Severus Snape blinked at Remus Lupin, feeling his cheeks heat against his will. He wanted the safety of Obscura, wanted to drown this rising tide of embarrassment, but his own words about darkness and madness and an obfuscation of self rang in his ears, sounding especially pedantic and self-righteous and so he did nothing, which was probably all for the best, because it was important he not start spouting denials before Lupin had so much as said a word.

When Lupin did speak, it was one word, clipped and concise and as heavy with sarcasm as Snape had ever heard the other man’s voice. “Well,” he said, crossing his arms and glancing about the room. “I like the decor. It’s really quite lovely.”

Snape’s eyes narrowed. A student – a male student – Harry Potter – had stumbled out of his room first thing in the morning in rumpled robes obviously from the evening before – and Lupin was admiring his taste? There was something particularly twisted in that; Snape decided he was impressed. “Thank you,” he said dryly.

For a minute, Lupin looked to be mastering himself – he turned pink, then white, then finally a faint tinge of green. Finally, he was himself again, the normally placid flatness of his brown eyes replaced by a cold hatred that Severus had never quite seen replicated but once or twice in a mirror.

You won’t do anything, though, will you, Lupin? he thought. No, I could be having my way with your little friend in here every day of the week, and you’d stand there just like that, wouldn’t you? “You haven’t changed a bit,” he said coldly.

Lupin’s lips thinned, and nearly trembled with suppressed anger. “You have. I thought you hated Harry.”

“I don’t hate young Mister Potter. When all is said and done, he is an... interesting young man. Very talented.”

Lupin’s eyes widened, his breath hissed out like steam from a kettle, his muscles bunched, all in the space of moments. It was only when Snape felt himself crash against the flagstones of his rooms that he realized the other man had actually punched him, hard.

“Oh, Merlin,” Lupin said directly after, for all the world sounding as though it was someone else had struck Snape – he sounded, Severus reflected, the way he did after one of Black and Potter’s more dastardly deeds – horrified and dreadfully disapproving.

Snape struggled to his feet and grinned darkly at the other man, the comparison amusing him. Something about the entire business struck him as immensely funny, and he barked a laugh.

Lupin stared at him, regret rapidly overtaken by raw hatred in his eyes. “You... you vicious, coldhearted bastard...”

Snape stopped laughing, realizing it was not helping his case. He rubbed at his cheek. “You hit me,” he said, feeling oddly more relaxed around Lupin. This was patentedly ridiculous, as the man had just attacked him, but Snape couldn’t shake a sudden feeling of kinship. “Harry came by last night because he’s been performing an ancient and rather dangerous technique called Obscura, an Occlumency discipline. He thought, correctly, that I would be the best person to help him deal with the spell. Unfortunately, the countercharm is rather weakening, and he fell asleep.” Snape jerked his head roughly towards the couch. “I thought it better to let him sleep than to wake him and inhibit his already somewhat shaky recovery.”

Lupin’s mouth slowly closed, his eyes narrowed. “You let me think...”

“And what was I supposed to say, unless you spoke first, you reticent twit?” Snape returned darkly. “As you step in the door: ‘no, I have not been shagging Mister Potter, although I realize it may very well seem that way.’”

“I punched you,” Lupin echoed irrelevantly, wrapping his arms around his shoulders.

Snape rolled his eyes, although the reminder had him rising to his feet, and rummaging through his potions stores for some bruise salve. The last thing he needed was to turn up for classes with pink hair and a black eye.

“That was incredibly impulsive of me, Severus,” Lupin said in a small, penitent voice.

Snape frowned. “Stop whinging. If I discovered Mister Potter in your rooms first thing in the morning, I would’ve done the same.”

Lupin blinked. “Would you?”

“Well – no,” Snape amended, pondering this. “No, I would’ve congratulated you on your conquest and merely poisoned you the next morning at breakfast.”

“I’m sure Harry would be pleased to hear you say that,” Lupin said, his voice sounding strangled.

“What, that if you were sleeping with him, I should have to kill you?” Snape inquired peevishly. “He might be startled to hear it; that’s certainly not something one hears every day.”

“That you care for him, I mean,” Lupin said.

Snape glared at him. “I don’t particularly care for Harry – I’d do the same to any teacher who was messing about with a student.”

“Mmm,” Lupin said in that perfectly neutral way that he had that always made Severus want to strangle him.

“Why are you here?” Snape demanded.

“Eh?”

“You must’ve come here for some reason,” Snape continued.

“Er... I – I came to talk about Harry.”

Snape sighed, resigned, and slumped down into the softness of his couch. “What about him?”

“If you’ve taken him under your wing, I think I don’t really have that many more questions. It’s suddenly quite obvious to me that some of the changes he’s been going through are due to your influence.”

“Mine?”

“Yes... er, something of his, ah, attitude... somehow brings you to mind,” Lupin said nervously, obviously still feeling wrong-footed. “He asked me all about Dark Arts the other day...”

“I’d love to hear this,” Snape said flatly.

“Oh – the oddest question was about the ImperiusCurse – he was talking about casting Dark spells on himself.”

Snape nodded. “A roundabout way of asking you about Obscura,” he explained. “It is Occlumency, so it is a self-directed Dark spell.”

Lupin nodded, more slowly than Severus had as he was obviously recalling Harry’s questions and placing them in a more appropriate context. “Yes, well... it’s not just that.” Lupin coughed into his hand. “Unless I’m mistaken, he’s picked up some of your mannerisms as well.”

