In which Severus critiques graffiti, attempts Taoism, and predicts the future, and Harry takes aim.

Warnings: biologically correct infants, passive-aggressive behavior

Notes: I said I wouldn't just stop without an announcement, so here is one last chapter in this post. The story will continue in the original Valley of the Shadow post, and it *is* pretty much the same story. It's shippier, but not pornier.

I would like to thank Albhwa, Danigirl, HalfEmptyTeacup, bluemeanies, jaw, maidofkent, muumi2three, nightworldangel, radioactiveblue, tsiddiqaamin, wolvelover, zachol, DarthRag, Fffreak, Luke21, Meg Helix, and especially Duj for following, favoriting, and/or reviewing regularly. Which is to say, for not just enjoying but for giving the story a mark of confidence that other potential readers could see.

Reviewing regularly is a thing that is especially precious and doesn't happen much. Final ratio as of this chapter: 8,400 hits and 171 reviews. I kept going as long as I could manage, guys, but I said at the beginning I wasn't interested in posting into a void (it's in the notes), and I've just got too much on my plate these days to struggle with adapting a very complicated story over and over when de-shipifying it is about to get harder and harder and I have less and less time/interest.

So, sorry, Duj, I only feel badly about this because of you, especially as you'd have liked the next few chapters wayyyy better than this one. And, as I said, the other version will definitely continue, and maybe someday if my commute changes or something I can go back and do a mass adaptation and upload, get this post back on track. But I can't commit to that now.

Nelson, Lancashire

"Oh, dear god," the deep voice rang out behind them in slow horror. "What did you maniacs do to our park?"

"Isn't it lovely?" Lily beamed, getting up to pull the staring Snape down far enough to be kissed on the cheek. Remus settled for taking one hand away from where he was idly pushing the pram back and forth to wave.

"It is not," Snape retorted. "It looks like every bad cliché of flower children on acid let loose in a tie-dye factory a three-year-old armed with sidewalk chalk could aimlessly scribble on a rainy afternoon."

Although he had not been previously aware of the existence of such a cliché, and didn't especially think that such a convoluted one would survive even if it held up under even the most casual examination, Remus made a point of only arguing with Snape when there was half a chance it would be worth it. Which it almost certainly wasn't, since on this occasion Snape wasn't so much glancing disdainfully all around as sneaking a hopeful peek at whether he'd made Lily smile.

"We think it cheers up the old place no end," she said firmly. "Anyway, I don't know why you're acting so surprised. Didn't Rosier show you the picture?"

"I can only presume he decided to spare me."

"He came back and helped."

"You're lying," Snape returned without bothering to think about it. "He came, he saw, he gave it up as a bad job and decided I must never know."

"…He did that butterfly," Lily said in a sort of it's-a-fair-cop sheepish tone, pointing at a thing that Remus had thought was either an abstract, vines twining through a rusted metal crown, or some kind of friendly cartoon sea monster. Maybe Nessie, cheerfully waving a webbed flipper for the tourists as she jammed their cameras. It had entirely taken over the slide.

Snape stared at it. Eventually, he decided, "I suppose he decided that's why I must never know," but now he looked amused. "It's a bit Last Unicorn Crunched Up Azathoth For Elevenses With Her Hay And Clover By Accident, isn't it? Did he say it was a butterfly?"

Lily tilted her head consideringly. "Now that you mention it, I'm not sure he did."

Even before the potions-based attack on his own curse had started to look like it might not go the distance, Remus had been building up a background in the Egyptian magical mindset. After all, they were rather specialized in curse-breaking as well as curses, what with all the archaeology and tomb-raiding that went on over there. He was almost sure that Azathoth was not any variant of Thoth he'd ever heard of.

Besides, Thoth was a patron deity of both magic and writing. Even when Remus felt that a particularly strict god of justice might not consider that he, Remus, had done quite everything that perhaps he ought to have over the course of his life thus far, he still felt more of an affinity for the ibis-headed god than a terror of him. His name certainly didn't make the hair rise on the back of Remus's neck—although the prospect of trying to remember how to spell the Djehuty variants while trying to unlock some thousand-year-old curse before its plague got loose did not please.

