Chapter Twenty-Three - Temper

Lupin was trying his best to write legibly despite the fact that the quill he was using should have been thrown away some months ago. He sighed and pushed the splintered end together with his fingernail so that it didn't splay out so much and muddy up his writing. Sometimes you just had to make do with what you had. Acknowledging that fact didn't make it any more palatable, though. He'd said it so often to himself that its effectiveness was starting to lessen rather markedly. He went back to his research.

Make the best with what you had. It had become an adage graven into his bones. It was the only way he was able to pick himself up each morning and trudge through the day. He'd spent most of his life dealing with his lycanthropy alone. Oh, he'd had friends who supported him when he was at school, and for a few years beyond that, but they'd treated it like some glorious secret that injected spice and excitement in their lives. Lupin knew they didn't really understand how pervasive and destructive the condition was to him. Maybe Sirius understood more than the others. Peter went along with it because everyone else did...that had been Peter's style. James just treated it like an excuse to flout school rules. Lupin shrugged to himself slightly. It was an ungenerous summation, but accurate. Regardless, it did make a difference to have them there every month.

But now, with Sirius on the run, James dead, and Peter hiding like the craven rat he always had been, there hadn't been anyone to prop him up. It might not have been so bad had he not been in such dire straits financially. With no family to support him, Lupin had to make his own way through a world that aimed an emphatically jaundiced eye at lycanthropy. It was bitterly hard. Nobody trusted you...they automatically thought you were either violent or mad, often both. With the ever-present risk of infecting others, werewolves found themselves kicked to the side of society, if not actively stomped on. Such treatment bred more than light antipathy amongst werewolves to non-lycanthropes, which in some had developed into a full-blown hatred. Greyback was one of those, although he was undoubtedly mad as well...a combination that had seen many die in a truly awful and degrading manner and others survive to eke out a half-life on the pity of others, as well as their own ingenuity and determination. It ground even the most strong-willed down until their spirits fractured.

Losing his teaching position at Hogwarts the previous year hadn't come as any surprise to Lupin. In fact, he had been expecting it to happen much earlier than it did. He'd tried not to let it get to him, but it had. Such injustices were getting harder to bear, not easier. There were some who were sympathetic to his plight. The Weasleys often sheltered and fed him, but although Molly fussed when he thanked them for their generosity and said his farewells, he made sure he never overstayed his welcome. If that meant that sometimes he went without food or a warm place to sleep, so be it. He grimaced. However, that was due in part to his drinking, which was starting to get out of control again. If it came to a decision between food and alcohol, he found himself choosing the latter. It was a bad choice, and he knew it full well, but drinking made him happy, at least for a short time, and short times of happiness were all he could get these days.

He stopped writing. No, that wasn't entirely true. Things had gotten a little better. He had work, albeit poorly paid, from the Ministry, a place to sleep, and people who knew what he was going through...perhaps one of whom that showed more compassion than she should. His mind skittered away from that thought quickly.

"Colloquial has three ells, Lupin."

Lupin jumped and splattered ink all over his carefully lettered parchment. "Shit, Severus, I wish you wouldn't do that!" He dragged his wand out and fixed the mess as best he could. He squinted at the result. It wasn't too bad, he supposed. He looked up at where Snape was standing over him and slid another page of parchment over the one he had been writing on. "How long have you been standing there?"

"Long enough to see that your spelling hasn't improved since fifth-year," Snape replied snidely.

Lupin's eyes dropped to the book Snape was holding. "Ailuranthropes? Are you thinking of getting a cat?"

"No, you imbecile, it's about theriomorphs that shift into cats," Snape shot back in a derisive tone.

"Didn't know you were into reading about that sort of stuff, Severus," said Lupin politely.

"They didn't have what I wanted. Apparently all the copies of Why Lycanthrope Males Turn Into Whining Bitches had sold out."

Lupin gritted his teeth in a parody of a smile. "Next time try looking under the editions of Tall Git Monthly. I take it from the downswing in courtesy...look, I can spell that ..." Lupin grabbed a piece of scrap parchment and inked the word in large letters. "...that your hangover has abated?" He waved his spelling in Snape's face, narrowly missing getting his fingers snapped off as the parchment was snatched out of his hand.

"Yes, no thanks to you," Snape retorted with a sneer. "And if you think that rubbing alcohol with dirt in it was firewhisky, then we should hold a funeral for your tastebuds. Probably in the cemetery plot right next to your liver."

"Strange how I recall you downing rather more of that rubbing alcohol than someone who claims to have such a fine taste in beverages normally would, Severus," said Lupin, rolling his eyes.

Snape screwed up the bit of paper in his hand and flicked it so that it hit Lupin smack in the middle of his forehead. "Here's your spelling test back." He stalked off and sat heavily in the dusty armchair by the fireplace.

"That's three for dinner, is it, then?" sighed Lupin, returning to his research.

"There's no way I'd touch anything you've cooked," Snape pointed out, most of his face hidden behind his now-open book. "It'd probably have hair balls in it."

Lupin's temper broke. "Well, f..."

A loud shriek from somewhere upstairs interrupted his long-overdue tantrum.

