All Our Yesterdays

~*All Our Yesterdays*~

'And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death'

~ William Shakespeare's Macbeth

Chapter 1: Welcome to Malfoy Manor

'Severus.' Narcissa Black sounded affectedly surprised. 'I wasn't expecting to see you here.'

'I can't imagine why not.' Severus Snape didn't bother to look up from the book he was flicking through, but then Narcissa supposed he had no real reason to. She took a moment's pause to look at him, grey-blue eyes thoughtful, before settling herself elegantly in the armchair closest to the fire. At this, Severus looked up. 'You're staying, then?' he queried.

'I live here, Severus. As you seem to need reminding sometimes.' There was no real malice in her tone, which Severus appreciated.

'As do I, Narcissa. And believe me, it's difficult to forget,' he replied with something approaching a smile. He closed his book more than a little reluctantly, accepting peace and quiet as a fond memory. Narcissa returned the attempt at a smile, with little more of an effort.

'I don't think I'll ask what you meant by that.'

'No. It's probably best that you don't.' He paused. 'Where's Lucius?' Narcissa shrugged unconcernedly.

'Your guess is as good as mine.' She stretched a little, rearranging herself better on the frankly rather uncomfortable chair. Her attention wandered momentarily to her nails before she realised that Severus didn't look satisfied with her response. She sighed. 'He'll turn up, Severus. How much trouble can one devastatingly attractive wizard get himself into?'

'You'd be surprised.'

'And you'd know, of course.'

'Better than you would.' Narcissa's mouth twitched up in a smile. She liked eliciting a little emotion from Severus, more so when it was this childish. He was always so frustratingly restrained around her.

'I don't doubt that,' she agreed, meeting Severus' momentarily turbulent eyes calmly. He held her gaze for a second before relaxing, sinking back into his chair and very clearly away from Narcissa. She didn't intend to give up that easily. 'What are you reading?'

'Right now, nothing. What I was reading before you broke my concentration was some immensely dry and academic tome on herbological catalyst reactions and their relevance in the modern world of industrial potions that Lucius dug out for me because he thought I might need something productive to do with my day...' Severus trailed off, face deadpan straight but eyes firmly fixed on Narcissa. She refused to rise to the bait.

'Oh, yes? I've been meaning to give that a try.' She smiled blandly. 'Is it good?'

'Fascinating.'

'So I would imagine.'

Severus often wondered why he bothered. She never rose to it, and he doubted that she ever would. Oh, it exercised his wit, undoubtedly, but he had plenty of other opportunities for that. Still he came back to Narcissa. Or rather, she came to him, and every time she did he started a battle he knew he would never win. Although, if it came to that, neither would she. There was just this sharp-edged, disquieting stalemate that disturbed the air between them, restless yet stagnant and almost tangible, whenever they found themselves within speaking distance, and it drove Lucius insane to see it.

Why had she come to the library? Narcissa never came to the library, not least because she knew that Severus would be there. She would come home alone, the echoes of shadows under her eyes belying the strain exerted on her each and every day by whatever was demanded of her by the Mark burnt into her arm (Severus had never bothered to ask for the details), and melt effortlessly into the heritage that lived and breathed through the Manor. Severus saw the way she moved through corridor and anteroom, allowing the walls and floor and ceilings to grow accustomed to her, to embrace her as an extension of history. Marking not territory, but presence within that territory.

He wasn't bitter about it. What reason had he to be bitter? He knew that she walked polished floors alone, exchanging constricted conversations with Lucius whenever they chanced to meet and constantly listening for the echoes that told her to turn back. He knew that she contented herself with the sporadic company of friends he had never met, and never wanted to meet, and that it was them she turned to for the sound of voices other than her own. And yet it was difficult to triumph, to revel in it, when Severus recognised in her what he was so accustomed to in himself, an innate satisfaction with her own company. He couldn't even take comfort in her loneliness.