Snape shookhis head, looking as if he were biting back a few comments that weren't quite as acid as he wished they were. "Well. As you can see, I received your message. What is it?"

"You tell me, Sev," Lily replied. "I just thought I'd keep Remus company when he got your note, and I thought it'd be nice to meet somewhere we've all been."

"…Ah." He glanced over at Remus and the pram, then favored her with a slow quirk of a half-smile that, to Remus's surprise, actually looked like pleasure and approval. "Keeping everything friendly?"

"Well, we are all friends," Lily said, being firm again.

"Lupin and I are not friends," he said, equally firm but without malice, and walked over. "Lupin," he said briskly and, in the same tone, peering into the pram, "Winston."

"His name is Harry," Remus said mildly.

Snape slid him that curling, dismissive look that said you have no understanding but it's of no account since you aren't either. Then, sitting down on the other side of the pram from Remus on the bench, he settled into the cool, dispassionate, professional, rather tired-of-everything face that Remus had got used to from the Snape who was continually droning at him to get out of his office.

It wasn't quite the same face, though. Usually Snape was impatient and irritated with him under it. Now Remus was chilled, thinking he saw just a trace of sympathy. Or even apology. And a certain hesitation. He braced himself, or did his best to, and asked, "What did you want to talk to me about, Severus?"

Well, maybe it wasn't too bad, because Snape reacted to his given name with his usual annoyed twitch. Someday maybe he'd react like a normal person to the friendly gesture, which would be better, but until then Remus would settle for driving him batty.

He got over it more quickly than usual, though, which was, in turn, a bad sign. It usually was, when Snape thought anything was more important than how angry he was, or even how cross. "I thought it right to tell you myself," he began, bluntly flat-eyed.

"The grant's been cut," Remus interrupted him, on the premise that maybe it wouldn't be so painful if he said it himself instead of hearing it. Nope.

But Snape gave a sardonic little sigh with a grimace that, again, was terrifyingly almost-sympathetic, and said, "It's not quite that bad yet, although I still wouldn't count on any soufflés from the eggs in that basket."

"Teach your grandmother to suck them," Remus retorted pessimistically.

With an odd, amused look, Snape mused, "Maybe I will." He turned his attention back to Remus. "No, the committee hasn't decided yet. What I have to tell you is that I'm out."

Remus rather wished that being a werewolf worked the way Sirius had originally thought (hoped) it had, so that when he got angry his eyes flashed gold and a growl rumbled in his throat or something.

No, that was a bad thing to hope, because Severus was the last person on earth he wanted to threaten with the wolf. Ever. Never again.

It was just, knowing what blood and fury was in him sometimes made him feel so helpless at times like this. Especially since he didn't want to let it out, ever, at all. He didn't. The temptation of flashing a fang would never, ever be worth the quiet damage it would do.

As always, he kept a firm hold on himself, only his hands clenching so that the pram stilled. "Why is that, Severus?" he asked, as pleasantly as he could manage.

Snape gave him a my egg-sucking grandmother could do that better look. Even after he'd already delivered the worst, it made Remus feel less angry than as if the world would still go on. "Among other reasons, someone with influence wants me out. Which means the project has a much better chance of remaining funded if I'm off it. They might withdraw their opposition if I leave."

"Of course," Remus said. "You're certainly not just giving up."

Snape looked at him in pure contempt. "You flash-in-the-pan enchanters," he sneered. "Spell a boot to kick and on to the next clever little notion. Do you know what patience is? Do you know the meaning of research? In two years I've watched more progress being made—helped make it—than has been made in the centuries since the condition first revealed itself. No one was able to begin to affect it before Belby. You think this is a surrender to the idea that it's unshiftable because I think it's going too slowly? The pace is miraculous. "

Under the drill of those eyes' full and irate attention, Remus couldn't help but lean back a bit, although he did manage to keep his chin safely down after the initial throat-tightening quiver. The muscles behind his eyebrows moved back, though, and he could almost feel his ears lowering along with his shoulders.

