InsaneJournal

Fic: Red Serpent (6/12)
Title: Red Serpent (6/12)
Author/Artist: skitty_kat
Rating: R
Warnings: death, destruction, sex, violence, torture and a gratuitous explosion or two. Yikes.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and associated characters belong to JK Rowling. James Bond was created by Ian Fleming.
Word Count: 2327 (31881 overall)
Summary: Remus Lupin is a spy, one of British Intelligence's finest, and this may be his most deadly mission yet. Armed with only his native wit and courage and assisted by the enigmatic and magnetic Severus Snape he must penetrate deep into Communist Russia to bring down the powerful Lord Voldemort.
A/n: This fic contains illustrations, set in the appropriate places within the text. Love to drachenmina for the fabulous beta.
Chapter One: M's Man - Chapter Two: A Bar With A Reputation - Chapter Three: Dinner For Two - Chapter Four: Small Spaces and Close Encounters - Chapter Five: The Howl Of The Wolf



They met in a compartment near the end of the train. The carriage itself was more or less empty; just an elderly couple sleepily ensconced at one end, undisturbed by the rattling of the train across the tracks. The thin figure of Severus Snape slipped through the door at the end of the carriage. He paused in the dimmest spot, face indistinct in the inadequate lighting. When nothing untoward happened he moved down the corridor checking each compartment. Only two were occupied; one by the aforementioned elderly couple and the other by Remus Lupin.

Lupin stood by the window, smoking. He watched as Snape entered.

'Close the blinds,' he said.



Snape did so, easing them down with only a quiet rattle. He slid across the bolt on the door too. It would never hold against a determined intruder but would stop anyone who was merely curious. Their compartment had privacy, at least. Lupin stubbed out his cigarette and sat down.

'Enjoying the journey?' he asked.

'Oh, absolutely,' drawled Snape, sitting next to him. 'There is nothing I enjoy more than the company of my friends for hours straight with no escape.'

'How did you manage to excuse yourself?'

'I picked a fight with Macnair,' explained Snape, 'and took myself off in a huff insisting that I have quiet to read my book.' He held it up with a faint sneer before laying it carefully on the seat. 'Now, what was so important that we risk this meeting?'

'I want something.'

Snape arched an eyebrow. 'And what,' he inquired a little archly, 'would that be?'

Lupin said nothing and grabbed Snape's head between his hands. He nearly slammed their heads together lunging for a kiss, ending up with Snape's nose knocking into his cheek. He pushed him backwards until they half lay along the musty seat. Teeth clashed with a furious rattle and scrape.

Snape shoved Lupin away viciously, anger ugly on his features.

'You'd jeopardise our position here for that?' he hissed. 'You fool!'

Lupin pressed him down again. 'You started this,' he warned. 'You don't get to complain about it now.'

'I can complain about the circumstances!' Snape protested, pushing back. 'Has it not occurred to you that there are rather a lot of people on this train who must not see us together?'

'You were the one who told me that your friends would not be surprised to find you with a strange man.'

'It's still too risky!' Snape twisted under Lupin but to no effect. He slumped a little, still holding Lupin away. 'Why now, of all times?'

'Because I can't stop thinking about you,' Lupin confessed.

Snape's face went immediately blank. 'Is that so,' he said neutrally.

'Yes!' Lupin rubbed his thumbs along Snape's collarbones, fighting against his thoughts. 'I don't know what you've done to me. I can't stop thinking about you, wanting you. I can't even watch you walk past without wanting to slam you into the nearest wall and make you scream! What the hell have you done to me?'

'You can stop thinking like that straight away,' Snape snapped, catching Lupin's hands with his own. 'I have done nothing to you.'

'Oh no?'

'Pah! Maybe I seduced you but you were hardly unwilling. And you haven't stopped it since, have you?' Snape made a noise of disdain. 'Unless, of course, you're only doing it to keep me happy in which case you're a much better or much worse man than your country will ever give you credit for.'

Lupin's insides turned cold like he had just swallowed ice.

'Oh yes, that's me,' he muttered, 'pimping for England.'

