Title: Beast, Book, and Scandal
By: Craww ([email protected])
Rating: PG-13, for sexual innuendo and language and such.
Disclaimer: Umm, I don't know Remus, Severus, the Monster Book of Monsters, or Sirius Black. I do, however, own Sirius' rock opera. J.K. Rowling owns the universe and characters, though.
Author's Notes: All righty, this is the first Harry Potter fic I've written, and the first story I've completed in over a year. It's set in Remus' and Severus' Hogwarts years (6th or 7th year). I guess I should warn people again that it's basically slash-ish, so...stay away, people frightened by massive sexual innuendo between boys who hate each other feverishly.

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Severus Snape was not malleable to the conduct of creatures that would wish to impose on his good pride. Consequently, Severus was not good with the Monster Book of Monsters. It took him days to figure out that it wouldn't open with just an impatient tap on the side title, and even more wounds before his attempts at stroking it gave way to any sort of results.

However, the minute it yielded to his short showings of love, it snapped back closed over his hand. Shaking it off with a yelp, it flew across the Slytherin common room and pegged Goyle on his thick vacuous head.

It was through some persuasion on the part of Lucius, and the simple fact that he was more deft with a wand than most physical aggressors, that Snape didn't get his crooked features rearranged until they were straight.

Snape decided to take his being alive as a good indicator of his luck, but he knew luck was something that yielded just as well to assiduous pressings as the book that was currently the bane of his existence.

So, he slipped quietly out of the common room, and trudged, agitated, towards the school library. In his bag he carried with him a gagged, bound, and whimpering version of the monster book. He'd come up with some nice hexes to subdue the retched literary beast, and was quite pleased with himself for being able to make an animate yet prosaically inspired object feel pain.

When he got to the library, the urge to hang back presented itself in the form of Sirius Black. Snape sneered as the aforementioned walked out of the library, carrying himself over each individual threshold like a smarmy star leaving behind his rock opera. Always in the mood to snipe, but curiously not in the mood to get bullied, Snape waited behind his corridor until Black had passed down his own.

Sighing annoyedly, Snape entered the library. Again conflict arose as he spied Remus Lupin, studiously leaning over books and parchment with a look so subdued that it was hard enough to believe he was a teenaged boy, let alone that he was a...a...beast.

Snape growled, and decided that being cruel to the vulnerably lone creature at the table could wait till a time when the creature in his satchel had stopped being cruel to him. So, he slunk into the stacks, making sure to at least passingly interrupt Lupin in an incisive manner. A bump on the elbow and a dropped quill weren't entirely satisfactory punishments for someone as noxious as Lupin, but it was a start and a start that made Snape smirk.

Impatiently scanning books like Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Snape attempted to find a new book to supplement in place of the Monster Book of Monsters. Something...appropriate. It was highly troublesome that an essay on the ever elusive Humptyback was to be due in Care of Magical Creatures at the end of the month, and there was no other literary information on it available than that entombed inside the toothsome, troublesome book that had been ratified to the students so foolishly at the beginning of the year.

He clenched the bridge of his nose between the pad of his thumb and his forefinger. It was no use avoiding the inevitable. He was quite simply going to have to make the book work for him. Hammer and chisel, black vice, drawing and courtering, whatever it took. Spying through the books, his eyes slits, he saw Lupin buoyantly reach down below the work table and pull, horror of horrors, the very same book as the one growling through restraints and tapping angrily against his thigh through his shoulder bag.

Hands delicate and pale, with even more delicate and pale scars on the palms, stroked against the spine of the book. Snarling gave way to...Oh, god, no it couldn't be! It was...purring. Snape's lips curled as Remus' hands tickled against the title page within the book, and the pages drifted of their own accord towards the finger tips, flipping gingerly till the boy got to his chapter. 'If it starts mewling in bliss,' Snape thought bitterly, 'I'm going to eat my quill.'

Slipping out from behind the stacks, Snape swished towards Remus' table. A smirk formed on his sallow face as Remus' soft amber eyes clouded around the dark circles encasing his lids. Remus let a soft growl escape his throat as he slammed the cover of his book shut, and whipped his head around to face Snape with an impatient, "What?!"

"Ooh, temper temper..." Snape said, and immediately caught up on the whimper the Monster Book of Monsters had let out when it had been indeliberately abused by Remus. "I never thought you one for tough love, Lupin. It's going to take hours of pressing, and maybe a few muggle cocktails before that book'll open up to you again."