The playground was on flat and scrubby ground, with nothing to bounce an echo off. Snape's voice, that got so quiet when he was angry, had started to ring anyway. "This is the philosopher's stone, Lupin, this is Mithridates' Shield, this is the cure for cancer and the common cold, this is the Sangreal of medical brewery and liquid cursebreaking. It's the kind of problem any real brewer would be thrilled to spend his life working on, but if the best thing I can do for it is to, at least for a time, walk away, I will walk away."

"…That doesn't make any sense at all," Lily complained. She'd picked Harry up while Snape was talking, and was cuddling him while he drooled.

Snape sighed, all his fierce conviction punctured, and looked at her with a you break me, why do I put up with this, oh right, I remember, but I'm sure I'd be less tired if I didn't expression. "There's news."

"But everything I heard says you're driving most of the progress, now that Belby's got too high-profile to be tied to just doing actual research in only one project," Remus parried that 'best thing' nonsense.

Snape pursed his lips, eying him. "If you're trying flattery, don't bother, there's no point in it, it's settled. As a matter of fact, what you say you've heard happens to be true. Patil's a reasonably competent lab hand, but it's been some time since he decided he wasn't coming up with good ideas and was of more use keeping the minutia of the lab running smoothly and in good order than in forcing creativity when it wasn't flowing. Which is, as a matter of fact, of great use, which is why Belby kept him on. However, that need not concern you overmuch."

"Because you think it's going to be shut down whatever you do," Remus said heavily.

Snape paused, and admitted, as heavily, "I'm afraid I do. But that's not what I mean, in fact."

Remus looked at him skeptically, but Lily made an inquisitive noise.

Predictably, it was to her that Snape addressed himself. "If I'm wrong about the grant, as I hope I am, I won't be leaving the lab without a font of new ideas. Lovegood isn't as meticulous about exhausting avenues of research once embarked on as I could wish, but she's not afraid to come at a problem from angles no one has ever dreamed of before." He paused, and added dryly, "Even while on hallucinogens."

Remus reflected that the difference between Sirius and Snape was that Sirius, instead of making that last aside, would have nudged him and grinned, Get it? Em-BARKED on, because he would have done it on purpose to be chummy. Whereas with Snape there was absolutely no way of telling whether it had been a buried dig or just the word he'd thought was appropriate and would correctly convey his meaning.

Either way he had a headache, but at least with Snape it was justified.

"But who's forcing you out?" Lily asked. Her frown was mostly worried, but it had the beginnings of indignation in it as she bounced Harry, who mostly looked pleasantly dazed.

"Someone who can. Don't worry about it," Snape said shortly.

"But Sev—"

"I didn't tell you so you could make waves," he said, even more shortly. "Leave it."

Remus thought, incredulously, Make waves? Lily wasn't exactly some shrinking violet. She was perfectly happy about going up to anyone to earnestly express a dissenting view. That wasn't a prospect that scared her. It had never particularly seemed to scare Snape, either, as far as Remus could tell, so Remus doubted he was projecting.

No, Lily only got stressed about the prospect of serious arguments with three people. She clearly wasn't on speaking terms with her sister, since her card to Petunia with a picture of her, James and Harry had shown up again in the post with 'Return to Sender' on it in Dursley's handwriting. And Snape obviously wasn't forcing himself out of his own job.

The third person Lily didn't enjoy having a real fight with (bickering was obviously another matter entirely) was from an influential family and hated Snape a lot. He was also having a passive-aggressive sort of fight with Lily over Snape already, which he was handling badly because he only knew how to do aggressive-aggressive and sneaky-aggressive.

But Remus couldn't believe James would do that to him. James had been right there when they'd thought Sirius had used Remus to get at Snape. James knew how wretched that had been, even after they hadn't had to be afraid that all their lives had been ruined by Sirius's drunken, flap-mouthed idiocy anymore. And James wouldn't muck about with Remus's cure.

But James never would admit Snape was very bright, either, any more than Sirius would. He might not think it was much of a risk or a sacrifice, if he got really worked up.

No. He wouldn't do that to Remus. He wouldn't.

