Sanctum Sanctorum

(a place of inviolable privacy; holy of holies)

by Shamenka

The trick potion, he was sure he had tasted at dinner, was kicking in, he had barely made it back to his own rooms before he felt woozy. And just as he was about to give in and call for Poppy to come assist him, he felt his body and spirit part company. Temporarily, he hoped. His next conscious thought was of waking up in a corner of a room he had never seen. A room filled with young Slytherins however. It seemed that Remus Lupin had finally, almost twenty years after James Potter and Sirius Black blazing the trail, made it into the Slytherin common room. Only he was utterly unnoticed, and not being painted green and silver; yet!

His first impression was that it was incredibly neat. Not threadbare and lived in, like Gryffindor, not faded and worn, like Gryffindor. And it was quiet, again, not like Gryffindor.

Then a young girl, Lucy Flemming, he thought, from third year, came in the room with a pile of books and parchment, she dropped them all on a table, tilted her head back and just screamed. The girl let fly with a scream worthy of imminent life threatening difficulties. And just as suddenly as she screamed the room was filled with curious Slytherins. The perimeters of the room were all checked, the fire place tested for floo travel, and a well hidden door opened revealing a half dressed, still dripping wet from a shower, or a bath, Severus Snape, wand drawn and ready.

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to make everyone jump, but I just got to screaming point and felt like letting rip!" Lucy crumpled down beside her pile of books and parchments. "It's been one of those days, not a single teacher said anything intelligible and no matter how much you wave your hand, if you ain't a bloody Gryffindor you ain't getting to speak!" she put her head in her hands and looked about to cry, then, after a deep, shuddering breath, she looked up at her house prefects and head of house. "The worst one of them all is that bloody Lupin!"

Remus tried to protest, but couldn't utter a sound, nor move an inch.

Lucy was starting up again.

"I swear he never even looked at our side of the bloody classroom once! It's like he deals with us by not seeing us. So, if you don't understand something you're stuffed. I can't even figure how he corrects our homework if we don't exist. I'm beginning to suspect he's getting a bloody house elf to do it for him."

Remus noticed Severus tuck his wand into the waist band of the trousers he had obviously just climbed into on his way to deal with the potential crisis at Lucy's scream. Remus also noticed the thin line of hair also heading into the waistband of those trousers.

"Well, let's see this awfully confusing homework then. Maybe I cant explain it to you, hmm?" Severus took her homework parchment off the pile on the table, read it, summonsed a calendar, muttered 'not a full moon', and asked for one of the other third years to bring their homework to him. Remus was a tad annoyed at the 'not a full moon' crack and tried to recall exactly what she could have copied down that was so bloody incomprehensible. The other third year, Rupert Cuthbertson, came back with his scroll, equally as unattempted as Lucy's.

"There are bits missing here, and here again in Rupert's homework, although his missing bits differ slightly from yours." Severus looked at Rupert. "Why are there big gaps?"

Remus was prepared for a lie, a big lie in which he was wielding a whip or a sword against them, not the actual truth.

"We've got to sit over on the window side of the room, behind the pillars, and we're not allowed to move for any reason. And since he only notices us when we move, not that he hears us or anything, we can't seem to get it over to him that we can't see the board without big gaps!"

Remus Lupin would have blushed if he had had a body with which to blush! The lad was right, he had steadfastly ignored the Slytherins since he returned to teach that year.

"Why didn't you say something before this?" Severus looked shocked, almost let down by his houses distrust.

"Well, it's only been a month, we kind of thought he'd like, grow up, I suppose, but no joy so far!"

"Does this go on with every year?"

Everyone present nodded, even the ghostly Remus would have nodded, had he been able.

Severus tilted his head back, closed his eyes, dark lashes fluttering down over pale cheeks, and sighed.

Lashes?

Cheeks?

Remus was a bit worried where his wandering mind was actually wandering to!

