Part Third: The Hart Subvertant: Prologue Part 5

Prologue: Like a Plant Kept in the Dark, Part 5:

The summer continued. Severus ran errands and performed organisational tasks for the Malfoys, served as Narcissa's escort when she wanted to go out, then spent hours engrossed in the most complicated and precise sort of potion-making in his spare time, only to be rewarded for all the stresses of his day with a long wallow in Bella's highly addictive charms at night. The many genteel entertainments of the summer felt like an odious sort of duty, just a distraction from his real interests.

Well, except for Evan and Felina's big garden party, that had actually been a good time. It was the first chance he had gotten to see Evan since his return from his honeymoon, and Evan was in wonderful spirits, standing about smiling like anything, his arm around his wife's waist. But now, with a woman who he adored in his bed nearly every night, and who refused to acknowledge their relationship in public, Severus for the first time looked at the happily married Evan with envy. (Or at least Evan was happily married – Felina seemed to deign to allow her husband to be happily married to her.)

But regardless of how lukewarm were the reciprocal feelings of Evan's object of affection, Evan was married to the woman he loved. He could stand about chatting with people and holding his wife's hand, both of them wearing matching wedding bands, and it was infinitely respectable to all concerned. Evan got to live with his wife, to sleep next to her every night, wake up with her, share breakfast with her, everyone expected him to be paired with her at all social events, in every part of his life; as far as the entire world was concerned, Evan's wife was his, inalienably his. To Severus, that married state now seemed like enviable bliss.

As he continued work on the Carnalis potion, he began to idly imagine doing up a batch of that granddaddy of all black market potions, Potio Amatorius, the famous, notorious True Love Potion, and adding a few drops to Bella's brandy of an evening. After all, if she really cared for him as much as she said she did, it wouldn't have any effect on her at all.

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August turned to September, and there were only two weeks left of Severus's and the Blacks' visit to Malfeasant.

But Carnalis was coming along splendidly – the Occamy shells were finally completely dissolved in the yolk of dragon egg, which he kept warm over coals anointed at the waxing gibbous moon with attar of roses... to which he added a single drop of inactivated Runespoor venom... then, at the right moment, he needed to add a single drop of veela sweat... then he needed to add the vaginal mucus of an ovulating woman, which Bella had provided for him... hopefully she had read her body's signs correctly and had collected it at the right time, or all their work would be for naught...

A week later, it was finished.

He had left the completed mixture in a large stoppered glass jar the night before – and the next morning, there was perhaps an inch of viscous violet liquid in the bottom of the jar. The potion had greatly reduced itself in volume, as the grimoire's unknown author had said; this mixture was so volatile in its final stage that it fed on itself in order to make the finished product. Without the most careful measurements and calculation, a batch of Potio Carnalis could consume itself entirely in the final stages, leaving nothing behind.

Severus opened the jar and held it to his nose... Carnalis had a very subtle scent, for a moment floral, then intensely musky – to him, it was very much like Bella's scent when she was intensely aroused... up close and in his face and gasping every time his lips and tongue touched her... Then he set the flask aside, embarrassed. He wouldn't have called the odour exactly pleasant, it was too intimate for that, but it made him want to smell it again. He then decanted the potion into a smaller stoppered phial with utmost care – if he accidentally splashed some on himself and then ingested it, he would be trying to function with the world's most persistent erection preceding him everywhere he went for the next six or eight hours.

He sat there for a long time, just gazing into the vial, holding the concentrated essence of pure sex in his hand, and knowing that he now had the power to have any woman he desired begging for his touch with just a drop of this in her tea. Bella wanted to take this and then go to bed with him... bloody hell, just the thought of that was enough to make him hard. But some dark, atavistic little part of him wondered if it would be possible to accidentally spill a drop into that pretty Beatrice Rookwood's tea of an evening... Perhaps he could entertain both of them together... a tender, impressionable little virgin on one side of him and an older woman so soaked in lust and decadence that she all but sweated sweet depravity on the other... He just let himself imagine what he would do with both of them for a single long moment, his eyes dulling, the philtre of Carnalis held tight in his hand.

After a long moment, he shook off the reverie with a little shudder. Merlin's beard, the Aurors would probably arrest him just for thinking thoughts like that.

Now, where to hide this illicit bit of contraband – there was no way he was going to leave something like this out. With his luck Narcissa would take some for a headache and end up hostessing a gangbang in the back of the village pub, and then Lucius would have his guts for garters when he got back.

He went to the large apothecary's cabinet on the north wall, a wooden chest that held over a hundred tiny drawers of various potion ingredients, and slipping his hand into one of the drawers, he then raised the phial until it met solid wood. He then affixed the phial there in the gap between drawer below and cabinet above with a Sticking spell.

Then he closed and locked the cabinet and went to tell Bella that their project was complete.

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Bella was as ecstatic over the potion's completion as he knew she would be. She wanted to immediately go and see it for herself, so he brought her down into the lab and retrieved the phial from its hiding place in the cabinet. She took the phial from him eagerly, unstoppered it and inhaled a long, greedy breath of its scent, shivering. "Merlin's teeth, my love, this even smells like a great lay."

"So, when do you want to try it?" he asked, wrapping himself around her from behind and hungrily kissing her neck.

"Tomorrow night," she said, with a conspiratorial little smile. "Remember, Aunt Tamora is having another one of her boring afternoon tea parties for all those ladies in her bridge club, and I'll put a couple of drops in my tea at around six p.m. The potion needs an hour or so to start working, so by evening, I'll be absolutely mad for it... How does that sound, baby?"

He groaned. "I don't know if I can wait that long. Let's try it tonight."

"Be patient, baby, be patient," she said, then turned and kissed him deeply.

"All right, tomorrow then," he said, taking the phial back from her and replacing it in its hiding place. "Just remember, it's here in the second drawer from the bottom left. You only need perhaps two drops to get the full effect, any more than that and you could get overexerted, so be careful, all right? I wouldn't want anything to happen to you."

"You mean, you wouldn't want anything to happen to me other than you giving me the shagging of my life?" Bella crooned, drawing him back into her arms.

He let his head fall onto her shoulder with a little laugh. "Yes, my dear, I'm certain that can be arranged."

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The bridge club party was the usual sedate sort of event the Malfoys hosted twice monthly. Aunt Tamora, Aunt Druella, and a group of wealthy older ladies sat down to tea sandwiches, scones, and Earl Grey in the sunroom. Bellatrix, Narcissa, and Severus joined them, all trying to look interested in tales of ferocious victories won at the bridge table.

Bella was especially helpful that day, dressed in unusually demure lilac silk robes. She was offering little cakes and petit fours on a plate, pouring everyone tea, and listening to all the guests' little anecdotes and witticisms with a brilliant smile. Severus watched her from under hooded eyes – it amused him to no end that Bella was putting on this perfect good-girl act when a few hours from now, he was going to be pounding her into the mattress like the randiest whore in the brothel. It was also fun to have her acting the courtesan for him, hovering attentively over him and making a sweet fuss of filling his teacup and bringing him pastries.

Sometime after his third cup of tea, however, he started to feel a bit feverish and light-headed. The room was shimmering slightly in his sight... Narcissa was talking to him, something about dancing and children who needed medicine for their wings... He shook his head hard and rubbed his temples.

"Severus, are you all right?" Narcissa asked, peering at him in concern. "You look flushed."