Snape and Lily were looking at him.

He stretched a smile of bland skepticism over the sick roiling in his chest and stomach and asked, "Is this 'turn the other cheek,' Severus, or 'attachment is the root of suffering'?"

Snape gave him another one of those I dislike you so very much looks, and snapped, "Best to be like water, which benefits the ten thousand things and does not contend. Nothing in the world is as soft and weak as water, but when attacking the hard and strong, nothing can conquer so easily."

Remus and Lily both stared at him, and looked at each other, and burst out laughing.

"Did he really," Lily giggled, "did he really just say 'I go with the flow?'"

"Sort of almost shouted it," Remus snorgled, because he was trying not to but Snape's yes, fine, all right, I HATE YOU BOTH grr snarl grump face was making it very, very hard.

"Your child's just soiled his nappy," Snape informed Lily crabbily, arms winched in across his chest like a cross, moss-colored spider god.

"If you're going to resort to drastic measures to change the subject," Lily scolded him, still giggling, "you should try not to be completely ridiculous. You couldn't possibly—"

She was cut off as Harry screwed up his face and started to wail like Moaning Myrtle in an echo chamber.

"I could absolutely," Snape said drily, talking over the screaming. "They make a face. Just because your parents didn't take you to work."

Lily tilted her head sweetly, trying to bounce Harry and get her wand out at the same time. It didn't go well. Snape was giving her a how many hands do you think you have and would you want to be jostled with full pants sort of look, but if he had any idea what she wanted to do with her wand, he didn't move to help. "Well," she said with obviously false consideration, "you know, Sev, Jamie's more used to learning things from Remus than from me, and if you taught Remus, it'd almost be like James owed you one, wouldn't it?"

"Specious and sophomoric," Snape said, still dry. "If you haven't got it down yourself yet, you've only to say."

"Will somebody please do something?" Remus begged, fingers in his ears.

"We are doing something," Snape said composedly. "We're teaching him that when he looks for help and attention, adults will give it to him but without immediately dropping everything in his favor every time, and that his dissatisfaction will be attended to but is no cause for panic. Now you do something and lay out the necessaries."

"Is that what we're doing?" Lily asked, raising an eyebrow.

"It's already no secret what Potter's like around him," Snape said in tones of dire foreboding. "I know the midwives, you know, courtesy of Narcissa being a hypochondriac by proxy—please avoid that if at all possible, incidentally—and by all accounts the man was diving at his every digit like it was a snitch. They thought there'd be cheek-pinching. It's not natural for a boy's da to coo at him like a maiden aunt. You're going to have work yourself to the bone to see he's not spoiled rotten, and he'll hate you for it for whole years at a time."

"Thank you Sookie Sunshine," Lily returned, rubbing Harry's back soothingly, with a droll air of never having expected anything else.

"Someone's already practiced in controlling his language around der kinder, I see," remarked Remus, pulling things more or less at random out of the giant bag Lily had balanced over the wheels of the pram. He frowned at the large stuffed animal and put it back, not seeing any particular need for purple foxes during the changing process.

"Have you started a swearing box for Black yet?" Snape asked, amused, laying out about a third of the things Remus had pulled out into a setup that looked vaguely familiar. Actually, when Sirius used foul language, Remus always got the feeling he was doing it, if not exactly self-consciously, than at least on purpose. It being cruel to tell a rebel he was being hopeless and rather cute, though, Remus didn't.

"I never understood the point of that," he said as Lily put the squirming, shrieking baby down on a blanket he thought he was supposed to call a blankie but didn't want to. "If the money goes to something everyone wants, then what's the incentive not to swear?"

"Yes, Lupin," Snape said, with over-exaggerated kindness, "but what you are attempting to apply to human behavior there is called logic."

"Whatever was I thinking," Remus returned, stifling a smile.

"I can't imagine, but stop thinking it and pay attention."

When the disgusting lesson was complete and Harry was dry and content again (and Snape had rather disappointed Remus by deftly turning Harry's hips sideways by the ankles in time to just avoid a shot of wee. He'd appeared to take it personally anyway), Snape peremptorily set Remus to exercising Harry's limbs for him and drew Lily away a little distance.

