Here the Stone Images are Raised

Memories: the taste of the moon distilled suddenly; branches against the winter sky.

Fuyu no tsuki (winter moon) has a pale tint that indicates a kind of coldness deep inside. Under that moon tea people deliberately break the thin ice in the tsukubai with the handle of the ladle; this solemn and clear frame of mind belongs only to them.

Karenu ho wa
Chasen no arite
Fuyu no tsuki

The Japanese were such fascinating people.

* * *

It was cold in the room Voldemort now occupied. It seemed almost futile to continue to follow a man (something once a man, at any rate) who seemed to be consistently stymied by a mere boy. Such a pity Potter had never been one to save anything other than his own skin, or to destroy anyone save those who came to care for him.

"Severus." Voldemort sat in a chair that one must assume should have been regal, were it not tattered. One must also wonder what Voldemort did with the money that should have been easily taken from the families he saw fit to unleash his frustrated ire upon. It certainly was not reflected in his sense of decor.

Checking both a sigh and a smirk, he approached the chair, bowing appropriately and murmuring the things one must say to appease those drunk on their own supposed power. He wondered if Voldemort could sense the lack of sincerity. He decided it was entirely likely. He was tired; this was not how he wished to spend his evening, and Lucius would snare him before he left, wrapping one perfectly manicured hand in the folds of his robes.

"What news?" Voldemort asked. "How do they grieve for their fallen?"

"Only what is to be expected, my lord. Dumbledore suspended classes briefly; the children are red eyed and decidedly lackluster."

"And?"

"And they clutch to one another in the hallways, between the classes-- the girls wailing and pleading with one another to avoid certain death, and the boys plotting your utter ruin."

"And Potter?"

"He looks as if he sees ghosts in every corner, every gesture."

"Excellent." Voldemort settled back into his chair, steepling his fingers and regarding Snape through the spaces. "My little spy," he said without affection, only a sort of proprietary pride and amusement.

Snape sighed; he could feel Lucius' eyes on his back. He sketched another bow, adding a flourish, and straightened. The mask hid nothing, none of the personality behind, none of the mood. As he forced his shoulders straight again, as he felt every glance in the room settling on him: shall we get through this one evening without another bout of crucio?

"You may go."

He turned and left, through the door. Voldemort sunk his claws in long enough ago; there was no longer anything left to guard. He did not need to turn around to see Lucius detach himself from the wall, nor did he need to listen to hear the quiet footsteps that trailed him the length of the hallway to the stairs and to the landing where he would always apparate. It was therefore no surprise to feel fingers wrap around his wrist, to catch and turn him. His shoulders were still bruised from the last time, and he felt them hit the stone with a pain still slightly sickeningly sweet.

He was tall, perhaps too tall at times, and Lucius, cut from a different cloth entirely was smaller and made of seemingly hollow bones. His mouth found the hollow of Snape's throat, Lucius' fingers digging into his sides as his teeth bit at the thin flesh. Snape could have lifted the other man and thrown him across the hall, but he moved his head to the side, and his hands rose to pull the absurd ribbon from Lucius' hair.

"At least you aren't wearing one of your bloody hats," he said. His breath caught when Lucius, faintly annoyed, bit down harder.

"It wouldn't quite fit beneath the hood," Lucius pointed out, tongue flicking against his skin. "Shall we go home?"

"Let's."

* * *

Sex with Lucius was only recalled later in moments of time, splintered into caresses and the rhythm of their breaths. They had been lovers in an assortment of senses since they were boys together. Mutual ambition, mutual respect at the time, though it became clear early on that neither of them were content to move in the same direction. When family duty required Lucius to wed Narcissa and produce an adequate heir, Severus felt something akin to relief. He had never been accustomed to the idea of love.

