Chapter Thirty-Three — Attachments

Folter blinked several times in mild surprise at the string of epithets that flew from Snape's mouth. She so rarely heard him swear, even though there were times that even she thought it was warranted.

He clutched the sheet in white-knuckled hands and finally focused on the house-elf.

"Half an hour! You couldn't have waited half an hour? Ten minutes? Ten seconds?!" He let go of the sheet and pressed his hands to his eyes. "Damn it, Folter, what did you wake me for?" he moaned quietly.

Folter shifted her weight from foot to foot and tucked her hair behind her ears. It had fallen forward when she had jumped back at the angry sound in his voice after she'd woken him. She'd known that he'd been suffering from disturbed sleep for some days and had hoped that allowing him to rest past his usual waking hour would benefit him.

"Folter is sorry," she began in a hushed tone. "She waited as long as possible to wake the Professor, but he needs to get up now or he will be late."

Snape didn't move his hands away from his eyes. "I'm not interested in eating in the Great Hall this morning," he muttered sourly. As if on cue, his stomach made a stupendous gurgling sound that made him sigh in exasperation.

Folter wriggled her bare toes on the stone floor, watching him in mild curiosity.

"Ah, Folter means late for class, not late for breakfast."

Snape removed his hands from his eyes and looked at her wearily. "What are you talking about?"

The house-elf pressed her lips together briefly, surmising that a combination of fatigue and disorientation was making Snape slow on the uptake.

"The Professor's first class starts in fifteen minutes."

They stared at each other in silence for a few moments as Snape's mind lurched back and forth over her statement.

Folter had to jump back again as sheets and pillows went flying in all directions. She looked up to see Snape stumble in the doorway to the bathroom, tripping on a sheet that had wrapped around his ankle. The door slammed shut on the material.

By the time she had returned from the kitchens with his breakfast, Snape was already out of the bathroom and in front of the fireplace, dragging his clothes on awkwardly over skin that was still damp.

"Your sense of timing is highly questionable, Folter," he pointed out acerbically, misbuttoning his shirt. The house-elf shook her head slightly and tried to help him by jumping up onto the mantelpiece and straightening his collar. "Where were you three hours ago when I needed you to wake me?"

Folter had no idea how to answer that, so she didn't.

His coat was secured on him with charm-induced alacrity that ordinarily he would have eschewed. The house-elf got slapped in the face by his cold, damp hair as he whirled towards the door out of his private quarters, completely ignoring his breakfast.

The stentorian slam marked his departure.

It was to be a day of very mixed fortune.

The tip of his quill slid back and forth gently under his chin as he sat lost in speculation.

The students had been charged with the task of determining what potions would be appropriate for the situations he'd listed on the blackboard. He was in no mood for any kind of interaction, so he had granted them twenty minutes to search through their books for the relevant information before embarking on the preparation of two of the possible six potions for that day's assignment. Even though it was a double lesson, they'd be pressed for time and therefore by necessity more fully focused on their task instead of fooling about.

Folter's timing had been almost comically poor. Rather than wake him up before the terrifying crescendo of his nightmare, she'd dragged him away from what he'd determined to make an erotic dream of exquisite degree.

Snape often mused on the content of such dreams after they had occurred. If the person he'd enjoyed was in the immediate vicinity, he'd study them carefully, wondering if his nocturnal imaginings had any basis in reality. Sprout had actually shouted at him for staring at her for too long once, but she was notoriously crabby first thing in the morning and was likely to bite the head off of anyone who glanced at her at the breakfast table.

The difference in this instance was that he hadn't got to finish what he'd started and so had no idea how the whole escapade would have turned out. Probably with a punch in the teeth or knife in his guts, if his experiences with Parr were to be a basis for accurate judgement, but surely his subconscious would not have been so cruel. Thinking back to the nightmare he'd had, perhaps it would be.