Because she knew, and he knew she knew. He couldn't even throw it back at her. She knew her part in this, and took it with calm self-possession and an unconcerned acquiescence. It didn't touch her to know that Severus had something she didn't, not as it touched Severus to know the converse. Narcissa had something Severus wanted desperately, and knew he could never have: the right to belong. Oh, he would always belong at Malfoy Manor; as long as Lucius was living there he would be welcome. But he would never have the right to it, the irrevocable claim to the life and the love he enjoyed that Narcissa had and didn't even want. He hated it, this abstract and indistinct power that she held over him, the gleam of her eyes in a certain light that never failed to remind him of it.

As he watched her that night, unable to read with her presence unsettling him, he realised he couldn't see even a trace of that gleam. It struck him that he rarely, if ever, saw Narcissa returning from work. Before she left, yes, at breakfast occasionally, a few early afternoon exchanges of civilities, but never at night. Something seemed different about her, even to Severus' eyes, so sharp when they wanted to be and so blind to so much else. Now, he looked at her properly for perhaps the first time since they had met. She had changed her clothes since her return, evidently, black robes and mask discarded for something deep green and velvety that Severus dimly recalled Lucius buying her in a vague attempt at courtesy. It didn't suit her; she wasn't quite pale enough to look striking in something so dark. Severus could always sense the significant, however, and his eyes were quickly drawn to hers. He saw not her eyes, but a translucency around them, a fragile quality to the skin and a slight darkening. She was tired, he thought, impassively.

'When are you likely to be called up?' Narcissa's soft, measured tones were inquiring, not accusatory. Severus replied with equally careful civility.

'Lucius tells me soon.'

'Lucius doesn't know what he's talking about,' Narcissa replied swiftly, yawning slightly. There was no bite to it, nor affection, just a simple statement of fact. Severus raised an eyebrow.

'And you presume to know enough to know that?' he asked lightly.

'I know enough to know that I know very little.' She smiled. 'Lucius doesn't seem to have quite mastered that concept yet.' She studied Severus carefully as he nodded a slight acknowledgement. 'Nor, I would imagine, have you,' she announced, still watching the man sitting opposite her. 'Although I'd say you know more than Lucius.'

'I'm more willing to know than Lucius,' Severus replied. His face had closed as Narcissa had spoken; his momentary relaxation dissipating. This simple statement, however, seemed to confuse Narcissa. She cocked her head to one side and stared thoughtfully at him, not asking him to explain himself, merely coming to her own conclusion about what he meant. Eventually she shrugged.

'I'll take your word for it. After all, I couldn't possibly comment.' Severus laughed, strangely.

'No. I'm sure you couldn't.' He smiled, blandly. 'And yet on Lucius you can. How strange.' Narcissa bristled slightly.

'I may not have spoken to him much, Severus,' she began, a sharp edge to her voice that she made an obvious effort to control as she went on. 'But I have still spoken to him more than I have to you. And besides,' she added, somewhat defensively, 'he's easier to read than you are.'

'I won't deny that.' It sounded like acquiescence, but he was far from agreeing. Suddenly, and desperately, Severus wanted Narcissa to leave. She showed no signs of doing so.

'Soon, then. Whatever that might mean.' It wasn't the subtlety Severus had come to expect from Narcissa, but any subject change was welcomed. 'Are you looking forward to it?' she queried, a note of genuine curiosity resonating behind practised blandness.

'I wouldn't say that, exactly,' Severus replied.

'Then what would you say?' It made Severus start slightly, then twitch the corners of his mouth up into an unpleasant smile. The rise he had been waiting for, the impatience in Narcissa's voice that told him he could frustrate her, he could make her want to lash out at him just as he wanted to do at her. Childish, it seemed to him, even as he relished it. Narcissa always seemed to bring that out in him, it was a source of great irritation. Not least, he thought, because it lessened the victory he took from her slight losses of control when he was by default equally guilty. He proceeded to push his advantage home by replying with perfectly controlled bland courtesy.

'That it will come when it comes.' He shrugged, non-committally. 'It'll be something new to keep me busy. A challenge, at any rate.' Narcissa nodded. She rubbed a hand over her eyes. Conversations between her and Severus were exhausting, clipped and constricted, every word weighted and hanging heavily between them.

'And Merlin knows that such a great mind needs to be challenged,' she murmured. Severus looked at her curiously.

'Indeed,' he agreed, a little perplexed. Narcissa waved a dismissive hand.

