Notes on Characters etc.:
Severus & Lucius aren`t portrayed here exactly as they are in canon, for the simple reason that in canon they are thirteen or so years older and consequently rather more mature. There is nothing to suggest in canon that Narcissa wasn`t married to someone else before Lucius. I`ve taken advantage of the occasional ‘ah’-ing of Lucius in canon and transformed it to a verbal idiosyncracy in its own right. ‘Gorge’ assumes that the pensieve Harry Potter finds in Dumbledore`s study is not a ‘one of a kind’ item, and also that they come in different shapes and colours. The OC-created and fairly simple Malfoy family tree is as follows:
Jean-Luc Malfoy m. Marie Malfoy
Narcissa ? ( b.1954 ) m. Marcel ( b. 1942 ) & Lucius ( b. 1951 )
( 1979 )
“You`ll come to the same sticky end as your parents, one of these days..”
Lucius Malfoy, JKR.
I – Lucius` Monologue.
II – Many Meetings.
III – Narcissa`s Monologue.
IV - Politics and Tattoos.
III – Waking Up Tired. (Bedroom Duologue)
I – Lucius` Monologue
The womb..
(..Somewhere in the depths of his mind a memory twitches to the surface, and he can (breathe) feel the cushion of the mother-heart, the rhythm of the mother-vessel, and for a second, a fleeting, yet terrible second, he knows too that he is not alone in there, he is (breathing) clasped to another body, foetal and (breathing) tiny and identical to his own..)
Umbilical discourse.
(..You are the light..)
Lucius? Lucius?
(..dark..)
II – Many Meetings
(A horse drawn carriage. December in London. An Auror, a Death Eater, and a proud, damaged youth just out of school..)
Welcome to England.
(1979.)
Lucius Malfoy kicked a discarded newspaper through the back alleys of London`s red light district. It was dark and wet and convoluted, this night of his prodigal return, and the city – lurid, sweltering – appeared to him as a mishmash of coloured signs, frequented by a gaily painted patronage. Whores converged shamelessly on the paved streets, pubs gasped with the stench of tobacco and vomit, and the heady smell of sex permeated everything, including the flesh. Whistling to himself, a seaman`s air, (though he`d never been a sailor) – Lucius gave the Muggles a wide berth. At every strategic kick to his newspaper a few strips of vellum flaked from the newspaper`s edge and streamed off in ribbons.
When the whores approached him with sex on their lips, Lucius shook his head without losing the thread of the song, and as all further attempts at persuasion were met with no response, they left him be and padded away to their niches amongst the damp and gleaming walls. Beneath the peeling frontage of an abandoned theatre complex, a band of carol singers fought vainly to raise their shallow voices above the clamour of the traffic.
“..silent night, holy night..”
It was Christmas, or so near to Christmas that it made no perceptible difference. In the Muggle shop fronts frosted snowmen and santas and reindeer moved in mechanical mobius, smiling, waving, ho-ho-hoing. Their clockwork naivete struck a chord. There was truth in the old saying: Ignorance is bliss.
What the Muggles don`t know won`t hurt them.
He lost the newspaper in the square, beneath the glowering-browed Nelson`s Column. The wasted article literally disintegrated in mid-air – and he amused himself for a minute or two wiping the last shreds of paper onto the base of the monument. Then there was nothing to do; no new tune came to him, and he stuck his hands in his pockets and waited in silence, amidst brightly coloured Christmas lanterns which swung unsteadily on either side of him, buoyed by the gusting wind.
At last he heard the familiar sound of a coach rumble in the near-distance, the wheels clamouring their protests against the uneven terrain. The roads of the red light district were rarely traversed by horse, let alone carriage, and Lucius smiled – his cracked lips twisting oddly, unused to forming such an expression. His fingers latched upon the wand at his side, finding comfort in its solidity. He untied it thoughtfully from its holster within his jacket and pressed it against his palm as the carriage drew closer.
It clattered to a halt a metre short of the monument and one of the horses reared back, its nostrils flaring wildly. Lucius stepped lightly out of the way and moved behind the monument to approach the carriage from the right side. The door was already open, and a round featured face peered out, the blue eyes narrowed in an attempt to discern a familiar figure amidst the dark.
Longbottom. Always two centuries behind the times.
The curtain of the carriage window was slightly parted, a thin V-shaped gap, and Lucius raised himself onto his toes and peered in. Shrouded in shadow, he made out a sharp, hook-nosed profile, a sheaf of dark, oily hair and black eyes that glittered with a childish defiance.
“Malfoy?” Frank Longbottom tried, calling hopefully into the chilly air.
Lucius smiled again, falling back onto his heels. He parted his lapels once more, this time to remove a cigarette from another inner jacket pocket. Conducting a flame from the tip of his wand, he ducked: the stoop of his shoulders offering meagre protection from the wind. The magical fire waned twice before producing a steady flare.
This light performed the function of a beacon. After a minute or so of fruitless searching, Frank noticed the flickering and rounded the corner of the carriage, his plump face flustered. Halting a few metres from the smoker, he shifted awkwardly from foot to foot – unsure of himself, and unsure, no doubt, of Lucius.
Unimpressed, Lucius watched him, and said nothing.
“I thought you gave up that habit,” said Frank, finally.
“I give up a lot of things. Did you want one?”
“No. I like my lungs.”
“So do I,” said Lucius, inhaling. “But I also like to believe they enjoy a challenge.”
They stood in quietescence for a while beneath the stern face of the French despot.
“You said you`d come alone,” said Lucius.
“The boy needed a lift. He has nothing to do with this.”
“A new recuit to the cause?”
“He bears the brand.”
Lucius huffed in a cloud of smog. He could not get enough of his cigarette. Between his lips the cylinder of compressed tobacco had become an umbillical mouthpiece, via which vitamins, oxygen and other physical necessities could be transmitted into the vacuum of his body. Stimulant, depressive. With a cigarette safely in his clutch he felt as if he had a portable sanctuary, a sure-fire route to the womb`s regressive stasis.
“Don`t we all,” he said.
Frank looked even more uneasy; he cast a fearful glance over his shoulder. It was almost as if he expected the Dark Lord himself to come bearing down upon him, hands extended like claws, Voldemort`s dead-lit ruby eyes fixiated on the pulse-throb of his jugular. The civil war had taught Frank that caution was a virtue common only to the survivors.
“We should leave,” said Frank. “We`ve a long way to go.”
*
It had been Marcel`s idea that Lucius campaign for the Death Eaters in France. Any excuse, Lucius felt, to get him out of Jean-Luc`s sight. As his father`s insanity clawed new footholds in the grey-matter of his brain, the cruelties Jean-Luc leveled upon his youngest son grew harsher, more extreme. Lucius-the-boy had been treated to the lash of his father`s cane. Lucius-the-man was forced to leap about his father`s manor like a dervish, narrowly avoiding the heat of Jean-Luc`s hexes.
The madness: it was there, throbbing, pulsing like a tumour in the right side of the cerebellum, and sometimes Lucius imagined he could actually see it, a thick clot of malignant darkness in his father`s brow.
‘You`re tempting fate, staying here,’ Marcel had said. ‘I would have him committed to St. Mungo`s, but the Dark Lord forbids it. For now, perhaps, you`re safe, but just remember he can`t miss all the time.’
Inscrutible, infalliable Marcel was yet to be proven wrong about anything. In the morning, Lucius packed a solitary suitcase and apparated in downtown Paris.
Au revoir, mon pere.
He`d spent six years touring the land, gathering supporters for the cause. He did not work in the methodical, patient way Marcel did. He refused to accept the presence of procrastinators and malingerers. He would fight alongside only those who were loyal to the core – who could breathe, eat and shit whilst remaining fully aware and dedicated to their quest for racial purity.
But it was rare he entered the battle field. He prefered to orchestrate the raids from an overseer`s point of view; he had no compulsion to lead the horde. If he were to come to fame, if he were to be remembered in the history books, if the name Malfoy was destined to be recited by young wizards of the future Voldemort-dynasty, Lucius would be commended for his reticence, his acumen, and not for his vainglorious exertions on the front line.
France.
The alcohol was sweeter and the women were easy – they carried none of the reservations of the British. He made acquaintances and casual friends in the small hours of the morning. These femme fatales he kept catalogued in memory, backdating the way some men did, remembering them in the analog of dates and times. It suited him to recall faceless, numerical phantasms who demanded nothing from him saving the occasional interuption of his business schedules. The simpering, garrulous reality was too sordid to retain as a souvenir memoir.