Remus' eyes darted towards his book, which had transplanted itself to the other end of the table. It growled when Remus reached out a hand to pet it. "Damnit, Snape," Remus breathed out, exasperated.

"Oh, don't blame me for your relationship problems, Lupin. Those glory days when your bestial hearts were first connecting have lost their novelty for the poor creature," Snape snarked. "Now I know why I saw Black fleeing earlier, so prone to jealousy isn't he?"

"Oh, really, Severus. Stop projecting. It's not as if you're doing so hot with your book either."

"Oh, and how did you become privy to that information, Remus?" Snape bit out. "Sounds like hearsay to me."

Remus pointed a delicate finger towards Snape's bag, with an expression almost resembling a smirk resting on his face.

Snape threw his bag onto the table, scattering Remus' work everywhere. With a severe sneer a brush-stroke across his face, he emptied it and watched as it gyrated against its bonds. "Well, unlike you, I haven't yet attempted to mate with it. Some of us just don't have the same affinity with vicious beasts as your kind, Lupin."

Remus sighed, and looked across the table at the permanently scowling boy intent on invading his personal workspace. "Well," Remus began. "If you ever want to get respectable marks in Care of Magical Creatures, or even just be able to magic up some minions that lack the ability to see their master is a mindless prat, you're going to have to know how to woo a beast."

Snape flustered visibly, and then proceeded to fluster over his initial flustering. "Woo a beast, Lupin? Really. I always underestimate your ability to be nasty, even when Black isn't lingering."

"I was being completely literal, Severus," Remus said shortly. "As I do recall, this isn't the first time I've helped you with academic endeavors where you've decided to twist my context."

Snape was nearly fuming, his stony eyes livid. "I can not, for the very life of me, see how you are currently helping me in any conceivable way, academic or mundane. If we're still actively recalling shared academic endeavors, I do believe it was you who was the touchy-feely one. Oh. Oh...Oh, and for the record, I could just as easily accuse you of twisting the context of my nonexistent context twisting into the twisting of context."

Remus' bark of laughter earned them both a dirty look from the old bat in charge of the library. In a bold move of example, Remus firmly grabbed Snape's monster book, earning his hands a gaze from behind a curtain of stringy light stealing, colour drained hair. Snape silently wondered whether or not his hands were as soft as appearance suggested, or as callused as the rough wrangling grip he held over the book implied. Growling inwardly, he detracted from his thoughts with a slightly un-dignified yelp of, "Hey!"

A flick of an appearing-disappearing wand, and soft murmur of words later, and the book was completely free of its shackles and lashing out against Remus with attempts at great ghastly violence. Snape held back on his protestations against Remus' handling of his book, and smirked as he nearly silently urged the book on. The utterance of "good show," is what made it nearly. Just a stark drop of blood against the other boy's hands, and Snape was certain he wouldn't regret even a minute of their exchange. A flesh wound, a beautiful crimson something to accent the pale. Accent? Oops...or was it assault? Snape didn't care.

Of course, that slight yearning was to be crushed for Snape as well. Remus' hands deftly danced over the cover, shuddered down the spine of the book languidly, and the book stretched open in less time flat than an in-heat Veela.

Snape cursed under his breath. "I tried that," he bit out, reaching for the book. Instead of handing it over, Remus regarded Snape's quivering hands skeptically. "No, Severus. I don't think you're ready to work this right," Remus said, smiling as the book fluttered it's pages contentedly under his touch.

Before he had time to object, Snape noticed in horror that Remus' book was back and nudging against the patched elbow of his robes.

Remus smirked and turned his own chapter back to the book he was working on, giving Snape's book a repentant look.

"All right, Snow White. Hand over my property before I set a rabid Hufflepuff up your robes," Snape said, noticing self-satisfactorily that Remus shuddered at the thought just as much as he did.

"If you're so bloody impatient with it, it's never going to open for you. Can't you try, for one briefly luminous moment in your life, to be a bit loving?"

"What?! Do I have to call it my ickle sweetiekins? Give it kisses?" Snape made a loathsome face.

"No, just...touch it how you'd like to be touched yourself. That is, of course, if you're not completely frigid."

Snape silently stared Remus down, and reached his hand out slowly to slide along the book's spine. It didn't snap angrily at him, but he had to roll his eyes as it flinched away from him slightly. Sighing, Snape buried his head in the arms of his robes and bit out an aggravated, "I hate you, Lupin."