It was true that he'd had Parr in his dreams before. The first time had left him both bemused and uncertain. The woman was a thorn in his side, exhibited minimal deference and somewhat violent behaviour...not the sort of traits that made a person attractive. Unless, of course, that type of behaviour appealed to you.

The tip of Snape's quill stopped in its path as he fixed his gaze on Parr. She was sitting at the back of the classroom, her head bowed to her textbook. Other than dark circles under her eyes and cheeks that were slightly more hollow than normal, there was little to betray her rather horrific transformation from the night before.

The second time was puzzling, simply because it had occurred so soon after the first. Normally a repeat performance didn't crop up until months later, if at all. Not that he'd denied himself a second go at it. Her proclivity for aggravating him in real life didn't get in the way of such nocturnal pleasure.

The quill-tip resumed its back-and-forth motion.

Perhaps it was a manifestation of a desire for control. Snape knew that sex was often used in such a fashion, but he had never been conscious of the tendency in himself. He enjoyed sex, plain and simple. It was ego-boosting when he got it, and logically if one ensured the partner got a lot out of it, then they'd return the favour; it was a win-win situation. Sex with an unwilling participant disgusted him. Such forcing was the result of selfishness and brutality that had little to do with the sexual act. It was overwhelming control, debasing another to satisfy a perverse desire to subjugate a person using a method that ordinarily gave pleasure. He'd had enough indirect experience with such flagitious behaviour growing up, and he had no intention of following in his father's footsteps.

Snape tilted his head to one side, watching the way Parr tucked her bottom lip under her upper teeth as she scribbled out some notes.

The third time he'd taken her, he hadn't hesitated. There had been very little in the way of control on that occasion which, upon waking, had left him very wide-eyed indeed.

But the last dream had been different to those before it. For a start, there had been verbal preamble...that had been a first. Parr had also resisted his attempts to engage her in amorous activity, which had therefore caused him to be more insistent with her. The dimension of smell to the dream had also been an uncommon layer. The scent of her had been overpowering, assailing him with a hunger so much deeper and more pervasive than he had previously experienced, which made the premature ending to the dream that much more frustrating. He mentally cursed Folter for the fourth time that day.

Snape sighed and ran the feathered tip of the quill across his bottom lip. He'd deliberately refrained from his customary stalking about the classroom in an effort to keep as far away from Parr as possible. He had no idea what it would do to him to be in her immediate vicinity. If, in his current state, he smelled her, it would very likely set him off, and that would be egregious in so many ways.

Student, attitude-ridden, sharp-tongued, disrespectful, physically overpowering, opaque, obstreperous...

The shaft of the quill buckled in his fingers.

Damn it! Listing her faults was just making it worse!

Something had to be done. Snape couldn't allow the situation to get even further out of his control. It was upsetting the precarious balance he was trying to maintain the poorly-patched tatters of his life in, as well as disrupting his concentration.

He gently straightened the bent quill and finished the letter in front of him.

A solid wall of half-giant stopped his exit from the Great Hall after lunch. Snape tipped his head back to look at Hagrid, whose face was located roughly halfway between the knotted mass of his hair and the bristling capaciousness of his beard.

"Ah, Professor, I've bin lookin' fer yeh!" Hagrid announced jovially.

Snape blinked at him. "And you have succeeded in that effort, Hagrid. Congratulations," he replied coolly. "However, if you don't mind..."

"I think I've foun' a Striker fer yeh," Hagrid boomed over him, smiling in accomplishment.

Snape tried to prevent the strangled sound that came out of his mouth but failed. He took a moment to compose himself and cleared his throat.

"If I may speak with you outside, Hagrid?" he grated out through clenched teeth before striding off towards the main courtyard.

"Understand this very clearly, Hagrid," he warned as they stood opposite one another under the slate grey sky that drizzled water over them. "No-one is ever to know that I asked you about Strikers."

Hagrid's smile dropped off his face. "Oh."

"In fact, I would appreciate it if you yourself forgot I ever mentioned them."