Snape stiffened. “The blame cannot be laid at my feet for any impertinence that enters that boy’s head–”

“I’m not trying to blame you for Harry’s odd behaviour of late, Severus.”

“Then what are you trying to do? Why inform me of any of this at all?”

“Because it’s obvious Harry’s taken it into his head to worship the ground you stalk on, old friend,” Lupin said quietly.

Severus stared at the other man. “I am not your friend new or old, and I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“He’s imitating you, consciously or unconsciously, Severus. He’s got a sudden interest in schoolwork in general, Potions in particular. He spends hours off by himself, and when he’s not alone, he’s with the Unsorted children, or Draco Malfoy, or Yolande Zabini.” Professor Lupin smiled gently, almost apologetically, adding, “And he raises one eyebrow and runs his left hand through his hair, and even sometimes imitates your inflection.”

“Haven’t you made a study,” Severus replied faintly, but he was adding things. He practices Obscura and keeps his temper altogether too well and for Merlin’s sake, was about to write the same paper as I did –

Snape was proud of the project, particularly because he had written it at seventeen years of age, but he knew that most sixteen-year-old boys would not have bothered to read the first paragraph, much less attempt understanding. It was odd, wasn’t it, that Harry, of all people, wanted to finish it?

That Harry wanted to come back at all?

Severus suddenly felt strangely bewildered.

His consternation must have showed, because Lupin pulled a chair close to the couch to face him, his brown eyes going soft and understanding. “Now that I look at it all together, it makes a lot more sense, especially after losing S-Sirius,” he stammered, then flushed at his loss of control. “He wants another, er, father-figure, and, well, you’re certainly a constant in his life...”

“I am nobody’s ‘father-figure’,” Snape spat, a wave of what he recognized as terror coursing through him – inexplicable, but there it was. “He has a father: James Potter...”

“Dumbledore told me that you helped Harry out last year with Occlumency,” Lupin tacked on, ignoring the denial altogether. “He said that the information you passed on was invaluable.”

“What?!” Snape growled under his breath. “Invaluable... yes, what I taught Mister Potter was to never, ever trust me under any circumstances. That I was his enemy in all things. That, even when Albus Dumbledore gives me a direct order, I cannot tolerate his presence, even in half-hour intervals.” Severus looked up to find Lupin frowning in confusion. “I’ll own that the boy may have somehow formed an attachment of some sort,” he said, “but I cannot fathom how – or why.”

“What happened?” Lupin inquired softly. “Dumbledore called the sessions successful – they must have been, in some way...”

Snape shook his head. “The boy was unwilling, and I was – I was... useless. I couldn’t.” Severus recalled getting angrier and angrier with Harry to the point of blind fury, recalled even the familiar Obscura falling through his fingers. “It was a catastrophe.” Snape paused, finally allowing himself to voice the niggling doubt that had been lingering in the back of his mind ever since the start of the summer. “It is because of my own inability to instruct him that he nearly got himself killed at the Department of Mysteries,” he said. “And, really, in the end–” He paused, then looked at Lupin again, pulling up memories of torture and torment to harden his expression. “In the end, I killed Black, as if I did it with my own hands.” Snape felt the pull of a faint sneer tugging at his lip, and marshaled his contempt and indifference like the soldiers of an army. “Of course, I would have preferred to do it with my own hands, and not through lowering the defenses in the mind of a child...”

“Severus,” Lupin said calmly, and something in the way he said it brought Snape up short, as though the faint rebuke in it really had any merit. “Obviously the sessions did Harry some good. He respects you.” Lupin smiled widely, looking very young suddenly. “And there’s nothing odd about a bit of hero-worship in a boy his age. Very likely, there are few wizards someone like Harry could view as any sort of hero. You uniquely qualify.”

Severus frowned at him with a jaundiced eye; doubly so, as the skin was turning a bright yellow as it healed under the salve. “This is all ridiculous,” he murmured.

“Nonetheless true,” Lupin replied. “Like it or not, you have an admirer, Severus. I want you to be careful with him. He’s a lot more fragile than he looks.”

“Do not entrust him to my care, then,” Snape returned. “I cannot be careful, even if I wished to be. Do you understand?” This was nothing but the unvarnished truth. He was used to making others feel his presence with a glare or a well-placed barb; he didn’t know any other way.

He hadn’t ever had cause to learn any other way.

“You’re rather brilliant, Severus,” Lupin said softly. “You’ll figure it out. And now I have one more question.”

Snape frowned at his unwelcome guest. “If I answer, shall you go away?”

Lupin grinned. “Yes.”

“Then by all means.”

“What on earth have you done to your hair?”

Needless to say, Severus Snape was not in a good mood when he reached the Potions classroom. His hair, while greatly improved from bubblegum pink, was now dark brown with flashes of auburn – apparently the balance between pink and blue-black. It might have been a perfectly attractive color in someone else, but Snape’s coal-black eyes and brows made it look, in his estimation, perfectly ridiculous.

On the bright side, his hair looked thicker and cleaner than he’d ever personally seen it, and the paler color of his hair made his skin look less like a dead fish rotting in the sun. He considered adding the dark colorant to his current shampoo for good for its apparent cleansing properties. He’d certainly add it now, until he had his original color back.

Storming into Potions just as the bell rang was almost worth it just to see the expressions of shock and wonder. Potter actually smiled at him in obvious approval, elbowing Draco, to whom the professor quickly deduced he’d told about the entire business. Odd, that. The Zabini girl and Granger were both gaping at him. After a moment, they put their heads together and began to giggle. The reactions of the rest of the class were of little concern to him, especially when he noted that there was a small napkin full of toast on his desk.