He shifted atop Snape, remembering what had started this argument in the first place. His arousal, which had started even before the dark figure had stepped through the door, had not abated in the slightest. By contrast, it had grown with the heat and proximity. He ground his hips across Snape's and bent back down.

'Does it really matter?' he asked, neither expecting nor allowing an answer.

He crushed his lips to Snape's, pressing until he felt him finally surrender. The kiss changed to softness and warmth and Lupin's hands were released to go where they wanted to. He unfastened Snape's jacket and the shirt too. The skin underneath was not as smooth as Lupin was used to, not belonging to a primped and preening woman, but twitched satisfactorily when Lupin teased fingers across it. He drew back to look at Snape but the man avoided his gaze, tipping his head back with a sigh. Lupin felt a flash of anger and frustration, wanting Snape to react to what he was doing. He pressed down again, sliding a hand to Snape's trousers.

Lupin had, despite the past day or so, little experience of touching another male body. Women he knew. He could tease and pinch and stroke all the right places to elicit the desired response. But with a man it was somehow more personal. The only guide Lupin had to the male body was his own. Using the techniques and touches on Snape that he knew he liked on himself was weirdly intimate and exposing in a way that Lupin didn't usually feel during intercourse.

Snape sighed quietly and began to reciprocate, one hand pulling at Lupin's tie and the other snaking round the back of Lupin's head to draw him closer. His mouth opened slick under Lupin's and his back arched to bring their bodies into full contact. He writhed, pulling Lupin into a winding embrace.

'Remus,' he whispered against a flushed cheek, 'Reee-musss...'

Lupin groaned, grabbing Snape closer and rocking against him.

'You know anyone could come through that door, don't you?' Snape continued, voice low and husky enough to be almost inaudible. 'If they wanted to, they could shove that door down and see us here together. And what would they think then, hmm? Would they be disgusted? Horrified? Turned on?' He seized Lupin's mouth in an increasingly desperate kiss. 'Maybe,' he went on breathlessly, 'they'd stand there and watch. Would you like that? Someone standing there, eyes never leaving us, watching us fuck on this seat...'

Lupin's movements became uncontrolled, hips bucking and arms clutching. His elbow struck the seat back and suddenly they were falling to the floor still wrapped in each other. Snape landed on top, all sharp edges and bones, but Lupin rolled him quickly underneath. They struggled together, grinding and rocking with the chaka-chaka-chaka of the train.

'Stop it,' said Snape. He shoved at Lupin when that failed to elicit a response. 'Stop it!'

'What's the problem now?' growled Lupin impatiently.

'This floor is filthy. I refuse to roll around on it.'

'You'd rather we fall off the seat again?'

'Tchah!' Snape made an irritated noise, sliding out from underneath Lupin. 'There is more than one way to skin a cat, you know.'

He pulled Lupin up to sit on the seat then knelt in front of him, pulling Lupin's trousers open. Lupin groaned as Snape, hands resting on the Englishman's thighs, went straight to the root of Lupin's desire with his mouth. This Lupin was more familiar with. Even the long hair he wrapped around his fingers could have been that of any of his former, female lovers (if they had neglected washing it for a few days, anyway). But somehow Lupin couldn't, and didn't want to forget that it was Snape kneeling before him and Snape's mouth sucking and licking with gay abandon. The train thundered on through the night, a one-eyed beast roaring in the darkness, but the most important sound to Lupin was the wet sound of Snape's mouth on him and his own gasps. In what seemed an embarrassingly short time Lupin was coming in a rush, hips bucking upwards under Snape's hands as euphoria pulled him under.

Boneless and feeling like his very life had been sucked out, Lupin slumped. His hands fell back to the worn, bristly seat cover and his head flopped back. Snape's smile, when he rose to sit back on the seat, was as smug as Lupin had ever seen it.


Lupin saw very little of Leningrad when they got there. The night was dark and he concerned himself rather with following Riddle and his Death Eaters from the train. Their boat waited in the harbour, unremarkable and certainly unremarked upon. The Soviet police knew when it was best to look the other way, it seemed. Lupin slipped aboard fairly easily and made his way, as Snape had told him to, down to the lower level of the boat away from where everyone else would be. Shortly after, the boat's engines eased into life and Lupin felt the surge as she started forward. It was not long before they were out into the ocean. Lupin settled in to wait out the journey. It was to be no pleasure cruise, he was sure.

