Darkly Bound

15

We ended up some dark tavern and he walked me quickly to the very back of the place to a dark corner table. "Do you want something?" he asked briskly.

"No. Thank you. I think I'll keep my head clear for this," I answered warily as I sank into a chair. He came back soon enough with a large glass of whiskey in one hand and the bottle in the other. He sat down heavily, downed the whole glass, poured another and glared at me. I rolled my eyes and watched him to take another gulp.

"I thought we were going to have it off," I said quickly, when I judged that he was just ready to swallow. I then stared intently at the ceiling while he tried not to choke to death.

"Have it out! O-U-T!" He spat the words across the table.

"Oops. That darned language barrier. Sorry." Despite the fact I'd nearly killed him, the distraction from his foul mood seemed to have worked a little. He sat back and emptied the glass watching me before swallowing this time.

"Why," he began, "all of a sudden, are you so hell bent on not returning to Hogwarts?"

"What makes you think I'm 'hell bent' on not returning?"

He leaned forward. "I heard what you were thinking." He refilled the glass.

"The trouble is, you see, I'm still waiting for someone to tell me exactly what my job at Hogwarts is! It's never been made clear exactly why I was hired at all. I know I wasn't hired to teach, although my students are the only reason I feel any obligation to go back." I leaned back against the wall behind my chair and closed my eyes. "Moody watches my every move. I give advice no-one listens to. Do I need to go into the gory details of what I did to us? And for what? The first time since I've been here that anything's been accomplished was Azkaban and that was for the Ministry. I could be useful there. I could be of some help."

He turned the glass in his hands, "Need I remind you of our meeting with Lucius Malfoy? That's why I brought you there. I know you well enough to know you needed to hear it yourself. You are far from anonymous. Despite what you think Hogwarts the safest place for you right now."

"Why can't I do both? You do."

"You have no idea what I do!"

"Well then, why don't you tell me."

The liquor wasn't making it any easier for him to think. I inched my hand along the table. Just as I reached the bottle and was going to start to slide it away, he snatched it up again. "I told you I can't do that."

"I think it's time you did."

He took another drink and brushed his hair out of his face. Then he got up and moved from his seat across the table and sat next to me. "You remember the Mindstorm. Before we left on Saturday."

"Of course." I could see the image he'd created in the corridor, a pit of despair, an endless graveyard.

"You thought I was trying to scare you. I wasn't. I was trying to show you what I face every day. That is what I live with. That is what I was part of. That is what I carry around with me."

I looked at him in shock. How could I not have known this?

"You saw all that and still you took that step. You stepped right into something I've been fighting alone for years. You were willing to face something I was getting ready to have to walk back into alone."

I couldn't look at him. "That was just contrariness. I can't not push back. That's what happened in your classroom the first time we met. Stunts like that have gotten me into more trouble than you can imagine."

"Maybe, but Dumbledore knows all this. That's probably why he showed up where and when he did on Saturday. He could have just as easily called us to his office. He knew everything when he hired you. I have no idea how or why, but he told me he was sending for someone. I knew who you were the minute you stepped into my classroom."

If that was the answer it wasn't a very good one. It opened up more questions than I'd had before. I pushed them out of my head. "Severus," I asked, "Why do you think I have a file in the office of the Department of Dark Arts Authorization? One that I'm sure has nothing to do with skrying?"

"Oh that's easy," he said and emptied the glass. "They have to keep track of dark witches like you. You said it yourself, didn't you? That you're 'as black as they come'."

" I'd like to see your file."

"I just bet you would," he whispered. "How's that spell of yours coming along? The one you were working when you were so rudely interrupted earlier today?"

"The only spell you're under is what's in that bottle. I'm afraid I can't hold a candle to 'The Old Mage."

"I think you were about here," he said and took me in his arms. He kissed me slowly exploring with his lips and tongue, moving from my lips to my neck and down towards my shoulders.

If I could have managed any words they would have been something along the lines of, 'Yes, this certainly looks like the work of 'Old Mage's Special Malt' particularly when consumed in large amounts over a very short period of time', but words of any kind eluded me.

He stood up, very unsteadily, from the table and reached out. "Come on then, I want to get out of this place right now."

*

The whiskey was hitting him hard, it would be a good idea to get out of there quickly. There was no telling where we'd end up, but when I opened my eyes again I realized that even in his quickly deteriorating state of consciousness his homing instinct had been sound and we had ended up in one of the upper corridors of his own house.

"Oh ye of little faith," he said. He had an odd and quite frightening expression on his face.

