Smoke and Mirrors

Smoke and Mirrors

Chapter One : Party Fears II.

Snape, hunched, still, in his chair.

Snape, expression unfathomable

Snape, with a cut across his left brow, a dark smear across his Roman nose. His hands rest, long fingers splayed, on each knee. I notice his nails, normally cut short and neat, despite that they are usually stained - now they look uneven, split, snaggy. Something dark has slid under the nail and soaked between the calloused flesh and the hard keratin.

I know, immediately, without even looking at his face, I know that he is stricken with emotion, beyond anything he has felt before, and I have seen him in the aftermath of some terrible scenes.

He has killed Dumbledore. The stain beneath the nail cannot be the headmaster's - Avada Kedavra doesn't spill valuable blood. But he sits there like a man to whom the heavens have revealed the most terrible truth. His eyes, always dark, are unmoving, glassy. Only the slightest rise and fall of his chest, and the ticking of a pulse at his pale throat, let me know he is still alive.

I don't like the look of this.

I kneel at his feet. The last time I did this was here, in this room, with Bella looking on, and Peter trying to listen in. Before that, I had knelt before him to plead with him, yet again, for Draco's life.

Yet again: for Bella had not witnessed the first time I had begged Severus for help. How long ago that seems, less than two years. And, despite my fears that Draco was indeed lost to me, it appears that Severus has kept his promises to me, all of them.

At what cost to himself?

Now his eyes are fixed on mine. After a long, long moment, there is the slight warmth of recognition in their depths.

"Narcissa."

I'm frightened. He frightens me like this, more than when he's being cruel and nasty or even blood-thirsty. This is not normal.

I don't like the look of this.

I gently touch his hand. It is cold. I take my wand and create fire in the ashy grate in this hovel. The orange lights his features, unnaturally, because he is as cold as the grave.

I only came to thank him, thinking how small and shaky my voice sounds.

"Thank," he says, quietly, as if he doesn't quite understand.

For Draco, I say, my voice like a stranger to me. The others want to throw a party, I say, in his honour. The Dark Lord will be there.

Suddenly he rises. He walks to his shelves and stands with his back to me, as if staring at his books. He remains so for some moments. Finally, I get off my knees and stand on his threadbare hearth-rug, unable to take my eyes off his narrow back. He lifts a volume off a shelf above his head and looks at it, replaces it; then another. The pages rustle as he searches through them.

I say, you can't let anyone see you like this. You look like you regret it. Pettigrew, Pettigrew will-

"Will applaud me," comes the cool response. "I am a hero"

Act like one.

I don't like the look of this.

I whisper his name. Nothing returns but the whisper of pages, old pages. Abruptly he turns and flings the book into the flames I have created. I watch the pages shrivel, the hard covers glow at the edges, and glance back at him. He is already looking through another.

Bravely, I tread the creaky floorboards to where he stands. He's blocking me out. He isn't interested. He's never been interested, but I've always had the power, before, to force him to make space for me amidst the plots and the obsessive magics. His proud, cruel demeanour has only inflamed my curiosity, steeled my will. I'm aware that this time it is different.

"Are you?" he scoffed, glancing sideways at me, his lips curled, his teeth bared slightly, the firelight glancing off their uneven edges. I look down at the book he holds. It is written in a language that I don't understand. It could be love poems or suicide curses, I don't know.

"Neither," he grins, maniacally. He replaces the book and takes another.

I say, you don't seem like yourself.

He replaces the book, but this time just stands staring at the rows of exposed spines. I reach out as if to touch his hand, but my nails scrabble at the soft cuff at his wrist. He doesn't move away. I feel skin, taut, cold. I take his hand in both my warm ones, as if he were a child, almost; as once upon a time I had Draco's. I edge closer. I feel hysteria, but I'm not sure whether it's mine or his.

He turns his head and gives me a look that says, Do I look hysterical?

I tell him he's worrying me.

He arches his brows, looking momentarily, genuinely surprised. "I am the one you need to worry least about, Narcissa, surely you have me where you want me."

I remind him that the vow is now discharged; he has fulfilled it.

He gives me an odd look. I don't know what to make of it. It doesn't fall into his usual repertoire of expressions. He is never as simple as he appears to be, trust him or not, there's much more to him than that, and I feel I have just glimpsed it.

It is so astonishingly intimate a moment that he draws his hand away.

"Not that again," he snarls.

Not after your last performance, I bite back, before I can stop myself.

But this is what he likes best, the verbal sparring; he's good at it, warring makes him comfortable. He smiles, his eyes glittering.

"I thought my performance was particularly outstanding," he says.

I remind him there is a party to go to, even as he closes in on me.

"They think we're fucking anyway," he reminds me.

But we're not, I squeak, palms flat on his chest, shelves against my back.

"Why not?" he asks, face inches from mine. Whilst I search for some answer, some retort, he adds, in quite a reasonable tone, "It can't always be on your terms, Narcissa. You're a married woman, you know that."

I'm lost for words. I remember my fascinated revulsion. I remember the feel of his body beneath mine, his hardness and heat inside me, his refusal to consummate.

"Not this time," he says, whispering, harsh. "It's been quite a night so far. I'm in the mood for some simpering hero worship."

"Pettigrew's your man," I gasp, even as I feel my fascinated revulsion swell inside me, damning me.

"He's out," he says, and gives a rough laugh. "Regardless of that, I think you should show some appreciation for what I did tonight," he breathes, bracing his arms on the shelves either side of me.

The tears are rolling down my cheeks as I fall to my knees. There is nothing I can do to prevent this. He knows exactly which buttons to press, it's humiliating.