'It radiates from you, Severus, although you probably don't realise. You have that aura of genius.' Severus was looking at her almost incredulously.

'And another one I should never underestimate.'

'Sorry?'

'Not important.' Narcissa nodded, accepting this.

The first thing Severus had done upon first meeting Narcissa had been to compare her to Lucius. They were alike, he had thought, in many ways. Similar in height; Lucius had never been extraordinarily tall. Similar, almost, in shape; unlike the hard, sharp angles of Severus' frame Lucius had always been rather effeminate in build. Identical in skin tone, looking as though a blush had never crossed their high cheekbones. A casual onlooker would have appropriately called it a somewhat narcissistic union, and it had struck Severus too just how much they resembled each other. And yet simultaneously to him they were entirely different. Narcissa's hair was darker, and curled somewhat; her grey eyes were diffused with a blue that Lucius' lacked entirely. The note that resonated as her voice died away was control, not confidence. Every movement she made was measured, carefully honed to an exacting propriety. She invited no criticism by ensuring there was nothing to criticise; Lucius would merely convince you beyond all measure of doubt that there wasn't, whatever the truth of the matter may be.

Severus had been at the Manor the summer when Christian and Alana Malfoy had first introduced Narcissa to their son. Lucius' parents had always been sensitive to his part in all this, and hadn't so much as frowned when seventeen-year-old Severus had refused even to look up as she entered. They had merely introduced Narcissa formally to Lucius, the bland picture of impeccably feigned courtesy (complete with a kiss of the hand), and left the three of them to sort things out amongst themselves. Put simply, when faced with the choice of acting in their son's best interests, and their own best interests, they had chosen to wash their hands of the entire affair and leave everything up to Lucius. Severus could never quite make up his mind whether this had been a stroke of genius, or a moment of idiocy.

Severus had remained quiet that first time, if for nothing else then to make things easier for Lucius. He had retreated behind a carefully guarded impassiveness, repressing all outward signs of the frustration twitching within him, while Lucius had rounded petulantly on Narcissa. As Severus watched Lucius had treated Narcissa to the full grandeur of his eloquence, stringing together threats, complaints and bold assertions into a vehemently and convincingly rendered outline of exactly why Narcissa should never consider herself welcome at Malfoy Manor. Narcissa had taken this with quiet complicity, nodding slowly as a slightly flushed and uncomfortable Lucius had wound himself down to a close and glancing thoughtfully at Severus, who, for all his carefully contrived indifference, had been unable to keep a blush from his cheeks at Lucius' rather impassioned references to him.

She had taken it in her stride. Had reassured Lucius with seemingly genuine unconcern that love wasn't the point of an arranged marriage. That as long as he wasn't intending to go out of his way to make life difficult for her, she really couldn't care less what he did with himself. Or anyone else, she had added, shooting an unreadable glance at Severus. After all, it wasn't as if she had chosen this. She had seemed calm to the point of apathy, and yet there had been a warning lurking in her softly measured tones that neither Severus nor Lucius had failed to pick up on. Insistent, she had been, on mutuality. That if Lucius would co-operate, so too would she. To be fair to her, Severus thought, so far she had kept up her end of the bargain. From that first meeting he had never felt included in it, and as such felt no obligation to uphold it, a fact that had been made abundantly clear to Lucius on the day that Narcissa had moved into Malfoy Manor.

That had been the brilliant idea of the elder Malfoys. Allowing the prospective happy couple to grow a little accustomed to each other. Severus had always thought that they had wanted to prevent any unpleasant and potentially harmful surprises following the wedding. Better to get any difficulties ironed out before the ideal of the next generation Malfoys was presented to the world in all its blonde-haired perfection, ripe for tarnishing. Although the more he thought about it, the more he wondered if he was misjudging Christian and Alana. He had always believed that they loved their son, regardless of whether that love won out over the responsibilities they all had to adhere to. Perhaps they had been genuinely uncomfortable with the arranged marriage, and had wanted to at least let each party know what they were letting themselves in for. Certainly when Lucius had, with a calm and brazen independence, extended the offer of cohabitation to Severus, neither parent batted an eyelid, and for that much, Severus would forgive them a great deal.

