FicWad

"Someone Like You"
By Siriusfanatic
Harry Potter


Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all characters are copyright to J.K. Rowling. I make no money off this, most unfortunately as I could use it. I do however own the plot of this nonsense and wish you to respect that.

Warning! Slash! If you don't like slash, you have no business reading this. Save my time and yours.



Part 1: Sympathy


It takes courage to stand up to your friends, as once was spoken by a truly great man and wizard. But sometimes that courage can be taxing. What's more is that it can be very confusing as well. Never more confusing to the then fifteen year old Remus J. Lupin.

Halloween had come and gone. Autumn moved steadily into the bitterness of winter, which was cold and bleak this year, with heavy snow and darkened skies. It seemed that once November bowed into December that the sun went on holiday, and left all wondering if it would ever return.
The bleak weather left everyone feeling a little restless, no more so than the small group of friends who affectionately called themselves the Marauders.
Hogwarts was their territory, their domain. The four of them knew every corridor, ever crevice, every secrete passage way, portrait hole, and so on and so on. There was no inch of Hogwarts they didn't know intimately.
On this particularly bleak December morning, James Potter and his best mate, Sirius Black, were feeling a particularly pronounced pang of boredom.
Sirius lay listlessly upon his four-poster bed, Remus (a.k.a. Moony) lying next to him, his head on Sirius's chest. Padfoot gave a long aggravated sigh as he stroked Remus's soft brown hair. "Dammit, Prongs, I'm dying over here!" he shouted to the bed next to him, where James sat scratching his dark messy black hair and pouring over a large piece of parchment that lay in his lap.
"Oh stuff it, Padfoot. I'm doing the best that I can." James sighed, pausing to take off his glasses and rub his eyes tiredly. Prongs had been staring the map for the last hour and half, watching and waiting for an opportunity to arise. It would come sooner or later, they were sure...but patience was never one of Sirius' strong points.
Sirius growled deep in his throat, and Remus brushed one long-fingered hang across the skin of his stomach. "Really Padfoot, I don't see what all the fuss is about. We can have plenty of fun without torturing that half-wit group of Slytherins." Moony said, trying to sound coy and sexy, which usually made Sirius pounce on him. But today it had no affect.
"No way, Moony. I'm gonna kick Malfoy's ass all the way from the dungeons to the third floor corridor. Two weeks of detention with that ass-kisser Slughorn! It was his bloody fault the potion exploded!" Sirius retorted, his long black hair falling in his face.
"Well maybe if you'd been paying attention you would have realized that he had the amounts all wrong..." Remus said mildly.
Sirius glanced down at his partner with skeptical grey eyes. "Hey, who side are you on, Moony?" he demanded, a tone of aggravation and hurt in his voice.
Remus smiled at his boyfriend and kissed him softly. "Yours as always. But I'm just saying that you could have picked a better person to cheat off of than Luscious Malfoy! You know he's just getting by in that class." Remus said reasonably.
"And that's only because he cheats off of Snape's papers!" Peter, who had been sitting alone on his own bed engrossed in a box of Bertie Botts piped up suddenly.
"Here here!" James cheered from his own bed. "He does have a point, Sirius. You should have gone right to the source and cheated off of Snape's paper like Moony did!" James chuckled.
Remus lifted his head at this and glared across the gap between the beds at James. "I did not, James! Unlike some people..." he gave an all encompassing look of admonishment to his friends, "...I pay attention in potions."
"Aw come off it, Moony, we're just teasing." Sirius chuckled nuzzling the other boy's neck.
"Aha!" James cried suddenly, making them all jump. "They've left the common room! Malfoy, Snape, and Rodolphus!" James cried joyously.
He leapt from his bed, Sirius and Peter doing the same, and headed towards the door of the dormitory. Sirius paused, realizing Remus had not leapt to join them. "Coming Moony?" he asked, grinning.
Remus sat on the edge of the bed, thinking it over. He didn't want to shun his friends, and certainly he would like to get a few kicks in at Malfoy just for being a bloody bastard...but his heart just wasn't in it. "No, you go on ahead." he said.
"You sure, Moony?" James asked.
Remus smiled warmly at them. "Yeah, give 'em a few good kicks in the shins for me." Remus said.
James shrugged. "Suit yourself!"
A moment later they had disappeared, leaving him alone in the room. Remus gave a resigned sigh, feeling very, very alone.


