Somewhere, just out of his reach, a fuzzy moving blur at the corner of his field of vision, she would always be dancing, dancing, her streaming golden hair and cool eyes almost taunting him. Dancing, twirling, gliding, dancing in the distance.
He had worshipped her from afar in their years at Hogwarts – worshipped, but never dared to come closer than the occasional nod or darting glance in the corridors, because she was the lovely ice-queen daughter of the house of Black, and he was the dark, vicious, scowling son of a Muggle and a witch – unworthy, unworthy. Or perhaps it was intentional, for sometimes the greatest beauty lies in the things left unsaid, the little half-thoughts that lurk at the edges of the awareness.
--
Once, when he was sixteen and she the same, he saw her dancing.
He had never cared for dancing, considered it to be a vulgar display of emotional weakness, but still he watched her twirl-step-twirl across the common-room floor.
She looked up, and her grey eyes caught his black ones. His lip curled in an attempted half-sneer; she tossed her golden head proudly.
But they talked to each other, after that.
Weakness made her human in his eyes, human and therefore beneath him, an object worthy of indifference and not worship, and she found him interesting and something of an escape – and in her world even later there were always two, Lucius the husband and Severus the trusted. Always Severus the trusted.
--
Things changed between the dancing and the dying; she grew up, and married, and had a son she adored; he grew older and taller and his scowl etched itself permanently into his dark face; but somehow, despite scorn, despite contempt, in his memories she was always twirling, swirling, gliding; in his memories she was dancing, always dancing down.
Er, yeah, so I am odd. Still.