Severus had gathered every Slytherin into the common room and had them sort their DADA homework into year by year heaps. The potion master read each years disjointed copying and wrote out a complete assignment for each group.

"How long will he keep this up sir?" a sixth year, Malfoy, Remus finally recognised the speaker, asked Severus.

"Well, even if I went to the headmaster he's say it was just a jolly prank and not to hassle the dear boy!" Remus could actually hear Dumbledore say that in the back of his mind, and that worried him greatly. "And considering he's a Gryffindor, and a Dumbledore favourite, he'd probably keep this up till you all fail and he can have you thrown out of his class." Severus spoke so matter of factly that it frightened Remus, not a single child in Slytherin tried to defend their DADA teacher. They just all accepted that he was out to make them fail.

He wasn't!

He was a liar!

He did want to see them all fail. They were Slytherins and deserved to fail because they were Slytherins...

He didn't like that idea, not in the slightest.

Severus was speaking again.

"See here, this is a floor plan of that room, whomever sits here, here and here will have between them a full view of the blackboard, so they will be your designated scribes and everyone will copy from them. It'll be up to your year leaders to make sure your best scribes get those seats. Ok?" He looked at all the children sitting and kneeling around him, they all smiled and nodded, a huddle of boys and girls Remus realised were the leaders in each year sat together, whispering names. Assigning the precious seats.

Well, he could stop that, assign those seats to their dimmest and slowest and....

Remus could not believe the way his mind was working. He was behaving like a five year old, not someone the other side of thirty-five!

"It's not just him, they all hate us!" That was a little first year, Remus didn't recognise her at all. He could name all the Gryffindors, most of the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs but only a handful of the Slytherins from the entire house.

"Of course they do, they always have, and no doubt will always find a reason to side with Godric Gryffindor and hate all Slytherins!" Severus was suppose to reassure them that they were wrong! Remus was sure he was supposed to support his fellow teachers in this situation, but there he was, sitting there almost naked, agreeing with them! Why?

Remus wondered if he meant why agreeing with them, or why half naked? Then did his best to refocus his thoughts on what he was witnessing.

Severus stood up, stretched, and a small scrap of tufty black hair encroached on the top of that waistband, unconsciously, Severus hefted his waistband up, covering it again.

"Come on, at least you don't have it as bad as myself, and your parents had it here!" Severus laughed, a sad sound heavy with irony.

"But that was centuries ago!" A second year boy piped up in the back of the group.

"Ohh!" Severus laughed and smiled, quite demoniacally at the boy. "Pansy, my dear, teach the boy to dance!" Severus drew his wand, made a wave in the air, muttered something in latin and music played.

"No! No! Not the dancing!" the boy would have sounded far more scared if he weren't giggling quite so hysterically.

"Clear the dance floor!" Again with a wild whoosh from his wand and more latin, Severus cleared a sizeable dance floor.

Pansy dragged to poor lad onto the impromptu dance-floor and began to waltz with him. To Remus' shock the boy could actually waltz, and very well too. But he could hardly see where he was going for laughing.

Nor could Pansy!

"Anyone else want to utter some cheek?" Severus challenged to room filled with distracted, laughing children.

"I heard you were really a Gryffindor when you were at school!" Lucy said, giggling from the first word to the last.

"Then you too shall face trial by waltz!" Severus pulled Lucy to her feet and they too danced around the small dance floor. She too could dance wonderfully, as could Severus.

Remus realised that the older children were teaching the younger ones to dance. Many of them already had the basics down pat, but all of them needed practice.

All of them were giggling and laughing.

It was a wonderful sight.

It was a marvellous sound.

It was something he would have sworn could never happen! Everyone knew how staid and dour Slytherins were, didn't they?

Severus was wonderful when dancing. His muscles rippled and moved in time to the music, he smiled so charmingly at his young companion that Remus almost wanted to be a little girl called Lucy!