"I'm... no, I'm not feeling well," he admitted. His eyes raked over Narcissa from head to foot – she had such fragile wrists and arms; the high-necked, cameo-pink silk robes she was wearing emphasised the contrast of her full breasts and her small ribcage, narrow waist and full hips. Such a little queen-bitch ice maiden, always whining and pouting and demanding that he pay attention to her; he knew she wanted it. He'd like to give her her first shag himself while her fiancé was a dimension away chasing Faeries – yes, he'd mess up that just-so blonde hair, force that little cupid's bow mouth down where he wanted it, see tears on that kewpie doll's face –

Where the hell are these thoughts coming from?

He turned away from her, reminding himself that he wasn't attracted to Narcissa, he'd never been attracted to Narcissa, she was spoiled and complained too much and she annoyed him. It was hot in this room, hotter than could be endured. His tight collar and waistcoat were chafing; his skin felt achy and so sensitive that even the fine lawn of his shirt was irritating. He picked up his cup of tea and downed it, poured himself another, but it didn't help even remotely.

"Severus? You look like you might be coming down with a fever," Narcissa said primly. "Maybe you should go lie down. Mother says influenza's going around in the village."

"Yes, yes, I think I should." Damn it all to bloody hell that it was influenza he seemed to have caught – if it had just been a bad cold, he could have taken some Pepper-Up potion and been done with it, but the Wizarding world hadn't managed to cure influenza any more than the Muggles had. He pushed back his chair and stood up, mopping at his brow with his handkerchief. "I'll go lie down. Could you have the house-elves send up some ice water... lots of it... "

"Of course."

He nodded apologetically to Bellatrix as he left the room – of all the times to get sick, he had to choose the night when he and Bella had an apocalyptically hot tryst planned for the evening. Ah well, it wasn't six p.m. yet, so she hadn't taken the potion, and they could always use it another night after he'd gotten better.

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Up in his bedroom, he shed all of his clothes in a long black and white trail that ended at the bed, and crawled between the sheets, pulling them up to his chin. A silver tray with a large glass pitcher of cold water, an ice bucket with silver tongs, a plate of citrus slices, and two glasses appeared on his night table. Someone had also kindly supplied little cut glass bottles of his own willow bark fever reducer potion and laudanum sleeping potion.

He put a drop of each potion in a glass of water, then kept downing ice water until it was gone. Then he lay down and drifted in and out of sleep for some time. Then it seemed he woke, from sweaty dreams of chasing a laughing girl through a forest... crashing to the grass with her in his arms... then they began to make love, as lusty and unselfconscious as wildcats at play...

Someone's cool hand was stroking his forehead – Bella was sitting on the side of his bed, bending over him. "Awwww, are you sick, baby? They said downstairs you'd come down with flu... I came up to see how you were doing... "

Bella... oh, Bella, he whispered. His arms felt boneless, helpless, his skin burning. She stood up, and then a moment later slid into bed beside him, her naked body pressing against his. He engulfed her in his arms, and suddenly it seemed that his every muscle screamed with lust, that hunger exhaled from his skin in a cloud; he had to have her, he'd die if he couldn't have her.

"Bella... what's going on? Did you... " He noticed then that he was harder than a truncheon of wood beneath the bedclothes. "Did you decide to give me the potion instead? Bella... "

"Just relax, baby... " She slithered down his body with a little giggle, and her mouth encompassed him – the pleasure was so acute it nearly hurt. It went on for a long, frenzied, voluptuous time; he had the fingers of one hand fanned through her hair, cradling the back of her skull and drawing her lips down onto him. He wanted her to do it faster, harder, every cell in his body straining to come, but she made him wait, drew the suspense out until he was nearly crying.

Then – horror of horrors – from out in the hallway came a knock on his bedroom door. "Severus, are you all right?" came Narcissa's prim little voice.

From somewhere down in his lap came the sound of Bella's wicked little moan, and she quickened her pace, fastening tighter on him... Oh, you evil bitch...

"Yes, I just need a rest," he called back, desperately trying to keep his voice composed, though internally he was shrieking Go the fuck away, damn you, I haven't got time for this now.

"Are you sure? Do you want me to have one of the house-elves draw a cool bath for you?" Narcissa called. Bella, evil instigator that she was, was now doing her best to milk the orgasm out of him while her prissy sister waited for his answer out in the hall.

"No, thanks. I think I'd rather stay in bed," he replied.

"All right. I hope you feel better." Mercifully, Narcissa's footsteps then retreated down the hall, and he threw his head back and crammed Bella's head down into his lap, finally letting himself come into her urgent mouth... After such a long, painful preliminary, the pleasure was devastating. She clung to him to the last spasm, the last drop, until his spent organ slipped from her hands and lips and they both gasped.

Afterward, Bella stretched herself out at his side, nuzzling him. "What are you feeling now, baby?"

"I feel like... like, damn it, if you wanted me to take it instead, why didn't you just say so?" he demanded. "Why couldn't you just tell me?"

She giggled. "I thought it would be more fun to surprise you."

He would have ordinarily been worn out for some time by such exertions, but now, even an intense orgasm like the one he had just had only temporarily sated the pressure building in his body. He felt more aggressive, too; while he had never been physically forceful with Bella before, had only touched her with sincere affection and the desire to give pleasure, now he wanted to overpower her, control her, make her feel his greater strength than hers. He wouldn't let her move even a foot away from him, keeping her body pressed close to his, hands everywhere. What felt like five minutes after the last act, just the brush of her silken arsecheeks against his cock was bringing it to full readiness again, and he could tell by the way she was drenching his fingers that she wanted it, the little slut... He started to lower her to the mattress, but then somehow she had him sprawled on his back and was sliding down onto him instead. His cock felt so hard it was almost painful, and the only ease for this condition was the tender warmth between a woman's legs.

"Tell me something," Bella whispered, grinding down on him so that he could barely breathe.

"What, what?" he asked, incoherently, barely able to collect his thoughts at all. He would have told her anything in that moment, his bank balance, the combination to his Gringotts vault, any damn thing she wanted, so long as she just didn't stop...

"Will you marry me?" she breathed.

Oh by the Merlin, was that all she wanted – this was some ploy of hers to get him to marry her? She needn't have bothered. He'd been planning to ask her that in a year or so anyway, properly, as soon as he could afford a ring –

But apparently he hadn't answered her fast enough, and she scowled deeply, then slapped his cheek, hard. I said, she snarled, will you marry me?

"Yes, you silly cow, anytime, anywhere. Name the day." He grabbed a fistful of her hair and forced her snarling mouth against his.

"Do you promise? On your word as a gentleman... ?"

"Oh, damn it all to hell, Bella, yes, a thousand times yes, whatever you want. Fuck me."

She laughed, low in her throat, and didn't resist as he locked his hands around her hips and frantically ground up into her. The climax was enough to leave him light-headed; one of the most powerful orgasms he had ever experienced. Yet even that didn't satisfy him for long – fifteen minutes later, his body was clamouring for another round.

"Please, baby, I'm getting tired," she said, starting to pull away from him – but her eyes never left him, as though waiting for a reaction.

"No, you don't," he snapped, forcing her onto her back again. With the frantic arousal came heightened aggression; he wanted her so badly that he felt capable of taking her against her will if she refused him, like an addict driven to desperation by the threat of his drug withheld. "You did this to me, so now you're going to finish it, whether you like it or not."