Sighing along, Remus queried, "Have you ever had a pet, Severus?"

"Snake," Snape grumbled, his head buried on the table grumpily.

"Quaint. S'what I thought. I mean, you can't touch a book like this like you'd touch a snake. You have to stroke it," Remus illustrated his point by placing his warm palm flat on the solemn boy's robe-covered back. Slowly, he petted softly.

Snape looked at him like he was insane. "So, you're saying I have to fondle the book, then? Right? That's it?"

"You're probably just too innately terse..." Remus was cut off as Snape grabbed his bicep tightly and suddenly, stopping the unassuming caresses gliding down his back.

"You may be gentle, but I touch like a catalyst," Snape said firmly. Remus raised an eyebrow, despite the fact that he'd ascertained on an earlier date that he couldn't do that. "If," Snape began again, "you're anything like your true nature suggests, you know that butterfly kisses and mild coddling are only a coverup for the way a common beast truly yearns to be touched."

Shaking off a tingle from the hand still grasping at his arm, Remus looked squarely at Snape and offered a mawkish attempt at a smirk. "Are you saying that the Monster Book of Monsters is secretly hoping you'll ride it hard and put it away wet, then?"

Snape looked momentarily dumbfounded, a bit scandalized, slightly nauseated, and tokenly hateful. "That's revolting," he remarked taciturnly after a few moments. "You master of innuendo you," he added, exactingly.

"All right then, Severus. Do show me how you think a common beast deserves to be touched," Remus said, and attempted, without results, to arch his eyebrow again.

Snape reached out a forced-steady hand for his book again, until Remus' unabashedly shaky hand stopped him. "No," Remus snapped, "not on the book, you git."

"I'm not going to feel you up in the school library, Lupin," Snape said crossly.

"Are you insinuating that you would feel me up if we weren't in the school library?" Remus inquired.

"No! Gods, I don't have time to play these little games with you, Remus. Give me my book..."

"That you still can't operate? Would you like me to put the shackles back on for you, or just attach it straight to a non-marred piece of your flesh?"

'Defeated', Snape thought. Swallowing thickly, he placed his hand on Remus' shoulder. Shuddering out a breath, he played down to Remus' carnal blackmail and started stroking down the other boy's arm with the same finesse you'd use on a sandpapering project.

"Okay, okay..." Remus surveyed. "Softer, and, erm...less pervy."

"Less pervy?" Snape demanded excitably. "I do recall that you're the one who said..."

"No, no..." Remus interrupted. "You're right, it's not your fault you're intrinsically lecherous. Just work around it. Good...softer. But, try more pressure."

"How am I supposed to apply more pressure and maintain softness?" Snape asked petulantly. He watched his own hand in wonder as it ascended and descended along the span of Remus' arm.

"I don't know, just....yes! That's it. Now, accelerate your rhythm..."

"This is such nonsense," Snape said as his hand rounded from the side to the back of the arm, cupping instinctively at the slant of cloth covered flesh.

"Oh, but you're making delicious progress, Snape," Remus said evenly.

Snape snatched back his hand as if he'd been burned. "Yes, well...I quite think if the book requires any more 'practice', then I'd much rather fail," he said, looking at Remus reproachingly.

Placatingly, Remus slipped Snape's book back into his bag and handed it to him. Just as Snape was about to get up, Sirius Black ambled over to the with a suspicious and infuriated gaze fixed on his handsome face.

"Why are you bugging Remus, you ugly dolt?" Sirius said dully, settling into his spot looming comfortably over Remus' shoulder.

"Because he was bugging me," Snape said, and began to stand up. Sirius grabbed Snape by his high-collar before he'd fully erected himself, and dragged him completely to his feet forcefully.

"Get your hands off me, Black. I don't remember Re, er, Lupin asking you to stand up for him like he's some innocent little damsel. In fact, I rather think Lupin can manhandle me for himself, which he's been so kind to prove to me and I'm sure to you on many occasions, and I was leaving anyway so LET GO!" Snape said skittishly, cringing over each misplaced word.

Sirius raised his brow, and released Snape in a manner that suggested he was a rather unsavory. Which, he rather was. As if it suddenly occured to him, Sirius turned back to Remus and asked, "Wait a second...did he say something about you manhandling him?"

Snape took that as his chance to slink away, Monster Book of Monsters sleeping soundly in his bag.

THE END