Rating for fleeting darkness.

---

~The Guest~

Severus Snape hunched further into his heavy cloak as he strode along the beach on his daily walk. Bloody cold, even for December. He supposed he could move somewhere warmer, but the stark countryside of Northern Scotland suited him; the bitter cold and the biting wind were like reflected elements of himself and he wrapped them around his life like another layer of protection.

His tiny cottage stood close to the narrow strip of sand. With a small walled yard and a garden behind, it suited his need for solitude, and he could brood with the sea for hours.

He arrived in his entryway in a swirl of freezing air and a few dead leaves, turning to shoulder the door shut against the wind. The warmth welcomed him, the air rich with the smell of the chicken roasting in the oven. He toed off his boots, hung his cloak on a peg, and padded to the kitchen in thick socks to where the ever-present kettle greeted him.

The war had finally ended. A lifetime of deceit and treachery were behind him, and all he had to do was learn to... do nothing.

At his trial, the evidence that Dumbledore had left stated that Snape had not had any choice. It had exonerated him, but both he and Dumbledore had been clear between them. There was always a choice, and Snape had chosen to follow Dumbledore's orders. The alternative, allowing the Dark Lord to win, was as unacceptable to him as it had been to the old man. Snape had made peace with himself long ago.

He had been cleared of all charges, had even been grudgingly given a small pension, but that certainly hadn't meant forgiveness. Another reason for choosing this place full of Muggles. Here, he was regarded as an eccentric academic, not as an evil murderer. Quite a recommendation for the place, actually.

He rarely saw any members of the old Order. Minerva came by a few times a year for a visit, always trying to persuade him to come back to Hogwarts to teach, but she was profoundly busy with the school, and in spite her grumblings, she seemed to be thriving. Weasleys, Potters and the various branches of the Black family he was happy to do without.

Lupin.

Snape frowned. The last time Minerva had dropped in, she had asked if he'd heard from the man.

"Why would you think I had?"

"I've been trying to get him to come back and teach, you know."

Snape had snorted into his very fine scotch.

"He was very good, as you well know." She had frowned at him. "Why do you still hate him?"

Snape had started to retort, as he always did, that Lupin had tried to kill him, but instead he simply stared out the window. "Habit?" It was the best, and most honest, response he could come up with.

Minerva shook her head. "He asked about you."

Snape's eyebrow rose. "You didn't tell him where I was?" She sipped her drink. "Minerva?"

"Well, why shouldn't I? He's not one of those still looking to kill you, is he. And he seemed...." She looked out the bay window. "I don't know..., at loose ends, perhaps?" It wasn't like her to be vague. "So I told him. I take it he hasn't contacted you?"

"No, thank the gods."

That had been a month ago. It was now a few days before Christmas and Snape's world was still blessedly werewolf free.

~~

Snape wrote articles for potions journals, consulted from time to time, and did a little special-order brewing to supply some of the extra niceties in life, but basically he lived a quiet, mostly magic-free life. He had seen so much magic used for evil, that he found it a relief to live quietly, reading, tending his garden and taking care of himself. Perhaps it was the novelty of having no demands on him, no one trying to tear his soul in two, but he liked being alone, liked it very much, which is why, when a knock came on his door at eight that evening, he looked up with a frown.

Holding his wand loosely out of sight – there were still those who would love to see his demise – he opened the door a crack against the stinging wind.

"Severus." The figure pushed back his hood so Snape could see him in the light escaping into the night.

"What do you want?" Snape used his foot to brace the door.

Lupin was shivering. "May I come in?"

Snape hesitated. The man was shaking so from the cold that Snape could hear his teeth rattling over the whine of the wind. He supposed he could at least let the man warm up before he sent him on his way. He opened the door wordlessly.

Lupin stamped the snow off his boots – when had it started to snow? – and then pulled them off. At least he was considerate. Snape hung the damp cloak and motioned Lupin back toward the kitchen. He had holes in his socks.