"Are you alright? Maybe you ought to just go lie down and sleep it off."

"Exactly what I was thinking," he said and pushed the nearest door open.

It had to be his bedchamber. The furniture was dark, heavy wood and the room was stacked with books. Candle ends littered the tables and had been pushed aside to make room for replacements. It looked as though the house elves had either given up trying to keep order or been forbidden entrance. He pushed into the room, dragging me along with him and shrugged off his cloak. I backed away but misjudged the door and ended up trapped against a wall. His kisses were whiskey flavored and dizzying. I felt my own cloak fall away and his hands slipping under my robes.

"Severus, you're drunk," I gasped when I was able to catch my breath.

"Quite so," he mumbled his lips following his hands as they peeled my dress off my shoulders.

"Later...when you've--" I protested weakly, pressing the palms of my hands flat against his chest, but the feel of his pounding heart under my palms served only to awaken my own craving.

He pushed me back against the wall, pressing himself hard against me. "Do you really think so?" he whispered into my ear sending shivers down my spine. I breathed in his heat, his scent and his power. No, I didn't think so at all. It had to be now. I wanted him-- wanted him with an urgency that took me completely by surprise. I unhooked the clasp that held his outer robe and slid it off his shoulders, down his arms. His soft cotton shirt was damp with sweat.

"Nullum inebriatus!" The spell took effect quickly, but clearing the alcoholic haze from his brain did little to cool his ardor.

He looked at me with mild surprise, and leaned down and covered my mouth with an urgent, consuming, nearly heart-stopping kiss. I hardly heard him through the rushing in my head when he muttered, his hands sliding down my body. "You should be more careful where you cast your spells."

He sucked his breath in suddenly, sharply as I slid one hand between and grasped him, sliding along the length of him. "I wonder," he whispered running his hands up my thighs pushing my skirts up as he went, "just what your little coven would think of your charm now?" I arched towards him and he came into me with searing blast of heat. The air was knocked out of my lungs as I was slammed back against the wall. I grabbed fistfuls of his hair.

"Not..." he whispered roughly through clenched teeth,

Very.

Pretty.

Now.

Is it?"

I managed enough strength to push him back, my palms flat against his shoulders. He was still for a moment, his eyes closed. I dug my fingers into his shoulders. "Pretty," I said in a rasping whisper as I caught my breath. His eyes flickered open and he moved against me, pushing deeper, daring me to protest.

"Pretty," I finally managed through ragged gasps, " is overrated."

A look passed over his face that took away the breath I'd just struggled to catch. With an animal sound between a laugh and a moan he pulled me away from the wall and towards him forcing a cry from deep inside me as he thrust forward. His fervor drove me much further and much faster than I was ready for. The wave crested quickly and suddenly. I muffled a frantic wail against it in the crook of his neck, burying my face in his hair.

It was only his weight holding me up then, and when he pulled away I felt myself start to slide down, my legs unable or unwilling to hold me up. I closed my eyes, waiting to reach the floor but he snaked an arm around me and pulled me back up to him. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow. I reached up and touched his face.

He looked down at me, his eyes burning like embers. He turned slightly to lean against the wall and when he no longer needed his arm to hold himself up he brushed the hair out of my face and cupped his hand under my chin. "You...." he closed his eyes, and tried again. "I--"

He was never going to finish that sentence. I finished it for him with a kiss that felt like nothing less than being struck by lightening the moment our lips met. It took us both by surprise, and we both made some small startled sound, but neither one of us pulled away. The charge ran through us, arced between us and around us. The room crackled with energy. It was like standing in an open field during a thunder storm.

At last, he broke the kiss and glanced around at the glimmering aura. He ran a hand through the length of my hair, grinning as he watched it crackle and spark.

16

Later, much later, we sat together, wrapped in silence in the parlor. The house was wrapped in darkness and the only light in the room came from the fire. Unspoken questions simmered between us and the atmosphere was closing in.

"Well?" he finally broke the silence.

I looked up.

"You've been waiting for the story, haven't you?"

"I was waiting until you were ready to tell it. This hardly seems the time."

"You could have just read it, pulled it out of my mind."

"I could have, yes."

He stared off into the fire. "You want the facts and figures?"

"No, I want your story. I want to know what happened."

