A/N; Written for littlebirds 'Favourite Things' Teachers' Lounge challenge.
My favourite thing in the Harry Potter world is the house at Grimmauld Place; it broods silent and watchful over the last three books in the series. The unlikely pairing I chose was Sirius/Severus. (Snack. No, really?)
With thanks to littlebirds for giving me a vehicle to indulge my tendency to flowery prose, respitechristopher for inadvertently giving me the title, hermyluna2 for inadvertently giving me the idea, and JKR for inadvertently letting me borrow the things you recognise.
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Two, down; Solanum Atropurpureum (11)
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The family that conceived her was one of shrewd and greedy opportunists. The tendrils of their influence, like the aerial roots of ivy, sought out the cracks and weaknesses in the structure of society and anchored themselves there. They prospered; grew rich upon the spoils of war, upon the acquisitiveness of Men and wizards alike, and upon the credulity of desperate fools and bankrupt governments.
The fields of Islington were being paved and metalled at the time the little Corsican named himself Emperor. Mindful of revolution in the air, the family removed from their secluded manor and sold its park and forest to the encroaching city. A fashionable architect presented his design for a house of taste and elegance, to be built there among the rows of graceful terraces.
The first faint ripple of sentience came when her foundations were laid, secured with bonds of innocent blood, like the bridges of the city. The simple builders looked upon her plans - inscribed in arcane language with words they did not understand and symbols no God-fearing man should know - and trembled with dread. Dumb and taciturn, the bricklayers and joiners took their shillings and did their work; and in silent agreement placed inside her walls and chimneys a bird, a cat, a shoe.
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Some whispered that her interior was infinite. This was not true then and is not now, though many things are hidden and others are lost. Within her are spaces proportioned in the golden ratio of magic and knowledge, and inside those are silences that echo with things not forgotten. She was built to contain the murmur of conspiracies devised between this great and noble family and Men of the cleverer or richer or more Machiavellian sort. They came and went; discarded when their useful purpose was done. The portly Regent and his brothers, vulnerable in their debts and irresponsibility and resentment of expectations unfulfilled, were ripe for exploitation, and her rooms resonated with promises and anticipation.
Perhaps the family thought that a royal house would always provide a generous reservoir of possibilities. But the little queen who succeeded her uncles, though diminutive and uneducated had proved rigid and suspicious, unyielding, incorruptible. Perhaps that should have been the first presentiment that not everyone may be bought. That gold and fear are not the only currencies of power.
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In the world outside, the cusp of the centuries merged and separated. Revolution whispered again, but gave way to a war the like of which had never been seen before, and then within the space of a generation, another. Even insulated as she was by power and magic, events of such significance did not occur without effect.
When the century had passed by its halfway point, the family, like so many others born to ease and privilege, found the world had changed. They began to retrench, withdrawing to the shelter of her walls, waiting for an opportunity when they could once more assert their influence and reclaim their position.
So Walburga, the loyal daughter who had never lived beyond the protection of this house, grew into adulthood blinkered in pride and ignorance, stiff backed and tight lipped. Proudly she married a cousin of her noble line and believed it secure; her duty done when she had two sons. She tried to keep them obedient. Tried to keep them safely by her. But in the end, both were lost to her. And after Walburga's lonely death, for a decade the house was devoid of inhabitants except for a single elf, descending in isolation into his own sort of bitter madness.
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She does not have eyes or ears as you or I would understand them, yet she sees and hears. She cannot interfere, she can only observe - and she has indeed observed much over the last century and three-quarters. She does not remember, but nor does she forget. She does not follow the passage of time, yet knows it is on a day at the very end of June, that Sirius Black comes home, riding a hippogriff like a wizarding Lone Ranger. Beneath his torn and dirty robe, he wears the pallor of incarceration, grief and fear. There is a bounty on his head and he has run out of places to hide. He knows he will be safe here, but he also knows that the price of safety is high, and all it buys is time.
She does not welcome him or love him, yet he is hers; she shares his blood. His thoughts echo in her empty spaces. She recognises that the family line is tenuous, and hangs on a single rebellious and unreliable thread.
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He stables the beast in his mother's bedroom, for though he has precious little to laugh about, he retains a sharp sense of the absurd. He does not subscribe to the theory that revenge is a dish best served cold, but it is all he can manage at the moment. The satin draperies and rare timbers suffer from the sharp claws and beak and each new injury to the fabric of his past affords him a small satisfaction. With reluctant familiarity he reacquaints himself piece by piece with the contents of his house.
