Title: The tick of the lead crystal clock
Word Count: 2687
Beta(s): Verity Graham
A/N: This is an AU, as said in the prompts below. I apologize for Lucius being slightly OOC; I was channelling the hidden love he held for his family through this particular portrayal of his character.
August 22, 1934
Her amaranth silk glared past her like the fulmination that ebbed in the melancholic deluge outside, a lantern between the sea of prismatic hides, and the gaunt frame of a cat crouched at her feet. It was a panther, it was Snape, it was my panther, but she did not look frightened, she looked at me. She was languid, cool; smiling even. I started pushing my way toward her, but the masked malevolence in her eyes stopped me cold.
That son of a bitch was standing with his back to her, spitting rancid slaver with each fluctuation, his tongue licking at the still ether. His sheepskin trench coat hung to the crook stabbed in the fodder besides him. She held something in her hands. An elephant passed between us — effervescent brocade scarves embellishing its tattered ears — and when it was gone, I saw that she had coaxed the panther with the flesh of a slaughtered goat. The fresh ichor stained her alabaster palms; horse flies besieging the meat. She looked at me again, bemused. Then her gaze shifted to the sweat on his bare back.
"Oh God," I said, suddenly comprehending. I staggered forward, screaming even though there was no hope of my voice reaching her. "Don't do it! Don't do it!"
She lifted the brawn high in the air, Snape's deep-set auric eyes following, and brought it down, colouring his back a nauseating maroon. The panther pounced as she dropped the meat and ran, jagged nails tearing apart bellowing flesh. The crowd of rubes shrieked, and then the whole tent convulsed with the deafening sound of bodies trying to shove past one another, off the stands and into the open air. The jaunty concord of Souvenir de Cirque Renz screeched to a halt, and in its place was a rolling accumulation of haunches, heels, tails, and claws.
I was too numb to move, even as the belligerent panther's claws caught the flaxen strands of a little girl.
So long ago it was. So long. But still, it plagues me.
…
May 13, 2005
Walls of magnolia and portraits of kindred encompass me, the pungent miasma of tapioca filling the trite atmosphere, but with no teeth, I could no longer eat what I enjoyed. Dentures cost an arm and leg, and if the doddery ladies with noses like a daisy-bud taught me anything, it was that dentures were more for those who yearned to be basking in their spring garden than gorging on lamb ribs. My wife's specifically, complete with blueberry chicken barbeque sauce and rosemary carrots. I want coleslaw. I want potatoes boiled in their skin. And I want a bittersweet, dry pear wine to wash it all down, not grape juice from a tin.
"Grandpa," Scorpius says, and I struggle to face him on my box spring. "Did you see it? They've been at it all morning, did you see it?"
I snarl at the boy, the ground cinnamon atop the cassava mocking me. "How can I see it, you ignorant boy, when there are no bloody windows in here?"
Scorpius averts eyes so alike his fathers that for three winks I believe myself penitent, but like clockwork, he turns to me without an arriere-pensee. "I took a photo," he manipulates the rotating screen of his camcorder and places it on my sternum, "tell me if you can't see it."
The picture's foreground is lolling in the blinding light of the aubade, but the silhouette of a large canvas tent, thickly banded in red and yellow with a palpable peaked top — my ticker lurches so sharply I gripe a fist to my chest, tapioca spilling all over my sheets.
"Grandpa!" cries Scorpius, pushing himself upright, but I raise a shaking hand, "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," I say, clearing my throat and clobbering my chest. "I'm fine."
He exhales, pulling the camcorder and sheets off of me. "Is it the circus? Father told me about you — I didn't think..."
I flounder and then about-face. "Nevermind about that, your father was delusional."
Scorpius braces his pallid hands on the edge of the bed, reedy tendons appearing in his forearm. "I have to leave," and then the door shuts with alarming duress. He will be back; he always comes back. Perhaps for a fortnight, he will be gone.
Draco is dead, after all.
…
August 31, 1932
"You will be in charge of Snape for now on," says Barty, motioning to the haggard panthers with his serpent-head crook, their atramentous pelts the remnants of a penumbra in the flat car. "That's him in the middle."
Snape leers at the din of his voice, clipping the latch with cicatrix paws, and snarls as I sluggishly approach the enclosure. I placate my nerves and reach for a bucket. "Wait," Barty adjourns, pointing at a chicken-scratch labelled pail. "Not that one. This one."
The entrails in both buckets were one in the same as far as I could tell, but Barty is glaring, and I know it was a bad idea to argue. The cat lunges at the door as he sees me inching forwards again, and my gait dampens. "What's the matter, Lucius?"