He sat back heavily and pushed his hair out of his face with both hands. "I was fifteen. I was at Hogwarts, sitting in Professor Binn's class--he was alive then, and if you're interested he had no more personality then than he does now--when I was called to the Headmaster's office much to the delight of a certain group of Gryffindors. I can still hear their hooting and whistles as I left that classroom." His voice trailed off for a moment, but he brought himself back quickly. "When I got to the office I was faced by Dumbledore and my head of house. I thought I was being expelled, but couldn't think why. I'd at least have liked to have done something to make it a memorable experience; something worth being expelled for. Then Dumbledore told me."

"Wait. No one from your family?"

"Dumbledore told me that my mother had had an accident and was not expected to survive the night. I was to leave at once. So I was sent home."

"Alone?"

"She was dead before I got here. I met my father in this very room. The moment I looked at him I knew he'd been behind the whole thing."

"And he knew that you'd know."

"If there was one thing my father could never bear it was the fact that all his children had inherited their mother's, shall we say, insight. He himself had no such aptitude and perhaps he saw himself at a disadvantage. All he said to me was that I was too late. That she had asked for me and I hadn't been there."

"That's not true!" I heard myself say the words, but I must have looked as surprised as he did when he heard them. Those words had not come from my own thoughts.

"What did you say?" he whispered.

"That's not true. She never awoke. He lied to you!" I looked at his shocked expression and realized he hadn't even told me what had happened. Waves of feelings were passing over me like the tides. The humiliation in the classroom the shock in the Headmaster's office and the horror of arriving home to such a cruel welcome. I felt the blood rushing to my head and my vision blurred. I knew what was happening but hadn't expected it now. A loud shrieking sound, like wind started in my ears so that both my sight and now my hearing were hindered as time fell away. It didn't last long-- as suddenly as it had come upon me, it stopped. The light in the room had changed. It was very cold, there was no fire. Looking towards the large windows I noticed it was snowing and had been, apparently, for quite some time.

"Tell me what happened, Father."

The voice behind me startled me. So familiar, but so very different. I turned quickly to see the new scene that was to play out before me. Severus Snape at fifteen stood in the middle of the room, his black eyes, rimmed with red drilling into his father's face. He was wearing a dripping wet Hogwarts school uniform and a shock of wet, black hair was plastered across his forehead but he never took his eyes off his father, who blinked first.

"She was doing some trance work. Just never came out of it."

Severus had not moved a muscle. "That's impossible," he said in a familiar soft, but taunting tone. His voice had not reached the timbre it would, but even at this age it was one of his greatest assets and a formidable weapon.

"Oh is it? And what would a sniveling brat like you know about that?" the older man barked. "Is that what you're learning at that school of yours now? Women's magic?"

"What should they be teaching me? You managed to teach me everything I needed to know to make me notorious the moment got there. They hate me there because of what you taught me."

"Don't be stupid, boy! They don't hate you, they're afraid of you. And rightly so. The place is crawling with mudbloods. To think I have three daughters to send there."

"What happened to my mother? Did you not like what she told you? Were her visions not grand enough for you? What did you do, Father? Did you force her to take some filthy potion?"

The slap came so fast I felt it before I saw it contact his face. I took an instinctive, futile, step forward. He never moved, never even flinched. His enraged father stalked out of the room. Only then did the boy let his posture betray his emotions. He dug at his eyes with his fists. He dropped his wet cloak on the floor and began tugging his bedraggled school tie out of his collar. His eyes fell on something on a table nearby and he walked over to it and picked it up. It was a gazing ball. It had to have been hers. I watched, heartbroken, as he looked at it, rolled it from hand to hand and finally, with a furious scream hurled it into the empty fireplace and watched it splinter into a million tiny shards of crystal.

A log fell in the hearth sending a shower of sparks up the chimney of the fireplace in the present day room and shocked me back to the present. I couldn't turn to look at him after witnessing such a private scene.

"Did you find the potion?" I asked.

"I did. I was right about the reason he gave it to her. She just couldn't tell him what he wanted to hear. There was some problem with the family business it seems. Father was desperate for some sort of solution. Why did she do it? Why did she agree to it?"

"She knew what she was doing," I tried to reassure him. "She knew the risk, we all do."

He was silent for what seemed a very long time, then asked, "Why is this so important to you? Why are you so interested in this?"

I wondered if it was possible to explain. I wondered if she'd let me explain. I got up and went to him. "I wish I could tell you. I reached out and placed the palms of my hands on his temples. "Close your eyes. Just try to see what I see. Don't fight it. You'll see it's the truth." I tried to give him as much of what I knew of her as I could. I don't know how much, if any of my visions were allowed to cross the barrier she had set up between us. But he seemed relaxed, and on the verge of sleep, so I left quietly after a while and went up the stairs to bed.