Padre Fear
shanna seanachai{are you afraid of love, are you afraid of me?}
Why don’t you just admit it? Nearly twenty years might have passed, Severus, but you are still scared. You still wake to the feel of teeth puncturing your arm, carrying with it doom and disgust and perhaps death, entering your blood stream as subtly and sinuously as ghost... You can still imagine what might have happened that day, taste the coppery feel of fear in your mouth, and that is why you hate me. Not because you think I was conspiring to kill you. No, you know perfectly well that I had nothing to do with Sirius’s plot. You are afraid of me, and that makes you angry, and so you hate me for it.
You hate me for other things, of course, but that is part of it.
{are you afraid of love, is that why you retreat?} And now that I have told you - that I know your secret, and that perhaps I know even more - you stare at me, as still and paralyzed as when, at the age of sixteen, you came to the end of that tunnel and peered in to the Shrieking Shack and saw me in a form you were never meant to witness. I won’t hurt you, Severus. There is no need to turn and run, as you did then.
Don’t believe me, do you?
Well, you should. I won’t tell anyone. I won’t mention it at all.
But I have a request...
Yes. I have a request.
It’s simple, Severus. I only want you to answer a question.
It’s this:
When did you start to love me?
{are you afraid of me?} Don’t look so shocked. I told you I knew your secret. What did you think I meant? That I knew you were Death Eater? Oh, there you go again. Of course, I knew that, Dumbledore told me. Quid pro quo. You know what I am, after all.
Don’t deny it, Severus.
Please don’t do this, Severus. I told you, you have nothing to fear from me. I only want to know why...how. Of course, you have to admit it before you can tell me that.
{are you afraid of love, are you afraid of memory?} I’ll tell you how I know. Yes, yes, how I “think” I know. Cast your imagination back, Severus. I know you have a good one. Our graduation day. How serious you were! And angry, too, I suppose; coming in second in the class, right after James Potter! You always took such things so close to heart. I can imagine why. After all, I had the misfortune of meeting your parents that day.
Ah. Yes. Didn’t know that, did you?
They didn’t know who I was. I don’t know how they would have reacted if they had. You hadn’t told them my secret - and I thank you for that, though I’m sure Dumbledore had a hand in your silence - but you’d told them plenty else.
No, it was they who approached me. They were looking for you - you disappeared right after the ceremony - and they wanted to know if I had seen you. Well, I hadn’t. They asked me if I had classes with you, and I told them that I did. And then they asked a very peculiar question...they asked me if that Lupin boy was still bothering you.
What’s wrong?
You’re absolutely silent.
I don’t need to tell you what they thought, do I?
{are you afraid of what you cannot see?} It’s all right, Severus. I don’t hold it against you at all.
I’m not being superior. I’m simply saying that I understand.
You know, up until I met James and the rest, I was alone all the time. It wasn’t really safe for me to be around people. My family was afraid they’d find out my problem and someone from the Ministry would be alerted and I’d be exterminated. So I spent a lot of time alone. I grew to have a very vibrant imagination. I made up...stories.
It must have been terrible, not being able to tell your parents about what happened to you in Sixth Year. It was, after all, a very frightening thing.
What? That wasn’t it?
I see. Yes, they didn’t seem like they had much attention to spare. For anyone besides themselves, of course. I understand.
{are you afraid of love, are you afraid of me?} So you made something up about me following you around...pursuing you, I guess you’d say.
As I said, it didn’t really bother me too much, knowing this, but it certainly did make me curious.
Well, why that? That’s what I was wondering. Why not just say that I was teasing you, or playing tricks on you, like Sirius and James?
And that’s how I came to my conclusion.
{are you afraid to be free?} The silence in the room was deafening. They sat facing each other, only a few feet between them, though it felt like miles. Severus’s hands were folded, as though in prayer; his head was bowed. Though he was completely still, his body vibrating like a live wire. Waiting for Remus to resume speaking. Waiting for him...
But Remus said nothing.
Finally, Severus raised his head. His face was carefully blank, but he could not control the skittish look in his eyes. “Well?” he asked. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
Remus had the most peculiar way of gazing at you and making you say and do all manner of things you would, under normal pretenses, never allow to occur. “Because I...” He bit the inside of his cheek, stopping himself. He frowned. “Get out.” There. He should never have let it get this far in the first place. Whatever had possessed him to sit here and listen to the man?
Because I...
“You haven’t yet gotten around to answering my question, though,” Remus reminded him.
“It’s a foolish question,” Severus said, standing up, “and I don’t intend to answer it.”
Remus also rose. He smiled at Severus in way that made him feel dizzy.
“I have no reason to fear you,” he said, and wondered why he couldn’t convince himself of that.
“Of course you don’t,” Remus said, and closed the distance between them in a mere step. “No reason...at all.” And then suddenly, as though he felt the need to bridge whatever gap still existed between them, he pushed his face close to Severus’s, and kissed him.
{because I want love but nobody’s home} It was a short, chaste kiss. Nonetheless it felt like Severus had been punched in the stomach; he stepped away, reeling from this attack. Attack on the senses. Attack on whatever composure he had managed to dredge up. “Get...out!”
“Severus...” And for the first time, Remus looked tired, looked anything but confident. Remus usually had this air about him of humble dignity, not smug in anyway, but sure of himself nonetheless. Now he just looked very sad, and Severus thought to himself: by tonight he will be gone, he will be far away and I will probably never see him again. Certainly it was a thought that would have pleased him mere hours ago, but now, at its insurgence, he suddenly found himself shaking, his breath catching somewhere between his lungs and his heart, anything he had been about to say ... lost. Just lost.
Then Remus kissed him again, and he closed his eyes, and let it happen.
{it’s midnight and I’m howling at the moon} “I..” he said, gasping, licking his lips when they came up for air, “I told them that because ...”
“Because you wanted it to happen,” Remus finished for him, and kissed him hard, his tongue sliding in between Severus’s lips, laying siege to his mouth, making the world spin around insanely...
“Yes, yes,” he groaned, “How did you know?”
“I didn’t, really. I only guessed.”
“Damn you,” he muttered, and kissed him even harder. Remus might have been the werewolf, but it was Severus who felt wild right now...felt like his body was morphing and changing into something else. Something ferocious and powerful. His body shook with this transformation each time their lips came together.
{it’s midnight and I’m howling for you} “Will you answer my question, at last?”
“Question? What?”
“When? When did you start...”
“Oh.” He closed his eyes. “I don’t know, really. It just ... happened.”
Remus kissed both of his eyelids, almost reverently. “I suppose,” he mused, “that is how it usually happens..”
“But you,” Severus said suddenly, backing away, “why are you doing this? Why are you -”
“- Kissing you?” And he did so, for so long that Severus almost forgot to care if Remus answered him at all. “...Wanting you? As you said. It just ... happened.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not at all. Is it really so ridiculous for me to want you?”
Severus just stared at him. “You never gave any kind impression that such was the case.”
“Neither did you. We’re both very good actors, I suppose.”
“It would be very easy,” Severus whispered, after they had kissed again, “to believe you...”
“Then do it.”
“I’m distrustful, by nature.”
“No,” Remus sighed. “You’re just afraid.”
{are you afraid of love?}
Don’t be scared.
Don’t be...
Don’t be scared.
{it’s midnight...it’s midnight...}
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