"Ah."

"It is a matter of extreme sensitivity that certain... foreign ears do not need to be aware of."

"Um."

"I hope that I have made my point very clearly."

"Er..."

Snape sighed, noting Hagrid's rather guilty expression and the way he was fiddling with his pocket flaps, the rain beginning to make the fur of his coat even more redolent than before.

"What have you done, Hagrid?" Snape asked in a flat tone.

"Well," Hagrid began, still fiddling nervously. "I thought tha' I could find yeh a Striker, since yeh were so keen on knowin' more about 'em." He stopped as the thunderous look on Snape's face distilled further.

"Go on."

"I... ah... told someone I know tha' yeh needed a Striker, an' they said they could arrange it."

This was not good. "I don't believe such a request formed part of our previous conversation, Hagrid." Snape was trying his hardest not to unleash a verbal fury on the oversized teacher, at least until he determined the extent of the damage. It seemed that he had underestimated Hagrid's desire to be helpful.

"No, but I thought tha' yeh would get th' answers yeh're after if yeh asked a Striker, Professor," Hagrid pointed out, trying valiantly to stem the bleeding. The twist to Snape's mouth suggested that this was not going well at all. He rummaged about in his enormous pockets and dragged out a piece of parchment that looked like it had been scrunched up, soaked in gravy, flattened, torn, repaired (poorly) and folded neatly. "Here's th' details," Hagrid explained. "She's expectin' yeh on Sa'urday."

Snape took the parchment at the very corner between thumb and forefinger in an attempt to minimise skin contact with this highly dubious-looking item. It looked like it had been used to plug up one end of a diarrhetic sheep.

"Who is expecting me?" he sneered, holding the parchment away from him.

Hagrid blinked a few times. Yes, this was definitely going badly.

"Ah, th' Screen, Professor. Yeh have t' go through her first."

Snape just stared at him, a small rivulet of rain water running along the length of his jaw. Well, perhaps it wasn't a total disaster, he conceded. There were ways around the spikier aspects of what Hagrid had gotten him into without his consent.

"It's OK, I've told her what yeh look like so yeh won't have ter explain who yeh are."

Fuck.

"Wonderful," Snape lied heroically.

He channelled his pent-up frustration toward the students. That afternoon saw all four houses lose a staggering number of points.

Of course, he should have known that to rely on Hagrid was a bad idea, but he hadn't thought that the half-giant would have gone so far as to make indirect contact with a seevy. Had the meeting been arranged by himself, then all manner of precautions could have been put in place to maintain a level of anonymity. Hagrid had effectively negated that firstly by arranging the meeting on the Screen's home ground and at the time of her choosing and secondly by describing Snape to her so that he was unable to attend such a meeting in any other guise except his own.

Snape felt that he was being thrown into waters where the currents were hidden from him. Who did the seevy that the Screen spoke for have an alliance to? It could be to the Ministry, to the Order, to the Death Eaters or even Macnair himself, or to some as yet unknown faction...perhaps one within the seevy community itself. If Snape's experience with the Death Eaters was anything to go by, there could be as many disparate factions amongst seevy as there were individuals. Sometimes being aware of all the possibilities made the situation harder to read.

Leaning over the cauldron on his personal workbench, Snape dropped the final ingredient into the cooling liquid and waited for it to dissolve.

Todianus. That fat shit of an excuse of a man was one of the weakest links to Macnair and Greyback's little scheme. Pirino would be the easiest to get information from, but the likelihood that he'd know much was doubtful. It hadn't appeared yet, but Snape knew that it was only a matter of time before an announcement of Pirino's disappearance or death appeared in the Daily Prophet. Little the mediwizard might know, but it would be enough to see him removed from the picture that was being clumsily painted by Greyback.

The looped strands that sat on the surface of the thick, mud-like liquid began to melt and spread, relaxing into the embrace of the potion almost tiredly. A curl of steam accompanied the state change like smoke from the immolating fire of a dying phoenix.