They had moved in almost simultaneously, within days of each finishing school. Narcissa was the same age as Severus, that is, about a year younger than Lucius, and as she returned from Durmstrang and Severus from Hogwarts, both fully qualified wizards, Malfoy Manor threw open its doors to Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy threw open his arms to Severus. Very little had changed since that first day, other than that Severus was now a Death Eater. Lucius still returned to Severus every night and stayed until every morning after, afternoons when he could, seeking Severus out in the library as he attempted to work his way through every dusty tome in the expansive collection. He continued to barely acknowledge Narcissa's existence, despite the two having discovered that they tolerated each other rather well, conversing civilly with her whenever they chanced to meet while never going out of his way to do so. Severus and Narcissa continued to demonstrate a barely concealed abhorrence towards each other through dialogue so frayed and seething with so much emotion that Lucius flinched back from them each time the three chanced to meet, melting into Severus and away from the agonising intensity that resonated in the air. For the sake of Lucius' sanity, they tried not to meet very often.

'You want to know why I came to the library tonight,' Narcissa stated, calmly. Severus sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose with long fingers. Narcissa's quietly composed presence was becoming an irritation he could do without.

'I can't imagine why you would think that would concern me.'

'You don't find my presence here at all strange?' she queried, trying to engage Severus' gaze. He had no intention of co-operating.

'As you so pointedly remarked earlier, you live here,' he replied. 'What reason would you have not to be in the library?' Narcissa shrugged.

'Perhaps because I've been avoiding you.'

'Such a thought never crossed my mind.' Narcissa smiled.

'No. Of course not,' she said, shifting on her chair. Severus was starting to feel a pressure inside his head. Reluctantly, he sat up straight, allowing his book to finally fall from his lap. He looked directly at Narcissa.

'Narcissa. Is there something I can do for you?' Narcissa met Severus' eyes boldly, but a spark of something that looked almost like awe registered in the face of the intensity his gaze could display. She opened her mouth as if to say something, and the unspoken word hung suspended between them for a moment. Then she shook her head, sighed, and stood up.

'Nothing whatsoever, Severus,' she murmured. He followed her silent exit with thoughtful black eyes, noting absently with the appraising glance of an aesthete the swirl of her deep green robes as they whipped around the closing door. A weight seemed to lift from the room, and Severus smiled to himself. A short-term goal, at least, had been accomplished.

Severus had fallen for the library he was sitting in during his very first visit to the Manor, back in the summer of his fourth year at school. Of course, the other two were equally impressive, but he'd had to choose one, and something about this one had appealed. Looking back on it, Severus supposed he hadn't really needed to make any such kind of choice, but it had felt like the most natural thing to do.

The problem with Malfoy Manor was that there was too much of everything. Even now Severus would never have claimed to have seen even the door to every room in the house, much less the inside of them. So much space, coupled with so few people, could have proved a volatile combination; the only way to stop oneself commencing the slow slide into madness was to decide, from the beginning, the tracks you were going to trace through the mansion, the rooms you would use and the rooms you would never need to go near, and essentially pretend that the rest of the house didn't exist.

This library was one of Severus' rooms, although before (and still) it was Lucius'. Severus would tell himself now that he had picked it because of the feel of the chairs, the glint of the spines in the firelight, the fact that the picture above the mantelpiece smiled at him when he walked in when most of the others in the house looked on him as something akin to superfluous. He would never admit, if he even knew it himself, that it was a lingering sense of Lucius that drew him here that first time, that ghosts, or perhaps memories, or even echoes of the youngest Malfoy walked these floorboards and reclined in these chairs and drew leather bound books from the shelves with careful fingers and languid interest. Severus had slipped into the patterns of Lucius' early life, following at first the boy himself, as a wide-eyed and longhaired teenager. Then later, as he found himself alone from time to time, he followed the whispers and the murmurs trailed in the older boy's wake.

