As mentioned in the two previous messages, these are the snippets from things from my working folder that I posted a couple of days ago to my LiveJournal - and I really apologise for not posting them here at the same time. 

Please bear in mind that I can't guarantee I'll finish all of these - more than one of them has been stalled for a while, and I'm sharing them more in the hope that it'll nudge me into getting writing properly again.  It's a selection of the ficlets I found most interesting when I was rummaging around; there are others though. The titles are, for the most part, working titles - ditto the ratings I've given them here.

~~~

From "Song Of Songs", R/S, PG13, Two Households universe:

"I think you're presentable now. Ready to try some clothes and something to eat?" Remus asked. He stood up and took a towel from the nearby rail, unfolding it and holding it out with a smile.

Sirius got up with an effort. He was a little unsteady, perhaps from the need for a decent meal, and accepted Remus's assistance in climbing out of the tub. Remus wrapped the towel around his waist and reached for another one, only to be forestalled by Sirius putting a shaking hand on his shoulder. His face was a riot of desperate emotion, and Remus at once abandoned what he had been doing and pulled his partner into a fierce hug, heedless of the soaking it gave him.

"Moony ..."

"I know, love, I know."

"I don't care what they say, Moony, I'm not going back to that place, I won't ..."

Remus stared into space over Sirius's shoulder for a moment, feeling a cold and sickening sensation in his gut. He remembered the day they dragged Sirius away to Azkaban as though it was only that morning; watching, forcing himself not to intervene - which would surely have been suicide - his head telling him that his lover was a murderer even as his heart and the wolf that forever lived just under his skin both howled a desolate protest that this was wrong, that they couldn't take Sirius away from him like this, that he would surely die without him.

He very nearly had. Sometimes he had wished that he could.

It was different now. Now they had proof that Sirius was an innocent man, but Remus Lupin had no faith in Ministry justice anymore.

"No," he said quietly. "You're not going back there. We'll work something out, Padfoot, even if the two of us have to go on the run together. I won't let them take you away from me again, I promise."

~~~

From "By Any Other Name", R/S, J/L, R-ish, AU

She was a young woman, probably no older than himself, with mousy-brown hair in a longish bob under a rather masculine style of hat. Her dark fitted robe was also in a masculine cut and with its large buttons fastened down the front it covered her from her neck to just above her ankles. She was quite pretty, with a slender face that was dominated by light brown eyes that gazed at him in a direct way that was almost a challenge.

Severus Snape wondered irritably who she was and for what purpose he had been brought before her. She was obviously expecting to see him and when Moody and Shacklebolt set themselves up, one by the door and the other behind him, she glanced at them and gave them a tiny nod of acknowledgement. Then there was silence.

Finally, unnerved by that calm level stare, Snape said sharply, "Well? What the devil am I here for? What do you want from me?"

The corner of her mouth quirked then and something shifted at the back of Snape's mind. The mannerism seemed oddly familiar all of a sudden, but he couldn't quite place it.

"You don't recognise me, do you?" she said then, and her unexpectedly husky voice made him twitch slightly.

"I've never met you before in my life," Snape snapped. "I don't know who you are and I don't give a damn - "

"You will, laddie!" Moody growled.

"You disappoint me, Severus," the woman said, and a gleam of humour entered her eyes. "I thought you were more observant! Especially as all the evidence points to you being responsible for my current appearance."

Snape opened his mouth to angrily deny any knowledge of her - and stopped, looking more closely this time. The mocking look in those amber eyes ... and that half-smile that was not entirely amiable ...

"Oh dear," she said dryly. "Must try harder, Mr. Snape - ten points from Slytherin."

"Merlin," Snape breathed, feeling a jolt of shock and recognition in his stomach. "Lupin!"

