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To visit and seduce the lover on his wedding night. The spurned lover makes a charm of rosemary, rue, woodspurge, valerian, rose petals, cinnamon, cloves and sew it in a silken bag, and places it in her clothes or hair. She must leave her shadow on her own bed, using the adumbratio spell, then recite the tessellation spell adding the following words: marble, water, marble, water, white, black white blue blue blue. She will appear at the foot of her lover's bed, and the new bride will sleep. She must return to her shadow before dawn or the shadow will walk and the body will die.

~~~~

Lady Margret*

Lady Margret sitting in her high hall door
Combing her long yellow hair
She saw sweet William and his new-made bride
Riding from the church so near

She throwed down her ivory comb
She throwed back her long yellow hair
Said I'll go down to bid him farewell
And nevermore go there.

Well it was all lately in the night
They were fast asleep
Lady Margret appeared all dressed in white
Standing at their bed feet

How do you like your pillow said she
How do you like your sheet
How do you like that gay young lady
Lying in your arms asleep?

Very well do I like my pillow, says he,
Very well do I like my sheet
But better do I like the fair young lady
Standing at my bed feet.

Once he kissed her lily white hand
Twice he kissed her cheek
Three times he kissed her cold corpsy lips
And fell in her arms asleep

Is Lady Margret in her room
Or is she in the hall?
No, Lady Margret's in her cold black coffin
With her pale face to the wall.

~~~~

They were essentially secular people in the middle of a brutal war. Nymphadora Tonks and Remus Lupin choose to solemnize their marriage at a Muggle registry office. Remus' status as a werewolf precluded his marrying the young Auror at the Ministry of Magic. Tonks has assured Remus that she didn't want a large elaborate wedding in any case. He is fairly certain that she was sparing his feelings, but there was nothing to be done. Each battle and crisis in the wizarding war has left the Order more vulnerable. Bringing everyone they loved into one room seems an unacceptable risk. Harry, the last reminder of Remus' school friends, does not attend; in hiding, or on a mission, he is safe somewhere else.

It is a beautiful wedding anyway. Tonks wears a pink vintage Chanel suit with a t-shirt underneath, a pink pillbox hat with a veil of pink netting, black Doc Marten boots and enormous silvery black pearls that had passed to her mother before the Black family disowned her. Remus has a new suit, a present from the Weasley twins, and a gold stickpin from Harry on his tie. Molly caters a small wedding breakfast with champagne and a proper wedding cake. Remus's aunt and uncle are there, and Tonks' parents, Ted and Andromeda, some of the Weasleys, and some of the Aurors from Tonks' class. Moody takes photographs of the wedding party on the town hall steps.

Taking the new bride back to her own flat, Remus is giddy with relief. It is like a reprieve from the wars, from the constant worry of lycanthropy, from all of his feelings of unreality and marginality. He had never thought he would marry. He never even wanted to take the risks of living with a lover. Furtive groping with other men behind various public bars and in alleyways had been the main sexual release he'd had with other people. Even in school, he experimented mainly with other boys. It always felt unsatisfying, never to lie down next to another person, never to be held. Keeping the secret of lycanthropy meant keeping everything quiet, meant never saying "I love you" or "darling" during sex, never speaking another person's name during orgasm. Here he is, thirty-seven years old, marrying this sweet young girl of twenty-four.

"Mrs. Tonks-Lupin, allow me, " he says, and sweeps her up into his arms to carry her across the threshold. They both laugh. He doesn't pretend to stagger, but carries her smoothly into the bedroom. Her arms wrapped around his neck are relaxed and her face is shining.

Why is it that I always have so much to worry about? Why is everything so difficult? Remus knows that Tonks has proven herself able to cope with his transformations. She has magical resources to draw on in an emergency; as a metamorphmagus, she could transform her body into something he could not harm. He loves her, she is brave and intelligent and pretty. So why is his relief and joy in being married tempered with a sense of unease? He just has some sexism to overcome with Tonks: his misplaced sense that he has to protect her was a barrier to feeling truly close. The truth was that he hadn't ever been close to any lover like he was with his friends. His friends who were all dead or turned traitor…

Tonks squirms and tumbles out of Remus' arms, onto the bed. She bounces and laughs. Remus throws himself down next to her.