One question that needed to be answered was with whom was Todianus allied? Snape would bet with near certainty that Macnair was not relying solely on Greyback, that the Ministry's Executioner would be simply waiting for the right moment to turn whatever standing agreement there was between the two Death Eaters on its head to leave Greyback stuck out in the open in full view of unfriendly eyes. As sure as the sun slept at night, there was a betrayal accreting in Macnair's mind. So, was Todianus in on this potentiality, or was he in the dark as much as Greyback was?

Of great concern was the fact that the apoth knew that Parr had been a seevy when she had accompanied Snape into the shop in Knockturn Alley. How good was his knowledge about seevy? It was time to pay the oily bastard another terse visit in order to find out.

Snape left the now-complete potion to cool and turned his attention to the row of small glass jars on the shelf behind him. He spent some time staring at them as if to choose the cleanest amongst the line of already hyper-sterilised containers, but it was mostly to allow himself a moment to grow as calm as he possibly could. If he were agitated in any way whilst carrying out his next task, he'd get bitten.

He picked one of the palm-sized glass jars off the shelf and turned back to his workbench. Setting the jar down with a sharp click, he drifted through one of the archways to a side room that was illuminated with a faintly bluish light. The air was warmer and moister here, which was a marked contrast to the rest of his territory, but he maintained very stringent measures to keep it that way. He used a Locomotor spell to move the large glass tank over to his workbench, setting it down so carefully that it never made a sound. The shadow inside it shifted slightly, aware of the change in temperature. Snape would have to leave the tank to cool for some minutes to allow its occupant to become more sluggish.

Was Greyback the only werewolf interested in acquiring Parr? Kettering had said that the werewolves were amongst those looking for Parr but she had not specified who precisely. Greyback did not control all the werewolves, but he did hold a lot of them in his clawed hand, and those he didn't knew to be very careful of upsetting this magic-wielding maniac. Resistance to magic would be a highly-prized trait for any werewolf, who needed every defence against magic-folk they could get. Snape had known for several years that some werewolves were attempting to grow their numbers in the same way that non-lycanthropes did: by breeding. They were trying to live their lives in spite of their wretched condition, but how that was to be done caused friction and often vicious in-fighting. That Lupin had stolen away a young female lycanthrope was both surprising and unsurprising; the former because it showed that Lupin actually had a set of balls to risk such a dicey manoeuvre, though Snape questioned the notion that Lupin had actually given his decision longer than a second of thought, and the latter because most would be horrified at how lycanthropic females were treated.

When under the influence of the full moon, lyc-males tended to attack nonlyc-males over females. Seeing other males as a threat was a large part of it. Close to the full moon, werewolves became edgy, short-tempered and easily aroused. It was not unknown for attacks on women to increase in the three days leading up to the full moon, and then again in the three days following it, although to a markedly lesser degree. Their urge to breed was strongest during these waxing and waning periods, and they were more than capable of being forcefully brutal to get what they wanted. Snape had seen examples of it, though the circumstances had been extreme. No wonder Lupin wanted to remove such a young female lycanthrope from the den he'd visited. The moment she proved to be of breeding age, she'd be condemned to a life of unrelenting copulation against her will, assuming that she didn't die in the process.

The second reason for such a male-heavy component to the werewolf population was that females tended to react differently to the condition once infected. There was a noticeable lucidity to them during the full moon that was always absent in the males. They were still dangerous, still powerful, still bloodthirsty, but with a cunning that made them a force to be reckoned with. They did not attack and infect indiscriminately, but instead chose their victims with an apparent care, satisfying some unknown set of criteria. Some victims would be resoundingly killed, others deliberately left alive, and an overwhelming majority of their victims were male. There were reports that they would leave non-lyc females untouched in favour of attacking males. They were a fascinating aspect of lycanthropy, one of many that had drawn Snape to a study of them in the early stages of his now-abandoned career path.