"Severus... you're scaring me," she whispered, her eyes very big, and round. "Don't... please... "

But she was regarding him with hot, depraved eyes, and her body was arching up to his to be mounted... He could hear the token resistance in her voice, the obvious provocation in her girlish squeaks of protest. She had said now and then that she wanted him to be rougher, wanted him to be cruel and domineering... Yes, she wanted this game of being overpowered so much that she had manipulated him into playing this role for her.

Well then. A gentleman couldn't disappoint a lady.

He reached for his wand on the bedside table – "Incarcerous" – and in a moment, cords had fastened around her wrists, securing her to the wrought iron bedstead, and then he parted her half-closed thighs with one knee, and just let himself have her, cruelly and without tenderness, harder than he had ever taken her before. She was writhing beneath him, her skin burning hot, more aroused than he had ever seen her.

There, you bitch, is this what you wanted? You wanted it rougher, did you? he whispered, his fingers biting into her arms.

Yes, baby, oh yes... you're so good... Her hips snapped against the bed as he worked her punishingly beneath him.

"Get used to it, Mrs. Snape," he gloated. "After we're married I'm going to keep you tied to the bedpost for my own personal use, and you're going to fucking love it."

Then he forgot gentleness, and just let the potion's unnatural appetite take him.

After what felt like hours, until he couldn't come anymore but kept rutting on her anyway, until she had practically fainted and was crying in earnest, desperately begging him to stop, saying that he was hurting her, and he was so tired and sore that he felt like he had been coming blood, he released her from the bonds and just held her tight until the tears subsided, all his rage and passion spent.

"I'd be happy to marry you," he whispered, stroking her hair in reassurance. "I love you, you know that. You didn't have to do any of this, ridiculous thing – I was going to propose to you anyway."

He laid his head on her breast, again wrapped himself around her, and fell heavily asleep.

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A single dose of Potio Carnalis left Severus so exhausted that he slept for over sixteen hours. Bella was nowhere to be found when he awoke, to his intense disappointment. The bed sheets were stained with sweat, dried semen, and here and there a smudge of what had to be blood.

Someone, probably the elves, had left a pitcher of water at his bedside and left a meal of toast and chicken barley soup on his desk – he consumed both in what felt like seconds. Later on he would step on the scale in his bathroom and discover that he had lost two pounds in the last twenty-four hours.

It was now three p.m. in the afternoon, and he felt all right, just a bit tired and weak. He got up, showered, shaved, and got dressed, and then went in search of Bella... went in search of his wife-to-be. Bloody hell, where she had ever gotten the idea that she needed to coerce a marriage proposal out of him, he had no idea – she knew how he felt about her, he'd had a crush on her from the first day he met her and she had to know it, even when she was sixteen and he was ten.

Bella wasn't in her bedroom, nor was she in the library or the front hall, so Severus headed down toward the drawing room.

Merlin's teeth, he thought, she could have told him flat out that she wanted to be his wife while he was cold sober and he would have agreed to it then and there. He didn't give a damn that she was older than he was and had had lovers before him. Where in this world was he ever going to find a woman he wanted more than he wanted her? Both of them were so alike, unconventionally ambitious and self-willed, didn't really give a damn about appearances or proper behaviour or what was expected of them, both iconoclasts who loved everything dark and extreme and wanted nothing to do with children... She would probably even like the gothic gloom of Orkney.

His plans went from there – they could hold the wedding at Snape Hall at high summer when the days were twenty-two hours long and everyone just stayed up and went for walks and had picnics at midnight. They could exchange vows against the backdrop of the cliffs, the sky, the sea... it would be just a very small private affair for family and their closest friends, Evan would make a prince of a best man, and he would have gotten a job by then and finally put a new roof on the place. Once Bella was his wife and living with him, they'd have a grand old time together, and chase each other through those long dark corridors and make love in all the big staterooms he hadn't been allowed into as a child, and make a game of casting all his father's worthless old stocks and bonds into the fireplace. He could only imagine what his father would say about his son bringing this fearless, sharp-witted, self-reliant Amazon home to be mistress of the castle – let the old bastard do cartwheels in his grave for all he cared, no one had better ever dare try to throw things at the wife of Severus Marcus Antonius Snape, thank you very fucking much. She'd probably whip out her wand and Stun anyone who tried it in no time flat. His soon-to-be Mrs. Snape was no shrinking violet, no; she was the kind of woman who could take care of herself in just about any situation. He loved that about her.

Oh, yes, this was going to be beautiful. He couldn't wait to bring her home to live with him. Fuck it, hang convention, when he went home at the end of this visit, he was going to ask her to go back with him, and to hell with what anyone thought of it.

Narcissa was sitting in the drawing room daintily working on a bit of embroidery when he came in. "Severus, there you are. Are you feeling better?" she asked.

"Yes, much better, thanks. It must have been one of those twenty-four-hour bugs," he said.

"Oh, good. It would have been a shame if you'd had to miss the Parkinsons' big dance tonight." Narcissa bent back over her embroidery hoop.

"The Parkinsons' big dance?" He looked at her blankly. "That's tonight?"

"Yes – don't tell me you forgot. That's going to be the event of the season. Everyone's going to be there," she said, in a tone of mild chiding. "Do let's all be ready to go by six, all right?"

"Er, yes, that's fine. Have you seen Bella around anywhere? I wanted to talk to her about – about something." It occurred to him with a brief pang of discomfiture that Narcissa and Lucius were going to be his sister- and brother-in-law now, but consoled himself with the knowledge that to both of them, a trip to Orkney may as well have been a trip to the moon, so no doubt he and Bella wouldn't have to devote much time to entertaining in-laws.

"Bella's not here. She promised Mrs. Parkinson that she'd help supervise the elves today before the ball," Narcissa said, placidly stitching.

"She did? When did she do that?"

"She was talking to Emmitt's sisters at the Wilkes's cotillion, asking if there was anything she could do to help. The Daughters of Wendelin are organising the event, you know. There's a raffle. It's all to benefit the St. Mungo's Children's Wing," Narcissa told him.

"Oh... I hadn't heard. Did she say when she would be back?"

"We're going to meet up with her at the ball tonight. She took her dress robes with her."

"Of course." He nodded to her and left the room – and immediately made his way to his greenhouse laboratory, a sinking feeling in his stomach.

In the lab, he unlocked the apothecary cabinet door and felt into the space at the top of the drawer – his hand closed on nothing.

Bella had gone to the Parkinsons' early – and the philtre of Potio Carnalis was gone –

Why not try everything? Won't you do this for me? Will you marry me? Do you give me your word of honour as a gentleman?

– and then the realisation hit him, a sharp and vicious snap into lucidity like having his head forced through a pane of glass.

He wasn't her new fiancé – he was her test subject. Tonight was the Parkinsons' summer cotillion, when she would put the Carnalis potion into its intended use on her real target, the man she had been after all along.

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Severus immediately made his way out of the greenhouse lab through a side door, ran until he reached the end of the anti-Apparition wards and then vanished with a crack – (where the hell was it again, I took Narcissa to a tea there last month) – to reappear in the birch grove just outside of the Parkinsons' grounds.

He stealthily made his way around the house, making certain to keep out of sight of the windows, thinking he probably looked suspicious as all bloody hell, slipping unseen onto the Parkinsons' grounds like some sort of prowler.