Snape poured them both tea and rummaged for some biscuits. Lupin helped himself with hands that were red and painful-looking from the winter air. He looked even thinner than he had when Snape had last seen him, thinner and more stooped. His clothes were decent, however, and his cloak had been thick enough for a London winter, and relatively new.

"Would you like a shot in that?" Snape heard himself asking.

Lupin grinned. "That would be lovely."

They retired to the living room where Snape poured a hefty amount of his second-best brandy into their mugs. They sat by the fire.

"You've no tree." Lupin looked around the comfortable room.

"Easy to see how you landed a job teaching the Dark Arts with that keen sense of observation."

Lupin stared at the fire for a long minute. "I thought we might be beyond this."

Snape looked sideways at Lupin. The firelight gave his graying hair an almost ethereal glow and softened the lines and scars on his face. It made him look younger, more the way he had at school so very long ago. Snape set his mug down with a thump. "Well, we're not. Why are you here? None of your friends willing to have you?"

Lupin flinched, then drew a deep breath. "Well, most of them are dead, but no, I've had invitations." He glanced at Snape. "Just thought I'd see how you were doing."

"Because I have no friends? Believe me, Lupin, I like it this way. And if I did pine for company, it wouldn't be yours."

Lupin's face went blank, and he set his mug down carefully. "I'm sorry, Severus, I'll be going."

Snape remained seated as Lupin pulled on his boots and cloak in the front hall and left, closing the door softly behind him.

~~

When the knock sounded on his door the next night, Snape thought it might be Minerva, or perhaps the woman who came to clean once a week had been baking, and had sent her eldest with a treat, but he certainly didn't expect to see Remus Lupin standing on his doorstep. Again.

"Now what?"

Lupin held out a basket that steamed softly. "Plum pudding."

Snape hesitated.

"With brandy butter."

Snape supposed it would be impolite to turn the man away, so he stepped back, taking the basket as Lupin shucked his boots and cloak. They were halfway to the kitchen when Snape faltered. "Did you make this?"

Lupin looked over his shoulder and smiled. "No worries. Molly Weasley made it."

Snape swallowed the sudden flood of saliva in his mouth. Molly was an excellent cook. But still. "Did she know you were sharing it with me?"

"No." Lupin turned with mugs of tea in his hands and gave Snape an appraising look. "She'd have sent more if I'd told her."

Snape set the basket down with a thump. "Why aren't you there, or with Tonks?"

Lupin shrugged as he unpacked the basket. "Molly invited me, but I see so much of the Weasleys anyway...."

"Oh?" Snape got out plates and forks.

"Mmm." Lupin dished up the savory dessert. "I work with Arthur at the Ministry now, you know, and he brings me home with him a lot."

"How would I know that?" Snape found some napkins in the drawer. Lupin just shook his head and Snape continued, hating himself for asking. "Tonks?"

Lupin's smile was rueful. "She finally saw the light."

"Realized you were too old, too poor and too dangerous?" Snape smirked as he repeated back what he'd heard Lupin's words on the subject to be. The first bite of pudding melted on his tongue.

Lupin gave an apologetic half-shrug. "Too gay."

Snape choked.

Lupin waited until, red-faced, he had stopped sputtering and wheezing. "Surely you guessed? Back in school?"

Snape concentrated on folding his napkin. "I'm afraid I didn't pay that much attention." He tried hard to banish the images of Lupin and that mutt, laughing, arms slung around each other's shoulders. Not that he had paid much attention to Lupin, of course.

They finished eating in silence and then, with fresh mugs of tea, retired to the living room and the chairs in front of the fire, where the silence continued. The firelight flickered over Lupin's face, making the brown of his eyes dance with golden hues. The long, lean legs stretched out toward the heat and he sighed contentedly.

Really, you'd think that if he had a regular income, he would at least get a decent haircut. It was unseemly the way the graying hair fell just over his collar, and curled behind his ear.

Snape stood abruptly. "I have work to do."

Lupin's expression closed as he stood and ran a hand through his hair. "Well, it was good of you to share a few moments of your time with me, Severus."

