7 June, 1982
I will say today and will keep saying from here on out that I associate rain most with Severus Snape.
He seems to claim himself within it. He becomes its soothing darkness, his eyes growing comforted and dim as he stands and watches it fall and drip from the sky, off the edges of the rooftops, over the panes on his old and tarnished windows. He reminds me of rain, and rain reminds me of him. In my home, alone and quiet, it will rain and I will feel as though he is there.
But today I was not in my home. I was not far away or on my own. The rain was not a distant reminder; it was a package deal.
I had unpacked for the most part. I'd left my last suitcase full of books and trinkets alone, because fuck it all. I was exhausted from traveling regardless. I had unpacked what was necessary then and there and needed nothing more extraordinary other than to sit and relax and be with the company I had been so terribly missing.
"How was the rest of the school year without me?" I asked, sitting with him by the front window and watching the rain. He had a small round dining table there, chipped and well-used, and he had set two mugs with tea upon it. I watched them steam while he looked past them, out the window at the storm.
He barely shifted when he spoke (he rarely ever does, aside from small and intricate changes in the corner of his lips and the way he darts his eyes). "Beleagueringly ordinary; beguilingly tedious."
"No former professors trying to set up any massacres? Anything of the sort?" I followed up jovially, as that has always been my role in our conversation. "Peritus rise from the dead?"
His eyes warmed just enough where I knew he received and appreciated the joke, but he did not laugh. It was not like him to laugh much. "No... yet there... was a massacre of sorts."
I leaned forward in my seat, playfully feigning shock. "Another! You don't say! Hocus-pocus at a school made for that nature?"
His arms clenched around his ribs, crossed tight over his chest. "The children kept making those blobs," he complained sharply, glaring at the window, which was dark and wet and gray. "I had to take down the recipe and tell them to bloody stop doing it. They were all over the damned place. Other professors were bringing boxes of them back into my classroom to... humanely dispose of."
I laughed at his antics; at his drama regarding the little harmless blobs. "And did that work? Taking the recipe down?" I gave him a tight-lipped smile, an expression that he often brought out of me unintentionally.
"Of course it didn't bloody work!" Snape growled quickly. "You think they wouldn't know it by heart the moment it was learned? Simplest recipe on the face of the earth, Rem. Take a liquid, take a thickener, take another constituent for a personality trait, overmix until it forms a living organism. They still do it when I'm not looking. I bloody abhor them. They're exactly as I was... as I am." His fingers dug into his cloak, which he wore even away from work. And I did not blame him for that; it was a fine cloak. It fit him well.
"Hate them?" I replied with a small laugh. "I'm sure you're fond."
Quiet. He was always quiet when I was right.
"You enjoy the children," I reiterated, taking my tea from the table. He only scowled at the wall; he must have lost interest in the window.
"Tell me of your job, Rem," he said, changing the subject so I couldn't bully him into being softer than he'd already become in my presence. "You've got a job out there in the country. You must have... worthwhile experiences there."
I gave a humorless chuckle. "Ah... I'm between jobs at the moment. There's a reason it's so easy to get the summer off."
He nodded. "They must not like your time of the month, I can only assume," he joked flatly. "God, they must repudiate working with women then."
"Oh, but they do," I replied. "The women get fired quicker than I have. They often have sick children or familial duties... reasons often more worthwhile than my own. Of course, being a dog is a fine reason to call into work, and yet on days that I am human yet still feeling ill, I've had more sympathy than they would if their firstborn son were on fire or spewing blood out the arse or both at once."
Severus smirked a bit, just for a moment. "Your condition is good enough of a reason to not go to work. You mustn't downplay it. It is beyond your control and is no comparison to someone's sick child." And he looked at me. His eyes were burning and dark. I loved them, and I loved him. I drank my tea and relished in the moment I was living.
"Thank you," I said. He looked at me.
"Hm? For what?"
"For understanding me," I stated simply. "For being so supportive of something you've not once been through yourself."
His eyes returned to the window. "I've been seen as a monster before."
