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Severus Didn’t Do Anything


At Hogwarts, time moves quickly even without the time turner - especially when exams are looming and now that they were less than a month away, time was downright speeding past. The O.W.L.s were scheduled to begin on 17 May, and with the full moon on 13 May that left very little time for final revisions which meant that the Marauders had to cram everything they could into the days leading up to the full moon, which became increasingly harder with everything going on: the final Quidditch match coming up between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw on 8 May, the teachers trying to cram every ickle bit of information they could into their students heads, and the days getting increasingly hotter and hotter until the dormitory in Gryffindor tower began to feel a bit like a sauna by midafternoon.

Come 1 May, Remus Lupin was a sore, tired mess. He hadn’t slept properly in over a week - every time he tried to get rest, images of Sirius Black doing an array of dirty things to him would invade his mind, as though he were being haunted. Remus would wake up in pools of sweat in his bed, unsure if he was sweating from pains associated with being a werewolf or over the way Sirius was touching and kissing him in his dreams; i could’ve been either, really. Remus’s knees were aching so badly he could hardly walk from the dorms to the Great Hall for lunch. They were so bad that most of the time James took to giving him piggyback rides about the castle, laughing as Remus’s long body draped over him. People gave them strange looks but the Marauders were always up to something, so they didn’t think too, too much of it… it was just another crazy thing those silly Marauders were up to.

But on 1 May, Remus was on his own. He was in the library, studying, while James was off on the pitch with the team at quidditch practice for the second time that week and Sirius and Peter had gone to watch. Remus had armed himself with a Honeydukes fudge bar, concealed in his robes pocket, and a stack of books he used to build himself a study fort on the library table, and there he sat, reading over old notes and textbook summaries for History of Magic, when a shadow cast its way over the parchment before him and he looked up.

Lily Evans stood before him. “Hullo,” she said.

Remus stared at her in surprise. “Hullo…” he replied slowly, suspiciously. He eyed her.

“Anyone sitting here?” she indicated the bench beside him.

He shook his head.

Lily sat down and put her textbooks on the table before her, along with her ink pot and a quill. She was straddling the bench though, facing him, one leg on each side, her eyes eager as she looked up at him.

Remus smiled warily. “Is there, uh, something I can do for you, Lil?”

She cleared her throat. “You could accept my apology,” she replied.

“Your apology?” he asked, “Apology for what?”

“For being a horrible friend,” she answered. She sighed and put a hand gently on Remus’s shoulder. “I really am sorry. I’ve been keeping busy with my own stuff, sort of avoiding my friends, really, except Alice, and only because - I mean, nobody can avoid Alice, she sort of imposes herself on you if you even try to --”

Remus was staring at Lily with confused eyes.

“-- and anyway… I mean to say that I’ve been distant. And I miss you. And I wanted to talk to you. Wanted to say sorry and hope that you can forgive me and we can be close again because I miss us, Rey.” Lily studied him a long moment.

Remus nodded. “Yeah… Well, don’t worry about it, Lily. I mean, we’re friends you and I. We drift away but that doesn’t make us less friends. You’ve been busy, I’m sure, so have I… Stuff going on and all. And I know you were upset with Sirius about the thing with Snape and all...”

“You were too,” Lily said. “How are you doing, by the way? With… with that? With what he did to you. Are you alright?”

Remus nodded, “Yeah. Good. Great. Just… just great.” He paused, staring down at his parchment and sort of spinning his quill on the table top. “Well. No. Not good, really.” He stopped spinning the quill and looked at her with sad eyes, “But I sort of need to be. The lads need me, Sirius included and…” Remus shrugged.

Lily reached out and squeezed Remus’s knee. “I’m sorry.”

“Been through worse, haven’t I?” he murmured, then he turned away, staring at his parchment.

Lily inched closer. “I think you’re incredibly brave.”

Remus shrugged.

She nodded, “You are. Just getting up in the morning after being betrayed by someone you trust… that’s… that’s something, isn’t it?” She smiled sadly. “I can barely do it myself.”

Remus looked up.

“I mean… how do you do it?”

Remus looked her over for a moment. “I just do.” He paused. “Lily, did something happen?”

Lily shook her head, “It’s nothing to worry yourself with, Rey.” She turned, sweeping her second leg over the bench and dropped open her textbook. Remus stayed watching her for a moment while she opened the book and found her page. She could feel his eyes on her. After a few moments of the silent stare he was giving her, she murmured, “There might’ve been something… very minor, no reason to tell the other boys.”

