Love in the Time of Carnaval

First came the owl...

Severus,
Going to Quebec to view some of the old family estates. You must come. Carnaval and all that. Fatally dull. I'll need your dourness to cheer me up. Try to back out and I'll poison you. Rodolphus

PS: Pack a hat.
PPS: And a brush.

Then came the summons.

Since having graduated from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry the previous year, Severus Snape had not found himself the recipient of many invitations. This week he had been sent two. It was the first of these that he considered as he strode into the apartments indicated in the second.
Rodolphus Lestrange's offer of Canadian travel was unusual but not terribly out of character for a young man of his whimsical nature.

The second owl, from Lestrange's father, was a complete shock. Snape had never before come into contact with a man as powerful as the senior Lestrange, who was not only one of the Ministry's ambassadors without portfolio, but was rumoured to be one of the richest business owners both in England and abroad, and that on top of coming from a line of esteemed, if slightly deranged, aristocrats.
This latter invitation ('An appointment at 2 PM, if you would be so kind') was to Snape a great epistolical puzzle, the point of which, he suspected, would be revealed in its own time.

'I'm here to see the Ambassador.'
The man at the door was dressed in a footman's wigged livery with the small addition of a pink domino mask.
'Show him in,' ordered an accented voice from within the mahogany doors of the study. The footman led Snape in with a look of reluctance - Snape couldn't decide whether this surliness stemmed from a dislike of the secondhand robes he wore or the servant's desire to remain, as much as possible, outside his employer's presence.

The study itself was enormous and smelled of suffocated cigars and leather. An angular man with sharp eyebrows and sad grey eyes adjusted his fine French shirt cuff and, looking at his cluttered desk, muttered, 'Leave us.'
The footman withdrew and Snape was left to contemplate this man, almost the very image of his son, aside from the thinness that might come with age and an inescapable greying of the hair.
'Mister Snape,' the ambassador announced to himself.
Snape said nothing, ready for anything.

Or almost anything - Lestrange advanced quickly and, throwing his arms about Snape, hugged him closely. Severus thought he might never forget that aftershave.
Suddenly pulling away and adjusting his tie, the elder Lestrange cleared his throat.
'You would like an explanation? And you will have one. But first a drink. There are,' he added cryptically, 'formalities.'
Lestrange stepped to a bookcase that revealed a concealed bar when manipulated, the glasses clinking in a very unbookish way.
'Please, Mister Snape, make yourself at home.' Lestrange offered him a glass of brandy before pouring another. 'You are a friend of my son Rodolphus.' It wasn't a question, but Snape nodded anyway.
'I, too, am his friend.' Here the older man smiled shyly. 'As much a friend as any son allows his father to be.' Lestrange shrugged as if to indicate a mystery incommunicable by words but somehow shared in all human experience. Severus only wished he owned such expressive shoulders. He sipped his brandy.

'As a "friend," I take interest in his comings and goings,' Lestrange winced at some unspoken critique and waved his hand protectively before himself. 'Spying? Perhaps. Yes, spying! And is it not a father's right?' Then, with a derisive thrust of his jaw, he indicated the desk covered in parchment.
'And yet what does this skullduggery reveal, eh? Days, times, trysts, entanglements? Idiocy!' shouted the magnate. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to calm himself. 'Idiocy,' he whispered softly. Snape had a much larger sip this time.

'Nothing is hidden from me, Mister Snape, nothing...except what matters. Except what is in here--' He tapped his temple lightly. 'And in here.' Lestrange held his hand above his own heart, perhaps counting its beats. Snape felt that it might be appropriate at this point if one of them cried.
'Ambassador, I--'
Lestrange's index finger weaved through the air like a drunken hummingbird as he shushed Snape.
'You wonder why I tell you this, yes. Why we speak man to man--while my son is...' Lestrange consulted a paper on his desk. 'Carousing at the Black Hound Public House.'
Snape suspected he knew the reason for this little tete-a-tete, but, determined to fulfill his role, quoted, 'Ay, my lord, I would know that.'

Lestrange, oblivious to the reference, plunged on. 'I will tell you then, Mister Snape, Mister Severus Snape. A good British name, Snape. Is it Welsh?'
'No.'
'No?' Lestrange digested this. 'No. Snape.' He rolled the name on his tongue. 'A good name regardless. Short, to the point, a trifle puritanical, perhaps. A good family, also, a pure family. Snape stared at the man, drinking in his brandy, if not his words.
'A shame, some might say a crime, that such a family should be without standing or connection, that the scion of such a house should languish in poverty.'
Snape tried to object, but his protest was cut short.
'Poverty, yes. I have said it! Am I a bore? No. We stand here as two men, two friends of my son, one immensely rich, the other laughably poor. Such is the world, my young friend.'
Lestrange refilled Snape's glass. 'Perhaps not in the workhouse yet, though? And with our little added income...'
Snape eyed Lestrange warily. This insane buffoon was, after all, one of the most influential men in Europe, if not the world.
'Yes, the little subsidy from providing, discreetly and, I'm sure, for a fair price, such potions as might facilitate feelings in a man that...well, shall we say, such potions as are regarded as dangerous by the authorities, though highly demanded by a select group of initiates.' Lestrange banged his fist on the bookend bar, causing glasses to shake, before hastily adding, 'Fear not, my friend, I will not compromise you! No, not I!' Lestrange's eyes twinkled. Snape could ever hear the unspoken words hang, heavily accented, in the air.
'But others, perhaps?'
'I'm not sure I know what you're talking about, sir,' Snape lied.
Lestrange ignored him. 'It is forgivable. Yes, here, I forgive it...and so,' he noted as an afterthought, 'does God. All is forgivable in an artist. And is not what you do with your little dusts and cauldrons and baby fat an art? It is, as I thought. Yes. You are an artist, Mister Snape, and artists must be forgiven, and artists must be supported.'
Snape's head was spinning. He wasn't sure if it was from the brandy or Lestrange's bizarre rhetoric.
'And I, do not laugh, am a friend to the arts.'
Wonderful, thought Snape, a friend to Rodolphus, then me, and now the arts. You must do a lot of visiting.

He had to say something. 'If you're interested in Rodolphus' doings, surely his brother--'
Lestrange coughed. 'Rabastan? No. No, I think not. I will reveal to you in confidence--strictest confidence--that Rabastan, well, he is a disappointment. Now, I've revealed myself! A matter of the public record. My son is a cretin.
'All I ask from you, Mister Snape, is that you be a friend to Rodolphus...and to me also. Stay with him. Shield him from the danger of this world and listen to what he has here.' Again Lestrange gestured to his head. 'And most importantly here.' The manicured hand hovered sensitively above that organ which the Egyptians took to be the seat of reason, and then, in a flourish, snatched the silk handkerchief from an inside pocket before daubing the owner's eyes.

Snape lifted Lestrange's untouched glass and downed the very expensive brandy like a shot. 'How much money?' he asked.
Lestrange smiled. 'Mister Snape, truly--you are an artist.'