Arranged on the dresser in the dining room, where a spider the size of a teapot keeps a many-eyed vigil, is the porcelain service, now dull with grime. Once a perquisite from a grateful supra-cargo of the Honourable Company, its armorial was copied so faithfully by the Chinese painter that in places the text can be read; 'this coat of arms to be done in gold'. The shield supported by Talbots seems almost a presentiment of where the line will end. The central chevron hangs above a sword raised in memory of the free company and the diabolical Englishman who was instrumental in bringing such wealth and opulence home.
Downstairs, the troll's foot umbrella stand in the entrance hall still sits at the bottom of the stairs. He remembers how his brother would hide inside it when he was very small and they played hide and seek together. A trophy brought by a great-uncle from a hunting trip in the damp forests of Norway, it is imperfectly preserved and emanates an unmistakable odour of rot. The grooved and yellowed nails and horny skin leave a flaky residue on the dirty floor.
Above it, on the stairwell wall, hangs an assemblage of shrunken heads, although it is many years - thankfully - since a new one was added to the collection. The protuberant eyes, opaque and sightless, stare as Walburga's portrait, permeated with a lifetime of bitterness and disappointment, daily expresses her contempt for him, and his house-elf revolts against obliged loyalty by way of duplicity and tiny treacheries.
Hanging in one of the principal rooms, grafted tight into the living mesh of the wall, is the tapestry. Brought from the Old House, its record of inheritance and entitlement is picked out in coloured silks and gold threads, now partly obscured by sooty cobwebs. The armorial here includes ravens, closed; the chevron reversed; the escutcheon surmounted not by a helm, but a by skull. This is her heart. The circulation of magic that runs within her walls, joists and rafters begins and ends here. Where his own name should be, there is just a blackened hole. And even now, when he looks at it, he wonders if his mother ever loved him.
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In enforced solitude, Sirius roams the corridors on two legs and on four, his bare feet and his paws drawing uneven trails on the dusty floorboards. There are places he will not go. He does not venture into his old bedroom or his brother's, for those children are dead now and he needs no reminder. There are many mirrors, but he avoids those too. When he catches an inadvertent glimpse of himself, he wonders who the unkempt stranger is. His perception is filtered through a prism of misery.
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Outside, it is July and the city sweats, but inside her it is cool. There is always a touch of moisture in the air, always a clammy feel to the timbers. And on this July day, Sirius has a visitor.
They are rare things these days, and this one comes from his past, which is what he fears more than anything. His guest is clad in pristine robes. Long, black and creased only where they should be. The boots gleam as if oiled.
Sirius's voice is rusty; he has not spoken to another person for several weeks, but he manages a sardonic tone. "What an unexpected pleasure. To what do I owe the honour?"
He is being mendacious, for he knows the answer and the visit is not unexpected. He has been expecting it every day since the twenty-fifth of June, when a tacit promise was exchanged in a brief and unwilling handshake, charged with pain and memories.
The visitor removes something from an inside pocket and Sirius looks at it with hunger.
The voice is carefully modulated; every word is chosen with care. "It seems you were not – quite – as guilty as you appeared. You will notice I am careful not to use the word 'innocent'."
Sirius does not answer. He is still looking at the packet held in those long fingers. Without haste, they open it and withdraw a slim cigarette, holding it before him, like a sweet to a hungry child.
Sirius takes it and lights it. It is so long since he had a smoke that he becomes pleasantly dizzy; gratifyingly nauseous.
"What an elegant house you have." The slender fingers pick up a porcelain vase from a stand and wipe grime from a spot on the side, revealing dragons and moths that hover in rich colours beneath the greasy surface.
Severus has cultivated a more aristocratic veneer than Sirius ever had himself and the heir of the House of Black recognises a connoisseur when he sees one. He gives a harsh laugh. "I sometimes think I am a changeling. My mother would have loved a son like you."
Severus puts the vase down again. "I must assume that living in a cave suited you, as you seem to be turning your house into something similar. You do not think I am here to make polite small-talk?"
Indeed, Sirius does know that. Without speaking, he leads the way upstairs, to one of the bedrooms on the second floor. The afternoon sun is hot on the windows. Even the flies that crawl on the sticky glass leaving brown spots to mark their passing are sluggish and enervated. But beyond reach of the harsh, breathless sun, the room is no warmer than anywhere else in the building.
Severus unfastens his robes, takes them off and hangs them; carefully and without hurry. His body is pale and slender. For a dark man, his chest is unusually smooth, and Sirius wonders if the Potions Master shaves.
