Chapter Text
Stress isn’t tangible. It’s a feeling, an idea that weighs down with oppressive might and sits cold against the lining of your stomach. Remus experiences that reality every month. It’s a pressure, deep in his body, pointless to try and carve away. His friends, wonderful and brave as they are, share that burden with him every day. Sirius attempts to steal it in its entirety, like a modern day Atlas. James is there to distract him more than anything, simple jokes, pleasant redirection. And Lily, she’s lovely, calming, a back beam to support and soothe the pain.
Now, against the cold of the Shack, he dazedly attempts to collect those small comforts. Rotted wood splinters his cracked skin, clawing uncomfortably into his waist, his back, his arm. He pushes the urge to adjust away. Against his cheek, the greyed wood floor collects his breath in gentle huffs of fog. He focuses on it, watches it spread along its edge, even appreciates the way it reminds him of the colder days in Gryffindor tower last Christmas. They would breathe over the window, tracing stupid shapes and stupider faces into the condensation.
The cold creeps up his spine quickly after. Discomfort fights his exhaustion enough to keep him conscious. His skin is crawling and numb at the same time. Even his eyelids grow heavy. Remus twitches, dragging a leaden hand against the ground until it’s underneath his shoulder and able to push himself up. It takes an agonising level of effort, but he manages to throw his head back and take a deep breath.
It’s when he finally has the opportunity to survey the room and its damage that he realises something is very, very wrong. Shrouded by shadow, he sees movement. Fear pushes through him fast, and he shoots upward, leaning back on his throbbing arm with quick and heavy breaths. The air grows thick in the shack as his vision comes into focus. The movement was slow, a steady up and down, and it took him a moment to identify it as human. He ignores the groan in his bones as adrenaline pulls him up, and he scrambles across the small distance to the robed— god, it’s a student— teen collapsed against a chipped remnant of the withered bed frame. He falls to his knees at their side.
He hesitates, only for a second, before his hand dashes to the student’s neck. The skin chills his fingertips, but he feels the slow thump of a heartbeat anyhow. Relief threatens to crash into him, but he doesn’t allow it, instead, flipping the student onto his lap. His eyes pull down onto the gash across their stomach. It’s not bleeding now, but it’s clear it had been, as the white of the Hogwarts dress shirt is stained red in a trail that eventually pools into a now dried stain on the ground.
Remus doesn’t allow himself to fall into self-loathing at the harm yet. As long as the student is alive, it doesn’t matter. He drags his sight up to their face. He nearly blanches as he does.
Snape, Snivellus Snape, lies limp across his lap. Though he’s always been pale, he appears sickly white, like porcelain. Remus doesn’t find any injury above his abdomen, a non-existent comfort in the situation. He can hardly breathe. Snape found him, somehow, and got injured in the process. The small, ugly voice in his head snapped back at him hastily. Remus hurt him. He did this.
Remus pulls a ragged fabric hanging off his own shoulder free, ripping the fabric into a long, dirty strip, just long enough to wrap around his back and over the weeping wound. He works with trembling hands, desperate and terrified. Snape isn’t dead, but he looks the part.
He pats his own body down until he reaches the wand tucked in his tattered robe pocket. It’s heavy in his hand as he presses it to the cloth. The warmth of a simple Episky shines over the covered wound, and he’d bask in the sensation against the cold of early morning air if not for the terror climbing up his throat. Snape doesn’t quite gasp, but he suffers a pained, wet breath against the charm, spasming weakly against Remus’ arms. The knot in his throat shrinks with a shaky swallow, before he takes a stuttering breath of his own. Snape is alive, which is truly a stroke of luck, but Remus doesn’t know how he’s going to fix this.
He stands on weak legs, shifting Snape up from his rested position over Remus’ knee and carefully into his arms.
It takes more strength than he, or the mankind, has to hold himself and Snape upright, but he manages. Pushing past broken furniture and the door is a hurdle, but getting to the steps and climbing? Adrenaline burns beneath Remus’ broken skin. The distance between Hogwarts and Hogsmeade has never felt so great. Through the tunneled path between the shack and the tree, he struggles to keep the limp body on his shoulder. The fleeting thought of charming his body to float along side him is useless, now. Every spell that could possibly do so escapes him. He has to press Snape’s unconscious body against the wall to get an arm under the limp thighs, lungs burning, body burning. He has to shoulder through the hidden door, suppressing the need to scream. It’s a struggle to get himself past the castle entrance, and his body protests with white hot pain as he forces through the empty hall and, eventually, mercifully, hospital wing doors.
Jingling bells ringing over the entryway register somewhere in the back of his thoughts. He doesn’t recognise the shuttering of doors close then, focused intently on pushing himself toward the nearest cot. In a few labored steps, he settles Severus against the harsh sheets, dropping heavy against the stone floor to his bedside the moment he found himself free to.
Remus attempts to call out, but it comes out a harsh whisper more than anything helpful. He’s thankful to see Madam Pomfrey anyhow, gripping helplessly to the sheet hanging off his bedside. Her rushing heels click against the tile floor.
When he finally catches his breath, he dares a quick glance upward. Pomfrey had already made it to him, hand pressed over her mouth for a mere moment before her eyes narrow into focus and she reaches down to undo the make-shift dressing.
“Help him.” Remus fights away the black spots cornering his vision, but the angry bursts of black come too fast to stop. “Help him, help.”
“Shh,” She quiets him gently. “You two are in bad shape, but I’ve seen worse. See if you can get into the bed there; I’ll come to you in a moment.”
Remus tries, honestly. But his legs feel like paper, and his eyes refuse to focus. His body is useless to his brain’s command. Worry clutches his conscious thought, the fear of death, but even that fades into the dark. It’s only when he registers cold stone scraping against his cheek that he realizes he’s fallen, and he’s too weak to fight unconsciousness.