He ran the pad of his middle finger in a circular motion over one of his coat buttons, eyes defocused in reminiscence.

If the way Parr had looked was an accurate representation of her Handler's health, she was very sick indeed. The conditions for observation had not been ideal, but from what he could remember of her external appearance, the Handler was suffering from malnutrition and anaemia...not terribly surprising. She could easily be harbouring injuries that he hadn't noticed. Certainly her neck would be in a bad state based on what Greyback was doing to her, which would make the likelihood of a blood or tissue infection high, taxing what little was left of her immune system.

Snape's finger stopped its motion, and his eyes refocused abruptly.

Parr was supporting her Handler. It all made sense now: her injuries that wouldn't heal even with non-magical treatment, why her health fluctuated rapidly, and why she ate enough for four people. Snape had no idea just how she was managing to do it, but Parr was shouldering her Handler's physical needs in order to prolong her life, most likely until she could be found and rescued, if that was part of whatever arrangement there was between Parr and Dumbledore.

Greyback was short-sighted. Endangering Parr's Handler's health would see his supply of magic-resistant blood correspondingly endangered. The man willingly lived in squalor, delighting in the sickness he bore, but was he as stupid as he was short-sighted? Snape recalled hearing that he'd abused Pirino for not being able to find out how the woman was staying alive, so it was unlikely she was being given any external nutrition. Being unconscious would not allow her to eat or be force-fed. Her resistance to magic would negate most attempts to fortify her using the more common magical methods of introducing nutrients into her body, so she was relying solely on what Parr could give her. Her poor state of health, plus having Greyback drain her who knew how often and to what extent, would mean that she was balancing very precariously on the fine line between survival and death. Considering how much Parr ate and how she hadn't put on weight, most of what she was ingesting was for the benefit of her Handler. Was it not enough for the Handler to be in a better state of health, or was it just being burnt up as soon as it was passed on to her? Snape knew of no other situation where such an arrangement existed. Parasites lived on or inside a host, so there was always a clear connection. In this case, the connection was mental. Parasitism didn't seem to be what was happening between Parr and her Handler; it was more along the lines of symbiosis...each gaining from and giving to the other. Who knew how this manifested itself between Striker and Handler under normal circumstances? Would this be the kind of information he'd be able to get from the Screen? If seevy were as secretive as Dumbledore claimed they were, it was unlikely. Could he get the answers using Legilimency? Not if Screens were as adept at mental blocking the way Strikers were.

Snape huffed in exasperation. There were too many unknowns, too many gaps and too many possibilities to get a clear idea of what connections ran between whom, who stood for and against whom, and who was intending to do what. He closed his eyes and took a moment to clear the whole tangled mess from his mind before returning to the task in front of him. He stretched a circular sheet of sheep skin over the open mouth of the glass jar and secured it with a length of hemp twine so that the surface was kept taut. Then, with careful and slow movements, he removed the lid of the glass tank and lifted its occupant out. She tolerated his touch with her usual flat-eyed dignity, her diamond-shaped head wavering gently, forked tongue flickering out briefly to check the identity of who held her. Her coils tightened around his arm, the mottled patterning of her scales so clear against the black fabric of his attire, gloss against matte. She was getting larger and heavier, he noticed. He'd have to get her a bigger tank or she'd get tetchy and short-tempered. It took only a little encouragement to get her to bite into the vellum-covered glass jar, but he kept a firm grip behind her head in case she changed her mind about being co-operative.

"You should wear that more often. It suits you."

Snape didn't bother to look up.

"Does protocol mean nothing to you, Lupin?" he muttered, watching the slightly milky drops of liquid roll down the inside of the glass jar. "It is customary to ask permission before encroaching on someone's personal space. The only reason you're not being forcefully ejected out and onto your bony backside is because I am otherwise engaged with more important matters, but I can assure you that won't last much longer."