Dysfunction, he reflected, held a raw attraction for him. Every relationship which had floundered under his ham-fisted guidance had been a riotous affair, a series of battles fought in the traction of sweat-laden blankets. Sex was not a conduit of love but rather a parody of junction; he marvelled at the fashion in which two bodies could be so close, yet mentally distanced a thousand miles.
J`aime..
There was love aplenty to be found in Paris – the prices were sensible, and his currency was fine.
(Narcissa..)
The letter from his father had arrived in the low hours of a mid-summer evening. He read it over a glass of Benedictine, curled on a couch by the hearth. Beyond the walls of his apartment he heard the frenzied babble of his first language, as the Muggles outside crowed over Bastille day fireworks. Liberte, l`egalite, fraternite. Each shout echoed the fatal thud of a guillotine. Viva la revolution.
A dark haired witch watched from the door way, awaiting the possibility of either order or sexual overture. Francoise Lestrange – part Italian, part Spanish, part French: a firey combination. Lucius had accepted her professionally because Marcel had commended her talents, and then accepted her in the boudoir because she had pleaded for it, with her heavy-lidded dark eyes and plush, eager lips, and the charismatic sashay of her round hips in the envelopment of her robes. It was impulsive of him – she was married, of course, as all the most appealing women were – but he was unable to resist such a provocation of desire.
He turned the letter over to scan the back for further directions. She moved closer, without any pretence of modesty, and laid herself sumptuously across the opposite couch, her arms folded in pillowing her head.
“What is it? From your brother..?” she asked.
“Non. Mon pere.”
Francoise`s features registered a mild confusion. “I thought you hated him. I thought he hated you.”
“We are mutual in our – ah, aversion,” Lucius agreed, slowly. “And yet, he wants to see me. He demands it. Perhaps he imagines he is dying. Perhaps he wants to make ammends.” He observed the full rise of her chest, and imbibed a mouthful of his liquor. “He would be foolish to try it. A breath of apology cannot excuse twenty eight years of torment.”
“You won`t go, then,” the witch confirmed.
“No,” the Death Eater replied, adamant. “Jamais.”
And yet the contents of the letter continued to haunt him. As he went about his business in the weeks that followed – as he rallied his troups, as he dreamt of the cleansing of the pure-blood ranks, as he spoke of assassinations and demolitions on a national scale – his father`s beckon swam to the forefront of his thoughts. What quantity of pride had his father swallowed, in order to author such a demand? What motivation could Jean-Luc have had? Were the dreams of his dead wife preying on his splintering mind once again?
I am the only reminder of her he has left, Lucius thought. I am the last bind of her presence. If he cannot bury me, he will never manage to put her completely to rest.
It took him six months to acquiesce to his father`s plea. In this interim he carefully extricated himself from his ties to the Death Eaters, appointing generals and other underlings to deal with the rigors of organised tyranny. Lestrange he left in charge: she was cunning and intelligent, and while he came to view her insatiatible libido as both unappealing and gratuitous, he could not deny her brilliance in matters of politics.
When he was satisfied that his affairs were in order, he contacted Frank. It would have been useless for him to seek Marcel`s help in the matter – his brother would have rejected the notion as foolhardy. ‘He will kill you,’ Lucius could imagine Marcel argueing. ‘I refuse to be party to your suicidal dream.’ Frank, however, was a safer bet – the pudgy young aide to his brother was far too cowed in Lucius` presence to offer any unconstructive advice.
‘Tell no one I am coming,’ he`d told Frank. ‘Meet me by the column. And do not bring a soul.’
It was because of his father`s letter that Lucius Malfoy had returned to London. It was because of Jean-Luc that Lucius had renounced his responsibilities and his charmed Parisian existence. As he stood before Frank`s waiting carriage, Lucius experienced the faintest of hesitations. Vaguely, he wondered if he had made the wrong choice. Is it too late to go back? he asked himself. Or should the question be: Do I really want to keep running forever?
The dark eyed boy inside edged along the bench to make room, and Lucius folded himself gracefully into the seat provided.
Well, I am here, Jean-Luc Malfoy, he thought, morosely. For you. I pray that you accept your bastard-child in good grace.
*
The boy in the carriage introduced himself as Severus Snape. He had recently finished school and beneath his Death Eater bravado immaturity beamed forth like a wand-flare in the dark. Severus said he was going to make potions for the cause. He said Marcel himself selected him especially for the task. He said that Marcel said that he had promise.
He said all these things whilst smirking out of the side of his mouth, his beady little eyes glistening, his thin body rigid with the assurity of youth`s superiority.
“Shut the fuck up,” said Lucius.
“You asked,” said Severus, shrugging. His pride had evidently been injured by Lucius` terse demand. However, he appeared determined not to let the petty jealousy of yesterday`s blue-eyed boy beleaguer his proffessional progress in the snake-eat-snake world of Death Eater politics. He adjusted the leather-bound suitcase on his lap and tightened his lips into a thin, disapproving line.
“I asked Longbottom,” said Lucius, firmly. “Not you, you greasy little shit.”
Severus opened his mouth to speak, but thought better of it. He turned his head and stared out the window, beyond which the cityscape had become a far-away blur. They were flying now, the horses cantering through clouds, and Lucius` mind turned to the contemplation of the Muggle`s Santa Claus and the parallels which could be drawn between their fiction and his reality.
Northbound..
He realised that he was not ready to see his father.
There was no source to this sudden epiphany. It entered his mind without prelude. He knew it was true; it was unquestionable because the subconscious itself was unquestionable. The flotsam and jetsam the tides of his thoughts threw up had to be taken at their face value. These were the makings of instincts, those impulsive and seemingly extraneous notions which dictated the onset of dread.
“He wants to kill me, doesn`t he?” Lucius said, quietly. His fingers buckled into the underside of the bench. In the deep pit of his brain an image was emerging – the terse lines of a profile unmistakeably Jean-Luc`s, the features skewed to one side as the weight of the madness-tumour strained the skin. The lips peeled back, exposing the narrow-bite canines of a snake, the pupils dwindling to vertical lozenges of empty blackness..
“What?” said Frank, squinting, blinking out of his stupor. “Who wants to kill you?”
He was frozen by this vision of his father; he felt the braid of a noose encircle his neck. Something burbled at his lips, a liquid of a thicker make than water. A splattering of mercury-stars rode the under-lids of his eyes. Muscles which were not his own spasmed, beset with violent contractions, and his knuckles tensed in response as rigor-mortis lanced through his veins, more potent than any drug. An uncurling, an unfolding.. a surrender..
Strangled, he gasped: “Jean-Luc.”
“But.. he`s your father,” came Frank`s reasonable demur.
Then the image vanished, and Lucius was left sweating and hazy in its aftermath. His surroundings jittered slightly, like misplaced slides in a Muggle-movie, and he realised he had, for an instanct, succumbed to unconsciousness. The breaking of continuity. As Frank leaned closer, Lucius gazed blearily up into the man`s concerned round face. “Forget it,” he muttered, intaking a shallow breath between his clenched teeth. “No. Wait. Stop the carriage. Turn it around. We`re not going to the manor.”
“But – Master Malfoy –”
“Do not argue with me, Frank.”
The promising potions student, who had been listening in on the conversation, objected to this unusual turn of events. He raised one long-fingered hand, like a child in a schoolroom begging the audience of his teacher, and said, “Excuse me, sir, but I do have to get to the manor by tonight, you know..”
Lucius turned on him. “Didn`t I just tell you to shut up?” he hissed.
“I`m not entirely sure. Perhaps you should refresh my memory, sir,” the boy mocked, with a sneer.
“I should warn you, sir, that I have no qualms at all about bending you over my knee and spanking your behind,” snapped Lucius.
“And I should warn you, sir,” came the belligerent reply, “that I shall endeavour to enjoy it.”
“Open the door,” Lucius told Frank. “I`m going to throw him out.”
Frank possessed an unnatural ability to predict violence of all kinds. He`d already bolted out of his seat and was now accosting the driver. “Turn the carriage around,” he said, his voice high and fracturing at the edges. “We`ve changed our plans. We`re going..” He paused and half-turned, awaiting Lucius` orders.
“Narcissa,” said Lucius.
“Angel,” said Frank to the driver. “We`re going to Islington.”
The potions-boy kicked his heels against the underside of his seat and sulked. Lucius lit another cigarette, leaning into the shadows so as to hide the tremors of his fingers from the others.
