?"

"Sit down. Have a drink." He refilled his own glass.

"Why, thank you," I said, sarcastically. "Seeing as how this is my room, and all." I considered the bed, then chose the armchair by the window.

He hooked one long arm around my desk chair and pulled it close to mine, then collapsed into it. His tall frame made it look like a child's chair; he couldn't have been comfortable. "You don't like me much, do you."

"I can't imagine why."

"I can." "

Then why do you do it?"

"I don't know. Perhaps I'm lonely." He looked up at me, glittering eyes shadowed by the thick black fall of hair. With his pale skin stretched like parchment over his angular face, they looked like embers set in the sockets of a skull. "Yes, that seems to be it," he said, returning his eyes to his glass, considering the fluid level appraisingly.

"Funny way of showing it."

"Yes, well." He took a sip. "I did try the conventional approach in school, and that got me nowhere."

"You followed us around and tried to get us in trouble."

"You got yourselves in trouble. I was just...observing."

"And a right pain in the arse you were."

He sighed. "Listen, Lupin. Do you know what I would have given to have been part of your little crowd?"

"You had your own crowd."

"I did. But I suspect Slytherin ideals of friendship are a bit different than yours were."

"So I'm learning," I muttered.

"You have no idea."

"And don't want to, thank you."

"Then show me Gryffindor friendship, Lupin." He rose in one sinuous motion and moved over to my chair, knelt at my side with his arms propped on the armrest. One hand traced the line of the hateful collar on my neck; the other began unbuttoning my shirt. Leaning his head in close, he fluttered his lips on the edge of my ear, and I felt a shiver start there and head south, down my neck, down my spine, all the way down.

"Remus," he hissed gently. His mouth was right at my ear but his sibilant, liquid voice was so soft that it barely sounded like speech. "I would have you pretend that you like me."

I turned my head to tell him how absurd this idea was, and he shook his head before I could speak, and captured my mouth with his. It was not at all like the first time, at the beginning of the term; his lips were soft and moved delicately on mine, and his tongue slipped so gracefully into my mouth that mine was open and moaning before I realized it.

He released me only to move around in front of the chair, halfway on my lap, pushing me down into the cushions of the armchair, pulling me down towards the floor. He had finished with my buttons and his fingers were tangled in the hair of my chest. "Remus," he breathed.

"I can't," I said. This was Snape; this was my captor and my master and my hated schooldays rival. The man who had taken my body repeatedly, uncaringly, and if he did it again in that way I would bear it as I always had, but I could not pretend that I welcomed it. Even had I not preferred the yielding sweetness of a woman to a man's hard planes and angles, it would not be he whom I wanted.

"You will." His breath came hot in my ear as he licked and sucked at my jawline, and despite myself I felt my traitorous body respond. It was not Snape that I wanted. It was the tenderness, the soft touches, the sweet words he whispered in his deep and silken voice, sweet words I did not believe but could not help but listen to.

"Your skin is so beautiful," he murmured as he gently slipped off my clothes. "Golden like the sun."

"I answer to a different heavenly body."

"The moon has no power over you now."

No, but you do, I thought, as he quickly removed his own robes and pressed his body against mine. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine that it was somebody else touching me, somebody else trailing lips down my chest, teasing my nipple with delicate teeth, searing a path to the erection I wanted not to have.

"Look at me, Remus," he said, and I obeyed, opening my eyes again in time to see his mouth close over my cock. I tried not to gasp, to give him the sounds I always took from him, but his tongue was too talented, his mouth too hot and wet, and I moaned like a wanton. His rough chin scraped at my inner thigh, but I didn't care. Oily hair brushed my belly and I arched into it, helpless, and then he was sucking and licking and I was thrusting and coming hard, coming into his mouth. Into Snape's mouth.

I was still trying to come to terms with this idea when I felt his mouth move lower. Oh God, I thought, is he determined to taste every bit of me? The just-past-full moon came through the window, and I remembered my dreams: Snape as vampire, Snape as werewolf. Fangs on both. The shudder I gave was only partly due to his probing tongue.

Then his fingers slipped inside me as well, not with the savage motion I was accustomed to from him but gently, soothingly. As he stroked, I felt a tingling whisper of sensation, a sweet liquid fire moving from my balls to my cock, and I realized with horror I was getting hard again. Not for Snape, please not for Snape, I begged my body, but his caresses were impossible to ignore.

He moved up and across my body, gently pushing my legs apart as he pressed his cock against my entrance and coaxed it inside. It was the first time he had taken me face-to-face. He smiled; no fangs.

"Sweet Remus." He bent his lips to mine, dark hair swinging around his head, and I realized he was neither vampire nor werewolf but Dementor, after all. The darkest of Dark Creatures, come to steal my soul.

His kisses were feather touches on my lips as he moved carefully inside me. If only he had been hard and brutal, as usual, I could have lain there in mute passivity. As usual. I could have let my hate for him flow through me with his semen.

But instead I tightened my arms around him instinctively as he thrust into me, licked at my neck, stroked my damnably aroused cock with long, skilled fingers. All I could think was: I came in his mouth. And soon I was spurting into his hand, across our joined bodies, and giving him my moans and cries again as he spent himself into me. My cries, and my moans, and my soul. If I had a soul.

I hate you, I hate you, I thought. I came in your mouth.

