He stumbles into the foyer of 12 Grimmauld Place and leans on the door to shut it, unsure that he has the strength for anything else. His entire body is alive with pain and he's almost certain it's the only thing he's truly felt in months.

He welcomes it.

He's not sure how long he stands there, though he's not even standing, his own feet too weak to hold him by themselves. He glances down and notices that the bottom of his robe has been burned away and starts to laugh, the sound growing louder and higher in pitch and intensity until the hard slap practically turns his head around.

"Thank you," he pants. "To be a cliché, I needed that."

"You need far more, Lupin," Snape assures him as he continues toward the kitchen. The seething rage of Mrs. Black's voice penetrates the haze that surrounds Remus and he manages a smile, following Snape.

Filth! Blood traitor!

"What on earth did you do to her?"

"I walked by."

Remus nods and moves to the opposite side of the room as they reach the kitchen, heading straight for the stove. He picks up the kettle and tilts it, listening to the water slosh before setting it back on the burner. "Tea?"

"No."

Remus pulls two cups from the cabinet and sets tealeaves in the bottom. "Was her cover off?"

"I didn't stop to look, Lupin." Snape's voice is still waspish, though not sharp, more dull and tired. "I do my best to avoid the portraits in this damn house. Between them and that vile house elf, it's a wonder I haven't been killed outright."

Remus stares down at the teacups, the leaves full and perfectly still. "Why do you risk so much, Severus?" He senses the movement behind him, can almost see Snape's chin rise, settling above the firm collar of his robes. "It's killing all of us slowly, but you…"

"I don't need your pity, Lupin."

"I didn't realize I was offering it." Remus pulls the kettle from the stove and pours steaming water into both cups. He stares into them as it swirls and eddies turbulently then sets the kettle down and picks them up. He slides one in front of Snape then reaches for the sugar bowl. "Curiosity, perhaps. But I would never go so far as to offer you pity."

"How does it feel, Lupin? To know now that all your friends are dead?"

Remus stirs brown sugar into his tea, his hand never faltering in its slow, methodical circle. "None of them, however, killed by my own hand. Or razored teeth." He sets the spoon on the saucer and lifts his cup, meeting Snape's black eyes. "Killed, perhaps, through my unthinking or my suspicion or my lack of action, but the blood on my hands is all metaphorical."

"That doesn't make it any less due atonement."

Remus nods and takes a sip of his tea. He closes his eyes, savoring the hint of mint that floats in the steam and bathes his face. After a long moment, he sets the cup down and meets Snape's eyes. "My atonement is this."

Snape's face closes down, tightening to unreadable. "Is my conversation so tedious, then, Lupin?"

"Not this, Severus." He smiles lightly, the corners of his mouth barely turning as he realizes he's called Snape by his given name twice. "This house, this…" He gestures under the table to the burned robe. "Every mission is my debt to James and Lily still gone unpaid. To keep Harry from hunting out the veil and slipping past it to find Sirius is my debt, my atonement." He sighs. "My life is my atonement."

"Such delusions of grandeur, Lupin." Snape shakes his head slightly, eyebrows rising mockingly. "But then, you were always best at absorbing blame that was never yours."

"The blame for what I am, I assure you, rests solely on my shoulders."

"Or on the shoulders of that what made you what you are." Snape finally picks up his tea and toasts Lupin with it. "Atonement means nothing if you're not truly guilty of what you're seeking to rectify."

Remus smiles and shakes his head, "And I'm suffering from the delusions? Do go on, Severus, how is your crime worse than mine?"

"Do you not wonder," Snape asks silkily, "Why it is I do this for Dumbledore? Or do you truly believe I subject myself to all of this out of the goodness of my heart?"

"Sirius was convinced you didn't have one."

"Black," Snape spits out the word, "knew nothing of me."

Remus's eyebrow shoots up and he nods, acquiescing the point. "We know what Death Eaters do, Severus. Curses and potions made to further the cause of Voldemort's war."

"And, after letting them burn this into my skin," Snape pulls the arm of his robe just high enough to expose the flaring heat that edged the tattoo, "I suddenly felt badly and decided to risk my life?" He laughs bitterly. "The House of Snape, I assure you, is not nearly so noble."