"Let's get out of these clothes, Remus."

"All right, sweetheart."

They take off their dress clothes and hang them up, and then turn to each other to remove their underwear. He always feels like sex with her is something that is happening to him, not something he is doing, even though this time he is the one to reach out for her and kiss her on her young pink mouth. He's always been essentially passive, held himself in check, even when he was burning with desire. He's not burning now: he feels removed. He is aroused, it's a pleasure to touch her, but at the same time he's about a foot outside of his body. He observes himself, having sex with his beautiful young wife on his wedding night.

He parts her legs and begins to plant dry, open-mouthed kisses, almost like breaths, from the underside of her left knee in toward her thigh. By the time he gets to her clitoris, she is thrusting upward, tilting her labia toward him. It's not difficult to do this, to lick her until she comes. At first she didn't let him bring her all the way to orgasm this way, expecting that he wouldn't be able to last inside her if they took too much time at foreplay. But this time she gives herself over to him. The musky smell and taste of her genitals is different from a man's, but still arousing in its own way.

He wipes the moisture off his chin with the edge of the sheet and climbs onto her, sinking into her body. She's too sensitive to start moving right away. He stops, feeling his cock inside her, knowing that she feels him, staring into her eyes. This is the moment that he should feel their connection, right now. In a moment, she closes her eyes and turns her head-- in embarrassment?-- and begins to move her pelvis against him. They move slowly. Remus thinks he will tell her he loves her when he comes; he's never been able to say that to someone before. He thinks he will say her name. But in the event, he can't, he can't say it. She is concentrating on her sensations, listening for him, and he can't break in on that concentration. He comes with a grunt and leans down to kiss her. After a few minutes they get up to use the loo and wash up.

Still, he does get to fall asleep with her in his arms, lying on his back with her sleeping weight warm on his chest. She has washed her hair with lilac-scented shampoo; it must be a witch one, not a Muggle one, because the scent is not too strong. He always notices her eyelashes, black on her cheek.