Now, nineteen years old and alone from day to day, he barely realised that he was no longer tracing Lucius' paths but retreading the memories of his own footfalls. Because for all circumstance had granted Narcissa her claim to the house, she had never laid claim to it. Not in the way Severus had, in the way he looked at Lucius but more in the way he made Lucius look at him, with an emotion deep and abstract that had made more of an impression on this generation's Malfoy than all the weight that bore down on him from his lineage. Narcissa could feel it when her beaten tracks through the labyrinthine mansion crossed his, a subtle change, a presence of sorts. She never flinched from the echoes of Lucius, but a shiver ran down her spine when she could sense Severus. She couldn't explain why.

Evan Rosier had once told Severus that he could exert far more influence than he thought. He had screamed it, actually, a long and painful note of anguished exasperation that had reverberated through the common room, leaving a heavy silence in its wake. Severus had stared, the fury burning his eyes dying, as Evan had looked at him in that way he did from time to time that on a deep and fundamental level frightened him, with a gaze that felt like fingernails raking through his mind. Evan always knew, with a surgeon's precision, the exact cut to make and how deep to make it, and it always worked because Evan could see things that very few others could and make you see them in a way that would make sure you wouldn't be quick to forget them. And each and every time he did so, after the shreds of each argument lay dying on the floor, after his piercing gaze had faltered, his eyes, a clear sharp blue, would dullen with perhaps regret, perhaps guilt, the feeling that each and every time he had played dirty.

Those eyes had taken to haunting Severus of late. Evan was a fairly frequent visitor to the Manor, although he always left before Lucius came home. He would sit in the chair opposite Severus, the chair Narcissa had taken, and bitch elegantly with Severus about life, the universe, and everything, taking teasing pot-shots every now and again at the absent lord of the manor with a hardness running beneath his words and an intensity of expression that for all Severus believed the remarks innocuously meant, he couldn't help a slight discomfort. But it was his eyes, burnt into Severus' mind, that stayed once Evan had left. The look he had shot directly at his closest friend, intuition seeing past the blank white mask, as he knelt, branded, before the Dark Lord.

It was indescribable, thought Severus, shuddering at the unwelcome recollection. At once haunted and tortured, but overwhelmingly something more terrible than both, the stare of a man who has seen something no man should ever have to see. Evan had the Sight, and in abundance, Severus had known that much since first year. He rarely exercised it consciously, and never welcomed it when it came of its own accord, which was usually in dreams. He had become rather popular among the girls of his year when it was revealed that he would willingly tell their fortunes, for a small price, of course. Severus knew he never so much as tried to See for them, just looked at them with that strange stare of his and told them almost unerringly what they wanted to hear. Severus had always thought it was funny, but then he had never been a believer in destiny. He would never have doubted that Evan Saw, but equally would never have believed that everything that was Seen was what must, irrefutably, come to pass.

'If it comes true, then it's only because you make it so,' he had said once, dismissively. 'If you believe it will happen, unconsciously you will make certain decisions that will force it to, nothing more.' Evan had laughed, but somewhat humourlessly.

'If you say so, Severus.' He had then smiled, his familiar, teasing smile, and challenged his friend again. 'But what if I've Seen that you won't believe what I tell you I've Seen and try and change your future to something else that I've already Seen?' Severus had glared at him.

'It's unkind of you to trouble me with such fascinating paradoxes when I'm trying to finish this Rune translation,' he had said, archly.

'Just because I've confused you...' Severus had shown him an elegant middle finger, and returned to his homework.

Severus was almost certain his friend had Seen something the night of his initiation. He still didn't believe it was the future. But he feared for Evan, feared him being consumed by whatever vision of doom had come upon him that night, feared him believing it. He had asked him, obviously, what it was, but received nothing more than a flippant 'I thought you didn't believe in all that, Severus?' for his pains. Which was hardly reassuring. Even less so the memory that persisted in surfacing unbidden in his head, the memory of a vague and inexplicable momentary feeling of dread as he had watched Evan kneel before the Dark Lord, abstract and fleeting but very much there.

