 | Brittle Lightby jat sapphire |
Disclaimer:
J. K. Rowling created the world in which this vignette takes place. That world belongs to her, to her publishers, and to Warner Brothers. I just dally here for a few paragraphs, no harm, no foul.
Notes and Warnings:
School-boy infatuation and sex. They might be sixteen; I'm not sure. They're definitely not mature enough to start these relationships--but as many have done before them, they're starting anyway.
I have a somewhat longer fic with my kind beta-readers; this is just ... a coffee break. Unbeta'd, that is. I borrowed the idea that Slytherin House wasn't always in the dungeons from Ivy Blossom, I think.
Last night, there had been an icy rain that lashed the windows of Hogwarts like invisible whips; Snape knew it although the dungeons had of course been quite unaffected. Today the light snowcover, which had been a gentle glowing white, was blinding, and so were the trees, walls, gargoyles, everything out-of-doors--coated with thin shields of ice, bright as mirrors. Light poured unchecked through the windows, though looking out left a strangely dreamlike impression, as ice against glass made the view wavery except where the sun had already melted ovals on each eastward pane. Outside any of the doors, the lightest step broke through a transparent crust, crackling louder than flames or crushed dry leaves.
Snape walked deliberately in the garden, listening to the crunches. He visualised himself: black robes, black scarf, black gloves and boots, stark against the bone-pale day. Like the bare trees and bushes around him .... he fingered the sticks of a bush. Sprout would know which kind of bush it was; he only knew it was leafless and reddish brown, with hard knobs scattered over it, and frozen within a shroud of ice, slick even to his gloved hand.
He remembered putting the end of such a frozen twig into his mouth, long ago. He hadn't worn gloves then, and his fingers had melted dents in the ice, which was thicker than this. He had pretended to fellate it to amuse Lucius. That hadn't been in the garden. They'd dared each other clear to the Forbidden Forest that morning--Lucius had claimed to know a centaur, which indeed he might have done, but they never went that far into the wood. Lucius had said something, and Snape had picked up a handful of snow, meaning to make a snowball, but it was a mess of leaves and edgy pieces of ice, so he just tossed it at the other boy. They ran amongst the small trees and undergrowth, shouting and laughing and throwing things at each other, and then stood panting the sharp air in and out. Snape's nose stung with it, and Lucius' ears were bright red against his pale hair. Then they'd gone back to Hogwarts.
Now Snape felt his mouth twist, remembering the bright morning, the cold air, the brush of Lucius' lips against his own--such a brief touch--and the Marauders finding Snape alone in the bath afterward. He hadn't wondered then why they'd been wandering round the long-unused rooms where Slytherin house had once lodged. It just seemed inevitable that he had only moments of comradery and happiness before Black and his cronies appeared to ruin everything.
In fact, though--Snape bared his teeth against the chill morning wind with the effort of fair remembrance--Lucius had been long gone by the time Black and the others had arrived. Snape had simply been lying in the big tub, lightly stroking his own skin under the water, head turned toward the window to see a branch tap the iced glass. It was bent slightly downward like a finger, and he moved his hips lazily, feeling again how Lucius' finger had breached him. The water made a sound as soft as breath against the tile.
And then he'd heard them come into the outer room, voices rough with laughter and overlapping so closely that he could not make out the words.
They hadn't hurt him, just hauled him out of the tub so they could drain and use it themselves; Black mocked him and Lupin smirked, and Pettigrew tried to trip him but only kicked one ankle. Snape had felt hot with adolescent shame and impotent rage, and he snapped out something about whom these rooms could be said to belong to--not Gryffindors, certainly--but Potter had a maddeningly logical retort. It was true that Slytherins weren't really supposed to be there either, any more.
Snape had thrown his clothes on and darted through the hallways, cloth clinging to his wet skin ... and he'd almost run into Lucius, who was as always immaculate, the perfect prefect. No one else had been present, so Snape had blurted out his anger, and Lucius had laughed outright at him.
Comfort had never been the blond boy's style. Or fighting another's battles ... no, Lucius saved his fealty for the more powerful.
It had taken Snape entirely too long to know that.
All the while he had been remembering, he had also been stalking among covered flowerbeds and naked bushes; now he had reached a stand of juniper, dark Slytherin green with its berries hard and withered, nearly black. He combed one hand through the supple, fleshy needles as if they were hair, taking deep breaths of a scent that seemed to fill his whole head and spoke to him of vanished years.
He didn't know afterward what he had heard. Something reached his ears; something roused his curiosity. Perhaps it was the usher's instinct he'd imprinted on his mind, over many terms dealing with wave after wave of children whose only thought seemed to be to break one rule after another. He moved sideways, gliding, putting his feet down so slowly that the ice hardly spoke, step after step, the low murmurs and smacks clearer as he neared their source.
Two boys were sprawled in the snowy needles between the junipers and the garden wall. Their limbs and robes were so entangled that they seemed one figure, but for the slow groping movements and the two heads, one pale and one dark. They were kissing. Their eyes were shut and their attention wholly absorbed. Snape relaxed--he'd have to shout to even let them know he was there.
For a moment he did not shout. The fair boy moved over the dark one, stooped like an owl over a mouse, nibbling, pecking, pulling back until their mouths almost ceased to touch--but did not--and then diving back in. A slow dance, beautiful, the dancer wise as a serpent in pleasure. Snape did not need to see the Slytherin scarf to know who this was, though it was spread there on the ground. And a slide of one hand up the side of the other boy's face, pulling back the hair, exposed the jagged lightning-bolt scar and identified him.
And Snape still stood, frozen as the gargoyles above them, enclosed in sudden ice. Dark hair and light tangled together in his eyes; sweetness and bitterness flooded his heart and his throat.
He rarely felt sympathy for Potter: the wizarding world was full of people bemoaning his every stubbed toe. But now--but now--he ached for the boy, for the future he saw, the past that made it so inevitable--for the pain they would someday share even if Snape never spoke of it. The light in that pale Malfoy hair, in the ice-storm eyes, was too brittle to last, too brief to capture.
Higher up, the tower behind them emerged into sunlight, and something above them slid, fell, shattered with a delicate sound more musical than glass. The boys started apart, Malfoy rolling over on one elbow--and they saw Snape standing there.
For a long moment they stared. Snape did not know what was on his face. Potter was shocked, all red mouth and wide green eyes. Malfoy recovered quickly, his own eyes narrowing and his mouth curving insolently. He was about to say something, but Snape was certain he did not want to know what, and forestalled him. "Get up. Go in." He waved one hand. "There must be somewhere you ought to be."
There would be times when the Malfoy grace faltered, but being discovered in dalliance would never be one of them. Malfoy rose, one hand smoothing back his hair, smirking though his eyes were lowered. Potter scrambled, embarrassment deepening the blush the kiss had given him. He picked up the Slytherin scarf, and Malfoy took it with a flirtatious glance that made Potter blush the more.
"Go," said Snape again, and they went.
The dark smudge where they had lain mocked Snape's eyes. He looked up, past the ragged tops of the junipers and the grey line of the wall, into the cold and burning sky, and stared for a long time at the single bird hung high in the merciless glare. Fighting the wind.
*** end ***
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