Title: Possession, Friendship, Joy
Summary: An AU one-shot that was based vaguely off of the bedtime story Lady in the Water by M. Night Shyamalan. Winters are awful when there's nobody to share them with except with madmen among madmen. Best thing there could be would be enchantment. V/BL, SS/HG, LM/HP.
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, the series, anything by Mr. Shyamalan or Miss Rowling. I make no money from this.
Warnings: This is both part of the Wizarding world and is not. It is the reader's choice to decide. Three parts of love, but not quite the same kind.
Dedication: Well, technically this was a present to my sister for Christmas. She asked for fluff and, in a way, I have given it. It took me two weeks and then I find that one of the pairings (the slash) was the wrong one and had to retrace. I hope others will enjoy it.

-:-
…Blow me a kiss from across the room,
Say I look nice, when I'm not;
Touch my hair as you pass my chair,
Little things mean a lot…
-Circle of Friends.

A house in the pit of rings and rows and hornets that stand as giants in bark and bite sits quiet and content with a ten foot white and grey stoned wall circling the property to keep away the unwanted. Three men live there; one mad as though he had advanced and incurable Syphilis, though that is not his disease. One stands at half that man's age, hair black as night and twice as tempered still with knowledge that pleases if only to himself. One is young, bi-speckled, all fair colors but that is not what his insides hold.

Each is lonely and has been for years. They live together and speak together without the opening of their mouths or the lashing of their tongues like snakes among cold feeling snakes. They exist in unison, and yet keep away from each other.

Outside of the lonely house, now that is something else in its entirety.

In the pool outside the front doors in open view of the courtyard—a wide expanse of tiles made of glass and stone that circle and bridge and gape like massive jaws and scales—the eldest of the men living in the house (being half snake and with eyes that are quick to fetch and observe if he is warm enough) has lately been privy to the sight of something swimming in the water. It is always during the night, with his candle lit to shine on the books that outside might look like a flicker of a distant star, but the man—by the name of Lord, but also Riddle and yet preferring the phrase Voldemort—has managed to catch, in the brief flicker of flame, long and ruffled black hair, spindly legs, arms that flourish above the head like a prayer and saccharine eyes. He sometimes sets the candle down, along with the text he had been reading to open the doors and go out to the water in nothing but his powder black robes and his bare feet. He has lost count of how many times he has dipped his hands into the winter cold water to feel what he saw, but still, even though the other men of the house say it could not have been, he knows what he saw and will stay up forever until he can hold it in his hand. Whether or not he should choose to keep the apparition afterwards, depends on if he finds it worth his time. So little is, these days.

Inside the house, among the books in many cases bolted to the second floor in rows and rows and little soldiers in white lines finest in silence, the second man, reading, writing, writing on boards in chalk and his fingers pressed on everything, has found himself in a dizzy spell of emotion. Something has come to his—the teacher, the observant, a Snape, a Severus, how like a serpent like the other men-library, just whispering out of sight when his harsh black eyes see it; a thin walking mist of contained curiosity, knowledge he does not possess, a head of syrup colored silk, pale flesh that walks below his clavicle and honey where sight resides. He has not and will not tell the others about this figment of his waking hours, no. He keeps it to himself. Until he is certain.

Far outside, far from the building that is the center of a universe resided in by silent, private men, among the calm Birch, Sycamore, Elm, Brentwood, Brushwood, Red and Apple, the youngest of the three—quiet, sweet, not really deserving to be stuck in a place with men twice his age and with a strange name, Harry—has found, wandering along the route that circles the property like a shroud, standing along the stones and balancing with both arms stretched wide in opposite directions, another being outside his own small world that he once thought large. Just by chance, a one in a million chance, his own green, wire rimmed orbs glanced upon crisp white slithers and ribbons of hair that framed a face slightly older than his own, with eyes like an empty sky and a little lonely like Harry himself. He nearly fell off the wall and into the world at the sight of flowing black robes with a green ribbon of a scarf, face trained and looking down upon the bundle of apples and pears in a sack the man Harry could not stop thinking about, carried right by the raven haired boy. They saw each other once and the young, sleek boy finds himself talking aloud to himself, without a way to say anything to his guardians about these things wriggling in his chest like worms and vipers and butterflies about to emerge from chrysalis.

Ah, a story now.