"I knew you'd get there eventually," Remus Lupin said.

~~~

From "Inmates 2", Gen, PG13, AU:

"I think the charm you're aiming for is Audio Extendis," a quietly amused voice said.

Harry froze where he knelt at the head of the kitchen stairs with his wand still raised. He looked over his shoulder, and Lupin walked soundlessly out of the darkness of the passageway. His hands were tucked into his pockets and the corner of his mouth was twitching gently as he regarded his pupil.

"Audio Extendis," he repeated softly as he approached, and he sketched a gesture in mid-air. "There's a tiny flick on the end of the wand movement, barely a twitch. The charm's a member of the Sonorus group, so you have to be very careful how you aim it or you'll find yourself projecting your voice several feet away, like a ventriloquist, instead of hearing what's being said on the other side of the door."

He crouched down next to Harry and raised a brow at him. "It wouldn't work anyway, the door's warded against that group of charms." Harry lowered his wand, disgruntled. "It was a good idea, though. Better luck next time, eh?"

"Am I in trouble?" Harry asked him warily.

Lupin smiled. "Not really, I'd be disappointed if you didn't at least make the attempt. All the same, you're not just going to get away with it. You can practice that charm - in your own time, mind! - and I expect you to be able to cast it effectively by Friday. I'll be testing you. Until then, don't you have homework to do?" He stood up and walked down the stairs, only to pause halfway and look back. He waved an imaginary wand in the air again. "Remember - Audio Extendis and a little flick at the end of the movement."

Harry watched him disappear into the kitchen, torn between annoyance and curiosity.

So he'd been right about Sirius and Lupin expecting him to try and eavesdrop. It was frustrating to have been caught, of course, but from the tone of Lupin's voice Harry felt as though he was being challenged to do it anyway.

He just had to find a way that was both effective and wouldn't get him caught. For a moment Harry wished all over again that he had Hermione and Ron here with him to help him work out new methods to try. And Fred and George as well, for that matter; it would be really useful to know how they made those Extendable Ears.

But they were none of them here with him and there was no point in wishing for it, so he would just have to manage on his own somehow.

So charms in the Sonorus group had been blocked? Harry remembered Professor Flitwick's lecture on how different sorts of charms that did similar things were grouped together. If one group had been blocked, perhaps there were others in a different group that might work. There were, after all, lots of charms books in the library ...

~~~

From "Herbal Encounter", Dean/Neville, R-ish, Auror universe:

"Didn't you take that plant back to Kew?"

Neville nearly leapt out of his skin and fumbled the bundle of dried leaves he was taking out of his wardrobe. When he looked around, Dean was standing in the doorway of his room, giving him a bemused look.

"Easy, Nev!" he said. "Only me."

"Er … yeah, right. Sorry." Neville shoved the bundle behind his back with a rustling noise and a couple of leaves floated to the floor. "What?"

"The plant - I could've sworn I saw you lugging it back to Kew the other day." Dean bent down and picked up a leaf, turning it over in his fingers curiously. "Your pomander's shedding, by the way. And - whew! - this thing stinks! What the hell is it?"

"Pomander?" Neville asked stupidly.

"Isn't that what it is? My grandmother hangs lavender pomanders in her wardrobe to keep moths away. They look just like that." Dean made a face. "Not sure I'd want my clothes smelling like this, though. Seriously, what is it?"

"Uhrm," Neville muttered, red-faced.

"Nev?" Dean waved a hand in front of his face. "You okay? What did I say to make you clam up, mate?"

"It's just a plant," Neville said. His eyes were wide, like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a lorry.

"Yeah, I saw that," Dean agreed, nodding and looking amused. "If it's just a plant and you're using it to keep moths off your gear, why do you look like that?"

"Like what?"

Dean grinned. He glanced over his shoulder; the passage seemed empty, but he pushed the door shut just in case.

"Like you're curing your own spliff," he said when he turned back to Neville.

Neville looked bewildered. "Spliff?"

"Yeah, you know! Pot - skunk - the forbidden weed! Marijuana." He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth when Neville continued to look blank. "It's a drug, Nev. You smoke it like tobacco and it makes you high."

"I'm not doing that!" Neville squeaked, now very red in the face, and Dean laughed.

~~~

From an untitled Broomflight story, J/L, R/S, PG13-ish:

"I'm a fearsome Auror! See me fight off six Dark wizards single-handedly whilst maintaining my flashing smile and perfectly quiffed hair."

"Perfectly squiffy hair, you mean!" Lily squeaked as he grabbed her and kissed her, deliberately tipping her backwards in his arms until she clutched at his shoulders, laughing.

James grinned and set her back on her feet, his heart lighter than it had been in days. "I missed you."

"Good. I missed you too." Lily tucked herself under his arm. "I brought you a present."

"Really?" James felt a little thrill that had nothing to do with the present itself whatsoever.

"But you can't have it until you've fed me crab sandwiches," she teased.

"Oh well, in that case …!"

But neither of them moved for the moment.

"I have stacks to tell you as well," Lily continued cheerfully, unaware of his thrill deflating as quickly as it had appeared.

"Did they offer you a job?" James asked, and he was proud of the calm voice with which he named his Doom.

"Yes, but that's jumping ahead a bit …."

Lily rattled on for several minutes, unaware that James was suddenly not listening anymore, having been slain by a single word.

"… and got back last night to find Mo had left a newspaper clipping on my bed saying that Marc Bolan is dead!" she finished sadly, jolting him out of his fugue state. "James?"

"It wasn't me!" James blurted out, then he realised what he'd said and wondered what on earth had possessed him.

Lily leaned back, staring at him. "It was a car accident."

"Oh - good." James saw her expression and became even more flustered. "I mean – not good. But it was an accident. And so nothing to do with me."

"Why would it be anything to do with you?" she demanded.

"I'm a terribly jealous person?" he offered weakly.

She blinked and shook her head, smiling. "You are absolutely, positively the most barking mad person I know."

"So long as that's a positive thing, I can live with it," James said, rallying. "So - crab sandwiches?"