Remus sucks in air, Sirius's familiar and haunting words echoed deliberately in Snape's. "You obviously feel the need to confess, Severus, though why I'm your chosen priest, I'm unsure."

"It has to be you," he assures him, his voice still velvety with intention. "You'll understand. And hate me. It's vital that you hate me."

"I don't hate you, Severus."

"I was recruited, if that is the word, to Voldemort's cause while still in school. Not that most of us needed urging. His need for Wizard supremacy and the call to all purebloods had Slytherin in a nearly manic state our seventh year. Fights broke out throughout the dormitory as the more levelheaded students refused to join outright. If they didn't openly support us, they were against us."

"How very Germanic."

"Muggle history is not so different from our own." Snape watches Remus as he takes a drink of tea, follows the cup back to its saucer. "I was eager to join. Blood-traitors were of interest to me. I had a few very particular victims in mind at the start."

"Is that what we were? Your victims?"

"As I was yours." Snape acknowledges with a tilt of his head. "I was…targeted, for lack of a better word, by certain members of Voldemort's inner circle. I received the Dark Mark long before most of the others in my house had. The summer before our seventh year."

Remus gives one slow nod and spoons more sugar into his now cool tea, watching the granules hang suspended in the liquid for a moment before disappearing.

"I had watched all of you for years. We knew that you would all be at the core of Dumbledore's fight." He pauses, his hand balling into a fist and sliding off the table. "I was told to find the weakest link in your armor. I found Pettigrew."

"You…?"

"Black had begun his campaign to get back into your good graces. Potter was besotted with Evans. Pettigrew was suddenly left at very loose ends. Being told to sod off every time he attempted to tag along with Black, being told to go wank on his own time whenever he tried to hang out with Potter. And you, you were a recluse until you fell under Black's spell again."

"Peter's defection was all our fault then?" Remus's voice is tightly controlled as he raises an eyebrow again, matching Snape's gaze with his own. "We failed to meet his needs so he ran to Voldemort for comfort?"

"He felt he'd been used to serve a purpose that was no longer needed. So we gave him a new purpose. Extorted it as a higher purpose. We showed him what it was and he saw it as what he needed." Snape shrugs. "I was there the night Voldemort held his arm and traced the Dark Mark, burning it beneath his skin where it wouldn't show, wouldn't give him away to you."

Remus lifts his chin, staring at the wall beyond Snape's head. "Did it hurt him?"

"Voldemort would not do anything that did not hurt." Snape sighs and turns his head toward the door of the kitchen, watching the shadows shift in the hallway outside. "It gives none of them pleasure if it does not hurt."

"Does it give you pleasure?"

"Nothing in this world gives me pleasure, Lupin."

"Then I was wrong, Severus. You do have my pity."

He snarls as his gaze snapps to Remus's, the dark hair falling over his shoulders. "I…owed Potter." Remus watches him nearly gag on the sentence. "And he died because I brought your friend to the dark side. That is why I play this stupid charade for Dumbledore, why I suffer the idiocy of Gryffindors in my classroom. Why I long for death on both sides of the fence. What I atone for."

"Peter had darkness in him long before you tempted him with it." Remus gets to his feet and moves over to the stove, tilting back the lid of the teakettle and staring down into the water, as if he can read it like tea leaves. "It's not atonement, Severus. It's forgiveness. And I doubt that either of us will ever find it. Certainly not in this house, and not at the end of the war. Voldemort will be defeated and everyone will simply assume it's their due that they continue living the lives they've grown accustomed to and they won't mourn the dead, won't even know them. There is no forgiveness. Their children cannot offer it to us. And we could not accept it, even if they could."

Remus turns and watches Snape for a long moment. The dark eyes stare back at him, nothing visible in their depths. "No forgiveness? No atonement?" Remus knows the words are supposed to be biting, mocking, sarcastic. "Then what, pray tell, do we fight for?"

Remus carries the kettle to the table and pours more water in his cup, destroying the pattern he refused to read in the tea leaves. "Absolution."