Snape didn't hear any sarcasm in the words, but he was sure it must have been be there. He retrieved the basket from the kitchen while Lupin put on his things. Lupin took the basket with a nod and Snape stiffened. "That was...." He searched desperately for a word that was neither too rude nor too friendly. When he saw the shadow of a smile forming at the corner of Lupin's mouth, he plunged on awkwardly. "Thank you, Lupin."

"You're welcome, Severus." Lupin ducked his head and reached for the door.

~~

Christmas Eve. Not that there was anything in Severus Snape's house to give any indication that this evening was different from any other. Snape was reading by the fire when, for the third night in a row, a knock came at the door. He looked out the window first and was barely able to make out Lupin's form in the blowing snow. He yanked the door open.

"What?"

Lupin blinked. "I, uh, brought you something."

Snow blew over Snape's stockinged feet. "Get in here." He moved aside, then slammed the door and scowled at Lupin, who was taking off his cloak. "I didn't invite you to stay."

Lupin straightened as if slapped. "No, of course not. Sorry." He started to shrug back into the snowy cloak.

"Oh, for gods' sake." Snape snatched the cloak and headed for the kitchen. Lupin kicked off his boots and arrived to see Snape hang the garment by the stove, where it started to steam. Snape turned and folded his arms.

"What do you want, Lupin."

"Uh... want?"

"Yes, want. Has the cold addled your wits? Why do you keep coming here? Are you tormenting me merely because it’s the holiday season and you're overflowing with brotherly love and the misguided notion that I'm lonely, or is this a plan of greater scope, and you will continue to plague me long after the new year?"

Lupin's face was pale but for the two spots of color the wind had stung into his cheeks. Slowly, without taking his eyes off Snape, he set a crumpled paper sack on the table. "There's really nothing, is there?"

Snape felt unaccountably discomfited. "What are you talking about?"

"No, sorry." Lupin dropped his gaze to the floor. "Just give me my cloak, I'll be going."

Snape felt oddly cheated as he handed Lupin his cloak and watched the man prepare to go out again.

"I'm sorry, Severus. I'll not trouble you again." Lupin's eyes were empty. "Happy Christmas."

Snape stood for a moment in the empty hallway, staring at the door. He didn't like the feeling that he had missed something important.

"Bugger."

He returned to the living room to read, but after half an hour of rereading the same page over and over, he slapped the book shut and headed for the kitchen. He poured his tea, then noticed the paper sack still sitting on the table. He studied it for a while, wondering what on earth the werewolf could have brought him. Finally, he reached across and gingerly tipped out the contents. A Slytherin scarf. Puzzled, he picked it up and ran it through his hands. It was old and faded, and on the hem was a carefully mended hole. A hole that had been made when he had caught the scarf on the carriage door leaving the Hogwarts Express after his second year at school. A hole that his mother had neatly darned before he returned the next fall. He had lost this scarf that winter. He thought he had left it in the library, but when he returned to look, there was no sign of it. What was Remus Lupin doing with his scarf? What had he been doing with it for the last, what, almost thirty years? Snape frowned while carrying it, with his tea, to the living room.

He dumped the scarf on the chair that Lupin had used, and once again picked up his book, but try as he might to read, his eyes kept straying to the scarf, and his thoughts to Lupin. He was suddenly jolted with a flood of intuition – the same intuition that had saved his life on numerous occasions. A kaleidoscope of images, ending with Lupin at the door, "I'm sorry, Severus. I'll not trouble you again," rushed through his mind.

"Buggery hell." Snape bolted out of his chair and headed for the door. He cursed as he jumped up and down on one foot trying to pull his boot on. Shod at last, he yanked on his cloak and, drawing his wand, stumbled out into the stinging wind and snow.

"Lupin!" His shout was whipped away by the wind. Holding his wand in front of him, he closed his eyes and cleared his mind, reaching out for traces of magic. There. Faint, but there, coming from the direction of the roiling sea.