He's ready for me and I take him. His hand caresses my hair, weaving his stained fingers into it, snagging his nails in it and pulling, even though I get the feeling he's trying to be gentle. I feel the power exuding from him, his dark energy, and I feel like I'm drowning in him. Before he comes, he pulls me to my feet, drags some of my clothing off, and lifts me up against the shelves, I wrap my legs around him, he finds the spot and pushes, he lays dry kisses against my bare shoulders, my throat, hiding his expression from my eyes.

The moment comes; it is perfectly timed, like a potions experiment.

Miraculously, he hasn't ripped any of my clothes. I am slick with his ejaculate, though, and we reek of each other. He won't meet my eyes as we straighten our clothes.

I murmur about the party. He says he needs the bathroom. He vanishes through the bookshelves. I take out my wand and clean myself up. I weep, silently, and start laughing, like a fool. My life is a mess. My son is a Death Eater, and surely his days are now numbered. My husband is in prison, safe and sound. I am a slut for an ugly, bad-tempered murderer.

And I don't know what to do.

Still, the fickle part of me is somewhat impressed with Severus. I really didn't think he had it in him. Murder was obviously a turn-on. I catch my reflection in a picture frame, super-imposed onto a picture of one of Severus' ancestors, who tuts at me and waggles her finger. I wipe my face on my hand.

Where is he?

The door upstairs is slightly ajar. I open it, soundlessly. All seems quiet upstairs. I say his name: no response. I climb the narrow stairs - stone, no creaking, only the slight whisper of my robes. Three doors led off a small landing. Two are fully open and reveal dingy bedrooms, lit through the thin curtains by the street light outside. The other is ajar. I say his name again. I hear a noise, but not words.

Scratch-scratch. Scratch-scratch.

I push the door open. I think every hinge in this house has been oiled. It reveals a grimy bathroom with a muddy-green coloured suite and a filthy carpet. Severus is standing beside the sink. At first I think he is looking at something on the wall, very closely. His finger tips touch the tile. He drags them down scratch-scratch, his nails dragging on the crumbling grout. There are brown streaks left where he touches.

I am momentarily horrified, and want to run.

Scratch-scratch. Scratch-scratch.

"Severus?" I go to him.

Scratch-scratch. Scratch-scratch.

His forehead is resting against the tiles, angled towards me, away from the mirror above the sink.

"Severus?" I catch his hands. He doesn't resist.

Blood. Under his nails. On the tiles. On my hands.

At what cost to himself?

He hated Dumbledore. I believe that he always absolutely despised the man - his need to love everyone, and his belief that love would save the world -

and I remember a night when I shared a chaste bed with this man, to discover that he talks in his sleep -

then, suddenly, I know. The heavens opens its heart to me and lets me glimpse a different scenario, and I know, I know, that every care he has taken to prove himself loyal to the Dark Lord, to us, has been a monumental lie.

Severus acts as if he had just killed his father, a father he loved.

I gasp and draw back, falling against the rickety door and closing it.

His eyelids raise, and he looks at me. He stares. His hands fall from the wall. He says something, too faint to hear, and closes his eyes.

"What?" I hiss.

"Not a coward."

I feel the hairs all over my body standing on end. My fear starts to peak. I look at him, and force myself to breathe, to think, to cover our fucking tracks.

Think!

"Severus," I say, standing straight. "You're the guest of honour. Fashionably late is one thing -"

"Yes," he smiles, "they want to congratulate me on killing Albus Dumbledore."

I grasp my wand and hit him with my best Cheering charm. It might not cheer him, but it might lift him from the depths long enough for me to communicate with him. He takes a deep, shuddering breath.

"If they guess that you loved him, it's all over," I spit and, quite impulsively, strike at him with my wand. I only hit his shoulder.

He looks more lucid. He stands up, glances at the wall, down at his hands.

"I am not myself," he says, concerned, slightly irritated.

"You're a mess!" I exclaim, striking at him again. He doesn't even flinch. He's still looking at his ruined finger nails.

"I tried to look at myself in the mirror," he says, slowly.

I look at the mirror; it is cracked.

"Let me do something with these," I suggest, approaching with my wand. He lets me mend his hands and clean away the blood. I clean the wall, too. "Well, you had me completely fooled. Yourself, too? Didn't you know that you loved him?"

He closed his eyes again, as if in pain. And at the closing of his eyes, the slight grimace, the deepening of the groove on the bridge of his nose, I see it.

I say something, I don't know what. The blood rushes in my ears, I can't hear myself.

"Yes," he says. "Tell anyone, and Draco will die with me. And you. You must see that."

I should have listened to Bella.

I don't quite understand this.

I wish I had not come.

I wish I did not know.

"You are an artful practitioner of Occlumency, when it suits," he says. "Use that gift." He is sounding more like himself. He touches my cheek with his cool hand. "Narcissa."

I feel so alone, again. I feel immense betrayal. I thought I could trust you, I say. The tears have started again, and I can't stop them.

"You can," he says. "I've never sought to harm you or yours, you know that. You can trust me."

"You've just killed someone you loved," I sob. I feel betrayed, so betrayed.

"That was different," he says, his voice cracking. His hand slides around the nape of my neck, and he pulls me gently to him, laying my cheek on his chest. I feel his chest heaving, retching, soundlessly, and I think about what he has done, and I don't understand why, all I know is that he is immeasurably damaged.

And now he has to face his friends, and lie to them, the biggest of lies: which it is, to deny love.

If he could pour that emotion into me, I know he could. He does not love me. But I can almost feel the burn of the wish that I was his, and he was not alone. It is a startling feeling.

"Let's not get carried away," he says. The bass of his voice trembles in his ribs. "We have a party to attend."

I look up into his face. "Do you think you will stay, afterwards?"

His lips shape the slightest of smiles.

To be continued.