Why had Evan chosen to offer himself? Lucius and Lestrange were easy to explain, although Lucius had taken some carefully worded convincing the fundamental promise of power was too intoxicating to pass up. Each of the three had tried their own reasoning on Evan, the last to be converted though he was far from an absolute sceptic. He had listened carefully to every argument, nodding thoughtfully and sending sharply observed criticisms to cut ideologies down the middle. Whenever the subject had been broached Evan had become blankly unreadable, projecting an outward attentiveness and consideration while not even Severus really knew what he was thinking. Something had made up his mind, however, and while it resembled neither the fire and passion of Severus' strong-willed idealism, nor the gleeful optimism of Lucius and Lestrange's enthusiasm, it was something, and something determined at that.

And yet was it a mistake, thought Severus, almost dozing before the heat of the fire, and if it was for him, why not for the rest of us? The question hung suspended by tendrils of thought in his mind as he slipped into the early stages of sleep, oblivious to the soft sound of the library door opening and closing.

'Did you miss...' Lucius Malfoy's voice trailed off into the fire-warmed air as he saw Severus, apparently fast asleep. 'Shit,' he cursed softly, making his way with silent footsteps over to the younger man's chair. He knelt beside it, concern crossing his face as he looked carefully at his lover's closed eyes. 'Sev?' he murmured. One black eye opened.

'Silence isn't really your strong point, is it, Lucius?'

'Did I wake you?'

'Well, you were doing a pretty lousy job of trying not to, weren't you?' Lucius sat back on his heels, pouting somewhat.

'I didn't mean to.'

'Takes nothing away from the fact that you did.' Both of Severus' eyes were open now, and he fixed Lucius with an impressively convincing disapproving glare. The blonde stood, vaguely aggrieved.

'Well, sorry, I'm sure, for wanting to talk to my boyfriend after I've been working all day without seeing him once,' he snapped. 'May I remind you that you have, after all, had all day to sleep? I can't see why you have to choose the only time I'm likely to see you to do so.' Severus raised an elegant eyebrow.

'It's not my fault you don't let me get enough sleep at night,' he pointed out, face deadpan straight. Lucius narrowed his eyes at him.

'Entirely beside the point. And not likely to happen in future if you will persist in being so...' Lucius found himself tangled up in the end of his own sentence, gesticulating around the word he wanted. Severus smiled for the first time upon seeing him, a smile of dancing eyes and twitching lips.

'Merlin, but you're gorgeous when you're angry,' he murmured. Lucius abruptly stopped waving his hands around and looked shrewdly at him.

'You weren't asleep, were you?' Severus shook his head, smiling an apologetic smile.

'No.' Lucius tried to glare at him, but failed miserably. Instead he returned to Severus' chair, curling up on the floor at his feet with a sigh.

'You know, one of these days I'm going to stop forgiving you for this,' he remarked. Severus shook his head again.

'No, you won't. You haven't yet.' He smiled a smile that Lucius couldn't see. 'And besides, the look on your face is worth it anyway.'

'Fuck you, Sev,' Lucius yawned, resting his head on Severus' knee. Almost absent-mindedly, the younger boy began to wrap strands of long white-blonde hair around his fingers.

Severus had discovered that Lucius looked beautiful angry within just weeks of meeting him, properly, for the first time. When fifth-year Lucius had been failing Potions, and had come sullenly to be tutored by fourth-year Severus. When all they had ever done was kissed, nervously, and when each still looked away when the other met their eyes. Thursday evenings spent in the library trying desperately to make Lucius understand the theory of potion making, staring at each other when each thought the other was working, moving chairs closer together every time until their legs touched under the table, involuntarily at first, then purposefully, as Lucius regained the confident charisma that he had lost so unexpectedly to Severus. The first night that Lucius had snapped as Severus had known he would, had thrown quill and parchment to the floor and stormed all of three feet from the desk, frustrated and insecure for the first time in his life because for all he tried, he just couldn't do it. And Severus had stopped him in his tracks with the most disarming compliment Lucius had ever received.

'Have I ever told you how beautiful you look when you're angry?'