"Stupid stupid stupid." It was his mantra as Snape forced his way into the wind, then turned left at the beach. The waves, unseen in the darkness, roared like an angry beast. Chanting a continuous litany of epithets that disparaged the ancestry, intelligence, appearance, and every other aspect of a certain werewolf, Snape made his way along the shore. "Shit!" Icy spray from the waves found its way under his collar. He came to the tumble of rock at the end of the beach and stopped. According to his senses, Lupin should be right here, but in the chaos of the storm, he couldn't see him. "Lumos Maximus!" Even that didn't penetrate the gloom very far, but it was far enough. Slumped down between the rocks was a still form.

Snape tried lifting the unconscious man, but the sodden robes made him far too heavy. Using a combination of spells to cast a warming shield and lessen Lupin's weight, he pulled him to his feet and half carried, half levitated him back to the cottage. Snape was sweating heavily despite the wind by the time he had Lupin inside, and not stopping to shed his dripping clothes, he wrestled Lupin up the stairs.

"Mrs. Greengrass will have my arse for ruining her floors, I'll have you know." He muttered and swore under his breath, dumping the still form on the bathroom floor. A few waves of his wand, and Lupin's wet clothing disappeared even as the tub filled with warm water. Snape tore off his own cloak and tossed it aside, then gently levitated Lupin into the water. His body was white and still, his lips blue. Without slacking in his diatribe, Snape supported Lupin's head carefully, grabbing a towel to cushion it on the edge of the porcelain.

"Do not drown; I'll be right back." He hesitated a second, then cast a charm to keep Lupin's head above water before bolting down the stairs. He tumbled down the cellar steps and ran smack into the warded door of the storeroom that held his potions lab. Impatiently muttering the spells to release the wards, he entered and rummaged frantically along the shelves. Finding what he was looking for, he took the stairs two at a time to the second floor and collapsed on the mat. "Too bloody old for this." He gasped under his breath as he pulled the cork with his teeth, steadying Lupin's head with his other hand.

He tipped a few drops into Lupin's slack mouth and waited. It didn't take long. Lupin gasped, his body convulsing in a wracking cough that slopped water out of the tub and all over Snape. "Bloody imbecile." Snape growled as he raised the bottle to Lupin's lips again.

"No." Lupin pushed his hand away. "Don't want it, let me go."

"Listen, you inconsiderate halfwit, if you wish to kill yourself, that's all very well, but you will not do it in my dooryard."

Lupin stared at him for a moment, his eyes round with shock, then he began to laugh. A high, rather hysterical laugh. "Since when do you care? I'd think you'd be glad to see the last of me."

"I didn't say I didn't want to see the last of you, I said I didn't want your frozen corpse on my lawn. Now drink this." He held the bottle to Lupin's lips and the man drank, suddenly docile, and turned his head away.

"No." Snape gripped his shoulder hard enough to bruise. "Don't you quit on me. Do you really think that after all the trouble I've gone to, I'll allow you to walk out of here and try that again?"

"I'll go somewhere else." Lupin's lip curled.

Snape sat back and crossed his legs, suddenly tired. "I'd rather you didn't."

"What?"

Snape sighed. "I said, I'd rather you didn't."

Lupin stared at him, wet hair plastered to his forehead, his eyes wide and wounded like those of a beaten dog. "Why not?"

Snape rose and grabbed his rumpled cloak. "Just... don't, all right?" Without waiting for an answer, he left the room, closing the door with a sharp click.

~~

Spring came slowly to Snape's stone cottage. Lupin had contracted pneumonia after that night and had spent several weeks recuperating in the small second bedroom under the eaves, and convalescing in the big chair by the fire. It just seemed natural, somehow, for him to return there once he started back at work a few days a week. They moved a bit cautiously around each other; Snape was unsure that he still didn't prefer living alone, but Lupin hadn't offered to leave again after Snape had flung the tea kettle at his head and shouted at him that if he bloody well wanted him to go, he'd bloody well tell him to go.

There came the day when Snape stood looking at the first crocus nodding golden in the snow, and Lupin laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. Snape had turned slowly, and after a moment's hesitation, returned the tentative kiss.

By the time the lilacs bloomed, the second bedroom was again a storeroom.

~~