He had never liked water. When they flew over the Thames for the second time, Lucius held his breath, the way Marcel had told him to do when they ran through the family graveyard in their youth.
‘If you hold your breath, the death can`t get in,’ Marcel had said. ‘If you hold your breath, you`ll live forever.’
*
He was bullied in school. Wasn`t that the curse of all truly dedicated pupils? To be teased, to be taunted. Devoted scholars pay the ultimate price for their knowledge – their youth.
As a child he coveted books, not toys. His father and he would make regular trips to the libraries of the Ministry of Magic, and Severus invariably departed that glorious sandal-wood scented heaven with a pile of tomes larger than he was. Underneath the dining room table he`d curl, knees to his chest, and read and read and read.
They were never well off. His mother borrowed money, his father took on a multitude of dead-end jobs which left him peevish and irritable from lack of sleep.
Every day was a battle for survival, a trial to get food on the table. Arguments ensued, and the first of many partings.
A Muggle psychologist might suggest that Severus` quest for academic brilliance was a natural response to the dysfunction of his family: a desire to gain some control over a life which had hitherto defied the pressures of normalcy. But a Muggle has no conception of the allure of magic.
Severus did not study because he wished for control or, if he were to be completely honest, respect. These were simply added incentives; they were not his primary motive. Severus studied because study to him served both as escape and addiction. Between the lines he found the release of a fantasist, and this false serenity possessed the drawing power of a drug. His personality tended toward compulsion, over-indulgence. He ate books; he gorged himself on their promises of asylum.
On the night he met Lucius Malfoy, Severus was exactly eighteen and a half years old. Currently his interests were: potions, the dark arts, finding viable employment, and making something of his life – in no particular order. He was – as might have been expected – a virgin. His passing interest in sex had never been tantamount to his absorption in magic. For the most part, he considered sex itself as a sickly occupation, sordid and quite below him. However, there had been moments when he`d contemplated it, albiet from a skewed perspective.
Ill at ease with the angularity of his body – he was whip-cord thin, a lean, economical build like that of a greyhound – the fantasies he did harbour involved a transformation on his part. When he dreamed of the delights of the bedroom, he experienced them within an alternate form. He remembered those bullies who so maligned him: he recalled their wirey muscles, the swell of the pectorals, the stoutness of solid thighs.
Lupin. Black. Potter. Even Pettigrew. In the film of his sexual turmoil he possessed them, one by one, manipulating them to his voyeuristic intent.
The blonde in the carriage was troubling to Severus. This vicious, ignorant Malfoy, who was so unlike the eloquent Marcel in character that Severus could scarely believe they were related, was nontheless inspiring – from a similar sexual standpoint to the Marauders. Though the Death Eater`s body was, in many ways, a mirror of Severus` own, the potions-boy witnessed in the lanky frame the possibility of attraction. The man`s skin was so pale as to appear transclucent at the edges, and the length of blonde hair, which Lucius had previously contained like a scarf about his neck, now shrouded the bony shoulders like a glittering, golden shawl.
It was not beauty, precisely, but its close cousin allure. The man was inscrutible, and Severus, given to prying things apart to discover their internal secrets, was riveted by Lucius` twisted threats and feverish neurosis.
He hated the man, too, of course – an instinctive, knee-jerk reaction to any pleasureable thing which might later reject him. If Severus had learnt one thing from his childhood and subsequent schooling, it was that the binding of oneself to another only found recourse in pain.
“I know he wants to kill me,” Lucius was saying. The sharp point of his nose appeared somewhat red, his entire body strained as if he were struggling to contain the emergance of some deepset fear. “He`s told me so many a time himself. If it weren`t for Marcel he would have done it years ago.”
“Then why now?” Frank insisted.
His rational approach was wasted on the disconcerted blonde. “Who knows? You cannot expect reason from the insane,” Lucius snapped. “He says he talks to Marie`s ghost, and perhaps he does. Perhaps she teases him with sleights on his manhood. On my parentage..”
The potions-boy opened his mouth, and then shut it again. Lucius caught the motion in his peripheral vision, and turned upon the youth, baring his teeth in a rictus of a smile. “I`m a bastard, my little stowaway,” he drawled, his voice corded with tension. His rising anger was tangible even to the normally oblivious Severus. “Though surely you,” he continued, in an ominous whisper, “having indulged in a little verbal reparte with my brother, would know this..”
“Lucius..” Frank murmured, quietly.
“I will speak what I want to who I want,” Lucius grated. His lazy purr had quickened in tempo, tainted with the faintest of quavers, and in his left hand his cigarette had burnt down to the filter, unattended. “I will write it on the fucking walls if it so takes my fancy. I have nothing to lose but the illusion of familial niceties. I want a drink.”
Deferentially, Frank pried open a small cabinet beneath his bench and prodded through the contents. Severus was completely entranced. He had never been witness to a fit of this type before. He had seen his parents shatter glasses and slam their bleeding fists into the plaster-thin walls of their home; but there was reason behind their wrath – whereas Lucius` display seemed no more than a spoilt, childish tantrum.
There are nerves here, Severus thought. There are a mass of nerves, just below the surface.
( Air.. air.. )
“Marcel didn`t tell me anything,” he said, playing the devil`s advocate, and heard Frank swear, quietly, under his breath.
“Of course he didn`t. What you have to understand about the Malfoys,” Lucius hissed, “is that we are taught from a very young age not to confide in others. What occurs in the manor remains there. We do not air our dirty laundry in public.”
“Dirty laundry?” Severus asked. Frank grunted again, and shook his head imperceptibly. Severus pretended he hadn`t noticed.
“The usual dirty laundry. The family secrets. My mother is a dead whore and my father is a living lunatic. And Marcel – poor Marcel, the true-blood son, caught in the middle.” Lucius` shoulders twitched. “Such a fucking mess. Such a fucking.. where is my drink. Frank?”
Frank dutifully passed Lucius a polystyrene cup of some golden liquid, without a word. The Death Eater sipped from it with a delicacy which belied his temper.
“Marcel. My fucking wonderful brother. The child of first-cousins. Inbreeding is fashionable in this day and age, so I`m told.” Lucius dabbed the heel of his hand against his lips, swollen now with the venom of antipathy. “Inbreeding – to keep the blood pure. To keep the Malfoy line undiluted. To raise bigger and better and stronger wizards. I swear – to hear my father speak of it, you might think he were talking of beasts. Pedigree, dear potions-boy. Marcel has the Malfoy stamp of approval, and six toes on his right foot for the trouble.”
( Air.. air.. )
“There is Marcel. And then there is the younger son, the heir-to-spare, as it were, who is only half-Malfoy and consequently as useless to my father`s mind as a broomstick in a hurricane. But we do not speak of that. No. We are taught not to speak of it. I am to be presented, hah, as a son but naturally not the son, and while Marcel remains alive I am disposable. And will be disposed of, no doubt, once my delicious elder sibling cosigns himself to fuck –”
“Lucius..” Frank tried, meekly.
“Cosigns himself to fuck, I say, that beautiful and vapid wife my father has selected for him. Narcissa. Ma petite soeur. Hah! My father thinks himself a farmer, raising a prime herd of cattle. But of course we are wondering now, my best-est beloveds, why the steer and cow refuse to mate. Four years in sharing a bedchamber.. and no calves? Could it be – surely not? – that the two are as infertile as mules –”
( Air.. air.. )
“Lucius!” Frank shouted.
Lucius` silver eyes took on a strange light; his fingers tensed around his cup, which splintered in his grasp.
“Stop the carriage!” he moaned, lurching to pull the cord to signal the driver to halt.
*
(A whisper, brain-deep and haunting.
“You are the light.”)
His philosophies of life, dictated to him by the sphinx-like Marcel, occured in pairs and parallels.
‘Pain,’ the elder Malfoy would lecture his younger brother, ‘is a necessary element of pleasure. One cannot exist without its counter-balance: agony serves as a measurement of ecstacy, just as the existence of heat is essential to approximate a chill. Without these oppositions, all becomes a numbness – a world lacking such conflictions would require that everything be possessed of a solitary, defining sensation.. which would then be voided as a constant. As consequence, some people may find that true pleasure may only be achieved if pain precedes it. For them it is essential that the scale of stimulation be affixed in their minds prior to an indulgence.’