It's her eyes that remind him the most of Sirius, their gravity under the dark question marks of her brows. It was her eyes that made him decide to let her have her way, to let himself try to love her, even though he was angry that she pressured him in front of other people. Just the desire to have those eyes looking into his again, the frank and warm and slightly ironic gaze of someone who could understand him and be his friend. She is a friend, and now he won't be alone. Tonks rolls away from him just as he is falling asleep.

~~~~
In the still darkness past midnight, Remus startles awake. There is a figure at the foot of his bed. He grabs his wand and silently casts lumos.

"Jesus sodding Christ!" says a deep voice. Remus' wand flies out of his hand.

"Severus Snape! What the bloody hell!"

He looks down and sees that Tonks isn't moving, and automatically shakes her gently by the shoulder. She's asleep, breathing deeply.

"She isn't going to wake up." Snape says quietly.

"My God, what have you done to her?" Remus springs off the bed, grabbing Snape, even though Snape has both of their wands. Snape is still as Remus disarms him and pushes him unresisting against the wall.

With difficulty, Remus realizes that if he begins to hit Snape he won't to be able to stop himself. It's probably a good thing that Snape didn't fight back, I would have killed him. Leaning his elbow and forearm against Snape's collarbone to hold him against the wall, he composes himself, breathing heavily.

"I haven't harmed her in any way, she's just going to sleep through this. It's a spell, not a potion."

"You used that book again, the one from the Black family library. Did you steal it when the Order met at Grimmauld Place? Was that why you wanted…I mean, were you distracting me by…"

Snape looks stunned. "I didn't steal it! I bought that book used in Knockturn Alley."

"There was only one copy." They both say "Mundungus Fletcher" at the same time, each under his breath.

Remus looks at him. "But you used those spells on me before, didn't you? The dream spell, did you use the dream spell on me?"

"Remus, I…"

"You thought I wouldn't figure it out because you didn't know I had read the book, or because you Obliviated me in the dream, but those dreams leave a magical signature. Is this one of them? No, because if it were…" If it were we'd have to be fucking now, he thinks.

"No. This is the ballad spell."

"For Christ's sake, Severus, are you crazy? You cast the spell to seduce the groom on his wedding night? The one where you leave part of your body behind? Are you trying to kill yourself?"

"It doesn't work that way, you misunderstood it. It's not really the whole body, it's a simulacrum, just a little leftover energy. I think people have died from the spell only because they didn't do it properly. The part about leaving something in my place was…helpful. I am under scrutiny."

"I read the spell in Sirius' house. It's incredibly risky and Dark."

"Remus, why didn't you say anything if you knew I was casting the dream spell on you?"

"If you don't remember, you traitorous arsehole, the last time I saw you, you were running up the Tower stairs to kill Dumbledore! Somehow we didn't have time for chitchat." Remus looks at Snape's face, blanched and exhausted. "Maybe you are trying to kill yourself, you sick fuck."

"It would be redundant." Snape bites off the consonants. "There are plenty of people who would do me the favor."

"How could you do it, Severus?" Remus doesn't mean to use his first name again, but he has repeated the question silently to himself for months, and that's how it emerges.

"Because I'm a traitorous arsehole, that's why."

"You know that's never going to be a good enough answer for me again, not after Sirius." Remus says. "I took everything at face value, and let my best friend suffer in Azkaban for a crime he never committed."

"You'll never believe me. There's no point, and I can't risk it," Snape mutters.

"I kept going over it in my mind, whether you really did it, that you must have done it, why you did it. Either you were never with us, always betraying us, or you were swayed to betray us at the last minute. Or someone forced you to do it. Dumbledore forced you. Or maybe you really are a black hearted, self-serving bastard who would turn on anyone, even someone who was like a father to you." Remus looks into Snape's face carefully. "He forced you to do it, didn't he?"

"It's none of your business," Snape says stiffly, turning his head to one side.

"You are in my bedroom on my wedding night because of a very dangerous, very stupid spell. I still don't understand why the spell isn't going to kill you, and it could kill me too. I think you do owe me a few answers."

"You're wasting time, and you aren't going to believe me. All right, Lupin, it's not as though what I say is going to matter anyway. Dumbledore was using me as his private escape route, like a poisoned tooth. He made me swear I would kill him under certain conditions. He didn't want Draco to kill him, and he didn't want to lose me as a spy. He was weakened by the accident that injured his hand…"

"What happened to his hand?"

"I can't…He was destroying a horcrux, do you know what that…."

"Voldemort had a horcrux!"

"What part of 'naming calls' don't you understand? I am betraying the Dark Lord yet again, could you please not draw his attention to me here? I am fairly sure that Dumbledore told Potter about the horcruxes and that he is looking for them, I'm certain without any adult help."

"There's more than one horcrux? But no one has ever…"

"That stupid brat, he should have gone to you for help. He thinks Granger can do all the research you've already done? The darkest magic anyone has ever done, and three teenagers are going to try to combat it alone. Idiots."