On the north side of the house, he came upon a veranda bedecked with flower arrangements and Japanese lanterns. A row of French doors were thrown open here, leading into the main ballroom – and Severus spotted Emmitt Parkinson wandering amidst a sea of white-draped tables, now and then issuing a curt order to a group of house-elves polishing the hardwood dance floor.

Severus appeared in one of the doorways, irritably beckoning to the other man to join him out on the veranda. "Parkinson – come here," he hissed.

Parkinson approached him warily, surveying the look on his face with unease. "I wasn't expecting to see you till later, Snape. Something the matter? What's happened?"

"Look... " Severus's hands clenched hard on his upper arms. "Don't drink or eat anything tonight, especially if Bellatrix gives it to you. It's important."

Parkinson's dark brows creased heavily. "Why should I do that, Snape? What's going on?"

"It's... I have reason to believe that she's going to try to... " His face burned. "Look, just don't, all right? It's for your own good. Go ahead and ignore me if you want, but if you value your own happiness, you won't."

Parkinson chuckled and rolled his eyes at the sky, clearly not believing a word of it. "You're going to have to do better than that, my friend. What, is she trying to poison me?"

Severus just looked at him, his face deadly serious. "Yes. After a fashion."

Parkinson stopped laughing. "How? Why?" he demanded.

Severus's face betrayed nothing. "Just don't eat or drink anything tonight," he said. "That's all I can say about it."

He turned and started to walk away, but Parkinson's hand shot out and seized his forearm in a vicelike grip, still barking questions, but a moment later, they heard Bella's smoky laugh from inside the ballroom, heading in their direction – Yes, Mrs. Parkinson, the floral arrangements are just lovely, I've always liked white oleander. They both turned in the direction of her voice, startled, and Parkinson's grip on Severus's arm loosened.

"Just remember what I said," Severus warned, then quickly made his escape before Bella or anyone else saw him.

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Severus never went to the Parkinsons' grand ball. He returned to Malfeasant after his terse warning to Emmitt, then hunted Narcissa up and rather feebly told her that he had been optimistic about his recovery from his influenza and didn't feel up to going. He made the ruse of that phantom flu last for two or three days, spending the time alone in his room, having his meals sent up and occupying himself with sleeping or reading.

Narcissa and Aunt Tamora came up to check on him once or twice a day, and he took the opportunity to question Narcissa about how the Parkinsons' ball had gone. Narcissa said that it had been lovely, just sumptuous, and what a shame it was that he'd been too sick to make it. Everyone was now talking about how Emmitt had danced four waltzes with that little Beatrice Rookwood, and she wasn't even a proper debutante yet, how scandalous was that.

Bellatrix never came up to see him. Severus tried to convince himself that she was just busy, and that this was not a sign that his usefulness to her was at an end, but he was as always unable to fool himself with comforting lies.

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After three days brooding alone in his room, Severus finally got up, showered and dressed, and made his way down to his greenhouse laboratory, just to clean up, do a bit of reorganising, and put the components of Potio Carnalis somewhere where he would never have to look at them again. If Bella wanted to talk to him, she could come looking for him.

Instead, someone else came looking for him that afternoon. "Ah, Snape, there you are. Just the man I was looking for." Emmitt Parkinson strode into his lab, dressed in very sharp, charcoal-grey robes and looking every bit the landowner and captain of industry that he was. "I do hope you've finally recovered from your flu?"

Severus never looked up from his work. "Yes, what is it?" he asked. His voice was more irritable than usual, to cover the guilt he felt.

"You were right," Emmitt told him, sidling close to him for a conspiratorial aside. "After the ball was over and the elves were cleaning up, Bella made a huge fuss out of making me a hot toddy the way she used to, just to prove she wasn't angry and wanted to be friends. I took it down to the barns and made my mother's dog drink it. You should have seen the poor beast – he was trying to mount the sheep in the fields, and then when I locked him up, he was attacking knotholes in the pen. It took about six hours to wear off, and he was so tired he's still not recovered.

"So I thought it might be advisable not to sleep in my usual bedroom after seeing the effect Bella's little cocktail had on Mother's corgi, and stayed in one of the guest rooms upstairs. And then when I came down the next morning, I found the French doors half-open and discovered that someone had broken all the lamps and ink bottles and thrown all the books off the shelves and otherwise made a terrible mess of the place."

"I hope nothing was taken, and have every confidence the authorities will deal appropriately with the perpetrator," Severus said indifferently.

Parkinson gave a short, curt laugh. "I'll get to the point, Snape. What was it that Bella put in that drink? Was it Bella who vandalised my room?"

"Probably, you should ask her," he said and started to turn away – and found himself facing Emmitt's wand tip.

"You can be more cooperative than that, my boy," Emmitt said, lightly tapping his breastbone with the wand, like a teacher reprimanding a recalcitrant student.

"I can't say anything, Emmitt, not without doing a whole lot of damage, so don't fucking ask me." He looked angrily down at the wand pointing at his chest and brushed it aside with an impatient gesture of his hand.

Parkinson withdrew his wand and stepped back. "All right, so there is a truly urgent need for discretion, and I'll not persecute someone for doing me a good turn, as it would be bad form indeed."

"How sporting of you," Severus said, pointedly turning his back. "Now be so good as to leave, and shut the door behind you."

Parkinson just smiled, leaning insolently against his worktable. "I see, the mad scientist needs his solitude. But first, indulge me with a moment of speculation – let me just hazard a guess," he said, gesturing to the laboratory around him. "The Malfoys' Boy Genius of Potions was experimenting with something that maybe he shouldn't have been experimenting with... and it went missing, perhaps?"

"I can't say," Severus replied, his jaw set.

"And she's Lucius's fiancée's sister, isn't she," Parkinson said. His meaning could not have been clearer – Severus was thwarting Bella's plans, possibly at risk to himself.

Severus made no answer besides a noncommittal shrug, but Parkinson only smiled knowingly at him. Yes, he knew Bella, knew how deceitful she could be, knew her propensity for liberating things that caught her fancy – and Bella had very carefully kept her relationship with Severus a secret. Emmitt Parkinson had no reason to suspect that he and Bella had ever slept together, let alone that Bella had coaxed him to make the potion because he believed it would be for their own personal use only.

"And Lucius thinks very highly of you. The Malfoys are wealthy relatives – and patrons – of yours. I'm sure you don't want to jeopardise that."

Again, Severus remained silent and shrugged, but with less nonchalance than before. Parkinson only smirked the worse.

"I won't forget this, my friend," Parkinson said, holding out his hand. "If I can ever do you a favour in return, call on me."

Severus gave the other man an instant's predatory smirk, then accepted the handshake. "Count on it," he said.

Parkinson smiled back with equally predatory understanding. "Good man," he said. "So, tell me... is there any chance you could perhaps, er, get me some of that potion? Just as a little... wedding present for the honeymoon I may be taking in the future?"

"No," Severus said instantly. "Not that particular potion, it's far too strong."

"What if I was careful to use only a drop?" Parkinson cajoled. "And what if, oh, a hundred Galleons were to turn up in your pocket?"