I can hear the gull of his laughter. "You're not afraid of Snapey-poo, are you?" he taunts. "He's just a widdle kitty cat in need of mama's milk. He's like a house cat, isn't he?"
Snape pauses to lick his bemired coat, rolling over onto his side. "I just never had owned an animal before," I say, "that's all." With fumbling fingers, I remove the padlock and lay it by my feet. Then I lift the pail and linger. The next time Snape turns away, I swing the door open. Before I can tip out the minced venison, his large jaws bite down on my arm. I scream, and the moan of metal hitting metal sounds, splattering gore and brawn all over weathered ligneous laths. The Malkin drops my arm and pounces on the rotten meat.
I slam the door and hold it shut with my knee, checking whether or not my arm is a mass of mangled tissue and cartilage. It's not. It is slick with sputum and as rufescent as the fading paint outside the iron horse, but the skin isn't broken. I let out a raspy breath, and notice Barty is crowing garishly behind me.
I turn to him. "What the hell is wrong with you? You think that's funny? He isn't a damn pet!"
"I do, yes," says Barty, making no effort to contain his mirth.
"You're seriously fucked, you know that?" I bound from the flat car, check my blemished arm once more, and stalk off.
"Lucius, wait," giggles Barty, prancing up behind me. "Don't be a sourpuss; I was just having a little fun with you."
"What fun? You tried to feed me to a cat!"
"He hasn't got any teeth."
I halt, staring at a struggling, upturned powderpost beetle as this fact sinks in. Then I continue walking. This time, Barty doesn't follow.
Incensed, I head for the bourn and kneel beside a couple of women laundering linens and performance liveries. A brunette spooks and topples into the water, choking on her surprise. The woman holding the washboard blusters, shooting a succession of glances at me and hesitates to grab the switchblade in her dress pocket. "Alice!" she shouts. "What is that? Is that blood?"
I look down. I am splattered with cruor from the entrails. "Yes," I say acrimoniously. "I thought the cats would make a good pet. You know how it is with first time owners."
She abandons her station and holds out her hand for the woman she called Alice, louring. "Just get out of here."
I walk downstream, looking back until I could no longer see the bronze braid of the other woman. Then I crouch by the stream to rinse the blood and cat saliva from my arms. Eventually, I head back to the second section of the train. Hagrid is up on a flat, next to an orangutan den, his beard sullied in treacle. The orangutan sits on his haunches, devouring fistfuls of grain mixed with crushed raspberries and watching us with beady black eyes.
"Need help?" I ask.
"Naw. About done, I think. I 'ear Barty got ya with deadbeat Snape."
I look up, prepared to be mad, but Hagrid's not smiling. "Watch yerself," he says. "Snape may not take ya arm, but Tom will. You can bet on tha'. Don't know why Barty asked ye to do it, anyway. Mad Eye's the cat man, though he is thinkin' of quitting. Unless he wanted to make a point. Marty, 'ere, wouldn't do that to ya. He's sweet as a pea." He pauses, reaches into the den, and strokes the ape's forehead before shutting the door. Then he jumps down from the flat.
"Look, I'm only goin' to say this once. Barty's a funny one, and I don't mean like a merry-andrew. You best be careful, Lucy. He don't like no one questioning his authority. And he has his moments; if ya know what I mean."
"I believe I do."
"No, I don't think ya do. But ye will. Say, you eaten yet?"
…
February 02, 1976
I am watching lambent lights coruscate past above my head. I am lying on my back. There is a quick, sharp, repetitive click of marmoreal: wheels scratching across a floor. I am in motion. I am being propelled. My throat is dry; I am gasping for air. The place I am in is golden, opaque silhouettes capering in the sepulchral idyll. I cannot move. I am sinking. The bed is swallowing me. Wait, this is not a bed; there are bars that numb my toes.
We are racing along. There are people on either side of me, pushing the metallic cage. They're running, panting, stress coursing through their red and blue veins. What's the hurry? My torso feels funny, heavy. There is a tortuous ache branching through it, like a rhizome, sprouting from my neck to my pelvis. I try to lift my arm, but it weighs as much as elephant's drink. I try to lift my head to look at it, to look at my chest, to look around, to see where I am, but I am unable to. My head, too, is heavy as lead. From the corner of my eye, I see people watching me, staring with achromatic eyes as I fly by, or maybe I can't see the pigment in their plastic doll eyes.