The hold of the boat was dark, dank and distinctly rank in smell. Lupin curled into his corner behind two crates and tried to get comfortable. It certainly wasn't easy. There were no soft surfaces here and two blankets were no replacement for a good armchair or, heaven forbid, a soft bed. The hold was clammy with the chill that comes from being underwater. On the other side of the metal hull dark water held silver pale fish, sleek dark predators and slimily clinging weeds. Waves swelled and rolled, raising and dropping the boat with little care.

Lupin wondered how much of a chance he would have out there if discovered and heaved overboard. Maybe a numb, sinking death would be preferable to whatever Riddle could do - if the state of Black's remains was anything to go by. The movement of the boat was quite calming, though, and Lupin found himself considering the facts of Black's death with a little more detachment than before. It was a fact that Black had been murdered, horribly, by Riddle or, at least, on Riddle's orders. Bellatrix Lestrange, on the evidence of Snape, seemed the likely culprit. An unnatural woman, Lupin decided. Her traits would have been abhorrent enough in a man but in a woman it was against nature. That Black had suffered his last hours under her care was a sickening thought. Lupin forcibly turned his mind from the idea and focused instead on the problem of Snape.

The man was surrounded by a mess of contradictions in Lupin's mind. While part of him wanted to trust the sour Russian - and a rather vocal part of his libido was most enthusiastic - another part counselled caution. That Snape had something to do with Black's death, either by action or inaction, seemed almost certain. At the same time, though, Lupin could find credence in Snape's sneering derision of Black's sense. Sirius had been a good friend but he could be headstrong. If he didn't like someone he made damned sure they knew it. He would never have got along with a person like Snape, especially after that whole mess with Black's younger brother running off to join the British Communists and ending up dead for his pains. Black's death was most likely the fault of both men and their failure to reach an understanding.

But still, that conclusion was only 'most likely.' It was not a certainty. Lupin could not allow himself to fully trust Snape, no matter what his libido said. He let out a huff of exasperated air. It was meant to be women who fogged things up with sex! Now, though, Lupin was being distracted by moments of intimacy: him and Snape against the hard bathroom tile; spooned among cheap sheets; and urgently hushed in the semi-publicity of the railway carriage. A stirring in his groin made him chastise himself thoroughly. Now was not the time!

Pulling his knees up a little more he tried to sleep. It was not easy; his mind kept running through thoughts of potential dangers and problems, of trust and betrayal, and inevitably, of sex. Eventually he dropped into a light doze in which he tossed and turned quite uneasily.

He jerked awake to find a sickly-smelling cloth being pressed over his nose and mouth, sending him properly to sleep almost before he woke up. Dark shapes swam before his eyes and for a confused moment he thought he was already outside and sinking among the uncaring fish. Words floated around him through the roar of water in his ears.

'... to get him up to ...'

'...ing heavy, Fen...'

'... right where he said he would be ...'

The waters of sleep closed over his head and the currents pulled him deep. The silver-bright thoughts darted away like a shoal of fish as he reached for them and finally there was only the black of the ocean bottom.



When he woke again it was to the absence of movement. A decided lack of it, in fact, due to what felt like chains binding him to the chair he was apparently now sitting on. He raised his head - which caused movement, all right, as the room began to go round like a merry-go-round - and saw that he was in some sort of dungeon cell. The walls looked old and Lupin supposed this must be Hogwarts castle, Riddle's confident purchase in the north.

Riddle himself, Lupin suddenly realised, was standing opposite.

'I trust you slept well,' Riddle said with all the calm of the most genial of hosts. 'Perhaps I should apologise for the condition of your room here. I'm afraid I have not quite had the time to settle in yet.' A smile crept across his lips. 'I know Severus has been most accommodating so far.'

Something in Lupin's brain stuttered to a stop.

'Did you enjoy him in bed, Mr. Lupin?' Riddle asked suddenly. 'I would hate for you to have been disappointed. After all, he did it on my orders.'



Chapter Seven: Arrival At The Truth