"Well... " Severus thought about it. "I might be able to get you something else – something that would guarantee your bride will enjoy herself, but without the chance she'll end up in the emergency ward getting intravenously rehydrated afterward. Something with no chance of overdose." He already had something in mind, one of the aphrodisiacs he and Bella had tried that summer – another pleasure-enhancing topical ointment that stimulated blood flow to the female genitalia, thus making arousal easier and orgasm more intense. Really, given the circumstances of poor little Beatrice's potential wedding night, it would probably be a kindness to make certain she got something out of it. "And because I think so well of you, I'll only charge you ninety-nine Galleons."

Parkinson smiled thinly at him. "All right, all right. Done."

"I'll get you my Gringotts vault number."

After Emmitt Parkinson had left, Severus went upstairs and lay on his bed, thinking. He had warned Parkinson for any number of his own, entirely self-serving reasons: so that Bella would not marry Emmitt and thus become sexually inaccessible to him, so that his own role in Bella's plot would never come to light, so that he would never have to admit that he had been tricked and used. In truth, he had been trying to avoid humiliation for himself, not do anyone else a good turn.

But he was now of the opinion that it might go well for him to have someone like Emmitt Parkinson owe him a tremendous favour. This sort of secret trust and understanding was satisfying and made him feel strangely powerful. Lucius liked to play on people's desires and manipulate their financial interests to get what he wanted... perhaps, Severus thought, he could find his own way through other means. Bella may have duped him, but he was now unexpectedly ninety-nine Galleons richer, and a powerful and influential wizard of their set owed him an obligation.

Unexpected decency, it seemed, could be its own weapon.

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Severus never got the chance to confront Bellatrix over what she had done before he left Malfeasant. Aunt Tamora informed him after dinner on the day of Parkinson's visit that Bella had packed up and gone back to London the morning after the Parkinsons' grand ball.

"She said something about planning a shower for a friend who's just found out she's expecting, but I think she may have been disappointed by a man she was fond of, poor dear," Aunt Tamora told him privately. "She was so sweet and brave about it too. Oh, what a tragedy that sort of thing is, to the young."

"Yes, what a tragedy," he repeated dully.

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Severus returned to Snape Hall alone at the end of September.

Parkinson had paid the ninety-nine Galleons into his Gringotts vault just as promised, so Severus put together a makeshift potions lab in an unused storeroom at home. He made up the aphrodisiac ointment and put it in a pretty enamelled jar, which he then had delivered to Emmitt Parkinson by owl, along with a bit of parchment with euphemistically worded instructions for its use. There, his end of the bargain had been fulfilled, at no risk to Beatrice.

Originally, Severus had thought that he would take the large infusion of liquid capital Lucius had left in his Gringotts vault for his summer's labours and the ninety-nine Galleons Parkinson had given him, and would invest in new roofing for part of the main house at Snape Hall – but then not long after his return, one of his tenants came to see him at the beginning of the late fall rainy season and complained that the roof of her rented house was leaking something fierce. Severus paid her a visit one rainy Sunday and discovered that she was indeed telling the truth – there were drips pooling in frypans and basins in three rooms of the house. Tobias Snape had been well known in the village as a tyrannical landlord who performed the very least maintenance he could on his rental properties in order to keep them liveable, and his son found this attitude both irresponsible and unconscionable, especially since his tenant was a widow who lived in the house with her elderly father and two small children. So Severus did his duty as a responsible landlord and hired a contractor to replace the roofing – which of course consumed most of the small nest egg he had accumulated at the end of the summer.

Snape Hall was just as drafty and cold and the roof as leaky as always that autumn and winter. It was cold comfort to know that his tenant family was warm and comfortable in their snug little house in the village while he himself spent most of the winter's long dark huddled under rugs in an armchair in front of the fireplace, both for warmth and to save on oil for his reading lamp, trying to ignore the sound of rainwater dripping into basins.

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The high point of that year was a fortnight's visit to his grandmother's in Mayfair for the Christmas holidays. It was just the two of them at the Mayfair penthouse, which his grandmother had decorated like something out of a Dickensian storybook. Now and then she would have her friends and relatives in for mince pies and sherry, sedate grey-haired witches and wizards of her own age, but Severus enjoyed their company, especially that of an eighty-something second cousin named Coriolanus Ollivander, who had been a competitive chess player and, as it turned out, knew Will Erlendsson, the Orcadian grandmaster. Plus, on Christmas morning, she gave him a pile of presents despite the fact that he couldn't afford to reciprocate in kind; things he needed, like clothes and boots, and things he didn't need but loved, like new books. As always, she had a gift for picking fascinating titles that interested him immediately.

Although he enjoyed spending the holidays with Octavia, he was very quiet and subdued even for him, and as always, his grandmother ferreted out the cause of his upset in that dignified, nearly telepathic way of hers.

"Severus, my boy? Is something the matter?" she asked over a sumptuous Christmas dinner of roast goose with all the trimmings. "You seem upset, if you'll forgive me."

"I just... it's nothing," he said, keeping his eyes on his plate.

"I know you spent the summer with the Malfoys – they weren't unkind to you, were they?" she asked, a hint of concern in her voice.

"No, no, they were fine. All those cotillions were sort of dull though, if you're not one for dancing."

"I can imagine." She cut herself another bit of goose from the roast on the table – "Would you like another slice?"

"Yes, please, thank you." His grandmother cut him two slices instead – she was generous that way.

"So, did you get to see a lot of your old school chums this summer?" she asked, sipping from her wineglass.

"Yes, quite a few of them. It was like Old Home Week or something."

Octavia laughed. "Good, good." She nibbled thoughtfully at supper for a moment, then asked: "And did you perhaps meet any nice young ladies?"

"I... " His grandmother's hospitality was of course the best English cuisine around, but suddenly supper had lost all its savour for him. "I met... someone."

She smiled. "Good, good." Then she studied his face for a long, thoughtful moment. "Anything come of it?"

He scowled down at his plate. "No, I don't think anything will. One of those summer things."

"I see." She rested her hand briefly on his. "I'm sorry, son. If any girl doesn't appreciate you, then she's the biggest fool in the world." She pressed his hand warmly, and then gently changed the subject, which only made him all the more grateful to her.

It was hard to return home at the end of their visit in January, but he had letters to write and the endless repairs to oversee.

Sometime in March, Uncle Abraxas mentioned in a letter that Rodolphus Lestrange had returned to Wiltshire from London, where he had been staying while his court proceedings were going on. The charges of blackmail, extortion, and conspiracy against Lestrange were dropped in early March of 1979 due to lack of evidence, and his first action as a free man had been to immediately head up to Malfeasant to welcome his good friend Lucius Malfoy back from his sabbatical in the Faerielands.

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Then it was summer of 1979, and Severus wasn't sure where the time had gone since he returned from Malfeasant. He still hadn't managed to get any but the most basic repairs done on the house, and he still had only made a half-hearted attempt at finding a job, or some way to earn money beyond the monthly stipend paid by his mother's inheritance. Somehow his desire to leave that which was comfortable, familiar, and unchallenging never turned into anything resembling real resolve, and even he thought his job-seeking efforts were less than decisive. The only thing he was glad about was that his father wasn't around, so he could go from here to there without the old bastard giving him hell over it. It was convenient not to have to account to that son of a bitch for his comings and goings any longer. For example, when he received the invitation to the wedding of Miss Bellatrix Natasha Black to Mr. Rodolphus Brutus Lestrange in September, he went into the kitchen and dropped it in the stove, burning the gilded parchment invitation and the pretty little response card and envelope to ash. There was no one left at Snape Hall to shout at him for his uncouth manners, and he didn't care.