~~~

From "Remembrances", Gen-ish, PG13, Two Households universe:

They were eating double chocolate ripple sundaes in Florian Fortescue's shop before Venus came up with her next question.

"Daddy, what happened to Cousin Snape's hand?"

There was no end to the difficult questions one little girl could ask, as Sirius had noted on more than one occasion. Not that he minded, precisely, but it did get a little wearing to get the questions in duplicate. Like displaced twins, what Venus asked would invariably be asked again later by Orion, and vice versa; a neat trick, especially as there didn't seem to be any evidence of collusion between them.

Then he registered what she had asked and felt a cold shock all over.

The question shouldn't have come as a surprise. She was bright and enquiring, and the real wonder was that she hadn't asked before. This was not something he wanted to discuss with anyone, though, least of all a six-year-old.

"Well, he - er," Sirius stammered. "Um, he had an accident and hurt his hand really badly. It - it had to be cut off."

Venus's eyes were big over her tall sundae glass. "How did he do that?"

"It was a very nasty accident, love."

Liar, Sirius's conscience said coldly. But what else could he do? Even if he could have found the words to tell Venus the story in a way that she would understand, he wouldn't do it. He wouldn't. There were some horrors that just needed to be buried and left in the past.

Cold sweat was trickling down his back under his shirt and robes and the ice-cream's sweetness turned sickly and nauseating in his mouth.

"And they really cut it off?" she asked.

"Sometimes that's the only way to help someone," Sirius explained, his voice sounding strange even to his own ears. "If the hand can't be mended it could make the person very poorly, so it's better to - to cut it off."

"Oh." She seemed to think about this for a few minutes, but just as Sirius was hoping the subject had been dropped, she looked up from her ice-cream again. "Mr. Mad-Eye has a wooden leg."

"So he does," Sirius agreed.

"Was his real leg cut off because it couldn't be mended?"

"I suppose it must have been ...."

"Then couldn't Cousin Snape have a wooden hand?" she asked triumphantly.

"I ...." Sirius rubbed his forehead. "It's not that easy, Venus. A foot doesn't have to do lots of complicated things, but a hand does. You can't hold a spoon with your foot, can you?"

"I might be able to hold it with my toes!" she asserted.

"Don't try it now!" Sirius told her firmly, when it seemed like she was going to take a shoe off straight away. "Mr. Fortescue won't let you come in here again if you try to eat ice-cream with your toes, and that'd be a shame, wouldn't it? Who would I eat my ice-cream with then?"

She gave him an 'Are you mad?' look that she must surely have learned from Harry. "Uncle Moony likes ice-cream too!"

"He'll be ever so cross with me if you get banned from the ice-cream parlour," Sirius said rather desperately. "Try using a spoon with your toes when you get home instead, he'll be really impressed."

"Okay!"