Lucius was a possessive man; the distance was never more than occasionally physical. School had ended and Lucius had inherited his father's estate (the elder Malfoy managing to get himself killed at such an appropriate time--then again, Malfoys rarely suffered from a case of poor timing). The wedding occurred in the fall, which some said was inauspicious. Late in October, the country side nonetheless managed to send a fine dusting of snow down to coat the leaves that rustled through the garden. Narcissa, dressed traditionally in sumptuous white, seemed to disappear in it, in the overcast sky and the flakes landing on her veil. Lucius was too much contrast, standing at her side in somber black, her arm threaded through his as they received their guests. Lucius met Severus' eyes over the head of his bride, and Severus knew that this would not be the close of their association.

It had been scarcely a week before an owl arrived, a typically unblemished white Malfoy owl, bearing a scroll and a portkey. A rather obvious invitation that he found himself unable to refuse. They had only rarely shared a bed to sleep, but still, he found that he missed the idle caresses, the interruption of his work. He took to spending much of his weekends in the portion of the Manor now known to be his.

She was jealous in the beginning, terribly jealous. She was frosty and rigid, and frequently attempted to bring ruin to their short-lived pleasures. Lucius plied her with cosmetics and expensive things, trips to the best parts of London, vacations in Paris, in Venice. It was not until he gave her Draco that he won her over and she left Lucius to his proclivities.

As Draco grew, he was nearly as hungry for his father's affections as Severus was. Lucius had little time for the boy—little time for anything, really. Subverting the Ministry was busy work, after all. Then Draco was in school and regarding Severus over the beakers and vials of potions class, and knowing with all of the worldly wisdom of an eleven year old boy that Severus found himself trapped between his loyalties. The boy would smile. He had learned too much from his mother. Lucius was at least reasonably straightforward in his manipulations.

Severus wrote glowing reports of the fairly mediocre boy.

When he was fifteen, he had told Lucius that he wasn't a liar. It had been snowing and Lucius had laughed.

* * *

Sakashirani
Natsu wa hito-mane
Sasa no ha no
Sayagu shimo-yo o
Wa ga hitori nuru

In the summer because of the heat, I slept, after a fashion, alone;
but now it is winter it is awful to sleep by myself on a frosty night,
with the bamboo leaves whistling.

* * *

Potter sat beside Longbottom in class now, attempting to help the boy now where the girl had left off. Longbottom spent the majority of his time crying large crocodile tears into his cauldron, ruining every concoction despite Potter's efforts. Potter glared over the rims of his glasses at Snape throughout class, accusing and defiant. Snape found himself slightly taken aback, but not altogether surprised.

"And you would have preferred...?" Snape said, drawing near to the boy as class ended and the students gathered their things, filing out the door.

"You could have done something," Potter spat.

"What, pray tell, could I have done?"

"You knew." Potter was fairly trembling with indignation. He held his books to his chest like a shield.

"Did I? I should say Dumbledore knew a fair bit more than I did," Snape said dryly, head slightly tilted.

"Don't try to twist this around! I--"

"I think you misunderstand me, Mister Potter. I dislike having my class time perpetually disrupted by your childish anger." He drew closer, leaning over the boy and speaking softly. "Voldemort destroys only the things you care for. What is left now, Potter? He has taken your parents, your godfather, your best friends."

The boy sputtered, his hands clenching into fists.

"Be wary," Snape said simply, turning to leave.

"Are you threatening me?" Potter's voice cracked in the center.

Snape paused in the doorway, one hand on the frame. He blinked once, twice, into the gloom beyond his classroom. "Far from it, Mister Potter."

"Then what are you trying to do?"

"Perpetuate your existence, Potter, as little as you appreciate or acknowledge it."

He left then in a swish of black and irritation, leaving the boy to stand staring after him.

* * *

Idiot, he seethed inwardly as he slammed the door to his rooms shut. He could not then, as he lay his forehead against the cool stone of the wall, decide who he cursed. There was a letter on his desk, in ivory and cream. He had ceased to wonder how they arrived. A twist of something laden with sugar, also, from Dumbledore—an apology of sorts, and a summoning.