Everything in him wanted to scream from the rooftops No, she's my lover, mine... but the more he thought about the circumstances, the less it seemed that Bella had really wanted him at all, and the more it seemed that he had only been a pawn taken up to further her own ambitions. Somehow it just didn't seem a coincidence that Bella had chosen to seduce a hopelessly randy, affection-starved teenage virgin who also just happened to have a prodigious talent for potion-making, then induced him to make up a coercive aphrodisiac potion that she had then tried to use to entice Emmitt Parkinson into a compromising situation, just after the most important ball of the season.

Years later, Severus would be able to reflect on the circumstances and realise that in their circle, it was perhaps inevitable that Bellatrix and Rodolphus should end up paired together. Bella had the taint of the virago about her, as a formidable woman with her own will to power, who used men for her own pleasure and who could compete in their world. And while Rodolphus Lestrange had done nothing that any number of the others hadn't also done, he had committed the cardinal sin of leaving evidence where the authorities could find it. He had been sloppy, and he had gotten caught.

Bellatrix was a notorious libertine, but also well-born, wealthy, beautiful, and charming; Rodolphus had been under suspicion, but was dashing, well-born, and rich. They were both tarnished and marginalised in exactly the same way, and no one else with their kind of social currency would have them.

As a grown man, with years of worldly cynicism hardened into place, these truths would be obvious to him – but for now, he was a teenage boy who had lost the woman he loved, and who had been deprived of the illusion that she had ever loved him; who now could not ask for anyone's sympathy without humiliating himself.

He lay in bed alone that year, listening to the wind and sea howling in winter, to the Selkies' faraway songs in summer, and refused to let himself cry.

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Then October arrived, and the preparations for Lucius and Narcissa's wedding reached a fever pitch.

Severus hadn't wanted to come to the wedding at all. He intended to only make a brief appearance on the actual day, but then Evan had come up to Snape Hall a week before the wedding, and told him that Aunt Tamora and Aunt Druella were worried about him, and prevailed upon him to come down to Malfeasant with the usual combination of brotherly bullying and affectionate sarcasm. Finally, he had promised he would go, just to see Evan and help Aunt Druella and the Malfoys a bit, and to alleviate his own boredom.

When he arrived, however, the Malfoy and Black families expected him to fall right back into his usual role of confidante, errand boy, and general cavalier servente to everyone; he was, once again, as indispensable as he was totally unappreciated. He had spent that entire week assisting Aunt Druella with various last-minute arrangements and listening to Narcissa's unending barrage of peevish complaints. That seamstress had put the wrong kind of silver pointe d'esprit Valenciennes lace on the hem of her gown, the florist didn't know if they could get enough silver roses for all the wedding centrepieces. Her wedding shoes came from the shop with a scuff, which of course meant that no one cared about her. Bella was supposed to be her maid of honour, but she kept sneaking off with Rodolphus and wasn't any help at all, and Bella kept talking to people about her own wedding when it was Narcissa's special day on Saturday. Her brother Menzentius and her cousin Regulus kept stealing Lucius's father's liquor and getting into fights in the village. Her cousin Sirius hadn't even responded to the wedding invitation they sent him, hadn't even bothered to send his regrets.

Narcissa had also heard a rumour that Lucius had commissioned a diamond necklace for her wedding present, and kept pestering Severus with questions – did he know which jeweller was making it? Was it platinum or gold, were there any important stones in it, and how many? There had also been some rumours about those wild, sluttish, promiscuous Faery girls chasing Lucius while he was in Arcadia, but Lucius's father had still invited some Faeries to the wedding. If Narcissa could have had her way, she would have refused to allow them to come at all, but the Faery woman was married to some long-time friend of Lucius's father's, and the Malfoys were paying for their honeymoon, so there was nothing Narcissa could do about it. Nonetheless, she took hours to bend Severus's ear about those and a thousand other grievances.

And then, of course, there was Bella, Narcissa's maid of honour, who kept looking at him.

It had been over a year since he had last spoken to her – since the night she had tested Carnalis on him – and they remained on each other's periphery now. She hadn't said anything, didn't make a move, but she just kept bloody looking at him, even as he made a point of not only refusing to speak to her or look at her, but avoiding her completely. If she entered a room, he would leave it as fast as was seemly. If circumstances required them to be in the same room, he invariably took a seat at the table as far away from her as was possible.

But even then, it was impossible to ignore her completely, as his treacherous body remembered her all too well and craved more of her. Just the breeze of her passing was enough to make his hair prickle, just the smoky inflections of her overheard voice were enough to make his skin feel hungry, and just the sound of her low, gloating laugh could still leave him half erect. He put more energy into ignoring her than he did in talking to anyone else, and while he shunned her with all his might, he was still hyperaware of her every move, of where she was at all times, and of her every interaction with everyone.

Everywhere he went, it seemed that he could feel the weight of those unshockable dark eyes burning into him, even when he tried his hardest to turn his back on her.

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He should have known that Bella would eventually refuse be ignored.

There had been some kind of closed-door arguing going on between Bella and Rodolphus since the weekend before the wedding. Severus had discerned from the whispers going around the castle that she was angry at her fiancé, something about how he'd gone out with Lucius and gotten into some kind of trouble. Some village girl was making accusations, and now a great deal of money was required.

She cornered him in his uncle's study – Severus had been sitting at Uncle Abraxas's desk entering some wedding vendors' invoices in a ledger when Bella's voice sounded behind him.

"Little baby Severus," she said, caressing his back, and her touch sent all the same little thrills through him that it always had. "You're avoiding me. I know you're doing it, and I know why you are... maybe I deserve it. But... " she gave a weighty sigh... "you have no idea how much I miss you."

Severus had been about to gather his nerve and simply leave the room, walk out on her without a word, but that last remark rankled so much that he couldn't stop himself from calling her on it. He stood up and turned on her, eyes flashing dangerously. "You miss me? Really?" he sneered.

She didn't falter; he should have known better than to think he could ever intimidate her. "And I think you miss me, too, don't you, baby? You and those big, pretty eyes... " One slim hand reached up to stroke his cheek, but he flinched away from her.

"If you're actually finding my absence disturbing, perhaps you should have thought of that before you agreed to marry someone else." He turned and started to leave the room.

"Severus... " She called desperately out to him, and there was something in her voice now, an edge of sadness that went through him like a knife. "You don't understand. My mother wants me to marry him, and Mum is old – she might not be around much longer, I can't just break her heart like that. It would kill her," she protested.

"Spare me, Bella, you were always on about how hate your mother. You've told me flat out that you wish she'd hurry up and die so that you can come into your inheritance, remember? If she dropped dead tomorrow, you'd probably throw a party," he snapped, disgusted. Bella told so many lies she probably didn't even know what the truth was any more.

But Bella just laughed... that soft sultry laugh that he had once loved so much. "Yes, you're right, you were always too clever for me. I won't lie to you, baby. It's because he's rich." Her shoulders drooped, and a blush lit her flawless cheeks. "There isn't much left to the Black fortune, it's true. That's why Cissy and I both have to marry well, you see... Mum is old, and Menz is just a kid, and they need us. There isn't anyone else, now that Daddy's gone." She raised her eyes pleadingly to him, lower lip quivering.