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Snape left with his bottle, and after a night in my solitary bed I thought yes, I can handle this. Then I went to breakfast. There he sat, lifting a forkful of eggs and fried potatoes to his lips, and I could not help but stare. I came in your mouth.

After breakfast, I went to see Albus.

"I am really very sorry to do this," I said. "But I find that I can not finish out the school year."

He raised his eyebrows. "But the students tell me you're quite the teacher. Quite the teacher," he repeated. "You are certainly up to the job -- is that your worry?"

"I enjoy teaching very much," I said.

"Then, Remus, what is the difficulty?"

My hand went to my neck. "The collar. There are...side effects."

"Oh?"

I shrugged. "Bad dreams, mostly. I'm not sleeping."

"I can have Severus make you a sleeping draught."

"It's not just the dreams," I said, quickly. I paced his small office. In truth I had gone to him with no clear idea of what I was going to say, only that I had to say something, anything to get me out of here and away from Snape. "I think...being a werewolf is an intrinsic part of me. The Change is necessary to my well-being, somehow. I don't like it, I fear it, but I feel unbalanced without it." I paused; would he believe me? "I am afraid that I might go mad."

"Oh, Remus. I had no idea." His face was sympathetic, and I felt a brief pang about my deception. "There is the Shrieking Shack."

I thought about it for a moment. I did not want to give up my position at Hogwarts and go back to whatever Muggle job I could scrape up. I did not want to give Snape the satisfaction of chasing me away. It might be enough to stay, free of the collar.

But it might not. I would see him at the High Table three times a day. Perhaps he would dog my footsteps, knock on my door, ply me with wine and firewhiskey. One day, maybe, I would be able to drink and play cards with him again. I could forgive him slamming me against the wall; I could forgive his hot breath in my ear as he thrust hard into my arse. But I could not yet forgive him for making me come in his mouth.

He saw something in my face. "If you feel you must leave, I will release you from your contract. But I understand the Wolfsbane potion will allow the physical Change to occur, while leaving your human mind intact. Perhaps when it is available, you will return to Hogwarts."

Snape would have to brew it for me, I thought. But perhaps by then..."I would like very much to return."

"So you will leave at the holiday, then?" Two more days.

I nodded.

"Shall I return the collar to Severus?"

"I would feel better delivering it directly into his hands," I said. "If he could join us now -- this month's full moon has passed --"

"Certainly." Albus moved to the fireplace and called Snape, who arrived a few minutes later, looking annoyed at having been interrupted from whatever it was he was doing. Then he looked at me, and I saw fear cross his features. He need not have worried, of course. I still wore the collar, and he had ordered me not to tell.

"Remus is leaving at the end of the term, for personal reasons --" I saw Snape's eyebrows flicker upward -- "and he wishes to return your anti-lycanthropic artifact before he leaves."

"A pity," Snape murmured. His black eyes were fixed on mine.

I swallowed. "May I?"

His eyes darted to Albus's face, and then back to mine. "Of course." He held out his hand.

I fumbled with the laces and removed the hated thing from my neck. The pressure in my chest immediately eased, and it seemed that in that instant Snape transformed before my eyes: from a Dark Creature, to a sullen child denied his toy. But he wasn't about to throw a tantrum in front of Albus. I smiled.

"Thank you for its use, Severus," I said, using his given name deliberately.

His face tightened and he shot me a glance of purest hate. "Lupin," he said, nodding curtly and turning to leave.

I did not care. I was free.

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In 1990, the Wolfsbane potion was finally perfected and released to the Wizarding world.

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In 1993 -- ten years after my first teaching stint at Hogwarts -- I was again given the position of Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts. The letter from Albus had a short postscript in Snape's precise hand: "I have agreed to brew the Wolfsbane for you. No conditions attached."

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I was tired out from the Change two days prior when I rode the Hogwarts Express to the school, and soon fell asleep. But when the train stopped with a jolt I awoke to find three children, scared out of their wits, and a Dementor at the doorway. I felt the cold sucking feeling, and I remembered how I had thought of Snape as a sort of Dementor. But he was nothing compared to this; and this, I could handle. "Expecto patronum!"

One of the children fainted, and when I bent to revive him I saw the scar on his forehead. It was Jamie's boy Harry --but for the scar, he looked just like his father -- and the memories came flooding back. My god, I thought, has it really been so long? I gave chocolate to him and his friends, and thought about James for the remainder of the journey.

I had not come early this year because of the full moon, so I had only a short time to move my belongings into my new quarters. I made it down to the Great Hall and slipped into a seat at the staff table just before the start-of-term feast began. There at Albus's left hand sat Snape, in all his malign glory; I had heard that he'd taken over as head of Slytherin House a few years back, and that Albus relied on him second only to Minerva McGonagall.

He looked at me with great loathing, the poison in his gaze almost palpable, and I felt the power grow in my chest. He clearly hated me; yet he had agreed to brew the Wolfsbane for me. No conditions.

After the feast, I intercepted him before he could stalk out the doors and back to his dungeons. "Kind of you, Severus, to offer to brew the potion for me."

Ten different emotions crossed his face in as many seconds; the loathing gave way to anger, then nervousness, then a sort of cautious blankness. Finally, he settled for a sneer. "I will see you at the three-quarters moon, Lupin."

I watched him sweep off. And I smiled.