Fic: 'came forth sweetness'. [HP, Snape/Lupin, PG-13.]
For florahart, the only person who could make me write Snupin. Unbeta'd.

Summary: The end of it, and the way beyond.



After the end of it, there was mud. The heavens had opened for days before the final reckoning; as if paying watery respect to all those who’d fallen already, and those who would die in that last, desperate push that was made in order to distract Potter from his goal. Pain, the Death Eaters gave him, and grief, and a stark choice between the world and his friends, showing him that for every hour, every minute, every second he strove to go to Voldemort and vanquish him, they would do nothing but kill: to rend away his friends, enemies and innocents all alike. Rumour had it that Lucius attempted to AK his own son in the hope it would stir Potter into some sort of rescue mission: rumour had it the son paid the father back for that attempt, and with interest. They found Lucius torn into pieces somewhere near Salsbury, and a staring, shaking wreck of a boy who’d still been puking up a day later. Some bonds are too primal to trifle with; and interesting perhaps that the son felt a grief in doing his father in that his father never would have felt for him. Still, this was hardly the only desecration: that was what wars were made for.

Still, Potter dug his heels in as he was told of the slaughter – Snape was there to watch a pensive resolution, white hot, burn into his bones and add to the set of his jaw. If they wished him to make a choice: stop the slaughter or save the world, Potter squared his shoulders and faced that drowned sky, and simply refused. He would not, could not make a choice: his head was too full of foolish ideas of nobility and justice, and for all that most of the fools who’d fed them to Potter were dead and gone, Potter ached to create a memorial to them through his own example. Even if Snape wrinkled his nose in distaste as such optimistic stupidity, he could not deny that Potter had generally achieved the impossible before, and he knew it as well as Snape. The certainty of success and salvation had settled in him now, and would not be so easily broken. So under a sky night-black with cloud, Potter had emerged from the tent that sheltered their little council, wand curled tightly in a hand that never could be a child’s anymore, and possibly never had been, and opened himself to the universe. Power had dwelt in him there; old power, that liked the certainties and irrevocabilities Potter brought with him, the surety and significant of his purpose. On this day, Potter intended to rewrite the history books; rather than live in a world of either/or, he would remake himself into the ‘and’, a man who could bridge all worlds, satisfy all hopes, and save all people.

Snape had watched huddled from a distance, seen the magic that coursed around the young man like fire, that seemed to caress him (for magic aches to be used, and it likes nothing more than besting its own rules) before he’d grown whiter and hotter and purer until there was only a boy-shaped outline that blazed like the sun, and could not be borne to be looked at. Snape had turned away then, and a second later, thunder had cracked overhead with the intensity of a sonic boom. Except this was not mere thunder; this was the very heart of thunder, the doom of worlds that hung in the air as the very shape of the universe was broken and remade for an instant.

In that instant, he had come to hear, through rumour and gossip and legend, that Potter had translocated himself halfway across the country, and more: that wherever there was a Death Eater, or a rough werewolf, or vampire, or Giant, or some nameless thing, menacing the lives and loveds of others, he had been there, telling it to stop. And if they had listened, he had bound them, by law and lore; and if they had not, he had bound them anyway. And at the same time, as far as anyone could tell, he had faced Voldemort in the bowels of Hogwarts Castle, and cast him into death.

Snape knew this had to be fairly accurate as he was still alive. Muddy, but alive.

He had, after all, not been invited to councils of strategy or included in the considerations of the Order. Even if he and Potter had reached an understanding, even if he had trained the brat, even if he’d aided him in destroying the remaining horcruxes (a necessary thing that left Voldemort weak and maddened, which explained the Death Eaters final push) he was far too uncomfortable a topic for the Weasleys and the Shacklebolts and the Tonks of the world to contemplate. He was, after all, a killer and a murderer, a liar and a user and a traitor to each and every cause except his own survival – and if there was one bit of idealism still left in his bones, he concealed it so well that all he ever felt was the ache of an empty heart. They shunned him because they could not bear the reality that he brought to bear: that life was painful, that certain acts were necessary if unpleasant, that those who clung to moral certitudes in this war had invariably end up dead. Not that he had corrupted Potter, or perverted his great cause: if anything, Snape had stood testament to the truth of what he was himself arguing – that Potter had to kill some people, without hesitation, without pity and without a thought, because some people were worth killing. And in the moment of killing, you grieved for the necessity of the killing and moved on. He had argued that, strong and proud in the one meeting the Order had allowed him to attend, and he’d seen the shocked faces he’d left in the wake of his words. Snape had left then, rather than be told to leave; but on the verge of apparating away, a hand had grabbed his and held him with a strength that belied the sinewy thin state of the wrist, the translucent sickness of the skin. The moon’s call was soon upon him.

Snape had turned with a glare in his eyes and a snarl on his face that had made lesser men wet themselves, but Remus Lupin was no lesser man: not even a man, by some accounting. Those eyes had gazed upon him, and seen him in that moment of anger: seen him and softened – the touch turned to pity, something Snape could never abide.

“Is this what the world has made of you?” he’d asked, softly, and the kindness in the voice was worse than the pity.