Oh, yes – he knew her dutiful daughter act was complete shite, so now she was trying another tactic, casting herself as the self-sacrificing heroine of a gothic melodrama. Merlin preserve him from the lies, dissembling, and mendacities of women. 'Frailty, thy name is woman'. If, like Diogenes, he took lantern in hand and went through the world until he found an honest woman, he'd be wandering until the last star in the universe winked out.

"Yes, I can just see your mother limping up the hill to the poorhouse – I wonder which of her diamond tiaras she'd wear to make that trek," he shot back. "Bella, just give it up. I know what you were doing – you needed me to create Carnalis so you could try to keep Parkinson. Then Parkinson eluded you, but no fear, Lestrange will do just as well, money's money. I don't know what potion you think you're going to get out of me now, but I don't care. I'm finished with you."

"Severus, please, darling, I don't need a potion," she said, gazing up at him so softly, so knowingly; making him feel, as always, completely vulnerable and transparent before her. "I just... I really do just miss you."

"Oh, really, do you?" he asked insolently. "You went to bed with me so I would do you a favour, and once there, you found that you actually liked going to bed with me, and now you want to start that up again? Is that it?"

She smiled up at him, as though delighted that he understood her so well – then her arms were around his neck, and she pressed a series of long, heated kisses to his numb, unresponsive lips. "Don't worry, darling, it can be like it was before. You know I love you, just you. We can be together anyway, it doesn't matter who we're married to. You're the best. You've always been the best... " Her fingers raked over his inner thigh, moving upward –

Severus pushed her hard against the wall and away from him, an action that made him feel horrible even if he was defending himself. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" he demanded.

He had gone through a second growth spurt that year, and was now taller than Lucius – and so could look down at Bella. His voice had also by then matured from his boyish tenor to his adult speaking voice, a true, rich baritone, and he used both now to full advantage.

"But... " She stared up at him, hurt and betrayed, her eyes lustrous with tears. "But you said you loved me," she said, sounding like a hurt little girl. Only Bella could be trying to make him feel guilty over refusing to sleep with her when she was going to marry another man, and only Bella could succeed so well at it.

He stared at her. I do love you. Don't marry him. You know damned well you would rather marry me, he thought – but he knew such entreaties would be futile, and refused to humiliate himself with pleading.

"I don't love you anymore," Severus said with a dire coldness that surprised even him. "I loathe you. I can barely stand to look at you. I will never care about you again, or touch you again. I will certainly never sleep with you again. You had best get used to it, because that's how it's going to be from this day onward. Perhaps you know a lot of blokes who are content to let you use them and toss them away when you're through, but I'm not of that type, thanks. If you ever come near me again, I'll tell everyone who'll listen about what you tried to do to Parkinson and see what that makes your rich fiancé think of you, you lying little bitch."

Her response was to wind up and backhand him across the face, hard enough to leave his jaw sore for hours afterward – Bella could even strike a blow with more force than most men. She knew how he felt about hitting women, knew very well that to retaliate would make him break his personal vow never to treat women like his father had treated his mother. If he wouldn't disregard her betrothal promise, she would find some other way to force him to be untrue to himself. It was a particularly Bella-like sort of thing to do.

He stood motionless, his cheek reddening, drawing blood from his lower lip with the effort of keeping himself from dealing her the kind of tooth-rattling slap that would send her spinning across the room, from seizing her arm and forcing her to her knees; in the way he had seen so many times before, in the manner that his father had rehearsed him since he was a child.

Instead, he turned his back on her, gathered what shreds of dignity he had left, and silently left the room.

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After his argument with Bella, Severus took refuge in the library, one of the least visited rooms at Malfeasant, to nurse his aching jaw alone. But not long afterward, he heard the door open and shut and then heard Lucius's quiet voice from behind him.

"Here." Lucius gave him a handful of ice wrapped in a clean white linen napkin. "I couldn't help overhearing the end of your discussion with Bella, and her final rejoinder sounded like it hurt."

Severus accepted the compress with his usual grunt of "Thanks," and held it to his jaw.

"Yes, so she's reverted to form, I see," Lucius said, looking at him sympathetically. "Cheer up, old man, it's not the end of the world. Bella's like that, always has been, always will be. Just an unrepentant gold-digging trollop from her school days – that's why all the lads always wanted her along in everything. She may have been a slut, but she was our slut."

"She's been with you too, hasn't she?" Severus rasped.

"Well... " Lucius shrugged, and needed to say no more. "I don't think even Rodolphus imagines she's going to be the most faithful wife in the world. That's why I never considered marrying her – a man likes to know that his heir is really his, you know," he continued, with an eloquent roll of his eyes. "But after that court proceeding, it's not as though they're going to be lining up for him ever again, and he'll take what he can get."

This was probably Lucius's idea of kindness, of getting him to look on the bright side. Brotherly advice. Severus thought about wrapping his hands around his cousin's throat and squeezing very, very hard.

Unperturbed, Lucius crossed to one of the brandy decanters on a side table and poured two glasses, putting one in Severus's hand. "In all honesty, cousin... I don't see why you don't just keep on with her, if she's willing. The occasional slap notwithstanding, of course, she likes you. You're not quite within the strata she wants as far as a husband, sadly, and I could have told you from the first that she'd never marry a half-blood bloke – but she really likes you. She hasn't stopped asking about you since I've gotten back. You seem to have – " one dark-blond eyebrow quirked knowingly – "impressed her."

So she had been keeping tabs on him through Lucius – but never once written to him, with so much as an explanation or an apology. Yes, that sounded like her.

But Lucius was still talking, oblivious. "And between her money and the Lestrange money, she might be able to do quite a bit for you, if you know what I mean. And after all that you've done for me, I wouldn't breathe a word to her titular husband, I promise. I might even be able to help arrange matters, if you wanted."

Severus stared at his cousin, eyes narrowing in hard disbelief. What, so he wasn't rich or pure-blooded enough to marry Bellatrix, but he was supposed to be the one to comfort her when her marriage bed proved too cold or unimpassioned for her taste? "I don't think so," he said shortly, turning away from Lucius and re-adjusting the ice on his jaw.

"All right, all right, have it your way," Lucius said mildly. "Though what with your prospects being what they are... you're throwing a lot away, old man. You do know that."

"Don't patronise me," Severus snapped huffily. "I took higher marks on the N.E.W.T.s than anyone in my year – who's to say I can't end up earning more than the Blacks and the Lestranges combined all on my own?"

"Yes, of course, who's to say you can't," Lucius said, in a tone very much like that of a grown-up humouring a child. "I know you've been sending out job letters – where have you applied, if you don't mind me asking?"

Severus named a few of the firms where he had applied, and Lucius nodded.

"Good choices. They're successful firms, all of them. Have you gotten any response?"

"Well... they probably receive a lot of job letters," Severus said, just a touch defensively. "It's too early to say."

"Of course they do," Lucius agreed. "But you know, cousin, I don't know why you're bothering with asking people outside our set for work, not when there's so much you could be doing right here."

Severus looked up, surprised. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"There's a meeting going on, just after I get back from our honeymoon," Lucius said pleasantly. "A new group of us have been getting together of late, to discuss matters of mutual interest to our sort of lads, you know, and I'd been debating as to whether I should ask you to join or not. The fellow who's running the show is quite inspiring, and has some absolutely stupendous kinds of ideas about how to better the lot of everyone in our world – while making a tidy profit for ourselves, of course. Would you be interested?"