There were other examples of duality. Good – and its counterpart, evil. On this issue Marcel assured Lucius of his own moral virtue. ‘For if it is right for pureblood wizards to wield supreme power over Mud-bloods and Muggles,’ Marcel explained, ‘then it follows that the pursuit of such a wizard-utopia is good. And while the senseless torture and murder of an entire race may seem, initially, to be evil, surely a worthless creature can be toyed with in any manner a righteous wizard sees fit. Muggles kill beasts for food – can`t a pureblood kill a Muggle for sport?’
The boy-Lucius understood all this – in the abstracted and generalised way he understood everything. And aside from the discrimination of pain/pleasure and good/bad, Lucius mentally noted an additional pairing: sanity/madness. He knew the fits which overtook him at times – those fits of breathless, liquid gasping which invariably concluded his tantrums – were the products of madness.
( Air.. air.. )
Over time, and under Marcel`s quiet instruction, Lucius had learnt to balance these psychosomatic convulsions with serene and unquestionable reason. Whether this reason was evident to those about him depended, naturally, on the personality he chose to invoke when dealing with them. But even if he did opt to play a lunatic, he remained sane beneath the facade – to wit: a madness with method in`t.
In the grasp of sanity he was cold, calculating and remote. In the grasp of madness he was hot tempered, passionate and impulsive.
He had created characters and personalities for as long as he could remember. He wasn`t altogether sure why he needed them; he accepted them simply as part of who and what he was and did not probe the depths of his psyche for answers. He lined them up before him like soldiers in ranks, and sent them out to wage conversational war against any who would would dare sour his name or his motivations. They served as a sheilding of sorts: a protective layer through which the inner-Lucius could not be touched.
Memory..
Lucius could remember everything after the age of nine. Before that, there was nothing – a void.
‘Is that normal?’ he`d once asked Marcel.
‘For you, maybe,’ had been his brother`s impassive reply.
In short, the universe of Lucius Malfoy was filled with a myriad of dichotomies which had no mid-point. For him, life and the living of it was an all-or-nothing affair. You were dead, or you were alive. You were good, or you were bad – or stupid, which was infinitely worse. You loved, or you hated. You were mad, or you were sane. You might choose to slip between the two, (from pole to pole, as it were), but never linger within the median range.
(“You are the light.”)
Good/bad.
(Then, liquid-choked:)
Sane/mad.
(“As I am the dark.”)
Very rarely, Lucius managed to be both at once.
( Air.. air.. )
As the carriage shuddered to a standstill, Lucius lunged over the lap of the potions-boy and hauled open the door. A shock of cold air hit him hard – his lungs, his face, his eyes. He reeled against it; he leant dangerously far out of the carriage and spat, huskily, into the dark and the Muggle-lights shimmering below, their radience partially obscured by a shadowing of smog. A bat-wing of despair unfolded from the torture of his mind and lurched from his gorge in a piddling splutter of vomit.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
His lungs were seizing up inside his chest; a foul aftertaste layered his parched lips. The carriage, off balanced by the sudden shift of his weight, swayed precariously in mid-air, and in the aural peripheral he heard the potions-boy let out a whimper of surprise. He choked again; the inner walls of his throat were congealed in phlegm and the air he inhaled was thick, wet, liquid.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
Then the spell passed and, eyes watering, he slumped backwards into the carriage. Frank caught him; the potions-boy pulled the door closed.
“Th-thank you,” Lucius mumbled, into Frank`s lap. “You are t-too kind..”
“Drive on,” Frank told the driver, feebly.
And as the vehicle rumbled into motion, the plump young man bent to begin the painstaking task of disentangling the fine threads of Lucius` hair. The potions-boy watched, his dark eyes stunned-wide, but graciously witheld his counsel. His silence was a small mercy on an otherwise pitiless night.
III – Narcissa`s Monologue.
He`d said –
I don`t like the way you walk, or the way you touch your hair.
He`d said –
You walk like a whore in a wedding dress.
Cut to fifteen years ago, to a world on the brink of civil war. Voldemort`s existence was hardly common knowledge to the average wizard rank-and-file, but his name had become a byword of the underground. Moving through the arteries of the country, below the skin-shield of concrete, the Dark Lord bided his time. Serpent-eyed and worm-tongued, he languished in the sewers with his nostrils filled with the stench of Muggle shit, and Marcel Malfoy would seek him out, as all the dutiful did, in order to pass on each twisted pureblood promise to prospective followers of the cause.
Marcel, the mouth piece of the Dark Lord. Voldemort`s little erand boy.
In those days Lucius had been a white creature with thin and dainty hands. On that day – the day Narcissa now conjured from the clutter of the pensieve – he was pinched and blue-faced with the cold. As protection against the chilly morning air he wore fingerless gloves, and about his throat he`d hung a bright red scarf, the tail of which was snared in a constant battle with the wind.
In response to each gust it would spool its cotton body a little tighter about his neck, so that every few minutes he was forced to insert a finger between the rippling fabric and the pale pillar of his neck and tug on it sharply in order to prevent himself from suffocating. This idiosyncracy lent him a slightly comical aspect – a predictability of neurosis.
“You love me,” Lucius told her. “You love me, but in the end, you`ll marry him.”
He was fourteen; she was eleven, and Marcel, passive, intellectual, absent, errand-boy, was twenty three and growing more like his father every day.
“Some things you don`t get to question,” Lucius said. “There are things you have to accept; there are rules.”
“That`s not fair,” she said.
“Don`t fucking talk to me about fair,” said Lucius, with passion.
Then he leant in, and kissed her – a dry, brotherly press of his lips to her forehead – and walked away.
Narcissa Malfoy could remember this conversation as clearly as if it were yesterday. Over the years which followed she had brought it to the pensieve`s surface a thousand times, analysing every word for the verification of a suggestion implicit – that Lucius had once loved her, too. It provided a small solace, this treasured, if unreliable, memoir. On those nights Marcel came to her, angry and self-hating and frustrated by the immediacy of his failings, Narcissa would hold it close to her heart and breathe steady in the knowledge that she had once been more than this – this vessel. And as he fucked her body into the semblance of submission, her mind discovered a fleeting release, transported to better times by the conduit of memory.
He`d said – “Learn to close your legs. Keep my seed in.”
He feared blame, Marcel did. For Lucius blame was something he had been brought up to accept as a given; his parent`s broken marriage, his family`s barely hidden animosity toward him – all these found both source and vindication in his very presence. For Marcel blame was a leaden thing – he could not shoulder it, he would not bear it.
He`d said – “It is your fault, not mine. Barren crone – I might well fuck a knothole for what you give me.”
“You scare me,” she`d told him. “I`m scared I don`t know you.”
“You don`t want to know me,” Marcel replied. “If you did, you`d ask.”
These days she considered herself a casualty of the civil war. She wore white dresses but her aspect was that of a woman in mourning. My legs, my hands, my heart is dead, she thought. My arms, my legs – gone. I have been dismembered through distrust. I have been reamed, maligned, and reviled by him, and yet..
And yet my blood comes easy each month, while the white cream of his zenith is watery and scant..
But who was she to question him? Who was she to doubt the redoubtable? Conquered and culpable, she moved like a ghost through the solemn corridors of their apartment, touching things lightly, but never leaving an impression. Shell-shocked. Love-burned. Her wedding ring – gold, ugly – was as heavy on her finger as a prisoner`s iron shackles. In complete honesty, she supposed she had no one else to blame but herself for her dire circumstance. This was a jail she had chosen, after all; she had bound herself irrevocably with the magic words: ‘I do’.
As she stood by the window, her arms encircling the bowl of the pensieve, Narcissa Malfoy dreamt of a bridled youth and a misspent maturity.
You love me, but in the end, you`ll marry him.
Then outside she heard the clatter of a descending carriage, and her reverie was broken. She walked downstairs to see who had come to call on her at this hour, already phrasing in her mind the manner in which she would explain to them that her husband`s whereabouts remained unknown.
IV – Politics and Tattoos.
The carpet was a maroon shag, the kind you would expect from a rich eccentric: someone who didn't care about being overly plump or lavish in their interior decorating tastes. It was the same with the curtains: maroon. Everything in the room was dark, dark red, as though someone might have committed murders there and painted the room that colour so the blood wouldn`t show.
Leaning against the mahogany dining table, Frank Longbottom trailed a pudgy finger along the polished surface. Nearby, three unfinished sifters of brandy stood sentinel before the liquor cabinent – only the potions-boy had refused the alcohol. Through the wide-view window (they were on the fourty-first floor), Frank could see the familiar spire of Big Ben.