As a dutiful Marauder, Remus took out his wand in the lee of his body and bettered his hearing. Snape must not have wanted to alarm Lily by showing he felt a need for tight security, since he didn't put up his buzzing spell, so that was enough to let Remus listen.

"…Be going away for a while," Snape was saying in a low voice.

"How long is a while?" Lily asked worriedly.

"Just the rest of the summer," he assured her. "But I'm glad you came today; I would have had to contact you anyway, before we left."

"Well, I should hope so!" she said indignantly.

Snape paused. His shoulders dropped a little, relaxing, his face melting warmer and friendlier. "…Well, all right," he agreed, very nearly smiling, "but I needed to tell you a few things, as well."

Lily leaned against a tree, stretching a little, and commented, "You never really appreciate not having a backache until you've had one for months at a time."

Remus thought he wouldn't mind trading his problem to have an ache for a while and be done, personally.

Snape considered. "I suppose it's like breaking something before school," he posited, quite matter of fact. "Or over the summer."

Her face went tight. "I suppose it might be. Go on, then."

He slipped her a quicksilver flash of a smile, there and gone again, barely there in the first place. "First off, are you taking the boy around to show him off to your old neighbors up around here?"

"Oh," she blinked. "I suppose I should, shouldn't I…"

He rolled his eyes. "Actually, you shouldn't, what with his being the child of two wizards who live in the wizarding world, and you shouldn't show him around to your parents' neighbors by their year-'round house, either. Statute, Lils. If it's not too late to stop your mother bragging, you ought to, but I expect it is."

"Well, I can try," she said, frowning, obviously hating the idea and looking a bit hurt about it.

"Fewer know, safer they are?" he said pointedly, and Lily went a bit white for some reason. Bit of an overreaction, in Remus's opinion. Snape had a point, certainly, but even if Lily was so un-circumspect as to bring the Obliviators down on her neighbors, she'd just get a fine she and James could more than afford and they'd just lose an hour or so, which was confusing but not in the least dangerous. "But what I wanted to say was, if you end up talking to anyone around this way, when you come back you've heard that Da's got ugly again. Do you understand?"

"He has?" she demanded, her spine snapping straight. "Does your mum need—"

"You've heard he has," Snape stressed, sighing. "And you can say truthfully that you have because you are, right now, hearing it, from me."

"…Oh," she said dubiously.

"Yes, I know, it's rotten," he said in a depressed agreeing tone. "To be called away without notice and not come back at once in a fury with apologies, I needed an excuse. A really drastic one."

Lily looked guilty, and Snape, with a slightly gallant air that made Remus purse skeptical lips, affected not to notice. He was going to have to ask her if James knew about this, too. Except he couldn't, because he wasn't supposed to have heard it, he was just eavesdropping, which Lily would take a Very Dim View of, so he couldn't get in the middle of this one.

If there was a nagging voice in the back of his head that said that Snape hadn't stopped him from eavesdropping, which was practically an invitation, and wasn't that interesting, and didn't it mean he was supposed to have heard it and could ask her if James knew and shouldn't so completely avoid the outskirts of this fight they were having, since he was being involved in it—well, if there was, then Remus, with a vaguely unhappy feeling he was well-practiced in ignoring and never named, sat on it.

"I know they'd like to see you, though," Snape went on. Going sardonic again, "Not me, at the moment, but certainly you."

"Well, you can hardly blame them, and, er, I hope—"

"I don't. Second…" Snape's shoulders tightened again. "Lils, if people you'd rather not talk to start trying to make nice with you while I'm not around to discuss it with, will you please stall for time and not just punch them in the face?"

She blinked. "What do you mean?"

"I have no idea. Not with any specificity. Just… the foghorn-like nature of Slughorn's opinion of your character and talents may have a great deal to do with his desire to show how prejudiced he isn't—"

Lily scowled, and if she wasn't remembering what he'd called her under the beech tree, if he wasn't, Remus was.

