Chapter Ten

It seemed to take forever, countless overloud beats of my heart; and just when I thought it was too late, and I felt the dull thud of defeat and the bitter taste of rejection, she turned to me. Her blue eyes were questioning, demanding that I untie my reluctant tongue, and for one as eloquent as I fancied I was, I found again, that when it mattered, I had nothing to say. I wanted to get past that bit; I wanted to get to the bit where I could hold her in my arms. I had never had that problem with other women, not that there had been that many, but I had always managed a fairly smooth transition from one stage in that particular minuet to the next; it was a dance, after all, the intricate steps of which led to intimacy and were engraved on the hearts, not to mention the loins, of most young men of whatever persuasion.

'Damnit, Severus,' she said, crossing the kitchen to where I stood, lost in the whirlpool of my feelings and my mind's more inane ramblings. 'My heart is not a toy to be played with or broken at your whim.'

'Yes, I know,' I replied; I was up to five words. I looked to the floor for some type of inspiration, and found none, or maybe I did. It reminded me of looking at the floor in the next-door room that very morning, at the spilt elf wine seeping into the floorboards, at my dreams trickling away in little rivers of red. It reminded me of the aching emptiness I had tried to fill with whisky, and what a fickle friend that had shown itself to be, and how I had felt then. It reminded me of how I had longed for a second chance, and how I had sworn to myself that I would not squander it as I done the first; and at last it reminded me that this was that chance, and that there would not be another.

She had sat back down at the table, and I didn't even know when that had happened. I drew in a deep breath, cursing myself. Damnit, I had just faced Tom Riddle with a pack of lies about my loyalty, and yet could not find it within myself to tell the truth to the woman I loved; what kind of man, I wondered, was I?

I don't know what drew me to look at the window, to where a French door led to the torch-lit garden, and if I weren't mistaken, which I then knew I wasn't, I could see there was a little veranda just outside the door. 'Let's go onto the terrace,' I suggested, using the same words I had used at Malfoy Manor. 'It should be quiet out there, and if it's not, we can walk across the lawns. Do you want your cloak?'

She smiled ... her breathtaking smile, and I could see then that her earlier ones, to Sirius and whomsoever she had bestowed them upon, had been but a parody of the one that belonged to me, and I could see that she also was thinking of another night not long before, and that perhaps that night at the manor had been a rehearsal after all.

As she stepped outside into the crisp evening, I raised my arms to put a hand on each of her shoulders. And this time no one else came out, and no one listened to me tell her that I loved her with all my heart, and that for me there would be no other; and no one saw the tears of regret that welled up in her beautiful eyes, because she loved me too, and had promised herself to someone else.

As I drew away from her, just far enough to watch her face, I saw the moon over her shoulder, where it rode high in the night-time sky. I almost laughed aloud as I realised what I was looking at. She was not full, just a hearty waxing gibbous, and I could tell it would be another two nights, or maybe even three, before she lay directly opposite her ultimate master. I understood Black's glance at Andromeda as he had left, and the long look he had drawn me, and Ethel's torch-lit garden, and wondered if even Andromeda had been party to manoeuvring me to this pass. I didn't ask though, content to leave it as a mystery, and quietly wonder.

I tried to remember what the next step in the dance was, but I seemed to have left the instruction manual elsewhere, and I was just beginning to panic that I had reached another impasse when she leaned towards me.

'These bedrooms, Severus ... the guest ones,' she purred into my chest, and I knew she could hear the beat of my heart. 'Do you suppose they will be warm enough for me? It is such a cold night.'

'And you such a delicate little thing,' I murmured into her hair, joining her game willingly, the fact that she stood very nearly as tall I did, and was as beautifully built as any mere mortal had a right to be, notwithstanding. 'I know my own is warm. Perhaps you should not risk the others.'

They weren't the most subtle remarks either of us had ever made, but it didn't matter to me, nor I suspect to her. They were just a means of moving on to where we wanted to go.

*****

I watched her undress with the slow seductive moves of a Knockturn Alley stripper; of course, that was her intention, to an audience of one. At last she pulled her second stocking from a long shapely leg and tossed it over her shoulder to land I knew not where. She began to cross the short space to where I sat barefooted but otherwise dressed on the edge of the night stand, watching the look of challenge in her blue eyes as she brushed her long black hair back over her shoulder from where it had had the audacity to hide one of her breasts from my view. I drank in the vision of my goddess in human form, her pearly-white skin glowing in the moonlight where it caught the ripeness of her breasts, and the tiny telltale swell of the other life within her, and shone a path of silver across her raven hair.