Frank grimaced slightly; then jumped, startled, at a sudden gun-shot of noise. A bird had smashed into the window – the glass was so polished that it hadn't noticed it there. Frank`s eyes leapt from the spray of feathers to the potions-boy, sitting alone at the table, toying with the meal set before him. Serverus never turned to look at it, and Frank thought he saw the boy`s lips curl slowly into a satisfied smirk at the sickening thud.
There was something unnerving about Severus, Frank had decided. It went beyond the boy`s defiance and biting cynicism; it was an instability about him, the same breed of instability inherent to Lucius. It was written into every cell of the boy`s waifish body, but it was best expressed in those night-black eyes. It was possible to see the madman in him through those flickering dark-irises, the manic and the depressive struggling for control.
A sadist, a cynic, this child. In another world, at another time, Frank would have pitied him.
“..bastard bloody Malfoy bleeding..” Severus was muttering under his breath.
“You shouldn`t mind what he says, Snape,” Frank told the potions-boy, sotto voce. “Lucius has a tendancy to get over-excited. Artistic temperment.”
“That would be the politically correct term for ‘fucking sociopath’, am I right?” Severus remarked, dryly. “The man has more personalities than a celebrity night at the Witches Weekly ball. How long are we supposed to stay here? I`m supposed to be at the manor, and I`ve no way to contact Marcel to tell him I`ll be delayed. Or detained – the word seems far more apt, given the situation.” He smirked, picking at the contents of his plate: a cold hunk of unsliced ham, and an unbuttered slice of bread. “Not a particulary good cook, Marcel`s wife..” he added, petulantly. “Personally, I think she`s suffering from a bit of the old ‘artistic temperment’ too..”
“Were you going to meet Marcel there?” Frank asked, interupting Severus` blithe criticisms of their hostess.
“Of course not. Marcel has gone underground,” said Severus. “After the Aurors raided his headquarters, I`m not surprised. He said he`d send me instructions once I arrived at the manor. By owl or by courier – whichever is quickest.” Tentatively, he tasted a morsel of ham – and found it remarkably palatable. He chewed, slowly. “Could you get a message to him?” he asked. “Given that you`re his secretary – or whatever it is you call yourself..”
“An aide.” Frank shook his head. “I`m afraid he cut his ties with everyone following the raid. Even his wife.”
“A wise move,” said Severus. “It was an inside job, I`m certain of it.”
“And how would you know?” Frank inquired, raising an eyebrow.
Severus shrugged disarmingly. “I read the Daily Prophet,” he said. “There was an article on the affair by Rita Skeeter: she said an un-named Auror infiltrated the ranks of the Death Eaters and tipped the Ministry off.”
“I never heard that.”
“Perhaps you don`t read enough,” said Severus, snidely, his voice carrying the sharp note of an insult. He had already formed a distinct opinion in regard to Frank Longbottom: a bumbling, apologetic sycophant – how the man was ever accepted into the ranks of the Death Eaters in the first place remained a mystery. But he imagined that working alongside Frank would be a lot easier than dealing with the tempermental Lucius. Though far less interesting, he added mentally, raising his dark eyes from the contemplation of his plate to the door.
Behind it, the voices of Lucius and Narcissa were audible, though the words themselves were indistinct. Nevertheless, Severus could surmise from their tone alone that Lucius was offering instruction, while Marcel`s wife conceded to each order in a halting quaver. The woman was unstrung, Severus thought; you could see it in her eyes, and the way she moved – every maneuver, conversational or otherwise, had been well thought out in advance. Apprehensive to a fault – but given her husband`s perilous situation, she was at least wary for good reason.
“I don`t reckon Marcel would employ an Auror,” said Frank, scratching his lank brown hair. “He`d be too smart for that.”
“You can`t trust anyone, these days,” Severus offered, philisophically.
“Why did you join the Death Eaters, Severus?” Frank asked.
The question was unexpected, and Severus` fingers flew immediately to his inner forearm, where a sudden pain jerked under the flesh – the afterburn of the dark brand which tattoos his sallow skin. Unnerved, he closed his eyes –
(“I – I pledge –”
He can`t think for the agony of it. There are razors lodged in the meat of his arm, and as he gasps his promise into his knees he feels the ache spreading like a disease along his veins towards his shoulder, and he knows that if he doesn`t speak soon the entire limb will be destroyed..
“Speak, Snape.”
“I pledge my allegiance to my Lord Voldemort, and in doing so will – ah – become a sworn member of the Death Eaters.. I – oh god – I bind myself to his wishes, and to his will, and I endeavour to – oh –”
“Continue!”
“..oh god..”
“He`s had enough, Lord.”
A pause, and Severus` mind grows hazy. Emblazoned against his eyelids he detects pinpoints of green light, sparks of fire and pain. Then these diminish, eclipsed by splotches of red which he recognises as an overture to a nightmare. In his mouth he tastes the dullness of his own blood, and it scares him to realise that this is a flavour hitherto unknown to him. He has never fought before – not like this. Not for his life, and for his future.
“..ahh..”
“Lord! You have to stop!”
“Malfoy? You dare to challenge the ritual of the branding?”
“He will die if you continue, Lord.”
“If he dies he will prove that he was never strong enough for the ranks of the Death Eaters.”
“Lord. If we are to kill our followers as well as those who oppose us, there will be few wizards left on this earth. Let him take the brand; he may swear later. I brought him to you for his aptitude in learning and potions, not for his physical prowess. And should he ever falter from our flock, Lord, I shall bear full responsibility for his transgressions. You have my word, Lord.”
In the silence that ensues Severus screams wordlessly, his body arced toward the sky in the throes of his excruciating torture.
“Your word, Marcel?”
“My word, Lord. My word, and my blood.”
“As you wish, then. The boy will make his pledge when he is rested.”
“Thank you, Lord..”
And Severus remembers little else, because a swift darkness has come suddenly upon him, and as he lapses from consciousness into its toxic embrace he hears the departing steps of the two Death Eaters, master and subject, as they depart the shadow of the dark altar..)
“Why did I join the Death Eaters?” Severus snarled. “What the hell sort of question is that, Frank?”
“Just making conversation,” said Frank, looking absently at his plump hands. “Sorry. Didn`t realise it was so personal to you, mate.”
“Of course it`s fucking personal,” the potions-boy growled. “Do you think I did this on a whim?” And he dragged up the sleeve of his shirt, so Frank could see the bold imprint of the Dark Mark still surrounded by purple, healing bruises. Leaning in as Frank recoiled, Severus thrust his arm forwards, squeezing his shoulder so the blood pulsed harder behind the tattoo. His face had become a mask of rage; he could barely articulate his frustration, the offence he`d taken at Frank`s banal inquiry. He screamed now, “Do you think I fucking..”
“My stars.”
The voice was soft, but carried such an air of dignified revulsion that Severus was shocked into withdrawing. Suddenly exhausted, he sat down heavily on his chair and stared blankly across the table at Frank, who appeared to be in a similar state of surprise.
“Are we quite finished, potions-boy?” Lucius asked.
He had made a fool of himself; he knew this already; he resented being reminded of the fact. Severus` features twisted into an uncomely grimace, but he managed to withold the bitterness from his voice. “I`m finished, sir,” he said.
“Marvellous to hear it,” said Lucius. “I have made arrangements with my dear –ah, sister-in-law. We may stay here – for as long as we so desire. Apparently, it would be ill-advised for us to return to the manor at this time. According to Narcissa, the place is crawling with would-be Aurors and hit-wizards.” He paused, and regarded Frank cooly. “Thank you for mentioning that to me, Longbottom.”
“I didn`t know –” Frank protested.
“We`ll rise early in the morning, and reassess the situation. I`ll speak to Marcel, too.”
“And I thought no one knew where he was,” Severus sniped, smirking at Frank.
“I`ll take the spare bedroom,” Lucius continued, ignoring Severus` taunting. “You two can sleep on the floor. Good night.”
Executing a sharp pivot on his heel he made for the door, and was part-way through before Severus had gathered his wits enough to issue a complaint.
“Wait! Sir! I`m not sleeping on the damn floor.”
“Would you kick him on my behalf, Frank?” said Lucius, mildly, without looking back. “I`m wearing very expensive shoes.”
Frank laughed despite himself, and then covered his face with his hand. The potions-boy snarled.
“No. Malfoy!”
Rising swiftly from his seat, and almost overturning his plate in the process, Severus dashed across the room, leaving the still-giggling Frank behind.