He had sealed off the walls with a sort of green fire that was not quite deadly, but would certainly hurt anyone and everything that was unfortunate enough to come across it by accident or no accident. Either way, it worked to the serpentine man's advantage. After four weeks of waiting patiently for the creature he had been watching for to make the first move—a move out of turn, leave a watery footprint in the snow about the swimming pool that had long been mostly considered just a decorative centerpiece to the garden with its slime and vegetation growing within, a second too late to escape from the surface when he opened the door—but Voldemort had enough waiting. He was patient, but he was hungry lately and no potion or meal could qualm his urges.

Making sure his soot haired bat of a man was in his study and his half-blood of a boy had wandered off into the woods, he bolted the door that lead to the garden and made a charm upon the knob that it would turn into blazing coal if it were touched by any other but himself. His fingers traced the glass frame of the out-looking window, nails making an awful screech of a noise and then he turned, black robe making a whirling dervish of motion and silence and his harsh eyes rested on the pool, winter flakes falling from the sky and becoming one with some dying lilies or firm grips of green sitting on the pool's surface.

Really, he did not wish to get emotional over a sort of apparition, he didn't. It wasn't his style or his wish and he hated feeling the unnecessary emotions that he had tried to blot out of his life like drops of ink away from paper. He couldn't understand and did not wish to so far into his century long life.

And yet…

Step for step for step took him to the side of the pool with little steps that took one within the clutches of the wetness that he usually disliked quite a bit and his lithe, boney left hand settled on the sleek of the wand in his pocket. He pulled his wand out and began a quiet incantation that only he could hear, but equally lead his wand to glow orchard leaf red at the end. Further into his words that translated only into a half-dead language, he stepped carefully into the pull—very sure in footing before he took another step so he didn't lose balance and crack his alabaster head on the tiles behind him—of ice cold water's clutch and keep, little tizzies of the red light flickering off the end of his wand to dive deep into the pool, circling under the plant life and finally residing in the farthest, deepest corner, like he thought it would.

A settled feeling of cold and wet set upon him at his elbows and the slime from the pool has found a way up his skin and into his clothing. Fine, but with the end of his incantation, a wicked and almost possessive look came upon his face and the wand sent a splitting red flash deep into the corner of the pool. Bubbles came up and out and popped at the feel and touch of the cold air.

That grinding that came inside his head that was a reflex reaction to any sort of triumphant feeling in his brain came to light and he had to smother down the urge to let his lips curl at the rims.

With that—oh, and this is the good bit—the rest is easy. Following up the bubbles, a slicker and slant of a body with hair black as ebony in his window frames, skin sickly white as ash and death and a face that is both terrifying, gorgeous and ugly at once breached the water, gasping and choking on the surface condition and the condition she had lived in (yes, she is a female, she had breasts after all) as a result of his spell and he is pleased to see that as a mouthful of red blood in spat from her mouth, he has her attention. Or she has his attention.

They're both staring at each other—her with a grin that showed off a mouth full of sharp teeth and eyes like a feral cat, him with a quirk at the ends of his mouth and his eyes narrowed in slits—and it is a content feeling he gets when she moves towards him, hair trailing behind her like tendrils of black, black, black. She circles him and says something he can't quite understand…

"….here…."

Her voice isn't quite hissy and mean, but is far from pleasant—a bit like his, but higher, much very—and he finds his grip on her hip and arm, tight on her slick skin that is difficult to hold. She doesn't struggle.

"What was that?" Voldemort hissed, in English, in Parseltongue, he wasn't quite sure. Her foot (bare, it was) was tapping on his firmly planted toes and ankle.

She swallowed deep, tongue coming to light to sweep away a slink of red still on her lips and he wanted to do the same with his own tongue; his fingers dug further into her arm instead.

"I was waiting for you. Took you long enough to get here," she answered, breasts touching his robes guarding the skin of his chest, her other leg coming up to circle his hip and stay there.

His nails cut into the slimy skin of her hip and he hissed in the back of his throat. She titled her head to the side before tucking herself under his chin. A present giving itself to an owner.

…Hm.

There was a loud and rather ominous 'thunk'from behind Severus as he took another step up the stairs to the next section of books he would need. The fourteen books in both of his strong hands were gripped even tighter around the edges at the noise and his head swiveled around to find that, the one book on top of the pile, the least heavy and the exact one with the dead, pressed flowers in it that he really needed had fallen down from where he had set it on the side of the staircase banister. It now sat on its back with its inside and a white pressed lily exposed at the bottom of the stairs.

Five staircases down it sat and he still had another set until he reached the top and could set the batch he held down on a nice, safe table.