She had literally been worried about the Marauders finding out about what happened.

Remus used his fingers to criss-cross his heart, “I won’t tell a soul, Lil. You know I won’t. Anything you say to me, I won’t repeat.”

Lily hesitated. She looked around, “I… I don’t want anyone overhearing us.”

Remus pulled his wand, “Muffliato,” he whispered.

To his surprise, tears came into her eyes at this.

“Lily?”

“That’s how it started.”

“What started?”

Lily blinked and the tears rolled silently over her cheeks. “It was after Potions a couple weeks ago now, and during class Severus Snape had been sort of antagonizing Sirius and after the class ended, Sirius ran off so you three went after him and… and sort of left me behind…”

The boys had been walking with her to keep her safe in the dungeons ever since Mary Macdonald had nearly been raped in the dungeons corridor before being rescued by a mystery student whose identity nobody knew - just the same as had happened in James’s timeline. Remus remembered the afternoon Lily was referring to quite well. It wasn’t long after Slughorn had switched Sirius and Lily’s Potions partners - partially because Sirius needed help in Potions and partially because James and Sirius were constantly goofing off (which may have explained why Sirius needed the help). Sirius never had told them what it was that Severus Snape had said to him - something terrible was all they could get out of him - but he had run off upset and they had gone after him and never given the abandoning of Lily Evans a second thought.

Remus felt a wave of guilt burning in him at this. If something happened…

Lily continued, without pause, “Well Severus and I were leaving at the same time and I was upset because James had been pestering me the entire time during class, asking me to go to Hogsmeade with him, over and over and over, and I was annoyed with him… and Severus stopped me in the corridor, grabbed my arm, and - and he asked what I was upset about and I was telling him when Mulciber, Avery, and McNair came around the corner.”

Remus’s heart sank, the guilt rising higher about it.

Lily couldn’t quite look him in the eyes.

“Mulciber cast that spell. The muffliato. He said it was so that nobody could hear me if I screamed.” Her voice shook. “And… and Mulciber pushed me against the wall ‘round the corner, where - where nobody goes unless they’re going to Slytherin common room - and Avery waved his wand and - and he cut - cut open my jumper… and… and Sev-Severus just… he stood there, watching with this… this funny look on his face… and he… he didn’t say anything… and McNair… he told him to go on and… and to… to have a feel, that Severus could go first since… since he w-wanted this mudblood so much… told him I’d never remember it, that they’d modify my memory after… and… and he… he took a step forward… whether it was to help me or to… to have a feel, I don’t know... but that’s when Slughorn came out of his office and ‘round the corner. I think he was headed to the toilets, and if he hadn’t of been… I mean, I dunno what would’ve happened.”

Tears poured over her cheeks.

Remus whispered, “Merlin’s beard, Lily, you have to tell somebody. Dumbledore or McGonagall.”

“Well Slughorn stopped them, gave them all detentions… and Severus said… he said he meant to stop them. Said he was stepped forward to save me when Slughorn had caught them, that he had been about to hex them all and free me… but... I don’t know, his eyes were so torn, like I could see he was battling the options, and he hadn’t made up his mind when he took that first step…” she felt her throat tighten. “Slughorn has walked me to the entrance hall every class since. Severus keeps trying to remind me that he was going to stop them, but I just feel so… so violated and betrayed and afraid because Mulciber was so angry, and McNair and Avery, too. They stare at me in the Great Hall. Jasper even noticed them staring. They were watching Jasper and I just the other day when we were walking to Herbology together…”

“Well they deserve a lot worse than detention!” Remus said, “Lil, you need to tell McGonagall. She’d expel them for that rubbish. They haven’t the right to be doing that to anybody for any reason! You must’ve been so afraid, I’m so sorry, why didn’t you tell us? We’ll stay with you in the halls from now on, I’ll see to it that we don’t leave you behind again, no matter what’s going on, we’ll stay with you - or at least I will, I swear, and --”

“No, no you can’t tell James and Sirius. You can’t, Remus,” Lily begged, flushing up immediately. “Please, you said you wouldn’t tell.”