“Wait!” he yelled again.
By this time Lucius was moving swiftly down the corridor, remaining willfully ignorant of any further requests Severus might choose to phrase. Incensed by the man`s disregard (of his feelings, of his position, of any bloody social graces whatsoever), Severus sprung forward without a thought for repercussions. His fingers ensnared themselves in the sleeve of Lucius` robe, and the blonde stumbled – and then swung unsteadily in a short elipsis which came to a painful conclusion as his shoulders foundered against the wall.
( Air.. air.. )
“..uh.”
Severus smacked him again for good measure, and then released the man. Consequences be damned, he thought, angrily. He`d had to suffer enough in his lifetime, and the arrogance of some Death Eater upstart, even if he was the brother of Marcel Malfoy, was not to be tolerated. Lucius and Frank had alternately ignored him or embarrassed him over the entire course of the journey, and Severus had finally reached his breaking point. He felt no respect for either of them, any longer – they might have been members of the same team, politically speaking, but he considered neither worthy of the Dark Mark.
He looked down at the thin figure groaning infront of him and hated Lucius Malfoy. He hated him with an unspeakable and infuriated passion.
“I said, wait. Is your hearing as bad as your manners, Malfoy?”
“Oh.. my stars,” the blonde murmured, and ran his tongue slowly across his lips. His fists were tensed by his sides, the knuckles a pinkened contrast to the pallor of his skin.
( Air.. air.. )
“I said, sir, I will not sleep on the fucking floor,” Severus snapped. “I`ve followed both of you fools on your little errand, I`m three hours away from where I`m supposed to be, and I`d apparate away if only I knew the damned location of the manor. So – either you explain to me where the manor is, right now, or you let me sleep in comfort. And these are, I`ll add, very bloody reasonable requests.”
Lucius` head lolled on his shoulders – and it occured to Severus he might have hit the man rather harder than he intended. When Lucius` reply came it was husky. “You can`t reach the manor by apparating,” he whispered. “It`s in an uncharted zone.. you have to travel the hard way, I`m afraid.” For some reason he lavished particular attention on the word ‘hard’, rolling it over in his mouth as if it were a particulary succulent morsel of food. “But..”
“But?” Severus prompted.
“But you may – ah. Have the bed. If you are not averse to sharing it.”
“I am averse to sharing it,” said Severus, shortly.
The blonde`s silver eyes fixed on him, an intense glare from beneath the halo of his hair. “Then you may sleep on the floor, potions-boy,” he replied smoothly, and there was no room in his voice now for further negotiations. Straightening, he began to daintily readjust his clothing, and Severus realised that what advantage he had held over the man had vanished.
But a bed, even if he was forced to share it, was surely a step in the right direction. Severus supposed that he should have been thankful he`d not been punished for the insolence of his act – which, now he had time to think about it, was incredibly reckless. To raise his fists against a superior Death Eater? To – he winced in retrospect – slap the man hard in the chest, and then proceed to insult his intelligence?
He gulped, his throat suddenly constricting. Lucius gazed down at him – (when standing upright, there was a three inch disparity in their hieghts weighed in the blonde`s favour). “Well?” Lucius asked, calmly. “To bed with a Death Eater, or to bed without a bed?”
“The former,” said Severus. “On the proviso you don`t snore.”
*
Pain.. is a necessary element of pleasure..
Lucius performed his abulitions in the bathroom, with the afterburn of Severus` blows humming in his brain. His reflection in the sink-mirror was sharp and overly flushed. Heated.
( Air.. air.. )
He exhaled, experimentally, and the glass fogged, and his fingers quaked, and his head ached with the brooding throb of a migraine.
( ..dark.. )
The world was red-rimmed and suddenly delicious. After splashing water on his face, he withdrew from the room, taking a handful of pins and clips with him from Narcissa`s cosmetic box. The potions-boy stood, hook-nosed and nervous in the corridor, and Lucius bestowed on him a devil`s predatorial smile. White teeth within the hem of pink lips; he saw the youth start, violently.
“You may use the bathroom – should you so desire,” Lucius murmured.
“Thank you. Sir.” In the time which had elapsed Severus had evidently recalled his manners.
“No apology,” Lucius remarked – a statement, not a request. He lowered his spectacles on the bridge of his nose, and peered genially over them into the scattered, tense face. “No matter. I deserved it, I suppose..”
“Yes, sir.”
“I will see you in bed.”
“Yes, sir.”
As he continued down the hall he saw a shift of blonde hair in his peripheral vision, a figure ducking back behind a door. Narcissa had been watching their little interaction, it seemed; grey-eyed and quiet and curious. Lucius breifly contemplated following her, but decided against it. His thoughts were a blur, their edges shimmering with a maroon violence; a violence echoed in the decor of his brother`s apartment. The words want and need surfaced intermittently from amidst the haze of barely realised fantasies, like bouys on an unpredictable tide.
( Air.. air.. )
*
They went to bed and fell asleep without further word spoken. Severus looked haunted and shameful when he returned from the bathroom, and Lucius was too concerned by his own thoughts to prod the youth into another frenzy. In the beginning, they spaced themselves well apart on the satin sheets, creating a deep valley between their parallel forms. But, during the course of the night, Lucius woke to discover the sleeping Severus burrowed into his back, suffering a series of vague, half-erections which came and went – fleeting, whimsical arousals.
There was something deliciously pathetic about this situation. Not wishing to rouse the boy just yet, Lucius gently pushed himself backwards, until the length of Severus` cock pressed securely to his spine, above the buttocks. A heat, accompanied by a slight moistness, prickled the small of Lucius` back, and the Death Eater stifled a laugh, pressing his face against the pillows as he ventured a hand behind him to investigate further.
His approach to sex had always been that of tentative, but fascinated experimentation. He would touch this place, and then proceed to that place, and mark his triumphs on his partner`s vocal and expressive response. With women he was invariably taken to assuming a dominant position – he could not abide their nonsensical demands, and chose to explore the various cavities of their bodies in his own time. With men – there had been a few, accidental enounters in his sordid sexual history – Lucius slipped into a child`s persona; he was playful, curious, and faintly abashed by the sheer naughtiness of it. A child is always an innocent in carnal games, and even at twenty-eight, Lucius still found it necessary to transfer the blame for such licentious activity.
The creation of characters had an alternate purpose: it displaced guilt. The potions-boy was, as far as Lucius recalled, no older than seventeen or eighteen.
Jail-bait.
The thought bothered him, but not perhaps as much as it should have. In his hand the boy`s erection radiated an intense and desperate heat, rising now to its full potential. Lucius circled the length between index and thumb, and then very slowly intensified the pressure. The head rested snugly in his palm for a second or two before the youth flinched involuntarily and recoiled from the Death Eater`s grasp. His erection, however, had not waned, and a few minutes later it returned to bunt intuitively against Lucius` open hand.
This proved a marvellous distraction from the fits of introspective weirdness which had been plaguing Lucius` brain. By this stage Lucius was completely involved in his role, and in his careful inventory of the potions-boy`s anatomy. The boy had retired to bed wearing a flimsy pair of cotton shorts, but these had slipped down over his thighs during his dreamtime-struggles. Lucius, his path to physical erudition thusly unhampered, noted in sequence: a thickness of pubic hair (dark, Lucius imagined, but was unable to strain over his shoulder to confirm it), broadly defined hips that arced from the concavity of the youth`s stomach like twin hills on a desert plain, and tensely muscled legs. The boy was thin but not weak – the events in the corridor earlier in the evening had proved that much, at least – and Lucius discovered that he found this attractive: a frailness of figure which belied a greater potency.
He was rougher now upon the completion of these examinations, and cradled the man`s cock with his entire hand, taking the length firmly at the base and then rising along it toward the head. Immediately after the third stroke a seepage of precome exuded to annoint his back, a response which Lucius took to be a welcome reception of his efforts. He bit down on his pillow to quell the snickers of hysteria which rose within him and continued this ingenious labour, all the while wondering exactly when the youth would wake.
He did not have long to wait. A few seconds later Severus stirred, yawning.
“Morning, sunshine,” said Lucius, spitting out his pillow.
There was a solemn pause as Severus gathered his bearings, and then a further hesitation as he assessed his current predictament. “You.. you`re holding my.. dick,” he mumbled, finally, somewhere near Lucius` ear.
“So sorry. I thought it was mine.”
“N-no. It`s not.”
“My mistake,” said Lucius.