Oh, and nothing had changed to this day, thought Severus, nothing in all of four years. Lucius outlined against shelf upon shelf of dusty tomes, every spine faded next to his sharp and radiant brightness, features thrown into sharp relief by flickering firelight. For while Severus could never be called beautiful, Lucius could never be called anything but, pale skin over fine bone structure, nose and brow and cheekbones as expertly cut as his hair. Some people's hair changed colour from light to light, like Evan's, but Lucius' was never anything but that curious mix of white and blonde and silver that somehow managed to crystallise into a single, pure colour and falling, ever since Severus had known him, to his shoulders. And the grey of his eyes would shift and swirl like a Pensieve, turbulent as storm clouds, every emotion spilling out unhindered. And power, or intelligence, or sexuality radiated from him with a brilliance that turned everything around him to a shadow of itself, from the fall of his hair and the openness of his eyes, the flush across his cheekbones and the twist of his mouth. And all Severus had to do was wind him up.

He had always wanted Lucius Malfoy. But then, everyone had always wanted Lucius Malfoy, whether they admitted it to themselves or not. Most of them had actually had Lucius Malfoy, thought Severus with a twisted smile. Before he had come along, of course. Lucius had told him one night, whispered it in his ear as the afterglow was dying, voice drugged with sex and sleep, that Severus had been on his mind from the day he sat, a second year, and clapped languidly as the young Snape, Severus, had Sorted Slytherin. Severus believed him at the time, and hadn't dwelled on it since. He remembered, though, drifting off into sleep and thinking back over three years spent crossing paths and following each other down the corridor with loaded gazes, neither really able to explain what it was that compelled them about the other. Severus still couldn't have explained it, although it didn't necessarily follow that he didn't know, on some level. But all he knew and could define was that now, after four years, when he was with Lucius he couldn't imagine being with anyone else. And when he wasn't, he never wished he were, because it was a given that in time, he would be.

'Narcissa came down a little before you arrived.'

'Oh?' Strange how much meaning can be carried by a single syllable, thought Severus. In one perfect, rounded sound, Lucius cared, and didn't, was angry and indifferent, curious and nonchalant, and it was difficult to tell which emotions were affected.

'Mm. She's never come down to the library when I've been here.'

'I can't imagine why not.'

'Sarcasm doesn't become you, Lucius,' Severus said, dryly. Lucius turned his head to look up at him, ambivalence flickering over his face as he regarded Severus carefully.

'Why did she come down?' he asked, after a pause. Severus shrugged.

'She didn't say.' Lucius laughed mirthlessly.

'You mean it was just for the conversation?'

'I think I should be offended by that remark,' Severus said, half-heartedly affronted. Lucius laughed again, this time sincerely.

'Sev, 'conversation', when applied to you and Narcissa, can be roughly translated as the oral equivalent of Chinese Water Torture. For both the pair of you and any unfortunate bystanders,' he said, yawning slightly. 'But only when applied to you and Narcissa,' he added, as Severus had failed to see this as sufficiently placating. 'Did it bother you, anyway?' he went on, still looking intently at his lover. 'Because I can make her stop, if you want.' So very Lucius, convinced that the world was wrapped around his little finger. Severus wondered idly if Narcissa would obey him, if asked. There didn't seem a simple answer.

'She disturbed my reading, is all,' he said, dismissively. 'And somehow I doubt she'll be coming back anyway.'

'You were that much fun to be around?'

'Is it so hard to believe?' Finally Lucius turned himself fully around, looking straight up into Severus' eyes.

'What I find hard to believe is that anyone would not want to spend every minute they could with you,' he said, with disarming frankness. Severus smiled a slow smile in silent response. 'Narcissa's a fool.'

'Entirely too true,' Severus agreed. 'She doesn't know what she's missing.' A look of something crossed Lucius' face, something approaching exasperation but not directed at Severus.

'Do we have to talk about Narcissa? I find it far easier to forget she exists if we don't,' he said, an unnatural affectation to his tone. Severus could feel it radiating from him, however much he tried to hide it, the pure and absolute emotion that for Lucius was Narcissa Black; her airs and graces and affected gestures, her careful manners and flawless restraint, her infuriating self-control, everything about her embodied for Lucius frustration. Complete and perfect and utterly maddening, a single humming note wavering off-key, too quiet to assimilate, too loud to ignore.

'Then how was your day?' Severus inquired smoothly, eliciting a sparkling smile from the man approaching twenty curled up at his feet.

'I don't want to talk about that, either,' Lucius decided. Severus cocked his head curiously to one side.