This would probably get him into a lot of trouble, not only with Remus but with her mother and great-grandfather too, but Sirius felt it was worth it if it kept his bright little daughter's mind off severed limbs for a while.

~~~

One Picture's Worth, Seamus/Dean, R-ish:

As he sorted through his papers that evening, absorbed the implications of the editor's latest request, and readied a new blank sheet for his next strip, Dean wondered if Seamus was ever curious about what he did up here. He surely had to have realised by now that his friend wasn't spending all this time on the odd commission for personalised business and birthday cards for friends and colleagues. Of course, he could simply have come and looked - there was no lock on the door and Dean had never forbidden him. But in spite of his knowledge of Seamus's near-terminal nosiness, they had always been respectful of each other's space if not of anyone else's and Dean thought it unlikely that Seamus had snooped without a direct invitation.

He couldn't decide whether to be grateful for that certainty or not. Certainly, there were things in here - drawings, cartoons, a couple of coloured sketches - that would be more than a little embarrassing if his friend were to see them, but on the other hand Dean couldn't help thinking that it might almost clear the air if Seamus were to find them and ask. An opportunity, finally, to air topics which until now he had felt constrained to keep close to his chest.

Dean had never told anyone that he was gay. From his first uneasy awareness that it was a possibility, he had hidden it – initially from himself, making himself go out with girls like Ginny Weasley to try and be 'normal' and engender 'normal' feelings in himself, and then, in alarm, he had hidden it from friends and family. At home he had steered clear of anything that could remotely attract the accusation, for his family's cultural background was strongly opposed to homosexuality; among his friends – largely his dormitory-mates at school – he made himself join in the tasteless jokes and taunting common among teenaged boys, desperate to blend in and not suddenly be perceived as the outsider, the weirdo, the freak. Having seen how Harry was treated just for being The Boy Who Lived, Dean had no desire to attract that kind of attention for being The Boy You Should Never Be Caught In The Showers With.

But he was closer to most of his friends than he was to either of his half-brothers, and certainly a lot closer to Seamus who had been his best friend and ally from their first day at Hogwarts. He felt vaguely that he shouldn't have to keep something like his sexuality from someone who had helped him to celebrate the emergence of his first chest hair, that it should be something he could talk to Seamus about without fear of rejection. God knew, sometimes he desperately wanted someone talk to about it. On the other hand, he didn't want to jump into a conversation about it with Seamus only to find that his friend's reaction was everything he most feared.

~~~

From "To Be The High King", Narnia, Peter/other, R-ish:

"You reigned for over fifteen years," Caspian said carefully; this was going to be a delicate question, but he had to know. "Do you mean to say that you were celibate all that time?"

Peter laughed at this, but it held an uncomfortable note and even in the chancy light Caspian could see him blushing hotly. "I … well … no. Not exactly," he stammered.

Interesting. "And how is one not exactly celibate? You … took a mistress?" That was a rather odd idea to contemplate when he was looking at this fresh-faced teenaged king.

"What? No! Good lord!"

"Men do," Caspian said with a shrug. "Kings more than most, I have been led to believe."

"Well, that was definitely not on the list of approved activities for the High King." Peter took another quick swig of wine; apparently his initial dislike of it was wearing off rapidly. "Although," he added, and there was a touch of remembered resentment in his tone, "no one seemed to think there was such a problem with Edmund doing it. Actually, that was true for a lot of things. It got pretty frustrating sometimes."

Caspian had encountered this attitude before. "His compensation for not being you."

"Is that what they call it," Peter said sourly.

"You didn't answer my question," Caspian prompted, when it seemed like Peter's mind had wandered. "How did you manage?"

Peter shrugged and drained his goblet. "I asked the same question - well, not precisely the same. I asked what I should do if a suitable princess couldn't be found … you have to remember that I was only about sixteen or seventeen when the subject came up in any seriousness. Up until then I hadn't really cared much, but then I started to wonder what my life would be like if the others got married and I couldn't. I didn't particularly want to get married then but I thought it would probably be nice to have the company when I got older." He shot a quick, wary glance at Caspian. "And it was sort of hinted that I was expected to produce an heir if I could. But without a suitable wife, and with them making it pretty clear that any kind of fooling around was well beneath the behaviour they expected of me … well. I asked how they thought I was supposed to manage."

Caspian was fascinated by the tale. "What did they say?"

"Runespear told me that I should leave the future to Aslan's grace. Actually, that didn't seem so unreasonable at the time." Peter's expression flashed into defensiveness for a moment, but after his own first encounter with Aslan Caspian could sympathise somewhat. "And then he told me that for companionship I should look to the men coming to our court from other kingdoms. That would be perfectly appropriate."

Caspian found that he could sympathise all too easily with the sarcasm in this statement. Then he realised that Peter still hadn't answered his question.

"So how did you manage?" he repeated.

Even in the rapidly falling darkness, the deepening colour in Peter's cheeks was visible. "I cultivated friendships among the higher ranking courtiers," he replied, and there was no mistaking the deliberate evasion in his reply.

"That's not an answer," Caspian pointed out.

Peter looked at his empty goblet. "Is there any more of this?" he asked. "Or something similar? Anything, really."

"King Peter - "

Peter looked him straight in the eye. "I'm definitely going to need more wine if I'm going to answer that question," he said frankly, "and so are you. And we'd better find somewhere less public than this, unless you want your entire court gossiping about it tomorrow."