"I might be," Severus replied. It sounded as though Lucius was getting involved in the formation of a new business concern of some sort – or was it a political party? It certainly sounded as though whomever was organising it had political aspirations, wanted to come out as a candidate for the Wizengamot, perhaps. "What exactly are they looking for?"

"I'll send you an owl when I get back, and we'll talk about it then," Lucius said, smiling. "How's the jaw, there? Can I get you a fresh compress?"

"No," he said. "No, I'll be all right."

Just you wait, Mrs. Lestrange, Severus thought darkly. So I'm 'not in the strata you want as far as a husband, and you'd never marry a half-blood bloke'? Just you bloody fucking wait.

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Severus Snape could not remember a time when he had not hated weddings.

He hated them because he had never been to a wedding where he really wished the couple well, where he really believed that the love being made so much of on the day the marriage was celebrated was anything more than a political alliance at best and a business transaction at worst. He had seen far too many people who he thought deserved better paired up with people who could never really love them, like Evan Rosier, now firmly shackled to the apron strings of sulky, perpetually dissatisfied Felina Rosier, née Nott. Like vivacious seventeen-year-old Beatrice Rookwood, whose engagement to the autocratic thirty-five-year-old Emmitt Parkinson had just been announced.

And now, like the prim, prudish, insecure Narcissa Black, married that day to the sublimely jaded Lucius Malfoy.

In the week leading up to the wedding, Snape hadn't gotten to spend anywhere near as much time with Evan as he would have liked, as Felina seemed to be keeping her new husband on a short, tight leash since they were married. Evan spent as much time with his best friend as he could, but he often had his hands full with his pretty, petulant new wife.

The Black-Malfoy wedding was the usual sort of carefully planned, rigidly ostentatious, joyless affair that would later become Mrs. Narcissa Malfoy's trademark as a hostess. Severus thought everyone except Narcissa seemed bored, even the vicar. Bella stood beside her sister as maid of honour, at the head of a long line of bridesmaids, but the cut of her emerald green robes was considerably tighter and lower in the décolletage than Narcissa had originally dictated at the dressmakers', which had led to a fresh attack of the vapours on the morning of the wedding.

The reception was the usual sort of lavish meal followed by the usual sort of cotillion, with the usual people talking about the usual things. All that made it different from Evan's wedding was this family Severus didn't know among the guests – a dark-haired, middle-aged man with a classically beautiful blonde wife, a woman so lovely that half the men forgot to speak when they looked at her, and all of the women forgot to speak to her at all. Their teenage daughter was with them, a skinny girl with huge brown eyes and bony knees, who spent the whole reception dancing with everyone – her father, Lucius, Lucius's father, Evan, Rodolphus Lestrange, Emmitt Parkinson, Marcus Flint. She had waist-length blonde hair like the Tenniel drawings of Alice in Wonderland, wearing a salamandrine green and silver dress that left her thin arms and shoulders bare. Both mother and daughter had similar tattoos on their arms, he noticed, bands of purple and black and red.

The girl was just a spindly little bit of a thing – he generally liked women with more of a figure, like Bellatrix. But somehow his eyes were drawn to her repeatedly as she danced. She might have had skinny legs, but she moved like water flowing, and she couldn't stop smiling.

What's she so damned happy about, he thought.

She was pretty, though, even from this much of a distance, he'd give her that. Not a patch on her mother yet for looks, but she might be once she got past the puppyish, sharp-knees-and-elbows stage. But she was a good dancer – the best one out there, even being so gauche as to outshine the bride on the dance floor, though he doubted she was doing that intentionally. More like, she hadn't noticed that anyone else was watching her. She was just dancing, just enjoying herself, and it didn't seem to occur to her this would have any effect on anyone else.

Then it came time for Narcissa to toss her bouquet into the crowd of unmarried women behind her, and the bouquet sailed up into the crowd and nearly came down directly on the blonde girl's head. She caught it deftly, but then just as quickly tossed it right back up in the air like a hot potato, and darted out from under it with an expression of abject horror. Severus actually suppressed a laugh at this – perhaps that one had some sense after all.

Of course the newly engaged Bellatrix Black was only too happy to step up, bat the blonde out of her way, and capture the bouquet for herself. Or at least she tried to bat the blonde – when the girl had seen Bella's elbow coming her way, she moved aside so that Bella only connected with air. The blonde dodged with such dexterity that it made Severus blink and then stare for a moment. Bella stepped up and caught the coveted bouquet, but when she felt herself evaded, she turned to the blonde in surprise, her mouth open in unflattering discomfiture. The blonde gave her a twinkly smile – a very twinkly fuck-you sort of smile – then turned and traipsed off.

Then Aunt Druella had come forward to congratulate Bella, and the blonde rejoined her parents. They seemed to be gently chiding her, perhaps assuring her that marriage wasn't just the absolute end to all fun and frolic – but the blonde was having none of it, shaking her head with an attitude of having narrowly escaped a very dire fate indeed. In the end the dark man just laughed, and put his arm around the girl's shoulders and kissed the side of her face, making her smile happily.

It was the sort of casual, easily affectionate gesture he saw sometimes between other people and their fathers – but for some reason, that sort of thing now made a hard knot form in the pit of his stomach. As a teenager, he had come to scoff internally at such public displays of familial affection, and thought those of his classmates who seemed to miss their parents during the school year, who ran into their mummies' arms at the moment the Hogwarts Express arrived at Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, were sentimental at best and ridiculous at worst. But now, having lost both his parents and feeling very much alone in the world, that affection between parents and children seemed poignant and meaningful again – something to be envied, rather than a display of weakness.

The wedding wore on. As he sat alone on the gallery, Severus's eyes were drawn again and again to the thin girl in green, who was now dancing with her father again. He knew absolutely nothing about her but that she was young and pretty, that she liked to dance, and looked happy, and that her father seemed very pleasant, and that her parents seemed fond of her, and she of them. He didn't know her family at all, but for some reason he liked watching them together.

But then, he thought, her father had a very intelligent expression on his face, so whatever he was saying to his daughter must be clever, and interesting. And from the way the girl was watching her father's face as he spoke, and how her smile deepened with amusement at whatever he said, he must be witty as well – good to talk to and listen to, a good companion. She was putting in silly little extra flourishes into the dances, and her father seemed to be teasing her about it, but playing along with her anyway.

Why were they like that, he wondered.

The players in this scene were simple – a man and his daughter, dancing together at a wedding. Why then, he thought, were they having such a good time, when so many other combinations of the same relationship – Felina Rosier and her father, Beatrice Rookwood and her father, and by extension the fathers and sons in the same group – seemed so incapable of enjoying each other's company like that? He was studying the girl and her father the way he studied lacewings, or fluxweed, or aconite, or a fine bezoar – because he had always believed that if he contemplated something long enough, analysed it for its component parts, learned everything he could about it, then somehow the secret of its power, of its magic, would be revealed to him. But the more he watched them, the less he understood them, and the more he wanted to know who they were.

He wondered briefly if the girl's parents would like to adopt a son.

Or if she had a boyfriend.

"'Lo, Snaples. Who are you glowering at now?" Evan said, sitting down next to him and glancing in the same direction of his fixed attentions. "Oh, her. Well, it's definitely true about her sort liking to dance."

"Do you know her?" Severus asked.

Evan shook his head dismissively. "No – nobody knows her, her father's not important anymore. She's definitely not from around here."