*


What seemed like hours later, although it was really only about a half an hour, Moony found himself wandering down the corridors after his friends, holding the Marauders map in his hands. James, Sirius and Peter appeared to be heading down the tunnel that lead to Honeydukes, and the Slytherins they had been after seemed to have parted ways.
Lupin was about to give up the search and head back when he noticed that the little dot marked "Remus Lupin" was standing almost directly on top of the little dot marked "Severus Snape".
Lupin blinked this for a moment, and then with a sick feeling he lifted his eyes and saw Severus Snape hanging above him as though being held up by his ankle by a giant. Snape's robes hung over his head his hand limply dangling down towards Lupin. It looked as though he had given up the struggle to keep everyone from seeing his underwear ages ago.
"Oh Sirius, how could you?" Remus moaned. He could only guess how long Snape had been hanging there. He supposed the boy was only lucky that it was a weekend so the corridors weren't so busy.
Raising his wand, Remus quickly undid Sirius' Levicorpus spell, which sent Snape tumbling painfully to the ground in a tangle of limbs and robes.
"I'm so sorry!" Remus cringed as Snape thudded to the ground, then he ran over and immediately began helping the poor Slytherin boy put himself to rights again.
"Get off! Get off!" Snape screamed at him once he had managed to untangle his robes from his head.
Remus sat back on his heels and waited patiently for Snape to adjust himself. Snape frantically pushed his long, greasy black hair from his face, which Lupin couldn't help but notice was beat red and seemed to be moisten with tears.
"I'm so sorry, Snape. I would have liked to given you a softer landing..." Remus began gently. Snape furiously reached for his wand, pointing it Lupin with a shaking hand.
"You and your bloody lot stay away from me, understand! So help me God, I'll fix all of you if you touch me again!" he screamed.
Remus remained calm. "Alright, Severus, alright. I understand you're angry---"
"ANGRY??! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG I HAVE BEEN HANGING---" Snape seemed to stumble upon his own screaming rant, to angry even to yell.
Lupin didn't seem disturbed by Snape's rage. His face remained calm, if not somewhat sadden. He reached out a hand and placed it on Snape's shaking shoulder. "Are you hurt at all?" he asked.
"DON'T BLOODY TOUCH ME!" Snape screamed, slapping his hand away. He got hastily to his feet, and then wavered uneasily. Remus was quick to steady him.
"Easy! All that blood rushing to your head...you'll faint if you stand up so quickly!" he warned.
"I know the effects of my own spell, than you very much." Snape seethed, his voice tight and serpent like.
"Let me help you to the hospital wing, at least." Remus continued.
Snape shrugged the other boy's hands from his arms and turned to face him. "You listen to me, Lupin. You tell your friend for me, you tell them if they ever touch me again I'll make them sorry they were born, understand me?!" Snape demanded.
Lupin nodded in understanding. Snape swept past him, robes billowing after him, leaving Remus once more alone in the hall.
Once Severus had cleared the staircase however, he paused, ducked behind a statue, and crumpled to his knees. He was extremely dizzy, and more than a little nauseous, but he wasn't going to show weakness in front of him. But what hurt his head more than all the blood that had rushed there, possibly even more than humiliation he had sustained, was Lupin's strange kindness to him.
Potter and Black had always been the bane of his existence, they never stopped picking on him, not ever, though Snape couldn't remember a damn thing he'd done to deserve it. Petigrew would join in their jeering laughter, usually goading on the other two. Insufferable suck-up that one was. A chronic hero-worshiper. But Lupin...though he had always been present, always among the group--and particularly close the Black, now that he thought about it--had never laughed. Never smiled. Never joined in any of the mean-spirited fun his friends enjoyed so much.
Snape put a hand over the black where Remus had touched him, and felt a small amount of comfort in that.