The relaxing and giggling and dancing went on for a short while, followed by some heavy revising on the subjects in which they were unfairly treated. DADA, Remus was now aware of his utter failure by these children so that was no longer a surprise, but that Transfigurations and Charms were also subjects in which they were unfairly treated did come as a shock. It was bad enough that he had let them all down, but that Minerva and Filius did so too was too much!

As the children worked, still smiling and laughing over what had to be Slytherin in-jokes, Remus wondered if he had learned his teaching style as a youngster seeing, but not noticing, those other teachers ignoring the Slytherins, as much as possible, and getting away with it all the time?

Remus' time sense told him it was after curfew, there wasn't a clock in his line of sight, so he was largely guessing. His theory was confirmed when one of the first years yawned and Severus, who had never gone and gotten dressed any more than he was on arrival at Lucy's scream, noticed how sleepy the younger ones were.

One more swish and flick and there were comfy cushions on the floor, enough for everyone. Every book, parchment and quill was laid aside as they all clustered on their cushions.

"Okay, we finished our other book last week, so a new one commences tonight." He flicked over first his left hand, "this one," then his right hand, "or this one?" But he didn't let them see either book title, that seemed to be part of the game he played with them.

Every voice called out, slightly more called left hand than right hand and the book on his right hand vanished. Cups of hot chocolate appeared for everyone, and even a few house elves turned up to listen too. Not that the Slytherin children seemed to notice or care. This seemed to be a treat elves and Slytherin shared with none but themselves.

Severus cleared his throat, showed them all, including those elves sitting up the back, the title of the book.

"You have chosen 'Dead Man's Ransom' by Ellis Peters." He paused to turn to the first page. "On that day, which was the seventh of February of the year of Our Lord 1141, they had offered special prayers at every office, not for the victory of one party or the defeat of another in the battlefields of the north, but for better counsel, for reconciliation, for the sparing of blood-letting and the respect of life between men of the same country - all desirable consummations, as Brother Cadfael sighed to himself even as he prayed, but very unlikely to be answered in this torn and fragmented land with any but a very dusty answer....."

Severus read them two whole chapters, closed the book, dismissed everyone to bed, and asked the elves to tidy up the mess they had made that evening. As the elves worked the Slytherin children headed off to bed, most of them bidding their head of house, and remarkably, in Remus' view, the elves a good night too.

Each one was greeted with a good night young master, or a good night young mistress from the elf in question.

Remus saw the pride is Severus' beautiful eyes as he watched his young charges head up to bed. A jerk, and a warm rush of energy, warned him that he was moving again, and as Severus closed the doors to Slytherin house behind the departing elves, laden with the cups and cushions, Remus found himself in his own body once more, with terrible cramp in his arms and legs.

The following morning, a stream of surly, unfriendly, bite first before they kick you anyway, distrustful kids streamed into the great hall. They could not be the children he had seen the night before! These were small adults, as young as eleven, being forced by their own teachers and fellow pupils, to fight in a war their elders were possibly battling, or possibly not! As Remus looked at his fellow teachers on the head table, not counting him they were all, except for Severus, colouring these children as guilty without trial, much as Sirius Black had been, and only Severus showed any pride in their battle ready stance.

"Severus?" Remus turned to his colleague seated next to him, but ignored thus far, since the commencement of term. "I am having seating difficulties in my classroom, it's not ergonomically designed in the slightest, pillars all down one side, so, I wonder if you could assist me, you being more experienced with these matters, in designing a seating plan in which every child can see clearly?"

"Now? Or after classes?" Severus looked shocked at being asked that particular question, given his previous nights activities with his charges, Remus wasn't surprised.

"Oh, after class, when we would have more time to deal with it properly." And that gave him an entire day to think up a way to gain an invite to hear the next two chapters, read out in Severus' sexy, sultry voice.

"Fine!" Severus sighed, sounding resigned to some Herculean task.

"Good!" Remus smiled, plotted and thanked whomever, or whatever, had taken him out of himself the night before, even with no physical body, his eyes and heart had been thoroughly opened.