I took a breath. "Oh. I... yes. I see." My fingers tapped on the mug. "This tea is bloody horrid."
"That's why I haven't touched mine. Minerva gave it to me and I have to tell her I've been using it. I cannot lie to her; she sniffs me out like a hound when I make an attempt," Severus replied. "Try to down it if you can. It cannot possibly be worse than your Wolfsbane."
"It can, actually," I interjected. "It has none of your vanilla in it."
"I've been pampering you far too much, Mr. Lupin," Snape teased. "You've become a picky drinker all thanks to my wondrous potioneering."
"You're just as picky," I reminded him. "At least I sipped it once. Look at you."
He looked darkly at the mug left on the table. After a moment of hesitation, his thin hands reached out and pulled it to his lips. He feigned a drink, his mouth teasing the end of the ceramic cup, his throat forcing the imaginary liquid down. But nothing touched his tongue. The mug was barely tipped.
"Delicious," he said dramatically, and I laughed at his silly little joke.
"How out-of-sorts you are today, Sev. You must be ill," I commented. "It is most rare in my presence that you pretend to swallow."
His eyes widened at me. If he actually had tea down his throat, I know he would have choked on it then. I merely kept my gaze steady, teasing, taunting, reminding.
"You..." He stopped, re-examined his thoughts, and looked outside. "Don't tempt me while I'm thinking."
I smiled. We both watched the rain.
And then I furrowed my brow. "Thinking of what, then?"
"The kitchen drawers."
I understood. "Oh."
I did not admit aloud that this was the answer I had been scared of. Perhaps not scared; something more akin to being worried and disappointed by. I was cautious of his sudden obsessions with the kitchen drawers, and of the past.
Yesterday was the first day after my arrival to Spinner's End. It was the sixth of June, the day of the full moon. I had been anticipating my Wolfsbane, and it was almost forgotten entirely as Severus was so busy rushing around the house and tearing through his own belongings like a starving animal.
It began when he found a box of potions in his storage that he claimed used to be his mother's. He said the last time he touched them, the box had been ruined entirely, but when he happened upon them the day prior he found them all organized and pristine. He said it was a sign of his mother. That she was here somehow, perhaps as a ghost of some sort, going around and moving things. But his obsession was rooted only on the concept. He had never seen her ghost. Still hasn't. But the idea is stuck to him and it will not leave.
Every few minutes, he would open a drawer or cupboard and notice something different than how he left it. I couldn't help but wonder how much of that was just a placebo effect of sorts. He believed something had been moved, and now to him it seemed that everything had been moved.
"It could be anyone, though, couldn't it?" I asked him that day. "You were away for the entire school year. You could've had a human infestation."
"No," he said stiffly, tearing through the refrigerator and inspecting every compartment, every wire, every bulb. "My mother used to do these things exactly the way they are now. I know how she handles things."
"She is dead," I reminded him, noting his usage of tense.
He paused. Nodded. "Handled."
I shot him a hesitant glance, brows furrowed, suddenly concerned about his state of mind. "Perhaps with your previous experimentation—all the delocaponum business—you summoned her memory to your home."
He verbally responded to my theory, but his eyes remained vacant, still fixated on her potential presence. "Perhaps."
I worried about him. I wondered briefly if he had gone insane without me. If he had any friends to keep him in check while I was away. Did Minerva ever check on him, for example? The dreaded Malfoys? Slughorn? Albus? They would surely be able to identify in him some sort of crisis, or so I hoped. But they had clearly missed one, because I was seeing it develop into full fruition before my very eyes.
Feeling my odd gaze on him, Severus moved away from my line of sight. He turned off the stovetop flame and closed the drawer, walking out of the room and leaving me alone within it.
I was silent, staring into the blank space ahead of me. I was worried for him. A silent and calm brand of distress, as if it came bottled like an ale. It sunk slowly into my blood, permeating and charming and flooding my head until I was drunk on it.
I am anxious of it even now, days later. Distraught because I fear the development of delusion, of instability or a loss of psychological independence. But, even more so, the more I ponder over it, I realize what I fear most is that he just may be right.