I am in shock. I heard them say it when they found me. He's in shock, one said to the other. Who are they? They shot the lady jester whose silver blades were embedded into my wife's back. Does her spine look like a macabre game of connect the dots? I am indignant. I black out.
I am swimming in the warm blood of my wife; the tick of her heart and tock of her tongue a melody among the jester's rotten shriek. Draco is cold to the touch, it hurts, he cries, and I push a hand against his wound; my fingers numb. Narcissa is breathing, but so am I, and then I can no longer feel her like her still figure feels mine.
I come to. There are people in hospital blue standing around me, peering down at me. They look like a thicket of trees, and I am lying immobile on the forest floor. When did it happen? What did they use? they demand, their voices far away. I don't remember — where is Narcissa, she wasn't breathing — is she alright? I feel a little sick. I vomit into the kidney dish they hold out for me. Why am I here, I say, where is Narcissa? Is Draco alright? Please, I want to see them. Where is my family?
Am I saying any of this? No one stops. They bustle. I realize I am screaming and stop, where is Narcissa? The nurse does not look at me as she answers, "the woman, she had a seizure, she choked on the infusion set. And the boy, his injuries, we couldn't do anythi—"
…
September 05 1932
"He hit you, Narcissa!"
She closes her eyes and rests her head against the back of her chair. "Merlin — has he always been like this?"
"Yes. Well, he's never hit me before. But these mood swings? Yes, I never know what I am going to wake up to."
"Dumbledore said he's a paranoid schizophrenic."
She drops her head, her fingers toying with the collar of her shirt. "How have you stood it?"
"I didn't have much choice, did I? I married him with the hopes of escaping a loveless arrangement my parent's setup. You've seen it. When he's happy, he's the most charming creature on earth. But when something sets him off..." She dithers, and then waits so long I wonder if she's thinking of retracting her confession.
When she does speak, her voice is tremulous. "The first time it happened we'd only been married three weeks; it scared me to death. He'd beaten up Moody so badly he lost an eye; I saw him do it. I sent my parents letter and asked if I could come home, but they wouldn't even send me their regards. It was bad enough that I'd married a circus boy, but now I wanted a divorce as well? My father told me that in his eyes, I had died the day I eloped."
I cross the room and kneel beside her. She reaches for my hand and traces the bloody cuticles, her skin cold. "Later in the season, I found out that the only reason Barty had a string of liberty horses to give me was that the previous trainer — my own sister — had an affair with Barty before being redlighted. I thought she had left the train, left me. And now, he tried to feed you to a damn cat!" She chokes on her words, her hand raising to cover her quivering lips.
"No, Narcissa," I say, helplessly. "No, hey — look at me. Please. Snape couldn't have hurt me, he's like a house cat, yes?"
She lifts her head and rubs her damask cheeks. She stares into my eyes. "Will you stay with me, Lucius?"
"Narcissa—"
She touches a finger to my lips and kneels in front of me, her knees between mine, her finger trembling against my lips. "Please," she says. "I need you."
My heart catches in my throat, and I close my eyes. "Narcissa—"
"Don't speak." she whimpers. She twists her fingers through my white tresses and down the back of my neck. I shudder. She leans forward and brushes her lips past mine, the essence of old wine alternating between the intermingling of our billowing breaths. "I love you, Lucius."
…
July 31, 2008
I am lying on the bed. I am listening to click of the lead crystal clock. It is dark, there is no light, but I can feel the rays on my ruined flesh. My mind is spinning. I am out of control, unable to contain myself. I am convulsing beneath the white sheets. They are white, Scorpius would say, as white as you. I am skeletal. It disgusts me, Narcissa, it must disgust you as well.
You are dying; the voice is far away. I can no longer feel pain, feel Scorpius, feel the sun, feel the white sheets. And, I can no longer think, I can no longer think of the pain, of Narcissa, or of the panther with no teeth. It is quiet; it is silent.
I am dead once the clock clicks past midnight.
Prompt(s):
- #118 for Angel N Darkness's Are You Crazy Enough to Do It Challenge
- Muggle AU, Circus AU, and Going to the past or present AU for SnarkyAndProudHufflepuff's 50 AU's Challenge
- #25: Describe a memory you cherish. Write about a character reminiscing about something for Fire the Canon's Conversation Starter Prompt Challenge.
- "I have to leave." - for AlwaysPadfoot's The Dialogue Wheel
- Past for KeepCalmAndWriteSomething's Start and Stop Challenge
- Write about getting a pet for the first time and it turning out to be different than expected for TQLFC