Remus said, “But Lily --”

“Please!” she begged. “James and Sirius look for any reason at all to pick fights with Severus Snape enough already. I don’t want them to hurt him and --”

“Don’t want them to hurt him? He’d have earned it, Lil,” Remus said, “It isn’t right what he’s done to you!”

“He didn’t do anything. It was Mulciber and Avery mostly and McNair, but mostly the other two - Severus hadn’t done anything.”

“Yes - he didn’t stop them. And not stopping something like that is as bad as participating,” Remus argued.

Lily wiped her eyes with her fists, “Remus, please, don’t make me regret telling you. Please, I told you because I trust you and right now there’s very few people I trust. You understand. You only have a few people, too.” She stared at him with a begging expression upon her face. “Don’t tell them. Please.”

Remus sighed heavily. “I… I won’t. But Lily… please tell McGonagall.”

Her eyes went to her lap and she tugged the hem of her jumper…

And Remus really noticed the jumper for the first time when she had.

And he realized what he was seeing.

The button missing, the patches on the arms…

And he realized that beneath the concern he now had for what happened, he was also feeling that heady dizziness from the cologne… subtle, but there…

But now was so not the time to be mentioning that jumper to her. Not as she sat with tears in her eyes talking about… this. So he decided that the jumper at least he would mention to James later on.

Lily wiped her eyes again. “Remus, thank you for listening,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean to - to burden you with that, it’s just… I do trust you, and I’ve missed talking to you. I meant to check on you, and to be sure you were alright. I didn’t mean to make this about me. I just - I understand what you’re going through with being betrayed by - by someone. I - I thought Severus was somebody I trusted, too. I trusted him so many times and now… I feel so stupid, Remus.”

Remus inched closer and enveloped her in a hug. “You are not stupid,” he whispered. “You’re so not stupid, Lily. They’re stupid for trying to hurt you and Severus Snape is stupid for not protecting you. I would never do that to you, neither would the other Marauders. Blimey if James had been there, he would’ve hexed them so badly they’d still be crying mercy…”

Lily’s whispered, “I know, you four have always been so good about that. About keeping me safe… and I’m always so terrible at thanking you lot properly.”

“You don’t have to thank us for that. We’re your friends, Lily. And that’s what real friends do. It’s our duty to keep you safe, and I’m sorry that we weren’t there then to save you. We should have been… but Severus’s your friend, too, and he was there and that means it was his duty to protect you. As a man - as a human being - it was his duty to protect you.” Remus was angry. His face was pink from it and he spoke with a hard passion.

Lily leaned over and wrapped her arms about him. “I’ve missed you so much, Remus,” she said thickly, “I’m so sorry I haven’t been there for you through this mess with Sirius, too. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to comfort you after you broke up. That was part of my duty as a friend, too, and I let you down.”

Remus shook his head, “I wouldn’t have wanted to talk about it. I didn’t talk about it with anybody. It hurt too much.” He paused, then, “I talked about it recently with James.”

Lily was quiet a long moment, then, “James is very good at listening when he wants to be.”

Remus answered, “James is very good at a lot of things when he wants to be, rather.”

“Including reminding everyone of that fact,” Lily answered. “If only he wasn’t so arrogant…”

“He isn’t really as arrogant as he puts off…” Remus said, “Underneath all that, he’s actually really nervous about how people see him. Especially you. He acts like he does about you because he wants you to be impressed with him. Idiot thinks he’s doing himself favors but --” Remus shrugged. “Honestly, under all that bravado and ego, he’s the nicest person in the world. And it’s rather thick, getting through all that rubbish he puts up but if you dig for it, there’s a heart of gold inside. Really.”

Lily laughed nervously, tucking a bit of stray hair over her ear, “You sound like a spokesperson for the James Potter marketing campaign.”

Remus flushed.

Lily stared at her textbook for a long few minutes - Remus did, too. They sat in silence, then, “Remus, are you ready to the O.W.L.s?”

“Bloody hell. No. I’m drowning in this material. I’m so scared I’m going to fail everything. I keep having these dreams - about - about Sirius and I’m alway studying in the dreams before he… interrupts me.” Remus burned bright red and he said, “I’m so nervous, too, because the exams are getting closer and I only have a few days left to study before… before the moon… and I’m so not ready.”

Lily said, “I’ll help you study.”

So they reconstructed Remus’s book fort to include both their parchments and they made flash cards and they started working together on studying.