Snape held up a quelling hand. "But it's also very clear to everyone that the opinion is perfectly sincere. Knowing that and given recent events, certain parties you have no interest in associating with might well start preferring to court rather than ignore you. So will you please not do anything irreversible while I'm away?"

Eying him dubiously, she said, "…I'll try…"

Snape took in a growling, groaning breath that clearly showed that he knew this was the best he was getting and felt it wasn't good enough. "You have a mentor, please use him?"

"Well, that I can do," she agreed.

"Oh, good," he crooned in a mockery of satisfaction, sighing bitterly.

"I am, you know," she said in a reminding-him tone. "Being all's-well and all."

On which subject, Remus badly hoped that she was going to tell James about this little outing of theirs, at least, herself, whether he knew what she was already looking guilty about or not.. He really, really didn't want to be caught up in the outskirts of this fight again, let alone in the middle.

Snape sighed again. "Well, I suppose it's something."

"Poor Sev," she smiled, not actually laughing at him sympathetically at him out loud. "It's so inconvenient how other people use our own judgment, isn't it?"

He made a face at her. "It'd be less inconvenient if you'd take the blindfold off and put down the scales, Madam Kettlepot. Nonetheless, vexing though you certainly are, there was one last thing."

"Just one?"

"Just one," he agreed, and looked uncomfortable. "Er."

Her eyebrows flew up.

"I might… ask for your company for a few hours at some point in the next few weeks. It won't be dangerous, but I won't be able to tell you where, and I can't tell you when in advance. But if you would come it would be… appreciated," he said stiffly.

Suspiciously, she asked, "What's this about?"

"I can't tell you that, either. Just… it's important."

"But not dangerous."

"No. Not dangerous. If I think it will be, I won't ask you to come."

Puzzled, she shrugged. "All right then. How will I know?"

"I'll owl or floo you a portkey. If it's by owl it'll be with a letter, with the time and activation phrase in lemon juice. If the activation phrase isn't in the Dancing Men, don't use it."

"Sev, aren't you being a bit eleven?" she asked affectionately.

With a bit of a wicked glint, he admitted, "It's possible, but after seeing what Evan perpetrated on that slide, I badly want to find out what he'll do with a graphic cipher and a pot of invisible ink. Don't you?"

"Good effort," Remus praised Harry, wiping a trail of drool off his chin with a clean nappy, "and a kind thought, but that isn't lemon juice and I think it best for everyone involved if you let the cranky man use his own, all things considered."

Next (over on the other post): Two rabbity little bunnies walk into a bar... and one, it turns out, has sweet, adorable, fluffy, nasty, big, pointy teeth!

And, even worse, the other one knows about CCTV.

Notes & Credits:

My copy of the Tao Te Ching was translated by Addis and Lombardo. It's not a standard translation, but it's my favorite. Severus has squashed together two bits of it.

Azathoth belongs to H.P. Lovecraft, who can have it.

The Last Unicorn is by Peter S. Beagle, and the movie was done by the same animation studio who did the original Hobbit movie. Which was very good, they both were, if done in a quite different way and for a different audience than the recent LoTR films. The same does not hold true for the animation studio's attempt at LoTR, which was crap.

The Sangreal is another word for the Holy Grail—san implying holy, although sang says we're talking about blood, just ask Dan Brown.

Mithridates' Shield is mine, but it was inspired by A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad. If it sounds this-story-familiar, that's because Severus and his labmates not only mentioned it but quoted the relevant part of the poem in chapter 36.

The Adventure of the Dancing Men is, of course, a Sherlock Holmes story. Severus's reasoning for using this cipher (despite Lily's opinion that he's reverting to scraped knees and scrumped apples) is that, as a simple substitution cipher, it was made to be simple enough that Doyle's readers had a shot at cracking it once they knew what was going on, and enough letters were provided by the story to make it crackable by the most dunderheaded Gryffindor who knew what to look for (barring dyslexia etc). While, on the other hand, to those who don't know what it is, it looks as much like a doodle as a code, which makes it safer than anything that looks like language. Or, at least, anything without enough magical protection to raise flags, or that hadn't been put through ENIGMA.