He didn't waste the energy on getting angry, but he did feel that he would become disappointed when he went to get his favorite book off the floor. A fall like that, always, always, always lead to a tear or a rip or damage of some kind. And that book was the last remembrance of the only real friend—and love, perhaps—that he'd ever had, as well.

He turned his back on the book to put the others to rest on his table he took millions of notes on each and every day—a study in more potions, on life, on anything that really caught his fancy—but his ears tuned into the sounds of bird wings on the air flitting into his domain.

Not such a strange thing, but enough to catch his attention as the wings couldn't possibly be those of an owl come to give him a note. Owls made a lot of racket inside of a house, contrary to their silent habits outside in the wood catching mice and rats and other vermin. The sounds behind him down at the bottom were tiny and flittery—like robins or pigeons.

He turned around with the books still in hand to find a flash of golden brown and his book gone.

The lily was still lying there plainly, but it was no longer pressed and dead, but glistening, in full bloom and exhibiting signs of a charm.

Without grace, without willingness to except something so ludicrous as a return of life in his silent domain, Severus simply dropped the books onto the step he had been making to step upwards upon in ascension and made descent down again in a rush, over stepping every two steps in speed that nearly lead to him falling and breaking something—himself, or the banister—twice.

"What in the devil was that," he grumbled and wheezed, down and down until reaching the bottom with the end of his robes taking the millisecond to grab up some stray dust on the stairs and send it fluttering onto the floor and into the air like tiny, microscopic organisms. His eyes narrowed on the rather beautiful flower—beautiful and then some more than even when it had flourished and been truly alive—and his hand absently came upon his wand, fingers and palm tightening upon its dark surface like his curiosity on this scene and impossibility.

His dark eyes narrowed and he uttered a quiet spell, hand waving his wand, and his other hand reached out as the flower levitated up into his hands and at its touch and its feeling of being moist and powerfully alive, he brought it up to his hook of a nose, smell entering his nostrils and then his brain.

"Chirr…"

A quick spin and the wand in his hand was pointed at the long table so similar to the one upstairs that he was supposed to leave his books on, the dropped book sitting there—pristine and unharmed—along with a cute and completely out of place golden brown canary. Its little head and bright eyes swiveled and looked at him, as if to say, "I believe this is yours; would you like it back?"

He kept his wand in hand, but the hand dropped to his side as he walked up to the table and the bird with mixed emotions of curiosity and mild bewilderment of how the little creature had gotten into his study again. It had been there before—just after seeing an apparition not so unlike Voldemort's, but also very much different—and he had always shooed it out a window, but it had never come before he'd seen the lovely looking young girl (that couldn't have been more than fourteen) and it made him a little uneasy.

Once his middle was touching the wood, the little bird looked up further—perhaps almost breaking its neck in straining to meet his eyes—and gave what seemed like a delighted little chirp, walking back and then flittering to sit on the chair's back that he usually leaned upon when writing notes.

Inadvertently, his lips started to curl and he set the flower down on the book's face, other hand tucking his wand back into his breast pocket, "I don't suppose you're waiting for that little apparition to show so I can let you outside again?"

The bird seemed to smile at him and with a little tremble of its wings and a noise sifting through his mind that was both terrifying and beautifully bright—a waltz by Mozart, or the orchestra that played during executions in more barbaric countries—that left Severus uneasy and anxious, the canary shed its feathers like a rose shed its petals as winter approached and the dark man was left to almost swallow his tongue.

The bird changed shape right before his eyes and then, before his eyes with her own eyes like summer gold and cleverness that didn't match such plain colors as the brown on her head furling out in waves, that little ghost of a girl was sitting on his chair, totally naked with her knees drawn up to cover her in chastity, hair settling over her small chest and a little smile on her lips.

"Actually," the bird/girl said, voice light and still smiling, "A friend of yours sent me to you and I was supposed to stay in."

On the table, the lily glowed red and then went back into a vanilla white.

Severus took in a breath that could have been silently made to be a prayer for patience and decided, unilaterally, that if Lily had sent this…person…to him, she would have to at least wear a shirt.

"Hello."