Snape lowered his book and peered at Lupin over the cover. "What the hell's going on up there?"

The sound of something breakable impacting on an immovable object followed.

"Shit!" barked Lupin and nearly knocked the table over as he launched himself at the doorway. He was halfway up the stairs, with Snape not far behind, when Parr shrieked again.

Lupin skidded round the corner at the top of the stairs just as the bathroom door virtually exploded outwards in several jagged pieces, stopping him in his tracks. A volley of objects followed, smashing against the opposite wall: a hairbrush, the bathmat, two bottles of lotion, the toilet seat and a sock that flopped pathetically onto the carpet.

"Merlin's bollocks, what are you standing there for?" Snape hissed at Lupin, his wand clamped in his fist. He shoved past Lupin who grabbed at his coat.

"Just wait a minute!"

Snape gawked incredulously at him.

A mirror flew out of the bathroom and shattered loudly on the skirting board.

"What are you: insane or frightened, you ridiculous man, and I use that noun in poor context, Lupin," Snape noted, narrowing his eyes over his shoulder. "Get your grubby paws off my coat!"

Lupin refused to let go. "Just shut up and wait," he snapped testily.

A bar of soap, a boot, and the shower curtain rail blasted out of the bathroom as a fat black spider scuttled out and over the debris littering the floor of the small hallway. It scrabbled its way up the wall a couple of feet and stopped.

Several seconds of silence passed.

Snape tried to move forward again but Lupin held onto the back of his coat resolutely. They both stared at the spider.

"Wait for it," Lupin whispered.

The spider started to dart to one side, but it made it no further than an inch before Parr's knife skewered it to the wall with a reverberating 'thunk'.

Lupin let go of Snape's coat and chuckled. Snape turned to look at him.

"She never misses," Lupin explained with a wide grin.

Parr stalked out of the bathroom, barefoot and clad in little more than her underwear. Snape reflexively slapped his hand over Lupin's eyes. Lupin tutted and tried to pull Snape's hand away from his face.

Parr wrenched the knife out of the wall, and the now-dead spider dropped to the floor with a small thump.

"Sorry about the mess, Remus," she said, scowling at the dead arachnid and wiping the flat of the blade on the seat of her underpants. "I'll clean it up afterwards." It didn't seem to bother her that there were two men staring at her in her underwear. "I might need help fixing the door, though." She padded back into the bathroom, her profile sharp with irritation.

"No problem," Lupin called after her, still trying to wrest Snape's hand away. "Severus, what are you doing? I've seen her with less on than that. If anything, you should be covering your own eyes." He turned and went back down the stairs.

He was halfway through writing a sentence when the inevitable question came.

"What do you mean, you've seen her with less on than that?"

Lupin exhaled heavily through his nose before answering. "It's not what you think, Severus."

"How could you possibly know what I'm thinking, Lupin?"

Lupin stopped writing and looked up at Snape, who was loitering ominously in the doorway with suspicion tainted on his every feature. "Ah, how many years have I known you, Severus?" he asked rhetorically. "I think I can make a fairly good guess at what goes on in your head." He went back to his writing.

"Thankfully it isn't what goes on in your febrile mind," came the retort.

Lupin's earlier crankiness returned like a shot. "Well, I don't know about you, Severus, but I don't consider seeing someone who is unclothed, beaten black and blue and with a shattered leg as an object of desire! I assure you that sexual thoughts were the last thing on my mind at that point," he snapped. "Now if you don't mind, I'm busy!" He angrily scratched out the rest of the paragraph.

"When was this?" Snape persisted relentlessly, like a child fixated on a new toy he knew he couldn't have.

"Oh, for fu..." Lupin dropped his quill and put his head in his hands. "Just forget it, please? I've neither the time nor the inclination to put up with this right now, so let me save you the trouble when I tell you that it's none of your business!"

Snape drifted into the room, planted his hands on the rickety table, and leaned towards Lupin. "My, my, how tetchy. Now I'm definitely intrigued."

Lupin glared at him over his fingers. "Don't... bother!" he said clearly and emphatically.

Snape blinked and tilted his head to one side. "What's Greyback up to?"

Lupin had Snape's collar clenched in his fist before the question had finished leaving the man's mouth. Snape was treated to one of Lupin's rare bursts of temper from two inches away.

"Never mention that name in this house!"

Snape tried to look at Lupin without going cross-eyed, but it was difficult with the man's face so close to his own. "You really need to get a grip, Lupin, otherwise I might think that you're a pathetic coward."

Lupin shook him like a dog with a rat in its mouth. "Idiot! I'm not the one you need to be concerned about!"

The heel of Snape's hand caught him sharply in the chest, pushing him back and breaking his grip on Snape's collar.

"Threaten me again, and I'll bind a choke-chain around your neck until you learn some manners!" Snape spat at him, his black eyes burning.

"Out!" Lupin yelled at him, his temper fragmenting into even smaller pieces. "Or this table will be broken once again, but this time it'll be across your face!"

Snape deliberately took his time in straightening his coat prissily, fetching his book and sweeping haughtily out of the house.