The sweet was peppermint and surprisingly good. He tended to only enjoy peppermint if it was fresh leaf and boiled in tea. The letter smelled of ice, of the first crack of winter thaw. He fancied that he could catch a tang somewhere in the fibers of crocus blooming by the roadside, past the stables and near the riverbank where he had grown up. Purple and orange hearts, blue, green variegated leaves. Silence, birds perched on trees encrusted still by snow.

This winter will never end.

* * *

Lucius stood before the fire and poured wine into twin goblets. He did nothing that was not calculated for effect. He knew, obviously, the way the light caught the hair spilling over his shoulders, and the way the rich red and gold of his clothing warmed his skin. Lucius admired the color, and in so doing, admired himself admiring the color.

Severus was, after twenty years or so, bloody tired of this artifice. He took the glass from Lucius and held it loosely in his fingers while he waited. He still wore his cloak. This would typically annoy Lucius to no end, but Lucius was steadfastly ignoring this breech of protocol. Severus was a patient man.

"Still plagued by conscience, my beloved?" Lucius said evenly, leaving only a fine edge of sarcasm to color his voice.

Severus made a slight noise of disgust. The corner of Lucius' mouth crooked in a smirk.

"When will you stop? Though I must confess I find it highly entertaining, Severus. Who do you obey, truly?"

"Myself," he said into the glass, taking a deep drink. Lucius laughed until he had to place his own on the mantle to keep from spilling it.

"Get out," Lucius said, sobering, his face drawing into a frown.

"I hadn't intended to stay."

* * *

Dumbledore was awake, despite the lateness of the hour. His office was oppressively warm, reminding Snape again that his mentor was no longer young.

It amused Dumbledore to serve him tea. It amused him to arrange a tray with sweets and things he knew Snape would not touch. Snape tolerated this and shook the snow from his cloak and hung it before the fire. He sat in his favorite chair, an old and hideous thing that few bothered to sit in. He curled up in it, belying the height of his body and fingered one of the cakes at his elbow. He felt like a teenager, and he was very tired.

Dumbledore watched him quietly, watched him pick up the cup of tea and wrinkle his nose at the contents. "Sir, with all due respect, you--"

"Cannot brew tea to save my own life, I know." Dumbledore's eyes twinkled, despite the weariness marring their typically carefree blue depths. "I do it simply to aggravate you, Severus. I can't tell you how sincerely I enjoy your look of distaste."

Snape pulled his wand from his sleeve and tapped the cup, murmuring an incantation. He glanced at Dumbledore through the wing of hair that had fallen into his eyes. Satisfied that he was not being chuckled over, Snape took the cup in hand and waited.

A sigh, deep and heartfelt rustled the papers on Dumbledore's desk. Fawkes lifted his head from his wing to peer at his master, rising after a moment gracefully in the air to cross the small room to nuzzle his head against his master's shoulder.

"Phoenixes are surprisingly like cats," Dumbledore said. "As with many magical creatures, they possess a strain of empathy, though they, of all the creatures we have encountered thus far, possess the greatest deal of compassion for their human counterparts. Fawkes has been with me a very long time. He has lain against my shoulder as I have delivered far too many terrible, terrible letters. It is never easier, not in all of these many years."

Dumbledore toyed with a sweet, a lemon drop, before placing it in his mouth. The phoenix made small cooing noises, rubbing the soft feathers of his cheek against the old man's.

"I didn't think we would be so late," he said. A silver tear traced its way through the careworn lines of his face to mingle with the twin the phoenix shed, sorrow for sorrow. "I didn't—“

"Shh," Shape said, unwinding his long legs, placing the cup on the table without a thought for the drops that spilled on the small table. They had known one another too long to bother with a great deal of formality at such a juncture. Snape went around the desk and drew Dumbledore's chair aside. He felt frail in Snape's arms and his body shuddered as he wept.