"Then I have chosen my moment wisely," replied Lupin from the doorway. He eyed the large reptile that was wrapped around Snape's forearm curiously. "What do you plan to do with that?" he inquired of the slowly-filling glass jar.

Snape fixed him with a black glare. "Its uses are multifarious and none of your business. Why are you annoying me?"

Lupin scratched his stubbled cheek and sighed. "By necessity of a request," he explained in a rather strained tone of voice and then jammed his hands in the pockets of his tatty trousers.

Snape ran his thumb absently down the back of the snake's head in an almost soothing gesture, not taking his eyes off Lupin.

"If it involves me providing Wolfsbane Potion to your newly-acquired lycanthropic dependent, put it out of your mind right now," he pointed out in a deceptively calm voice. "I am not your personal apothecary."

Lupin blinked at him in surprise. "It had never occurred to me to ask that of you, Severus, and even if it had, I still wouldn't ask."

Snape narrowed his eyes at the man, wondering if there was an insult buried somewhere in his response.

"A Lust Potion, then? Circe knows you need it, dressed like that."

Lupin smiled back at him. "We don't all have your flair for impeccable old-fashioned style."

Snape sneered at him. "If being the height of fashion means looking like a dirt-drenched animal's bed, then I'm overjoyed to be passé."

Lupin snorted at his retort.

Gently disengaging the snake's fangs from the vellum, Snape returned her to her tank, running one finger lightly along her smooth scales to quieten her. She rustled about in the leaf litter restlessly, coils slipping over one another, her tongue flashing out like scarlet lightning. Snape pulled a piece of string from his pocket, Transfigured it back into a mouse and dropped it into the tank, replacing the lid quickly. He noticed Lupin's mouth tighten as the mouse squeaked as it was bitten. The werewolf was ridiculously squeamish about some things.

"Actually," Lupin continued, clearing his throat and strolling further into Snape's private room, "the request does not come from me."

Snape's lip curled in contempt. "Just the messenger boy, then," he sniped. "And why does this exalted personage not come to me with their request directly instead of sending the dog?"

Lupin shook his head slightly, trying to let the snideness slide past him. "For the same reason you so recently cited, Severus: protocol." He took his right hand from his pocket and, with two extended fingers, pointed to a spot on the stone floor beside him. A resounding cough, almost like a bark, came out of Lupin's mouth, igniting a flash of recognition within Snape which could not be examined, for in that moment Parr appeared through the same doorway that Lupin had. Keeping her eyes lowered to the floor, she stopped where Lupin was pointing, the hem of her black coat swaying against her calves. There was a pinched look to her face that Snape couldn't determine was due to anger, pain or uncertainty.

His eyes flicked back to Lupin. "Intriguing. Since Miss Parr has never exhibited a difficulty in making her opinions known to all and sundry, I am at a loss as to why she does so now."

There was an almost imperceptible sigh from Lupin. "These circumstances dictate it," he replied rather flatly.

Snape's gaze returned to Parr. "And what circumstances are those?" He noticed her face turning a rather interesting and intense shade of pink at his words, though the expression on her face did not alter in the slightest.

An altogether stony set to Lupin's face betrayed his annoyance at the question. "Suffice it to say that Chara acknowledges that a... mental propriety was not observed by her recently."

Snape squinted one eye. Prickly about ritual and formality, Hagrid had told him. He scanned Parr from head to foot, noting the absence of her usual school attire in favour of her black garb. Was this one of those instances of ritual and formality? Her subdued manner suggested it. Snape hoped she didn't have her knife stashed somewhere on her person. Her often erratic and violent behaviour coupled with the strange and foreign rules that governed seevy could easily see Snape having his ear removed as a gesture of her alleged contrition.

"I see," he lied coolly.

"Since the manner by which she would ordinarily be punished is not an option, an alternative has been arranged."

Snape stopped squinting at Parr and returned his attention to Lupin. The man sounded uncharacteristically terse.