"Dumbledore asked you to kill him? I can't believe it."

"I predicted that."

"That can't be the only reason."

"Obviously the Dark Lord also wanted me to kill Dumbledore, to prove my loyalty and to cement my dependence on him. Narcissa Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange came to me to protect Draco, and I made the Unbreakable Vow with them. Dumbledore knew about Draco and was sentimental. He didn't want Draco to take the Mark, protecting innocent youth and all that."

"But he was willing to sacrifice himself, and you."

"Yes, he was willing to sacrifice himself, and me, for the cause, and I was willing to do what both masters wanted, because I am exactly as you say, a black hearted, self-serving bastard."

Remus doesn't take the bait. He feels ill, deflated. He can't trust Snape's answers but they are the worst ones he had imagined and therefore, probably true. "Why are you here?" He lowers his arm; he has been leaning against Snape all this time. Snape rubs his clavicle where it meets his shoulder, where Remus' bony elbow poked him.

"I have information to share with the Order about the Dark Lord's plans." He has a parchment scroll. "I used a special ink and a spell. You will be able to read it, and you will be able to copy the information out, but no one else. You can say that you got the information from one of your werewolf packs."

"You used the ballad spell for an intelligence report? Why did you come to me?"

"Because of your work with the packs, and I thought if anyone would believe me, it would be you…" Snape's voice trails off.

"It wasn't because…" Remus can't finish his sentence.

"Of course if you read the book you know how the spell works."

"What makes you think I would…I'm not going to…you hate me, you always did. Since the Shack incident. You always want to mess about, but I know you hate me. I know we always…mess about, but it's not something…it's not healthy. It's a sick thing, to always want to get off with someone you hate."

"I hate everyone, Lupin, you know that."

"You loved Lily, when we were at school."

"We were just friends, you idiot. Unlike you I didn't conduct an elaborate pretense of heterosexuality. I always knew I was queer."

Remus rolls his eyes. "Fine. But you…you were 'just friends' with Lily like I was 'just friends' with Sirius. You were close. Just because you aren't involved with someone doesn't mean you don't love them."

"Oh gods, I don't think I can stand hearing about how you 'loved' Sirius Black. He exploited you, exploited your lycanthropy..."

"Snape, what the bloody hell… the man is dead. You can stop being angry now. They're both dead. Nearly everyone you or I cared about at school is dead, or mad."

"Were you in love with him, with Black? Is that why you let him use you?"

"No! No. He was just my friend, the first person who knew I was cursed and didn't care. God, he didn't trust me because of you, you didn't trust me because of him…"

"I trusted you! You weren't telling me…"

"I meant three years ago, when I was teaching with you and you thought I was letting Sirius into Hogwarts. You were so angry with me, but you still wanted to…we still…had one off. A few times. Before you 'let slip' about my being a werewolf."

"So this is what you meant when you said…"

"What?"

"When you said that I hurt you and you didn't understand me."

"I never said that to you."

"In…in one of the dreams."

Remus feels the blood rushing to his head. "What is this really about, Severus? You don't use the ballad spell to just have another round of men's lavatory fellatio, a little more hostile groping in the hallway. Or are you just trying to get under my skin in another way?"

"I…no. I just wanted…I just wanted to see you again." Snape hugs himself, grasping his elbows, and looks at the floor. "I know you aren't going to be able to forgive me for what I've done. I can't forgive myself, why should you." Though his voice is steady, tears begin to run down Snape's face. "Anyway I'm going to die in this war, I can't betray everyone and not get killed. Potter's son will do me in, or the Dark Lord will catch me like he did Regulus. And I don't want…I don't really want to live anyway, I just want to get free of him before he kills me…"

"Severus, Severus, why didn't you come to me, I could have…" He's finally touching Snape the way he always wants to touch him, brushing the hair off of his face, touching his shoulder, touching him. Remus' arms wrap around Severus's arms, around his still-too-thin body. He strokes the muscles on either side of his spine, the wings of his shoulder blades. His anger was tremulous and now he is shaking with desire.

"You couldn't have done anything, you owed the headmaster as much as I did. I only have value as an instrument. That's how it's always been, even to Dumbledore, who liked me, I think. "

"Not to me. You were always a person to me, even when you thought I wasn't human. I should have spoken up for you. No one ever defended you except Albus. He needed to know that you were important to someone, that you shouldn't be made into a murderer." His thumbs smooth Severus' eyebrows, and he is kissing them, kissing his eyelids, kissing his wet cheeks. He wants to bury his nose in that long neck, to take great sniffs of that familiar scent.

"That's ridiculous. I was a Death Eater in the first war, I was responsible for poisoning hundreds of people. I was no innocent. Even the poisons that were killing Dumbledore when I cursed him, it's very likely that I made those. I'm not a good person, Remus."