This was not going to be some melancholy coupling, tinged with guilty regret and thoughts of what might have been; somewhere on the stumbling way up the stairs Andromeda had decided that this was going to be fun. Fun, I had heard of the word, of course, assuming it to mean something to do with laughing, but had experienced little of either. I felt her fingers, slow and assured, begin to unbutton the row of tiny fastenings on my shirt. I took her hands in mine, kissing the back of each one before letting them fall to her side, and ripped the shirt apart to send the buttons skittering hither and thither to hide until morning, joining again whatever game she was playing. I pulled my trousers apart the same way, gasping as they dropped to the floor and my cock sprang free from its only confinement. I groaned as I pulled her to me, feeling our bodies meet at last, as any lingering doubts I might have had about terrified flaccidity became quite the opposite problem.

We tumbled onto the bed, our mouths meeting in their first kiss of unfettered passion, tongues snaking to explore each other. I wanted it to last forever, and knew that if Merlin called me that very night I could go without regret. She was as ready for me as I was for her, and as I entered her for the first time I felt an ecstasy well up inside me that I had never dreamed possible. She slowed me down, pushing back on my shoulders, which was just as well, as I was in danger of losing what little control I had, and I gasped as I felt myself slip from her warmth as she moved over a little below me.

She moved until we lay facing one another in the moonlight, and I groaned as she took my cock in her two hands and bent to kiss the glistening tip, then ran her tongue across her lips as though to catch every taste of me. And I needed to taste her now, and slid down the bed a little to drown myself in the scent of the woman I adored, urged ever onward by her moans of pleasure. I made to mount her again, my own needs becoming desperation, but she pushed me aside until I lay on my back, and she bent her head again to let the heavenly warmth of her mouth surround my cock.

She must have sensed how dangerously close she had pushed me to falling over the edge. 'I wouldn't want you to leave me behind,' she murmured, her voice throaty and breathless. Then she raised herself up to straddle me, letting me slide into her depths again, grinding herself down on me as I toyed with her breasts, teasing her nipples until I was so lost in her that I would have willingly died of it. She reached one hand behind her and began to play with the balls that would surely explode in another moment if she didn't stop, but the moonlight cast across her face, and her low keening moans told me she too had almost reached that point from which there is no return. I watched her face contort in that magnificent agony of sexual climax and felt the somehow different warmth of her contractions, my own breath ever shortening. I was nearly there as I eased from her and turned her onto her back, before plunging into her with a reckless abandon I had not known could exist, and I felt my balls draw up, and slammed into her, eliciting a gasp of pleasure-pain from her, and whatever primal groan came from me as my seed flowed home, like something racing to an unimagined shore.

And as I lay with her in that delicious sleepy post-coital repose, sated and at peace, I felt such a deep contentment within me that I quite forgot she was not mine.

*****

I didn't really concern myself much that Black had not returned for breakfast, taking it for some sort of tact on his part. I suspected he and Lupin were lovers, and it was hardly my business to pass judgement on how any other man saw fit to enjoy himself, or anyone he saw fit to enjoy. Perhaps a few days before I would have been disinterestedly disapproving, but I had developed rather a liking for Black, due in no small way, of course, to the part he had played the previous night; sort of keeping my newfound affections in the Black family, one part of it at any rate.

Ethel had pottered about in the kitchen and then flitted in and out of her picture, without once stooping to cast a meaningful look in our direction. Andromeda and I sat at the table, drinking coffee, and reading whatever parts of the "Daily Prophet" the other wasn't reading at the time, and just enjoying one another's company without the need for conversation. We had gone through to the living room a little later, where I at last got the opportunity to sit on my favourite seat, and it was only when Dumbledore returned unexpectedly, just before lunchtime, that any small concern I was beginning to have turned to alarm.

'I have heard a rather disturbing rumour,' he said, materialising in the middle of the room once I opened the window to let the bee in. 'It seems that Sirius Black and Remus Lupin were arrested last night in a certain establishment in Knockturn Alley. I take it that, as Sirius is not in this room, that in turn confirms that he is not here.'

I felt a slam of guilt as I shook my head dumbly. He had only left the safety of Spinner's End to afford me the opportunity to be alone with Andromeda. 'Azkaban?' I whispered. I knew that there were already one or two wizards who were in Azkaban for no greater sin than being homosexual, whatever other spurious charges had been laid at their doors. I turned for a moment to glance to where Ethel watched from her picture, but she only shook her head doubtfully, as though mystified.

'Not that I can tell,' Dumbledore murmured. 'Arthur Weasley seems not to think so.'