Sirius does not want to look, yet cannot tear his gaze away. His throat is dry, yet he forces speech. "I don't want this, you know. I need a woman."
"Indeed." Severus's voice is heavy with irony. "But what did you get in that prison, Black? Not a woman, surely? The brand you wear indicates otherwise." He scratches a circular weal around the raised and darkened mark on the tattooed chest.
"The man who gave me that mark was never my master, Severus!" Sirius clamps the other man by the wrist, and forces his arm up, twisting it to show the dark stain. "You cannot say the same."
Severus's eyes are nearly black with dislike and with lust. "There are those who say that a woman can never please a man as well as another man."
And this is true, but Sirius wishes it were not. Angry, his reflexes animal-fast and instinctive, he pins Severus against the wall. His prison-muscles have the strength of hawsers, and allow no quarter, but Severus merely smiles. His chin is smooth and he smells of expensive cologne. Deliberately, he contrasts with the musty odour of neglect that lingers on Sirius like smoke.
Although it is a year since Sirius broke from Azkaban, he carries with him still the staleness of imprisonment. He is slightly malnourished, and magic cannot quite keep on top of the spots and skin lesions; the bad breath and bleeding gums. He is an unattractive specimen these days, and trapped in the cage of his arms, Severus wrinkles his nose.
"It is not the softness of a woman you need now, is it Black? It is this." He bends his head and catches a small nipple between his teeth, biting painfully. Sirius makes an exhalation, raw with unwelcome desire.
Severus's voice is amused. "You were always a slave to your physical impulses were you not? Lucky for me. All I ever had to do was touch you."
Sirius releases his grip and droops in defeat, his defences broken by need and loneliness.
Severus's nails are buffed and polished and the ease with which he draws he draws a fine line of blood indicates that at least one of them is filed to a sharp edge.
It has been too long. Sirius's heart speeds in its beating. He wishes he did not respond so quickly with a rush of blood; wishes he did not cry out in hunger. He puts his hand flat on Severus's smooth chest and feels the regular beat underneath. He loathes himself for the note of pleading he hears in his own voice. "Why do you hate me so much? You did not hate me before."
They had been boys then, soft of skin and voice; excited and afraid; tough with public displays of indifference, while privately soft with need, desire, even sometimes tenderness. It was an addiction that sucked them into an undercurrent salted with shame and denial, until other loyalties had intervened and jealousy, like nightshade, had poisoned their fragile association.
"I have always hated you, Black. For your privilege, wealth, good looks and charm; for the way things were always easy for you. You were weak, effete, spoiled. You are still weak, but you are no longer beautiful."
They are men now, big and hard. However damaged. However hurt and lost. Each alone, yet connected in bitterness and regret, they are two sides of the same coin; heads and tails. They are not light and dark, for now they are both dark and both walk in the shadows. While one might have acted from the best of motives, and the other from the worst, yet the results are the same. By their actions, each has lost the one who meant more to him than any other. The road to hell is paved neither with good intentions nor with gold, but with misery. Both men take what little comfort they can in anger.
"Turn around." The touch is gentle now. Assured and confident, slippery and necessary, facilitating the slide of flesh on flesh. Severus might gasp, with a small loss of control, still, not as loud as Sirius for whom carnal activity was always a noisy, uncontrolled affair. There is the inevitable residue of fluid, drying on the musty bedlinen and cooling on the skin; but if magic is useful for anything, it is for removing the evidence of such activities.
Sirius lies back against the bedstead and lights another cigarette, watching as Severus armours himself again in black.
Severus says, "This will never happen again," and Sirius understands this, but does not know quite how it makes him feel. Is it relief, or regret, or something else altogether? The barrier between love and hate is as insubstantial as air and he has never really understood where it lies.
Alone, Severus descends the staircase with measured steps. Before he leaves, she observes how he pauses in her chilly entrance hall and believing himself unseen, bends his head and wraps his arms tight around himself for a moment before moving on.
Upstairs, Sirius lies motionless and silent on top of the bed, his cigarette turning to a trail of grey ash that drops on to the sheets. His eyes are fixed upon the peeling gilt of the ceiling rose, while tears run back into his ears, and trickle on to the dirty cotton ticking of his pillow.
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Nowadays, beetles eat the timbers of her rafters and her gilded plaster flakes with damp. The parquet blocks on her floors warp, birds nest in the chimneys, and trees have seeded in the gutters. But the bonds that hold the structure in place will never break while innocent bones rest in her foundations.
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