Snape had reacted as if stung, yanking his arm back. “Look at what the world has made of you, Lupin,” he’d spat, rudely. “And mind your own affairs. At least I don’t get caged up once a month.”

“You carry your cage with you, Severus,” the man had replied politely, twinkle in his eye like Snape was some sort of student who needed consolation, hope and a block of chocolate. Snape hadn’t even bothered to respond with anything but a black look, and he’d whirled his cloak around him before disappearing in the difference between tick and tock.

He’d stayed low after that, only emerging to watch on that final, fateful day when everything changed. Largely, he’d been skulking in the quiet places, lingering in alley ways and back lanes and country roads. The cobblestones and lean-tos of England had become a home, but now he had to move again: all was over, all was won, and Snape was still not ever, not never, a victor.

The mud squelched uncomfortably underfoot: it had rained for days and even now, two days since the rain’s ending (since everything’s ending, one way or another), most of England was little more than a puddle. He had no idea where to go, of course, but he’d picked up stories along the way from those huddled in homes or barns or making their way stodgily across land the way he was. He’d pieced together the tale of Potter’s victory from those who’d heard – and most weren’t sure as to what they’d heard. There was a hundred different tellings and a thousand different sources, but all agreed that Potter had come and Potter had won and nothing would ever be the same again.

Unfortunately, the mud was still the same.

He was ambling his way across some bloody field in Yorkshire when he heard the familiar pop of Apparation, the pop that Potter had made to sound so simple and so little in comparison to the thunder he’d generated on that day. He’d sagged for a moment, arms hung heavy at his sides – if they wanted to take him, they could – but then the old determined fire, black and bitter in him, rose up and he decided that they could take his fucking corpse, but he wasn’t about to be caught with his back turned. So, he attempted to move above, to face his assailant, potential or not.

He found he couldn’t move. The mud was so thick that his brief pause had overwhelmed his boot, and he’d sunk a little further into what used to be grassy turf. He groaned; but the heavens did not hear his entreaty, and so it was left to him to place hands on either side of his right knee and attempt to yank himself out of this most embarrassing quandary.

Laughter drifted in across the moor. Snape’s eyes narrowed, and he gave up on the futile efforts to extricate himself. He recognized that laughter; free, and full, but touched with sadness. Snape had never been sad; bitter yes, but not sad. And the converse was also true: life had left this man with little more than sadness, but he had never been bitter, not a day that Snape had seen him – and that had rancored deep in Snape’s heart as if it was a personal insult. As if the world was telling him he was lesser for succumbing to such petty and selfish emotions, as this man (this brave, better, broken man) had not.

Remus Lupin ambled around to stand directly in his line of sight on a safe patch of ground some yards away. His hands were safely tucked away in his pocket, and his clothes were as odd an assortment of bohemian plaid as Snape had ever seen. There was amusement in his eyes, and every so often the caterpillar Lupin laughably called a moustache twitched as if the man was holding back laughter. “Severus,” he called out, “whatever are you doing?”

“I’m fleeing,” Snape snarled back, feeling scarlet flush briefly into his face. He felt something beyond ridiculous, and so did his best to clasp his robes more tightly around him, as if their lines of black and shade could give him an authority and professionalism he did not currently have.

“Fleeing. I see.” Lupin pulled his wand, slender and knotted, out from his left trouser pocket and pointed it at him. Snape had ditched his own wand back when Potter had been victorious; it was too traceable, too identifiable, too much a part of him – he hated things he could not leave. Soon enough, he was rising in the slush, feet freed, and there was now a path of solid, dry ground to take him towards Lupin.

To take him nowhere else but towards Lupin. Snape scowled and took every step forward delicately as if he assumed the surety of the path would vanish at any second. The wolf might leave him stranded again simply for the pleasure of it.

When they were standing all but nose to nose, Lupin tucked his wand back into his trousers and spoke. “You sour old bastard,” he said, in a voice full of more fondness than rancour, “we won, don’t you understand? We won, and I include you in the ‘we’.” He’d grabbed Snape’s face then, and hauled him down and in for a hard kiss, lips pressed upon lips. “That’s because we’re alive,” he murmured, almost sacred, soft and low against Snape’s mouth. “That’s because we’re alive and I will find joy in that, and so should you. You helped, you know. You kept Harry going.”

“I did no such thing!” Snape sought to extricate himself, to deny, to lie, and spluttered – but Lupin merely smiled in his eyes and the strength of mountains was in that grip. He slid his tongue into Snape’s spluttering mouth – and there was joy to be found in that, Snape realized with a savagery that made him go weak in the knees. Joy was to be found in that strength, that union, and from the strength came forth sweetness.

Reason returned to him but slowly, and he found he was cradling Lupin loosely in his arms, and being cradled in return. Lupin was running fingers through Snape’s dank, dirty hair like every long strand was fine spun gold, and the expression in the man’s face suggested that was what he truly believed.

“It’s over, Severus,” he murmured, brushing his lips across Snape’s forehead; and the clouds that had still loomed overhead for days had finally parted, and the June sun had shone down upon them. “You can be whoever you want, now.”

This was the end of it, then, and the way beyond: it sounded a little something like hope.