'Do you know who arrested him?' Andromeda asked, her face already pale and worried.

'My source says one of the men was Lucius Malfoy,' Dumbledore replied. 'He wasn't sure about the other, which concerns me, as he knows all of the known Death Eaters.'

'Another spy?' I asked, somehow put out that I was not as unique as I had assumed.

'No,' the old man replied. 'A homosexual wizard who gives me information from time to time about who frequents where, so I, in turn, can warn him who is a danger to them.'

'This is my fault,' I hissed, not failing to notice that whilst I had appointed myself Andromeda's protector, Dumbledore's remit was far wider. 'I should never have let him leave.'

'That is a foolish notion, Severus, and well you know it,' he replied. 'You can hardly hold yourself responsible for a grown man who leaves this house of his own volition. That apart, he knew what dangers lurked, and he has another identity available to him,' he reasoned. 'What possessed him to leave anyway?' he asked. 'I rather thought it was he who wanted to stay here in the first place.'

'How do we find out where he is being held?' Andromeda asked anxiously, ignoring his question.

'We wait and listen,' Dumbledore replied, 'and we hope that they are indeed being held somewhere; the alternative is not one I want to consider.'

'We cannot wait, Dumbledore; the moon is almost full,' I said, before turning to Andromeda. 'Are there catacombs in the Black family home?' I asked her. I had only been to Grimmauld Place once, and knew little of it except that it reeked of hate and anger and something ominous that I didn't want to place.

'Not that I know of, but it's a horrible place, so anything is possible,' she replied.

I thought about that for a moment, and found myself remembering the venomous look Sirius's mother had cast him that night at Malfoy Manor, and wondered if, even then, some plot were afoot to remove him from what Riddle must have regarded as dangerous circulation. But something else occurred to me too, something even more recent. Riddle had told me he was going to delegate the Blacks to Lucius, and I began to suspect he had already done so, for other reasons than Dumbledore's confirmation that he had been present at the arrest.

'It must be the manor then,' I said, and told them of my reasoning. 'The Malfoys have extensive cellars. In fact they are larger than the floor area of the house itself; they stretch right under the front lawns. I don't know them terribly well,' I confessed, 'although I had reason to go down there once, quite a few years ago.'

I remembered the occasion quite clearly; I had been in my fourth year at Hogwarts, and Lucius was in his first attempt at his final year, the one before Abraxas paid a large endowment to the school, and Lucius, at last, miraculously scraped through his N.E.W.T.s. Lucius had been enjoying some notoriety at Hogwarts at the time, more than even his fair share. He had been left to cool his heels at school over the Yuletide break that year, as I always was, and he had become bored and had invited three of his cronies, Evan Rosier, Walden Macnair and Rabastan Lestrange to Malfoy Manor, presumably to show off his wealth and power in a way that he had now brought to some sort of dubious art form. I had not been invited, too low as I was in what he saw as his hierarchy at that time, or so I thought then, but Evan Rosier was frightened of Lucius and had recognised enough of my power to ask me to tag along with him. I remember Lucius drawing me a somewhat apprehensive look when he saw me, and it made me think that he actually saw me as some sort of threat to what he regarded as his supremacy, and I had wondered why that was.

We had been given the grand tour, stiflingly boring as it was, as though any one of us would be interested in which slack-mouthed aristocrat had buggered which other at some obscure point in antiquity, when Macnair came up with the idea of exploring the catacombs. At first Lucius was reluctant, probably having been forbidden by Abraxas, of whom he was at that point suitably terrified, to take anyone down there. But Abraxas was away in Romania on a business holiday, whatever that was supposed to mean, and had taken his wife, the woman I had wrongly assumed was Lucius's mother, with him, and Lucius didn't want to lose face in front of the boys who would become his toadies.

At first I found it almost as tedious as the public rooms had been, having no interest in Abraxas's wine cellar, nor the evidence of his more questionable sexual deviances, but the deeper we went, the more nervous the other boys seemed to become, and the more I began to understand just why that was. I had some limited Legilimency skills at that point, and I found Lucius to be anxious too; I also realised that he had never been this deep into the cellars, and only his vanity was pushing him onward. It was Rabastan who suggested that it was becoming boring and that he was hungry. I knew that to be a lie, sensing, as I had just done, the furtive glances the rest were casting at two small but ancient sarcophagi that we had just passed; they were slightly hidden by two bookcases stuffed full of what looked like ancient texts, ones my fingers itched to reach out and touch. Lucius had not remarked on the coffins; in fact he had become very quiet, and I suspected that he did not know what they were. He agreed readily with Lestrange that it was indeed time for lunch, and he and the other three boys turned with what I sensed was relief, and saw quite clearly was panic on Evan Rosier's part.