"One would hope not a less severe alternative," Snape mentioned silkily. He noted that Parr bared her teeth briefly at his remark, the colour in her face darkening.

Lupin opened his eyes very wide and bared his own teeth at Snape as if to indicate that his comments were a gross breach of manners. Snape didn't give a shit about what Lupin thought, rather revelling in his apparently rude behaviour.

"As recompense," Lupin continued, enunciating clearly and emphatically, "Chara is to submit herself into your service for seven consecutive days."

"Is it Miss Parr being punished or I?"

"That remains to be seen," Lupin replied through gritted teeth.

Once again that barking cough, and Parr turned to leave. A long strip of white material running down the back of her coat glowed with an almost painful brilliance in the dimness, like the flash of light skittering along the edge of a blade, before she disappeared through the archway and out of sight.

Lupin glared sullenly at Snape. "The situation was awkward enough, Severus. Why did you have to be such an arsehole?"

"I take it that protocol is no longer in effect, Lupin?" Snape shot back snottily.

Lupin made an exasperated sound. "I'm beginning to think this punishment is going to be far worse than tradition decrees," he muttered, returning his hands to his trouser pockets.

"Why is it not my right to determine the nature of Miss Parr's punishment?" Snape demanded to know. "I'm surprised you didn't have her writing lines or some other such trivial hardship."

Lupin tutted. "I didn't decide this. The nature of the punishment is Chara's to determine, Severus."

Snape's brows lifted. "How lenient her traditions must be," he concluded, sneering.

"A week at your mercy is, I think, sufficiently torturous," Lupin snapped, hunching his shoulders and flicking his greying, too-long hair out of his eyes.

"At my mercy?" Snape repeated, a spark of interest igniting. "Tell me, Lupin, since you clearly have the rare advantage of certain knowledge over me, to what extent of compliance is Miss Parr bound to?" He ran the tips of his fingers back and forth along the edge of his workbench.

The werewolf pressed his lips together tightly, plainly unwilling to answer Snape's shrewd question.

"The punishment is ineffectual unless I am enlightened of the precise nature of the respective roles, and I shall not consider Miss Parr's debt discharged until I know the exact extent of my rights in order to determine if they have been suitably... exercised."

Lupin remained silent, his arms tensed as if his hands were clenched into fists in his pockets.

Snape glided slowly from behind his workbench, the fingers of one hand still caressing the slightly blunted edge of the work surface, the hem of his teaching robes whispering across the stone floor.

"I should so hate to commit any breaches of protocol, as it were," he opined, half closing his eyes and resting back on the workbench, fingers still toying lightly with the scarred wood to either side of him.

"Chara is bound to obey you for seven consecutive days, Severus. I think I have made that patently clear," Lupin finally and reluctantly responded, his eyes dropping briefly to Snape's constantly moving fingers and frowning.

"Exceptions?"

Lupin's frown deepened.

"Is there anything she will not do?" Snape elaborated, a faint quirk to his mouth as he enjoyed Lupin's discomfort.

The werewolf sighed rather heavily and transferred his gaze to his own shoes as if dragging up some last remaining shred of temperance. When he looked back up at Snape, the expression he wore was a study in intractable determination.

"If I hear that you have mistreated or disgraced Chara in any way, Severus..."

"Answer the question, Lupin. You're not a Slytherin so your attempt to sidestep is pathetically wanting." He slid the pads of his middle fingers excruciatingly slowly back along the table towards his body.

Lupin's nostrils flared with his audible exhalation. "No, but..."

"When is her punishment to commence?"

"Sunrise tomorrow, however..."

"Five seconds, Lupin," Snape interrupted a final time. "If there is still one molecule of you in this room by the time I count to five, I will show you at least three painful uses of the snake venom I have just procured." He turned his back on the werewolf slowly and deliberately. "One... two..."

He knew that, by the count of four, Lupin had gone.