Severus nuzzled closer and draped an arm over Lucius` shoulder. He was too sleepy to dispute this indignity; too sleepy and too stupidly aroused. Lucius` motions were inexpert (though this clumsiness might have, in part, been attributed to his difficult position) but nevertheless enjoyable, and Severus – without knowing why – pressed his lips to Lucius` neck and kissed him there, staying clear of the many pins and ties which held Lucius` hair in place.
Then a second of dull-singing pleasure engulfed him and he moaned, convulsed, and accidentally banged his nose off Lucius` upperarm.
“..ow.”
“Shut up.” Lucius started to laugh, wheezed loudly, and then lay still.
“No. You shut up.”
“No. Go back to sleep.”
“I will not,” Severus said, mid-yawn. “I want.. to go to the manor. I have to meet Marcel. I have an.. appointment..”
“How wonderful for you,” said Lucius.
“I`m not in any way.. impressed by you,” said Severus. “I think you`re an asshole.”
“I find you equally unpleasant, I assure you.”
Severus nestled down again, leaving an uncomfortable wet patch on both the blankets and Lucius` pajama bottoms. Lucius didn`t have the energy or the motivation to rise and change.
V – Waking Up Tired. (Bedroom Duologue)
Morning..
Resting within the Death Eater`s palms was a beautiful silver bowl, its pale, gauzy contents swirling to the very rim, so that it appeared to the bleary-eyed Severus as if it were a convex mirror turned onto its face. Propping himself up on the crutch of an elbow, the potions-boy mumbled something unformed and indistinct, then slumped back onto the pillows. He felt decidedly sticky and wholly uninclined to disentangle himself from the swathe of sheets. Bathed in the dreary English morning light which filtered through the window`s vertical blinds, Severus extended his thin arms over the covers in a lazy yawn.
“My sister-in-law`s favourite toy,” Lucius explained, beside him. “A pensieve. See – you can draw memories from your mind and into the bowl..”
“I know how a pensieve works, sir,” Severus grunted.
“Sir? This from the boy who called me an asshole last night, on no uncertain terms. How marvellous your manners have caught up with you this morning.” Tilting the bowl ever so gently, Lucius inspected the pensieve`s interior. “Cissy – Narcissa – is addicted to the past. Me – I cannot get free of it fast enough. I think the pensieve senses that. I never see anything but my reflection. Myself, and what`s behind me.” He sucked his lower lip between his teeth, contemplative. “I heard it takes a great power to wipe a pensieve. To wipe a mind, I think, would be a – ah, better way to put it. To erase memory..”
“Cool, sir,” said Severus.
“Do at least pretend to listen to your elders and betters, boy. You never know when you might learn something fascinating.”
“You – last night –” Severus said, trying to regroup his thoughts into some semblance of order. His brain was scatty, and sticky, too, like his body beneath the sheets. A spreading numbness had worked its way into his muscles, atrophying the very nerves, and resulting in a total exhaustion which even the repreive of sleep could do nothing to dispel. Moving his thigh, experimentally, he discovered his skin was fused to the sheets with sweat and post-coital juice.
Lucius` legs, ridging the blankets no more than a few inches from his own, were temptingly close; but the very idea of cuddling against the man was anathema to Severus` dignified sensibilities. Asshole, he`d called Lucius last night, as brave in the stupor of sex as he`d been in the spasms of rage, and an asshole Lucius remained. But the appeal of warmth, even if it were derived from such a thin and bony figure, was undeniable..
“I believe the phrase is ‘to jerk someone off’,” came the Death Eater`s dry interuption, before Severus could make a decision to crawl closer or veer away. “If one is to use the – ah, vernacular. I shouldn`t concern yourself with it overmuch.”
“Shouldn`t concern myself with it?” Severus snorted, vaguely affronted. “What under god is that supposed to mean?”
“I mean, dear potions-boy, that thou shouldst keep thy bless`d mouth shut and thy lips clean of slander. I don`t believe we`d made bargain for you to rest in my bed for more than a night.” With an effort he lifted the pensieve from his lap and onto the bedside table, where the contents sloshed themselves in an enticing manner, recalling to Severus a sudden, though not particulary urgent, desire to piss. “I think – a bath,” Lucius added, half to himself, and drew away the covers.
Emerging from the blankets, Severus saw that Lucius was half dressed; the man wore loose silken pajama bottoms that were perhaps a size too large for him in the waist, and an inch or so short in the leg. Marcel`s clothes, Severus surmised. Lucius lowered himself to his haunches, with his back to Severus, and began to ruffle through a chest of drawers. The arc of his spine rippled the pale skin of his back, each vertebrae strained into individual prominence. A moment later he had risen again, a towel in hand. Without turning he wrapped it about his hips, releasing the waistband of the pajamas in the same motion – his modesty preserved, at least for the time being.
Pivoting briskly, he spun to face the boy directly for the first time, but his eyes did not fix upon Severus` face, nor did he offer any alternate acknowledgement of the youth`s presence. Instead, he remained there half-naked and desultory – as if at some point during his declothement he had forgotten the purpose of this undertaking, and searched the room to determine the reason.
Set with his feet slightly apart, his thighs – slight, and almost devoid of the evidence of muscle – curved gently inward until they were obscured by the towel. His thin fingers lingered delicately over his belly, overlapping the towel and consequently securing it in place. Lucius` body was that of a wastrel: there was an infantile weakness about his shoulders and chest which was rare to see in men of his age, and his abdomen puffed out from below the teirs of his ribcage, a small, downy paunch quite unlike the concave stomach Severus had anticipated. Wisps of blonde hair feathered a thin line downward from the navel to the towel`s hem.
“Mr. Malfoy..? Lucius..” Severus tried, rolling himself onto his knees on the mattress with some effort.
The sound of his name snapped Lucius out of his reverie. “See anything you like, potions-boy?” the Death Eater inquired, bemused.
Severus declined to accept this bait. “I`ll keep you posted, sir,” he said.
“If you say so..”
He began to make for one of the twin doors that led from the room. It was too much for Severus to bear. The lackadaisical attitude of the man was infinitely worse than an outright rejection. Smarting, Severus half stumbled from the bed, throwing the blankets willynilly in his pursuit.
“Stop!” he panted. “Tell me how you feel. I`m owed that, at least.”
Lucius` hand rested on the doorknob. “I owe you nothing, potions-boy,” he said, quietly. “Nor am I in the business of granting favours.”
Severus stopped short. Anger and pain throbbed through his brain at this – another snide set-back, another vicious rejoiner. Brilliant student he might have been, but Severus` books and his classes had not prepared him for a situation like this. He stood naked and sweating and sticky and completely stripped of the dignity he had been so assured of a mere minute before, gangling, stupid, ignorant – no more than a boy and less than a man, and broken in a word. The ragged split-ends of his dark hair cluttered his vision; he pushed them aside gracelessly, the greasy strands clinging now to his shoulders and cheeks.
“Luc..” he said, hopelessly.
“I don`t want you, Severus,” Lucius replied, lending a malicious edge to the youth`s name.
There it was: the word, and the breaking.
No. No. That`s not fair! Severus screamed mentally, while his body remained stone-still and rigid in defeat. You touched me. You touched me. It was you who started it. Who started this, whatever this is. You can`t do this. You.. you asshole. You can`t push me like that and expect no repercussions. You can`t pretend it didn`t happen. You can`t, because I wont –
“I do not want you,” Lucius murmured, softly. “But I will have you, if only because it pleases me to own things I do not need.”
He raised a hand and smiled with the cool abandon of a demon, and his index curled a beckon that Severus was willless to resist. “Now, come, potions-boy,” said the Death Eater, smoothly. “Hot water waits for no man.”
*
While Lucius tossed various suds-creating potions into the bath water, Severus took a piss. He felt violated. He had been violated. The fact he had not tried to resist only attested to the demon`s powers of persuasion. He`d been captured while weak by a vulture; a sexual predator, Severus thought, gritting his teeth.
“Boy..?”
Severus flushed the toilet and re-entered the bathroom. The air was fogged with steam, but Lucius was clearly visible, sprawled back in the hot tub, his upper chest and shoulders rising from the puffy clouds of foam. He had released his hair from its pins but not from its braid, and the blonde plait hung over the edge of the bath like the slithering tail of a rat; his rectagular-rimmed spectacles sat on the edge of the sink. As Severus approached, Lucius drew his legs toward his chest, providing an equal space.
“You took your time.”