"They . . .” Snape began, beginning to make the sort of banal comforting statements that one makes on the other side of death. They would have been lies. The children suffered, and suffered horribly before finding their release in death. He sighed, the sticky-sweet scent that clung to Dumbledore's robes nearly making him sneeze. "It is over for them," he said. "They hurt no more."

"Small comfort, Severus."

"I have none other to give."

* * *

He woke twice, tangled in his sheets.

"There is blood in the water," he said, strangled. "Blood in the water."

He remembered nothing in the morning.

* * *

He wore white for the children.

The sky was clouded and it threatened rain in the distance. The wind caught at his hair and twisted his sleeves around his thin arms. The smoke would carry away from the school, then.

Dumbledore was subdued, moving mechanically through the motions set down a thousand years before. Wizards did not die in fairy tales, yet Dumbledore wove a story of the lives distilled into two shrouded bundles resting on twin pyres.

The Weasleys stood in a crowd to the right, nearest to the fragmented remains of one of their own. Red blurring into red, they held each other and attempted to stifle themselves. It was only marginally accomplished.

They went one by one to stand on the dais and relate their own recollections. The boys having memories that should have been amusing any other time, but that sent them sniffling into cheap handkerchiefs. The girl could scarcely gasp out ten sentences regarding her late brother before she fell into the arms of another. Snape felt that some of this was a bit excessive, but this was their grief and they were less inured to it than he had necessity to be.

The muggles followed. The pair of them stood shaking and too close to one another and not even the steadying hand of Dumbledore could cease their quaking. Perhaps they only had just found occasion to realize that the world they had sent their daughter into so willingly six years ago was not a kind and altogether pleasant place to dwell. This was not a land of fairy stories, no. Magic is not exciting. Your daughter is dead, a heap of broken bones, and what have you now to feel pride over?

He wore white and the first year Slytherins pressed against him in the crowd. At eleven, at a school so very far from home, they fancied themselves adults. They believed in their foolish wand waving far too much. They believed in the power of their first charm, the first potion that did not send their cauldrons melting through the desks.

Yet here, wrapped in the kindness of heavy cloth, lay one of the best of them. Where was the magic then? Where was any sort of salvation?

His mother’s rosary sat wrapped twice around his wrist, belying all of this, attempting to assert that there was something more, some greater plan. The plan here was split between Dumbledore and Voldemort. One was perpetually losing, some loss of life or ground to note the struggle that had lasted half a century and more.

Dumbledore raised his arms to the sky to beseech it, to demand an acknowledgement for the destruction arrayed before them. He called to the clouds, called past them to the gods that refused to listen or bear proper witness. He called the lightning.

It struck the huddled forms, forking at the last instant to ignite both.

* * *

Lucius often sat by the fire in his office reading late into the night. Classical literature, poetry, occasional forays into more modern attempts at art—Lucius was predictable in his habits. Tonight, he had philosophy spread across his lap and a glass of brandy beside him. The small silver reading glasses he occasionally wore were perched on his nose and he looked wearier than he often gave himself leave to appear. Severus paused in the doorway for a moment until Lucius took notice.

Crossing the room, he knelt, resting his cheek against Lucius’ knee. He had grown so accustomed to sighing that it seemed as constant as breathing. Lucius shifted the book to the side and twined his fingers In Severus’ hair.

“It was today,” Lucius observed quietly.

“Yes.”

“I was invited, of course, but I didn’t think it wise to attend.” Lucius began slowly stroking his hair, running his fingers through the length of it. Severus had fine hair, like a child’s, and he rarely bothered to cut it. It had grown slightly past the base of his shoulders in his disregard. Lucius wrapped the ends around his fingers idly.

“No.”

“Severus,” Lucius said, unknotting a tangle deftly, “why did you come?”

He raised his face to meet Lucius’ eyes for a moment before turning to look into the fire. “You know I can’t stay away.”

“No.” Lucius drew his head back to his knee, moving his other hand to stroke Severus’ cheek. “You never could.”