I hung back. I had felt something that I doubted the rest had fully understood. Something was alive, or at least aware of our presence, in those small stone coffins, but there was something else I sensed too. They were not there as merely a means to some end of their own; they had a purpose, they were guarding something else, something very much alive, and I wondered just what that was.

Lucius turned and looked back at me, urging me to keep up with the others on the way back. He was afraid; I could tell that, even in the sooty glow of the small torch I carried. He was casting frightened looks along the dusty corridor we had come back down, and it was only then that I noticed that the air of neglect in that part of the cellars was not what it seemed. Cobwebs and dust indeed gave testament to the illusion that that part of the cellar was never frequented, but the floor, whilst having an accumulation of dust and debris of ages piled at the edges, was clean in the middle, as though trodden by more than our own few footsteps that morning. Someone came down here often, and I wondered why. Lucius saw me frowning at the floor in thought, but he had never been over-burdened with intelligence, and failed to see what I had seen.

It was some three weeks later, we had already been back at Hogwarts for almost two weeks, that Abraxas paid an unexpected visit to Hogwarts, and Lucius was summoned to his presence. He missed dinner, something I had never known him to do, and he was very quiet when he came to the common room that night. Lucius waited until we were alone for a few minutes, and surprised me by asking me to meet him in the Library later, after the rest of the Slytherins had gone to bed. I could see he was trying to hide some pain, both mental and physical, and wondered what summary justice Abraxas had meted out to him, but his thoughts were a welter of confusion I could make no sense of, and I agreed to meet him. It was the first time I ever felt truly sorry for Lucius Malfoy, as he confided to me that his father had somehow been informed that we had been down to the cellars, and Abraxas had actually used a Cruciatus Curse on his own son to remind him of the price of defiance. That wasn't what had caused my bout of compassion though, it was that Lucius had just learned that the twin sarcophagi guarded his own twin sister, a sister he had never known existed. He said that Abraxas had told him that she suffered from a family affliction that necessitated she be kept in a safe quiet place; I took that to mean she was mad.

Lucius was called away from school just before the end of term to attend a mysterious family funeral. He drew away from me after that, seeming to want to put some distance between us, but not before attempting an Obliviation Spell on the part of my memory relating to the cellars and his sister, the fool announcing his intentions as he raised his wand. By the time he left Hogwarts at the end of his repeated seventh year, he had become as aloof to me as he thought he remained to that day. In some way, I suppose I still felt sorry for him, that he had needed a confessor, and yet was so afraid of incurring his father's wrath by having one. I found myself wondering if Abraxas Malfoy had wanted to be rid of the only other fruit of his loins now that Lucius knew of her existence, or if Lucretia Malfoy had simply died. Whatever the truth was, I realised I knew for certain where Black and Lupin were being held.

'I must go to the manor,' I said, as I finished telling Dumbledore the story. 'It is only two days, by my calculation, to the full moon. We cannot leave Lupin there, any more than we can leave Black.'

'On what pretext?' he asked.

I shook my head, trying to think. 'I do not know yet, but I must get down to the catacombs.' I plucked a maple wand from my desk drawer and slipped it into the pocket on my thigh beside my own wand, and turned to leave; there was no time to waste. "You will wait here?" I asked that other side of Dumbledore's awareness.

"Of course. Remember, Severus, do not risk your cover. There is no value to me if the price of Sirius and Lupin's freedom is the loss of yours." He held out his hand in an unfamiliar gesture, as though expecting me to shake it the way one would shake the hand of a relative stranger in greeting, and it was only when my own hand clasped his that I realised he had passed me something, two things to be precise. "Use the white one only if you are in extremis, my boy, lest her Dark Sister feels her touch. You will understand how to, if the need arises," he said. "The other is one of Fawkes's feathers; it is the only Portkey that can lead to my office."

His thought slipped out of my mind, leaving behind a strange warmth and sense of belonging I had never felt before.

Andromeda walked me to the front door, her blue eyes unreadable but for some obscure pain. 'Be safe, Severus,' she said, leaning forward to kiss me in a way that made my resolve falter, and made me want to stay just where I was. 'Do not shorten whatever little time we have together.'

I knew what she meant; I knew that one day, whenever this danger had passed, she would leave my life, but for now I would content myself in the knowledge that even a fool's paradise is a paradise of sorts.

*****