Lilliana Snape (Book 5)

Part 5

I woke up in the middle of the night with my stomach growling, in fact, my stomach was the reason I wasn’t able to get to sleep again. Usually I can just ignore it but not this time; I literally felt sick with hunger and I had that horrible crackly sensation at the back of my neck telling me to eat so, without much enthusiasm, I crawled out of bed and padded out of the room.

My plan was to grab something from fridge and take it back up to bed but there was a light on in the kitchen which meant that I wasn’t the only one awake and, to my horror, I found as I peered through the gap that my old Defence professor and crush was sitting at the table, on his own, cradling a mug of something in his hands. He didn’t look too alert; in fact, if he wasn’t blinking, I’d have believed that he’d fallen asleep with his eyes open.

“You’re welcome to come in” he told me quietly, without looking up.

“Sorry” I muttered as I pushed open the door “I only came down because I-” and at that moment, my stomach conveniently growled.

Lupin chuckled “there’s some left-over apple pie on the oven, I think.”

Apple pie actually sounded really good. I grinned gratefully and went over to the over where, sure enough, under a cloth was almost half of an apple pie left, just begging to be eaten. “Would you like some?” I offered as I cut myself a large piece of pie and dished it onto a plate.

“No, no thank you; I’m alright with just my coffee for now.”

I grabbed a fork before joining him at the table. As I ate, I studied him out of the corner of my eye; he looked sad, tired and…well…ill, as always but I couldn’t help asking “professor, are you alright?”

“Please, I am no longer your professor, call me Remus and no, Lilly, I’m not alright; I doubt most of us here are to be honest. This is something we’ve all been expecting for a while but nothing can prepare you entirely. Most of us believed that Voldemort had gone because believing that he could return again was just something that no one wanted to face up to but here, we all knew that it would happen we just didn’t know when and now that he’s back-” he trailed off, staring at his mug. “For someone like you it’s dangerous but for someone like me…the chances of my survival are slim” he sighed.

“But why?” I asked in confusion “you have just as much chance of coming out of this alive as I do.”

He shook his head “Lilly, I am a werewolf; they’ll either recruit me or kill me and if I refuse to join their side then they’ll kill me. My odds are not in my favour.”

“Death can’t be a bad thing if you’re protecting the people you love” I told him quietly. “I would quite happily die if I knew that my death was worthwhile.”

“You misunderstand. I’m not scared of dying, I’m not scared of fighting- just like you, I would lay down my own life in order to protect the ones I love; the thing is, the thing that angers me is that I will die and then they will target you and they will target Harry, Ron, Hermione, the twins; they will target anyone who had any contact with me so, it seems that, even if I do die to protect you it won’t matter.”