'No? Then what do you want to talk about? Because if it's not suitably fascinating, I'm going back to sleep. I think you'd find it pretty hard to be as interesting as you were in the dream you so rudely woke me up from.' Lucius' eyes flashed steel fire as he grinned suddenly at Severus, who knew at once that somewhere, a button had been pressed.

'Oh, really?' Lucius asked, voice dangerous in the best possible way. 'Am I to understand,' he continued, standing in a single swift movement, 'that you'd rather be asleep,' - he laid a hand on each arm of Severus' chair, leaning in towards him - 'than here talking to me?' His face was inches away from Severus', whose breath was caught in anticipation.

'I think that was the gist of it, yes,' he murmured, almost nervously expectant. Eyebrows raised archly, Lucius tossed back his hair, theatrically.

'And that a dream could possibly be more interesting than the real thing?' he queried elegantly, fixing Severus with a disapproving glare. Severus nodded, a little breathless.

'That sounds about right.' Lucius looked as though he was digesting this, nodding thoughtfully and studying Severus' face with serious grey eyes.

'Well, then,' he began, deliberately. 'I suppose that's what you'd call a challenge.'

And Severus, with a gasp and a shiver, fell headfirst and uncontrollably into Lucius Malfoy, hands and arms and legs and lips, neck and chest and thighs and hips, hopelessly and irretrievably. But this was Lucius, for him, and this was being with Lucius, absolute and irrefutable, a sequence that couldn't play out any other way. And Severus didn't believe in destiny and never would, but this had never been what was meant to be, or what had to be, it was what was, and could only be, each and every moment in the fragment of a second it transpired. The future held no meaning, a distant and abstract concept, and yet in the desperation of Lucius' touch and the ache resonating in his sighs Severus wondered if they were living in the future already, knowing without admitting that the present, the immediate they believed in was the death throes of a simpler past that it was easier to cling to than discard. For at least the past was definite when the future was uncertain.

A hand, a mouth, a sound from somewhere deep in someone's throat and the sheen of sweat-soaked skin. Never a blur of imperfect sensation, never a coherent flow of emotion, rather a chain of crystallised impressions, brilliant and lucid flashes of reality. But reality was never just Lucius, Lucius in the instant, then and there. Every bright hard moment carried with it every moment similar from every year they had known each other; Lucius' hand, exactly there, in the morning, evening, before class or after Quidditch, and Severus' shallow breath echoing in the library, the dormitory, bedroom, bathroom and hallway. A thousand trysts, layer upon layer of echo and memory, and this was what it felt like, this was what Lucius felt like, all Severus' impressions of him at once.

And sprawled there across the chair, robes awkward but it didn't matter, and leg bent at a strange angle but he didn't care, and Lucius' weight heavy on him but he hardly noticed, this was wholeness and entirety because that was what Lucius did, almost without realising. When he was there, he was everything, and everything revolved around him, and yet he was momentary and instant, for when he wasn't, he could be forgotten, although Severus rarely tried. After a moment, at least, for he was a flash of such glaring brilliance that the world seemed grey for the second after he was gone, and the purple bruise of his silhouette was burnt fleetingly into your retinas. And he knew, and he didn't, that this was what drew him and Lucius together. Because Lucius' light reflected blindingly from most sycophantic faces, but Severus absorbed it as though it had never existed. Because Lucius illuminated Severus without ever outshining him, and because Severus tempered Lucius without ever obscuring him. Because neither would concede the other's superiority.

And Lucius' touch burned, flames licking down every nerve in his body and it was almost delirium, now, a weight of oppressive heat bearing down on the skin Lucius didn't have the hands to touch, and searing from the skin under the hands that were, and radiating from the body they belonged to, and everything was focusing in now into a concentrated beam of feeling, white-hot and lethal, a rounded note keening up into a crescendo, rising and rising until - a twist, a writhe and a convulsion, an echoing cry and the beam shattering into a firework of sparks, and the note fading into shallow, ragged breathing and the sound of satiation.

'Never let it be said you don't rise to a challenge, Luci.'

'Some challenges are more fun to rise to than others.'

And as they lay tangled there, that strange serenity surrounding them, footsteps left unheard from behind the library door.