The water was fabulously hot, blistering enough to make Severus` skin crawl. He crouched opposite Lucius, his shoulders hunched, his head down – in every way making it clear he was suffering such ignominy under duress. Lucius laughed mirthlessly at the youth`s despondant theatrics.
“Don`t look so impossibly sour,” he said. “You`d think I`d just slept with your sister.”
“I don`t have a sister.”
“That gives you all the more reason to smile, boy. And you must remember – today is the day that little Severus gets to meet big bad Marcel, who`ll teach him all manner of naughty Death Eater things.”
“Stop it. Sir.” Severus heard the quaver in his own voice, and hated himself for it.
“Stop what, precisely? Ah, I`m merely offering you your day`s itinery..”
Lucius` knee, nudging lightly against Severus` side, seemed as viable a handle as any. Severus gripped it and tugged, and as Lucius skidded toward him with a startled yelp, Severus pounced. Wads of suds scattered explosively between them as they collided: Lucius grappling to stay afloat, Severus struggling to push his advantage of strength. The man`s skin was water-slippery, and Severus` straining fingers failed to latch firmly upon anything – those limbs he managed to secure only slipped elusively from his grasp a second later.
Hold still, you stupid bastard, Severus cursed him. With a final harsh shove, he withdrew as far as he could to his side of the bath, and glared, crossing his arms with his hands under his armpits. Lucius flailed a moment longer, before realising the threat had vanished. Confused, he squinted myopically across at Severus, and then prodded him underwater with a toe.
“Excitable boy, aren`t you?” he said. A half-smile slanted his features on a diagonal: wry, smirking, and utterly undetered. Severus was on the verge of launching another bath-tub attack when he became aware of something: in the breif skirmish, Lucius hadn`t offered a sound louder than a whimper. No protests, no screams for assistance, no shouts invoking Frank or Narcissa`s names..
“I don`t – ah, mind,” said Lucius. “I think I..” His breathing was laboured, his chest heaving to rhythmically break the surface. The smirk he wore became tinged with doubt; he sucked his lower lip between his teeth. Pale lashes clung damply to his cheeks as he lowered his head; he studied his knees and the bubbles which surrounded each pale island of skin. In an instant the formidable persecutor had vanished, replaced by the nervous confession of a child. Lucius poked at the depths of the foam. “I think you – could..” he said, presently. “If you, ah, wanted to..”
“Wanted to.. what?”
“..not sure.” Without his glasses, Lucius` face appeared younger, almost naive – the word was innocent, if such things could ever be applied to Death Eaters and their kin. He extended his arms toward Severus, the palms uppermost, the wrists aching to veer together, yet not quite touching. He said, “Well?”
“Er. Pardon?”
Lucius snapped out of the act. “I gave you credit for your intelligence, potions-boy,” he hissed. “Don`t disappoint me.” He reached forward, taking Severus` forearms – by this stage, Severus was too utterly perplexed by the performance to offer even a token resistance – and placed the youth`s hands on his chest. He smiled, coy and self-effacing once more. He said again, “Well?”
And this time, Severus understood. The man was presenting himself as a rag-doll, weightless and pliable – a fantastic, living, breathing puppet. For all his refined eloquence, the Death Eater was no more than a vessel, a will-less object, ripe for the toying with. Severus, who had so long fantasied about manouvering another`s body to his own whim, was simply enraptured. As he palpitated his hands experimentally against Lucius` bare chest, Lucius mumbled out a feverish plea, but offered no physical resistance. The silver eyes were rabid and staring, though: half fearful, half awestruck, like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.
“I won`t – you won`t. I will – I – please.”
These words parted the thin lips in a hapeless babble, and the Death Eater upturned his sharp chin and stared at Severus over the bridge of his nose for a single, frantic second, as if a look alone could save him. If saving was, indeed, what Lucius desired. Beneath the soapy suds, Severus could feel the man squirming and twitching, the reedy muscles in his thighs vibrating like bass-strings. There was no grace at all to Lucius in this state; just a wanton and utterly provocative need that screamed such things Lucius` tremor-struck mouth could never clearly articulate. Severus had barely touched him – and yet Lucius was already panting in desperation, great sobbing breaths that suffused his pale features with scarlet.
If I so much as stroke him, he`ll come in my hands, Severus thought, cruelly amused. He slid his hands across the slippery slope of Lucius` abdomen to the hips which jerked uneasily against him, creating lapping tides which sloshed to the bathtub`s rim. A beatific smile fluttered on the Death Eater`s face at this motion, a stupid, ecstatic grin that quickly matured into a tense grimace. The man appeared caught between arousal and apprehension – a losing battle. His long fingers clawed hopelessly at the wall-tiles, as if the inches they gained there might possibly go some way toward his eventual escape.. and yet all the while he kept pushing, in that desperate and apologetic way of his, rocking himself forwards even as he strained back.
He was a cold, shallow body roused to a sudden, animal heat, and Severus hated him and wanted him; the two, he found to his surprise, were not mutually exclusive. The overwhelming desire to hurt, to tame by the measure of violence, filled Severus` mind and throbbed in his gut, and as he leant forward to reassert his grip on those bony hips he felt his own erection grow warmly against his belly. It was the first arousal Severus could remember having which had its source in a real, attainable object; it was the first arousal he had attributed to the needs of his own body, and not those of another, fantasy alter-ego. His nails bit into the soft skin of Lucius` stomach.
“You pervert,” the Death Eater giggled.
“Shut the fuck up,” said Severus, and jerked him backwards, hard. Lucius` half-smirking face disappeared beneath the surface with a splash, his hands flailing against the smooth walls of the tub. For a second Severus saw the man`s eyes sparkle, terrified, through the water, before the suds eclipsed him from sight.
Now the battle began in earnest. Underwater and choking, Lucius` muted buckings became a mad scrabble for air and life. Tortured screams bubbled to the surface amidst the calamity of foam. Bending between the wildly waving arms and kicking legs, Severus pinioned Lucius` shoulders to the floor of the bath and held him there, stubbornly refusing to give in. Finally, Lucius` struggles began to dwindle in strength; a weak kick here, a plaintive slap there.. Once Severus was assured the Death Eater was well and truly remorseful for his ill-mannered accusation, he grasped the man by the shoulders and hauled him out of the water.
“Now, then,” said Severus, and shook him. Blue-tinged and shuddering, Lucius tore himself away with a childish feint of his shoulders. Lurching to the side of the bath, he spat water and phlegm onto the floor.
“You shouldn`t – I hate that.. I can`t..” he spluttered through his sobs.
“Shut the fuck up, sir.”
In silence, Lucius retreated to the other end of the tub, his neck aligned between the taps. His silver eyes were damp-lashed; his nostrils quivered. He coughed weakly into his hand.
“I like the way you talk, sir,” said Severus, cooly. “You can be very interesting to listen to at times. But at others, I don`t want to hear you. And now is one of those times, Mr. Malfoy. So if you can manage to keep your ugly little mouth shut, I may find it in me to torture you a little more. In the best possible way, of course.”
Lucius said nothing.
“Alternately, you can get out of the bath now, and call Frank or Marcel or even your bloody inane sister-in-law to come and lock me up.”
“N-no..”
“What do you want, sir?”
Lucius` gaze strayed to Severus` midriff, and then lowered. There was nothing sultry about this look; nothing to hint at falsity. It seemed Lucius had given up on any attempts to reconcile his passion with his distaste. All that remained of him now was the simplicity of his craving – illustrated in this tragic and utterly perfect plea. Something lurched in Severus` chest, then; his heartbeat quickened to an uneven tempo, and it was with a fierceness that he concentrated on keeping his voice level.
“I thought as much,” he said.
He was merciful in leiu of this exquisite submission. With strong hands he led the man backwards, supporting Lucius` buttocks on his upper thighs; and with the man`s legs spread in a v-shaped surrender upon his chest, Severus snuck a hand below the water`s surface. Inspecting the man`s anus, Severus discovered the muscle there protruded slightly, a small hub of trembling, slightly rippled flesh. Lucius` entire body contracted in a gentle shudder in response to Severus` investigation; a white-wash of foam rocked between them and, with comical ponderosity, Lucius` cock raised its pinkly-gleaming head above the crest of the waves.
“..gosh,” came the breathless and slightly shameful whisper. Lucius` grey eyes were clear, unreflective, moist; his head dipped toward his chest.
Severus nearly sobbed. Slowly but surely, he slid his fingers, one by one, into the molten pith of the man.
|