Almost jumping from his skin and having lost his heart through his mouth, Lucius spun on his heel to find nobody behind him but his own footsteps in the snow and the curves in the white blanket of frost caused by his briny stone black winter cloak dragging behind him like midnight over a sea. Baffled, he directed his eyes and head up towards the towering Stone gates he often walked by almost every day after visiting the market, just to look upon it and wonder why any being would want to make such an attempt to keep out the world. The Malfoy head's Silver Prestige Grey eyes blinked twice when they fell upon Absolute Green that made him flinch a little and almost drop the two bags of books in his hands he had bought, along with the paper bag of apples and two cloth bound whole baked bread eggs held tightly with his inner arm to his chest.

A young boy looked curiously down upon the man from his cross-legged position atop the wall, one foot wiggling and causing some little speckles of snow to fall to the ground like cascades of a waterfall. He was no more than a young teenager and kind of cute.

Caught between dignity and lack of dignity at being caught looking like a carrier donkey with all the house items in his possession that he was—of late—now forced to get by himself since his wife left with his son a few weeks ago, Lucius dropped the first word out of his mouth that came to mind.

"Uh…hello."

The boy, black haired, wire rimmed at the eyes, dropped from the fence without hesitation and, with a little hand wave that looked not-very-complicated, he hovered to the ground like a cloth covered firefly, finally touching the earth just three feet from Lucius.

"You walk along our wall an awful lot," the boy began, holding out his hand with a deeply warm smile, "And I thought we might be neighbors. It's rude not to know who your neighbors are—or so Severus and Riddle say—so I thought I'd introduce myself if my guardians won't. My name is Harry, and you are the person that lives in the big, white stoned house down the lane, right?"

Lucius nodded, a little dazed at the young man—Harry's—rambling, but, never the less and with a little shuffling of one of the book bags to his other hand, he took the much smaller and gloved hand offered to him and shook it, "Er, yes I live up the lane. My name is Lucius Malfoy."

"Oh, well, I do know that," Harry blushed, looking upon the load Lucius was carrying with a certain worry Lucius couldn't understand, "I asked Severus who lived in our closest neighbor's house—your house, now I know—and he said you were an old friend of his. I also know you're rather well off, have a son and a wife that just cut ties with you and you have this tendency to walk along our rather ominous wall every day that you can while staring up at the trees or down at the ground like the weight of the world's on your shoulders. You seem nice, so I wanted to offer you help if you ever carried something rather heavy by while I was around. Seeing as you have some rather heavy stuff now, I'm making that offer…"

Harry took a long breathe—in and out, in and out—as his face had gone red trying to get enough oxygen during his ramblings that Lucius thought he might have to drop his belongings and catch the brunette before he passed out. After a moment, of which the younger man dipped forward a little so that the thick red and gold scarf wrapped around his neck—such a grand difference to the others in his house that preferred black and green or silver—touched the snow and then had some clinging to it on his lurch back, Harry was smiling lightly again and offered his hand out, "Would you like some help carrying that stuff home? Every time I've seen you carry this much stuff, you always drop something and I can hear you cursing for about half a mile until you disappear."

Lucius didn't so much allow as absently feel his eyebrows rise at the mass of information that came out of Harry's mouth. He felt a little sick at having someone that didn't look like he could drive a Muggle vehicle know so much about him when he had never met the boy once. It was like having a stalker and in the back of his mind he was actually panicking quite badly, but his face remained rather sleek and calm as he handed the boy one of his book bags.

Harry took the load and seemed to strain to keep his balance, but managed not to fall on his ass and maintain his grin. He didn't look dangerous, so Lucius turned on his heel and waved his hand for Harry to follow him.

"You seem rather curious about a person twice your age that you've never spoken to."

Harry walked up beside him, both hands on the bag, "You don't look that old and, well, you're the only person—besides the apparitions in our pool and library—that I've seen since coming to live with my guardians. I got curious about you."

"And obviously, you don't know that it's generally socially unacceptable to start talking to a man you don't know when you have no idea if they're killers or molesters…" Lucius muttered, both of them having to hop over a tiny creek that Harry recognized as the water route that funneled into their wall and into their swimming pool, all crystal clean and beautiful.

"Severus says you couldn't raise a flag," Harry shrugged nonchalantly, almost causing Lucius to trip into the water route in mild shock, "I don't know what that means, but he gave the inflection that you weren't dangerous. Why worry?"

Lucius smiled and, internally, made the promise after dropping his belongings off at his house to give the boy some cocoa and then walk him back. He seemed pleasant and, when Lucius took him back to the giant of a manor he lived in and walked him to the door, with some luck he might be able to see his old schoolmate again. How much fun would he have getting Severus to explain to the boy what they used to do and what "raise a flag" meant.