4 - Selfless People
The night was spent in cold and worry, and the occasional passing of a Dementor. Like hints of nightmares passing by the edges of your consciousness, they caused an obscure fear of falling asleep. Remus had the feeling he didn’t sleep at all, but then he woke the next morning, aching everywhere in his body. While he was still miserably laying on the ground, the mute aide came again, fetching the food from last night and bringing new one, as well as water in a bucket and two cups.
Lupin assessed their new belongings: a bucket of water, another empty bucket which was probably the Azkaban version of a toilet, two cups, two dishes, two spoons; two felt blankets, their clothes, a lot a straw and their boots. That just didn’t make an escape.
“Good morning,” he said with a deliberate amount of politeness, when Snape finally moved to fetch a cup of water and drank it. Snape merely answered with a scowl.
Time went by like months, as they watched the sunlight move outside their tiny window slit. They sometimes got up, stretching their limbs, pacing a few steps, careful not to intrude their personal spaces. It was like living in the same room with a mute ghost “ you see him, but he doesn’t seem to see you, you hear him, but he won’t answer, you are two and yet alone. It was probably the most boring day both had spent in a long, long time. Evening came, and with it new gruel. The aide also emptied the second bucket, which they had both had to use some time, looking away in embarrassment. This was a level of intimacy neither wanted to share with anyone, much less each other.
Finally, darkness came again and with it the cold and the damp. Snape also ate his gruel, the first time he touched the prison food. He must be really hungry by now, Remus thought. Strange, how he has enough discipline for that, enough discipline to fool the Dark Lord, but can’t keep his temper at all when confronted with Sirius, or Harry.
“I’ve thought about something. There is the director of this prison; he seems to be a reasonable man. I might try and talk to him, if just we could get his attention. I think he would consider putting us into different cells.”
Snape stared at his plate, chewing, a dark air about him. “Why even care, Lupin? So that we would rot in different cells, until the miserable end of our wretched lives? There’s no way we’re getting out of here, not without a strong ally from outside. We’ll wait until the full moon, talk as little as possible, you’ll rip my throat out and eat me and then, if you’re lucky, they’ll have mercy and shoot you.”
Remus put his plate down with more force than intended. He resisted the urge to go at Snape’s throat right here and now, and instead he jumped to his feet and started to pace.
“No! We won’t do that. That would be too ... I haven’t lived all my life ... Why did you go on then, all the time, if you’re just willing to give up now?” He sounded like a stammering fool. “Your life was less than pleasant and I know it! Why did you still try? Why didn’t you just succumb to Voldemort or let yourself be killed? Why did you become a spy? Why so much effort and now just throw it away?”
“You wouldn’t know. You never had to fight for anything.”
“Oh? Really?” Lupin’s voice was shaking. How could that man be so horrible? So incredibly thick and stubborn?
“Now I’ll be getting the ‘poor misunderstood creature’ show, right? Shut up,” Snape spat.
“But I won’t. Now listen, Snape. I won’t talk about how it is to be a werewolf, because you couldn’t possibly understand, and because I think you’re right, it is totally undignified and out of question. It’s fate and I’ve accepted it. But I won’t keep quiet about the rest. Do you know how it is when everybody distrusts you? When everybody turns away, pretends not to know you? Yes, I think you do. When everything you do is barely good enough? When you’re alone for years and years on end, and you just know it will always be like that, until the end of your life, because a person like you couldn’t possibly have real friends, or heaven forbid, real lovers? I think you do. Have you never questioned your reasons for going on?”
He had never spoken so honestly about his feelings to anyone and felt embarrassment well up inside him, and guilt. It was wrong to complain. Totally wrong. He had to go on quickly, or he never would finish this.
“When I turned legal, the werewolf registry handed me a muggle gun with silver bullets. Just in case, you know. Just in case I should feel the call of the dark side should get to strong. I probably should have felt insulted and thrown it away, but I didn’t. I kept it, all those years. But there still are all those bullets, not one has been used. And do you know why? There are some people who have risked their lives and their careers to grant me a live as normal as possible. It would just have been ungrateful to throw it away. I will fight until my last, Snape.”
He didn’t know what he expected Snape to do or say, but the gloomy laughter from his side of the cell was not it.
“A muggle gun. Very thoughtful. Should have handed them to my generation of Slytherin’s, just in case they felt the call of the dark side getting too strong,” he said sarcastically. Remus didn’t know what to say. He had just spilled his heart to Severus Snape, in a way, felt nervous and stupid, and his hands were shaking maniacally. And Snape had just made a joke. He laughed, probably sounding completely deranged.
He sat down again and huddled in his felt blanket, because it was getting colder. He could hear distant groaning from the cells one floor down of theirs, and reckoned that the Dementors were coming closer. Maybe their laughter had attracted them.
But do I really believe what I just told him? He asked himself. Wasn’t it that in reality, those people who helped you and supported you only did it for themselves? They did it to satisfy their conscience, to live up to their personal standards, to be moral and just ... they did selfless things for selfish reasons ... would they, if he had put the muggle gun to use, really have mourned? Wouldn’t they, instead, have been sad about their personal failure to be good enough to save him? Would their pity for him not have been self-pity?
The world became a grey, frayed edge around the Dementors, a torn flag waving slackly in their frosty wake. But something remained there, a stubborn refusal to see the world so darkly...
“Yesterday,” he asked quickly, “You seemed quite unaffected by the Dementors. How do you do it?” Snape took a moment to answer, and Remus feared he would just deny any kind of help, but then Snape replied with a low voice.
“Occlumency. It keeps them at bay until a certain measure. At least the more conscious part of your fears and emotions.”
“Would you teach me?”
“You won’t learn it, not in less than a month’s time.” Well, at least it wasn’t just plain ‘no’.