"Severus…" Since Snape is bowed against the wall, Remus can reach his mouth to kiss him. The kiss is soft: Severus' thin lips are soft and relaxed against his, his tongue soft, his nose presses against Remus' cheek. His mouth is warm, his hands are warm; when the kiss breaks, his eyes are, finally, warm. Their fingers are intertwined.

Which is the real you, Severus Snape, the warm and weeping man filled with regret, or the cold angry bastard I've known since we were seventeen? He doesn't say it out loud but Severus still tells him, "You shouldn't trust me. I'm not consciously lying to you about any of this, but you still shouldn't trust me. Spying has damaged me. I don't even know which are my own feelings and which I manufactured to fool the Dark Lord, or the other members of the Order."

"But you're crying."

"Why do you think everyone called me Snivellus at school? Have you really never seen me cry before? Why do you think I went in for Occlumency in the first place?" Remus kisses him some more, he doesn't want to stop kissing or touching him. It's just like when you are a teenager and you fall in love for the first time, you kiss and you stare into the person's eyes, Remus thinks.

He did that with Severus, once, behind the greenhouses, when they were sixteen and seventeen. Before Severus knew Remus was a werewolf. It wasn't that they never touched again after that. It was just--just sex.

"What do we need to do so that you survive this spell? Just tell me."

"Why? Do you believe me that I am still working for the Order? You haven't even opened the scroll. How do you know it's not blank? What if I plan to kill you?"

"Stop it. If you lied to me then I'll have saved your life for nothing. It's not as though I don't owe you for that year of Wolfsbane. I trusted you with my life then. What do we have to do?"

"You have to fall asleep in my arms."

He looks into Severus' eyes for another long moment. Severus picks his wand up from the floor and says a spell to make the bed expand, and then sits down at the edge of it.

"You aren't wearing shoes."

"I didn't walk here."

Remus pushes him back, and they lie down together. Tonks is still sleeping, curled in on herself. Remus rolls them over, pulls Snape on top of him. Severus touches Remus' face like he is memorizing it. Remus kisses his hand, first the palm, then each long finger. The index finger slips into his mouth. Severus makes a sound.

Snape mutters something and his clothes fall away. Their chests press together. Remus feels Severus' erection hard against the inside of his thigh. Severus is kissing down his jaw, his collar bone. He takes a nipple in his mouth, and Remus feels it in his groin, and everywhere. Severus' wet finger is teasing Remus' perineum and anus. Remus has his hand on Severus' silky, hard cock. He says some lubricating spells, quickly.

"I want you to fuck me, Severus."

Severus is blushing. They never talk about what they are doing. Remus takes hold of Severus' shoulder and looks into his face.

"Please look at me. I don't want to lose a moment of you."

Severus spreads Remus' thighs, continuing to gaze into his face. He slides his fingers into Remus's body one at a time, stroking his prostate. He works the fingers out and positions his cock to fuck Remus.

"I trust you, Severus."

Then Severus is inside him. Remus puts his legs around the long torso. He finally sees Severus' loving face the way he saw it when they were teenagers. His nose was beaky and his eyes young but untrusting, like a wild creature. Remus always thought of him as a bird of prey, innocent and dangerous, a hawk or an eagle.

Severus grasps his cock with a lubricated hand, and begins to slide up and down his shaft. Remus is gasping, oh oh oh, each stroke of Severus' cock intensely pleasurable, and it goes on and on, looking into those eyes and feeling those feelings. Finally, as his orgasm hits him, Remus groans Severus' name, staring into his beautiful wild eyes.

Severus, coming, says, "I love you, Remus."

Now Remus is weeping. This is it, then, after all these years. Severus is going to die. He would never have said that, or admitted it to himself, if there was a chance he could live. But at least Remus got to see him one last time; he had wanted to see him so desperately. Maybe he can't trust him, but at least he finally got to touch him, to talk with him.

"Shh, shh." Snape rolls off of him finally. Remus puts his head against Snape's chest, and feels the man's arms around him. The long fingers entwine his hair. Snape begins to speak to him with his throat against Remus' head. The thrum of his voice vibrates against Remus' skull.

"I'll tell you a story. Once there was a boy who loved another boy, and there were no obstacles to love except a bit of stubbornness. There was no war, and no one asked them to do anything but learn their lessons and take examinations. When no one was looking, they held hands and looked into each other's eyes. When they grew up, they moved into a small house together and had pets and read books and kept a garden. Their friends came for dinner. Whenever they liked, they took a trip to the Continent, or, or Morocco, or any place they wanted, really. They packed their clothes in one suitcase and shared one bed. They were never lonely and no one ever asked anything of them…"

Remus drifts off to sleep, his eyes still wet, with Severus' arms around him.
~~~~

* This version of the ballad Lady Margret is from Pete Seeger's Carnegie Hall Concert of 1963, on the album We Shall Overcome. Seeger attributes this version of the song to Frank Profitt, Jr., who built his banjo. Like many American ballads, this has its origins in an earlier English version; you can find another version of the song with historical notes about its antiquity here.