“It’s not as if we’ve got anything better to do,” Remus answered through clenched teeth, because he had to keep them from chattering. He could hear their rattling breath now, their sweeping clothes, could see them gather in front of their cell, hungry, greedy. A skeletal hand grabbed the air between the rusty bars, blindly reaching out for its prey.
“Clear your mind,” Snape’s voice came hollowly out of the dark. “Get rid of your emotions. Lock them away. Your mind must contain not so much as a dust particle of thought.” It sounded like a mantra, and Lupin tried to make it his own. Clear your mind...
Remus imagined his mind a barren sky, locked with grey metal doors and heavy locks, nothing could penetrate the doors and nothing was there to be penetrated. He eased into the cold around him and invited it inside, where it should replace the moon and the memories...
But it was hard. It was hard to clear your mind if the presence of the Dementors brought back the worst of memories and feelings your mind had to offer. He groaned and felt his mind would snap soon under the unusual strain.
“Try harder!” Snape hissed angrily and then fell silent again to get a hold of his own emotions again. How could a man with zero patience ever survive being a teacher? Lupin thought and immediately started to wallow in memories of being fired after the discovery of his lycanthropy. The only thing he’d ever loved to do, genuinely loved...
“Actually, you are worse than Potter,” came the comment from across the cell.
Harry. Harry who hated him, now that surely he believed him to be a murderer. He had failed to keep his trust ... just like he had failed Sirius and James and Lily ...
“Sometimes I think you actually love to suffer.”
Remus fell forward, gripping his head and screaming in terror. His throat was tight and hot, the rest of his body frozen. He desperately wanted his mind to just go away, to shut off, to succumb to the madness, just so this pain would cease.
And with a last desperate roar, his mind complied. It curled into a tight, shivering ball somewhere at the back of his head and closed its eyes. And the beast raised its head, snarling and fearful, edging away from the unknown creatures that were threatening it. Through a haze of red hot panic Remus saw it thrashing against the wall, clawing at the stones, ripping at its clothes, keening and whimpering. Then, suddenly, the behavior changed, and the wolf decided that his last defense lay in attack “ and flung itself against the bars and the Dementors behind it. He almost didn’t notice Snape, a flash of darkness at his side and then a dull black pain in his head...
The pain was still there, but it was rather huge and throbbing. And not at all dull. He lay at an awkward angle on the straw, and some of the straw was in his mouth as well. He felt disoriented and realized that he had been out cold for a while.
“Snape?” he rasped.
“Careful, there. I’ve still got the dish.”
“Dish?” Remus wondered.
“The one that recently became closely acquainted with your shabby head, Lupin.”
“Oh, that one.” He felt for his head and quickly redrew his hand. “I didn’t think you could be quite so violent... in a physical way, I mean.”
“You, on the other hand, met my expectations quite well. Don’t ever talk to me about how much control you’ve got over your inner beast again!” It was the Dementors; Remus would have liked to defend himself, but knew it was quite futile.
“I think you were right about learning Occlumency. I’m not the right person for this kind of thing ... too much living in the past to withstand Dementors.”
“You’re self-piteous and sentimental.”
“Maybe,” Remus answered tiredly. “Maybe that’s true.” Snape made a disgusted sound.
“And you don’t even protest! How pathetic is that?”
“It’s not pathetic. I’m not Harry or Sirius or James. I don’t think that arguing with you has any point “ your tongue will always be sharper than mine and your convictions more stubborn.”
He rolled over to wrap himself in the blanket. He was tired of arguing. He liked sensible, constructive conversation. He liked a minimum of politeness. He liked beds, too, but none of these were granted to him right now.
What if Snape would have caused real damage to his head? What if he had been seriously injured? Would any help have come? Remus suddenly startled and sat up.
“Ow! Severus, I’ve got it! I’ve got a plan!” A very articulate silence met his enthusiasm.
“You just knocked me out, right. How long did I stay unconscious?”
“About ten minutes?” Snape answered in a doubtful voice, as if he thought ten minutes had been way too short for his liking.
“Very well. My health may not be the best, but I’m healing a lot more quickly than other people. Especially near the full moon, but also now.”
“I know that.”
“Yes, but does that prison officer who brings our food know it? No. If he thought I was dead, or seriously injured, wouldn’t he come inside?”
“That plan is older than Dumbledore’s beard,” Snape groaned.
“Yes, sure, if it only was a simple bluff. But what if he could plainly see that I was really injured? What if I, say, lost a lot of blood?”
“Maybe. But he’d probably restrain me in some manner before doing so. And where would the blood come from, anyway?”
“Me, of course. And I’m counting on you being restrained. So, say, I’m injured and unconscious. He restrains you with a binding charm, opens the door, comes inside, gets me to the infirmary. But he doesn’t know I’m healing more quickly than usual. I wake up on the way to the infirmary, knock him out, take his wand, get you out of the cell, we flee. Once we’re away from Azkaban, we can Apparate wherever we want and have more time.”
“That plan is least original thing I’ve ever heard.”
“The oldest tricks are still the best.”
“Well, the worst that could happen is that you accidentally die. Fair game.” Remus nodded grimly.
“If I die, you live. And you will do everything to get out of here and warn them about that bastard Regulus.”
“It won’t work.”
“There are no alternatives, or do you know any?”
“How will you inflict the injury upon yourself? Carve a spoon into your arm? Bang a cup on your forehead until you bleed?” The headache had completely vanished, and right now Remus’ mind was as clear and focused as never before.
“It may seem ridiculous to remind you, Severus, but I’m a dangerous beast. Teeth and claws, that’s the answer. Teeth and claws.” And he could clearly sense that Snape was too speechless to express how completely mad he found that plan. Remus silently agreed with him.